Favorable Circumstances

I don't know if I have Mojo, Juju, or Luck.

I know I like coffee with whipped cream on top. I know I like to listen to certain music when I write. I know that my office, where the Star Wars and Star Trek figures and ships, the Gargoyles, and a plethora of the writing related quotes in picture frames are all displayed, that is where I most want to be. All. The. Time. 

I know I have Passion.

Everyone has something they do, something that they take great pleasure in doing, something that is at its core linked directly to their own personal self-satisfaction. I would gladly, gratefully, spend the rest of my days honing what I do, learning more about it every day because writing stories, creating characters dealing with events that mean something, fulfills my need for a sense of purpose.

Is it corny/ignorant/insane to think of writing as spiritual? It's as if the numinous light of That Which is Divine drips this fluid mix of drive and imagination on me--it's not something that I actively will to be, it's something that just is part of me. That creative tap must flow and if I can't use those creative juices to make something, the potential of each drop escapes into the ether. When I use it, it replenishes me. When I waste it, I'm unbalanced, starving for more to restart the cycle of creativity that makes me who I am.

Is writing my religion? Do I worship at the altar of the blank page, where my prayer is the composition of words that tell a story? When I call on my own experiences to craft an emotional scene, is that my confession? Is sharing it with others equal to raising my voice in the choir? 

Re-reading that, it sounds melancholy. It even sounds a bit self-aggrandizing. Please don't misunderstand, I don't mean 'my writing is divine.'

I mean the act of writing is, to me, divine.

I don't need the office toys to write. I don't need the coffee to write. I don't need the inspiring quotes to write. They could all vanish. I'd still write because all I need is the passion.

Its the passion that keeps my butt in the chair. It's the passion that makes me try again and again, write and rewrite, finish and start something new.

Whatever your dream is, you don't need tokens or luck. Find your passion, hone your passion, honor your passion...and you will achieve.

What Juju Do You Do?

Juju. Amulets. Phylactery.

We have all heard about athletes who have a lucky object they wear during their games...as well as the fans who do the same. You know there's a guy out there who wears his most worn out pair of (hopefully clean) underwear every time his favorite Major League Team/NASCAR driver is in action simply because he is convinced that every time he does, his sport-crush will win. Maybe it's just a superstitious way to mentally participate in a sport that some couch potato has no hope of physically playing. Or maybe there is some magic emanating from that ragged, holey cotton.

Maybe not.

A slight twist on that notion, one that I think has more merit, is the red-power tie worn in the corporate business office. If you believe that red is a color of action, courage, and leadership, if you believe that wearing it to work will enhance or reinforce these qualities in you, then therefore as you place that crimson tie around your neck in the morning, you are consciously making a choice, an affirmation. It mentally sets your personal standard bar where you want it, perhaps a little higher than yesterday.

Can anyone say that challenging yourself to do better than you did yesterday is a bad thing?

Topically, the mojo methods being shared this week are cool and insightful, but I think the real questions, the one that you, dear readers are coming here to find the answer to, is what magic beans can I plant to improve my writing and where can I get them? Are lucky charms worthwhile? Is this mumbo jumbo real?

If Awesome Author A wears a certain ring everyday and her novels are fantastic and her sales are soaring, and Well-respected Writer B burns a specific incense and eats four pistachios before sitting down to write what always turns into a best-seller with movie deals, shouldn't you run right out and get a ring just like A's and buy the incense and nuts and set up your desk accordingly to double your take-the-world-by-storm super powers?

No.

In my opinion, it does not matter what you do. It does not matter what I do.

It matters that YOU do what matters to YOU.

What resonates with you? What in this great big world of options and ideas is the one, two or three things that help YOU focus YOUR MIND and settle in to write at your MOST INSPIRED, at your CREATIVE BEST?

It's the act of setting up the item(s) and performing the ritual that is important. That act creates a mental bubble (or perhaps a mental Death Star) that sets your mind to the task and empowers you. It might be as mundane as having coffee in your favorite mug--heaven forbid it is dirty and you have to wash it first. It might be keeping a collection of specific new-age stones said to have creative energy clustered on your desk and saying an affirmation before you start every day. It might be listening to certain music. It might be running a mile first. It might be five minutes of meditation.




Whatever it is that puts you in the best mental place to do better than you did yesterday is the MOJO that will work for you. It will be your very own. Your precious.

Oy, You Lucky Jockstrap Bastards!

