Transcription

G:

Hello and welcome.

This is the writing spirituality podcast, brought to you by the Grounded Spirit Project. We’re delighted that you joined us. Whether you’re a writer first and foremost, or write as part of your role as community or spiritual leader, this is the place to find ideas, tools and prompts to get started, to keep going and get finished, and to find a home for your writing.

L:

Let’s take a moment to focus.

Take a deep breath.

Relax your body.

Let go of your to-do list,

and be fully present, here and now.

G:

Welcome to episode 2: the spiritual writer’s notebook.

I’m Gwyneth, a poet, translator and writing coach based in the UK.

L:

And I’m Lucía, a writer and student of religion coming to you from Spain.

G:

If you want to know any more about us and about the project you can go back and listen to episode 0, which is where we discuss our plans for world liberation.. theologically speaking…

[laughter]

L:

That sounds a lot like the Theology of Liberation.

[laughter]

Each week we choose a text to read as writers, and discuss it paying attention not just to the content, but to the techniques the author has used, or to other lessons we have learnt, or ideas we have gleaned from it. And today we’re going to be reading some extracts from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

G:

Indeed. I think that Marcus Aurelius was probably my choice of book because I came across Marcus Aurelius when I was a very small child. My father gave me this tiny little book that had belonged to my grandmother and it was entitled Gems from Marcus Aurelius, and it is a beautiful artefact in itself, a tiny little book. And inside there were some wonderful words. So what we gonna just read a few of those extracts… the translation that I was reading then, I think was by George Long, but there are different translators. But I’m going to start with one that really struck me even as a little child, and it’s from book 8 and it’s note 50:

“A compu… oh… a cum…” oh,  I can’t say it. Ugh. Cut that!

“A cucumber is bitter, throw it away. There are briars on the road, turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add “and why were such things made in the world?”

L:

Beautiful.

This bit is from book 2, note 1, translated by Gregory Hayes:

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: “the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognised that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.”

Umm, I want to go on about this as a theologist, but I think we should move to book 6, note 29.

G:

Ok, and this one that last one was a translation by Gregory Hayes and this is translated by Maxwell Staniforths, and it’s just a very brief phrase:

“Shame on the soul to falter on the road of life, while the body still perseveres.”

So the writing spirituality podcast is about writing and here in today’s episode we’re going to be looking at a basic tool that many writers have: the writer’s notebook. I don’t think that Marcus Aurelius was writing this notebook, his own notebook of meditations, either as a notebook for him as a writer and nor was it for publication but it is a wonderful piece of writing anyway.

So the writer’s notebook, Lucía.

L:

The writer’s notebook is just, like a dumpling place for all kinds of things that you encounter that might be useful to you as a writer, or more specifically as a spiritual writer. Whether it’s something that you hear, or something that catches your eye or your ear, that you want to reflect on later, because it’s wonderfully done or because it’s got a meaning that you want to reflect on, or whether it’s something that you’re thinking.. an idea that you have… you know everybody says “where do you get your ideas?”, lell you, in the worst places. So that’s why you have your notebook, to just write it down and it’s there, it’s kept safe. And you can go back there and use that as a textbook… and as a… a starting point for inspiration. It’s got so many uses, you know? It might be just for the pleasure of reading something that’s amazingly beautiful or you it might be for a more analytical purpose, “I really want to dissect this sentence, or for this paragraph and see how this author has conveyed her meaning so well”, or if maybe just, you know, “wonderful ideas for this place in my novel where I got stuck! Have the character get into a terrible war”, or whatever, right? Ando all those things can go together in a very effortless way into just a notebook that doesn’t need to be read by anyone other than yourself.

G:

I would say that I think that some writers will keep different notebooks and some writers who are highly organised will probably colour code their notebooks so maybe they using one colour for something that they’ve copied from something they’re reading, and this is an original thought. And actually really helpful if you do that or if you are writing down ideas or texts from other people’s writing, it’s always wise to actually say where it came from,  because otherwise you look back at things.. And in some of my notebooks I look at things that I think “That’s a wonderful phrase” but I dare not use it because I think I might have copied it from someone, and I don’t know where it came from. But I don’t know if it’s original. And it might be something wonderful that I thought of myself. And I still cannot use it because I’m afraid that I would have stolen it from someone. So, if you are keeping notes from things that you’re reading, remember to write down the source.

L:

Yes. When I take notes in my courses, and I’m hearing the professor talk and I have my own idea, then I always draw an eye in front of that, because this is something I have seen myself. So I draw an eye, and I write whatever I’ve seen. So later on, when I study, I can go on and explore that: if someone, a scholar, has written about it or I can ask the professor about it, but I know it’s something that comes from me and not from the lecture.

