Paper Planes And A River Of Stones

// January 3rd, 2012 // 4 Comments » // illustration, Uncategorized, writing ideas

Here we are in the new year and I’m taking a new direction in my Ephemeral Adventurer series of paintings. I’m experimenting with larger paintings on canvas and trying a few designs without the maps.

This one is called ‘Fly With Me’ and it’s the first of the new batch. I’m going to order some wooden boards as well so I can more easily get some maps collaged in there. The canvas I used has beautiful deep sides and I painted them black which looks really great.

I’m still doing the art cards and have started getting a few custom orders through my Etsy store, so I set up a button where you can purchase a custom paper plane, paper crane or paper boat flying over a map featuring the city of your choice.

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Another way I’m kicking off the New Year is by participating in the ‘River Of Stones’ event over at ‘the Writing Our way Home blog. The challenge, well it’s more of an invitation than a chellenge, is to write a small stone evry day for the month of January.

Fiona and Kaspa run the website and have some wonderful courses and a blog as well as a great community forum. Fiona has been writing small stones for years,  and they were a strong influence on my current writing practice.

What’s a small stone? It’s a beautiful form of writing meditation and people  are posting their examples at Fiona and Kaspa’s blog and forming a collective ‘River Of Stones’. You can check out everyone’s contributions here. Have a look, and you might want to have a go at writing Small Stones while you’re there!

I’ll be writing Small Stones this month and posting some of them on the blog.

Here is my Small Stone for today:

morning chill

the Blue Jay seated on a bare branch

springs away and up

one… two … three … four

back and forward … back and forward

the branch bobs good-bye.

Noticing Mondays: Point Of Contact

// November 14th, 2011 // 7 Comments » // writing ideas

Noticing Mondays is a new weekly event on this blog where I discuss my mindful writing practice of ‘noticing’ and encourage you to join in.

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What’s noticing? Well, here’s the twitter version:

Comfy? Good. Start writing whatever you’re experiencing right now: sights/sounds/feelings/thoughts/etc. Stuck? Write ‘noticing …’ continue

And this post has a slightly longer version

The first thing that fascinated me about noticing when I began was the way that it seemed to ground me. I took up noticing as a way of overcoming the anxious feelings that overwhelm me when I write. All I asked of it was that I could just get some momentum going so that the anxiety wouldn’t keep me completely blocked.

What I found was that ‘noticing’ seemed to loosen the anxiety and tension I was feeling.

I would start noticing how anxious I was and move on to something else, then I would come back to the anxiety and notice that it had lessened. As I went through this process a number of times, I started to see that there was a link to noticing the physical sensations I was feeling, and that they would change as I noticed them.

This is the single biggest gift I’ve got from noticing so far.

Here’s one of the ways I’m working with that at the moment.

Points of Contact

When I’m noticing, at some point I’ll often focus my attention on the points where my body comes into contact with other things: a chair, the floor, the edge of the desk, keyboard, clothing. Simply noticing anything that is making contact with me and what my experience of that is.

What I find is that I become more aware of points of comfort and discomfort in my body, and either rest into those points, or adjust the points where I am uncomfortable.

I’ll usually do this exercise and make any adjustments I need to get more comfortable, then move on to some other kind of noticing, what’s around me, or thioughts that may come up, then after a while I will often come back and do another sweep of the points of contact to see if anything has shifted.

Here’s an exerpt from one of my noticing sessions this week where I spent a few minutes noticing while sitting on the stairs in my home:

‘noticing the hard line of pressure against my back where the step is digging in, the sensation is solid, and it feels like the step is pushing forward into me rather than me pushing into it. Like there’s movement there, or something. Now I’m shifting my back forward a little to lessen the pressure.

Noticing the warmth of the wood beneath thesoles of my feet, this step feels soft and yeilding. Another step presses lightly against the mid-point of my calves. It’s stronger against my right calf, barely noticeable against my left.

