Setting Intentions

Posted on July 5, 2023 by dinafried

For the past few months I’ve been experimenting with The Artist’s Way technique of writing three long-hand pages before getting out of bed in the morning as way to clear out detritus, set a tone for the day, and hopefully get to some inspirational creative nugget. Though the nuggets have been few and far between for me, I’ve found the process useful in breaking the habit of going right to my phone with its tasky emails and social media rants about disturbing items in the morning’s news cycle.

It’s also been useful to write down intentions of what I’d like to accomplish for the day, remembering that I don’t need to beat myself up for not completing everything I’ve set out to do; I just need to remind myself of the direction I’ve set, and gently pivot back if I’m veering off-course (or re-assess if the new course I’m on seems more right for the moment). Since I’m still in the throes over-achiever recovery, my intentions can sometimes feel like a laundry list of everything I might like to get done, as impossible to pull off as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But seeing, day after day, how ridiculously long my lists can be, and taking time to express gratitude for what I have achieved at the end of each day has been helpful in setting my sights a tad more realistically.

I was discussing this a few days ago with Alice, my chevrutah, which loosely translates from Hebrew as a “learning partner.” Instead of studying Jewish texts, we’ve chosen to expand the Jewish practice of self-reflection and forgiveness during Elul (the month before New Year’s) into an ongoing practice of checking-in on personal growth, taking inspiration from Jewish and non-Jewish spiritual teachings, as well as in the countless gifts we get every day from immersing in the creative process and engaging with the natural world. Alice told me that the Hebrew word for intention, kavanah, is not so much about the tasks you aim to get done, but the quality with which you approach them.

So, for the last few days as I’ve written my list, I’ve expressed the kavanah to pay more attention and be more connected to whatever it is I’m doing, rather than thinking of it as an item to be quickly ticked off so I can get to the next thing as soon as possible.

Surprisingly, this has made me more relaxed in my writing practice. I’m not so worried about what the next big project might be, or if I’m doing the most important thing right now on my writing “to-dos.” I’m setting one writing intention a day of something to focus on and trying my best not to second-guess myself (which includes actively choosing not to write on days that are exceptionally busy, rather than feeling distracted and harried as I try to squeeze it in). And when a new path opens up (i.e. in the middle of doing submissions, a poem begs for a rewrite or a few lines pop into my head, or I get a brilliant idea for a new story) I let myself wander off the path, the way my husband and I often follow unmarked trails in the woods, confident that we know the local forests (just as I know my own internal map) well enough to find our way back home.

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Self-Sabotage: The Minefield of Shortcuts

Posted on June 27, 2023 by dinafried

Yesterday, I slipped on a wet floor and banged up my knee. And today, I’m determined to baby it. So no yoga class, and certainly no race-walking or bouncing around to cardio videos. This is a huge break in my pattern of always physically trying to do as much as I can despite whatever minor discomfort I’m experiencing. But it’s time to face the fact that I’m older; my body is more compromised, and the last thing I want to do is let a small injury turn into a large one because I didn’t give it time to heal.

Meanwhile, my hungry mind is alluring me with alternatives. Maybe I can do a restorative yoga video, or try a flat, non-strenuous half-hour walk. Or find a spot where I can sit at the edge of the garden and pull a few weeds. Since my knee doesn’t really hurt that much, these messages sound tantalizingly sensible, even though I know I should make sure to be careful. Still, what’s wrong with taking a couple of shortcuts to make my day feel more settled and normal?

And is my resistance to having a day with minimal physical activity connected to knowing that if I don’t do any of these routines, I’ll have a lot more time–i.e. too much time–to face the blank page?

Sometimes I wonder if filling up my days with routines–even healthy routines–is one of the ways I sabotage my creativity. If I know I only have a couple of hours in my day that are designated for writing, I can easily fill them with smaller writing tasks like revisions, or submissions, or blogging, or marketing/political writing, or editing/reviewing work for others. And while all of these are important in my writing life, focusing all my attention on them can mean never getting to the next big project, especially if I convince myself that to tackle something larger, I need more mental bandwidth and bigger chunks of time. Yet a day like today, when I have a lot of open time, feels like one of those expansive western landscapes I wrote about on my recent trip to California. They are undeniably gorgeous and awe-inspiring, but they also leave me unsettled.

