The Curse

The curse of writing is the compulsion to do it; like a lust, it compels me to continue to strain and struggle to take something that exists in such Platonic perfection and translate it through the muck and mire of my brain and experience. The curse is also that feeling I get, deep in the belly, when what I tried to write comes out in a way that is strained, contrived, dull, or cliched.  It’s like looking for something familiar in the fog; you know where you’re going, but can’t see it or how to get there. That feeling of being maddeningly far from your destination while knowing exactly where you want to be can generate a feeling I can only describe as despair.

Heres’s an example from “A Heart Blown Open”.  In an earlier draft, I had ended a powerful scene like this:

Twenty years later he saw Silvia working as a bank teller and she seemed, in her conservative pantsuit, as far removed from the magic of the 1960’s as if that had been in another lifetime.  Kelly certainly was changed from the mid-1960’s, the last time she had seen him.  He was wearing the modest clothes of a Zen priest, his head and face cleanly shaven.  Only his eyes might have seemed the same or given some indication of the man she had once known.  But their eyes had never met, and Kelly had done his banking and been on his way.  Some things, he knew, were best left in the past, where their magic remained forever undisturbed by the passage of time and the changing of perspective.

Word came to him a few years later that Silvia had lost a battle with cancer, and that her unique expression of humanity had returned to the source.  He sat with the news, thinking about how she had saved his life and his sanity, and realized that although he hadn’t seen her in 20 years, he would miss her terribly.

The Magic

The passage above made me wince every time I read it. It was so far from what I saw in my mind as this passage played out; I felt Kelly’s heartbreak as if it were my own, and knew it was something that touched at the very core of what it meant to be a human being. There was a universality to this experience that I had utterly failed to capture, and it was maddening. Because of the discomfort between what I felt and what I had written, I labored on this paragraph stubbornly and relentlessly, sculpting and fine-tuning until I came up with something a little closer to that Platonic perfection:

After that night, Kelly and Silvia’s paths crossed less and less, and by the late sixties he had lost touch with her completely. In 1982 he went into a bank in San Francisco to withdraw cash and was astonished to see Silvia standing behind the counter in a conservative pantsuit working as a bank teller. Her hair, once magnificently long and as dark as a starless patch of the night sky, was short and graying. He looked at her for a long moment.

Kelly too was much changed from the days of a shaggy beard and shoulder-length hair, and only his eyes might have given some indication of the man Silvia had known so many years before. Yet their eyes never crossed, and Kelly did his banking and left. As he stepped out into the gorgeous California morning, he knew that some things were best left in the past, where their magic remained forever undisturbed by the disillusioning passage of time and the changing of perspectives. Silvia and Kelly’s bond belonged in another era, in a different world whose time had come, and gone.

Word came to him a few years later that Silvia lost a battle with cancer. He sat with the news of her passing, remembering how she had saved his life and his sanity, and felt the depth of sadness in a world where nothing could be held and where everything slid inexorably, and inevitably, to ruin.

When I finally got these words to come through me, I felt the magic of what I do for a living. I had managed to steer myself out of the fog and to that perfect dwelling sitting right in the center of my being; the words came tantalizingly close to capturing an Ideal. For that day, at least, magic had won.

Whether I experience writing as a curse or something magical largely depends on the day, the weather, the stars, my karma, God’s will, or some other vector that I don’t seem to be able to capture, manipulate, understand, or control very effectively. So I slug through it day after day, and let passages like this one inspire the many other passages that have me gritting my teeth in frustration. Perhaps this is why we writers are stubborn, reclusive folks. Perhaps, too, this is the very thing that stands in our way. Either way, the compulsion to write beats its relentless rhyme inside of me.

In the summer of 2010, after I finished what I thought was the final draft of A Heart Blown Open, I sent it off to a major literary agency to seek their representation.  My whole strategy hinged on them picking up the book, which meant they would be willing to walk the manuscript through the door of a major publisher. Money and fame were imminent, I thought (writers tend to bounce between megalomania and a pathological lack of self-worth).

