Becca Rowan – Page 3 – Modern Creative Life

August 14, 2016

Sunday Salon: Wearing All the Hats

A few years ago the small office I worked in went through a period of transition and downsizing. Those of us who had been around for a while were asked to take on more responsibilities to fill in the gaps. In particular, one of my colleagues seemed to end up with a task in every department, from marketing to IT, from human relations to account collection. We kidded her about all the “hats” she wore around the office; for Christmas that year I bought her a box full of hats, each labeled with a company business card denoting her varied positions.

She was philosophical about the whole thing, and though sometimes I’m sure it was extremely stressful, juggling all those different roles and responsibilities, she eventually developed the skills she acquired into a much better position at a larger company.

Truthfully, we all wear a multitude of hats in our daily lives. For people who embrace their creative natures, sometimes the roles we’re required to play might seem restrictive – we may even feel stifled and frustrated, trapped in tasks that seem completely opposite of the work we’ve been “called” to do. But if we look closely, there may be ways to express that side of ourselves, even amidst those roles that seem far from creative.

This week, I’m primarily wearing my Grandmother hat. It’s one I’m thrilled to have in my collection, and each summer when my son and his family come to visit, I plan my days around them. It means a lot of walks in the park, coloring, playing board games. It’s time spent in visits to museums and plays and the pool. There’s little time for writing or reading (anything other than The Berenstain Bears or Frog and Toad that is!)

Still, I feel as if there is creative living inherent in all the things we do together. Instead of sitting at my desk, I’m outside in nature, exploring the world with a little person who sees everything with eyes of wonder and delight. Instead of writing chapters in a novel, I’m helping Connor make up stories about Ping Ping the bear and his friends Harvey and Duffy. Instead of practicing accompaniments, I’m playing and singing “Everybody Loves Saturday Night” or “This Train is Bound for Glory” while my grandson keeps time on the tupperware container that has been repurposed as a drum. All the while, I’m trying to capture these special moments in photographs I can use to create our annual Michigan Trip picture book that tells the story of each year’s vacation – a creative project I’ve been doing each year after the visit is over.

This is creative living, Grandma style.

Most of us aren’t lucky enough to spend our days totally immersed in our creative endeavors, but it might be possible to wear a creative hat during parts of your day, no matter what it involves. Maybe it’s as simple as arranging fresh flowers in a vase on your desk at work, or setting the table for supper with different pieces of tableware found at resale shops and estate sales. Maybe it’s listening to classical music while you input data on your computer, or taking 15 or 20 minutes out of your lunch hour to write in a journal or capture some photographs or sketches around the office.

Here in the Sunday Salon, I write about the intersection of art and daily living – the way literature and music and art enhance my ordinary moments and invite me to live a more fulfilling life. My roles as a writer and a musician are important ones in the creative life I try to live. But caring for the people I love is an important role for me too. It’s one that is fulfilling in an entirely different way, and is even more so when I recognize the way I can bring my own creative gifts to bear within it.

It’s a hat that fits me quite comfortably, and I hope to wear it well for as long as possible.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. This week she’s busy being a grandmother – making cookies, reading stories, and going for walks in the park with her four-year old grandson, Connor. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

July 17, 2016

Sunday Letter: Grateful for the Garden

Dear Neighbor,

When my husband and I moved into this condo community back in 2012, we received such a warm welcome from everyone we met, we immediately felt we had made the right decision to move here. And as we met and talked with people, nearly every one of them said the same thing at some point in the conversation.

“Make sure you visit The Secret Garden! It’s fabulous!”

“Secret Garden? we asked. “What garden? Where?”

You know how it is…they would explain in that vague and often confusing way people have when attempting to provide directions. “It’s just around that first bend right after you come in the entrance,” or “I’m not sure what street, but it’s kind of hidden along the back of the property,” or “You can’t see it at all from the road, you have to meander around behind that first group of homes.”

It was late September when we moved in, and what with unpacking and getting settled and then a long Michigan winter, we had forgotten about The Secret Garden.

Until spring, when another neighbor reminded us.

“I’m going to The Secret Garden,” she said one afternoon. “Let me show it to you.”

Imagine my surprise when I learned it was an easy bike ride from my house! And yes, it is most definitely tucked away along the back of the property. Truly, you can’t see it from the road, which is what makes it so charming and – well, SECRET.

