To live
so close and
hear the
heartbeat
of the earth,
the cyclical
pacing pulse
rising so full
in my senses,
wearies
body and mind
with the roaring
whisper of

life. . . life. . . life. . .

Luckily, I employ several strategies to help me refill and refresh, so I do not get stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits of inner doubt. When I tap into that sticky mental muck, I try to practice something other than self-flagellation. I turn to books. I love books, the smell, the feel, the weight of paper, and, of course, I love that this physical object contains something as ephemeral and intimate as an idea. Books return me to that primitive writer state: the reading child. While bookstores offer plentitude, the library more vibrantly captures those earliest connections with books, offering pure mental decadence. Choices must be made at the bookstore regarding cost; but at the library, I can have everything and anything!

So, what do I want or need to read? I reliably find mental refreshment in books about writing, particularly those focusing on the inner life of the writer. My copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is so battered I’ve had to purchase another to re-read. This spring, I stumbled across Bonni Goldberg’s Beyond the Words, the first book I’ve read that recommends not writing as a writing practice. Books on creativity, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s books Finding Flow and Creativity, can be recharging. Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star, The Joy Diet, and Expecting Adam offer humorous insights into creative choices for living. Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson’s study The Cultural Creatives reveals just how many people are choosing to live creatively. The Dalai Lama’s How to Practice teaches compassion for others as well as one’s self.

My curiosity leads me into new knowledge. As I learn, I make new connections; I add to the metaphor base I use in my work. A book on the equine biology reminded my poetic mind of the powerful creativity of time and the curiously beautiful results of happy accidents. I find new words, like “misprize”, to fail to realize or appreciate the true worth of something or somebody, or “numinous”, the sense of the spirit within objects (the dictionary is a good read too). As I read, I submerge in flood of words and ideas. I forget my drought and doubt, and soon reading moves me forward into writing, just like waves lap at the shore.

I try to be a good neighbor,
cautiously walking my regular
and trampled paths, through
large openings between tree and shrub,
but the one occasional distraction,
or perhaps, misguidedly ambitious spider,
and I blunder into their guy wires,
destroying their day’s creation.

Tangled in wisps, and
suppressing the evolutionary
adrenal panic of capture,
I move again, with apologies,
and watch the marvel rebuild,
without deference to this
most reckless and
gargantuan oddity.

He is not the only performer in my urban neighborhood: many others also claim this territory. Carolina wrens announce their authority, and the cardinal declares his province. A host of chickadees and their jaunty allies, the tufted titmice, sweep through in a chattering cloud
morning, afternoon, and evening. I have even seen, but only recognized afterward, an American kestrel fire through the trees in swift pursuit of a panicked and fleeing dove. My sluggish brain recognized his racing form too late for a second look, and I was left with an amazed yet uncertain memory of that arrow’s flight.

These are the public figures of my woodland yard, a diverse and vibrant habitat that I tend carefully: planting with an eye to hummingbirds and filling feeders with everyone’s favorite, sunflowers seeds, and peanuts especially for the jays. I welcome the lively distraction from my work, always happy to stare out the windows instead of at the computer screen, to watch who has come to visit. My favorite, though, is the quiet resident who, unlike the daylight neighbors, remains a private figure, appearing in the closing dusk to haunt the yard. The flight of other birds does not seem loud, until I watch the owls wing soundlessly into the trees.

The Eastern screech owls have resided here as long as I can remember, growing a new generation each year for the last thirty-two that I have called this place my home. I begin to see them in the late spring, as dusk comes later and I can sit in the yard as the evening cools. One or two appear together, dark shapes on the grass, or gliding silently between the trees to reach their vantage point. I have chanced upon their hunting, opening a door to find one perched near the patio, her predatory eyes turning to stare at my disruption. I’ve heard their claws late at night, catching a moth against the walls. As much as I enjoy the brighter birds, I feel a kinship with these owls, an affinity of spirit. I, too, like to work alone.

This spring, the owls chose my yard for the fledging, making an awkward and dangerous public appearance. My giant schnauzer found the errant youngster, grounded near a pecan tree. Hissing, the owlet held her at bay quite effectively, his wings spread wide to compensate for his small size. Part fluff part feathers, he must have seemed more dangerous than tasty, because she came away quickly when I called. Luckily, the murderous dachshunds missed him entirely. By the time I put the dogs away, the grounded owl had righted himself and begun a walk across the yard, a surprisingly efficient traveler by foot. His parents were in the trees, watching him carefully, watching me cautiously. In less than an hour, he’d made the ten-foot journey to the base of another tree, and climbed five feet to the first branch of significance. Wearied by his recent adventure, he rested in the branches and his parents came to sit near him, one watchful, one resting with the independent fledging, who was safe again in the trees, confident in his own success.

