ARTS: The Craft of Writing

This space is for discussing the writing craft, in all its forms.

The possibilities are endless. Here are some ideas:

• Expository Writing
• Technical Writing
• Approaches to Memoir
• Journalism
• Fiction
• Genre Fiction
• Composition
• Styles, Tropes, Purple Prose
• Sentence Patterning and Rhythm
• Grammar and Usage
• Dialogue
• Short Story Arcs
• Novel Arcs
• Plot and Subplot
• "It was all a dream" and other pitfalls
• Narrative and Point of View Choices
• Contemporary Writers
• Not So Contemporary Writers
• Buddhist Influences, Other Influences
• Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, Post Modernism, Beyond the Post Modern, etc.
• Writers We Like

Looking forward to this evolving discussion,
Gassho,

Hensho

Satlah

Let me start this by asking: What is the Zen Aesthetic and how, if at all, does it inform your writing?

Gassho,
Henso

sat

Hi Hensho

For me, the Zen aesthetic comprises simplicity and directness, presence and awareness. There may also be elements of pointing to universal truths within the specifics of the world.

In haiku, we start off with a set of images and pick one or two that reflect the scene we are trying to make. Even after that, excess and superfluous words are removed, leaving only the bare essence. This approach can also be applied to prose writing and I find that it is something I have gone into the habit of. Natalie Goldberg calls it 'writing down the bones'.

I was initially trained as a science writer and that has a similar approach of cutting away extraneous information that is not relevant or adds nothing. However, what is removed there may be different and the objectivity required for science writing contrasts with the personal becoming universal of the Zen approach.

In Zazen, we sit with each moment, complete and full and Zen writing can reflect this, drawing on sense experience to point to that fullness, invoking the colours, scents and feelings of a time and place. Zen is also linked with the natural world and its seasons and I think it would be a rare Zen work that did not allude to this in any way at all.

Anyway, good question, Hensho! I do not consider my answer to be in any way definitive but are merely the thoughts that come to mind in response.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

I have read Writing Down the Bones a few times. I highly recommend it.

Gassho
Sat, lah

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geika

I have read Writing Down the Bones a few times. I highly recommend it.

Gassho
Sat, lah

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I liked the book too.

[emoji106]

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

I have the Writing Down the Bones in paperback and Kindle format, but I haven't gone through the entire book yet. I think Natalie Goldberg coined the term "freewriting." I have done a lot of freewriting. For a long time I wrote 750 words (equivalent to three pages) a day of freewriting, as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, although I couldn't bring myself to do it first thing when I got up in the morning.

Gassho,
Onkai
Sat/lah

Come to think of it, Writing Down the Bones was my first introduction to Zen practice, though not a book about Zen practice. I picked up the book on a whim, looking for something that might inspire me. At the time I was dropping out of college and feeling like I should still keep up with my goal of becoming a writer in some capacity. I was all caught up in a mishmash of Paganism, New Age and esoteric Yoga practices at the time. Natalie Goldburg kept dropping the word Zen, and I thought, why not look into this and add it to my mix? I found Treeleaf very shortly afterward, and somehow over the next two years dropped everything else. I had also been reading a huge volume of collected essays by J. Krishnamurti, and I think that contributed to my shift as well, although also not strictly about Zen practice.

Gassho
Sat, lah

I picked up Writing Down the Bones for help with with an autobiography. It was very helpful and I actually wrote an autobiography and self published it. "Almost President" was the title as that had been my grandiose delusion. I had it online and got 1/2 million hits before I took it down. It was about 15-20 years ago when self disclosure of mood disorders was more risque for doctors. We have come a long way and people talk about psychiatic difficulties much more freely nowdays.

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

For me, the writer who has most informed my Zen practice is actually a poet: Wallace Stevens. I was really into Stevens in graduate school but I had no thought of Zen in those years. I don't think Stevens did either, but I rereading him now, I find him exceedingly Zen.

"It was how the sun came shining into his room:
To be without a description of to be..."

...And so many other passages helped to form my thinking both as a writer and as a person. His work is part of me now, merged with many other artists and thinkers and experiences, inseparable from how I think and encounter the world today.

Gassho,
Hensho

lahsat

This discussion of influences leads me to ask: What does it mean to you to be a Buddhist / Zen writer? Do you identify yourself that way? How, if at all, have the principles of Zen influenced your work?

Gassho,
Hensho

sat

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hensho

This discussion of influences leads me to ask: What does it mean to you to be a Buddhist / Zen writer? Do you identify yourself that way? How, if at all, have the principles of Zen influenced your work?

Gassho,
Hensho

sat

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That's an interesting question. I don't consider myself a Buddhist or Zen writer. But the subject matter of Buddhism certainly shows up in my poetry at times.

I'm not sure the principles of Zen have directly influenced me as a writer. I think where the influence has come is through reading and writing haiku. That sense of direct experience in haiku, the way so much can be conveyed with the right image(s) and precisely chosen words.

Thanks for setting up this thread and asking such interesting questions.

Gassho, Jim
ST/LaH

Sent from my SM-T510 using Tapatalk

In my fiction, I don't find I write about specifically Zen or Buddhist themes, but Zen practice helps me look at things in different perspectives, to get into the skin of different characters.

