Category: Riffs

The Hell of Mirrors

Suzanne Biro2 Comments

I waffled about this post. Writing it. Sharing it. But here’s the thing…I committed writing this blog to address the process of my own writing practice. 

Working through (pushing through) during points of resistance is very much a part of the process. And writing about it here helps me to “see” it and understand it better…and, I guess, work with it.

Pushing through resistance is part of the medium.

Recent (i.e., used in the last couple of weeks) strategies that (intentionally? unconsciously? yes) slow or detract from writing towards the long project book-length work underway:

  1. Veering off into researching (just this week it has been: where/when the belief about photographs stealing souls came from; oxytocin (attachment hormone) and its relation with social emotional functioning; long term impacts and consequences of men who experience trauma witnessing their partners giving birth (the heart of what I’m avoiding writing about); liberation psychology and its founder, Ignacio Martín-Baró)[1].
  2. Reworking a very small piece of writing (<250 words) for submission to River Teeth Journal, specifically their submission window for Beautiful Things.[2]  
  3. Participating in a focus group, as well as being part of a panel to talk about starting creative writing sessions in public libraries with the Writer’s Collective of Canada[3].
  4. Attending physio appointments to help heal my left wrist (stupid injury: scooting fast across Princess Street, carrying two bags of groceries, I tripped the lip of the sidewalk and came down with all my weight onto my left wrist and right elbow…strawberries went flying…eight people lunged to try to catch me but I was too fast for them…gawd it was embarrassing. And I haven’t injured myself in years!). Bonus: the physio guy is a very beautiful man; I’m mesmerised watching his fingers manipulate my forearm while he regales me with epics about he and his wife travelling in Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt[4]. 
  5. Signing up for a couple of local creative writing workshops[5].
  6. Writing this blog post during time “reserved” for long project writing instead of writing it on a weekend[6]. 

Huh. That’s a longer list than I thought. 

                  Researching (#1 above) is my default. Yes, I remain curious about so many things …but it’s also a way for me to feel comfortable, hiding behind the metaphorical wall of academic knowledge (and its seductive illusion of authority). [Deleted: paragraphs of run on writing trying to escape having to lay out the next sentences here.] One (the main? I have no idea) thrust of my book-length work is to illuminate, as authentically as I am able, using a fictionalised approach, my own experience of how the birth of our first child impacted sexual intimacy between my then-husband and I.

The emotional vortex associated with this forces me to be blunt and factual. Lillian’s birth, 25 years ago, was three days of labour, an ambulance ride between two hospitals, the use of high forceps with the physician’s leg up on the mattress/table for leverage, ripping and tearing of my insides and outsides requiring substantial stitching, inside and outside[7]. My husband believed I would die. He thought the baby might die too, but in the moment this was a lesser concern. The pain was so intense, I wished and wanted to die. I probably screamed that out loud. My changing body during pregnancy and the violence of labour and birth impacted my husband’s attraction to me as a woman…read: he was no longer attracted to me. We did not talk about the fact he was no longer attracted to me because we did not know or understand the emotional rupture was caused by the physical one. Trying to have sex with someone who you are no longer attracted to reduces the frequency and quality of sexual intimacies. My husband explained he was not attracted to me because: I had put on too much weight; I gave too much of my attention to raising our children (which, I did); I was no longer the pretty young woman he had fallen in love with. I felt deeply ashamed and…surprise…deeply unattractive (so I flirted, though not outrageously, with other men but never crossed the line into consummating an actual affair…though I fantasised several in my mind during our twenty-five-year marriage). We never spoke about this…it never came up in ten years of marriage counselling because we did not acknowledge—to ourselves—the arresting of sexual intimacy due to the violence of giving birth as “a thing” at the root of so many other issues. An insidious pain.

 When I finally had the ability to voice a version of the previous paragraph to my therapist (circa 2020-21?), it came out as a hoarse whisper in a voice that was physically painful to move up and out of my body[8]. It was as if I were hauling out a heavy bowling ball from my stomach, squeezing it up through my esophagus and rolling it past my teeth and out my mouth. A physical pain becoming voiced.  