Even when I am more engaged in my writing life, another way I sabotage my creativity is going for the “easy out” when working on a piece, because I’m often just trying to get it done rather than really examining its total potential of where it can go–in other words, taking the shortcut. This isn’t because I have any real time constraint. I can always come back to something the next day or the next week or the next month, and often do. However, it feels as unsettling as an open landscape or open day to leave things unfinished for too long.

True confessions: I’m three-quarters into this open day, and I’ve cheated. A lot. Instead of facing the bigger contours and potential of the blank page, I made a batch of granola and put up a pot of dried chickpeas to incorporate into dinner. And I did take a slow 30-minute flat walk with hiking poles, and spent about 45 minutes on some very easy gardening, neither of which compromised my knee. But though I kept my focus on smaller writing tasks, I’m grateful that in addition to sending out two poetry submissions, I stumbled on some new and useful insights that helped me revise a couple of poems I’ve been stuck on (and that I’d previously sabotaged myself with by thinking they were finished). And I wrote this blog, which means, at least, that I’m accepting and acknowledging the pattern. So while I still might be seduced by the ease of shortcuts, I’ll make a point of treading even more carefully through the minefield.

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Centering Home

Posted on June 21, 2023 by dinafried

Returning from vacation often brings me face-to-face with that moment when the world pricks hard enough to make me sit up and notice that I’m no longer in that carefully constructed bubble of paradise geared to distract me from my life. And this time felt harder than usual. The daily news, successfully willed to a microscopic wisp at the edge of my consciousness as I lay in a hammock overlooking the mountains of Kings Canyon National Park, started to burn at my skin again, its smoky haze penetrating the air like the remnants of a wildfire. And my to-do list, which I could easily reduce to a vague thought and make it sound almost pleasurable in my mind while walking through a grove of foggy sequoias, now felt gargantuan–a tottering avalanche ready to tumble at any moment and bury me in its angry cascade.

Usually I can counteract these post-vacation moments fairly quickly by pivoting back into routines, but for some reason, this time it took over a week to get my bearings. I just want to get back to my life, I kept telling myself, feeling more and more frustrated as the days slipped away but the tasks on my plate stayed constant–or grew. And that led me to question, What was this thing I was referring to as “my life?” What was it I was trying to get back to that wasn’t happening?

On each of those initial post-vacation days I was doing familiar things: walking or biking, gardening, cooking, catching up with friends I hadn’t spoken to or seen while away. And on the days I took the time to assess whether I’d enjoyed my day, I could clearly express gratitude for the many parts of it that pleased me. So what was missing?

Note: I did not put “writing” on the above list.

However, I was writing on many of those days. Mostly, I was pulling out half-finished poems and chewing on them, making a few tweaks, and putting them away again, not feeling very satisfied, or, more importantly, connected to what I was writing. And because I had such a long to-do list, it was easy to get up after a few minutes and do something else, before giving myself the chance to really revisit what I’d been writing and reset my creative clock.

And being disconnected from my writing made me feel disconnected from my life.

A week after returning from my vacation, I had a writing date with my friend, Lanette, which meant that for two whole hours I had to sit with her on the porch of Barstow’s Dairy Store (a great place to write, if you’re in western MA) and keep at it. I highly recommend writing dates with friends (either in-person or on Zoom) as a way of getting going. In addition to enjoying a brief visit before writing, I couldn’t just tweak a poem or two and then get up to succumb to the call of the unpaid bills or the weedy garden, because at the end of the session I knew we’d be reporting to each other on what we’d done and possibly sharing some of our work. Even as I flitted from poem to poem and took several breaks for Wordle and its Dordle and Quordle variants, not to mention checking email and social media, I kept coming back–until I could look at a poem and remember why I wrote it and why it might still matter. And that helped me finally make the shift back to my creative center.

Since then, I’ve been just as busy with tasks, social and family stuff, but I’m feeling totally differently about my life. I’m now connected to my words and my reason for writing them–even as I might continue to sift through and change them. And that means I’m home.

