1.6 : How Can I Be More Creative When I Write?

Transcript

What is good, folks? Welcome back to the Immovable Wisdom Writing Podcast. I am Karen A. Parker, and if you were listening carefully to the introduction of this show, you will notice that there was a little change. 

I am no longer identifying as a secular Buddhist. I am officially a Buddhist layperson. Yay! And I'll be doing a separate episode talking about what that means, but I find it actually really cool that the changeover from Secular Buddhist to Buddhist layperson is coinciding with this episode in particular because I think it just fits really well. 

Because last time, we talked about candor, and to be as candid as possible, if you have been a longtime listener or longtime friend of the show, and you notice that there is a gap in the production of episodes—I think the last episode was at the end of August, and now we're in November—I apologize. I will not pretend that things have gone on as usual in the interest of candor, in the interest of honesty. 

And we also mentioned that being a writer, being candid is your bread and butter because colonialism doesn't want you to be candid. It wants you to lie to yourself. It wants you to go with the status quo and to just, you know, delude yourself into whatever it wants you to be. 

And so, the fifth step or the fifth principle of my Immovable Wisdom Writing Framework (trademark pending, if I ever get a trademark application filed at all with how the government is doing these days, how my government in particular is doing these days), the fifth principle we're going to be talking about in Buddhism and in this Buddhist framework for systemically oppressed storytellers is anicca. 

That is the Pali pronunciation, and the title of this podcast episode being like, “How Can I Be More Creative When I Write?” It feels like a non-starter, like, why would I even ask that question? But trust me, like, hold on to your horses, I'm gonna explain. Because of course you're creative when you write, you're a creative writer. But this is not what I'm talking about here. 

So in Buddhism, anicca is one of the three marks of existence. And I have a link to a website called accesstoinsight.org, which has a ton of Pali Canon texts available for free, which is awesome. And I also have an article from Lion's Roar that explains—Both explain this concept beautifully. 

But I will start with the from the literal text from the literal canon, and basically say that anicca is one of the three basic facts of existence. The three basic facts being—the first being anicca being impermanence or change. The second being suffering or unsatisfactoriness or dukkha. And three, not self or insubstantiality or anatta. And anicca is important when it comes to creative writing. And when it even comes to being, you know, like, when it comes to your your personal life, or at least in my personal life, because anicca is the reminder that evolution is real, and that we all change, there is nothing in the world that is permanent. 

The sun will die. It is 4.5-something-billion years old, at least from our, our carbon—not carbon dating, what am I saying?—from our calculations. But eventually, it will get bigger and bigger and bigger and turn into a red giant and then, you know, swallow up the earth, and it's like massive, gaseous heat generating form. And, you know, hopefully by that time, we will have found another planet and we won't have to, you know, think about that, and the human race will live on. 

But um, yeah, there's nothing permanent. All things will fade with time. And, you know, when, when we write, we want to be permanent. And we want to have a sense of, like, carrying on a legacy or to have our words, you know, survive us past our death. But you know, we, and that's, and that's because we die. And that's because we, you know, we all go through through changes. And the one of the sources of suffering in Buddhism, as Buddhism claims, is that we cling to, we cling to a sense of permanence. And we cling to this idea, this false idea that everything is just not going to change, everything is going to be fine, everything is, is as it is, and it will always be the same way. 

And on a fundamental level, that's just not true. And when it comes to being a creative writer, I find it super important for writers to be firm, but flexible. 

That's, I think, an idea that—I mean, I, I mentioned in the intro, and I mentioned it probably in the other episodes, I can't remember, it's been so long, but there's a sense of needing to be firm in the sense that you have to be candid, and you have to be honest with yourself. And you have to be honest with the world around you and looking at the world around you. But there's also a sense of like, well, if something comes along and changes you, you know, accept that change and accept the, accept the transformation. Don't be too rigid. 

And that's one of the, that's actually one of the key tenants of the Plum Line—not Plum Line—Plum Village lineage, that was started by Thich Nhat Hanh, is that they do not subscribe to ideologies. They, they, their minds are free from, from grasping and clinging to these ideas and holding onto them and, and fighting for them so that they are not, you know, that they are just in the moment and, you know, comfortable with what is. 

And as I'm gonna say a bunch of times, probably in seasons two, three, and four of this podcast, colonialism doesn't want you to be creative. It doesn't want you to have this sense of, you know, evolution and change and rebirth and death and, and cycling through and trying on new identities. It wants you to be as rigid as possible, because if you're as rigid as possible, then you will fit into the mold that it has designed for you. 

And what that looks like in the writing space is, or at least what I think it looks like in the writing space is, if you happen to be a speculative fiction writer like me, capitalism and your publisher and your fan base will want you to continue writing the same fantasy stories that you have been writing for years and years and years or weeks and months and days. 