Why is my long project devoted to this? I guess it’s for three reasons. The first is so that I can understand the whole experience, “in the round”, for myself[9]. The second is that this is a subject that is rarely acknowledged or spoken about. In researching, I was interested to discover there are support groups for people having experienced or witnessed a traumatic birth in the UK. There are supports in Canada now too, though they cost money. For me, the difficult birth was only the beginning of pains to come. The third reason I’m writing this is because I can’t seem to write anything else without related themes and pains bubbling up and out of me to the page. Read: I need to write this to get it out of the way so I can write other things I’m also interested in. Or maybe to be able to tell the same story better, more eloquently, more elegantly, with beauty. I don’t know. At present it’s expressed messily …there is no other way I seem to be able to pull it out of me. 

A fourth reason: by writing this long form I am learning how to write long form. 

Another issue I’m struggling with is trying to portray Fanboy (the protagonist’s husband in the story) in a balanced way. I don’t want him to be villainized; I want to present a complex character with qualities that are sensitive and kind. My issue is that, so far, I’ve been unable to write him this way. And when I do write him, he’s coming out worse …more unkind, more insensitive[10]. I think that’s why I wrote the short piece about my father, trying to cram some pill shaped analysis of growing into a compassion for a person who, in real life, has been very broken by the effects of war and revolution and immigration and racism. 

Working with my therapist (man, she’s come up a lot in this post…I’m very fortunate to be working with her) we have managed to narrow down my experiences of anxiety to a distinct presentation pattern: it kicks off when I’m trying to voice my own thoughts or opinions about something that is deeply meaningful to me, in public.

So. 

Here we are at the root reasons for my resistance. Unpacked, dancing around so nakedly here in the mirror, my writing reticence shows itself as A COMPLETELY HUMAN ANIMAL REACTION to working with difficult emotional material. I wish I could write it better.  I wish I could write it beautifully. I wish I could write it straight.  

Suzanne: give yourself some grace. 

I’m writing it. 

Thank you for reading; it keeps me writing. Really. 

[1] Reading this list, I realise how much pressure I’m putting on myself to try to integrate some of these learnings ….which is in complete opposition to the flow necessary for loose creative writing that will offer up the gifts of creativity. I am driving myself nuts most days just trying to loosen up …not be so tightly wound…let go…

[2] This piece is about my dad and I in a canoe …I’m very young, too little to paddle…the piece pulls in the imagery of the tornado shape and sound made in the water off the tip of a J-stroke and compares that to the emotional storms in my father’s body having been witness to atrocities during the Hungarian revolution…how he wrestled with anger and a hair trigger temper raising his kids …but I wanted the piece to encompass the idea that in sharing those beautiful quiet moments with him in the canoe…they allowed me, as an adult, to understand his anger was born of fear, to allow that as a person, he was complicated. The writing in this short piece failed to capture what I was after …and the writing itself, poetic and cryptic and stuffing images on top of images…I’d reverted back to my (default?) pattern: too much for the reader to take in at once…missing crafting in breathing space/white space for a reader to settle with an image or an idea and feel it.  And ha ha …had to admit…how the hell do I remember tracking the whorl off his J-stroke when I would have been sitting in the middle of the canoe and he would have been steering from the back?  This means someone else was in the canoe and he was in the front …but I have no idea who that would have been. Piece is shelved for now. 

[3] In both of these zoom calls, gathering volunteers from across Canada, I experienced, again, attacks of anxiety …deeply uncomfortable—it feels like a knot of cold in my stomach, coupled with an inability to breathe…wait, no, it’s the feeling of not being able to breathe but the body still continues to breathe, though it labours to do so—also extremely embarrassing as my voice fails to project and I work very hard to get what it is I’m trying to say out of my mouth.   

[4] I am starved for touch. 

