“There is no other practice than this practice.” –Shunru Suzuki

The most important thing I do every day is . . . believe it or not . . . nothing. It is a practice that creates nothing, and yet creates everything.

It is the most uncomfortable, most valuable time that I spend.

Here’s how I do nothing:

I stop doing things. I sit down. I stay sitting.

It’s mostly impossible, the doing of nothing. At the same time, it’s very easy.

When I’m doing nothing, I feel aches and pains, warmth, tingles, chills, complaints, tightness, impatience, restlessness, lust. My mind fills with fears, impulses, regrets, desires, calendars, TV shows, grocery lists, sadness, terror, joy, traumatic memories, contentment, beloved faces, betraying faces, story plots, breakfast sausage, protests, longing, leftover pizza, the inane song in my head.

I can’t change the thoughts or run away or distract myself or make something happen.

Doing nothing allows life to just be, along with its torrent of thoughts.

Doing nothing teaches me that the good stuff arises independently of my conscious control. In writing, this means everything.

There will always be a new idea, something to say. When the story is patchy or implausible or weak, I don’t have to jump up and do something.

I stay. Wisdom will come. Solutions will come, just like problems.

When I do nothing, I find Center, I find peace. I’m not capitulating in defeat or indulging my lazy side or avoiding anything. I’m acknowledging a greater Source of my creativity and life.

In classes, I also do nothing. Leading others into nothing. Whether on Zoom or (someday soon again) in a live setting, we close our eyes together. We breathe. We relax. We stop forcing ideas, pushing our secret inner agendas.

We tell stories; we write them; we read them. No longer do we have to make things happen.

We experience heartbreak, horror, violence, a scream in the night, or an officer’s knock at the door.  We feel humor and warmth: giant clown cookie shoes; a mother-in-law in robe and curlers.

We acknowledge zest and surprise, a buttercup-yellow meyer lemon, a kiss on the nape of the neck, a car radio playing as we drive a dusty desert road.

Our writing, our creating, our art, and our lives brim to overflowing. We stop trying to fix the world and surrender, holding nothing we can grasp, moving beyond our tiny brain-space, freed to experience the universe.

In doing nothing, we are overtaken with story and truth and wonder and love—that is to say, we are doing our best work, in everything.

Neither you nor I would expect to complete a memoir while crouching to avoid the shots of a bank robber; we know we couldn’t write a novel while thrashing to escape a tsunami. And yet we writers and creators make countless demands on ourselves without accommodating our brain’s needs. We tell ourselves we should be more disciplined, tough-minded, brilliant, and talented, and we push ourselves to become these things. In short, we stress ourselves out.

Neuroscience is discovering that creativity works in the completely opposite manner. The more you relax and shut down the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the more you can bring artistic, out-of-the-box solutions to whatever you’re doing.

I learned all this decades ago, before science fully understood it, by reading Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, by Henriette Klauser, a book which transformed my relationship with writing and led to my own experiments with creativity. In twenty-five years of working with writers, I’ve seen it over and over again: when you calm the nervous system, soothing fight-flight-and-freeze responses (which are actually trauma responses), you find inner resources such as:

• breakthrough ideas
• humor
• playfulness
• curiosity
• unexpected flashes of insight
• intelligence beyond the status quo

New students sometimes wonder why we do relaxation exercises in my class, why we minimize Zoom screen use (which overactivates the nervous system), and why we focus on the positive, often to the point that our inner critic thinks nothing is happening.

Something is happening. Something profound and deeply affecting, which can transform a stressed producer into a joyful maker who has a deep sense of well-being.

In my writing classes, we deactivate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – and no electrical currents or  intervention is needed, such as those used in recent research.

Meditation, relaxation, movement, breath, and poetry – these are some of our tools.

Remember, when you push, push, push, you’re expecting what isn’t natural. You’re running from Sasquatch and thinking you should be finishing that writing project with each step. Be here, relax, and let the writing flow in a way that’s natural, healing, and beneficial, not to mention super-creative and productive.

This is especially our agenda in QFire Class.

*****We have a last-minute seat open for the session starting Tuesday, January 12. Are you brave enough to join us?*****

Let me know if you want to try this counterintuitive yet nurturing approach to getting your words on the page.

“I’m not making this up. I’ve made it down. That’s what writing is, after all the nonsense, getting down so low the world offers a merciful new angle, a larger vision made of small things. The lint suddenly a huge sheet of fog exactly the size of your eyeball. And you look through it and see the thick steam in the all-night bathhouse . . . .”    –Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Not making it up, but making it down. Writing gathers my actual experience, what I see, taste, and swallow; what I feel under and over my toes. The most mundane and ordinary thing becomes a story, a fascination. I pause to rub the pale bruise on my foot. It bears the story of Friday’s hike through blackened trees and overgrown brush in the Columbia Gorge, where a stick wedged its way into my hiking sandal and jammed against my toe joint. The bruise shines like newt skin, lime green and smooth. This is not good, bad, happy, sad. This is not something to judge a day by. This is a glorious receiving of Earth experience, story, and imagination all at once.

