It’s
good to be back actively on here after a long hiatus, due to health issues. I’m
grateful to our Kindly Leader, Elaine, who has been posting some of my writings
from the past for me during my absence. She does so many things to keep this
blog running smoothly that readers will never know about.
As
long-time readers of this blog will know, I have several autoimmune diseases,
and because of one of these, I ended up on large amounts of steroids for an
indefinite period of time. This has continued now for several years and has led
to a severe weakening of the legs, due to steroid myopathy. As a consequence, I
have taken a couple of very bad falls, resulting in a shredded rotator cuff,
shattered shoulder, and other difficulties that eventually led to my absence
from this blog and from social media in general. I haven’t been on Facebook in
years and am only sporadically checking in on Twitter.
As
I’m starting to get better here, my home has been invaded for the last several
months by an army of home health nurses, physical therapists, and occupational
therapists, whose role is to help me rethink my ways of doing things around the
house, so that I can begin to take up some of the tasks that I have had to give
up, due to this loss of mobility in my arms and legs. I have had more visits
from physical therapists than any of the others, and those have been visits
entailing hard work and pain on my part. However, I am seeing real progress, so
of course, it has all been worth it, and I am going to continue to do all of
these exercises, even after the physical therapists stop visiting.
The
thing is that any muscles we don’t use adequately on a regular basis will
atrophy and continue to weaken. Once those muscles have weakened, for whatever
reason, we must work hard to strengthen them once again and teach them what
they must do. As I deal with multiple hours of physical therapy exercises on
legs and arms every day, I think about how this applies to writing, as well. We
all know how difficult it is to begin to write once again, when we have been
absent from the page for a long time. Our writing muscles, the muscles that
help us to plot and describe and narrate and create dialogue and action on the
page, have weakened, and we must begin the process of retraining them and
strengthening them.
For
me, this often starts with handwriting in my journal and freewriting on
anything that comes to mind, especially if it might pertain to a writing
project or contain an idea for a writing project. But even before I do that, if
I’ve been away from the page for a long time, my first exercise will begin with
my fiber arts, spinning, knitting, and weaving. This is because I have usually
strayed too far from my creative self, and I need to replenish and stimulate
that creative self before I can begin to write my best material. It usually
doesn’t take too long a time of wandering among the beautiful colors and
textures of fiber arts, before I am developing new creative ideas of things to
write and am ready to begin the exercises with the journal and freewriting.
Soon
enough, I am ready to move from random journal entries and free writing to the
equivalent for writers of the scales and finger exercises that pianists and
musicians do. I have written earlier on this blog about these finger exercises
for writers here. As I move through practicing these scales for
writers, I find that my writing muscles are definitely getting stronger. I am
imagining more clearly. Ideas are collecting in my brain. I begin to see
characters in sharper detail. Most of all, my energy and enthusiasm for the act
of writing itself, creating my own world and people, increases.
As
writers, we think of ourselves as cerebral beings, rather sedentary, unless we
develop physical activities outside of the act of writing. I do believe that
our brain, since it is a muscle of sorts, has more in common with our physical
body than we think. A while back, I wrote a poem about this unlikely similarity
and connection.
HAND THERAPY
Bring
your palms together in prayer
against
your chest. Feel the pull
in
the once-broken right wrist.
Release,
relax, and repeat ten times.
Squeeze
the putty to make a fist.
Pinch
it between your thumb and each finger,
one
after another down the length
of
the squeezed-out roll, creating a wavy snake.
Hook
the tips of all four fingers, trying
to
touch tips to bases, but inches of air
keep
them apart. Pull those fingertips
to
the center of the palm to make a fist
without
the putty’s help. Stretch them
down
toward the base of the hand.
Struggle
to hold a pen and write a line.
Stop
when the fingers tingle and go numb.
For
what are we humans without the hand, clever, useful
appendage,
connected so closely to our big brains,
that
cuts, creases, carries, and caresses
our
way through daily obstacles and opportunities.
Write another line and a second before the pain
sets in—the way every writer has to work.
What
do you do when you have been away from the page and the act of writing
creatively (as in fiction or poetry rather than journalism or blog posts) for a
substantial period of time? How do you begin to retrain those writing muscles?
Linda Rodriguez's 12th book, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, is about to be published. Her 11th book was Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology (edited). Dark Sister: Poems was her 10th book and a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published in 2017. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee detective, Skeet Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2021. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.
