When the Spirit Moves the Pen

“It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange side of the divine; it means letting go of our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.” 

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking On Water

Hi, fellow Scribblies!

As we continue our conversation about moving forward with our writing intentions by loosening our grip, some words come to mind that, in my view, need to be erased from the writerly life vocabulary. 

Words like:

Discipline
Willpower
Determination
Self-control
Drive

Those are great for things like flossing your teeth every day. 

But when we’re talking about the creative process and the life that supports it, those forceful words are part of the reason we find it so hard to let go of whatever stands in the way of our best writerly selves. 

When we let those drive the writing bus, we think things like:

“Dammit… I am going to sit here for two hours and write eight pages.”

“I’m not going to get up to get water or go see why my dog is barking. I won’t even go to the bathroom, even though I have to pee like a race horse.”

“I just had a scathingly brilliant idea, but I can’t run with it because I have to stay on track to meet my quota.”

Gee, that sounds like fun! 

But not to approach our work that way almost sounds unAmerican. What about the Puritan work ethic?

Um… there weren’t any creative Puritans. 

Letting those words be in charge isn’t the writerly life. I can say that with authority, because I used to pride myself on writing 15 pages a day, five days a week, and not exercising, and taking my work with me wherever I went, and eating meals at my desk. 

Did I write a lot of books, reach a lot of people, and reap the financial benefits? I did. I also had to engage with the twelve steps of workaholics anonymous (it is an actual thing)—because I completely burned out. 

If you’re familiar with twelve step programs, you know that Number Two says:

We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

That says just the opposite from being a Control Freak about our work. I’m not about to stage a spiritual mugging. I just have some thoughts for us to ponder. 

What does “a Power greater than ourselves” mean?

While there are those who would say otherwise, “higher power” legitimately means something different to every individual. There are no boxes in creativity. Not even spiritual ones. 

The kind of “something greater” we’re talking about runs the gamut from “I just know there’s something out there” to “This is the being I believe in.”

Please know that I’m not trying to water down anyone’s religious beliefs or their lack thereof. I am a God-centered person myself, and I deeply respect where any individual is on the spiritual journey, unless that journey is used to control other people.

As we continue this conversation, maybe consider it in light of your experience with whatever it is that’s beyond yourself.      

What does this have to do with the writerly life?

It has almost nothing to do with beliefs and everything to do with experience.

Has this happened to you? You sit down for a writing session. You’re restless at first. You can’t get comfortable in the chair. Your laptop is being weird. You think you might need a second cup of coffee, but you go ahead and start a sentence, and then you start it five more times and none of it’s what you want.

And then the right words come, so you go onto the next sentence. And the next. The story or narrative takes on a life of its own. Something unexpected appears on the path and you follow it. Then suddenly you realize you really do have to pee, and you look at the clock, and you’ve been at it for 90 minutes. Where did the time go? For that matter, where did the story go when you weren’t controlling it?

Something Else took over. It suspended time and took you places you didn’t plan to go but are glad you did. You didn’t consciously let go. You just loosened your grip on it all being up to you, which gave the Writerly Spirit a chance to do its divine thing. 

Consider three possibilities:

Wherever we are in our spiritual life and in our writerly life, we can loosen our grip on concepts like control, drive, self-discipline, and determination by considering three possibilities:

The Call

What is it that moves you to write? Why do you keep coming back to it? 

What do you feel compelled to write about? What’s so important that you have to get it down and put it out there?

How do you feel when you aren’t heeding that nudge? 

For the rare few, that’s an audible voice in their head that isn’t theirs.

For many of us, it’s an undeniable sense that this is what is ours to do.

For others, it’s a thing that happens in retrospect.  “Now I get why I just had to write that story.”  

That feels like a Call to me. Name it what you will. But the more we are aware of that beckoning from beyond, the freer we are to move forward.

The Inspiration

We don’t heed the call under our own steam. The God I know doesn’t say, “I’m calling you to this, but as far as you actually doing it, it’s up to you now.” I mean, seriously, what the heck?

The word inspire comes from the Latin inspirare, which means “to blow into or breathe upon.” Can’t you just see the God-spirit taking a big ol’ breath and exhaling it into your soul where all the best stuff happens? Perhaps ponder:

Where do you think your ideas come from?

How do characters appear to you?

From whence does a plot unfold?

How is it that you end up meeting some random person who unknowingly gives you an idea?

Why is it that just when you’re ready to throw in the writing towel, someone messages you on Facebook saying you’re brilliant. 

I think we can agree that doesn’t come completely from us. And the more willing we are to open ourselves up to that, instead of forcing ourselves to come up with something unique and original and fabulous, the freer we are. 

Kairos Time.

There’s Chronos or sequential time, which moves along no matter what. Many of us experience Chronos as a tyrant whose winged chariot is always at our back. 

Kairos time, on the other hand, is basically the good and proper time for action. While Chronos is quantitative, Kairos is qualitative. It’s knowing this is the thing to do in this moment and following it, taking advantage of the unexpected. 

It is, essentially, spiritual time. It is creative time. It is inspired time.

It’s like being in the Zone. It’s when Chronos time ceases to matter for a while as we lose ourselves in dreaming and playful planning and writing from our souls.

How do we loosen our grip enough to allow creative spirituality. To let Spirit move the pen?

That’s the topic of Episode #18 of The Scribbling Woman podcast, which you can access from here on the website. We chat about a trio of ways to free ourselves up, one knuckle at a time. 

Just know for now that none of us does this writerly living completely on our own. If we try, we end up with less than our most authentic creativity. Recognizing the quiet power of something larger and wiser and more creative than ourselves is a spiritual act.

No matter what we name it. 

I’m praying for you and with you, Scribblies. And until next time…
Scribble On!