A few weeks after submission, I got an email from the agency, saying exactly this:  “…although we’ve both been really intrigued by such a ripe story, I’m afraid I just didn’t fall in the writing as much as I’d hoped.  The story has all the details and events, but seems to have a… ‘and then, and the’..type of quality without really transporting to the reader into time and place.  Much of this feels like a recited life and not one that leaps off the page into contemporary biography.  And without these elements, I’m afraid it will be a very difficult sell in this incredibly volatile publishing market…”

I read those words, and looked around me. The sun was close to the mountains outside my window, in a clear blue sky. It was warm, and a window air conditioner rattled in the next room. A copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind sat to my left, a pad of paper with my scribbled handwriting to my right. The apartment was otherwise still.

After that pause, my world imploded around me like a slow-motion reel of a submarine being crushed in the darkness of the ocean’s bottom. I could no longer breath.  Another rejection — how many did that make?  305?  320?  400?  I’d lost count.  And not just any kind of rejection, but one that explicitly said that it was the writing, not the story, that was causing them to pass on the book. I wanted to throw up, scream, weep, but all I could manage was raspy breathing. I limped out of my office into the living room, noticing sunshine streaming in from the window, a world away from my reality. I sat down hard enough on a chair to nearly break it, too upset to do anything but collapse into a stunned, embittered silence.

What am I doing?  Who am I kidding?  Why do I think I can pull this off?  I’m no writer, certainly no fucking artist, and don’t have the talent to do this sort of thing.  I’m kidding myself, wasting my money and time, living an adolescence fantasy into a depressingly real middle-aged failure.  Who the fuck am I kidding?  I should grow up, give Jun Po his life story back and tell him to find a real writer who has the stones to pull it off.   

As I sat thinking these things, and worse, I  looked up from the floor. My dog, Amia, was sitting ten feet away from me, staring lovingly.  Her ears were flat against her head and mouth pulled down, and her entire body was quivering.  She was the very picture of the emotional devastation I was feeling. She looked pathetic and, I realized after a moment, funny. She was reflecting my own intense heartbreak, feeling my pain inside of herself, and unintentionally mirroring me.  Amia looked as sad and pathetic as I felt: in an instant, I burst out laughing at my own ridiculousness. Okay, I thought, maybe this isn’t the end of my world. Maybe it isn’t as bad as she looks. 

That night, I went out and got staggering, stinking drunk to blow off the steam of the rejection. With a crushing hangover the next morning, I sat down at my computer with a cup of coffee and glass of water, a handful of aspirin scattered along side the computer.  I opened A Heart Blown Open.  The writing wasn’t good enough.  Okay.  I would see what I could do about that.

The book’s first sentence read: “A few weeks after his 28^th birthday, Denis Kelly was sitting on the floor of a friend’s beach house in full lotus position, both feet tucked onto the top thigh of the opposite leg.”  I considered.  Yeah, that was a shitty start.  After a few moments, I deleted the opening sentence, and typed: “Denis Kelly was about to commit ritual suicide.”  I allowed a guarded smile.  That was better.

And it came to me as the first aspirin went down: the agent had been right — I had been cutting creative corners, being lazy with descriptions, and not giving the book my full potential. I realized that part of me had been holding back so I could tell myself, “Yeah, but I didn’t really try” when rejection inevitably came. Part of me was terrified of that rejection, and had come up with a brilliantly self-defeating strategy to live with it: don’t really show up. Don’t try as hard as you can. Over the next nine months and maybe 1,500 hours, I labored over every sentence, every paragraph of that book, until it was the best I could do.

This time I held nothing back, and if the writing wasn’t good enough now, I could at least say that I could do no more, write no better.  This was me at my best, and there was no more to give.  I put everything into this book — time, money, sense of self, purpose for being, and every single ounce of talent I had. At 38 years of age, I finally became a writer, finally understood what that meant.

I found the perfect home for my book with a small but dedicated publisher, and A Heart Blown Open is now out in the world, for better or for worse. In fact, my first review, in the Huff Post, came out just today, and it didn’t say the writing sucked.

Whatever else the book may be, it is the very best of me.