His second try was less graceful. Later, I discovered him in the hollies under the same pecan from which he’d walked away earlier. This time, he flopped and dangled from his toes, one foot trapped in the cracks of the bark, the other free but unable to clutch anything but air. His little body heaved as he panted, and I wondered what exactly to do. Do I interfere, or let Nature take its course? The hollies deterred me, as well as other predators, so I waited to see what the little bird could do alone. Half an hour later, he still dangled there. Because I knew something of being stuck, I decided against objectivity. Perhaps Nature had put me here to interfere, to make good use of my opposable thumbs.

Moving a long branch under his chest, I nudged him up and perpendicular to the tree. He scrambled, grabbed, and flipped himself from the tree, hissing and glaring from his flattened position in the bushes. His energy was back, and fierce. All he’d needed was a little leverage, a little boost to make it on his own. I backed away, leaving him to figure out the rest, since after all, I knew nothing about flying. His parents arrived for coaching, so I knew we’d been watched. By early evening, he’d clearly learned enough and had vanished with his parents into the dusk.

I saw the fledgling later that week, behind our yard, grounded at the foot of a tree. I lobbed a branch to scatter the grackles that had gathered to heckle the young predator. That was the last I saw of him in the daylight hours. He’s finally learned to fly and make his way safely in the dark. I hear him in the trees at night, chuckling softly with his parents. Now, he coasts silently from perch to perch, mastering his hunt, the next requirement for independent living. I know soon, he’ll melt into the darkening trees, a silhouette in the limbs among the parliament of owls who haunt the dusk.

~Aristotle

As I sit down to write this essay on creating a creative practice, I have just concluded a personal practice that helps me focus, centers my thinking, and channels my energies into creative production. I have shopped for groceries. Such a mundane thing! How can this chore be a creative practice? Creativity surely requires something more exotic, more glamorous? How does choosing vegetables invoke the Creative Muse? Shouldn’t there be some incantation
at least?

As I walk slowly, mindfully, through the grocery store, I am concentrating on a simple task that has a definitive beginning and end, after which I have a sense of accomplishment. I have completed a task and for a writer, completion is never so conclusive! During the process, I go steadily through my list, tracing my path carefully, and focusing on each necessary item. I ponder what I’d like to cook (create) during the week ahead. I wonder about trying new things. I open to new ideas. For me, grocery shopping provides the perfect balance of ritual, creation, and simplicity to serve as an excellent creative practice. I am also thinking, as I shop, that when I return home, I will sit down to write. I am preparing myself for more creative work. Once I’ve put the groceries away, I’m going to write. That’s simply the next logical step.

In her book, The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp writes of her own “ritual of preparation”: “I wake up at 5:30, put on my work out clothes . . . I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to [the gym] where I work out for 2 hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training . . . the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go, I have completed the ritual.” How ordinary! How simple! Indeed. The habit must be simple, doable, attainable, because as Steven Pressfield points out in The War of Art “it’s not the writing that’s hard, it’s sitting down to write.” A creative practice readies you for creativity. Once you’ve established the precursory practice, you set yourself up to work. If X occurs, then Y happens.
The one requirement of establishing a successful creative practice is that the practice must work for you, and your practice need meet no other requirements than that. If for example, you despise grocery shopping, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make that a creative practice unless getting the hated task out of the way allows you to reward yourself with the pleasure of your work: “once I complete this hideous task, I get to paint!” But you must never forget to reward yourself, or stack too many hated tasks ahead of the creative one. Conversely, if the creative practice is far more engaging than the work, then perhaps it’s time to rethink the role of the practice!

I also caution against worrying too much about how someone else may practice the same task you wish to use. I fell into this trap myself after beginning a new practice I’d read about in Gail Sher’s One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers. She suggests writing a haiku a day as an writing practice and offers simple clear instructions for creating haiku, particularly that capturing the essence of the haiku moment is more important than focusing on syllabic restrictions. Indeed, I found it worked wonderfully. While my haiku were not particularly brilliant, the practice brought clarity to my work, helping me concentrate on clear, concrete images in a very small space. After each practice haiku, I wrote more efficiently and my poems became more precise. I was also pleased that through practice, my haiku improved. For every four or five I wrote, at least one would be markedly better, and if I created nothing else that day, I could still be happy that I had created one haiku.

I lauded the practice to my writing partner, who immediately decided to try haiku as well and to begin she had, she told me, reviewed the rules of haiku for several hours. While I worried that I might be doing the practice incorrectly by not following the rules, I had to remember that the practice was working for me. My writing partner found herself so caught up in the rules of haiku that she could not use the writing practice that worked so well for me. She now uses other rituals, but not haiku.

The rule for successful creative practice is only this: the activity opens your mind and readies you for creative work, whether it’s yoga, or doing the dishes, or sharpening ten new pencils before you begin. If the practice you try does the opposite, it’s simply not the practice for you!