final days forum

The power of waiting

One of my great friends is applying for a grant. She asked me to read her application. I was struck by the crisp prose. Simplicity exposed emotion. As her friend, I know how long she has waited for Her Moment, the season of discovery when the world says to the previously obscure writer: "It's you and no one else!"

My friend has a solid chance to win the grant. Her straightforward style in the application said more than sentences drunk with description.

Her words were the blessed fruit of waiting.

Take a walk; feel better

Sometimes writing gets clogged.

Nothing looks right. What you energetically tap on your laptop keys sounds like an explosion of ideas, but what you read looks disjointed. Incoherent. You wonder why you write.

Resist that self-defeating emotion and take a walk. Sure, you can go to the gym and try to sweat bad writing from your pores. But that activity doesn't always stimulate a smoother creative process.

Walk and you notice things. How many birds fly overhead? Whose footprints are lodged in the dried dirt path? Are you breathing slow or fast? Does the curl of fall leaves make you think of beauty or that the year is getting away from you? If you feel like you're running out of time, slow down your walking speed. Breathe more deeply.

Remember that creativity is a gift we all have. Rediscover yours when you walk.

Writing about now

If you are a writer, are you taking notes about the times we live in? So much is happening with the economy, with communities of faith, with families, with local governments. History is taking place. Deep change is occurring; 2009 is right around the corner and the Jewish New Year, 5769, already has begun. Happy New Year and dust off that diary.

Write what you see. Write what you feel. Anticipate a new year of purpose and direction. Let your writing reveal areas you need to get right. Let your writing show you what will be.

Cling to the assignment

Distraction haunts us. Ever notice how life interrupts as creative energy suddenly appears? You want to press forward to complete the project. Everything in you savors an abundance of powerful ideas showering on you like the pelting of a Texas downpour. But the dastardly, pesty issues of life conspire to throw your creative energy and your project over the cliff.

Fortitude is required to fix your mind on the assignment for the hour, day, week, month or year. Even more so, it takes all you have to complete the assignment of your life.

Discovering beauty at night

Clarity often steps from the shadows after midnight. Words that never materialized during the day suddenly take on flesh and they flow from the writer's fingers. The silence of the hours after midnight often energize creativity. When morning comes, it is particularly refreshing because the writer's labor already is accomplished.

For the writer who discovers clarity at night, this is the chief aim of writing.  Before a person is moved by a story or prose, the writer herself was first transported into clarity.

Overcoming chaos

Today I talked with an employee about keeping a higher-level focus. It's hard, I said, because there is a lot of crazy, unreasonable stuff happening in our work environment. Just because I don't speak on everything does not mean I do not see the annoying things that are happening. But as a leader, my focus must be the bigger picture. Seismic change is greeted with fear, anger, and resistance until everyone adjusts to the change. But we are on the cutting edge of what is happening in journalism. Just hold on.

Funny how hard it is to withstand challenges, to press against resistant and invisible forces, to view life from a place of transcendence and not victimization. Everyone doesn't get there, but the most hearty of us try because we know that on the other side of gnawing trouble is deeper creativity.

The difficulty of jumping

Stepping away from the comfort that a dysfunctional thing can give is hard because it's like getting from under a scratchy blanket on a cold night to retrieve the downy comforter in the closet. Do you stay in the bed and toss all night? Or do you allow yourself to leave the warm bed and endure the icy night for a few moments?

 Pursuing the creative thing that beats in all of us is like embracing the downy comforter in the closet. We know the current thing we're doing saps strength and steals joy. But that thing may be a job that pays the bills -- underwriting meager vacation days, keeping kids in good schools and the family in a nice neighborhood.

Maybe the thing is a person -- relentless in his or hers resistance to change, and this person is your spouse, friend or parent. Fear of confronting them dwarfs everything else.

Even the very thing you were born to do.

Creative joy

Authentic creativity produces an underlying joy that can leave you breathless when your life has been too pedantic; soothed when the pressures pummel you into extreme busyness; and healed when you have been wounded. Create today. Be healed.