"My Writing Process" -- An Inter-networking "Blog Tour"

Work in progress: reflecting upon writing process.
I hereby enter a river of writing about PROCESS...

Step One: I'll acknowledge and talk a bit about my intro to the blog-tour and offer homage to the person that involved me in the blog-tour:  Annie Lanzillotto

I like to imagine the sea of process-oriented writing that will be generated by the Blog Tour titled "My Writing Process."  Involved in creative processes throughout the arts, I have always been so in love with process, that "product" gets little of my glory -- so this is very much up my alley.

Annie Lanzillotto invited me to do this writing.  As writer, creator and HUMAN is an essential being in my life. This is a truth that has grown and transformed over decades. Our knowing of each other is rich, deep, growthful and wondrous. Her writing has been a gorgeous part of my life all the while. "Kin Ink" was originally created for me to "publish" or help create her chap book in the mid 90's:  ELBOW ROOM.  I bound it and designed the labor-intensive covers from National Geographic collages upon elbow pasta boxes, highlighted with metalic paint-pens.  I think there were about 14 or so of them.  Each unique.

The "voice of my body" is my first literacy, the "voice of my dreams," the second.  Both of these illusive mediums are tricky to buckle down into WORDS.  Annie, though, as my essential mentor and collaborator, brought forth writing processes that met my dream processes and my dance processes,  easing them into written expression and exploration.  She has brought two profound writing practices into my life (as well as into our collaborative leadership/teaching processes). These are:
      ACTION WRITING and SPIRAL WRITING.
Both of them are "out of the box" writing experiences that create for me, "internal surprises." As I practice these,  I am simultaneously uncovering a mystery of selfhood, yet deeply knowing myself.  The spiral rings of awareness bring together the ever-deep consciousness of the "infinite inner" rings of awareness with the ever curious consciousness of the "infinite outer" rings of awareness.  The Action Writing is akin to drawing words through a dance with paper. In a river of consciousness, it flows.  In these processes, there is no difference between truth and its opposite.  They are each a form of awake dreaming, a vast process, fields beyond intentionality.   

Annie's books are among the most beautiful to be read, I find. L IS FOR LION and SCHISTSONG --  They sing!  And can be ordered on Amazon.  And her blog and website may be perused:  www.annielanzillotto.com and http://annielanzillotto.blogspot.com.

Step Two: I'll answer these 4 questions about my writing process. 
      1) What am I working on? 
      2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? 
      3) Why do I write what I do? 
      4) How does my writing process work?

1.What am I writing?  
I am writing about dreams and about narcolepsy. 
I am writing about movement as it comes to meaning within my experience of dance and of yoga.  Doing it. Viewing it.  
I am writing about ethics and what brings out the best in our being.  The way ethics lives in the body, not just the mind.
I'm writing about children's development, how they play, learn, and wonder.
I am writing about teaching, which, in myriad forms, is my primary livelihood.  I find teaching so rich with learning and observation of how learning unfolds.  
I am writing about the vivid close of life, those who have passed and how caring for them has been very important to me.

I have blogs for all these different things. I blog to organize and file -- and ultimately to share, if anyone is interested.  A blog feels like a tip of an iceberg, a testament to my realms of focus and growth.  Blogs are public, and this inspires me to perform them -- to make them gorgeous and journey-ish.  But my creative processes are not generally on the computer.  They are in my body, breath, hand and mind.   

I am meditating.  I am moving.  I am writing.  I am drawing. I am inventing.  It is all part of my creative process, life.   I usually write in notebooks, writing to know and unknow myself simultaneously. I am writing to be in dialogue with myself.  I am blogging to be in dialogue with a world of writing that as a reader, I fall deeply in love with and am awakened for. I dabble with accomplishing a lucid memoir around narcolepsy and motion.  I aim to express the process of waking up,  speaking up .  I aim to discover and write about the power of sitting in stillness, awake.  
     I am writing lots of spirals these days. (as mentioned above).   

2.  My writing lives in my body.  In order to accomplish writing, given my narcolepsy, I must breathe deeply to stay focused.  Even move. I like to breathe deeply while writing, not leaving my body out of the loop.
3. I write to surprise myself.  To transcend what is ordinary in my own mind.  I feel hungry in mind as I write and my words race forth, as if they are being chased by the wave of my thoughts.

4.  Hmmm. Writing for me is still a bit haphazard.  On the subway, for example.  But I'm inspired toward a more structured approach, as advocated by Mary Oliver in her book about writing poetry. She encourages Heart and Mind to make serious appointments with one another, and never fink out on those.

I'm trying to involve future bloggers and will announce them ASAP.