Process and Realization

I haven't been writing here much lately because I've been working on a writing project. I know it must be potent stuff because those 1,000 words have consumed hours of my time!

The article itself is a "Dharma Classics" piece that, editorial opinion permitting, may appear one day in the Buddhist magazine Buddhadharma. These "Dharma Classics" are book reviews with a twist: they present a dharma book in the context of its impact on the reviewer's life.

And, as I am finding, the power of the book I chose to profile, Ajahn Sumedho's The Way It Is, isn't limited to the way it transformed my practice at a time when I was at the end of my resources. Describing my relationship with the book has consumed my recent days, and helped refigure my experiences as a scientist and lay nun. I have felt all the symptoms of transformation: strange periods of anxiety; hours of complete internal silence; dreams and reveries; moments when my voice seems to belong to someone else; sudden bursts of energy.

I had a long, rambling draft in hand a week ago when I drove down to Newport, a quiet Oregon seaside town, and stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. It's a literary-themed hotel, where the rooms are named after writers instead of being numbered. The room rates are reasonable, but the real bargain is the women's dorm, which offers bunk accomodation and full breakfast for only $26 a night--quite a deal. It's a rambling old building several stories high, right on the beach, with a windowed reading room looking out to sea. Books and magazines and literary journals are stacked everywhere, and portraits of authors look out from the walls.

I read and wrote and walked on the beach. The piece I was writing went from seven pages of rant to three pages of taut, sane prose. And I changed too; I am not the same woman who went there a week ago. The whole process of writing has been a process of processing the past, and looking to the future.

Main Entry: pro·cess
Pronunciation: 'prä-"ses, 'prO-, -s&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pro·cess·es /-"se-s&z, -s&-, -"sEz/
Etymology: Middle English proces, from Anglo-French procés, from Latin processus, from procedere
1 a : PROGRESS, ADVANCE b : something going on : PROCEEDING
2 a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result [the process of growth] (2) : a continuing natural or biological activity or function [such life processes as breathing] b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

There is something special that happens with this kind of ongoing, focused composition. Blog posts, by contrast, usually take less than an hour--sometimes far less. They have some sort of structure and narrative flow, and when I feel satisfied enough, I post them to the blog. But writing for a magazine involves an extra layer of care and craft. I don't want to sound like an idiot, and I really don't want to sound stuck-up. The progression of ideas has to flow, without being overly impressionistic. The only way to make this work is to hammer all the way through it, until the words start to sing.

I last wrote with this level of intensity in high school English. The feeling of hunkering down is the same. But those essays I wrote half a lifetime ago did not turn me into something new as they came into being. Working on this piece--or even editing someone else's words--wakes up my capacity for language. I express myself more clearly in every way, including speaking to others. My handwriting changes (even though I don't work in longhand). I don't understand it, but I need it. There is something about working language that overturns me and makes me new.

I realize now: this is how it needs to be. I want to change. I have needed to do it this way my whole life, and I need now to attend to the process of writing, seriously.

Main Entry: re·al·ize
Pronunciation: 'rE-&-"lIz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -iz·ing
Etymology: French réaliser, from Middle French realiser, from real real
1 a : to bring into concrete existence : ACCOMPLISH [finally realized her goal] b : to cause to seem real : make appear real [a book in which the characters are carefully realized]
2 a : to convert into actual money [realized assets] b : to bring or get by sale, investment, or effort : GAIN [realized a large profit]
3 : to conceive vividly as real : be fully aware of [did not realize the risk she was taking]
(from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Indeed.