Sage Woman Chronicles

Ego Games

“The creative process is not like a situation where you get struck by a single lighting bolt. You have ongoing discoveries, and there’s ongoing creative revelations. Yes, it’s really helpful to be marching toward a specific destination, but, along the way, you must allow yourself room for your ideas to blossom, take root, and grow.” – Carlton Cuse

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” – Julia Cameron

“ ‘Romance’ is based on my entire creative process. I fall in love with an idea, obsess over it, isolate myself with it, and when I eventually introduce it to my friends, they all tell me that it’s stupid.” – Chuck Palahniuk

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.” – Flannery O’Connor

“Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.” – Red Haircrow

Does this happen to you? You’re working on a project. You love doing it and you’re inspired every day by what you’re working on. Even when you’re having a frustrating day, it’s great to be part of the creative process. Then others, knowing that you are doing something creative, send you tips on how to do the work. And that makes you feel irritated. That happened to me the other day. A friend of mine posted something on my wall about writing a novel, which made me feel really irritated. It’s one thing to post it for the general public to read, but I didn’t like that he posted it on my personal wall like I needed help with the project I’m working on. Okay, admittedly, I do need help from time to time but I’m going to seek the help of people who are writers and who understand the personal nature of the writing process.

I find that often the people who are sending me tips, aren’t engaged in the same work I’m doing. That irritates me even more. Who do they think they are telling me how to do my work, when they aren’t working in my field? I begin to engage in mental ego games. I want to tell them to shove their advice in a … well, we won’t go there. Then I begin to get my ego in check and I realize they’re just trying to be supportive. They want to encourage me and be my cheerleaders. Sometimes I find myself getting irritated even when fellow writers send me tips on writing. They believe that everyone should approach writing the same way they do, and they are very didactic about it. Maybe that’s why I dropped out of both writing groups I used to belong to.

It’s a rule in the theatre that an actor never tells another actor how to portray their character. That’s the job of the actor playing the role in collaboration with the director. I feel it should be the same with other forms of artwork. My way of writing isn’t going to be the same as your way. Your way of painting that picture isn’t going to be the same as someone else’s way. The creative process is deeply personal and unique to the artist.

While I was mulling this “helpful” post by my friend, I read a post on Facebook by Diana Gabaldon, author of the hugely popular Outlander series. The other day she wrote about her experiences at writer’s conferences both as a new writer and now as a successful author. She enumerated the ways new writers sabotage themselves by listening to all the advice from the successful writers who present their method for writing at the conferences as THE way to do it. They, the new writers, think they have to write just like she does, or like Dan Brown, or James Patterson, or J. K. Rowling. She was telling how it was for her when she began to write the first in what is now nearly a nine book series. Though she attended writer’s conferences, she didn’t pay attention to anyone’s formula for writing. She took what was helpful, then just started to write and followed where her characters led her. She followed her own instincts. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve gone to only a few writer’s conferences because I didn’t want someone telling me I’m doing it wrong. As far as I’m concerned, there is no right or wrong when it comes to creativity. The few conferences I have attended didn’t really offer much help for me and my process. I’m the only one who can find my inner path to the truth I’m trying to convey.

Having written all of that, I have had fantastically helpful comments from reader and writer friends. But I chose their advice very carefully. The ones I trust don’t try to speak to my process, they only make comments on their reaction to the work I’m creating. They know that writing is a painstakingly slow process and sometimes we can get mired down in all the details of our story and loose track of where we were going with it. We throw unnecessary events and characters into the story and we need one or two helpful people to point out where we’ve gone off track. The people who are the most helpful, are those who point out where the story bogs down, tell me what’s working and encourage me to continue writing.

As for my friends who try to help me, I’m grateful that they are interested in what I’m working on. It’s nice to have cheerleaders encouraging you to keep up the good work. Maybe some of them want me to succeed because if I do, then it’s a sign that they can succeed at making their dreams come true too. When they send me advice, that I don’t really want, I’ll just remember that my ego is the one who is offended. The real me will accept the good wishes of my friends and keep writing.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

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Tipping Point

“People say, ‘I want to change the world!’ Wonderful! I’ve got a great place to start – look in the mirror and get to work!” – David Roppo

“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” – Jimmy Carter

“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.” – Voltaire

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” – Dalai Lama

Last week I was away at a family wedding and all kinds of great things happened during that time which make me think we’ve reached a tipping point in the direction of choosing love instead of hate.