But what it really is is ENCHANTED. When we walked down the path into the deep, shady bounty of the garden, I felt like a child again. Between the flowers, the sculptures, the bird houses hanging from within the trees, the wind chimes tinkling in every tone imaginable, the little stream babbling quietly, I felt as if I’d been led into a fairyland.

“Who made this beautiful place?” I asked, when I could finally find the words. My friend pointed at the condo right behind us, whose upper deck looked out over the beauty of these acres.

“The couple who live in that house right there,” she said. “I’ve never met them, but I heard they love to garden and when they bought the house started clearing the woods behind it and over the past 20 years have turned it into this. Word soon spread, and they opened it to the community for others to come in and enjoy.”

In the past three years that we’ve lived here, I have come to this Secret Garden countless times, and so Dear Neighbor, a note of thanks to you is long overdue. I am beyond grateful for the sense of peace this spot provides, for the benches where I can sit and listen to the birds, watch the butterflies flit among the blossoms, and bask in the deep green shade of the trees. The past three months, I have been grieving for my mom who died in March – she who loved flowers and gardens and quiet outdoor spaces. Your Secret Garden has been a destination for me, a place I can come on my daily walks or bike rides, a place that offers respite from the trials of my journey.

Sometimes we go about our lives engaged in activities we love without realizing how much those things can mean to others. You obviously love to garden, and I’m sure all the planting and tending must be rewarding for you. But did you imagine that your garden could be a place that eases the troubled heart of your neighbor? A place that makes complete strangers smile and feel enriched for just a few moments before they go back to whatever life might hold in store?

That is a gift, Dear Neighbor, and one I appreciate so much, especially this summer.

Before I close, I wanted to share this poem with you. It’s from a favorite poet of mine, named Mary Oliver. She writes of the beauty and importance of the natural world and the lessons it teaches. This poem, appropriately titled “The Gardener,” is a newer one of hers.

Have I lived enough?

Have I loved enough?

Have I considered Right Action enough, have I

come to any conclusion?

Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?

Have I endured loneliness with grace?

I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.

Actually, I probably think too much.

