Limbo Exercises: What They Were To Me

Self Portrait, 1981 (Acrylic on cardboard)

In the early 1980s, when I first embraced writing as a calling, I read On Becoming A Writer (1934) by Dorothea Brande. Ms. Brande was an American writer, editor, and writing instructor from Chicago. Her book, a treasure trove of practical advice on writing and personal development, is a classic on the creative process. In particular, two pieces of practical advice helped me immensely. The first: write every day. The second, however, was the game-changer. She said that it was imperative to learn how to write on command. 

In other words, don’t wait for “inspiration.” Don’t wait for the earth to move. Rather, write because it is your job (or decision) to do so. For me personally, she was saying, "Set aside a designated time to sit down and write."

 

I took this to heart. Every day after supper I would sit at my typewriter and fill a page with words. Some of it was stream of consciousness, some of it was preconceived ideas I’d organized in my head while apartment painting during the day, and some of it was poetic expression. Whether it took 10 minutes or 25 minutes was immaterial. Building the habit of producing words on paper was the aim.

 

The name I gave to these daily missives was Limbo Exercises. Just as we need to be physically active to keep our muscle tone and physical health, so it is that writing keeps us exercising our minds, which is good for our mental health.

 

What did I learn from these exercises? Discipline. In the process I also found that some of what I produced became seeds for stories, articles and poems. No Pulitzer Prize material, but a few little gemstones that could polished and shared to lift people's spirits or make people think.

 

I wrote the above as an explanation for any blog posts with the subtitle Limbo Exercise #2 or #17 or whatever.. The idea was resurrected by reading Kent Peterson’s substack, Tales from a Rolltop Desk. Kent writes the old-fashioned way, with that beautiful sound of clickety-clack emanating from his fingers on a typewriter. 

 

There are some who insist the best, and maybe only, way to write is with a pencil or pen on paper. My personal view is this: The right way is the way that works for you. 

 

Are you called to write? Then do it. 

Related

Limbo Exercise #41

An Essential Truth for Writers: Writing On Demand

THROWBACK THURSDAY

One of the biggest myths about writing is that you need to wait for inspiration from your muse. Honestly, if that is your method, you will drink yourself to death before that muse shows up.

While it's true that inspiration can strike at any time and you need a butterfly net in your head to capture those sparkling but elusive special illuminations, for the most part writing is a craft and a discipline. Hemingway's aim was 500 good words a day. Jack London wrote a thousand words a day. Whatever your target, you're more likely to reach it by discipline than by hopes, whims and the winds of chance.

It was Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer that sank this lesson home for me. She pointed out that by setting an established time and place to write each day we can harness our unconscious, our intuitive powers, train it to join us as we approach the allotted time. The unconscious, says Brande, is shy, elusive, and unwieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will, and even to direct it. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is meddlesome, opinionated, and arrogant, but it can be made subservient to the inborn talent through training. (These last two sentences were borrowed from a review at Amazon.com, but they capture the essence of my thought so very well.)

Written in the early 1930's Brande taught writing and was a keen observer of the creative process. Brande may not have been the origin of the notion of left brain/right brain thinking, but I first encountered it here, decades before it was popularized in the self-help rage of the nineties.

It's my opinion that if you want to master the craft of writing, here are three things you can do. First, get into the habit of writing every day. When I was young I used do what I called "limbo exercises." At a specific time each evening I would place a sheet of paper into my typewriter and fill it with words, single spaced, as fast as I was able. It was a great exercise for getting the juices flowing, especially since you were not aiming for publication or fame, but just learning how to produce good copy quickly. (Note: No one that I know of skips the editing step that must follow. Do not aim for perfect prose. Perfection happens when you tighten and revise afterwards.)

Second, go to the library and read as many books on writing that you can possibly find. Buy the best ones for your personal library.

Third, read great writers and study how they do what they do. You'll never be a great writer if you can't tell the difference between Hemingway and Danielle Steele.

