Today I'm considering engagement. It's important. Sometimes you do things without really doing them. Meditation this last week has been difficult because I've done the meditation without really doing it. If you know what I mean. It's about engagement. In meditation and in my work.
By focusing some good intent on my book, and even having it beside me while I sleep, seems to have re-charged my relationship to it. I finally have an ending, and not the one I expected, but it is congruent with the text. As I re-read, editing, how painful the narrative is. Yet with so many unfinished manuscripts and thesis's (two and two), bringing something to completion is of particular importance. That's a meditation in itself: the hexagram of completion.Engagement isn't completion, they're two different processes with two different purposes. Engagement is being in the present, fully participating in whatever it is you're doing. Full focus; undivided attention; the complete synaesthesia possible for any particular connection. But engagement is needed for completion, especially when the mind wanders, creating posts on why we write in blogs and spending copious hours photoshopping a photo, recording a reading that didn't work until giving up and going for the sweetness of the yoga teacher's voice, ooh la, should I tell you that? Today the manuscript lies open before me, and have I spent as much a one second looking at it? I've had a breakfast of 12 grain bread and melted cheese, mugs of coffee, erased the grey in my hair with colour, showered, had curry for lunch already and it's not even noon!
I've hugged the dog lots, eaten grapes, wiped counters, done dishes, laundry, sent emails, considered all my relationships, focused on what I need at the present to continue, collected my life, you know the song.
Oh, did I tell you about the fresh strawberries, almost over-ripe, that you slice into a bowl and put a good-sized dollop of cream cheese on and sprinkle generously with raw sugar? In the microwave for 40 seconds, mix it all up, and it's almost like having cheesecake! Instantly, that is.
Do I have 2 hours a day for my book? Of course I do. Now that I know the ending, I can focus the writing.
Editing.
Engagement.
Quote: "That's a meditation in itself: the hexagram of completion."
ReplyDeleteYes!
But oh~then the entire rewrite~~~~and yet, it is good, because the first part has ended and we know where we are going in the second phase, so it becomes a whole new perspective in adventure~complete with a surprise here and there.
The cream cheese and strawberries sounds yummy~
I love this entry you have this day, Miss Brenda.
Many Blessings~
Thank you, Laurieglynn... a process you know well! It's new for me, something of this length. And it's only 100 pages single-spaced so far! But intense. And I'm only managing small bits of time on it. How about you? Are you able to spend whole days revising? Or is there a phase between the first draft and the second draft that is "bits" re-sewn here & there, fixing, until going over it in its entirety? I'd love to hear of your process... xo
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