Monthly Archives: January 2010
Musings On Inspiration: Author Pat Brown
This week’s “Musing on Inspiration” features Canadian author Pat Brown. She wrote her first book at 17. She read her first positive gay book then, The Lord Won’t Mind, by Gordon Merrick, and had her eyes opened. After holding a host of jobs, at 40 she went back to school and became a network engineer, which eventually landed her on the shores of Bermuda where she spent 2 years learning how to drink rum swizzles and battle hurricanes. Back in Canada, she buckled down and started producing books seriously resulting in a multitude of books coming out in the next year. For more information about Pat and her work, check out her website.
TSC. How do you define ‘inspiration’ for yourself?
PB: I define ‘inspiration’ as the force that drives me to create something.
TSC. What do you think first inspired you to become a writer/artist? Can you identify a moment or experience or influence that turned you in that direction?
PB: The love of words inspired me. I would hear a story when my mother read to me, then later I would see the words on a page and it seemed magical that such simple words could create such wonderful things. When I realized I had the power to do that, I started scribbling my own thoughts down on paper. It was even later when I realized that people actually made money off those words.
TSC. Describe the ‘inspired’ you. What does he/she look or feel like?
PB: A little bit obsessive. Fanatical even. He tends to be preoccupied when writing. Not good company at all. He inspires people to leave me alone.
TSC. What is your most ‘inspired’ work? Why?
PB: I think my most inspired work is the one I’m currently polishing. It’s both more tragic and more complex than any previous work. Certainly my most ambitious. It goes beyond a crime novel or suspense. It’s most certainly not romance, though there are romantic elements in it.
TSC. Who or what or where is your muse? How do you invoke your muse? Rituals?
PB: No rituals. I think I invoke my muse by reading and letting my mind loose to explore. Thoughts come to me, I can examine them and let them feed my muse to come up with stories and characters. I’m really never more alive than my muse is going full out, feeding me ideas and images. I write like a fiend at those times, usually operating on very little sleep. I’ll even forget to eat.
TSC. What is your take on the notion that writing—or any creative work—is more about perspiration than inspiration?
PB: I think it is. Ideas are useless if you can’t or won’t put them down on paper. And that takes plain hard work. Plus, you can’t only write when the ‘muse’ strikes. Not if you want to have any kind of career as a writer. You need to operate under the pressure of a deadline and those don’t give you time to stroke the muse. You need to be able to write without it. It’s nice when he comes around and I probably write faster when he’s there, but I can write even if he’s not. So I think perspiration is a big part of creating something.
TSC. What do you think is the most common—or problematic—myth or misconception about inspiration?
PB: That it’s somehow magical. That it can’t be coaxed into being and it must always aspire to some lofty goal of literary purity instead of being content to write a good, rousing tale. And that you need it in order to write. A lot of ‘writers’ sit around waiting for their muse to come and when she doesn’t, they just don’t write. Which isn’t very professional.
TSC. What is the most ‘inspired’ work you’ve come across so far?
PB: I’d almost have to say The Lord of the Rings. It was like nothing I’d ever seen at the time. Of course it’s been imitated often, and usually not very well, but the original stands as a masterpiece of creativity.
TSC.. List a few tools or practices or methods that work reliably for you to get you in the mood to create. How do you shift into your ‘zone’?
PB: Sit down at my laptop. sometimes reading a good how to writing book helps focus my mind. Books such as The First Five Pages or Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel (and the Notebook that goes with it)
TSC. What are you currently feeling inspired to do?
PB: Finish writing barrio boyz, my latest work in progress and make it the best thing I’ve done to date.
Relationship Ready?
'Wisdom' and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle
A few mornings ago I woke up hugging one of my pillows again (at least I wasn’t humping or punching it). As I lay there thinking about how long the other side of my bed has been empty I remembered a question that a good friend of mine had suggested that I take to The Shower Team,
His question was, “How do I line up better with a satisfying long-term relationship?” As I continued to cuddle my pillow it felt more and more relevant and so I did the only thing I could think of to do in that situation, with that topic fresh on my mind . . . I headed to the shower . . .
On this topic perhaps more than any other, the difficulty that you often experience is tied to the mixed messages—the competing or conflicting signals that you are offering on this subject in your experience. We have also observed that the longer you hang around on the planet, the more mixed your vibration or your signal about this becomes.