The wedding was beautiful, as was the scenery along the way and at our destination. I don’t know the couple well, but everyone who spoke of them said they are two exceptional people. That in itself is hopeful. Weddings are a celebration of love. That’s what made the Supreme Court decision about making sure marriage equality is accepted in all 50 states an extra bonus to the weekend.

The Supreme Court also upheld The Affordable Care Act, and they upheld the use of an independent commission made of up citizens to draw Arizona’s congressional districts. In other words, they stood for the citizens of this country in three different ways. Hurray! It’s another few steps in the right direction.

Though I was very happy about all the decisions, the one that surprised and delighted me the most, because I didn’t think it would happen, was the one that upheld the rights of THE PEOPLE of my state of Arizona to decide how to to organize the voting districts. The politicians have to stay out of such decisions. If they upheld the vote of the people on this issue in my state, it can be the beginning of the end for gerrymandering in other states as well. This decision was big, and went mostly unnoticed with the news of the other two decisions. However, all three, in my opinion, point to the beginning of the end of lots of injustices that have been in place in this country.

As I’ve emphasized many times in the two years I’ve been writing this blog, there are positive things happening. The tide is turning toward more tolerance, and more fair treatment for all our citizens. I think what happened last week is definite proof that what I’ve been saying is true.

Other positive things are happening as well. Look at what’s been happening since the shooting in Charleston. I have to say that I was moved by the statements of the families of the victims. They shared love and forgiveness for the poor young man who allegedly did the shooting. Because of their forgiveness, lots of people are engaging in actual, serious conversations about not only the symbol of the confederate flag, but how blacks, and other ethnic groups, have been treated. We’re examining our unacknowledged and unexamined attitudes about each other. (Thank you Donald Trump!)

If you watch Fox news you probably still think the world is going to hell in a hand basket, (Sorry for the over used metaphor.) that liberals are taking over the world and persecuting conservative Christians and wealthy white people. It’s not, and we’re not. We’re just standing up for the rights of ALL people.

Here are some more positive signs that the tide is changing and that we’ve reached the tipping point toward the positive. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have had huge turnouts at their rallies, and raised enormous amounts of money donated mostly by ordinary citizens. The Republicans who are running for office sound more and more like people high on drugs or people who are mentally ill living in world of their own creation. The Girl Scouts refused a $100,000 anti-transgender donation, the attacks on the president by the Koch brother’s and the Tea Party are failing, and many people around the world continue to speak out on issues from guns to women’s rights, education for all, and how damaging it is to use religion to attack others. Wow! The good news is everywhere.

Now I understand that most of us automatically go to the negative when events happen. My friend Jean, who had brain surgery almost two years ago, has been studying books about brain research. One thing she told me was that scientists have discovered that we’re hard wired to embrace the negative first and that turning our thinking around to the positive can be difficult. But it can be done. It just takes practice.

I have to admit that I grew up in a positive environment, so it’s easier for me to change those initial negative thoughts to positive ones, however, I too feel despair at times about all the bad news. That’s why I seek out positive news items, TV shows, movies and supportive messages on social media. If we feed our minds negative images and messages, that’s what we’ll think about. Conversely, if we feed our mind positive messages, it becomes easier to think in the positive. Maybe recent events show us that people ARE beginning to embrace positive thoughts which produce positive change. I hope so.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

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About Women and Our Changing Culture

“I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.” – Georgia O’Keefe

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher

“Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.” – Alice Walker

“You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.” – Erica Jong

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” – Rebecca West

Somehow what I wrote in the last post just didn’t seem like it covered all the ideas that have been rattling around in my head for the last few months. So many things are happening to lots of different groups of people and they all look like different issues, but in my opinion, they are the same issue. We need to learn to value others so much that it won’t matter what color, sexual orientation, gender, or level of prosperity they might have or be. However, it’s hard to value others if we don’t value ourselves.