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Looking Up

Posted on June 14, 2023 by dinafried

I thought I would blog while I was vacation in California last week, but as Robert Burns said, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Not surprising. Even as I always bring my computer on excursions, as well as a notebook and pen and good intentions, I rarely write anything more than a few answers to emails that can’t wait when I’m away. But I do find myself doing some of the internal work that goes with the territory of writing, particularly in how I’m drawn to setting. The wide expanse of central California’s landscape with its sandy foothills, waterfalls, and high peaks evoked both the wonder and unease I often feel visiting the west. While it seems humanly impossible not to be awed by the desert wilderness and the open sky, as an east coast girl with firm roots in New York City’s concrete, I always feel a bit unhinged in all that open space. Ultimately, I want the closed in comfort of narrow paths hedged by trees.

California has trees. But not the same canopy that you’d find on the east coast, especially in the area I visited: Yosemite and Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks. It takes a certain kind of courage to hug one of those giant sequoias, even for an intrepid tree-hugger like me. Much easier to plant a soft kiss and whisper sweet nothings to a thin sliver birch than to try to slide your arm around the girth of a sequoia and realize just how small you are in the universe. “These trees are like dinosaurs,” my husband quipped. “They don’t even seem like trees as much as like prehistoric beings.”

Calling these notable groves the Land of the Giants was not overrated marketing hype. It took a full seventeen seconds to scan all the way up to the top of one of these beauties and back down again to our little corner of the planet.

And that got me to thinking–what does it mean to look up?. To take a step away from the comfortable landscapes of our lives into the unknown, a question that was enforced metaphorically by the intense fog we drove through to reach the park. Taking any creative risk is like driving through fog. We may not see the entire landscape of where we’re going in front of us; perhaps we can only see the vaguest contours, or a few inches of the road’s white line and a pair of headlights coming at us from the opposite direction, but we plod on ahead, focused only on what we can see, with the faith that if we keep going, the tops of the trees will slowly come into view.

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

To Share or Not to Share

Posted on May 23, 2023 by dinafried

“You have to learn to take rejection not as an indication of personal failing but as a wrong address.” ~ Ray Bradbury

Even when we’re not asking an entity from the great gods of publishing to judge and dissect our work to give us outside proof of its worthiness, when we share our writing, the stakes can be significant. In fact, when your best friend doesn’t like something you’ve written, it can feel much worse than a journal rejection. Because even when the people you love are trying to be diplomatic, you can usually sense their ambivalence in their tone, or the way they might hem and haw as they try to figure out a nice thing to say, or when they ask you an off-topic question that demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that they just didn’t get what your story or poem means to you (and what you think it should mean to them). Or they don’t know what to say so they focus on the grammar: Are you sure “its” shouldn’t have an apostrophe here?

So, what to do?

The urge to share what we write can be compelling. Sharing is what connects us. We write because we want to be heard, validated, acknowledged. While it’s a purely personal decision to decide when, with whom, and how to share, here are some suggestions to share in a way that both enhances and protects our vulnerability.

Be true to yourself about WHEN you want to share: There are many times I want to take myself and my writing to some snowy inn on top of a mountain and sit with it by a fireplace at a candlelit table for one. And this is a perfectly fine choice, whether you do it literally or metaphorically, especially for writing that still zings in its its newness and rawness. I find that I don’t necessarily need outside validation for every word that leaks out of my pen or pours out of my keyboarding fingers. Often the catharsis of dealing with a difficult emotional subject or finding the right words to capture a joyful moment, or a knotty character revelation can be its own reward.

Be discerning about WHO you share your writing with: Chances are, your soulmate in love and life will not be your best writing/sharing buddy (though I know some lucky few soulmate pairs that defy these odds). And words from your soulmate, your parent, your child, your best friend, all of whom know you too well and in too many other contexts carry much more weight than comments from people who know you less well, or those who know you only in a writing context. I could write a very long book that had nothing in it but annoying things people I love have said to me about my writing. And while I can’t ban all these stinging nettles from my memory, as I know I should, I do my best to consign unhelpful comments to their own little corner of my mental closet.

Be Clear About Exactly WHAT Feedback You Want: Especially with those you love–and even more so if they are not writers–ask them to tell you some things they liked about your writing–an image, a description, a funny moment. If you’re ready to hear their more constructive feedback, ask them to frame it as something they were confused about or didn’t understand, rather than giving you a prescriptive way of how to “fix it.” These can be helpful guidelines in a writing group, as well. However, if you are open to prescriptive suggestions, especially from other writers who likely have more experience than your friend-set in solving writing issues, be sure to consider any suggestions as a possible exploration that can get you closer to your own path, rather than as a “must do.”