On the one hand you diligently and repeatedly declare your desire for a partner . . . and we know that your desire is genuine. We feel your sincere wish for companionship and passion and mutual enjoyment of your life with another. But on the other hand, you also tend to develop increasingly strong desires for independence and freedom and for living your life on your own terms.
In addition, you begin to create the equivalent of a shopping list for the mate that you want . . . as though you were ordering from a catalog . . . or you put a series of qualifiers in parenthesis around your statement of desire: “I want someone to share my life with but I don’t want that and I don’t want this and I don’t want that . . . “
You tend to approach this particular desire with an increasing specificity and with increasingly mixed feelings—to the point where it is no longer primarily the satisfaction of a relationship that you are focused upon but rather it is your concerns about the degree to which any relationship could actually meet your increasingly strict criteria. And in this as in so many of your stronger desires, you also tend to spend much more time noticing that it is not there than you spend in eager, delicious anticipation of it coming.
When the energy is flowing in response to your desire, to your asking . . . and you are flowing with that current (i.e., not resisting), then not only are you ready, you are receiving—or will be very shortly. The Universe does not and in fact cannot withhold anything from you under those conditions.
But when that energy is flowing and you are standing there in opposition to it—that is, when you are questioning it in some way, or doubting it in some way, or thinking conflicting feelings about it . . . then you are not “ready” in the purest sense of the word because you have not fully aligned with what you’ve asked for. Some part of you is still not quite believing it or not quite trusting it or not quite seeing yourself as worthy of it.
If a lovely and satisfying new relationship is your dream, and it’s been a long time still not coming—and you notice as you wonder about that, that there are some little nagging feelings of doubt that you’ll really find someone or questions about whether someone you would want to be with would ever really be attracted to you . . . Say to yourself, “What reasons can I find to believe that this is truly available to me?” Or “What are some realistic, plausible things I could say about having this thing that I desire, that would feel better for me to give my attention to?”
Readiness is not something that is bestowed upon you at random or that falls out of the sky on some lucky few . . . It is a process of letting go of whatever thoughts you are clinging to that contradict the having of what you want. Identify those thoughts as you’re able and then practice reaching for softer or gentler or more soothing or reassuring thoughts that are accessible to you—that is, that you can believe as you say them.
When you ask yourself, “Am I ready to have this wonderful new relationship . . . or this unprecedented prosperity” . . . . or whatever the desire may be . . . really listen for the answer. Really notice how you feel about that desire being fulfilled . . . Really notice if you are standing there absolutely believing in it and expecting it and eagerly and enthusiastically anticipating it . . . or not.
What we are suggesting is that you give more time and more attention to enjoying your desire for a relationship than you typically spend questioning or fretting or analyzing that desire. Try to focus more deliberately on the joyful or playful or otherwise compelling aspects of being with someone. Instead of treating this as a puzzle or a riddle or a problem to be solved, approach it as a game you enjoy playing or a movie that you like to watch over and over.
What we are really encouraging you to do is to begin living now as though what you want were already present. “But how can that be?” You might ask. “How can I live my life now the way I would if I were happily partnered?” And we say, “Well, what would be different besides having another body in your bed?” What is it that you think is going to be so great about having someone around in the first place? Really stop and think about that. Think about why you want this so much and what you’re going to get from it and then look very carefully and thoughtfully at how you can—and we promise you, you can—begin to have some of that experience in your here and now—even before the mate materializes.
Why wait? If you truly want this dream mate to show up then you have to pave the way. And this means beginning to live the live that you want to share with a mate. It means being the person you want this mate to love and desire and want to be with. It means taking your attention off all the things you think this relationship that is yet to be will make right for you—and making those things right for you where you stand. And in the process, you make yourself right for the relationship that you seek.
Until you put yourself in the right place and the right frame of mind—a place where you are living the life and being the YOU that your future mate will adore—then you more than likely would not really want the ones who might show up in the interim. Be the you that you look forward to being when you are with the one you want . . . and the one you want will find you soon enough.
I can always count on The Team to make it all about me. Even when I think it’s all about someone to love me. And that leaves me willing to give my role in the pursuit of the elusive LTR a lot more thought. And it leaves me feeling, for the moment, completely focused on becoming an even more lovable me.