My notebook rests on the top of my thighs, it’s light except for where my hand rests as I’m writing. I can feel that pressure moving as my hand shifts across the page. noticing the thumb on my left hand pressing down on the page, holding my notebook steady, and how the opposite corner of my notebook shudders lightly as I write, I feel the stuttering contact up near my right knee.’

This went on for a while and there was a bit of shifting around to get comfortable and I noticed some subtler things (like the movement of the notebook as I was writing ) that I would normally never really be aware of.

Focusing awareness on my body has a grounding effect, and it’s something that I forget too easily when I write.
I’ve found noticing the points of contact an interesting exercise because it gets my awareness focused on my body in a way that is different each time–noticing my posture, what I’m sitting on and how I’m sitting on it, what I might be leaning against, or holding–the experience is always different.

How You Can Join In:

Everyone is welcome to join in in whatever way you like.

First of all if you haven’t done noticing, you can check out the brief instructions in this post.

Then … You could hang out in the comments section and share your own experiences and ideas.

If you have a blog, you might like to do a little noticing experiment in a post, or write about your experience with noticing, and leave a link! I’d love to go and check it out and leave a comment.

Of course, you could check-in and read the posts and never comment, just hang out and play quietly with your own noticing practice. (I’ve always been a shy commenter, and that’s my preferred way of hanging out on a lot of blogs.)

Even though posts are titled ‘Noticing Mondays’ they are there to capture any noticing, or ‘noticing noticings’ that might come up for you (or me!) throughout the week!

You could also post mini noticing sessions, or noticing exerpts on twitter or google+. (Use #noticing hashtag so I can respond!)

Whole Life Creativity: The Art of Noticing

// July 18th, 2011 // 9 Comments » // writing ideas

How do you feel when you face a blank page?

Some days it’s not a big deal for me, some days it’s difficult.

When it’s good, writing and creating is like something fresh and vivid pouring itself onto the paper.

Then there’s the not-good times. The block shows up first in my body–as heat, as tension–it’s like I’m a thermometer and the red mercury of dread is rising up through me.

That feeling reminds me of exams I’ve taken where I sat, pen in hand, mortified as every drop of knowledge  evaporates, leaving me stuck on a hard seat staring at the sheet of paper demanding answers from me.

Most of my experience of writer’s block is somehow related to false expectations. Set by me, or a someone else, as if I’m being examined and about to be ‘found out’ as lacking something.

I’ve developed a practice that helps me with all of these things, that is changing my relationship to writing, it’s called ‘noticing’.

Noticing is my way of dissolving false expectations, and tapping into what lies underneath all of that anxiety. It’s a way of claiming a small victory for myself. the small victory of starting. Which often leads to a snowballing effect–once I’ve pierced the crust of my anxiety I’m free to mine all the good that lies beneath it.

This is how it works:

Start by writing the word ‘noticing’ at the top of your page, and begin to write whatever comes into your awareness, in this moment. Anything counts, if the pen is moving, this is working. There is no quality requirement here, we just record what’s happening in the moment, even that is just a starting point, if you veer away that’s fine, too.

Whenever you get stuck, or need a moment to regather, or simply want to follow a new train of thought write the word ‘noticing’ again keep the pen moving:

Noticing the boys walking outside my window, chatting away. The sound of geese? ducks? the light is low and I see grey through the window. The room is warm. Noticing tension in my head. At my temples. I’m tired and flat. Noticing the light falling on the page, how my hand casts a shadow over the tip of my pen and each word is written in shadow then moves into the light as my hand moves across

The repetition of the word noticing does a few things. First of all, even before I come up with my first word, ink has already met the paper: no blank page. It sounds insignificant, but with writer’s block there are no insignificant victories. There’s writing, and there’s not writing.

The word noticing also gives me a focus, I have a clear simple action to perform, that keeps me from spinning my wheels.
I also like the rhythm of the word: ‘no-ti-cing. I often write it out a few times when I’m stuck and just enjoy that rhythm, and what it draws out from me:

noticing noticing noticing … a plane flying overhead, the small of my back is tight, I’m leaning forward in my chair, now shifting a little, my back has eased slightly , still tight. the window just brightened, the sun is out and there’s a mess of garden hose all lit up on the ground outside.

