I could no longer write without thinking through why I do it. Therefore, I need a poetics. Since I consider my religious partialities the most influential to me, my poetics must be informed by jiyū shūkyō.
The following seems to be the most important things to do moving forward:
- Deepen study, personalization, and practice of jiyū shūkyō.
- Develop an articulation of my poetics inspired by jiyū shūkyō but draws into existing adjacent poetics.
- Create works that both test this poetics and inform it so it grows further.
Other thoughts:
- I’m persuaded to resist a capitalistic, marketing approach to my writing career. In alignment with this, I don’t want to update my social media regularly. I want this to happen naturally. Where to share spontaneous thoughts, though? Substack? Maybe resist sharing spontaneous thoughts?
- I (hope) my writing could be useful to even just one person.
- No prescriptions on how my writing should make others feel. This hinders freedom.
- It is okay to distinguish between writing for myself and writing for others. Sometimes, I will need to write only for myself, and this is okay. Often, my writings are for me and other people.
- A writing life is easier built by habits, practices, routines, and systems that strengthen one’s poetics.
- It is okay with me to lessen my outward writing production, so I can focus on journaling and talahardin work.
- The recipe is this: The more I find union with the Great Life on my walks and writing, the better my writing life will be. Whatever is published arises from that process.
- I shouldn’t respond to calls for submission or workshops just so because this takes time away from the work I want to create for myself.
- Stop going after a traditional writing career and focus on helping—truly helping—my real audience, my people. This is my ministry. I know I need a ministry. All of my religious exemplars who wrote didn’t do so to compete getting into workshops, winning contests, or getting published in publications. They wrote for themselves and others authentically, naturally based on their practice/living. That is what guided their writing. Let the religion guide the writing.
- Avoid making premature conclusions in your public writing. If you are not yet sure about what certain things mean to you or what course of action to take, say it honestly. Do not feel pressure to produce and write answers when the answers are just not there.
- What does it look like to write with a single stroke?
Goal: to use this writing thing to develop my spirituality and produce books along the way
How can I really make writing into this vessel for change?
Goal for my writing
- expansive I always
- writing as a way to think
- Combine writing with journalism and scholarly writing
- Writing as a way to not think
- Process past but also move forward
- Genreless
- Ephemera, arises as not needed
- Exclutionary practices not priority. Focus on language and how it could change me.
Models
- de borja
- Cruz
- andrew
- Thoreau
Ministry
WHAT IS THE REAL WRITING I WILL BE PASSIONATE ABOUT?
- not this lyrical shit
- But this honest shit
- Eb white, thoreau, not stylistic but true and vulnerable
My jiyu shukyo will dictate the kind of writing life I want for myself, and that life, in turn, will dictate what works will be produced and in what form.
No more masters.
Focus on the work I want to do.
Focus on the website: essays and newsletters.
Focus on getting better with my discipline of attention.
Focus on reading, studying, and writing about my most important exemplars: Brion, Tanauan, Thoreau, Merton, Bugbee, etc.
Never stray away from the goal.
Do not run after a conventional writing career.
Build a unique life instead.
One Long Journal
- mix, hybrid, just to help me make sense of everything
- alongside it a talahardin that blossoms