The River: How We Make Big by Elizabeth Howard

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're very happy to host Elizabeth Howard...

Elizabeth writes: It is still a coming realization for me that I am my own person. 

Even when I was a little kid in a big family and I was deciding what I wanted to "be", it was hard to imagine I could be just exactly who I wanted to be.

Part of life is the never-ending search for "identity." It's one of life's BIG QUESTIONS... 

WHO AM I? 

Or maybe, more accurately:

Who should I be?

The River: What my baby told me about time by Clare Law

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Clare Law...

Clare writes: In the dark week at the end of the year we celebrated our son’s first birthday. I’ve learnt a lot in the year (plus nine months) that he’s been with us. Things like how to do an unwanted nappy change on a person who seems to have eight arms and four legs. And that Weetabix is best cleared up straight away, because it sets as hard as plaster. Oh, and how to find more tether when I think I’ve reached the end of mine. And how to ask my husband to take over.

Of course, the baby gives back freely and generously. His fresh, magical view of the world is infectious; and there are moments every week when I feel an incredible peaceful joy because I am in the right place doing the right thing. But he’s also taught me something about time.

The River: Same year, different story by Jean Morris

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Jean Morris...

Jean writes: I could write a rather grim summary of 2011, of demanding, difficult, dragging months. But there’s another story, a story that’s also all mine, in the Small Stones I started writing for last January’s River of Stones, and kept up, to my surprise, on a new blog, for most of the ensuing year.

1 January

At 4 pm the daylight's almost gone - a layered, enclosing snail-shell of darkness.

16 January

A seagull's cry: the wide, damp street outside flickers and becomes a wide, damp, biscuit-coloured beach.

The River: The creative magic of a daily ritual by Michael Nobbs

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're very privileged to host Michael Nobbs...

Michael writes:  I love the idea of writing small stones and not just because they are a beautiful thing. More than that they are a daily ritual. Daily rituals, almost whatever they are, have a magic that can transform our creative lives.

## Add a rhythm to our days

Simple rituals that we enjoy and that are easily repeatable (like writing small stones) add a rhythm to our days that make creativity a priority and that can increase our creative output hugely.

The River: Necessary to the poem by A. F. Harrold

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host A.F. Harrold...

A.F. writes: It’s very kind of Fiona and Kaspa to invite me to contribute a post to this month of looking at things. I thought the best thing I could do, rather than blabber on, is simply offer a poem with a couple of words of introduction. I hope that satisfies.

The River: Size matters – the importance of scale by Mark Charlton

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Mark Charlton...

Mark writes: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about scale. It began with a talk by the artist Julian Meredith. Julian makes life-size images, sometimes woodcuts, sometimes earthworks – of whales and dolphins and other huge animals. Reduced size images he said, are part of the reason we pay so little attention to images at all.

The River: Time Rushes On by Luisa A. Igloria

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Luisa A. Igloria. Luisa's essay is the longest one in the series. I encourage you to make time to read the whole thing. Luisa is writing about how art forms a bridge to our homes and asks what this means for those of us unfixed from our homes. (There are some of Luisa's poems here too.)


Go and make yourself a cup of tea, or coffee, and come back, settle down, and read something wonderful...

"Literature can console, but not enough." ~Derek Walcott

"Writing … becomes a practice of gathering and giving back what one has received."  ~Vicente Rafael

The world was once nothing but a wide and level plain

Luisa writes: In the northern Cordillera region of the Philippines (I am from Baguio City), there is a legend that tells how, in an older time, the world was once nothing but a wide and level plain. There were no mountains or hills then, nor rocks, trails, or landmarks by which to calculate distances and tell a man where he was going. Thus, people who went on journeys always lost their way; or, venturing far afield, when they stumbled into enemy villages, were killed or captured. Their god Kabunian pointed out that all they had to do was note where the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and they would know where they were. But the people complained that since the land was flat and unmarked, east and west seemed the same. Their god sent a messenger from the underworld to make a journey alongside a representative of the tribe. If the former managed to find his way back unaided to the starting point, he would be allowed to take the souls of people with him into the underworld; if he lost, then the god Kabunian would have to give the land more definition. The messenger from the underworld was crafty; when he set out on the prescribed journey, he made deep holes in the ground with his walking stick, creating a trail he could follow back to the village. Some of the young hunters from the tribe saw what he was up to. They took a jug of rice wine and raced ahead of him and set it on his path. He came across the wine, and delighted; sat down to drink. When he was thoroughly intoxicated, the hunters emerged and did away with him. At the end of the day, the people said defiantly that since the messenger from the underworld technically did not finish his journey, Kabunian had to keep his part of the bargain. And so Kabunian made mountains and hills of many heights and shapes, created rocks, ridges, landforms and water forms, each one different from the rest; and it is said that from this time on, the people never got lost again.

The River: The words that matter by Susannah Conway

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more.

Today we are very honoured to welcome Susannah Conway.

I write things down to remember them, which sounds ludicrously obvious, I know, but wait for a moment. On my kitchen table there is a Post It note that holds the words: kale, lemons, broccoli. Beside my computer there is a piece of paper that holds the words: book gas appointment, pay tax, email Rose. Neither of these will be kept, the words simply memory-joggers, used and then discarded just as quickly.