Then I step out into the garden,

where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,

is tending his children, the roses.

~~~

Being here in this garden you’ve made gives me a place to quietly reflect and consider. I leave rested and renewed, to go back to my world and be sufficiently grateful for the happiness I experience, to be graceful in enduring this new loneliness. I go back determined to plant and tend seeds of compassion, empathy, and peace.

So if you’re looking out your upstairs window some afternoon and see a short, dark-haired woman sitting on the first bench by the stream, you’ll know that’s me. Someone who is ever so grateful for the gift of your Garden.

With sincere appreciation,

Your neighbor

*Poem The Gardner, by Mary Oliver, from her collection, A Thousand Mornings

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. This summer she has developed a newfound love of gardens, and you’ll find her spending lots of time outdoors, either in the Secret Garden, or puttering around in her own flower beds. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

July 3, 2016

Sunday Salon: Let Freedom Ring

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning here in Michigan on this American holiday weekend. We’re celebrating our nation’s birthday with picnics, fireworks, pool parties, and sailing on the lake.

But I want to interrupt the festivities and get serious for a moment.

One of the most important freedoms we celebrate today is freedom of speech, or freedom of information. We live in a time when more information is available in more forms that at any other time in the 225 year history of this country. Day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, we are bombarded with information. Between e-mails and cell phones and texts and internet and 24-hour international news cycles, it is always available, and it never ends.

Our TV’s and computers bring us real-time images of murders, bombings, natural disasters, as they occur from every corner of the globe, all broadcast on our huge high-definition screens. We hear the cries and screams of those affected directly in our ears through digitally enhanced audio headphones. If we can’t take it anymore, we can always change the channel, but still run the risk of a popular show or movie featuring it’s own murder and mayhem.

Sometimes, like a cranky preschooler, I want to clamp my hands over my ears and scream, BE QUIET!

It’s true: horrible things do happen in the world. It’s also true that if we are to be good citizens of the world, we need to be cognizant of them.

But I wonder.

What would happen if we tried to reframe the message? What would happen if we countered every story about violence and disaster and hate with another story about peace and compassion? Can our creative work be about highlighting our shared stories instead of glamorizing our differences?

I wonder.

What would happen if more of the messages we released into the world on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram were messages of truth, empathy, beauty, caring? What if we used our social media feeds as a tool to incite hope, generosity, and empathy, instead of to spread anger, irritation, and sarcasm?

I wonder.

I believe words matter. I believe images matter. I believe music matters. I believe all of these things frame opinion and thought in mysterious ways we can barely explain. Because in this 21st century, the Media really does carry The Message.

The Sunday Salon is a place where I contemplate the intersection of life and art. I believe our mandate as artists in this information age is to use our creative intelligence and ability to promote good – to advocate healing and acceptance and understanding and wisdom. To reflect beauty, invite contemplation, and offer common ground.

Creative friends, we have awesome power, with untold avenues and opportunities to put a message into the world, to plant seeds of change. In the United States, we have amazing freedoms with which to do that.

Use that freedom wisely and well.

Let it ring out all over the world.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

June 5, 2016

Sunday Salon: Eye of the Beholder

When I was a freshman in college my favorite class was Art History 101. Since I was a literature major with a music minor, I was surprised to find myself enjoying the class so much. Especially since I had always considered myself someone with not one smidgen of talent for the visual arts.

I used to arrive early for the 8:00 a.m. class and slide into a plush theater seat in the brand new auditorium. I’d pull out the small writing desk attached to the arm, get out the fat blue notebook emblazoned with the University of Michigan logo, sip my coffee, and wait for Professor Andy Harwick to amble in. He was the quintessential art history professor, in his mid-30’s, with shaggy blonde hair that hung nearly to his shoulders. He wore a crumpled brown corduroy sport coat over wrinkled Levi’s, and stumped around the stage in suede workboots. He carried his own cup of coffee, and often looked as if he’d just crawled out of bed as he paced back and forth in front of the large screen that served as the backdrop for his lectures.

It all seemed sophisticated and ultra-collegiate to me, sitting in this darkened room with at least 100 other students, sipping coffee, and studying the world’s great works of art projected before me in larger than life size.

But I soon became captivated with more than just the atmosphere. What Professor Harwick lacked in style of dress he more than made up for in his teaching skills. In his lectures, each painting became it’s own story. He was able to describe details that made the artist’s vision come to life, and made me realize the ways art reflects the history and culture of its time.

Even more than that, I learned to appreciate the visual beauty art provides. Wandering through quiet galleries and museums, staring into the canvas of a Monet, a Renoir, a Picasso or Degas, letting the colors and composition wash over me, I am filled with a kind of peaceful awe that’s different from the feelings I get in a concert hall or reading a great book.