I wish for you a larger vision made of small things. The quiet hush of fascination. The courage to look at what the fire has burned, and where the bruises have softened you.

As the desire draws you, so the story waits like the heartbeat of something yet unborn.  Draw your ear close and shiver with the beating of it: welcome the poem, and the world, and your heart.

Overwhelmed by the tide of online meetings?

Two weeks into the 2020 Covid-19 quarantine, I was feeling pretty good. I met online with my directors at Clark College, strategizing how to offer my 20-years’-running class, Wildfire Writing. Lisa and Roseanne were asking what I knew about teaching online.

“I’ve learned that Zoom classes are different,” I said. “The attention is different.”

Turns out, my insight was an understatement.

The attention is different. Oh my goodness gracious me, it is solar-systems-away different.

It is not only different for the participant, but for the facilitator. Three weeks into the pandemic, I was walking around in a haze, or treading water, with this blurry, slow, foggy feeling in my bones. What was wrong with me? I was holding three or four or six Zoom classes and sessions a week, all short, but in between I felt like a zombie.

I started reading about Zoom fatigue. And then I realized it wasn’t trauma that was making me weird and tired, it was simple science.

The energy and strengths of an online class are topsy-turvy from interpersonal meetings. And this helps explain why Zoom fatigue is real.

As humans, nonverbal cues make up ninety percent of our communication. Subconscious, nuanced gestures and tones can only be received in close contact. If you’re an intuitive teacher or worker like I am, you’re reading the moods and modes of your people—but you are using subtle cues on a deep level without conscious awareness of what you’re doing. You’re noting breathing, eye movement, and posture, among other things—many of which are impossible to transmit via camera.

Reducing our meetings to two-dimensional experience restricts our awareness, taxes our resources, fogs our brains.

When we’re relying on Zoom day in and day out for work and learning, we’re asking the technology to do things it can’t. We’re asking ourselves to perform in arenas that are unnatural.  Conversely, it’s easy when meeting online to send and receive resources, to edit documents, to hand off links, articles, videos, titles, and lessons.

At the same time, screens are exciting. To have “phone TV” was my dream as a child, ever since I saw it on the Jetson’s. Now, it’s a reality, and stimulating. And kind of delicious. Just like coffee is stimulating and delicious. But, oh man, too much at the wrong time is hard on the brain.

Screen use and upload of information can be fatiguing. What’s more, these things tap only a fraction of our capability.

Studies abound regarding whole-brain learning, and the benefits of using all of our senses. It so happens, quite nicely, that the strongest writing also incorporates the five (plus fifteen!) senses, and that when we are creating concrete, specific, sensory images with words, we are engaging our brains and activating the brains of our listeners.

Yes, listeners.

Although our eyes may be overtaxed, one thing we’re in short supply of during this stressful and unusual time of quarantine, is listening. And yet many of us have fully functioning ears—thank goodness. Our ears, when allowed to take over for our eyes, can be an amazing resource that funnels useful info we can use.

The auditory system is a neurological system. When we listen to each other, we are connecting in powerful ways that our overtaxed eyes can’t achieve while looking at a screen.

So, incorporating this knowledge, I’ve designed hacks for myself that have made all the difference. My energy is back! My meetings and classes are bringing positive gratitude and feedback which means so much right now. And I’m loving my work – even online.

Here are some things you can try along with me.

1. Say hello for the first 5 minutes of the meeting, then turn off the cameras.
2. Limit how many cameras-on meetings you’ll have per week.
3. Put a lovely screen saver on your computer or phone, turn of your volume, sit back, and listen.
4. Use an old-fashioned notepad or journal, and take notes by hand. (There are studies on the benefits of writing by hand, too.)
5. Take a 5-minute break every 30 minutes, or a 10-minute break once an hour. In Wildfire Women, which meets Thursdays, we get up and stretch together halfway between class. In my Story Camp on Fridays, I send the kids out for 10-minute scavenger hunts in their homes or front yards, writing about the objects at hand. As a certified yoga teacher, I also incorporate yoga into the weeks’ classes.
6. Turn off self-view. In some applications, you can turn off your own view of yourself, and this creates a much more natural feel. You don’t  have to be preoccupied or self-conscious. In Zoom, find your own “square” of image, now click on the three dots in the right hand corner. Scroll down to “hide self view” and select.

Best wishes! Tweak, try, experiment, and see what works as you find peace and equilibrium in this strange moment of history. Whatever happens, please know that the fog you are feeling is not permanent.