And I still have a dog who sometimes gives me those sad, sappy writer looks, because sometimes I’m still a sad, sappy writer.

Some things don’t change.

Then I saw it, and that pride and feeling of accomplishment imploded. I stared at one ugly letter that stood out across the cover of the book, glaring at me like a broken tooth. U.  Ken Wilbur. As in, Ken Wilber. (Clicking on the image, above, will show you the actual book cover I saw that day.)

I could not believe my eyes. I thought: Am I always to be the punch line of the universe? What have I done to be denied a singular victory of perseverance and self-belief?  And then, somewhat less profoundly, You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…  There were copyeditors, editors, assistant editors, designers, all supposed to catch this sort of thing. How could this happen? And the image I approved, and the one still currently on Amazon, had the correct spelling. I balked. I complained. The publisher shrugged, said they had no intention of eating the cost of their first run, and that my contract was clear: I had the final word. They had sent me their final draft, where someone had “corrected” Ken’s name, and I’d missed it. “Sell out the first printing,” they said, “And we’ll fix it on the next run.”

Now anyone who appreciates fine automobiles knows how luxurious and spectacular an Aston Martin can be. When painted a sleek silver, the car looks like something straight out of a James Bond movie (where they are, in fact, often featured). Getting my first book published was like earning a car this magnificent after a decade of toil, having it be delivered to my driveway, and then noticing that it had a bright yellow door.

The typo wasn’t just anywhere on the book, like the title (where I might be able to, with some convincing, claim artistic license). No, the typo was at the top, center, and of the name of the most notable endorser I had gotten for the book (Ken, I might add, never received a copy in thanks, for obvious reasons).

In the months afterwards, every time the book was mentioned or I was talking about it, I always felt like I had an Aston Martin with a yellow door. “But it’s a beautiful car,” I could hear someone saying, “Fast, sleek, amazingly well made — a true work of art. You’re so blessed to have it. You should be proud.” But all I would see was that damn yellow door, and grit my teeth in frustration.

Now, almost three years later, I’m still on that first printing of The Mysterious Divination of Tea Leaves, which means that yellow door is still with me, to this day. But I have come to appreciate the book, and its flaws. I have come to be proud of it after all, the letter u be damned, for it serves as an important reminder that I probably shouldn’t judge my own book by its cover. But just for the record, here’s the cover I did approve, wonderfully typo-free (go ahead, click on it, and notice that gorgeous letter “e”, right where it’s supposed to be):

They were sold out.

That wasn’t the worst of it.  It was about 15 degrees outside, and now I had to walk the streets with the other poor souls looking for an extra ticket.  My friends went in; Sara, dressed scantily, was kind enough to shiver with me in the cold.  I asked the groups of people who passed for an extra ticket, but there was no luck.  After a half hour, frozen, we gave up and got a beer at the Cheeky Monk just up the street.

“I really want to go dancing,” Sara said next to me at the bar, chattering, too cold to have a drink.  ”I want to dance.”

“Me too,” I said, guiltily.  ”You should just go in without me,” I offered, but she merely shook her head.

A Russian Imperial Stout warmed my belly, and I soon felt emboldened to try again to find a ticket, to join my intrepid friends inside dancing, laughing, and having the kind of fun I really, really wanted to be having, too.

Sara and I walked the two blocks back to the Fillmore Theater.  At least a dozen people were still looking for tickets, many of them the same people who had been looking when we’d left a half hour before to warm up.  Sara offered an incantation of some sort, her unbridled optimism, and an assurance we’d find a ticket.  Me?  I grumbled and cursed under my breath, sighed, and fought competing waves of anger and disappointment.  ”It’s useless,” I complained, darkly.

“We’ll get a ticket,” she countered.

“Let’s cross the street,” I mumbled, “Over there, where at least I’m not standing with another half dozen people who are all looking for tickets.”

We crossed the street, and I held up my hand with my pointer finger extended, in the universal symbol of “need one ticket, man”.  A young fellow, dressed warmly and in a vaguely hipster kind of way, approached us.

