Graphophobia

Tomorrow I leave for middle of nowhere Nebraska to take part in my first ever writing residency at the amazing Art Farm! I am super excited about being in a totally new environment with the sole purpose of writing. I'm not going to lie, though. I'm scared.

Fear is a part of any artist's psychological landscape. Let's call it graphophobia for fun. It was Georgia O'Keeffe who famously said: “I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” Fear is just another thing I've got to get used to if I want to make writing my life. 

I don't fear many things that others might fear, like traveling solo in a foreign country or swimming between islands in the Ten Thousand Islands. But these days, as this new adventure approaches, I feel fear encroaching, gaining speed behind me, scratching at my back with its long talons. The demons roar in my ear: What right do you have to call myself a writer? What have you ever published? Who wants to read what you have to say anyway? 

For the past few weeks, I've been letting fear rule. I've stayed away from my writing desk. I've jotted down some notes here and there, but for the most part, I've been mute on the page. Let me tell you that it doesn't feel good. When I think about it, and I try not to think about it, I feel like a fraud. I want to run far, far away from my MFA program. I want to turn my writing desk into a shot glass exhibit. "There are so many other things I can do," I tell myself. "Quit now and save yourself the trouble." 

This afternoon, I joined my professor and a few classmates at a coffee shop. "What have you been writing?" my professor says.  "I haven't written a word in a month," I blurt out. "Am I doomed?" He laughs and goes on to assure me that my writing career  is not doomed. "It's okay to take a break," he says. "Now get back to work." 

We spent the rest of the hour workshopping each other's pieces. It felt good to get my hands back into the dirt, to wrap my mind around words, and dive back into the world of lyrical language, tone, structure. 

In transcendental meditation, I was taught that our mind wants to transcend. We don't have to force it. It will happen naturally if we let it.

I hope that I can approach my creative process with this levity, to trust that our minds - our souls - our beings - want to create... If we let it. This is what a residency provides: a physical and psychic space for your creative self to expand and explore without fear. 

Wish me luck!

The Not-So-Restless Writer?

It was Sunday morning, nearing noon. The day was bright and blue, and I knew this because I could see it from my window at my desk. It dawned on me then, as I watched a cardinal hop around a tree outside, that I had been sitting at my desk for nearly three days straight - and even weirder - I was okay with this fact. It was a strange feeling, when I realized I had only been between school, home, and the gym for over a week. I looked at my royal blue Rav 4 sitting in the driveway, looking lonely, and I remembered the girl I used to be, not all that long ago.

In Miami, I couldn't go between point A and point B without stopping to take a quick dip in the ocean or meeting a friend for an impromptu walk or yoga session. I was the girl who always had a bathing suit, towel, high heels and a little black dress in my trunk. Oh, and my hula hoop, of course. I lived out of my car, quite seriously. I was on the m-o-v-e, all the time, and my car was my closest confidante.

My bicycle is my main form of transportation now. It takes me all the places I need to go: from my house to my office, from my office to the gym, from the gym back to my office, and from my office, home sweet home. Sometimes, I take my speedy two-wheeler for a spin around Lettuce Lake Park about a mile from my house.

My world has shrunk to a 1.5 mile radius. That is insanity to me.

What's even more insane is the fact that I couldn't be happier about this. To be honest, the nesting habits crept up on me, like a slow fog. It started with the clearing of the desk. And then the growing of the plants. Now I have bird friends outside my window everyday and it's as if, all of a sudden, I woke up in the clouds, and I never knew I was being lifted away.

But I guess this is the reason why I came to grad school, after all. To drop out of my life of chaotic excitement, and drop into a new, quieter one - one that strives for the beauty of authentic expression.

I spoke to my friend in Costa Rica last night. He's used to my spur-of-the-moment trips south.

"When are you coming back down here?" he asked. In the background, I can hear the sounds of the rainforest all around him.
"You know," I said. "I really don't know." Silence. "Things feel... different, now."
"Hmm," he said after a while. "Estas comprometida." Comprometida - to be engaged, committed.
"Yes, I think you're right. Estoy comprometida."
"Eso es bueno!" he said with a laugh. He's an artist too so he knows what it feels like to be on fire about your craft. He knows about this rabbit hole, he knows it well.

That Sunday afternoon, I could have sat at my desk all day. But, it felt sacrilegious to let such a perfect day slide by my window without getting out there and communing with the elements. I had to honor that other part of myself, the wild one. So I called up my friend Sarah and we made a date to watch the sunset on the beach. It felt strange to drive my car across the long bridge to St. Pete, weaving between traffic and listening to sugary pop songs on the radio. But it all made sense when I plunged into the cold waves, tinged pink from the setting sun, releasing my body to this saltwater altar.

A fellow free spirit

Making Space

We're over halfway through with the semester. This is the time when shit gets crazy. Everything is due all at once, papers need to be graded, the reading load is as insane as always, and the weather is that perfect mix of sunshine and sweet breeze.  

But still, somehow, it's important to find time for quiet moments of introspection, moments where we make space for truth to seep in.


I had a breakthrough last weekend. A few, even. My roommate was out of town and the thought of being home alone all weekend was frightening at first. But something about the chill in the air got me to my senses. 

First, I drove over to Home Depot and bought the makings for a garden paradise: wood for a raised bed, a few seedlings, a shovel, and several plants with tags that read "low light." I had already spent way too much money at the USF Plant Sale the weekend prior, where I bought three different kinds of banana trees, a sweet almond bush, a variety of tomato seedlings, and salad seed packets for good measure. 


Now I had my shovel; I was ready to go. I got to work digging holes in the backyard and distributing horse manure from a local farm (my roommate has a horse so I have an compost connection!). When the trees were planted and the seedlings were watered, I got to work arranging my indoor plants. I’ve never really owned houseplants, or at least not since college when I needed something to perk up my dreary dorm room in the dead of winter. Although my life is not as dreary as it was then, my life is certainly not as plant-ful as it has been in the recent past. So I have conceded to the fact that I am just in a place in my life where I need a plant on my desk. And in the bathroom and on the kitchen counter. 


The next morning, a fellow writer and I headed to the beach for some sun and sea healing. While we sank our toes into the sand and soaked in the rays, we talked about – you guessed it – writing. She’s in her second year in the program so I picked her brain. I have basically been asking anyone who will speak to me about his or her writing process, mainly because I feel so at odds with my own. 


She told me that she has several writing spaces set up around her home, places that she has almost turned into sanctuaries, safe havens where she can do the hard work of facing the blank page. I thought about my own home, a safe haven in the making, and I realized my problem: there isn’t a single space where I want to sit down for a long time. I thought about my desk - a blank white closet door sitting on stools. My original intention was to use it as a writing table, but it had quickly turned into a receptacle for abandoned papers and random flotsam. Just thinking about it made me anxious. 


When I got home, I resolved to make my desk into a creative space – a space where I wanted to spend time. I hauled out the big computer that was dominating one side of the desk and moved my stack of magazines into the bathroom. I cleared away the wreckage and restored my desk to its original –blank- state.
 
I placed two potted plants on the windowsill in front of the desk, and sat down with nothing but a notebook, a pen, and a cup of tea. And I wrote. 

And I didn't get up.

Home sweet desk!

My roommate has her kitties... 

and I've got my plants!