maggi dawn

latest writing

Second Thoughts - an article in The Christian Century

Morning - an essay on College Chaplaincy in spirituality journal Quiet Spaces

all my recent publications are on this page

show up at the page; put words on it

I have long been a fan of Rachelle... there are quite a few parallels in our lives, and she inspires me.  She's one of four artist friends who have, between them, inspired and persuaded me to start painting and singing after a few years in the doldrums. And although I was writing already, to gather confidence and discipline and method in writing too. A lot of the dynamic in creative pursuits is similar from one form to another - the way you work, the blocks to work, the balance between discipline and inspiration (which, regrettably, is heavily biased towards discipline. Only when you' regularly put in the hours on stuff that gets thrown in the bin does that sweet inspiration strike and something that seems effortless flows onto the page or the canvas.  Madeleine L'Engle said that the drafts of whole books that are thrown into the bin are like the pianist's five-finger exercises. Without them, the good novels are never written.)

This morning Rachelle encapsulates the tendency among artists and writers to put off that awful blank-page moment, filling the time with endless mundane tasks - all of which, of course, are entirely important to life...

...Every morning the writer wakes up, eager to put pen to paper, and every morning resistance kicks in to keep the writer from actually doing the one and only thing she really wants to do. It is inevitable. It is part of the game and one cannot play in the writing world without this dark nemesis. What’s a girl to do?

Cram the bastard back down into the dung heap it came from, that’s what.

“Yes, “you cry, your voices in unison against our common foe, “Yes, but how?” Ah, there’s the rub. I think it goes something like this:

Show up at the page.

Put words on it.

go read the whole thing here: Magpie Girl - Writing and Resistance.

Me? I'm off to the page now to put words on it...