Art, whether on the walls of a museum or my own living room, becomes a window to another world. Like a time machine, it invites me in and transports me to a different place – whether it’s a field of wildflowers in Giverny, a battlefield in Guernica, or before a simple table set with a “still life” of ripe fruit and cheese. And because I don’t aspire to create art of my own, I don’t feel pressured when looking at art, don’t feel the stirring of my own creative impulses as I often do when reading or listening to music. I’m not tempted to analyze or evaluate or compare. I can simply see and appreciate the beauty before me, let my imagination take me inside the painting and see whatever it wants to see.

Art also becomes a gateway to feeling. I brought home one of my mother’s favorite paintings after she died: it’s a small watercolor of a African woman dressed in a colorful dashiki and dhuku, carrying an infant in a papoose on her back and holding a small girl by the hand. The viewer sees them from the back, but ahead of them stretches a pathway and distant sunrise. The colors are muted reds, golds, blues, and greens, washed with a pale yellow haze. There is a deep sense of love, trust, and contentment in this painting, one that speaks of the bonds of motherhood and the immensity of its attachment. It hangs on my bedroom wall, right across from the chair where I sit and read each morning. I spend some time every day just looking at it, and always feel enriched by the gentle hope it portrays.

Though I can’t recall enough detail from that long ago art history class to intelligently describe my favorite works of art as I might a novel or a piano sonata, I know they speak to me in unique and important ways. One of the characters in B.A. Shapiro’s novel, The Muralist, has this to say about creating visual art: “We want to get at what life feels like. The emotions we all share. Our commonality. To make our invisible life visible. Or experiencable.”

Making the emotions of life visible and connecting the heart of the creator to the eye of the beholder.

It’s a beautiful thing.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

May 15, 2016

An Invitation for You: Save the Date

Dear Friend,

Here’s what I’m dreaming about: A month or a week or even one day completely devoted to myself, a time for reflecting, creating, simply BEING.

Do you dream of that too?

So why don’t we do it? Why don’t we make ourselves a priority for a change? Why not put ourselves on the calendar?

I can imagine what you’re thinking. “I can’t take the time off work.” “Who would take the kids to school and soccer and dance and gymnastics?” “I’m right in the middle of a major project at work.” “My partner wouldn’t support that.”

I completely understand. I can come up with a hundred compelling reasons why I shouldn’t do it either. Still, that nagging whisper persists. I find myself dreaming about it when I’m cooking dinner, sitting in a meeting, or weeding the garden. I fantasize about getting away from the noise of everyday living and finding a way to be quiet for a while, free from all the distractions that become convenient ways ignore the call of my own heart.

Have you ever read the book called A Year By the Sea? In it, author Joan Anderson writes about taking an entire year for herself and moving to a remote cottage on Cape Cod. She was longing to be alone, to listen to the “myriad unheard longings, ideas, and plans” she had been ignoring. I feel those same longings stirring in my heart these days, but most often they get set aside for other things I make a priority.

But a entire year? That really is impossible for me. Even a week or a weekend could be a stretch.

But maybe, just maybe, I could manage ONE DAY.

What if I were to grab that calendar I’m so attached to, find one day within the next 30 days and write ME in big, bold letters right in the middle of that square? What if circled it, draw a heart and flowers around it, made it pretty and eye-catching, because that’s what this day is all about?

My goal for this special day will revolve around this question: What do I need more of in my daily living? Do I want to wander in the woods and soak up the sights and sounds of nature? Maybe my heart’s desire is as a block of quiet hours to plan a big writing project? It could be that I simply need uninterrupted time to think and relax, sit in a rocking chair and read a good book or listen to my favorite music.

Maybe I want all of the above.

Whatever I decide, I’ll need to gather my materials: good paper and pens, essential oils and candles, books, books, and more books, favorite foods and beverages, a playlist of inspiring music, my walking shoes, my camera. I want to turn off my phone (including the internet!) and limit every distraction.

When that day arrives, I’ll enter into it with a spirit of dedication and love. I’ll treat myself with all the tender loving care I bestow on others. I’ll take note of every thought and feeling during this day, of the things I accomplish and decide.

I’ll make plenty of space for my dreams to surface and shine.

Joseph Campbell wrote: “When one leaves certain social situations, moves into temporary loneliness, and then finds a few jewels, everything changes.” As much as I love my family and friends, as much as I value my daily life and routine, I feel a real need to carve out some space around them and move into some “temporary loneliness”. I know there are jewels to be found.

They just might transform my existence.

How about you, friend? Are you with me? Should we make some space for ourselves?

I can’t wait to hear what you think….

Love,

~Becca

If you’ve taken some time to make space for your creative self, consider sharing your experience with Modern Creative Life in an essay or poem. We’re accepting submissions for Issue 2: Nourishment.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

May 1, 2016

Sunday Salon: At Play In A Creative Garden