G:

That’s a really good idea. Again, colour coding could work, but I never have more than one pain with me, so… And I think that the thing about the writer’s notebook is that you want to have it with you all the time, you want to take your notebook out with you. Some people will say they don’t need a notebook, they’ve got a phone. I personally feel quite strongly about the value there is in writing things by hand, but that that’s different for different people.

L:

Yeah.

G:

And, obviously, if you’re reading online and you want to just take a screenshot or just copy and paste, that’s very much quicker than trying to copy out whole paragraphs of someone else’s writing…

L:

Yeah, but the notebook…

G:

…do what works for you.

L:

Yeah, but the notebook is not about copying whole paragraphs. It’s really about picking up the gem and the gem will be typically small, right? I tell people to use their phones to jot down ideas, especially with people who are beginning writers and they really struggle with having ideas, I tell them, you know?, just open a note in your phone that’s called “Ideas for writing” and you know?… even… you can be in the supermarket or whatever you are and you have this idea, write it down. By the end of the week you’re going to have lots of ideas written down on your phone. So I think…

G:

Or you can be the absolute disaster, like I am, where I actually have a physical writer’s notebook which actually has my shopping list in it as well.

[laughter]

You can either go shopping and be inspired by ideas, or you can try to be inspired by ideas and write your shopping list. Yes.

L:

See? It’s very useful!

[laughter]

G:

Yes, it’s a very flexible thing. But… yes, it is a very flexible thing and if it’s a physical notebook, one of the advantages is that it doesn’t just need to be written pieces you can, if you are in any way artistic, you can draw things, you can snip, you can do mood boards and snip bits and images and use it as a scrapbook, almost. Because there’s…  yeah, I think that clippings and scraps can actually be very inspiring.

L:

Yes, especially if you are creating a character, it’s very useful to make a mood board about things that the character might have, or places where the character might live or visit, what does the character dress like… I don’t know if that’s really useful for a spiritual writer, but when you’re writing fiction it’s extremely useful to have a mood board for your characters.

G:

Very definitely. And I think that, for me, there are two kinds of notebooks, though. One of them is one that you will use in the future to fuel your writing and another would be one where you’ve collected inspirational thoughts and notes, that you can go to for comfort and solace, as well as spiritual inspiration. And whether these need to be separate notebooks, I suspect that they don’t, but for some people it would be easier, I think.

L:

Yeah. Because when you write in the field of spirituality, a lot of what you do is it’s putting… it’s developing your own spirituality and making sure you understand it fully. You cannot convey something you don’t fully understand. So it’s very useful to have a notebook where you work out you own ideas and you develop your spirituality. Yes.

G:

Yes and you’re not in the notebook intending to have a polished piece of writing at the end. You might be mind-mapping, you might be just expanding on one idea out of a selection of ideas. Just focusing, drilling down into one of them, so it’s almost like jamming or practising scales for music. It’s developing that mastery of language and…

L:

It’s not something that anyone ever needs to read but yourself, so the pressure is non-existent.

G:

Yes. It’s a little bit worrying how many writers notebooks are published after their death, but actually I don’t suppose we need to worry about that. But, Marcus Aurelius for example, I’m pretty sure that his notebooks were meant for himself. They were never intended to be published. They were not for public consumption.

L:

Do you think he’s turning…

Sorry I interrupted you.

G:

No, no, no. I don’t think he’s turning in his grave.

L:

Saying: “Oh, I should not have written “cucumber”! That was stupid!”

G:

Yes, it should have been…. Yes

L:

Whatever.

[laughter]

G:

Absolutely, “that was the wrong choice of words”. No, I don’t think that that’s the case. But, yeah, under normal circumstances your notebook is just for you, a tool to feed your writing more than anything else. Sometimes when you write down something that you read and you note that you need to go back and read it again, that’s because you think you need to be reading it more as a writer rather than as a reader. And this is one of the things that we want to talk a lot about in the podcast, I think. Is the idea that, as writers, yes we must still read as readers and we should get pleasure from reading, but sometimes we have to switch off that automatic “I just want to know what happens next because this is a good thing that I’m reading. I’m just enjoying it”, and actually stopping to think “why am I enjoying it, why is this working for me, why is this not working for me, what are the techniques, what are the things that are being done that are triggering emotions and invoking reactions in me?” And that’s very important because if we understand how other writers managed to create those effects in ourselves, we stand a much better chance of being able to do it ourselves through our own writing.

