Capturing the Moment
This last week was the first of our “Writer’s Circle” workshop series gatherings, hosted by myself and John Adler here at Farmstead Creamery. Eager faces and nervous glances met us at the table, amidst steamy cups of coffee and tea. We were starting on a new adventure—a commitment to further engaging our writing practice, of engendering creativity, of freeing the writer within. The class is inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones.
Now in my fifth season of writing these “Down on the Farm” stories, I’ve learned to find a tale to tell or a moment to capture both in the major events and in the tiniest of activities—tending the garden, doing chores, making jam. There’s the migratory birds moving overhead, the sound that the wind makes in the maple trees when they’re ready to lose their leaves, or that cantankerous piece of machinery that refuses to start yet again.
In our writing class, one of the exercises was to take 15 minutes to free-write, starting with the phrase “in this moment.” You can take it anywhere from there, but start with this. You can’t stop the pen; you can’t cross out or edit anything. Don’t worry about spelling or punctuation, don’t worry that your inner critic is telling you that this is silly or childish—just write. If you get stuck, write “in this moment” again and keep going. Don’t stop until the 15 minutes are up.
Get your pen (or your laptop) and go. The challenge is on!
“In this moment”
In this moment—I hear the clicking of typing, see the little wobble of my page as I move the pen across in short, quick strokes. I smell something from the kitchen, the brewing tea, the cover of Natalie’s book resting before me, colorful sticky notes poking out the side.
In this moment, I can feel the focus around me, like little claws yearning for something real. There is a flurry, a concentrated determined pressing forward. How different from the long, lazy ride to Minong earlier today with intern Olivia dozing in the sunshine next to me. How different from the scuttling through morning chores with damp, chilled fingers, trying to get back in time to open the café.
It seems like a small space has opened, a little splash of golden flowers in the corner of my vision sitting as a reminder of the beauty of impermanence. This is only a moment, but a moment is all that we have. It is followed by another moment, another space—potential for creation, renewal, hope. How quickly the claws of doubt seek to intercede, to distract, to pull away into a thousand pieces our carefully crafted and savored moment for first thoughts.
In this moment, I’m reminded of the child who first realizes that a pencil that they move with their tiny hand leaves behind a mark. It is an early, visual representation of a piece of self. Here too, I watch the tip of the pen, watch words forming on empty lines, watch as I work the code of alphabet and language to express thought in a two-dimensional medium. It might be magic—the ancients thought it so.
In this moment, it would be easy to wonder about words, about this process, why we even bother writing. But here we sit, each our own bag of stories, of collected experiences, thoughts, and memories—libraries waiting to be written. And in that space we give ourselves now, what of all this do we choose to put on the page?
“How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” It could be that something presses forward in our minds, yearning to be heard—yearning for the space to exist, to be legitimized. So often, in our current culture, the spoken is given less credence than the written, and so we are led to feel that somehow that extra weight of black letters on the white page must carry the burden, must mean something.
“Talk is cheap,” so they say. But Natalie points out that talk is also the exercise ground for writing. As I’m writing this, I hear myself speaking these words in my head, like I’m talking to the page—as if that page is a friend with whom I can safely share my thoughts, whatever they may be. Some days I may cry and vent and question the world and what it’s all for, other times I may madly try to capture and experience before its luster begins to fade.
***
Time’s up, and we all set down our pens or stop typing. The room as a whole lets out a big sigh. I have the urge to shake myself like a dog before returning to group discussion after this 15-minute sojourn into personal thoughts. When writing, 15 minutes can sometimes crawl, at other times fly. I can still feel the tug of the flow of writing that the times exercise brings on. It makes me hungry for more.
Our next Writer’s Circle gathering is October 27th from 3 to 5 pm at Farmstead Creamery & Café. You’re welcome to join us, even if you didn’t make it to the first class. You can learn more about the Writer’s Circle workshop series on our Facebook page or by giving us a call. Try the exercise “in this moment” and see where it takes you. I’ll be writing too, every week, capturing moments from life here, down on the farm.