[5] For me, this is a sure sign of …was going to write procrastination but no, that’s not the right word…resistance is the right word. Worse, maybe it’s pining for validation. Ugh. For one of the workshops, the author was a no-show (eye roll). The other one, scheduled for October, is for a full day workshop as part of the Kingston Writer’s Fest.  I have a chip on my shoulder about the KWF…it boils down to feeling like an outcast whenever I’ve attended sessions over the years.  Obviously, this speaks more to my personal insecurities as opposed to the KWF. If I’m honest, part of the reason I applied is that it’s a competition for one of twelve spots in the workshop and maybe I’m looking to feel and confirm a certain level of outrage when/if my writing (the application required submission of 1000 word fiction example) is declined. I know, this is a very bad reason to sign up for writing workshop. If I get in, I will be an angel and support the other writers who are there, I promise. 

[6] I wish I was a person who is not so regimented …I’m tempted to make a joke about being tightly wound (the beautiful physiotherapist called me “special” because my muscles are so tight “they should be written up in a textbook”)…but the deeper truth of it is that I grew up with a lot of unpredictability; adhering to a schedule makes me feel calm and comfortable, conditions necessary for creative work. It also reduces the number of decisions I need to make in a day, and it ensures that I make consistent, small-step efforts toward my creative work. A critical ache in me taunts me to wonder whether adhering to a schedule means I’m a lesser artist. I try to ignore this ache, stupid for so many reasons. This too requires energy. 

[7] I healed completely. Physically.  

[8] Writing this paragraph was also physically challenging: thumping heart, tears, difficulty breathing, cold in the stomach, shaking. It took an hour. More. I have, in recent years, spoken to friends about the experience and I have discussed it openly with Lillian and Willa, my two daughters, too. 

[9] Yes, writing it is a form of therapy. I rarely articulate what I’m specifically writing about with other people, instead I describe the writing as exploring the dissolution (disillusion?) of a marriage nested in my family’s stories.  A fictionalised version. Many people will quip: So, it’s a form of therapy. And this feels…minimizing…I receive it a s a sort of criticism…that what I am writing is definitely not literary and definitely not interesting to the majority of readers…it’s simply navel gazing. It stings because there is truth in it: I am navel gazing …my head so far up my own ass, I’m looking at you from the inside-out, from the gut punched belly buttoned knot of my bruised insides.  

[10] Having a lot of cognitive dissonance over this.  Is it because I’m angry at my husband IRL? Am I? Not really. Is it because I don’t know what kindness might look like? That can’t be right.  Is it because I don’t have enough distance? Is it because I’m unskilled rendering character into words? Do I lack imagination? The questions spiral dark and deep to pierce the pain at its hot point: I’m infuriated…fucking outraged (!) at myself for staying in such a situation and being so fucking innocent and so stupid and not having the fucking balls to question it sooner. [I talk a lot about this with my therapist; she reminds me I did not have the knowledge then that I have now and that I chose to stay in the relationship to be able to raise my children in a stable environment. Yes. I know these things; I remain livid with myself. She says: give yourself some grace.]  

The Trades I Make

Suzanne Biro

The last week and a half, I let my creative writing time go.  It’s a decision I seldom allow, making exceptions only when I am away on vacation or my routine becomes so disrupted it interferes with sleep. I don’t bounce back quickly after sleep is sacrificed. 

These last years of early morning waking for quiet reflection and writing, I have learned that with any break in routine, the fear of inadequacy floods in, and the time to get back into routine, back into a free flowing creative state, takes me twice as long (at least) as the time  that I “take off”. So, stopping the creative writing routine is not a decision I make lightly. It’s too costly.  

I wish I could say it wasn’t due to COVID-19…I read so many artists explaining this time has robbed them of creative spirit.  But it’s not like that exactly.  No, in the wake of the pandemic my role at my job has swerved—a twist of irony that can’t be ignored—toward more writing.  I’m writing for our regional medical officer of health.  I write whatever and whenever he requests.  I’ve ratcheted up my [work] productivity to a level I haven’t had to in years.    And last week I worked against the clock to complete a scientific review of research literature to write a proposal submitted to the province requesting regional easing of restrictions in areas with lower incidence of the disease.  