As I’ve written many times in this blog, valuing myself has been a big theme in my life and one of my main cheerleaders was my father. I couldn’t articulate until I was much older that he had lots of great feminine qualities that I wanted to emulate. Because he was a man, I got the idea that all men would be like my dad. But as I grew older and bumped up against barriers that were constructed to keep out anyone who wasn’t a white male, I started to rethink who I was and what it was that made me valuable. And the answer is: Because I’m here! This has been a lifelong process, you understand, to know that I’m valuable just because I exist. This and all the ideas I’m expressing today have taken me a long time to be able to articulate.

This is what I now know. We are each a piece of God. As I’ve studied the religions of the world, I’ve come to think that there is something within women that understands that fact. Way back in human history, men knew it too, because they worshiped the Goddess. But then things changed and men took charge. Women adapted. They kept their strength to themselves and learned to make a place for themselves within the male dominated societies. On the outside it looked like men were in charge, but there were often great women behind the great men. And almost every woman who became ruler of a country, did not have a husband, which allowed them to rule the way they thought best.

But I don’t want to go into the entire history of moving from female based cultures to male based cultures and back again. There are lots of fantastic books about that subject. No, what I want to do is express what I think is happening now. I think we’re moving from a completely male dominated world, to one of cooperation between the sexes. And one where every single person is value and honored. The evidence I provide for this is just what’s happening in the news almost every day.

In this country, the male dominated congress is in deadlock. There are white men who are going ballistic because they see their domination crumbling. They’ve been in control for so long. They liked it and they don’t want to lose the upper hand. Each time there is a new shooting, or new restrictive legislation introduced, or progressive legislation that’s voted down, there are people who wake up and say, “Wait a minute. That’s not right.” And the more people who say that and band together with other’s who are awakening, the pendulum swings ever so slightly in the direction of more equality all around.

One of the things I was going to mention in this post was the fact that women need to stand with and for other women. I’ve always thought that was important but this morning as I was thinking about that I was challenged to back that up with action. I’ve received a number of invitations from my new Representative Martha McSally to follow her Facebook page. I’ve refused to follow her because she’s from a much more conservative party than I am. I was angry that she won the election, and that she won it by a minuscule amount of votes. But if I’m going to stand up for having more women in leadership roles in this country, then I need to support Martha McSally. I’ve just taken the time to like her page. Now I’ll be able to tell her how I feel about the important issues that we face in this country. I don’t know if she’ll pay attention to anything I write to her, but she’ll never even consider them if she doesn’t know what I think. As Malala Yousafzai says, “Sometimes we wait for others and think that Martin Luther should raise among us, Nelson Mandela should raise up among us and speak up for us, but we never realize they are normal humans like us – and if we step forward we can also bring change just like them.” So, I’m taking one step forward and telling my Representatives what I want this country to look like.

I’m given hope that maybe Ms. McSally will pay attention, because I saw a news segment not long ago about the gatherings the women in Congress hold regularly to create a bridge between the parties to get things done. They may not always agree on an issue, but they look for ways to work together. I like that!

There is so much more to say about how to help this country grow into one where every single person, no matter who they are, can be honored and valued but I’ll leave that for future posts.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

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Cancer of Our Society

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred; universal brotherhood, not enmity; peace, and not violence.” – Pervez Musharraf

“Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov

“Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially from violence that can never be justified. It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity.” – Hillary Clinton

Something important I’ve learned in my sixty-two years is that we repeat a lesson over and over again until we learn it. That goes for individuals as well as groups, businesses, societies, and nations. As I write this, there has been another mass shooting this time in a church. I guess we haven’t learned that violence only begets more violence which means, we’ll keep repeating this insane scenario until we get it. Humans are stubborn and we often have to be pushed to the brink before we are willing to change.

Violence in all its forms in our country is a cancer that is eating away at our society from the inside out. It’s exactly what our enemies are hoping for, that our society will collapse in on itself. And we are teetering on the brink of doing just that because the people haters are declaring their right to freedom. But what of the rights and freedoms of those who become victims of violent acts? They get blamed for not carrying a gun.