“You guys need a ticket?” he asked helpfully, his blue eyes not entirely eager to meet mine.  He had blonde stubble on his face, a red jacket, and a gentle demeanor that nevertheless seemed a little shifty.

“Didn’t I see you out here earlier,” I asked, my East Coast city skepticism immediately on guard.  Scalper.  Watch out.

“Nah,” he said casually.  ”Just got here.  I won an extra ticket earlier this week.  You seem like nice folks, thought I’d give it to you.”

Sara beamed at me and squeezed my hand.  ”See?” her smile seemed to say, “The world is beautiful and hopeful!”  My guard dropped, and effusive optimism rushed in.

“Well, she has a ticket and has been nice enough to freeze with me,” I gushed, pulling out my wallet.  ”How much?”

He pulled a ticket out.  ”40 bucks,” he said, taking the money.

“Thank you,” I said.  I offered my hand, which he reluctantly took.  ”My name is Keith, this is Sara.”  His eyes, still not wanting to meet mine, darted briefly between us.

“Travis,” he said. “Enjoy the show.”  And then he was gone, off into the crowd and not, I should note, into the line to get inside.

Sara and I, now smiling and ecstatic, waited in line, then were patted down, showed our IDs, and finally stood at the entrance of the Fillmore, promising warmth, music, and libations galore. The man taking our tickets was very short and his face hidden in a coat twice his size. He scanned Sara’s ticket.

Beeep

I handed him my ticket, and noticed as I did so that it said “Halloween Gala” on it.

It was not Halloween.

I felt my heart sink.  Sara and I exchanged a look, and I knew I’d been had.  My East Coast cynicism had tried to protect me, but I had gotten all soft and New Agey, and actually taken someone at their word.  What an ass I was.  Out forty bucks, and “Travis” was no doubt long gone, or should be if he knew what was good for him.

The man scanned my ticket, and it made the electronic equivalent of the sound of nails on a blackboard.

“No good,” he stated, holding the ticket as if I’d rubbed my ass on it.

“Look,” I pleaded.  ”I just bought that from some dude on the street.  He scammed me.”

“Please let us in,” Sara begged.  ”It’s freezing!”  The man hesitated.  She turned on her charm, and stepped fully into his view.  She smiled; a radiant, full smile that was like an invitation to someplace warm.  ”Our friends are inside.  We just needed one ticket.  Please?  Be an angel for us, please?”

The man looked at the ticket and then at us, his small face framed in a billowing hood.  He offered a kind of sigh.  ”Don’t buy tickets from scalpers,” he said, paternally, but with little enthusiasm, perhaps because he had already decided what he was going to do.

“Go ahead,” he said.  I grabbed his shoulders and squeezed.  ”Thanks, man,” I nearly shouted through chattering teeth, “You’re a life-saver.”

“You’re an angel,” Sara declared, hugging him, and a small smile cracked the stoicism of his face. We stepped inside, into warm, pulsing bodies, and music that moved like a living thing.

I was scammed, yes.  But in a way, I wasn’t. Travis, or whatever his real name was, sold me a bad ticket that was nevertheless a good one.  Kinda like he was a bottom-feeding scam-artist, and an angel.  Ain’t that something?

Oh, and the show?  Yeah, it was amazing.

Thoughts While Working on My Resume

Today was a bad day.
My Boss called me into his office
and told me we are losing money,
and heading into a recession,
and have too much indirect expense
to compete in a smaller world
where our competitors are lean and mean.

My Boss said
we’d have to downsize,
and reduce indirect
and lay off people.
Since the company is having a bad time
we all must pay.
My Boss said I was fired.

The company is having a bad time.
So am I.

(c) 2001 Keith T. Smith

The consequences of this model are that gifted and insightful teachers, with genuine and deep insight, are leaving for greener pastures in non-spiritual fields like coaching and therapy.   What a terrible loss.

In Christianity, we’ve seen the preachers who have built multi-million dollar homes on the backs of their congregations, which certainly does certainly create some commonsense skepticism.  But between mansions and giving away teachings at cost, might there by a middle way?

