This, I've known for years, but lately I've discovered whole new forms of procrastination--sort of like discovering a new species of beetle.  Who knew?  I decided about a month ago that I wanted to write something in a new form.  I remembered a piece that had been written a couple of decades ago in that same form, and decided that I had to read this thing before embarking on my own project.  So I went to my local bookstore.  They couldn't get it for me.  I called a friend who I thought might have it.  He didn't.  I went on Amazon, where it was out-of-stock.  I have been waiting for a month to read a quite-possibly-irrelevant piece of work that I convinced myself I could not go on without reading.  And here's another distant relative of that version of procrastination: since I was going to be writing in a new form, I decided that I needed the proper software.  After all, there's no point writing if it isn't formatted properly--right? So I spent time online researching software.  I became completely overwhelmed by the possibilities, and ended up not doing anything at all.

After a month of this, I ended up exactly nowhere.  No reading material.  No software.  And--most of all--no writing.  All because I threw up roadblocks, one after the next, keeping me from that single, most essential process.  The only process that matters, really.  I kept myself from sitting down in my chair, with a notebook in my lap, pushing past my own fears and self-censorship and resistance, and following the line of words wherever it takes me.

For years I have kept a quote from Nietzsche on the bulletin board above my desk: "That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts," he wrote.  "There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking." When I talk about what I'm thinking, instead of simply thinking it--when I talk about it instead of grabbing a notebook and starting to lay down words, what I'm really doing is succumbing to my own anxiety.

Is it going to be any good? Does the story have legs?  Can I create momentum?  Is it something anyone other than me will care about?  Here's the thing: I cannot possibly know this. Until I write it, I will not know.  I can talk about it until I'm blue in the face, but all that will happen is that it will wither and die before I've had a chance to find out.

All I know is that if I had given in to this idea of inspiration over the years-- if I had waited to feel that eureka moment each morning before I began to write, my output would be much smaller than it has been.  Instead of seven books, I might have had a story or two, or three, or five.  But not much beyond that -- because most days, when I've sat at my desk, it has been with a sense of purpose, of desire, of longing, of diligence, of doggedness, but rarely have I sat down with a sense of inspiration.

Don't get me wrong.  Inspiration has come.  It has tiptoed into my writing room when I've least expected it.  It has shown up mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-idea.  But it generally doesn't precede me to the desk.  Inspiration comes out of doing the work: the hard labor of laying each brick on top of the next, one at a time, until what you've done begins to resemble a wall.  Often, it doesn't resemble a wall, or it's come out crooked, or in some way less than you'd hoped, and you have to smash the thing up and start all over again.  Inside this painstaking labor is where inspiration lies.  Only when you're up to your eyeballs, covered in dust, hopeless and bordering on despair, does the muse even consider paying a visit.

I remember once, working on a single short story for six months straight.  Draft after draft, I couldn't get it right.  It was fine, it was polished, even (and often a piece being polished before it's finished is the worst thing because it becomes harder and harder to see through its veneer) but it didn't sing, and I knew it.  I despaired.  I wept.  I was convinced that I had thrown away six months of my life.  Then, one morning, depleted from the stress, I became sick with a terrible flu.  I became feverish, my body wracked with chills.  I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat in bed with my story, which suddenly, through the lens of my illness, became clear to me.  I tore it up and started all over again from that place of feverish misery which transformed itself into...you guessed it...inspiration.

The thing about this state of being is that it can either be enormously fertile, or self-destructive.  A writer can breathe into the emptiness, can wait patiently as the parade of bad ideas and externally-driven silliness sweeps by.  A writer can, in the words of my former teacher Grace Paley, take baths.  Or a  writer can tighten up, get anxious, over-eager.  A writer can start thinking about things like the marketplace, in which case, a writer will be sunk.  I've seen it happen over and over again.  This way leads to manufactured ideas, reeking of fear and manipulation.  Ideas that will eventually lead to a brick wall, or a desk drawer, or (worse still) a bad book.  The only solution for a writer not writing--a writer who is not yet ready to write--is to accept the avalanche of feeling, to welcome it, even, the way that when we meditate we welcome our thoughts and feelings with a sense of self-compassion.  Oh, I'm thinking that.  isn't that interesting.  Okay.  Now, back to the breath.  The book will come.

But when it come to writing, I think courage expresses itself differently.  What does it mean to find a voice?  To experiment wildly?  To be willing to fail?  Without the willingness to fall flat on our faces, we cannot create anything of value.  Without the gnawing, roiling, back-up-against-the-wall feeling of not-knowing, we can't begin to hope to know.  It's so easy to forget this.  To think that somehow, that the road to a powerful piece of work can ever be a smooth one.  Seven books, and I still have to remind myself of this.  In meditation, and in life, we are always beginning again.  We also begin again every time we set pen to paper.  What we did yesterday, or last month, or last year--that does little to bolster us.  We have to once again buck up our courage, face our fear, and walk--perhaps even with some small degree of excitement--into the abyss.

I have always been mindful of the responsibility of being someone who publishes work in which others often show up as characters.  I never feel like I'm trolling for information, or am lying in wait for the next bit of inspiration to thwack me upside the head.  That isn't how it works, at least not for me.  But I am aware that there is a certain distrust.  A sense, in others, that maybe I'm taking mental notes.  And maybe, in a way, I am.  After all, that's one of the great advantages of being writer (and there are so many down sides; as I write this on tour, sandwiched in a middle seat on an airplane with a very large snoring man whose head is dangerously close to lolling on my shoulder...)  But I digress.  The upside is in the aliveness.  In the sense that around any corner, there is the possibility of something that feels exciting, real, true, worth exploring.  Something that goes ping.  That shimmers.