The River: Seeking to see things more clearly by Douglas Robertson

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Douglas Robertson...

Douglas writes: I’m trained to see, that’s what I do for a living.

One of the purposes of the River Of Stones project is to encourage people to pay attention, to be more aware of their surroundings and build up an awareness of the space in which they exist.

As part of this I’d like you to take a bit of time to discuss and understand how you see. 

‘What?’ I hear you say, ‘but I can already see, the man’s a fool!’

What I’d like to talk about is the difference between looking and seeing. People often look without seeing, not fully understanding the space that is around them, what makes it what it is, and how it also makes them who they are.

The River: Trusting the Process by Beth Adams

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Beth Adams.

Beth Writes: January brings a new River of Stones to the literary and spiritual blogsphere, right at a time when our attention to the world around us might be flagging, along with our spirits. This challenge -- to write one small observation each day -- inspired large numbers of us last year and I have no doubts that it will be the same in 2012. For some, this is the beginning, or renewal, of a daily writing practice. For others, it's the first taste of what that might be like. But the real challenge for all of us, no matter how long we've been doing this, is how to keep going.

The River: Messy and other thoughts by Chris Dunmire

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Chris Dunmire...

Chris writes: Perfect Messy and other thoughts

“I cannot draw well or write exceptionally, but I feel now so far beyond that perfectionist streak which would be flawless or nothing — now I go on in my happy-go-lucky way and make my little imperfect worlds in pen and on typewriter and share them with those I love.”
~ Sylvia Plath, Letters Home, March 13, 1956

SYLVIA PLATH WOULD LOVE THE WORD PROCESSOR. The cut-and-paste feature alone is worth three typewriters’ weight in gold.

A few weeks ago I did myself a huge service as a developing writer by checking out the restored edition of Plath’s Ariel from the library. This 2004 book, with a foreword by her daughter Frieda Hughes, is different from the 1965 version — it is “A Facsimile of Plath’s Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement,” showing work-in-progress pieces with scored-out edits, penned-in additions, writes-and-rewrites, and above all, the comforting assurance to every new and seasoned writer that “messiness” is a natural part of the creative process.

Yes, messy is allowed — even encouraged — in bringing ‘the formless into form.’ Without allowing the untidy, unorganized, experimental, disorderly, mixed-up, disheveled, and imperfect stages of creativity and innovation, artists, writers, performers, engineers and inventors everywhere would be paralyzed with perfectionism and nothing would get done.

Can you imagine if Edison only had one shot at the light bulb? “This is your one and only chance to shine, Tom.” Yes, we’re grateful now to all those broken bulbs and shards of glass … and for the sweeping invention of brooms!

In Kaizen-Muse™ creativity coaching, messy is celebrated through the creativity principle of Spills, Muse of practice, process, and imperfection. Spills will be the first to say, “Let it be imperfect, messy, absurd, and insignificant.” To take more pressure off, she’ll add: “At the very beginning, the creative process requires lowered expectations, spiked with fun, in very tiny increments of time, in fractions of steps.”

Messy is not only a quality of creative output. It’s also something we might bring to our work to make it more rich and alive. Hughes wrote that her mother “Used every emotional experience as if it were a scrap of material that could be pieced together to make a wonderful dress: she wasted nothing of what she felt, and when in control of those tumultuous feelings she was able to focus and direct her incredible poetic energy to great effect.”

So as you continue through this River of Stones, appreciate the messy inherent in every piece of art and writing you experience along the way. Don’t be fooled by the good clean-up job I’ve done here…messy is ghosted behind the digital white-out of corrected spellings, reworked paragraphs, and deleted scenes.

*  *  *

Chris Dunmire is the founder of the award-winning Creativity Portal®, and with humor and compassion, coaches artists and writers through overwhelm, procrastination, perfectionism, and other blocks to their creativity. 

Connect with Chris through CoachingYourCreativity.com

The River: Flying the Freak Flag by Joslyn Hamilton

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. 

Today we're delighted to host Joslyn Hamilton...

Joslyn writes: Let me tell you a story. When I was 13, I transferred to a new school. I had to go through the excruciating tween process of trying to fit in during a time when being cool and popular was the only imperative. Luckily, I knew a lot of the kids already because we had gone to grammar school together. They brought me right into their fold. However, the social structure had altered dramatically in a few short years, and this regional middle school had more students. There was a whole new social order, and I had no idea how to navigate it.

The River: Be surprised by Lynne Rees

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series, our mindful writing challenge. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Lynne Rees...

Lynne writes: Little children continually surprise me: a little girl who suddenly starts skipping in the middle of a shopping mall or a small boy who fills his Crocs with sand when he’s told it’s time to leave the beach and go home.

‘If you have to give your holiday a score between 1 and 10,’ I asked my grandson, Oliver, when he stayed with us in France last year, ‘what would you say?’ ‘100’, he says. ‘No, 200.’