L:

So actually the writer’s notebook needs two things: one, it needs you to write in it, and two, it needs you to go back to it and read again, and revisit those things that you have written down to study, right? Or to get inspiration. If you never go back, then you will never get inspiration. You know, it’s something that’s for your own use, so you need to use it. It’s like a seatbelt, it only works if you bucle it.

G:

Yes, and there are lots of examples of this sort of books of snippets that have been published. We’ve already talked about Marcus Aurelius Meditations. There are, as I said, writer’s journals that have been published. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, I’m sure, again, she never expected that to be published, and yet it has been, and it’s brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. But there’s also a similar kind of book, and this is not what we are talking about, a book which is with the intention of being published, which is notes on a particular theme or curated collections of quotes and aphorisms. So if you’re into poetry, of haiku and haiga, and maybe we’ll look at those at a later date, but specifically we’re talking here about collecting ideas and fragments of text, primarily for your own use.

Now what are we going to call it? We talked about calling it a writer’s journal. There’s also, if we look at those curated collections, they’re more like poetry anthologies and I think that “anthology” is… the etymological derivation of “anthology” has to do with flowers, and there’s another word, isn’t it, Lucía? That I always get my tongue twisted over.

L:

Yes. Florilegium.

G:

Yes. Flori… I can’t say it. Florilegium.

Both:

Yes.

L:

It’s a collection of flowers. It’s a bouquet of flowers.

G:

That’s what “anthology” is, but an anthology tends to be something that has been collected to be published, again, brought together, while florilegia is something that you collect for yourself…

L:

Actually, I think that “florilegia”, it’s a religious term. The way I learned it, and I’m not talking from the authority of the dictionary, it’s just my own experience with the word. It’s that, when you read scripture or you read sacred texts, you take whatever snippet of that text just catches your eye, as if you were walking in a field of flowers and you were taking flower by flower, the small, you know, individual flowers that you really like and then you put them all together and try to derive spiritual meaning from it. And it’s an exercise in reading scripture…

G:

So, it’s all about helping to develop your own theology?

L:

Yes, it’s done within the context of the Catholic Church, so there’s a fixed theology for it. But yes, it’s done as an exercise to better understand scripture through whatever is catching your eye, and also it’s going to do with the idea that whatever catches your eye has a meaning for you, has a message for you. And I think that also works for a writer’s journal, because if something catches your eye in a text, it’s probably because it’s got something that you really like, so it’s especially meaningful for you. I remember reading La Peste by Albert Camus, as a teen, an older teen, and I was in a moment in my life where I was very isolated and had no friends. And La Peste is about a town that is cut off from the rest of the country and it was extremely meaningful for me. And I started writing sentences that were very meaningful to me in a piece of paper that I then kept inside the book. And if you take the piece of paper out now and you read it, it’s kind of like my own diary of that year without friends, being isolated from other people. It’s like I was making my own Reader’s Digest and in another situation, in another moment of my life, I might read the same book and pick different sentences, because very definitely right so if something calls your attention, pay attention to it, because it’s got a message for you and it’s saying something about you and I was about the moment where…

G:

You are so right and I think that’s the whole idea of the religion, that the text speaks to you and I think that in the same way… as I said, it’s important to write down the source of the things that you collect in your vitals notebook. It’s probably important also to make sure that each notebook is dated. Not necessarily every page, and this is not a dairy. You don’t have to write it every day. It’s not a written report of what you did. That’s not what we’re talking about. That is, however, a different way of producing a notebook. But, no… we are just talking about collecting snippets and, as you said, Lucía, I think that reading the same book two different times in your life, you’ll find very different things catch your attention and so it is interesting to have them logged at a particular time.

L:

Yea, yeah, yes.

G:

But, what about the book itself? Do you have any thoughts about what sort of book, Lucía?

L:

Personally, I like to just buy the cheapest, ugliest, lightest notebook that I can get my hands on, because I, personally, if the notebook, the object itself, is very beautiful I feel an obligation to write well, to have a good handwriting, to write meaningful things, to be very clean and orderly,

G:

Yes.

L:

And that’s not what we want here. What we want here is really have a place to dump all those ideas and so is the notebook is just cheap and, you know, insignificant it helps me be more free when I wright, and I and I suspect this will be different for everyone.

G:

I think that if I were intending to make a meaningful collection of quotations that reflected all the books that I was reading as I read them, I might try for a more attractive notebook and try to keep my handwriting rather neater that it is, but I absolutely agree with you that it can be too daunting to start to write in an attractive notebook. It  actually induces anxiety in me. The one thing that I will say is that I always have a hardcover notebook. Because then it’s actually easy to write it and I like spiral-bound notebooks, because they open fully, so there are practical considerations of what kind of book you’re going to write in. And obviously it’s going to depend on whether you carry a rucksack or whether you carry a tiny little handbag as to what size it can be, but my own personal preference is for an A4 spiral-bound hardback. The cheap one.