No grammar check, no spell check, no checking anything here. The exercise is all about getting the pen moving, and touching base with your present moment experience.

Noticing is for everybody, the great thing about this exercise is that you can’t get it wrong because you’re just recording what is coming into your field of attention as it happens. And also, you can’t get it right, because no matter how fast you write you can’t possibly capture with pen and hand all the things that are you are noticing in any given moment.

Ideas of right and wrong become completely irrelevant. Take that inner critic!

It’s a great practice to begin a writing session–that’s my favourite use. I also find it calming, and will often ‘notice’ for a few minutes before writing an email, or filling out a form I’ve been stressed about, or even if I just want to sit and do some journalling (I never know what to journal about, so noticing is really helpful there. )

I’ll sometimes take a pen and paper out into the garden when I’m supervising my son’s play, too. It’s nice to sit out there with a cup of tea, do a bit of noticing, run around with the boys for a while, do some more noticing. It’s a great way to check in and touch base.

You can go as lightly or deeply as you choose to with this. Sometimes,I’ll start off noticing and hit an idea or a felling that really draws me in and the noticing becomes something else entirely– a blog post, a starting point for a poem, or a painting.

Anything can happen.

Give it a try and let me know how you go with it.

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Noticing is one of the exercises we cover in my Tea House Writing sessions, you can read about them here if you’re interested.

I was also interviewed this week about writing and creativity by Fiona over at ‘Writing Our Way Home’ . While you’re there you might want to check out their great writing community.

Imagine This

// June 7th, 2011 // 3 Comments » // curiosity, writing

You are sitting at your desk

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook and this blank page stares back up

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook and this blank page stares back up as you twirl your favorite pen in one hand and nurse a mug of peppermint tea in the other

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook and this blank page stares back up as you twirl your favorite pen in one hand and nurse a mug of peppermint tea in the other, you blow steam from the top of your mug because the tea is hot and it is very difficult to start writing

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook and this blank page stares back up as you twirl your favorite pen in one hand and nurse a mug of peppermint tea in the other, you blow steam from the top of your mug because the tea is hot and it is very difficult to start writing when a robin bathes vigorously in the birdbath outside your window reminding you how low the water really is

You are sitting at your desk staring at a blank page in your notebook and this blank page stares back up as you twirl your favorite pen in one hand and nurse a mug of peppermint tea in the other, you blow steam from the top of your mug because the tea is hot and it is very difficult to start writing when a robin bathes vigorously in the birdbath outside your window reminding you how low the water really is and you go to the garden to fill the birdbath back up and maybe water the roses, and the rhododendrons by the back fence, before heading back in and then

You are sitting at your desk …

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If you’re a writer you might not have to imagine that scenario, you’ve probably spent enough time living it.

Writing can be such a difficult thing, I know I’ve spent way too much time staring at a blank page waiting for something to magically appear.

Sometimes all we need is a little space to help get in touch with what needs to be written, and a little support to help us dig deep and get the writing done.

That’s what the The Tea House Writing Sessions are designed for.

The Tea House Writing Sessions

// June 1st, 2011 // 3 Comments » // metaphor, writing

I used to sit regularly at a Buddhist center back in Australia. One of the members there was a student of the Japanese tea ceremony and she used to hold a tea ceremony for us once a month.

The center was in the inner suburbs of Sydney, and we sat on our meditation cushions in this large but austere room as the sounds of traffic, children playing in their yards, and banging pots and pans from families making dinner swirled around us.

In the middle of all this we created our own enclosed world, where we re-enacted this ancient Japanese ceremony. We sat together in silence as our host taught us to whisk the tea in just the right way, and we would take turns to serve each other as we drank green tea and munched sticky rice cakes filled with sweetened red bean paste.

