In his spare time, he builds rock walls; not the kind with mortar in between each piece, but dry-stacked ones where every rock is pressed in, almost like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. If one does not fit, in contrast to cardboard puzzles, he positions a chisel and wallops it with a mallet to conform the rock to the space. Some of the rocks are small and easy to lift, but some are huge and heavy. From my observations over the years, I concluded that constructing a rock wall is not for dainty hands and weak spines.
A rock wall builder, like any other artist, has a lot of time to think, which is sometimes beneficial to innocent bystanders. Like the time when, out of the blue, he summed up his strategy for the daring feat of stacking rocks.
"The secret to building a rock wall," he said, "is the four Ps: passion, patience, persistence and pain." Those four Ps apply to any endeavor.
Of course, I had to write a story about him and the rocks in his head and on the ground, and I filed away the four Ps for future reference. Since that day in the yard and my husband's rare moment of self-disclosure, the Ps have been multiplying and hopping around in my mind like baby rabbits in the springtime. When the leader of the writers' group called for a volunteer, the Ps hit me like a ton of rocks. I had a pallet full, and here they are:
Power
Purpose
Pain
Passion
Perseverance/Persistence
Pet Peeves
Procrastination
Profanity
Politics
Where a book could be written, I am sharing a few notes from my talk:
Power:
Franz Kafka wrote that books can "wound and stab us ... wake us up with a blow on the head ... affect us like a disaster." Kafka knew the power of writing.
When someone holds up a book and says, "This book changed my life," that is powerful stuff, and it happened at one of my previous writers' meetings. (The book mentioned was Theo of Golden; I have not read it yet). I could say the same about a book titled Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It chronicles Louis Zamperini's imprisonment in a Japanese prison during World War II. Way before reaching the last page and closing this book, I knew I would never have another bad day, because nothing could be as bad as the torture Zamperini went through.)
Someone said, "Be careful what you read. It may change your life." This could also be said: Be careful what you write. It may change someone else's life.
Writing is an opportunity to reach tens and hundreds and thousands of readers, or maybe just one. Either way, someone's writing can touch a soul, even through a friend's short story or essay.
With writing, we also have the power to change ourselves. How cathartic is writing!
Purpose:
Lucky ones find their purpose after extensive investigation, openmindedness, and trial and error. In researching this topic, I found a wealth of information on the Dale Darley website. She suggests exercises such as writing for ten minutes about one specific moment in your life that changed your perspective, or by telling your story to someone in two minutes. The idea is to give credence to what pulls at your heartstrings. The things you are passionate about are the things that will lead you to your purpose.
Pain:
The beauty of writing is that we can transfer our pain to paper. As a word of caution, Dale Darley says to write from the scar and not from an open wound. If you are still bleeding, so to speak, you should tend to the wound first. Wait until the bleeding stops and the pain subsides before writing your story. Darley says that in remembering the experience; do not relive it; remembering is reflecting. Have a support system in place. Writing about trauma is beneficial to the writer and to the ones who are helped by your experience. Avoid being pressured into sharing more than you are comfortable sharing.
Passion:
Like finding a purpose, discovering your passion is good for mental health. Doing what you love reduces stress, anxiety and depression. Another helpful website is Very Well Mind.
Passion and purpose go hand in hand. If you possess one, you will likely possess the other.
This excellent article at Very Well Mind can help you find your passion: 25 Questions to Help you Discover Your True Passions.
Perseverance/Persistence:
My thoughts about perseverance and persistence are that when we are fulfilled by the task, we persevere to the end. Sudowrite is another informative site. It suggests that we define why we are writing; it refers to the "why" as our "North Star." Structuring specific, realistic writing times is essential to reaching our goals, and defining our goals is imperative. A reasonable goal is not to write a book; a reasonable goal is to write one page a day or one chapter a week.
(FYI: Perseverance has an alternate meaning that is not in the dictionary. According to online sources, Perseverance is the name of a NASA rover that has been exploring Mars since February 2021.)
Pet Peeves (As an avid reader, these are some of my personal pet peeves regarding published books; they are not rights or wrongs):
Excessive exclamation points. Like crying wolf, repetitive exclamation points lose effectiveness and can be annoying. One agent wrote on a blog that an exclamation point should be used only once in a piece. While that might be extreme for a seventy-thousand word book, exclamation points should be used sparingly, like cayenne pepper.
Repetitive choppy sentences like this one: The detective noticed something different about the scene. A slight odor. A scent, a sense of something askew. A problem. But not a crisis.
The word got. (Tom and Jane got dinner.)
Had and double hads. (I had had to tell him twice already, and I wasn't going to tell him again.)
Repeating a certain phrase or word throughout the book, until it becomes annoying for the reader.
Beginning sentences with the word "now," over and over again.
Writing words in all caps or italics for emphasis, consistently.
Procrastination:
Mark Twain advises us to use the frog method in thwarting procrastination: Perform your most important, major task first thing in the morning. Everything else you do the rest of the day will be a piece of cake.
The website Very Well Mind is also recommended for solutions to procrastination.
Implement the five-second rule. Count down from five to one, then start working. The countdown sets up your brain for the task at hand. (Mel Robbins' book, The 5 Second Rule)
Break large tasks into smaller tasks.
Set a timer for twenty-five minutes; work on a task; take a five-minute break; repeat.
Profanity:
Whether or not to write profanity is a decision every author makes. Some readers and writers are not perturbed by profanity, and some readers will avoid authors who write outside the boundaries of decent language (me). By writing profanity in your works, a certain percentage of your reading audience will be displeased, and many of those readers will steer away from your books. The same goes for politics.
Politics:
Imagine this scenario: Your favorite author, in a podcast or on social media, reveals a political preference that is light years away from yours, and suddenly, that favorite author is not such a favorite anymore. The truth is that we all have biases. Unless writing about politics is your profession, and your audience knows what to expect from you, you might consider keeping your political affiliations under wraps.
In my three-year stint as leader of the Virginia Writers Club Richmond Chapter, I kindly requested that we nix both profanity and politics in the writings we shared with the group. While there were probably some who shook their heads, some thanked me for providing a neutral environment.
(After the recent passing of Dolly Parton, a talk show host reported that she would never say which party of politics she preferred, even when interviewers pressed her to choose one side or the other or to give an opinion. She knew that by doing so, she could risk alienating about fifty percent of her audience. She always responded by saying she was a performer ... How wise of her.)
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In closing, there were about a dozen of us in an upstairs room at the arts center, and the writers in the audience were super receptive and engaging. We had a fabulous ninety minutes tossing Ps back and forth between this perky, perceptive, and pleasant group of writers.
A meeting of writerly minds
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Be kind in word and thought.