Spontaneity, enthusiasm, openness: qualities that are not as overtly present in my daily life as I’ve got older. So perhaps that’s why taking part in the River is so important: each day for a month I embrace them, if only for a few moments, as I look around me and record whatever’s there, or transcribe the dream I had last night, or recount a memory that has jumped to the forefront of my mind.

The River: Hold the Moment by Lisa Baldwin

This post is part of the River of Stones guest post series. The River of Stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more.  

Today we're honoured to host Lisa Baldwin...

Lisa writes: Gently, gently, we hold the moment in a cupped hand, wondering at it before it hops away.

We hold it up to the light; we respect its shadows.

We acknowledge its soft curves and sharp corners, and we see ourselves in them.

This seeing invites intimacy with our experience and surroundings - instead of scurrying past, we pause to befriend the world and know its stories.

This kind of attention deepens what it is to be alive - entirely, gratefully alive.

Without the attention, we're just breathing in and out, and thinking nothing of it.

This is it, my friend - your moment, cupped in your hand.

This is your red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater.

Caress your meditation with poetry.

And see, see, see.

*  *  *

"Lisa Baldwin. Curious monkey. Prolific ponderer. In love with kindness and the creative impulse. A playful Buddhist with a passport and a pencil. Kiwi, yet neither bird nor fruit. Currently calling Thailand home. Hello!"

Lisa's website is here, here she is on Facebook, and you can follow her on Twitter here. 


Photo by Whit Balance via Creative Commons, with thanks.

The River: Writing: An Ode To The Art by Peter Clothier

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Peter Clothier...

Peter writes: I’ve always known that I’m a writer.  I’ve known it since I was twelve years old. I have known it even though I have chosen to do many other things to earn a living, raise a family, pay the bills… I have kept that knowledge firmly in heart and mind.

But what does it mean, to be a writer? In my years as a teacher in academia, I had many students come to tell me that they “wanted to” write. I always told them that “wanting to” was too often a sure way never to do it. If I keep “wanting to” feed the dog, the poor dog soon starves. No, it’s not something you want to do; it’s something you do. It’s a practice.

The River: The Gift of a Moment by Amy Palko

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Amy Palko...

Amy writes:

Foraging through linen folds
to find the perfect mattress place
he curls cat-like
between puffed up pillows
and slips into sleep
hushed by eiderdown fluff.

I wrote this short piece while my family and I were staying at a hotel, one of the few that would accommodate a family of 5 in one room. The first evening we were there, we all collapsed into our beds and fell fast asleep - exhausted.

The River: Writing as a way of life by Sage Cohen

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're chuffed-to-bits to host Sage Cohen...

Sage writes: I have been laying down words with purpose for 28 years. In this time, I have come to understand my relationship with language as both a path and the mode of transportation that unveils the path. Eternally a beginner, traveling blind into the belly of a poem or a story, word by word I am led somewhere specific where language intends me to go.

The River: Putting the Fun Back into Writing by Sarah Salway

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Sarah Salway...

Sarah writes: Recently I undertook an assignment for Psychologies magazine in which I had to do something fun every day for a week and keep a diary about it.

I know what you’re thinking – that this has to be the jammiest assignment ever.

Well, you may be surprised how many people commented that it sounded stressful, or how I’d even caught myself googling ‘fun’ as if it was something I needed to have the consensus of what other people considered fun before I could give myself permission to enjoy it.

The River: 4 things I've learnt from writing small stones by Dave Bonta

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Today we're very pleased to host Dave Bonta...

Dave writes: I guess I’ve been writing what you could call small stones, [at morning porch] for four years now, one a day except on rare occasions when I’m not at home. Here are four things I’ve learned from doing it, lessons which I think might be more broadly applicable to other kinds of creative writing as well.

1. The most obvious subject is usually the best one to write about — or as the Zennists say, “first thought, best thought!” Doing the same thing every day is often a chore, and can quickly become overwhelming if you take it too seriously or hold yourself to too high a standard. Don’t be afraid to be boring or humdrum once in a while. You may say to yourself, “I always write about squirrels,” but if the neat thing you saw a squirrel do this morning is in fact what made the biggest impression on you, that’s probably what you should write about. And what I’ve found is that nine times out of ten, these obvious subjects result in the most popular small stones, measured in terms of retweets and favorites on Twitter and likes and comments on Facebook. Does that mean they’re necessarily the best? No, but since part of my agenda is to get other people interested in noticing what’s in their own yard or street, it’s important to write things that resonate with ordinary readers from time to time.
   

The River: Let's Hear What Our Bodies Have To Say by Dave Rowley

This post is part of the river of stones guest post series. The river of stones is our mindful writing challenge. Properly notice one thing each day, and write it down. Click here to find out more. Our guest post series features writers talking about the art of noticing, writing and more... 

Today we're delighted to host Dave Rowley...

Dave writes: "We have been trying to handle this information with our heads alone--as if we were a brain on a stick--now let's hear what our bodies have to say ..."
~Joanna Macy

That image of the 'brain on a stick' is uncomfortably close to my default setting for writing. So many times I've caught myself trying to squeeze words out by holding my body still and willing my mind to function as a word pipe.

No wonder it can sometimes be a fraught and draining experience for me.