THE DANA MODEL TODAY
The dana model, of giving away the teachings as an expression and practice of generosity, has been a time-honored approach since the time of the historical Buddha. Yet for most of human history, those who taught the dharma were taken care of by a wealthy aristocracy who paid for their temples, robes, food, transportation, security, time for contemplation, education, and every other worldly need.  Spirituality was an important and central rail of nearly all cultures, and therefore was handsomely supported.  Those aristocrats are no longer there, but those of us still teaching are expected to teach the dharma at cost or, at least, without living too grandly.  After all, it isn’t about the money, right?

As a 39-year-old Buddhist lay disciple and sensei, I have watched this view — “it’s not about the money” — self-select a new generation of teachers that have tremendous psychological shadow around money, strongly literal and rigid interpretations of the dharma teachings, and/or a strong inclination to be judgmental and suspicious of anything innovative and emergent.

The harsh judgment around charging for teaching is captured perfectly by Brad Warner, from his Hardcore Zen blog: “…fundamentally a Zen teacher is not a professional who helps students who are non-professionals in exchange for compensation. The so-called ‘students’ are actually companions in work that is being undertaken by both teacher and student. The only real difference is that the teacher is someone who has done this work for a bit longer than the student. Yet the teacher is no more advanced, because the concept of ‘advancement’ is an illusion… A professional is someone who charges for their services and promises some kind of results, even if not necessarily promising what the client views as success. The moment Zen teachers start looking upon what they do in this way, what they do is no longer Zen teaching at all.” [1]

CONFUSING RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE: THE CORE PROBLEM
At the heart of many criticisms of charging for Buddhist teachings I see a confusion of a relative with an absolute view.  From the absolute perspective, there is only Awakened Mind, permeating everything and everyone in this moment.  There is nothing to be sold, no realization to be had, nothing to be gained, no transcendence or transcendence of transcendence, no student or teacher or teaching, nothing but this extraordinary moment in this ordinary mind.  This is why Zen says Zen teachings are “selling water by the river”, for Realized Mind is not something you get, or release into, or surrender in front of, or do anything at all to get.  This mind just is, and in that light Mr. Warner’s point on this absolute view is correct.

But we don’t live in only an absolute world, but also the world of evolution and growth, including the evolutionary impulse waking up to itself (a most extraordinary thing, really).

And in that sense, Brad’s idea that “the teacher is no more advanced because the concept of advancement is an illusion” is true, but it is also transparently false.  Charismatic and insightful teachers like Adyashanti and Eckart Tolle make good livings selling water by the river, for the simple reason that they do posses something that most of us don’t — the ability to see through the illusion of our separateness.  They have crossed through the Gateless Gate and, seeing there is nothing to be had on the other side, attempt to show us this age-old truism of spiritual insight: the diamond is in our pocket.

Saying “the teacher is no more advanced” is, in fact, a dangerous flat-lining of insight that opens the door to many things, not the least of which is the narcissism of the un-awakened student, who almost certainly does not possess the insight of the master.  The truth that we are all fully realized beings is inarguable when viewed through an awakened lens, yes, but so is the view that most of us do not realize this, and need instruction and help to do so.  The diamond is in our pocket, but sometimes we’re not sure of even what room we left our pants in!

THE MIDDLE WAY
This is where the healthy teacher-student dynamic emerges, of course.  In Tibetan circles, the relationships between students and teachers can, on occasion, get into more rigid hierarchical and patriarchal structures, with some teachers not even allowing their students to question them.  This would be the other, extreme side of this coin — from being “only always an equal” to “always more insightful”.  Neither of these views is true, because we don’t live in an absolute or a relative world — we live in both, simultaneously.

It’s time for us to move from these extremes, and instead chose the middle road — no teacher has absolute authority, and we should be skeptical of any that claim they can sell us water by the river.  At the same time, teachers and masters exist because they have taken the time to deepen their own insight, and the wisdom in how they came into Awakened Mind can help us to do the same, or to “take our own seats”.  This insight is not from a teacher and not given by one, for as Jun Po Roshi says, only we can take our seats in our own spiritual insight — it will not be given to us.  Most of us, though, need a teacher to empower us along the way.