For what it's worth, Amazon.com has 190 used copies of Brande's book on sale starting at under two dollars. Might be a good place to start if you're a beginning writer or young writer seeking to move it up a notch.

Have a great, great day. And write on.

Pollock: A Film About Artistic Process

This year the Duluth Art Institute is once again sponsoring a film series featuring art-themed films at the Zinema here in Duluth. Saturday we saw Pollock, the Ed Harris feature film that was released to the big screen in 2000. As in the past, a local "expert" gave a preview of the film and facilitated a discussion afterwards. This week's facilitator was Dr. Nathan Carroll, professor of communication, theater and art at the College of St. Scholastica.

Amber White of the Art Institute welcomed us and reminded the audience about upcoming events, which you can check out here at their website. A highlight for me will be the Community Forum at the Underground on Wednesday evening, 5:30 p.m.

After Dr. Carroll was introduced, he briefly made several remarks to put the film in perspective. Ed Harris, the central character in the film and its director, grew up in New Jersey and has performed in a lot of great films. He met his wife Amy Madigan in the Sally Field film Places in the Heart. Madigan plays Peggy Guggenheim in this film. Marcia Gay Harden plays the longsuffering Lee Krasner, Pollock's partner and wife.

Ed Harris took an interest in making the film when a friend told him he looked like Jackson Pollock. Harris proceeded to read Pollock's biography, becoming acquainted with Pollock the drunk and Pollock the painter. His aim was to focus on the artistic process itself more than the source of Pollock's demons. "We don't have to like the artist to appreciate the art," he stated. This question is at the heart of many discussions about art, though.

* * * *

The film itself tells the story of Jackson Pollock's drivenness to produce art important enough to be noticed. It begins with a major art opening after Pollock has been featured in Life Magazine. He's "made it" to the big time. And then we flashback to 1941, the struggling artist in his New York apartment, striving not only to survive as an artist but also to gain recognition for his work. (He is the youngest of five brothers and not drafted to fight in the new war because he is 4F.)

When Lee Krasner enters his life his fortunes begin to change. His abstract expressionism begins to get noticed. Unfortunately, he is severely alcoholic and gives the appearance of being a manic depressive. As Dr. Carroll noted, "It's a pretty intense little film."

Pollock, the film,  conveys a number of key themes. One of these is the new challenges fame can introduce into a life. He craved attention for his work, but once he got it he didn't know what to do with it.

Like many such films Hollywood seems to enjoy recreating moments that have been documented in Life or other media. The Aviator, with Leonardo DiCaprio re-living Howard Hughes, comes to mind. I remember seeing the old Life magazine spread that featured Pollock. In another lace Harris re-enacts making Hans Namuth's attempt to capture Pollock's painting technique to document it and share with the wider world.

In the discussion afterwards one woman noted how Hollywood frequently presents artists as troubled human beings, giving the impression that madness is almost an essential feature in great artists. I wrote a blog post about this based on a quote from Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer (1934). She wrote, "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."

A favorite pastime of mine is to read reviews on imdb.com in order to decide whether a film is worth my time, or afterwards to see what other thought about what I just experienced. Quite often the divergence of opinions is itself fascinating. In the case of Pollock that is exactly what you find. Remarks like "boring" and "I hated it from the beginning" are strange to me. I'd seen the film when it came out. It's not boring, especially if you've ever been serious about your art, whatever form that might take.

One reviewer at imdb.com stated that artists and the general public perhaps view this differently based on where they're coming from. This is probably the case with most films.

As for the artists reading this, the question preeminent in my mind after watching Pollock was the one regarding who we're doing art for. Is it for the approval of others? Or because we ourselves love the act of creation and want to see what will happen next? How important is it to have critics, or the general public, love your work? What is the ultimate aim of what were are striving for?

When all is said and done, Ed Harris can be commended for what he achieved in producing this film.

Rejecting the Myth of Artists As Madmen

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." ~ Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo.