I fell out when this topic hit our programming list, not because it's about luck. Rather, because the word jockstrap was involved and I maxed my maturity at age thirteen. I can't escape the image of a writer huddled over his computer with a cup on his crown and the leg straps looped under his chin.

~waits for the image to sink in~

You're welcome. 

Now, do I believe in luck? I believe in the existence of Karma, the Cosmic Boomerang, and the Collective Subconscious. I also believe in the Powers That Be.

I am prostrate to those powers from the moment I hit "Send."

Writing the story is about creativity and hard work. That's all me. My responsibility. My sphere of influence. My realm of control. When the story flies into the world, its fate is no longer mine to dictate. That's the time I call on every bit of extra help I can.

Glee, Sam, & An Episode I Missed

Meditations & Affirmations. 

Completing Circles & Twining Threads.

The exact things I do are personal and vary based on what my connected conscious suggests. Overall, I try not to nag because I don't like to be nagged (see Cosmic Boomerang, above).

Whichever ritual I do, none of them have involved a jockstrap.

Yet.        

Photo Found Here: http://www.youknowyoulovefashion.com/glee/tag/brittany

The Luck of the Irish Just Got REAL

Hey, I'm a Kennedy - what did you expect?

I also come from the McGees and the Murrays and the Lamberts. The Irish Catholics are a strange and superstitious lot. The rituals of religions meld with the charms for good luck and no one questions decisions based on "a feeling."

My grandfather, Pat McGee, had all sorts of good luck rituals he followed - from the rose he affixed to his lapel for mass to the green he wore on St. Patrick's Day. He also spent the day drinking, going from bar to bar until he was more wasted than usual.

See, "the luck of the Irish" should be said with a bit of irony.

The Irish, while eternally optimistic believers in serendipity and the grace of the universe, are not a lucky people. They've been besieged with internal battles and external oppressors. Famine sent the Irish on such a mass exodus from their home that now four times as many Americans claim Irish ancestry as live in Ireland today. Though blessed with happy talents for words - both spoken and written - technology, music and other arts, the Irish are also plagued with the tendency to be at war with everyone and everything.

Most people with Irish blood know this, deep down. The possibility of sabotaging ourselves is ever present. Thus, the fervent belief in Good Luck.

That's all a long introduction to this week's topic, phrased from our calendar as:

What's Your Mojo? Sports has their lucky jock-straps; what do you wear/do to bring good-luck to your writing?

I used to have this dress I loved. It was one of those power outfits - comfortable, flattering and elicited compliments whenever I wore it. Made of a dusty, deep-blue jersey the color of summer twilight, I wore it everywhere for years, back in my mid-twenties. As it got frayed, I wore it around the house. Since I don't wear pajamas, this dress would be the first thing I put on in the morning when I rolled out of bed. When I got serious about writing, since I wrote first thing in the morning - because that was the advice I got over and over - that was what I wore.

It became my lucky dress.

See, when I became serious about writing - and by this, I mean a deliberate effort to not just write every day, but to create finished products instead of just fragments - good things happened fast. People liked what I wrote. The teacher and students in the first writing course I took said wonderful things to me. The first polished essay I produced was immediately published. An exclusive critique group invited me to join them. You have to understand that I had been focusing on science until that point and had no reason to think I had an any talent or ability for writing - just the relatively sudden conviction that it should be my life's goal. Receiving this kind of feedback felt amazing, incredible and .... Lucky.

I savored this fortunate turn, every day giving thanks that things were going my way. Being a good Irish girl, I knew my luck might not last. Never depend on next season's potato crop. But be gleeful and enjoy the now. Every time I sat down to write, I wore that dress.

One day, David, who is wonderful, supportive and has a low tolerance for raggedy clothes, told me to get rid of that dress already.

"It has HOLES in it," he pointed out, as if I didn't know this.

Sure, it might have had holes big enough to put my hands through, but it still - more or less - covered my body. "It's my lucky writing dress," I protested.

And he took me by the shoulders, saying, "My dear, the writing comes from you, not from the dress."

He was right, of course. But it took him telling me that, for me to see it. (This, by the way, is the best kind of partner to have - who lovingly and firmly points out when you're full of shit.) I got rid of the dress and survived the winter anyway.

Today I'll raise a glass of Jameson to Pat McGee - and to all of my intrepid ancestors who fought to survive, to journey to a new land and to make new lives for themselves and for those of us who followed after.

We, like they, make our own luck.