HOW THE DHARMA SHOULD BE SOLD
My teachers, Lama Tsering Everest and Jun Po Roshi, have helped me far more than the expensive therapists I have seen, or the emotional processing I’ve done in groups, or the books I’ve read.  And their teachings were, indeed, largely given to me at cost.  But I don’t agree that those teachings should necessarily be so cheap.

A great spiritual teacher will change your life, and the good ones won’t refuse any students on the basis of money.  They might request an exchange of equal value or offer scholarships, but all are welcomed.  Yet in my home organization, Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen, is perennially very nearly running out of money, greatly limiting our reach and our ability to spread the dharma.  Priests and sensei’s like myself are expected to teach for next to nothing or nothing, which can create tremendous tension (and psychological shadow) around our personal finances.  And as I mentioned, it costs us many gifted and insightful younger people, who leave in order to be able to support themselves more substantially.

ARE SPIRITUAL TEACHERS PROFESSIONALS?
In the absolute view, no, of course they’re not professionals.  There is, after all, only one mind, one consciousness, and there is nothing separate from this awareness.  But in the relative, are spiritual teachers professionals on-par with therapists, coaches, and others who help people take a deeper and more loving cut into their own lives?  Of course they are.  And as such, they deserve to get paid, without ridicule, condemnation, or judgment.  More to the point, charging money means that professional spiritual teachers will be much more accountable to the quality of what they teach, and how well they do it.  Teachers that have entered the public eye and made handsome incomes off of the dharma have indeed opened themselves up to more public scrutiny, as everyone from Genpo Roshi to Eckart Tolle to Adyshanti can attest to.

Many teachers are inventing novel ways of spreading the dharma, and bringing new tools that never existed before into it — Genpo’s Big Mind, Jun Po’s Mondo Zen, Lama Tsultrim’s Feeing your Demons, for instance, all three of which lean heavily on Western psychological insight to inform and deepen basic Buddhist principles.  This is not classic Buddhism, and the dharma is evolving along with us, as it should, to meet the needs of a modern and post-modern world.  So too should our relationship to compensation.

SO HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
Who determines, then, how much is enough?  To me, we need a commonsense rule in place, which is that teachers of the dharma should, since they no longer have the support of a ruling class, be able to live comfortably above the poverty line.  For one, “the market” will determine what a teaching is worth, but also encourage charismatic and insightful teachers to be able to live off the dharma, while even raising a family and participating fully in life.  Teachers that begin to charge high rates for students that can afford it open themselves up to high levels of scrutiny, which is never a bad thing.  Those that can afford to pay, however, should always be asked to do so (and perhaps handsomely), for this allows us to spread the dharma to those who cannot.

The dana model has served us well for a few thousand years, but like the crumbling other institutions of old, it needs to be re-imagined for a new world that is fast descending upon us.  If we want a vibrant and living spirituality to continue to evolve along with us, we need to be willing to pay for it.  Or else find some friendly aristocrats.

###

It’s a great question.  I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve always known I wanted to write and have always loved doing it.  So that part was a given.  But actually editing, sifting through ideas, deciding what was good and what wasn’t, finding places to publish, contacting publishers in a way that you might get something aside from a form letter response, and 1,000 other things all stood between my love (writing) and my vocation (getting paid for it).

What does it take to not only write, but to write something good and get it published? 

Here is what I’ve discovered over the years. There is a saying in Zen, that in order to see the true nature of reality and transcend your suffering, you have to have three things: Great doubt, great faith, and great determination.  As someone who has practiced Zen for a number of years, I can attest to the wisdom of this approach.

Next let’s move to Kung Fu, which I’ve been practicing and teaching for over 17 years.  In here we’ll find another important principle: our relationship to safety.  If I play it safe and never want to get hurt or hurt another, I will never truly learn how to apply my body and my skill in appropriately powerful ways.  Fear will prevent my practice from growing and evolving, and keep me safely within the boundaries where I feel the least threatened.  This doesn’t mean I have to have my teeth knocked out or crack someone’s ribs.  The lesson is that by choosing to go up to my edge and sometimes beyond it, growth happens.  I must grow into that new boundary I’ve established, and in so doing must become a little bolder, a little bigger, and a little more confident.