Sitting here at my desk each morning I gaze out the second story window and watch the progress of spring. In the few weeks since my mother died, the once bare branches of trees lining our street have begun to sprout lacy green and white blossoms. The ornamental cherry tree is dressed in dark red leaves, and if I look closely I see the first hints of magenta blossoms that will soon explode into glorious full flower. To my right is the tulip magnolia with its elegant rose colored blossoms, swaying in the chill breeze.

The unfolding of spring signals nature’s insistence on what’s next, this brave and beautiful advancement into a new cycle of life that never falters but marches headlong into a new way of being. This spring, as every spring, it sweeps me into its embrace whether I’m ready or not. It pokes and prods me to uncover my own blossoming hopes and dreams, to step boldly and bravely into a new season of living.

Nature requires warm nights and gentle rains to
rejuvenate. I require nourishment as well, especially this spring as my heart copes with the empty space my mother’s death left behind. I feed my soul with art. I take solace in playing music with my friends in Classical Bells, for there I can think of nothing else but making the black dots on the page come alive through rhythm and harmony. I listen and react and move together with 14 other musicians as we weave notes together into song. I find comfort in reading and writing, losing myself in the stories of others, writing in my journal and shaping my own stories into some kind of cohesive whole. If I had doubts about my true nature, they were dispelled in the last 40 days: music and writing have worked magic in healing my grief.

Because I consider myself a writer and musician, words and music are the staples of my artistic diet. But I’m learning this spring to season the meal with a sprinkle of other creative pursuits. I carry my phone with me and play with photographs, aiming the viewfinder anywhere that catches my eye. I buy colored drawing pencils and blank sketch books and scribble without hesitation on their thick blank pages. I lug home mixing bowls and cake pans from my mother’s kitchen and try my hand at her favorite recipes, determined to replicate the taste and textures she created in the room that served as a sort of “studio” for her.

This creative play pushes aside those darkly ruminative thoughts that run through my brain on an endless loop. Instead, my time and effort is focused on making something, and this effort engages my spirit as well. So I allow these new buds to form and blossom as they will, without great concern for the end product, but simply playing with them, letting my creative nature take it’s course and being open to the possibility of what’s next as I nourish my spirit in this new creative garden.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

April 17, 2016

Sunday Salon: A Love Affair With Keyboards

My love affair with keyboards began in 1959. I was three years old when my dad brought home an old Remington manual typewriter that had been discarded from his office, and put it on a desk in our attic. Sitting atop a mound of pillows for height, I tapped away for hours – at first putting only gobbledygook on the page, but then beginning to craft words that led to sentences that led to stories. The writer in me was born at that keyboard.

But that same year, another keyboard entered my life, one that would turn out to be just as important in my creative future. A tinny little toy piano, with only 24 keys, every one of them I’m sure was painful to the ears of the adults in my family, but equally glorious sounding to mine. When my short stubby fingers weren’t busy on the smooth black keys of the Remington, they were pounding the “ivories” on that miniature upright.

As important as writing is to my creative well-being, music is the outlet for my emotions. I have always turned to the piano when I’m excited or in a celebratory mood, when I need a physical and mental challenge, when I want to lose myself in beautiful melodies and harmonies.

When I was a teenager, I spent many hours relieving typical teen girl angst by playing everything from Chopin Nocturnes to Simon and Garfunkle. Even now, when I’m troubled or sad, playing the piano is the ultimate healer.

Never have I been more aware of this than in the past month. On March 24, my mother died. Her loss has left such a deep void in my life it sometimes threatens to swallow me whole. A few days after her death, my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson Connor came to attend her funeral and spend a week with us. Connor, who has just started preschool, has recently fallen in love with his weekly music class. Called Music Together, it is a curriculum designed to foster children’s love of music as it brings together elements of song, story, and physical activities. Connor brought with him the CD of songs, and a music book complete with piano parts. He couldn’t wait for us to have “Music Time” together. We headed off to the piano, where he snuggled beside me on the bench, and we played and sang through all 25 songs in the book. This process became a daily ritual, sometimes even multiple times during the day. Whenever I asked Connor what he’d like to do for fun, “Music Time!” was always his enthusiastic answer.

In the ensuing hard days following my mother’s death, this little boy seemed to ken the way music could ease and soothe an aching heart. Some of the songs provoked laughter, while others brought tears. “Are you thinking about Mamoo ?” Connor asked once, when I couldn’t hide tears running down my cheek . The music touched places in both our hearts, lifted our spirits, and helped us forget our loss for a little while.

The act of making music engages the mind and the senses in a magical way. “Melody is an almost unconscious expression of the senses,” wrote composer Edward McDowell in his 1912 essay. “It translates feeling into sound. It is the natural outlet for sensation.”

