Completing a 31 Day Writing Challenge

The digits on the calendar page read the 28th of December. A month ago, I was issued a challenge, along with other writers for The Good Men Project, to send in an article a day for the entire month. The topics were ours to select with the only parameters being in alignment with the branding on the site. Anything to do with relationships, gender, politics, sexual expression, the state of the world, communication, spirituality, current affairs, or the environment was fair game. I felt like a kid in a candy store with so many choices spread out in front of me. As a regular columnist with a blog called Through The Eyes of Possibility, who submits an article a week, this felt like a stretch, but once I got started, the ideas came flowing through like a rushing river. Some of them arrived while I was sleeping and when I awoke, all I needed to do was sit down at the computer and let my imagination speak through my fingers. Some called out to be written about in tribute to loved ones who died recently. Another was inspired by a journey undertaken to India by a friend whose inner sojourns were equally powerful. Others were a way of ameliorating anger and frustration about the current political climate and the social injustice and inequity that is prevalent.

I have long loved words. As a child, I toted books around as some carry cuddly teddy bears. Bookstores and libraries were like a combination of a toy store, ice cream parlor and Disney World; a magical place to which I was transported at the speed of thought. Swirling in word soup. Indulging as if it were the most luscious chocolate, licking my fingers afterward. Sultry sweetness. A verbivore is what I have become, with a voracious appetite for indulging shamelessly in decadent delights.

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember, taking creative writing classes in high school and college. My journals which date back to the 1980s are filled with commentary about life, the Universe and everything. When I re-read them I am astounded at what I thought about relationships back then and am bewildered that at 60, I still contend with some of the same conundrums. My wordsmithing became professional when my husband and I launched a magazine that we published for 10 years before he died. It was there that I cut my teeth on interviewing some of the most amazing movers and shakers on the planet, ranging from Shirley MacLaine to Ram Dass, from Ben & Jerry to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, from Jack Canfield to Olympia Dukakis, from Deepak Chopra to Bella Abzug. It prepared me for my ultimate dream into reality interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2008 when he came to speak in Philadelphia.

I was listening to an interview a while back on World Cafe on WXPN between David Dye and musician Ray LaMontagne. His newest CD is called Ouroboros. I looked up the origin of the word and this is what I discovered: An Ouroboros is an infinity symbol that is representative of a snake swallowing its tail. No beginning. No end. Life and death in one. Impermanence.

During their conversation, Ray was describing what creativity was for him. He makes himself available to what he calls, “The creative pull. Imagine that Peter Pan is The Muse and he comes tapping on the window and you let him in and he wants to play hide and seek and you say, ‘I want to play checkers,’ and he will go away and not come back for 10 or 20 years. So, I just follow it however playful and mischievous it wants to be.”

It brings to mind the story that Elizabeth Gilbert shared about being the servant of the creation, rather than the other way around. She tells the tale of singer-songwriter Tom Waits’ encounter with The Muse while on the LA Freeway.

“He heard a little tiny trace of a beautiful melody, and he panicked because he didn’t have his waterproof paper, and he didn’t have his tape recorder, and he didn’t have a pen, he didn’t have a pencil — he had no way to get it, and he thought, “How am I going to catch this song?” And he started to have all that old panic and anxiety that artists have about feeling like you’re going to miss something, and then he just slowed down and he looked up at the sky, and he looked up and he said, “Excuse me, can you not see that I’m driving? If you’re serious about wanting to exist, come back and see me in the studio. I spend six hours a day there, you know where to find me, at my piano. Otherwise, go bother somebody else. Go bother Leonard Cohen.” I would love to know if Tom or Leonard wrote the song.

I am also a recovering Type A workaholic overachiever, so I took this on as a point of pride. What kind of writer would I be if I couldn’t come up with 31 pieces that could entertain and inform? I like to say that my writing writes me and that I don’t get writer’s block, but instead, writer’s runs. I ‘can’t not write,’ as grammatically incorrect as that sounds. I have described my Muse as a persistent lover who often doesn’t let me sleep until I do its bidding. This challenge offered me the opportunity to stretch my creative muscles, cross the finish line early and satisfy The Muse at the same time. Arms upraised to the cheers of my inner spectators!

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