Happy sharing!

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Babies, Blessings, and the Bird’s Eye View

Posted on May 10, 2023 by dinafried

For the past five days I’ve been living with my daughter, helping to take care of seven-month-old Baby Manu while her husband is away. Like most of life, there have been moments of joy, moments of challenge, moments of laughter, drudgery, frustration, profound peacefulness, you-name-it. The only thing certain about life with a baby is that there’s rarely a dull moment.

As a grandparent I feel blessed by having a lot more perspective than I had when my own children were young. In my years of early motherhood, whenever my kids screamed, I worried that not addressing on some immediate need they were expressing would scar them for life, the fog of sleep-deprivation only adding to my anxiety. Now, as I carry Baby Manu around the house and try with my old arms to satisfy his need for incessant “jumping” (i.e. lifting him up and down as he flexes his leg muscles as a launching point on my lap) I feel wiser and calmer–even when he’s screaming. And I’ve thought about how like writing, taking care of a baby is really just an exercise in plunging in and dealing with a lot of trial and error as I try to find that “true north” point of connection.

With Manu this might mean reading a book and taking stops between each page for jumping breaks, or tango dancing around the house while humming riffs from Raffi’s greatest hits or rap songs I’m making up on the spot–all on the theme of Manu: The Life. It might mean playing hand games, or making funny noises, or going through an entire array of animal sounds. Or taking a moment to put him down to play by himself, recognizing in my new found older-age wisdom that both of us could use a little time to chill. “Little” is the defining word here. All of these activities have proven successful–but generally none of them work for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

The writing process can sometimes feel similar. While I welcome the blessings of the time I feel “in the groove,” other times my words–and my brain–can feel jumpy and fragmented. These are the days I go into the garden to chill, just as I put Manu under his playstation, so he can shake his rattles and babble to himself without Grandma’s interference. And other times, when I’m struggling with trying to write that “one true sentence,” I realize I need to switch up the activity, which for me usually means putting a story aside to revise a poem, or putting the poem aside to work on another poem, or another story or essay until I find something I’m connected to enough in that moment to “re-see.”

But I’m counting my blessings and taking the “birds-eye view” as both a grandparent and a writer. Eventually Manu will grow old enough to tell me what he wants–and so, I hope, will my baby poems and prose in progress.

To subscribe, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Gardening: An Antidote for Perfectionism

Posted on May 2, 2023 by dinafried

It’s May, which means it’s time to get real about the garden!

April has always been a hard month for me emotionally. (I resonate with T.S. Elliot.) I generally feel as unsettled as the weather. The minute we get a warm day, I’m warring with my impatience, chomping at the bit to start planting, while at the same time feeling anxious about how I’m going to incorporate daily gardening time into what seems like my already too busy life. And when the days turn back to being cold and rainy, there’s actually a part of me that feels relieved that I can stay burrowed into my winter self for a while, though I wonder what masochistic inner voice is making such a silly choice. Meanwhile the crocuses, the daffodils, the rhododendrons, the pink and white flowering trees are lighting the world with promise but fading so quickly, I worry I’m not paying enough to attention to enjoy them before they’re gone.

But now it’s May. The peas, onions, cilantro, and tat-soi are all planted, and half of my garden bed has been prepared as I wait for some reliably warmer weather to plant the more vulnerable vegetables. A few of the daffodils are still hanging on, while the tulips I planted last year are springing out among the wild violets and dandelions. We’re still getting cold, rainy, weather, but this didn’t stop me from seeking the garden yesterday the minute I felt stuck with a writing project. There is something about feeling the dirt sifting through my fingers that consistently gives me my best writing ideas. My writing/gardening motto: When in doubt, go out!

I didn’t grow up loving gardening. As a NYC girl, I think I was a teenager before I realized that vegetables didn’t come from the supermarket. When I first moved to western Mass. I didn’t really get what the fuss was about when people made a point of proudly showing me their tomatoes. Yet, gardening is a thing here, so when my downstairs neighbor at the first house we rented long-term said she’d teach me how to garden and we could make one together, I agreed. And fell in love.

