Natural Wisdom for Writers

A unique 28 day writing program

28 days of daily wisdom and writing prompts for any writer seeking nourishment and motivation – through nature and the way of the horse, at home.

Make it your own. Shuffle days, repeat days, skip back and forward – it doesn’t matter. (There are seven days in each week section including two ‘rest’ days).

Start whenever.

There are no rules.

Week One

Day 1 - Patience

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Just as a horse cannot be rushed to do things, so too do words need time to make their way through us and to the page. A rushed horse raises its head in indignation, refuses our requests and will be wired with adrenaline. Front hooves lock into the earth and the very energy from which life is drawn will shudder to a halt. The spaciousness needed to be with a horse, to write, becomes crowded out by both demand and expectation. Our writer’s potential suffocates and words dam up behind a wall of impatience that humans know well, but horses cannot comprehend.

Patience is more than just a moment-to-moment construct. We will take a long breath and tell ourselves we are now showing patience but with a horse, one breath is only the beginning. Patience lays bare her virtues in a relationship with a horse over months and years – decades if you are fortunate – and writing requires us to give it that same dedication.

There is no value in rushing and impressing a ‘rule’ or action on a horse. Rather we stand alongside them and support the emerging wonder and unique aptitudes that horse has. We are in it forever and there is no rush. They are willing if we let them be.

Writing is an act of gentle patience most of all with ourselves. If we imagine ourselves as horses, as the wild animals of instinct we already are, we can step into a ‘sense of time and space’ that exists without clock time and without fear or hurriedness. Patience helps us coax the best of ourselves to the page, a place where all our worlds converge and our words become meaningful and bright. Patience is forever. Writing is forever more.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes writing about what patience feels like in your body.

(C)Lindy Schneider 2017

Day 2 - Deep Bow

When a horse is relaxed and feeling confident in you as their leader they will drop their head. This simple act of humbleness is a statement of their hearts – you are worthy.

Often we mistake the lowered head as a sign of sadness or giving in, so accustomed are we to seeing horses in show rings with their heads held artificially high. And so often we are told we too must carry ourselves with our heads high. But what if this is not the way? What if the soft line of a horse’s neck is also a sign to us that we can also let our softness be stronger than our strength?

When I find myself with a horse that trusts me enough to lower her head to mine, I cannot help but mirror her gesture. And so we both offer each other a deep bow, of reverence, of calm and of acceptance.

If we give to our writing with this same softness, this same sense of trust and confidence perhaps we will also find that same deep reverence for our words. With our heads closer to the earth our words may form from clay and river, and germinate in the rich fecundity of the land that holds us. We need only remind ourselves of this place by dropping to all fours and lowering our head to our heart. Here we are reminded, with fingers that once wrote in the dirt, that our writing is from a deeply primitive place, a means of sharing our ideas and a way to incant the grist of our dreams.

Bow to your words for they are yours alone, and if the only heart they touch is your own then that is already the miracle you seek. And perhaps every word we commit to the page in this way has a tiny hoof print hidden within. Bow in thanks.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes reflecting on what in your writing you are grateful for.

(C)Lindy Schneider 2017

Day 3 - Constant Nourishment

I didn’t realise how consistently horses graze until I took the time to sit for hours in a paddock being part of the herd. The essence of their being is about eating. While there is a physiological reason for that – their digestive systems need to be working constantly – there is another lesson here for us – the need for constant nourishment. In a natural setting most horses will simply pick at grass. They will not gorge, they will not abstain, they will move through trails of tasty grass as if following some invisible thread to the next delicious patch. Heads to the earth they do not deprive themselves of what they need and step by step they get what they must have not just to survive, but to be happy.

What is the tasty patch a writer needs to follow? I suspect this is as varied as the people who write. But there is something in the way of the horse that shows us that we need to care for ourselves with the same sense of self, and that little by little we will feed the amazing animal writer inside of us that burns with artistic desire.

It is not our way to be starved – of words, of ideas, of what sustains us. It is the true path of a writer to feed the body in all its glory as a physical, emotional and mental miracle.

Imagine each blade of grass as if it were a word. And blade by blade we construct sentences and one day whole pastures of stories. We take the words into our own unique systems and through a process of digestion and transformation we make them come to life on the page. Even that which we consider manure is the richest of fertilisers for the next day, and the next.

Writing creates the need for nourishment and it is simultaneously an act of nourishment. We are fed as we feed, and we realise that holding back, that starving the writer’s soul is denying the very freedom that keeps us alive.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes writing about 5 acts of nourishment you can do for yourself today.

Day 4 - Not Today

Horses live in such deep sensitivity with the natural world. They ease and sway with the seasons, the weather, the moment. If we stop to witness their ways, we can see their innate wisdom in everything they choose or not choose to do. It is difficult for us as human animals to step back from the unquestioned way we so often impose our will on our animal brothers and sisters. So often we require, even insist, that they do what we want them to do when we want them to do it. Perhaps we feel some level of agency or control in the world when we can have our animal friends wield to our demands.

