"Holly Lisle - Mugging The Muse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

surrounded by forests and pervaded by peace. And this silence is hard to find and
HOLLY LISLE
MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 22

hard to hold. It is as elusive as a rainbow, as easily shattered as sugar glass, as rare as
a white stag, as skittish as a wild colt. A single worry about an unpaid bill or an
appointment with a dentist or a remembered argument can destroy this silence for an
hour or a day, and no amount of gritting teeth and frowning at monitor with fingers
poised on keyboard will lure it back.

I have fought my battles with the noise of the mind, and have lost my own share of
time and pages to stupid replays of arguments and fantasies of future greatness and
worries that I can do nothing about at the moment. I've gradually come to a place
where I've started winning the battle, though, and winning it often enough that I think
I'm on to something.
The search for your characters' voices and your story's action and the truth of the
world that you are building begins in the silence of your mind. You can reach that
silence through training your mind to stillness тАУ not an easy task, but one that offers
tremendous rewards. While I'm sure people have found dozens of ways to lead their
minds to quiet, I've found that meditation works for me. I advocate no religious
systems and follow none тАУ my meditation is nothing more than sitting cross-legged
on the floor, my hands clasped in my lap in front of me and my eyes closed, breathing
to a slow count of four. Inhale to four, exhale to four. I slow my breathing and
counting as I begin to relax, I acknowledge stray thoughts that wander into my mind
and immediately dismiss them, and I sit for fifteen minutes. No more, no less. I have
a little timer that I sit in front of me, and I set it to run backwards тАУ I'm to the point
now where, when I peek at it, I'm almost always just a few seconds to either side of
fifteen minutes, and when my mind has behaved itself for that long, it seems to be
long enough. For the rest of the day while I write, I can reach that silence again with a
couple of slow breaths while my eyes are closed. I keep a meditation journal, too,
which most days doesn't say anything more than that I sat for fifteen minutes and
more or less concentrated on my breathing. Some days in the middle of that lovely
silence I have a revelation that electrifies my work. Occasionally while I meditate I
break through a wall that has held me stymied. Mostly I just sit, and if I only just sat,
it would be enough. Because on the days when I meditate, I invariable finish my
allotted number of pages. On the days when I don't, and when my mind wanders and
chatters and refuses to shut up, sometimes I still manage to succeed. Sometimes I fail.
Which would make you think that I would never skip a day of meditation voluntarily,
wouldn't it? But I do. The mind resists being made to behave, and offers all sorts of
reasons and enticements and cajoleries for missing a day, or a couple of days, or a
week, or a month. 'You don't have the time,' or 'you have to pay bills,' or 'you already
know exactly what you want to write today so why don't we just get to it?' Sometimes
my mind is convincing enough, and sometimes I am lazy enough, that I skip it. And
then I regret it.
HOLLY LISLE
MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 23

Finding silence takes discipline, and I'm not always disciplined. It takes commitment,
and sometimes I don't have the commitment. It takes living up to a promise that I
made to myself, and sometimes I don't live up to it. When I do, I'm better, I'm