I’m enjoying the challenge at work.  Though last week the hours were punishing, and everything slid sideways to accomplish it. But that productivity level won’t be the norm.  This week should see things settling back into routine. But that’s not really what I wanted to write about here…sometimes the setup is too long to get to where you’re trying to get to.  What I’m curious about and even somewhat ashamed to ask, is: why it is that I will put my head down and work that hard for “my job”, or for someone else, or …let’s call it something extrinsic to myself, and not do the same for my own creative writing projects?  A fraction of that energy to my own creative work would have seen a list of publications or painted canvases.

Ah.  But even writing that last sentence I see how easily I slip into chasing products again, instead of sinking into process, as one does into a downy pillow after a long day.  Still, it would do me good to explore what it is (why it is?) that makes it easier to perform for others as opposed to for myself.  Like a trained circus animal.  

But that’s exactly it, isn’t it…a denial of one’s wilder instincts to ensure steady meals on the table. Avoiding the discomfort in the wilderness of unknowns; the unpredictable traded for an illusion of control, a fairy tale of certainty.  

It amazes me always how the writing will get you where you need to get to, to answer questions.  Part of the process is having the courage to ask questions.  But also, a willingness to trample into the bare unknowns, where the answers are often harsh and unforgiving.  

Word follow: Creativity

Suzanne Biro

‘I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one’

John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

I’ve returned from a week and a half vacation in B.C.  Of course, I brought my notebooks, my computer, and some select drawing materials, believing I would have the much needed down time in order to create or work on expanding the draft of a short story I’m working on.  That didn’t happen.  The time change—even moving as little as three hours towards the sunsets—made me feel nauseous and exhausted.  Wonderful visits with family and friends filled the days.  The artistic practice routine I’ve guarded and carved at home, dissolved. I let it. Instead, I welcomed the laughter, delicious food and wine, the spectacular mountain views. It’s all essential.    

Two weeks not practicing makes it hard to face a blank page. Like any exercise, I need to build back my muscles.  Habits help.  I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit the tailspin of self-doubt and anxiety (again?! still?!)  about my artistic abilities or my lack of productivity. It’s a comfort knowing most artists feel this way. Most creatives? And then, I wondered, why?  

I attended a lecture at Queen’s University this week, a PhD student in the education department exploring how the concept of “creativity” is incorporated and has influenced the Ontario curriculum since the 1880s to now (no small feat) (1).  His research demonstrated the word “creative” doesn’t enter common usage until the 1950s or so, an etymological fact that surprised me. The original use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and a theological reference the student managed to track down, deviates from the modern definition we bandy about and follows an interesting progression through the next few hundred years. 

In the 1640s, creativity was associated with “creationism” and the divine (read: God) ability to make all things, all of “creation”.   This older concept of creativity became associated with the idea of a “God – given gift” and that association then became linked with “genius” and “ingenuity”.  Read: reserved only for the special, “chosen”, few (and, historically, almost exclusively white males in Europe). Genius was reserved for those bestowed (by God) with the creative power and understood to be an innate gift, not something one might learn (through practice, for example). The tiny tinsel ring of recognition bells might be ringing in your mind….

From there, the concept of creativity grew and changed.  But slowly.  It wasn’t until the later 1800s that it slipped under a conceptual definition that was more inclusive, through the founding father of kindergarten, Fridrich Froebel, a German educator.  He believed all humans are creative (not just geniuses) and ought to be left and encouraged, through play and exploration, to cultivate individual creativity.  This seems closer to what we aspire to (and believe?) these days, but artists are still assaulted by imposter syndrome and fear…what happened?   

Froebel’s ideas managed to influence curriculum development and implementation as far from Germany as Ontario, but in the early 1900s, it was believed too free and difficult to control alongside more traditional approaches to education.  Two world wars with Germany on the opposite side did the conceptual definition no favours.  It fell to the wayside. I wonder if it is any coincidence the surrealism, expressionism, cubist and art deco movements grew out of this time, following on the heels of impressionism?  Did those artists as children attend kindergartens where they were free to explore their creativity?  

