Essay
The Art of Writering
You must have noticed a flower bud, at the end of a stalk, now slowly opening one or two buds at a time, almost imperceptibly, nudging you into hope and new sights.
Writering is just like that, so soft and nearly imperceptible, that when the word stream begins to emerge out of the thick blanket of unconscious, you sense YOU like a ray of light.
And it has to stay this way, not forcibly gardened by adding magic fertilizers of catalytic idea moments or force-disciplining the pesticides of distractions. No, no, no.
Pause, my dear. Writering is effortless when the time is just right.
And for the time to come, the soil conditions must be just right, the breeze not a hurricane blowing everything on its way, the light just enough, the other beings in the ecosystem thriving.
You see, writering wasn’t meant to be an individualistic only-i-am-the-best enterprise that we have made it to be. Envious of other writers’ success, woeing our circumstances, genes and all, feeling insecure in what we do, sensing stuckness and all that.
No, no, no. We are the part of the living world. And some of us like the weaver bird weave words. And when the wind blows and our being knows it is time, we write. To nest old hopes and new possibilities, to nest a world that sometimes tires, to nest an ecosystem that needs us to do the writing.
Everything that we do is connected loved needed wanted by every-being else, whether we know it or not. Even when you devour a part of your idea-world through the force of your words, know there is no extinction, only a mutation.
Don’t GMO this process, please. Don’t rush for productivity, and I-must-publish-this-year. Slow slow slow………down. Rush for love. Rush to care.
May I suggest that you ensure you feel the alignment with your ecosystem – all the humans in all their struggles and rainbow-hopes, and all the animals and birds and bugs and creepers and shrubs and the giant trees and the underground world and the sea that watches. Go for walks. Meet more and more beings, sit with them, breathe others.
You see that is the stalk of the flower bud that connects to the mother stem. You want to stay connected. The stem provides the juice for the bud to awaken. Don’t sabotage that channel with your likes dislikes musts shoulds. Let it flow.
And may I suggest that you practice non-judgment? You may wonder what is warm-warm-fuzzy-fuzzy has to do with writering. See, hear, when you judge an issue/event/being, your opinion has shut the door from further knowing. You have ceased to be curious. Your writing will move from the seat in your living room to the door that is closed and you will wonder why your expression is so limited.
Keep the door open and let your writing wind out of the comfort of your home, into the unfamiliarity of the streets to behind the bushes into the wild. Practice non-judgment please. That is love. That is curiosity.
And and and, play with time please. Like you do music. Time moves you to new spaces. To play with time, you have to stop the world. Stop focusing, stop destinating, stop searching for goals. Be lost. Walk into the dumpyard of emotions, struggle with the discomfort in your body, and the sheer not-knowing who you are in this moment…
But that you exist. You sense it in your breath, in the many muscular movements, in the twinges of your mind, in your withdrawals and rushes. You sense your aliveness sans the world. Writer from there.
Patience, I think is a wonderful quality for a writer. The art of being willing to wait. A simple returning to soil and others, again and again. Read. Meet. Walk. Sit with. Wait.
You see, the world is brewing marinating cooking the words that will flow through the gorges of your Self. You have to wait for Mother Earth to set the table. Stay hungry and hover. Don’t walk away from her kitchen.
And the petals of your knowing will open, revealing the insides, ready to evolve into another world-making. And when they do, please surrender. Don’t try to format it, mould it into i-like-that-style, sculpt it into winning entries.
They don’t matter for long. They don’t bring ever-lasting happiness. They don’t even support your creativity.
When the petals open, surrender to the flow. It is what it is. Sense your body, observe its movement. It will guide you on how to row the flow.
Not the way-of-thoughts and control-into-blocks please. Struggle a bit in the current and find your arms. Trust the process.
Trust you. Trust mother.
This, if you want to stay authentic, original…
Yes, writering is breathing. And breathing is like compositing, an eternal process of generosity. You give-write, you receive others into your being and let them dance, you give-write. Exhale, Inhale, Exhale again. Pause within every now and then. No breath more important than the other.
And sometimes your writering will become a chameleon and sing and dance and paint and stitch and weave and knit and cook. They are all good. When words become colours and phrases become music, that is still a creative flow in a new way. Surrender.
Don’t force it to stay the same.
You see, you have to compost too. Your plant-being also has to become the richness of soil. And you may become them. And that is okay too.
The art of writering ends pauses hides in the silence-harmony of the soil. This is peace. Be.
(This essay is dedicated to Mary Oliver and the writers she read-lived. They are the ancestors of this essay.)
Author’s Note : Every word in there that may show up as a spelling error is actually intended to be so. The confusing grammar, the endless sentences, the strange pauses. All intended
Bhavana Nissima is the loved progeny of a generation of ancestor-weavers — human writers-creators, birds-animals-plant weavers. She considers it an honour to inherit their flow and to continue to transmit their knowing through her body into words and more. In her being, writing-healing-growing-learning merge. And that is how she shares into the world. This, her family and profession. Thank you for allowing her to reach you.
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