Gassho,
Onkai
Sat/lah

Onkai:

I've been away for a little while, so please excuse the late reply. I've been thinking about what you said. I see Buddhist themes in my work (from even before I began practice), but maybe it is Zen practice itself that is the deeper influence these days. Maybe it's the sitting that brings clarity of thought. Perhaps it is a different way of seeing and knowing.

Gassho,
Hensho

sat

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hensho

Let me start this by asking: What is the Zen Aesthetic and how, if at all, does it inform your writing?

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Zen Aesthetic. Ironically, it is so close, I had thought you anticipated my answer - Zen Authentic. Because, Zen is nothing if not authentic. My writing allows me to share myself with another human being. That is a gift; and one that I do not have without writing. I have autism level two. My hardware doesn't allow me to express myself authentically in real time. Which means, I do not connect with others in real time. Many would argue that this isn't even the most isolating of the many I possess. So, I write. I try; rather than telling a narrative, I try to share my experience. Sometimes, it works. When it does, I get the privilege of expressing myself authentically to another human being.

Angel - sat

Thank you for your post about the Zen Authentic. It's a interesting twist. May I ask how Zen Buddhism has made you a more authentic writer...or if it has at all?

Gasho,
Hensho

Sat

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hensho

May I ask how Zen Buddhism has made you a more authentic writer...or if it has at all?

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Yes, you may. Years ago, I would have clicked 'post quick reply' after those first three words. Today, I understand that you believe that you already have asked.

I have an answer, but not the words. I shall return when I have them. gassho2

sat

Rather than begin a new post; I've decided to add to this one. This is what arose:

Zen introduced me to the stillness from which my words arise. I find the stillness and rest in it, allowing it to burn away everything that isn't truth. Whatever is left gets written.

Angel - sat

I wear my rakusu now. I have added this word to my personal dictionary in spell check. So important is my garment of the Buddha, I shall wear this into the nwxt world. When a man comes close to death, much becomes clear. What we see, what we know and do not know. I am 70-years -old. In my mind. I am 25 and finally solving the solving my personal. Zen has taugh me modweation in my spendingg. I have an outstanding balance of money. This month I will owe $75 on my credit card. Next month it will be paid in full. At one time, this card had a balance of $5250, with money from my Social Security, now I don't. My Brain Surgery showed me sevral imedite things. Truley there is no bith no death. My body will be dust soon. When I was 25, life meant very little. Then 5 years I married, then 5 years later sobriety, 2 years became a proud father. All my life from 37 on. I look at the errors in this entry.
Gassho
sat/ lah

Tai Shi, friend: gassho.

How nice to see you on these pages. I have been waiting for you.

Thank you for reminding me of the beauty of expression. It is all just so.

Deep bows,
Hensho

Satlah

Hensho, Onkai, Angel. Geika, and all women and all the women who wish to sit for other women and for the men who so often for get the women of all our world, for such as me. I forget so often women and men with sensitivity, Jishin, Kokuu, for all men, and for Kyousui, my dear friend who found my life in a comment that caused my wife to drive me to the hospital, for JiminBC, for my wife who has as others given over to some men so that those men might live in hope for some equality who cannot have same ever, for all of us who live in hope of each other, and yet equality which the Buddha himself so wanted, yes what we can offer, and those who cannot believe in equality, may you yet find long writing here recognizing that we have ruthlessly taken from women what they only ask for in our life--love. That also men only long for quality of life, and give over what women wish-- control, equally in any relationship, or if they chose no relationship, what each sex is only suited for, what we alone wish of ourselves. May we ever find in peace some attitude we cannot understand, what we long for what is right and good. Schikantaza. For me as I wish in sorrow that our life together quality, and equality, could it be ever so in our old age, more so, let us be alone if we wish is it we long for--solitude.
Gassho. sat/lah
Deep Bows.

I have sought new civilizations, new men and women. Landed into Planet eternal, laughing why we wish for alien introduction to knowing human beings are not alone in this universal overtone. We know this Buddha nature is true because they land with their space machines warp in one Science Fiction, in another inter dimension, races mingled evermore together, and we soar, and we fly not without we are not angry, so flight becomes easy as we mindfully since from mind all memory of death and destruction gone, all is union, all is pyre of death eternal to let flow up and on. For all the women who have been hurt by me and in ignorance, in beginning less greed, for all women to hear to see, to understand. To humanity now together living as one, as interdependent.

Gassho
Deep bows
sat/lah

Please dear women friends light here and to hear songs of poetry, words in song, lyric, and wistfully we dissolve into meditation which is different just sitting ill meditation gone even so with the WORDS gone is sickness as Jishen helps men to see that error is eternally not repented not necessary except in Verse of Atonement. Four vows eternally we cannot see all reality, we cannot know all verses of poems we sing high and winged up, up, up and away. Dastardly presence gone evermore, tranquility in wings, of doves landing baptism of fire, of shirt eternal flame of wise intersections of no wonder we cannot flame, that we cannot exclaim. Realm of Glory road, up to another life of alien people who live in the world of earth, who have always been hearing the giving bright tone. Women, men asexual, men women mingled together. Men, women alone.

Gassho
sat/lah