We remember him as somewhat of a madman. And to a certain extent his behavior warranted this. He cut off his ear, for love. A bit excessive, though it made for an interesting self-portrait afterwards. On another occasion he was determined to see the girl he loved but her parents would not let him in. To show them how intent he was on seeing her, he held the palm of his hand over the lamp flame and said he would not leave till he saw her. The smell of burnt flesh was not very convincing and ultimately he passed out from the pain.

This story reveals that he was indeed a man of intense passions, which poured out of him into his works, works now valued in the millions of dollars. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, and died in a mental institution in his thirties by his own hand.

As for the source of his mental illness, psychiatrists by the score have studied his behavior and his work to identify its root causes, whether from schizophrenia or syphilis or some other variety of experience. What we know is the notion of "artist as eccentric" found a home in the pop psyche, a notion that treats artists as kooks and social misfits. Or rather, that to become a great artist you have to be a kook or misfit.

Dorothea Brande, in her outstanding volume Becoming A Writer (1934), assaults this notion head on. "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."

OK, so Salvador Dali comes along and portrays this vain child-madman to the extreme and makes a fortune doing it. No comment. Brande went on to explain that there really is "an artist temperament" and it is not the same as the accounting mindset.* The book goes into detail about left brain/right brain thinking, a concept which became excessively popular in the 1980's and has filtered its way into business books, consulting, education and psychology. The notions have been with us a much longer time than many folks realize.

What Brande argues is that you do not have to be mentally unstable to be creative. In this instance she is speaking to young writers, but the same applies to creative souls in the visual arts or music as well.

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "A good picture is equivalent to a good deed." If you are in Duluth this month there are plenty of venues where you can see some good pictures... and probably there are plenty of places in your home town, too. Check out the Duluth Art Institute at the Depot. Or make your way to the Tweed up at UMD, especially if you've never been. Open your eyes and engage.

*The Myers-Briggs personality tests, developed in the 1920s and fine-tuned over time, demonstrate that indeed artists and accountants have differing personality traits that result in their engaging the world differently. It is not insanity that makes people creative.

The picture at the top of this page, titled Blue Van Gogh, is currently available as a giclee reproduction. $85 plus S&H for a limited time.

How Important Is Inspiration?

Rilke spent a segment of his life developing an external poetic form that enabled him to write without being "dependent on inspiration." He developed the concept through friendship with the sculptor Rodin.
Journal note, April 10, 1997

If you do a Google search of "How Important Is Inspiration" you will all kinds of links to articles and blog expressions regarding the importance of inspiration. At the top of my search is a Harvard Business Review article on "Why Inspiration Matters." Next is a blog entry at The Meaning Experiment on "The Importance of Inspiration." And it goes on from there.

In reading these various articles one becomes aware of a certain kind of inspiration that is perhaps more related to passion. The kind of inspiration I'd like to briefly digress upon has to do with the notion of the Muse.

Nearly all of us who are artists or writers, or have participated in other creative endeavors, have had the delightful experience where it seems The Muse has alighted upon our shoulders and showered us with a moment of gilded creative light. Some artists, writers and poets can find themselves so enamored by this experience that any results that fail to come from their Muse feel slightly less significant and a mere exercise of technique. Hence, we can be deceived into feeling the only way to accomplish anything is to wait... wait for inspiration to magically draw near.

But poet Rainer Maria Rilke felt it an achievement to have been liberated from this dependency on something seemingly random and beyond our control.

Dorothea Brande, in her book Becoming a Writer, says the same. We cannot be dependent on a Muse. This kind of attitude toward the creative results in an imprisoning mindset of passive waiting. The posture is not one of initiative, but of passivity. From whence does the creative urge emerge? If within our power, then we must learn the processes that stir it, that stimulate, that revive its power.

To some extent it is not about what we do, but rather the energy with which we do it. On command. The energy resides within us. We do not have to wait for circumstances and stars to align. We can choose to pour ourselves out, on demand.

We have no control over the things that lie outside us. But we can control our thoughts and actions. Learn how to prime your pump, how to take charge of your creative powers. The world will be there to absorb the streams of creative life you bring.