L:

I think that it`s important to carry it with you, because inspiration can strike anywhere, so definitely carry it with you, and if you don’t, use your phone, you know?

G:

Yes.

L:

We carry our phones all the time. And that way, the more accessible it is, the easier it would be for you to write it and read it back. One of the things is that writing is so difficult in general that if you put yourself lots of obstacles chances are you’ll never do it. So one of the things that you have to do as a writer is just take down all the obstacles. If carrying a notebook is an obstacle for you, use your phone.

G:

Yes, or use voice notes, although it is more difficult to search on voice notes but it’s certainly easy to listen back to them, and you can have them transcriber, so.. For me, it doesn’t work, but they are going to be listeners for whom that will the ideal medium for them.

L:

Or use the writer’s napkin [laughter] the writer’s paper napkin.

G:

Yes, or the back of the enveloppe

L:

Yes [laughter]

G:

In which case, staple it inside you notebook.

L:

Yes, please. [laughter]

G:

And do make a habit to go over what you wrote. Just go over it and if you’re feeling uninspired, if you’re stuck, have a check-through, you may find something that triggers ideas, you may find a thought there that you want to explore further. That’s what the notebook’s for. There is one other use that I can think of for a notebook and that’s to use it as a trash can. I know that, I for one, I’m very tempted to write very purple prose or very poetic poems, and actually the best thing for them is to write them into a journal or a notebook, and leave them there. And never revisit them, because that’s not what I want to be writing and I don’t think they’re worth pursuing. But if I don’t get them out of my head, then I got more room in my head for something else.

L:

I do that, too, except I actually do it in the first draft. Whenever I want to say something, usually the first words that come to mind are something very trite or something I’ve heard or something I’ve heard in a song, things like that. And if I don’t write them down, they just keep popping up in my head. If I write them down, then I can move on to whatever is my true voice. Yeah, definitively, that’s a very good use for a notebook.

G:

Yes and that experimentation of “Does it work this way? Does it work that way?”… yeah, that also can work but then I think you’ll use a lot of notebooks if you do all your draft writing in your writer’s notebook, so it’s more where you collect thoughts, rather that where you write your draft.

L:

Yes, yes, yeah. Don’t write your draft on your writer’s notebook. Well, I mean, if it happens, do it. Don’t ever put any obstacles between you and writing.But that’s not the goal of the writer’s notebook, definitively, yes.

G:

No, it’s where, yeah, going back to find inspiration or, as I said earlier,  maybe it’s to find consolation as well, because if you’ve been collecting some wonderful phrases, some wonderful words then, that may be its purpose.

L:

Mm. Music, music, music.

G:

So…

L:

So, What’s today’s tip, Gwyneth?

G:

So, what a surprise!, today’s tip is to start a writer’s journal. If you haven’t already got one, go out and buy a notebook of some kind, or, if you say that you’re only going to do it digitally, that’s fine too. But, decide where you’re doing it, because it’s far too easy to have lots of notes scattered in lots of different places. So, find a dedicated space whether it’s digital or whether it’s in print, whether it’s on paper and start a writer’s journal.

L:

Very simple, very efficient.

G:

[laughter] And hopefully very useful.

L:

Yes. Music, music, music.

G:

And now it’s time for listeners’ questions and don’t forget, but if you got any questions, do write in and ask, and, yeah, we’ll try and answer your questions on the subject of writing spirituality. So, today’s question: Where do you get your ideas? Lucía?

L:

In the notebook, of course! [laughter]

G:

That’s where you put your ideas, as well.

L:

Yes. [laughter] Yes, usually ideas come in the worst moments, often in the shower, which is incompatible with paper and also incompatible with phones, see?

G:

Yes.

L:

The worst place. [laughter] So, whenever you are lacking ideas, one of the things you can do is go back to your notebook and pick one of those ideas that came to you at a moment when you couldn’t write and use that as a prompt. And just start writing whatever comes to your mind when reading that prompt. Or, inspire yourself with a good piece of writing from someone else, and move on from there. And that way you know that you have these notebooks full of ideas that you can always go back to whenever you feel dry.

G:

Absolutely. And there’s no reason why if you’ve had an idea and you’ve written something inspired by an idea that you can’t like something else inspired by the same idea. An idea isn’t… it doesn’t have one life and that’s it. They’re more like cats, they have many lives. I think Spanish cats don’t have as many lives as British cats. British cats have nine, Spanish…

L:

Spanish cats have seven lifes.

