Sucess -- In Writing and in Life? Simple…

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"SIMPLY SUCCESS" - SHORT POST - May 3, 2007
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>Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work
Bruce Elkin: Life/Work Renewal Coach
Personal - Professional - Organizational
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to subscribers only. Names are never shared or sold!
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Hi All,
I’m back from 10 days of rest, relaxation, and reading. Lots of reading. And lots of journal writing. But, unlike other retreats of this sort, I didn’t work on any “writing projects.”

Nor did I read serious non-fiction, such as change strategy, or the environment and sustainable living. I read novels. Great, contemporary “literary” novels.

Rain and wind and a bit of viral thing kept me inside much of the time. But that was just fine. I curled up on the couch, next to the wood stove, and snuggled under three layers of quilts.

My view through sliding glass doors wandered across a meadow, over the salt marsh beside Oak Bay, then across it to where the foothills, ridges, and high peaks of the Olympic Range should have been.

Only a couple of times did the mountains pop out of the cloud. Once, after a storm, the appeared plastered with bright white snow like a freshly frosted cake. In the early light, backlit against a dark, flat blue sky, the foothills and bay still shrouded in shadow, they glowed, luminescent. Radiant. Uplifiting. Everything high mountains should be.

But they didn’t tempt me. I’d look up, catch my breath, celebrate a moment of awe, and then tuck my head back into the story I was temporarily inhabiting.

I learned about love and compassion from a Buddha-quoting Irish Wolf Hound named Dante, in SIGHT HOUND by Pam Houston.

In Cormac McCarthy’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, I felt how savage, senseless, and ineffective the “war” on drugs in the US is, and felt old.

In BLUE SHOE, I struggled alongside a self-doubting single mom, as she worked to put a fractured life back together, and feel good about herself, and was relieved that she succeeded at at least one of those goals.

Finally, Karen Fisher entranced me into being part of a wagon train of settlers, traversing the Oregon Trail in 1847. Mix male Victorian arrogance and unquestioned superiority with an obedient but unbroken Victorian woman yearning for passion. Stir in an authentic ex-Hudson’s Bay Company mountain man searching for the remnants of a life, cruelly lost. Toss in historic authenticity, exquisite detail, finely wrought plotting, and, in A SUDDEN COUNTRY, you have one of the most engaging novels I’ve read in year. Or any year.

So, what you may ask, does my vacation reading have to do with you?

Well, it rekindled my desire to write-- to write well and to make a living at it. It reinspired me to create a simple, successful, and sustainable literary life, wrapped closely around the craft of writing. And, in the one non-fiction book I read, I learned a simple, but powerful process for creating that life.

“Write 1000 words a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of your life,” advises novelist Carolyn See. And on each of those 5 days, send out one charming note, thanking someone who has moved you, taught you, made you laugh, or otherwise charmed you."

She says other stuff, too, but that’s the nut of the book, and the process. 1000 words a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of my life. Just do it. The rest will come.

As I’ve said so often in these pages, the real secret to success is practice, practice, practice. Write a million words. Meditate for 10,000 hours. Practice free skate moves 14,000 times a year leading up to the Olympics. As Nicoliades said, in A Natural Way to Draw, “the sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you’ll learn to draw." It's the same with anything that matters to you.

You can use this process to create the life you long for. Get your vision of that life as clear as you can. Craft clear, compelling visions of the key results you want to create in support of that life. Ground your visions in accurate, objective -- emotionally neutral -- descriptions of the current state of each creation. Then take action, learn from your experience, and make adjustments, and act again, and again, until you complete the result.

Do some of this every day, five or six days a week for the rest of your life. Put in the miles, lots of miles. Keep your eyes on your vision and your feet in current reality, and — poco a poco, little by little — the results you desire will emerge from all your daily doing.

That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tighten my belt, live a bit more frugally, so I can work less. That will free up time for writing. And I’m going to write 1000 words a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of my life.

This paragraph will bring this piece to just over 800 words. A good start. Tomorrow, I will start an essay about “A 100-Mile Vacation” that I want to submit to a local magazine. I should get at least another 1000 words written. Then, the next day, a couple of hours revising that piece, or 1000 words on My Father. There is lots to do.

And I know I’ll enjoy the process. I just have to think about the end result!
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>THIS WEEK'S QUOTES:
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"The miracle is not to walk on water, the miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment, and feeling truly alive."
-- Dante the dog, quoting Thich Nhat Hanh

"Roam about until exhausted and then dropping to the ground, in this dropping, be whole."
-- Dante, quoting Buddha

"I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die."
-- Juan Ramon Jimenez (in Blue Shoe, by Anne Lamott)
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That's it for this week. All the best!
Bruce
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> BRUCE ELKIN:
Personal, Professional, and Organization Renewal Coach
>Call: 250.388.7210 www.BruceElkin.com Or Skype Me!
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