This is what I think about the gun debate. This country was founded on the fight for freedom against tyranny. Each member of the army had to own a gun, and that was even written into our constitution that individuals have the right to own a fire arm. The reasoning behind that was obvious. This was a wild country at the time, not to mention many people needed to hunt to provide food for their families. Do we really need to own so many guns now? I guess we do if we see every other person as a threat. That’s sad. We’re so busy being proud of our heritage of standing up to the bullies that we continue to look for them everywhere and have become the thing we fight against.

In my opinion, our country was founded on the masculine ideal. We think of a man as being tough, stoic, invulnerable, and he rules his domain with an iron hand. And if a man isn’t like that we look down on him, or at least we used to.

Basing our culture on those principles may have helped us grow and develop at one time, but that time has passed. We’ve evolved as a nation as evidenced by the way we treat our returning soldiers now as opposed to the way we treated them after WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. During WWI men who suffered from PSD, or shell shock as it was called back then, were treated with distain, disrespect and if they were in the field and were unable to perform their duties, they were shot for cowardice. With each successive war the attitude about PSD changed ever so slowly. Now we understanding that being a part of all the violence that is a part of war, is highly corrosive to a person’s psyche. In other words, again in my opinion, our society is moving toward a more feminine perspective.

Those with feminine qualities are loving, vulnerable, understanding, supportive, inclusive, peacemakers, and healers. All the people most of us profess to admire and aspire to emulate throughout the ages have had more feminine qualities than masculine, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to name just a few.

So I ask, do we want to heal the cancer, or kill ourselves because we don’t want to acknowledge the diagnosis?

I hope you will consider this quote from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. My copy was translated and annotated, and with an afterward by Victor H. Mair, thus the two different numbers.

41 (76)
Human beings are
soft and supple when alive,
stiff and straight when dead.

The myriad creatures, the grasses and trees are
soft and fragile when alive,
dry and withered when dead.

Therefore, it is said:
The rigid person is a disciple of death;
The soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life.

An army that is inflexible will not conquer;
A tree that is inflexible will snap.

The unyielding and mighty shall be brought low;
The soft, supple, and delicate will be set above.

In other words, the meek shall inherit the earth. I believe that if our society is to survive, we need to become soft and supple with each other.

I’ll write one last thing. I saw Malala Yousafzai on Jon Stewart’s show last night and I’ll paraphrase something she said that I’m trying to get across with this post. She said that one person can do one thing to make the world a better place. And I say, if each of us does one thing, then it won’t be long before the world we live in becomes a very different place than the one we’re living in now.

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Minding Your Passion

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman

“We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.” – Sheryl Sandberg

“You can do anything as long as you have the passion, the drive, the focus, and the support.” – Sabrina Bryan

For a little over two years I’ve been writing this blog and today is the first day I wish I could skip writing for a week. It’s not that I don’t like writing it, it’s that I’m deep in the process of revising my novel, The Space Between Time and I almost resent any time spent away from that task. So I hope you’ll excuse me if this post is short because I’m in full creative mode.

Having written that, I want to emphasize that anything we do that fills us with passion and gives us pleasure, in a creative way, of course, should be our top priority. I have lots of theories about why we deny ourselves the pleasure of losing ourselves in work that grasps us. We’re sure we don’t deserve to be happy, or we’re addicted to misery. Getting pity from others can be a powerful draw. In a way our DNA is imprinted with the idea that we can’t have the things we desire most. Most people throughout history accepted their lot, did all they could to survive and didn’t allow themselves to dream beyond creating a better life for their families. We have few examples of people living the life of their dreams and being successful at it. In a way, that’s good because every single person must discover their own way to their deepest passions. The thing is, though, you need to believe that it’s possible to put aside the miseries of our existence and cross over into a happy, fulfilling life. Seek out the stories of people who’ve realized their deepest desires. Discover how they did it, and believe you can do the same.

Once you discover your purpose, I encourage you to go for it. I can testify that you might not realize your dream right away, but if you keep your commitment alive, eventually, you’ll be living the life of your dreams. When that happens, you’ll look back and be thankful for every time you chose to take one step closer to fulfilling your dreams.

Every morning when I wake up, I’m grateful I stuck with my quest and I’m grateful for the full support of my husband who has been my cheerleader our entire married life. Find your cheerleader, and be a cheerleader to someone else.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to working on my manuscript. Good luck on making your dreams come true.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

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