Some people find the endless cycle of weeding and digging and mulching and watering a kind of drudgery, but I make sure to stop the minute I get tired of a task–which makes the 30-60 minutes I try to spend each day a joy rather than a chore.

What I love most about gardening is that I have no desire to do it perfectly. Each thing I manage to grow and harvest feels like nothing short of a miracle, even after more than thirty years of experience. If the peas don’t come up, I shrug and re-plant them if it’s not too late in the season, or figure I’ll buy some from a local farmer. Some seasons I’ve replanted cucumbers and zucchini four times before they didn’t wilt or get eaten by animals. While I like to exchange tips with other gardening enthusiasts, I don’t spend any time comparing my gardens to theirs. Really, all I want is to get my hands back into the dirt and dig up some writing revelations as I pull out the stubborn blades of grass. And to jump for joy as I see the asparagus spears poking their heads out of my little plot. And celebrate the delicious mint from last year that’s survived the winter and come again all by itself. Time to make a mojito!

To subscribe, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

Vulnerability, Writer’s Block, and Performance Anxiety

Posted on April 23, 2023 by dinafried

I’ve fallen in love with a new Chopin Nocturne I’m learning, Op. 9, No. 2. There are a few different versions of this on youtube, but my favorite is this one by Tiffany Poon. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to professional pianists play the pieces I’m learning, as they remind me, even after I get the basics down, how far away I am from ever playing with such fluidity and ease.

A friend of mine who is co-authoring a book I’m editing writes about his past experience with writers block: I labored under the mistaken notion that writing was a gift from the muse, he says. You either had that gift or you didn’t–and obviously and sadly, I wasn’t one of the chosen few. This is how I feel about piano, except that when I was a child my parents and extended family led me to believe that because I had perfect pitch, I was one of the chosen few. But I couldn’t actualize “that gift” because my fingers were never as good as my ear, especially in a performance setting. I played exactly one piano recital when I was nine–a special concert for “teachers’ best pupils” in a fancy hall in New York City–and it was an unqualified disaster, as I wrote about in detail in an earlier post: Reframing a Past Mess-Up.

I want to feel that spending the last three years returning to piano, a process that has required not only frequent practicing but also a deep dive into my family history in order to decode and defuse a long line of harmful generational messages, would put me past some of my performance anxiety. However, I don’t play the piano if anyone other than my husband, Shel, is in the house. (And if he went out more, I’d probably wait until he was gone, as well.) Even as I’ve managed to turn the screech of my inner music critic down to a low murmur and generate enjoyment from my own flawed renditions, I’m terrified of anyone else’s judgment. So, it was an odd leap of faith to impulsively ask my visiting younger child, Raf–who is a professional musician, nonetheless–if they wanted to hear this new piece I loved and was in the middle of learning. I could do this–even if it made me more vulnerable, I told myself.

How wrong I was.

Man sitting on a chair covering his ears. Earworm concept, also know as brainworm, sticky music, or stuck song syndrome. <a href=”https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/places.html”>Earworm Concept. Man Sitting on a Chair Covering His Ears. – depositphotos.com</a>

Even though I could already play the piece decently with just a few rough spots, knowing Raf was listening made me miss the easy notes as well as the hard ones. My baseline totally fell apart and it seemed to be a matter of chance as to whether I was going to hit the right chords or the wrong ones. Keep playing! I told myself, even as I could barely breathe. Focus on the expression–why you love this piece. Somehow, I managed to finesse the melody, finally landing pianissimo on the last few chords, their soft reverberations calming my shaky insides.

It will be a long time before I do that again, I said to myself. But something had shifted. Unlike the time I was nine, the minute I stood up and walked away from the piano bench, I left the incident behind me. My inner critic didn’t take this little blip as a chance to screech with delight. It stayed at its current murmuring level, which I could easily drown out the next time I tackled the Chopin.

My friend writes about writers’ block, Now I accept without pain that I am a reasonably competent writer. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy the writing I produce. While I prefer to use “aspiring,” rather than “reasonably competent” to describe my musicianship, the last sentence rings true. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy my piano playing. Even if I may not be ready to play for others very often–or at all; for myself, I can play well enough to express what’s in my heart. And in any art we might pursue at whatever level we might be at, that’s what should matter–whether or not we choose to make ourselves vulnerable by sharing.

To subscribe, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com