And that is because, you know, people like what they like, and capitalism likes a reproducible product, you know. Having you know, making, making something for little effort and making something reproducible and making something, you know, that making something that earns quick cash. And you're gonna get stuck in that rut, and you're gonna get frustrated. And it's, it's frustrating, because you want to leave if you don't want to write speculative fiction or fantasy anymore, but it's what pays the bills. That's the system. That's how the system is set up. The system is set up to keep you in one spot, to keep you one way, to keep you as one image in people's minds for as long as, as long as humanly possible, as long as capitalistically possible. That is just, that, that's how the, the current, you know, Western decolonial system works. 

But Buddhism says no, like, you don't—One, you don't have to be a certain way. And two, you, you're, you're not going to be that way forever. It's just not, it's just not possible. In the long scheme of things in the—not the long scheme—in the grand scheme of things, that's the phrase—you know, eventually, you will stop writing that kind of writing. 

Eventually, I might stop writing speculative fiction, which is very unlikely, because I like it too much. But I will likely write, you know, romance or contemporary or something completely out of left field, and I will have to find a new market, or I will have to learn new story techniques. And that will be a good thing. It'll be a good thing to keep my mind fresh, to keep my mind just, you know, open to all of these possibilities, because that impermanence and that sense of change is a mark that I'm alive. It’s a mark that I exist, along with suffering and unsatisfactoriness, unfortunately, and the idea of, of not self. That's, that probably is going to be a different episode. But I just wanted to talk about impermanence first and the fact that, you know, you yourself as a writer are going to have multiple iterations and going to, like, wear different hats and move in different genres. And that's a good thing. 

It is a good thing to, to stretch out your limbs and to, you know, as the kids say, be cringe, and to do to do things imperfectly, because that is a mark that you're alive and that you are, that you are in this space and you are taking up space and people are, people are hearing your voice. 

And so what can we do about this, about this rigidity? Or what can you do when you feel this rigidity coming on? 

Well, you know, lean on your other Immovable Writing Wisdom Principles. 

Stay curious about how you've become rigid. Are you in certain social circles that encourage, you know, encourage you to be a certain way? Is there anything that anything new that you've wanted to learn in the past few days, weeks, months, years that you haven't gotten to? 

Are you, are you rigid because you want to numb yourself out and you only want to feel a certain thing at a certain time in a certain way? And you're kind of avoiding certain sensations? 

Are you compassionate with yourself? Are you, are you measuring your worth based on your, your productivity? Or, you know, what kind of story you got? Or how many reviews it's got? You know, what are these, what are these metrics that you were holding up to? 

And again, are you, are you candid? Are you lying to yourself? Are you telling yourself that yeah, “I'm a, I'm a specular fiction writer,” or “I'm a horror writer,” or I'm this, that and the other and that label doesn't fit with you anymore? 

Like, these are the kinds of questions that I think you ought to be asking or journaling or even asking to a friend. 

And just briefly, as I mentioned at the start of this podcast, I no longer identify with the label of Secular Buddhist because I, you know, I wanted to—

I deepened my sense of, I deepened my Buddhist practice and deepen my knowledge of Buddhism and learned more about it, and realized that I wanted to be a Buddhist in traditional Buddhist context, rather than in a secular context that sort of takes away the spiritual aspects or. You know, for me it felt like I was, I was giving myself a free pass and not engaging with the, the thing that has meant so much to me in its true, in its truer form. 

And I, I'm glad that I, you know, had the label of Secular Buddhist for a while because before, I didn't have a label, or I didn't have a thing that I could hold on to, but I'm glad that that label has changed because it has signified my growth. 

And for those Secular Buddhists out there who are listening to this podcast, like I'm not dogging on Secular Buddhism at all. If Secular Buddhism works for you, keep at it. Like if, if it means something to you, that's, that's totally fine. But for me, I wanted something different, and I, I wanted, I wanted the source. I wanted the, the fuller expression of that teaching. 

There are many different branches of Buddhism that you can, that you can look into, whether or not you're, you're a writer. I mean, if you want to focus on mindfulness, you can do that. If you just want to focus on compassion, you can do that. Like, Buddhism has no, I mean, it has no fixed form, and that's, that's a beautiful thing. 

You do have to watch out for scammers, though. You do have to watch out for people that say they're Buddhist, but they're not really Buddhist. So there is that. 

But yeah, on that level, see where you yourself as a writer and as a person can be just a little bit more creative and less attached to ideas of yourself in your life. 

‘Cause that's it for me, y'all. And I will see you on the next episode. 

Take care.