I was struck by all the elements of the ceremony, the beauty of it, and the contemplative and appreciative state of mind it helped to build.

These are the qualities that I’ve been drawing on as I’ve been developing the new writing sessions I’ll be offering here.

I’ve been hoping to lead some sort of writing project with my blog for a while now, and wanted to come up with a way of working with people that included approaches that have been helpful for me, in a format that is also great fun to work with.

What I’ve come up with is called the Tea House Writing Sessions, and they’re going to be available very soon.

The Tea House Writing Sessions will be offered in the form of either one-on-one sessions or group calls. They will take place over phone (or Skype).

Writing can be fraught with anxiety and isolation, and it’s easy to put off. A Tea House session is a place where you can get some respite from writing anxiety, tap into your own courage and writing smarts, and get a little success on the spot.

I’m using the metaphor of a Japanese Tea Ceremony as a guiding principle for the writing sessions. We create a refuge, a retreat from the world, charged with spaciousness and presence and ease. And we write together from there.

I say “we” because during the session I’ll be writing too. We also have the opportunity to read our work out to each other. (Reading aloud is optional.)

A Tea House Writing Session is not a coaching session or a writing class. It floats somewhere in between (beside, around) those things.

My role is to build a supportive environment for people who would like to write, and to offer myself as a fellow traveller. And there’s a process to help guide you beyond anxiety, procrastination, deadlines, worry–to the joy of actually writing.

The process includes guided visualization, a writing/meditation technique, lots of writing time, and a chance to read back your work and get some appreciative feedback.

In the sessions I’ve held so far, everyone has brought their own gifts and style and life experience with them, and from there they spill out all kinds of alive and surprising material. The emphasis is on feeling safe to write, and when that happens people lean into the edges of their writing and take it to new places.

I’ll be opening up the Tea House sessions for bookings next Monday. Sign up for my newsletter and you’ll get an advanced discount code when they open.

The Tea House Writing Sessions are now available–you can read about them and sign up here.

Cicada Time

// May 20th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // metaphor, poetry, work in progress

A cicada shell;

it sang itself

utterly away.

Basho (trans.R.H.Blyth)

Late Spring in Australia is when the air swells with the piercing cry of countless cicadas. It feels like the ground, the gum trees, and the sky are all vibrating with them.

The sound is incessant, to the point where it almost distorts your sense of time. It’s a harsh sound, and it resonates perfectly with the searing blue skies.

Cicadas are huge insects and have a jewel-like intensity to them. Part of that intensity comes from the fact that, prior to moving into the trees, they spend up to seven years living underground.

They come up from the ground when it’s time, attach themselves to a tree and then shed their skins, emerging from the husk into the outside world.

Once they’re out they only live for a few weeks, and so they really let loose and make a noise in the time they have.

As a kid I always enjoyed finding the abandoned shells left on the trees in our backyard, and liked even more to find a live cicada and hold it in my hand for a while.

The last few months have felt like a cicada time for me, the underground part. I’ve been developing a format for the one on one and group writing sessions that I’m going to be offering soon on the blog.

Very exciting!

The thing is, that as I’ve been developing the writing exercises, using them myself and then trialing them with a few people, all my creative activity has gone into my notebooks and journals.

I’ve traded keyboard for pen, and social media for writing in solitude. It’s been a sudden turn into a different way of writing, and a good reminder that creativity is an ever-shifting thing. Though I haven’t been putting much of myself out into the world, a lot of work has been going on underground.

I’ve written hardly any blog posts over the last few months but have nearly two dozen poems written that are currently being polished for submission. I’m excited about that because I haven’t written or submitted much poetry at all for the last three years, and it shows me that the writing sessions generate a whole lot of writing.

Next week is the song part of the cicada time, when I climb above ground and introduce my new thing to the world. I’m also revamping my slumbering newsletter from next week with advance discounts on the writing sessions and monthly art giveaways.

You can sign up for the newsletter in the sidebar right now if you’re interested.

Hope to see you here on Monday, spread the word!