G:

Yes, I don’t know if there’s going to be something similar with ideas, but I think that any idea can be exploited in more than one format, or more than one more than one approach to it. So don’t just cross out an idea in your notebook when you’ve used it. You may be able to do more with it.

L:

Yes, you can try to write it with a different narrator. You can try to write it in a different style, like what if you were a journalist and not a spiritual writer? You can try to write it from another person’s point of view. You can try to write the complete opposite idea. It’s just, you know, they keep giving and giving and giving, and…

G:

Absolutely. And although principally we’re talking about writing spirituality, any writing practice is going to be useful for you in your spiritual writing. So, although Lucía talks about writing novels and I will talk about writing poetry, actually all of those practices are writing practices and it doesn’t matter, it will improve whatever else you write.

L:

Even if your notebook has lots of snippets from spiritual writers or from sacred texts then it will naturally lend itself to spiritual writing. So…mm because you create your notebook with the things that you live in your everyday life and those are the things that interest you. Then, the ideas there will be very well suited to your writing and to your interests. It’s specially tailored for you.

G:

And now it’s time for the writing prompt, because each episode we’re going to be giving you a prompt for the week and the challenge to do something with that prompt before you listen to the next episode. We’re promising to be here and we’d like you to promise to do some homework. No one’s going to check it, but the accountability is that the clock’s ticking and the next episode will be coming out. Can you have something written by then? So, Lucia, what’s the  prompt for today?

L:

So, today we came up with two prompts, right? One of then is, since you have a writer’s journal, a writer’s notebook, take a passage from it, or from any old diary, or a photo from your phone, or a notable phrase, or snippets of writing that you’ve heard, or read, and, you know, use it as a prompt to write a spiritual reflection. Right. The second one is: write your theology. Because, as a spiritual writer, I suspect your notebook is going to be full of spiritual reflection. Try to write your own theology, which is a description of your spirituality or belief system and don’t try to make it perfect. It’s impossible, believe me when I tell you.

G:

It’s not just that. I would think that your theology might develop and evolve, so I’m not sure you can make it perfect if it’s going to be a process and it’s going to evolve.

L:

The thing with theologies is that, before you write it, you think you’ve got one, and when you start writing it, you realise it’s full of holes. And then when you start filling the holes, you realise there’s too many contradictions, and then you go back to zero, and you start again.

G:

I get the impression that you¡re speaking from experience there, Lucía.

L:

Yes, I am. I am. So, my challenge for you… my mission for you, if you see it fit…you know…

G:

If you choose to accept it.

L:

Yes. Is: write your theology, write in a few paragraphs, maybe 200 words, what is your belief system, or your practice. And remember that this is for you, it’s not for publication, so it doesn’t matter if it’s well written or not. It may have, of course, curse words, if needed. [laughter] Just try to do it. If you are happy with it, with the way in which you’ve done it, share it on social media because I would love to read other people’s theologies.

G:

Also, I can imagine that if you start with the aim to write it in maybe 200 words. If you can’t do that, then, maybe write it in 2000, or maybe you start with a bigger plan, that it’s going to be huge, but actually focusing down on a little bit might be useful as a starting point. There’s different ways to approach this…

L:

Yes. And then your theology might, or will, have questions in it. So, a big part of a theology is saying, you know. so if I believe A, how come B, or how do I explain C. And it’s okay to not have an answer. But not having an answer is not a reason to not write the question because just the fact that the question is there it’s already important in itself. So I believe theologies should have lots of questions.

G:

Yes, okay. And I’m just thinking that there should also possibly be lots of questions in your writer’s notebook.

L:

Yes.

G:

So, either, take a passage from your journal or from wherever you want and use that as a prompt to write a spiritual reflection, or write your theology. Easy task before the next episode. [laughter]

L:

You have one week. The clock is ticking.

G:

Thank you for being with us today. You’ll find the script, links and notes for this episode at www.groundedspiritproject.com. You’ll also find us on Twitter and on Instagram and the link to that is also over on the website. So, if you have any questions, tips or thoughts you’d like to share, send them two hello at groundedspiritproject.com, and maybe we’ll feature them on the podcast. We’re really interested in hearing those questions, and we’re really interested in the tips, as well, that we think might be useful for the rest of the community. So, this is what it’s all about, it’s all about community. Don’t forget to leave a review and share the podcast with your community. See you next week!

L:

And don’t forget to write!

G:

Bye.

L:

Bye bye.