Writing On Demand

One of the biggest myths about writing is that you need to wait for inspiration from your muse. Honestly, if that is your method, you will drink yourself to death before that muse shows up.

While it's true that inspiration can strike at any time and you need a butterfly net in your head to capture those sparkling but elusive special illuminations, for the most part writing is a craft and a discipline. Hemingway's aim was 500 good words a day. Jack London wrote a thousand words a day. Whatever your target, you're more likely to reach it by discipline than by hopes, whims and the winds of chance.

It was Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer that sank this lesson home for me. She pointed out that by setting an established time and place to write each day we can harness our unconscious, our intuitive powers, train it to join us as we approach the allotted time. The unconscious, says Brande, is shy, elusive, and unwieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will, and even to direct it. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is meddlesome, opinionated, and arrogant, but it can be made subservient to the inborn talent through training. (These last two sentences were borrowed from a review at Amazon.com, but they capture the essence of my thought so very well.)

Written in the early 1930's Brande taught writing and was a keen observer of the creative process. Brande may not have been the origin of the notion of left brain/right brain thinking, but I first encountered it here, decades before it was popularized in the self-help rage of the nineties.

It's my opinion that if you want to master the craft of writing, here are three things you can do. First, get into the habit of writing every day. When I was young I used do what I called "limbo excercises." At a specific time each evening I would place a sheet of paper into my typewriter and fill it with words, single spaced, as fast as I was able. It was a great exercise for getting the joices flowing, especially since you were not aiming for publication or fame, but just learning how to produce good copy quickly. (Note: No one that I know of skips the editing step that must follow. Do not aim for perfect prose. Perfection happens when you tighten and revise afterwards)

Second, go to the library and read as many books on writing that you can possibly find. Buy the best ones for your personal library.

Third, read great writers and study how they do what they do. You'll never be a great writer if you can't tell the difference between Hemingway and Danielle Steele.

For what it's worth, Amazon.com has 93 used copies of Brande's book on sale starting at 35 cents. Might be a good place to start if you're a beginning writer or young writer seeking to move it up a notch.

Have a great, great day. And write on.

Blue Van Gogh

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." ~ Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo.

We remember him as somewhat of a madman. And to a certain extent his behavior warranted this. He cut off his ear, for love. A bit excessive, though it made for an interesting self-portrait afterwards. On another occasion he was determined to see the girl he loved but her parents would not let him in. To show them how intent he was on seeing her, he held the palm of his hand over the lamp flame and said he would not leave till he saw her. The smell of burnt flesh was not very convincing and ultimately he passed out from the pain.

This story reveals that he was indeed a man of intense passions, which poured out of him into his works, works now valued in the millions of dollars. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, and died in a mental institution in his thirties by his own hand.

As for the source of his mental illness, psychiatrists by the score have studied his behavior and his work to identify its root causes, whether from schizophrenia or syphilis or some other variety of experience. What we know is the notion of "artist as eccentric" found a home in the pop psyche, a notion that treats artists as kooks and social misfits.

Dorothea Brande, in her outstanding volume Becoming A Writer (1934), assaults this notion head on. "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."

OK, so Salvador Dali comes along and portrays this vain child-madman to the extreme and makes a fortune doing it. No comment. Brande went on to explain that there really is "an artist temperament" and it is not the same as the accounting mindset. The book goes into detail about left brain/right brain thinking, a concept which became excessively popular in the 1980's and has filtered its way into business books, consulting, education and psychology. The notions have been with us a much longer time than many folks realize.

What Brande argues is that you do not have to be mentally unstable to be creative. In this instance she is speaking to young writers, but the same applies to creative souls in the visual arts or music as well.

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "A good picture is equivalent to a good deed." I'm hoping that if you are in Duluth this month you will stop by The Venue @ Mohaupt, 2024 West Superior Street, to check out my show, First Hand Experiences. Of the more than 130 works, I am hoping you will find at least one "good deed" among them.

The picture at the top of this page is titled Blue Van Gogh.