The 100 Ladies Project

“… 5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. 6. Go for the jugular…”
Natalie Goldberg
Writing Down The Bones
From the list of rules on writing practice

Yesterday I wrote about beginning to draw again when Tallulah, the ringleader of The 100 Ladies Project, surfaced on the page before me. She was calling me back to drawing and painting, and it was fun, but I knew that it was the beginning of something that would take a long time. This can be daunting, beginning without a destination in mind. Unlike this 365 day project on this blog that had a clear beginning with a definite end in sight these Ladies that I create came into existence in 2013 and I am now returning to them with no idea where they will take me. What I have begun is not a project with a destination, I have returned to a daily practice that will take me where I need to go even though I’ve no clue where that is.

I was reminded of something as I sat down this morning with my big journal before me, my black pen, paints, jug of water, and paint brush. I was taken back to 1986 when I stood in Books, Strings and Things bookstore in Roanoke, Virginia, rooted to the spot, reading a book that would change my life. The book was Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I had written since I was 9 years old filling notebook after notebook, journal after journal, and from my early 20’s I had been teaching journal classes, first to the pregnant couples in my childbirth classes, and finally at churches, New Age festivals, women’s centers, colleges, and more. I enjoyed teaching them. And during the decade from my early twenties until that day in the bookstore at 32 years old I had been studying Buddhism. These were two separate practices in my mind, but all that was about to change. Writing Down The Bones married zen and writing in a way that shook me to my core. It was an awakening, it was thrilling, and it was about to change the trajectory of my writing and teaching forever.

So much of what Natalie wrote about I was already doing, using timed-writing for example, but the way she outlined the rules for writing practice gave me a new more powerful way to approach what I was teaching…

“1. Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)
2. Don’t cross out. (That’s editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)”

In 1988 I went to study with Natalie for a weekend in South Carolina. In January 1990 she called me to ask me if I would like to attend a week-long workshop she was teaching at the Mable Dodge Luhan house in Taos, NM. I went. I would never be the same. I fell in love with New Mexico, I didn’t want to leave. And what I learned there deepened my relationship with my writing in a way I could not have understood before that time. Writing was something I had always done, writing had saved me as a child going through years of sexual abuse, it was the center of all of my creativity as an adult, but in my early 30’s it became my spiritual practice. It is to this day.

This morning I got up, sat down here with my coffee, and stared at my journal. I knew in that moment that it was not only writing but art that I needed to do to balance my life, art uses a different part of my brain than writing does and I need both to be whole. It is not about making art to “be an artist” in any formal sense. It is about making art to heal my brain and show me what I need to know. And in that moment I understood that Natalie’s rules for writing practice were exactly the same for art.

As I began I had only one goal in mind and that was to draw as quickly as I could, without stopping, without trying to make it “perfect” (As if that were even possible.), and just to get it down on paper. I would…

1. Keep my hand moving, no matter what.
2. “Don’t cross out,” (…which meant, for me, that all those wobbly, lopsided lines and the stars that were misshapen with haphazard mistakes would stay as they were.)
3. “Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar” (“Don’t worry that you don’t have fancy watercolor paper and that this too thin paper will crinkle from too much water, don’t worry about how to use the art supplies, just use them as you intuitively feel is right, don’t worry about smudges, fading and bleeding, just draw, paint, and feel the joy of being lit up by simply doing the thing at all.”)
4. Lose control. Amen and Hallelujah!
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. “Go for the jugular.” (Go for it! The oddly shaped eyes, the uneven nose, the wonky lips and funny ears, it’s all fabulous just like it is!)

It was the freest I ever felt creating one of my Ladies and I have now created hundreds of them. I just threw caution to the wind and got her done. And when I was finished I realized something, I realized how I have been over-thinking everything about my life. I was trying to “make the lines perfect,” when there is no way to do that ever, at all. I was trying to plan everything out carefully so I would know that I would be okay but we can’t know that, we can never know that. We simply have to wake up, everyday, and dive right in. And what we need to know we will discover in the act of showing up and living our life. That is all I need to know. That is what I’m going to do.

As I was drawing and painting Debbie today a flood of thoughts were coming, things I want to say, things I think might be important in the book I want to write. I jotted down notes simply to get them out of my head so my mind could rest. It is not time to write the book. Right now I will daily do these blog posts, draw my Ladies, and let the things that I am supposed to learn rise up from the depths of these daily practices and find their own form as they will in their own way and time. I need to get out of my own way. I think I am finally beginning to do just that.

My work is done for today. I have drawn my Lady and written this blog post. Now I will go take a nap with the pugs. I’ve no way of knowing what will come after that, and I don’t need to know. One thing at a time. Only one thing.