Writing as a Martial Art

We all know that writing is an art.  But what about as a martial art more akin to the discipline of Zen or the intensity of Kung Fu, allowing your creativity to flow as your momentum builds?

This might sound like a radical idea.  After all, many approaches to writing and creativity tend to be what I would call yin based, centered around removing obstacles that stand in the way of your creativity (parts of yourself, usually) along with motivational practices and exercises to draw out the inner artist.  These approaches work for many thousands of people, and have allowed many to succeed in what they do.  The best-selling The Artist’s Way is a great example of this approach.

It doesn’t work for me, though.  At least not in-full.

Passion.  This is often overlooked, perhaps because as far as I can tell it can’t be taught or learned, but must be felt, deep in the belly.  That means there aren’t many coaches blogging about it.  Yet the book or creative project must be alive and kicking inside of you, demanding to get out. A great idea fueled by passion can become an unstoppable force.  Can become, but sometimes it needs help getting out. Great doubt, great faith, and great determination are necessary in Zen, and in writing.

Great doubt: You should understand that the odds of writing a good book, and getting it published, are astronomically small.  Actually making money off of it is even more of a challenge.  You should doubt yourself, your ability, your drive, your passion, and your talent.  You should doubt these things, because you haven’t written that book yet!  See that doubt and feel it inside of yourself; see where it stops you dead in your tracks like a cold draft of air climbing up the spine.  But don’t stop there.

Great faith means believing that you have everything you need to beat the odds and pull it off.  You have to believe completely this work is possible, and you have to take a leap of faith that it will be completed brilliantly, will make money, and will allow that passion within you to express itself fully on the page. Your great faith will square off against your great doubt and, together, they will create balance within you.  Together, by seeing and believing both, you can begin to build momentum.

Great determination will allow you to break through the cycle of doubt and faith, and sit down every single day and hammer out that vision that is so powerfully felt in your belly.  The determination to write is the discipline of writing — of sitting down and taming your promiscuous ego that would go to Facebook, the New York Times online, your Smartphone, or the million other distractions that will allow your doubt to live and breath through you.  No — be determined to succeed, and your vision will indeed manifest right before your eyes.

Lastly, you must be willing to put safety second.  For me, that was extreme: I sold my home and all my investments so I could afford to write A Heart Blown Open.  Extreme, yes, but that’s playing with all chips in, with no option remaining but to move forward.  Putting safety second does not mean being reckless or cavalier, but it does mean being willing to not give yourself any option but to learn and grow from the experience.  It does not mean that failure won’t happen, but it is the biggest way you can stack the deck in your favor.  With my book, had I not been able to write it well or get it published, I would have learned a powerful lesson (not the one I wanted to learn), but it still would have been worth every penny.

As a final point, smart authors, especially ones just starting out, seek out help for these things.  You’re not an island — other writers, family, friends, or professional writing coaches can all help you to see your vision more clearly, and hold you accountable to bringing it into existence.

So move forward with great faith, great doubt, great determination, and great passion, put safety second, and see what wonders you might create today.

The house sold in August of 2009 (in two weeks, actually), and I did indeed use the money to fund two years of intensive, 6-days a week writing and editing.  Jun Po gave me an advance on top of that money so I wouldn’t have to worry about feeding  myself or making my rent.  The memoir is now finished, and it is sampled on this website extensively for those of you interested in seeing what I’ve been up to.

I sacrificed everything for this book.  It was a leap of faith, and of belief that this story simply had to be told, and told by me.  I have never been so scared or so sure of anything in my life.  What an interesting intersection of faith and fear and confidence!

The Challenge of the Book  
I  set out to craft an emotional, heart-felt book that would drop the reader into the scenes and settings of Jun Po’s life.  And yet some of those details, with the passage of half a century or more, had grown less vibrant and bright.

