Beginner's Mind

How to write like you did when you knew nothing about it

My mother became a Zen Buddhist in the 1960s, and books about Zen appeared in my step-father’s modern house on the lake-shaped coffee table and tucked into the pony wall that separated the hallway from the sunken living room. I had begun a spiritual quest of my own, though I was attracted to the medieval Christian mystics, many of whom were women who’d broken free of their societal roles and were writing their stories of experiencing visions and avoiding marriage. That path was for me! I was also writing deep into the night, accompanied by a pile of records set to drop one after the next onto the turntable and a black candle burning as my only light source. I folded my poems into thirds and sealed them with sealing wax and a stamp, imaging they’d be open and discovered after my death. I have no idea what happened to them, but they didn’t move through life with me. What did was a phrase I read in one of my mother’s books, a later entry into the collection but the title got me to open the book: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. The first line read “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

This struck me as true, and I wanted it to be a part of my life; I wanted a beginner’s mind. In a way, I already had it. Didn’t I acknowledge beginning by watching the clock move into a new day at midnight and by getting up for the sunrise? A new day was a new opportunity. I could choose to live from now; the past was over. Easier said than done of course, but I held the concept as an ideal, a way for growth to occur, relationships to last, wars to end, peace to be made. Arrive to resolve the disagreement, the grievance, free of the past—come to the negotiating table today with a mind to the present and the future. What now? Yes, the past happened, but when does relitigating it ever lead to anything but argument? We all have our own versions of what happened. When do we ever truly convince another person that we were the good one, the right one? It is the adult thing to doing to accept that life isn’t fair, we got hurt or we caused harm or both, that’s ours to keep but not to bandy about forever if we want to move forward. But we can leave the past behind with a beginner’s mind, and see the possibilities for an enriched present and future—if peace and a continuing relationship is what we want. How are the wars the world is living through now ever going to end if one side keeps saying “you did this to me” and the other side counters with “yeah? well you did this.” The “negotiators” scatter, the wars rage on. But nature keeps teaching us to rise and shine, and shows us the possibility of a beginner’s mind. We can clean our hearts daily. What do we have to lose but the small, tight pleasure of a grudge?

Recently a friend gave me a manuscript of a novel to read. She has published many novels quite successfully, but this was her first novel, put in a drawer from the day an agent passed on it. She accepted that verdict and set out to learn how to write a salable novel, which she did and does. I love her books. But I was obsessed with this old one, her first. It had qualities that are occasionally seen in first novels, but not so much anymore when work is polished to a high sheen before it even leaves the house. It was urgent, it had velocity, it was strange, the commitment was palpable, and it was sincere. Well written too, but that wasn’t what was most striking. It was the plunge the book made into the world of all books, the risk the young writer had taken to write her own based on a story she wanted to tell and a love of reading, no instruction necessary. It was really, really good. Had that agent been wrong? She had certainly responded crudely—even if she didn’t want to represent it, the book deserved celebration.

But what it made me think about was how much writing I have seen like this over the years in my role as a writing teacher, how loose and brilliant people can be before they get wind of what they should be doing. Many are silenced by learning what to do, and it breaks my heart. But there are those who can combine their early sense of urgency and desire with all the craft lessons that come their way. They can know a lot but not feature that when they sit down before a blank page. I can’t say exactly what they think about, but when I read their books I can see the beginner’s mind present. The text is alive. In the books I love most, I can picture the author’s handwriting, and exactly how they dance. I can see which paragraph made them laugh as they wrote it (often not funny.) I have no idea if I’m right about what I picture, but the point is that their spirit is singing on the page, fresh, unencumbered by the weight of lessons, fully there, unedited. Lessons are useful; I wouldn’t teach writing if I didn’t think so; but ideally plotting becomes a form of muscle memory, and not a struggle or an inhibition.

How to do this? A few thoughts.

1. Mindfulness meditation. I did an online course with the wonderful Cyndi Lee that finally got me to develop a regular practice after many stop-start attempts.

   https://www.cyndilee.com

   She also has a Substack I wait for every week called Drip, Drip, Drip

2. Get up for sunrise, go outside, watch the light come up and the colors change, wrap your mind around the reality that this is a new day that never before existed, and that applies to you too.

3. Create writing rituals that put you back in touch with your earliest impulses and attractions to art making. I change up my rituals frequently, but they are all along the lines of getting alone with my text. This can take some doing, and it happens best after I have been able to write a few days in a row and my discerning mind doesn’t come into this space. Knowing when to stop is as important as starting without prejudice. When did you stop coloring when you were eight? Get back in touch with that wisdom.

4. Read and study separately, not during your writing time. Reading is absolutely necessary for becoming a writer, but it can also be hugely inhibiting and misleading when it crosses over into the writing space. How many times have you read a book and thought, oh, I should start my book over and do it this way? No. That’s not your book. Stop it!

5. Stay in your sentences, stay in your senses. Flannery O’ Connor said you need to invoke three senses to convince the reader of the reality of a situation. Write from the body, the feelings, the senses that create images. Write each sentence from the last sentence, not from a thought. Your sentences will tell you what they want next. Stay on the page.

I’ll stop here for now. What are ways you come to the page afresh and anew? Is that how you feel when you are writing these days?