Since my grandson went back home, my days seem long and lonely. I find myself wandering aimlessly through the house, lethargic, unable to focus. But then I remember the power of “music time” and wander over the piano. Through the fast-running scale passages of a Mozart Sonata, the precision of a Bach fugue, the gentle flow and intricate harmony of Debussy, I access the mystical union of sensation and intellect required to make music happen. My despair is lifted, and I walk away feeling easier in my soul.

“Music was my refuge,” Maya Angelou wrote. “I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

Here at my keyboard, I curl my back to loneliness and am comforted by melody, rhythm, and all the spaces between the notes where harmony and peace reside. It’s why my love affair with this keyboard will last my whole life long.

About Sunday Salon:

The Sunday Salon is a monthly column that explores the intersection of art and real life, looking at ways the creative arts inform, enhance, and invigorate our emotions, our intellect, and our experience of daily living.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

March 8, 2016

First Letter: March 8 , 2016

Dear Friend,

I am excited about our project of letter writing, of sharing our thoughts about this creative process that is so much a part of our lives. With our letters, we join a long history of other writers and artists who have used personal correspondence as a way to inspire and support one another.

I’m writing this letter early in the morning, in that fresh and open space right after waking up before the demands of daily living hijack my thoughts. This is what I want to tell you today.

Recently I had coffee with a friend – not a writing friend, but one who has always had kind things to say about my work. We talked of our lives, our families, our past experiences, some plans for the future. As we were finishing the last sips of coffee and wrapping winter scarves around our necks, she asked me this:

“What are you writing about now?”

I sighed heavily before I answered. “I’m not really writing at all,” I admitted. “I can’t seem to get anything on paper these days.”

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, before saying: “Well then, what do you think you might write about if you were writing?”

Such a good question.

If I were writing, I told her, I would write about how suddenly my world has become consumed with caring, of thinking about ways to physically and emotionally support the people in my life who are struggling with their health and well being. If I were writing, I might describe the ways my life has narrowed in the past 10 years, how much less I have and how much less I do, and how I am so very fine with all that. If I were writing, I would write about the ways technology has become a pervasive and disruptive presence in the world, how the noise from it hurts my ears, steals my attention, and fractures my time. If I were writing, I would relate my fears for this nation of ours, this America with its bold dreams and promises, and how this election year has revealed a dark underbelly to the place I’ve always been proud to call home.

But I am not writing. I am wondering – what do YOU do when suddenly the words don’t come? Do you feel as I do now – washed up, useless, spent?

Here’s the truth I know about myself: When the world is too much with me, it’s hard to find a way into the words, even if the words are the very thing that can save me.

I read something today, and found it helpful and insightful. It’s from a small book called Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Maybe this idea will speak to you as well.

“The hardest part of art-making is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over – and that means finding a host of practices that are just plain useful. The details of art-making we recognize tend to be hard-won practical working habits and recurrent bits of form we can repeatedly hang work on.”

Like Frederic Chopin and J.S. Bach, composers who wrote piece after piece in certain formulaic patterns – Chopin with his Mazurka’s and Waltzes, Bach with his Preludes and Fugues in each of the 24 keys – there are artists who know the value of having a familiar and successful place to start.

So maybe this is what I need. Instead of looking for a new thing to inspire or motivate me, instead I should be looking back at those “recurrent bits of form” that provided reliable gateways in the past.

Maybe “what’s next?” is really “what used to be” – the writing I made part of my daily routine in the past, but have abandoned lately in the midst of many upheavals in regular life: writing morning pages, religiously every day; writing blog posts, once or twice a week at least; putting good sentences in my ears with inspirational books. These are my Mazurka’s, my Preludes and Fugues. They bring me to the page, prime the creative pump, and start the well of words flowing.

And who knows? It may turn out that these very letters I’m writing to you will be something new to “hang work on” in the future.

“Over time, the life of a productive artist becomes filled with useful conventions and practical methods so that a string of finished pieces continues to appear at the surface. And in truly happy moments those artistic gestures move beyond simple procedure, and acquire an inherent aesthetic all their own. They are your artistic hearth and home…”

I like the idea of an “artistic hearth and home,” work I can return to time and again and where I feel comfortable and safe. I think we need those kinds of havens for work and for life, in order to muster the courage to go forward and try those things that feel risky and dangerous.

“The discovery of useful forms is precious,” write Bayles and Orland, “and once found they should never be abandoned for trivial reasons.” So here’s what I want to ask you, dear friend. What are your practical habits, your Mazurka’s and Preludes, your artistic hearth and home? Are you returning to them regularly, and letting them nourish you on your creative journey? I hope so.

Until next time,
Becca

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.