The next chapter I’m going to review offers its own advice that ironically enough pertains to my management of this blog-project (bloject?). My last post was undoubtedly a little forced in places. I get so much from this book that it becomes hard at times not to transcribe the entire thing. I can’t really claim that I enjoyed writing the last one and I furthermore suspect that very few of you made your way to the end of it.
Almost in response to this Brande writes:
“Whenever you come across a piece of advice in these pages I exhort you not to straighten your spine, grit your teeth, clench your fists, and go at the experiments with the light of do-or-die on your countenance.”
Recently I attempted to “manage” my chocolate consumption by restricting it to the weekends. I was successful in making it through the first week before entering the weekend like Willy Wonka after Lent twitching on Easter morning. My “chocolating” then extended well past Sunday into the following week making the very idea of any more the following weekend deeply nauseating. My efforts in fact made me eat more chocolate. The point here being that this tendency of ours/mine/peoples’ to over compensate when trying to negotiate change can have a particularly stifling effect. Becoming a Writer is, if you haven’t picked up on it yet, about developing new habits. I have already had some very significant success with this in my life, however, my methods in those instances were aided in no way by what Brande calls “the slow dead heave of the will.”
She endorses instead a sort of steady gentleness along with some good old-fashioned imagination. Her allusions feel an awful lot like breathing after being held under water for a long period of time. But for me that has become something of a tradition with this book.
Brande uses a really quirky exercise to demonstrate this to great affect.
Very simply:
Draw a circle on a piece of paper using an upside down glass or cup. Then draw a straight line down through the middle of the circle from twelve o’ clock to six o’clock and another one across the middle from three o’clock to six o’clock. Then hold a ring or a key tied to the end of a short piece of string (about four or five inches) above the intersection of the two straight lines in the middle of the circle.
Now, holding your piece of string still think your way around the circumference of the circle following it as you do so with your eyes. Try and pick up a little bit of speed as you do this and develop a rhythm. Eventually, the ring will begin to swing around in its own small circle and gentle expand out wider. Change direction and move your eyes up and down the straight lines at various intervals and you will find that the swinging ring or key will distantly follow.
Brande writes that this is a simple example of how imagination can be so important “in the sphere of action.” Tiny involuntary muscles take up the charge assigned the mind almost autonomously
This brief chapter concludes with a warm and grandmotherly call of encouragement. With regard to the book and its exercises “turn yourself gently, in a relaxed and pleasant frame of mind, in the direction you want to go.” This seems so enticing and even relaxing that I find myself with such an urge to have known this woman and brought biscuits around to her house for tea.
“Consider,” she continues, “that all the minor inconveniences and interruptions of habits are to the end of making a full and effective life for yourself. Forget or ignore for a while all the difficulties you have let yourself dwell upon too often; refuse to consider in you period of training the possibility of failure.”
These are far more than words merely concerned with writing. They are about living a full life, unencumbered by dull thoughts about why not.
A life, I have long imagined to be that of a writer.
More very soon
Yours in Writerly Regard
Ciaran J. Hourican
Cj Hourican 