I didn’t want to skip important parts of his life, or simply list what happened without creating a tapestry of characters and places.  So I would take what he told me and work to fill in the details as best I could.  Jun Po would read what I had written and offer corrections, and I would take these and rework the content. Then we would go through the process all over again.  I like to describe it as he told me the facts of his life, the bricks, and I was free to create the mortar used to bind them together.  The language, the descriptions of people, and the scenes and settings all flowed from the intersection of my imagination and my knowledge of this extraordinary man.

In this back-and-forth style we slowly created an entire book that reflected, as accurately as possible, his memory of events that occurred a lifetime ago.  My goal was to not just report the events of his seven decades on this planet, but to also capture a little of what it felt like to go through them.

Where Things Stand Now
So it was a bet with all chips in.  Sell everything I owned and had and invest all the money into the creation of a book.  How did it end up?  Well, I can honestly say this is the best thing I have yet written, and the most I’ve ever thrown myself into any creative project.  I have little doubt it will set readers on fire as they take in his life story.  The publisher Divine Arts Media agreed to publish the book, wooing me away from bigger publishers with the promise of investing as heavily and as passionately in this book as I had.

Was my gamble a wise one?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

Even if I never make back my money, it was worth it for this simple reason: I realized that I love writing more than anything else in life.  It is what I was put on this planet to do, what I do best, and what I most enjoy.  If nothing else, these past two years taught me that I want nothing more than the leisure to be able to create, and that knowledge alone was worth ever single penny and every sleepless night.

So now I am rebuilding.  I am ghostwriting an amazing book for a client here in Boulder, Colorado, a book that I am certain will be a best-seller.  I have another finished novel of my own I am editing.  And ideas for a new one yet to begin.  For the first time in my life, I am coaching other writers to deepen their own craft and their own ability to stand in the fire of their passion.

I am excited to share with you what happens as all of this unfolds.

The Drop
United in our embrace
two become one.
In one there is no separateness,
no loss, no other.
It is a drop united with the ocean
free to be thrown upon the rocks,
scattering into an infinite mist.
And then the waves recede
and only I am left,
wanting to drown again in you.
© 2006

The Idea of the Artist
She loved the idea of artists,
the willfulness and creativity.
She came to find and to love a man who
held that passion and lived it actively.
She never saw that art is a gamble
where how to win can only be guessed
that reason must be driven to passion,
for dreams are difficult to manifest.
She then wished him more like other men,
a bit more practical, less for today -
to put aside his dreams, to douse his fire
and live in a more reasonable way.
(c) 2008

Grief
It seems, love, I have disappointed you
that you expected more of me, again,
to be strong, even if I must pretend
there was nothing to what you put me through.

No need to explain, your friends all agreed,
my concerns were childish, a selfish path
when instead we should focus on your wrath,
and honor your experience, your need.

I wish you understood why I must leave
instead of turning, avoiding my eyes
whispering to friends I was full of lies,
unable to see or hear why I grieve.
(c) 2008 KMS

Constrained
What I once thought was hard fact
were only chalk line hypotheses,
impermanent remedies blown away by a breeze.

Once we were open to the other
but your past was concealed
and it’s cold where I used to feel -
perhaps it’s time to travel on.

I’ll write stories from the edge
so look for yourself in pages
where no longer constrained by cages
we’ll achieve what might have been.
(c) 2008 KMS

The Heart of Love
No matter how much we love
you are out of my control
I am out of your control
It will always be so.
© 2008

Offerings
I say I am a writer
Yet you have stolen my words

I say I am a storyteller
Yet you have removed my voice

I say I am a poet
Yet you have taken my rhymes

So I say I am nothing
yet you have given me something
and spinning and laughing
I fall upwards, and smiling at the moon as she dances through the sky
I offer you whatever is left of me.
© 2007

Shattered
Have you noticed?
Have you heard?
We are the same, you and I.
Looking after you, I find only myself, blushing and happy.
Looking after me, you find only your own smiling face.
Together, we shall smash ourselves on the rocks
and let the wind dance ‘round the pieces that remain.
© 2006