When that happens, what is a writer's responsibility?  There is a fine line between worrying about betrayal--and self-censorship.  There is an equally fine line between hearing  that little voice perched on your shoulder (on all of our shoulders) who tell us that we can't/shouldn't/mustn't -- and knowing whether that voice is speaking for the right reasons--or the wrong ones.  In my experience, most writers who are concerned about hurting others in their work--don't.  The ones who don't even think about it--those are the dangerous ones, running around like child soldiers wielding great big  guns.  Deep down, we know.  We know why we're doing what we're doing?  Pride? Envy? Resentment? Take-no-prisoners selfishness?  Proving something--as in, I'll show them?

All I'm saying is, if we pay close attention to our motivations, we know.  And what we know about ourselves will protect us--and those around us.

It occurs to me that we writers--who spend most of our time alone in our rooms, thinking, staring into space,  occasionally putting words on the page--are among the least equipped to be out there in the world doing what needs to be done for our books.  Don't get me wrong--I am one of the writers who really enjoys this aspect of things.  Not all of us do.  I've come to like speaking and reading to audiences, even as my heart flutters, even as I wonder and marvel that they've come out to hear what I have to say.  But we all need to know how to take care of ourselves, and what that means.  For some of us, it means not traveling at all (though these days I'm not sure how anyone sells books without it).  For others, it means careful monitoring of sleep, food, drink.  For me, yoga and meditation are my best tools for centering myself.  Last night, on the flight back east from LA, I bought myself one of those little neck pillows at the airport store.  As we waited in line for take-off, I leaned my head back.  Closed my eyes.  That small gesture of self-care made a huge difference--not necessarily because of the pillow itself, but because it meant that I was noticing that I needed comfort.  I silently repeated the Metta phrases: may I be safe, may I be happy, may I be strong, may I live with ease. As the plane flew into the night, I felt myself slowly calm.  I read a beautiful novel instead of the piles of juicy tabloids.  I began to come back to myself.

Over the years, I continue to develop tools.  These tools can be as simple as remembering to breathe.  To go inside myself, no matter what's happening on the outside.  To find the words that center me, and remind me that everything I need is right here, right now.  When I am internal, I am a witness.  I'm the outsider, the observer, absorbing and seeing everything around me.  Sometimes it's a little bit lonely--the price to pay for being on the other side of the window, nose pressed to the glass, looking in.  But when I'm too external, I become part of the world--and I lose my own outline.  I lose myself.  I do think this is the lot of the writer.  We need to be ever-so-slightly apart from what goes on around us, so that we can see it, feel it.  Ultimately, so that we can record and understand it.  Instead of berating myself (as is my wont) for the silence, the buffer I crave, perhaps instead I should see it as my greatest friend.

What does it mean to be generous?  To read generously?  To write generously?  Does it imply a kind of blindness, or dulling of the senses, or stupidity?  That's what our culture would sometimes have us think.  Opening a book with a sense of excitement and exploration--of hopefulness--rather than with a skeptical show me attitude, requires effort.  Hope takes more effort than skepticism.  Generosity requires greater rigor than approaching a book with a defensive stance.

This is even more important when it comes to writing.  When I sit down to write, I have to systematically eliminate all the nasty, judging, doubting voices in my head.  They crowd in the room all around me, threatening to take over.  Who do you think you are? They taunt me.  Why do you think you have anything to say? Why should we--why should anybody--care? This voices are the enemy of generosity.  And really, though I like to think of them in some metaphysical way as coming from outside myself, they come from deep within me.  From a dark place I always need to keep my eye on.  Perhaps it is most difficult for us to be generous to ourselves--and it all radiates outward from there.

I could talk about what this is probably doing to all of our brains, and our children's brains, and their children's brains... but what most interests me about the way that my attention feels split, or even splintered, is how it might or might not be affecting my writing.  I have a friend who uses a computer application that actually shuts down her ability to go online for several hours at a time--sort of an internet babysitter.  She swears by it.  I've been tempted to try it at times, but am still interested to see if I can discipline myself.  Sometimes I work long-hand.  That certainly works, and I highly recommend it.  There's nothing like the slow and tactile feeling of holding a pen, feeling it glide across the page, the ink itself, the crossing out of phrases, the circling of words, the use of arrows and asterisks rather than the neat-and-tidy cut and paste function.  Really, even as I type this now, I'm longing for a pen and a notebook.  I started Family History in a blue and white spiral bound notebook purchased at The Andover Bookstore in my husband's home town.  This became a bit of a fetish for me, and several years later, when I began Black & White, I stockpiled these notebooks.  I still have a half-dozen blank ones in my office closet.  I like the messiness of longhand.  I like the way the pages begin to look indecipherable to anyone but me.  I like being able to doodle.  But mostly, what I respond to is the slowness.  Sitting in a chair with a notebook balanced on my lap forces me to pay attention to one thing at a time.  And when I do that, I am propelled into the moment.  Into the present, and deeply onto the page, where, as a writer, I am most fully alive.