A Woman Writing

Lesson One - Claiming Vocation

Caroline Myss once said to a room full of us in seminar with her that if she didn't have a group of students to teach then she would teach to the soap in the shower!

I recently realized that if I am not animating characters on the page then I tend to become overwhelmed with the notion that I have to DO something in my life. I get antsy. The restlessness can provoke me into making choices that aren't necessary and often times generate undue stress for myself. In other words, I now understand the old adage that a writer has to write in the same way Caroline was telling us that a teacher has to teach. It is the right use of our life's energy when we know what our passion and purpose is.

I further understand that if and when I generate negative consequences from the decisions I make out of a state of restlessness that I have become possessed by my Negative Animus. Becoming aware of this unconscious pattern means that I have the power to change it.

How do I break this pattern?

By holding myself accountable to a regular writing ritual that allows the writer in me to play in words and imagination. And the ultimate outcome of this gift to myself is acknowledging a passion that fuels my experience because it aligns me to the Great Spirit of my creativity. It is the woman in me who knows how to hold that Negative Animus in right relationship to the world I generate. Anchoring the masculine within translates the wholeness of my writing practice into positive forward momentum in all aspects of my life. The passion to write becomes the engine of my life.

In Latin, the word animus means intellect, memory, character, and is often equated with "mind" and it is also used to mean courage, will, and vivacity. In Jungian psychology it denotes the masculine spirit or unconscious mind of woman.

When I am unaware of my own mind or disregard the spirit of my unconscious then the animus can act like a possessing demon. I can be seduced out of right relationship with the very things I say that I desire and throw my experience off balance. But another wise mentor, Barbara Hannah, taught me that as a creative writer, the animus can become my collaborator guiding me into the very source of my own creative impulse in the collective unconscious.

Simply put, if I let writing be the ballast in my lifeboat then I'm able to steer the craft peacefully down the river as I'm no longer paddling against myself.

Lesson Two - Building Character

I recently did a Writing Fiction course with Kate Mosse and one of her instructions was to be fit for writing. I remember thinking, at the time, that only a wise woman would have earned the right to say this because it comes from hard graft. It is a simple instruction with potentially profound consequences.

Do not underestimate the value of routine, stability, health, and home to hold the possibility of steady creativity. It takes confidence to hold home steady so creativity flows in an ordinary life. There is supreme pleasure in stability, good meals, gardening, reading, walking, biking. This is the life I have claimed. And for many years I feared losing it. In fact, I did lose it time and time and time again because I gave it away.

Why did I give away the very essence of what I required to be fit for writing?

I mistakenly assumed that being a writer meant something other than what I had been given. That there was something out in the world for me that I had to seek and find — namely, men and money. But that impulse put me in unsafe places. Time and time and time again I was brought back home to myself. Thank goodness! I see now it was all a beautiful design.

Considered in the narrow prism of professional recognition and monetary reward, the vast majority of serious writers can be said literally to lead disadvantaged lives. They must hold another job. They must be willing to sacrifice, for a lifetime, quotidian status, money, or even recognition in their own field. This is a test of character that most professions don’t require of their initiates. In what other vocation can you do your most advanced and difficult work — at the level of, say, a full professor — while holding the position of department secretary (and receiving the equivalent wage)? ~ Victoria Nelson, On Writer’s Block

Truth is, when I commit to the call of my vocation and let it show me the way then nothing or nobody can stop me. It comes with built-in support, guidance, and instruction. It just takes courage to listen and then to act in accordance with it. It is, ultimately, freedom. And this has certainly demanded I look away from the collective world we share, and what I think I should have, while exploring deeper my own inner world in order to discover the worthiness required to claim what is mine and do it anyway.

I could make a book from all the rejection letters I’ve received from literary agents and publishers over the years. But I don’t. Instead, I just keep writing. I don’t make it mean that I’ve done something wrong or that I’m not good enough, which are, in my experience, the two biggest weeds in the garden of the female psyche. Instead, my faith in the work grows every day. Regardless of what the world says, I will do this anyway!

Why?

Simply put, I matter. I have decided that my work matters. And when I realize this then I become who I was destined to be. And that is enough. So I endeavour to be grounded right where I am. I let my creativity power along its tracks. I take the journey. This is my life to live and I fall in love with my work.

When we let ourselves love what we have, we fall into the deep well of true worthiness, which is the ultimate stability and, I suspect, the place from which something wonderful is always unfolding.

(Watch this space, if it's useful to you, as I will add insights as they come to me.)