Warm up life drawing exercises

J. P. Guilford, a psychologist, peppered his learning theories with “creativity” and the word took hold, sticking through a common usage from the 1950s onwards.  Guilford’s conceptual definition broke creativity into component parts: as a problem that could be solved.  In this way, creativity was recognized as a set of skills that might be taught.  By the 1980s, curriculum had teased art making, “creating”, into a progression of increasingly complex building blocks (and why, perhaps, creative making is widely encouraged in primary schools, and then subtly, through omission, discouraged in secondary schools in favour of learning that supports social efficiency skills (those that will get you a job).  This is my era of formative schooling and it makes me question whether my dogged pursuit of “learning to write” by searching and reading so many (too many) books on writing (instead of just getting down to the paper and practicing and exploring more freely, in the Froebel manner) is hindering my progress.  I think it is.  

More recently, the concept of creativity has embraced and shifted into the idea of creativity as social power: through creativity we are able to reform or revolutionize the world.  I don’t know about you, but I feel an intense pressure to use my art toward the greater good.  The pressure is immense.  It can be, and has been, paralyzing.  

The variety of conceptual legacies continue to percolate and bubble our modern sociocultural beliefs about what the definition of “creativity” is.  Presently, we draw and squeeze together all five ideas. By looking backwards, following this etymological roller coaster, I’m beginning to understand the lenses I allow to cloud my artistic practice.  If knowledge is power, then at least I can face the blank page with a little less reservation.  

(1) Trevor Strong

Practice efforts from life drawing class. The one on the right I drew entirely with my non-dominant hand! Who knew one could do that!!

Searching for [the] write words

Suzanne Biro

“Words are the wings both intellect and imagination fly on.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week

I think about words a lot. Words are the atomic unit of writing.  I obsess about how to cram an experience, capture the essence of something, get to the elemental idea of a thought, into as few words as possible [1].  Or better, one perfect word, e.g., laconic. 

This week I stumbled upon [2] a wonderful art project, Leaning Out of Windows, a multi-year collaboration between artists at Emily Carr and physicists at the University of British Columbia “to open new pathways for the possibility of a much richer understanding of the human experience than can be attained separately”.  I was fascinated to see the words, shared by both disciplines, in a photo of a concept map (one of several products of the art project), created by Ingrid Koenig, mirror the messiness of the creation/discovery/exploratory process. 

In her latest book, Essays One, Lydia Davis counsels attentiveness to abstract words, often they disguise a real thing, such as “a herd, a seed, a rodent, a goat”. “Know what that concrete thing is.”  This is interesting, from a writing perspective for a number of obvious reasons…but also, if I were to review my own writing—notorious for tracts of conceptual thoughts and reflections, and rife with abstract words—I might discover some underlying feeling, my soul speaking through some imaginative space of authenticity that I need to divine [3].  

Winston Churchill’s essay, The Scaffolding of Rhetoric, lists “the continual employment of the best possible word” as the most important “element in the technique of rhetoric”. [A word] “must in each case absolutely express the full meaning of the speaker.  It will leave no room for alternatives.”  In this way, poets are masters of language.  

But it’s daunting, isn’t it, to find the right word?  The best I can hope for is recognition, in my own writing, for when a word is imperfect.  That my brain catches the signal there’s more to be unearthed, more digging to be done. Refinement needed.  The ripple of a misplaced word in the still waters of a sentence has the potential to wash out the larger piece.  I take heart with this quote from Philip Pullman, in Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling “If you want to write something perfect, go for a haiku.” And this one too: “But you just try to do better next time.”

[1] inner critic notes: well, you failed with that loquacious sentence, didn’t you?!

[2] I read about it.  The show is on in Vancouver later this month for those of you lucky enough to be close to that city.  I will have to settle with reading about it and looking at the few pictures of the exhibition posted on the web.  

[3] might be a good exercise to try …exorcise to try?