Spitting it out

I've been doing the 'morning pages' exercise from The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron, Pan Books). Maybe I should say "again" because I've been on this path a few times before when I've needed to get unstuck creatively and psychologically. Technically morning pages are a writing excercise with the following rules:

• Every morning, soon after you wake up, write three long-hand pages in a journal.
• Don't think about what you're writing, just write, stream-of-consciousness style, until you've filled up three pages. No cheating with a tiny little note pad!
• Don't read what you've written. 
• Don't show it to anyone else. 
• Do it every day, whether you feel like it or not.

This time round, I've got the morning pages in my laptop, in Word, with the font size set so one page of single spaced text with no paragraph breaks is 750 words. I start with the date, note the time, and write until I've filed the page, note the total word count and time, save and shut the file. If I don't agonise, edit, or think too much, it takes roughly 17 minutes, so not a massive time suck.

Some good things are happening. I'm looking forward to getting up and writing every day. I feel no anxiety, no struggle to stay focussed, no burning impulse to vacuum or clean the windows before I get started, or half way through. And I'm feeling no pressure or block. I am writing, and it feels bloody great! Yay.

And not only that; I've been motivated to do my own writing again. A couple of times this week I even woke up thinking about story ideas for my blogs. This is massive. For the past year or so I've been waking up thinking about some work problem. Usually it's a writing problem because that's what I do for a job. More often than not, when I wake up properly I realise it's an imagined, not a real problem, but it hangs around, whining and bothering me, and stopping me from actually working, or ensuring the work I do feels like agony. It's also exhausting, so I've had no energy  for creative writing either.

But as I said, a couple of times this week I woke up with story ideas in my head. It is a much better day when I wake up feeling interested, motivated, excited to get up and write. A much better scene altogether!

So what's going on? I think the morning pages are a bit like housework. It's like I go into my brain every morning, and clean it out -- throw away rubbish, wipe up dust and grime, put stuff in its right place so I can find it when I want it. Wipe the benches, run the dishwasher, pick up clothes, do the laundry, take out the garbage, sort out that junk cupboard, give some stuff away. Think of all those things that make your house nicer to be in. When you don't do them, everything's harder, more stressful, a drag.

The morning pages are my brain's housekeeper, keeping things in order so I don't have to navigate around chaos and clutter when I'm working. These days I'm more likely to sit down to work feeling fresh and clear. A bit virtuous even, just like I feel when my clothes are picked up and the kitchen sink is sparkling.

Perfect Lies

I am perfect. Seriously. I don't say this in a boastful or gloating way. I say it in a whispery, almost embarrassed way. It's only taken me fifty two and a half years to get to this simple truth. I only just realised it.

I've been the victim of perfect lies. Mostly waiting for things to be perfect. Waiting for perfect timing. Waiting for the perfect opportunity. The perfect moment. The perfect outfit. Hairdo. Job. Holy shit, you could spend your whole life waiting for things to be perfect.

In the past year, the perfection thing has really been strangling me. I've been a writer all my life. I've written stories, poems, journals, essays, blogs, letters, speeches, emails. I write for fun. I write for a living. I love words and words seem to love me too. We're perfect for each other actually.

Three years ago I decided to write a gardening and cooking blog. It was an experiment to see if I could sustain a writing practice because I wanted to be a column writer in some future, perfect stage of life. I loved blogging. I wrote two or three posts a week, took photos and developed a sideline interest in photography. I loved my blog very much. It felt like an expression of the real me and my passions.

After a year of writing in quiet anonymity I started to promote the blog -- you know, to experiment with having other people read it. And that was pretty thrilling too. I got a lot of positive feedback and some followers. People left encouraging comments. I had site stats to analyse. I emailed a link to my favourite food writer, Nigel Slater, and he read it and sent me a gorgeous email that made me cry with happiness. I joined the NZ food bloggers' association and went to a conference. I handed out business cards and started getting followed by other food bloggers. The editor of Cuisine magazine started reading my blog. (She's my cousin, but hey, she's the editor of Cuisine!)

Awesome eh? Except as soon as I'd attracted an audience I stopped writing.

It's been excruciating, not writing. But I have felt totally unable to write. This block comes with a physical symptom -- like someone's standing behind me, holding my arms down by my side and pulling in on my solar plexus. I can't breath properly, I can't yell out, and I can't get away.

I realised today that this is the grip of perfection. Telling me that there's no way it's going to let me be a real writer. Telling me I'm not smart enough, original enough, creative enough, or strong enough to make it as a writer. It's yelling to stay away from the edge. Don't get burnt. Don't, whatever you do, open up too much, get hurt. It's OK to doodle around in a journal, and post on a blog nobody reads. But that's IT.

OK, so that was quite a shocking realisation. I haven't just got writers' block. I've got perfection doing a permanent Heimlich maneuver on me! Good to know. 

It's clear enough that perfection is the inner critic in this situation. It's a belief that I need to suffer and struggle and sweat and perform miracles to be good enough to get anything I really want. And believing that even then, I probably won't get it. I feel embarrassed and ashamed writing that. But it's true. The vice of perfection gripping me and holding me back is a just part of myself that's terrified -- of being honest, expressive, known, read. I'm sure it's not a coincidence that those are also the things I want the most -- to be honest, expressive, known, read.   

This is exhausting -- wrestling myself over what I want most and fear most. It's so exhausting I've had no energy to write. Which, perhaps, is the perfect truth of our struggle with perfectionism.

I was trying to meditate (perfectly of course) today, and all I could see was this big old self-inflicted fist fight; all I could feel was the pain in my solar plexus. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I called a truce. No fighting for a few hours, so I can write something.

This is it. It feels kind of exhilarating. It's a relief. It's perfect. I'm perfect. Just like this.