In a space of heightened horse awareness we become attuned to the signals a horse gives that today, at this time, they need to express their own freedom of choice and not do what we are asking. From somewhere deep in our own unexpressed need for pure freedom we can recognise our equine friends right to say no, and trust that from the deepest part of their wisdom there is good reason for their refusal. We may go to the paddock and this right of refusal is expressed as simply as the horse turning his head away from us. Other times they will flick their tail and actually move away from us.

I liken this moment as the same energy we can encounter in our writing. I imagine the page as the field and the words as the herd. I can go to the page and, for whatever reason, the words say no. Not today. This does not mean no not ever but perhaps that there is something more brewing, something else tender and evocative under the skin that needs a little time. We are not slaves to the words, and they are no less enslaved to us. We clip the halter back on the gate, send our love and in our own moving away, make space for tomorrow.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes exploring what the difference is between procrastination and self-determination for you.

Day 5 - A Little Goes a long Way

How much of life is process and performance focussed? It’s a state of the world we live in as humans. But our horses don’t know this way. They actually don’t need to know how to complete this or that, or how to be at this level or have that outcome. They simply know how to be.In a world of more, the horse teaches us the value of less.

If I face a new situation with my horse and she is unsure, then I gain nothing from pushing her into that newness simply because I want an outcome. Even if I am coming from the heart, from a place of wanting to help her, pushing too hard creates an unnecessary challenge that undermines our trust in one another. If in this space I can honour her need for slowness, let her take her own time to adjust and be with what is, then there is an opening for a deepening of our connection that feels far more valuable than mere task achievement. We offer the chance to try, and we celebrate that slightest attempt or interest they show. A sniff, a shift of weight towards, simple yet seemingly tiny moves that allow small and secure steps forward. Imagine instead of wanting more and feeling disappointed, we experience delight and hope. That moment where a horse tries because they want to carries an energy that is holy.

Our words, our writing can also find their holy truth in this same way. Setting word counts, forcing the words when everything in your body says step back, these are not ways to write the truth of your existence. There will be a myriad of tiny personal practices that you can embrace when ‘the new’ in your writing feels insurmountable. Small steps in tiny places are the writers most honourable friend. We are then able to genuinely support that which seeks expression in the world in its fullness.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to jot down your own ‘small steps’ to writing.

Day 6 - Relax

Day 7 - Contemplate

Let your ideas bubble. Grab them as you please and jot in a notebook. or take a bunch of different coloured post it notes and give an idea to each one. Fine some wall space and mind map your ideas. Try not to censor yourself and don’t judge what comes out. Flow and flow some more.

Don’t do anything else but notice and capture the potential of new writing ideas. You may notice the pearls later.

Week Two

Day 8 - Write when you feel it

It is not within a horse’s realm of consciousness to procrastinate. The horse doesn’t stand idly in the paddock wondering when to do something, or second guessing what tomorrow will look like. The horses doesn’t look for obstacles to them doing exactly what they want to do when they seek to do it. In this way they are pure ‘in the moment’ beings and their attention turns in each second to the very thing that is the most important thing to them. Not tomorrow not next week, just now.

It is this purity of intent that makes them trustworthy and honest to their word. If this moment calls them to run, they embrace full expression and run; if the moment takes them to rest, they stand with soft eyes and simply let themselves be

For me this realisation feels like a relief in the depth of my bones. As writers, the pressure we apply to ourselves that we must write at a certain time or produce a certain amount is so often at odds with out creative flow, and certainly an unfathomable concept in the mind of the horse. What if, instead, we practise horse ways and become more attuned to our own needs in the moment? If when the idea or inspiration first sparks in our hearts, we simply focus on that moment and take up our pens. Not tomorrow, or in our next planned writing session but in that very moment that we are taken by the words. Leave that conversation, stop making lunch, pull over in the car. If we let words come when they need to we are opening to a stream, a rushing wellspring of possibility – all made available to us moment by moment, breath by breath. A horse knows what it is to follow feeling to guide their worlds, let’s follow our own feelings to guide our words.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to write yourself a permission slip for ‘nothing to do today’.

Day 9 - Eat the Best Pasture First

Last summer, my two horses came for a short holiday in a neighbour’s paddock at the end of my street. How blissful to be able to spend so much time with them in my day-to-day life. The paddock was lush with grasses and I could imagine their glee at the abundant home they had for a few months.

As I watched them graze their days and nights away, I noticed they went for the best grass first – the thick carpetty couch grass that had crept into one corner of the paddock was much more palatable to them than the tall spindly grass that I thought was the ‘horse food’.

I see this as both a survival instinct – eat the best available first – and as a way of self-honouring. Why take the spoils or the slim pickings when there is juicy life available?

In our writing life, how often do we compromise or sublimate our true intent? How often might we model our expression to what we think people will accept rather than what we truly want to say. A horse would never compromise this way. As writers who do we serve by second-besting our words? We need to take to the page with our best ideas first – those ideas that feel juicy, the ones that ultimately ensure our survival as writers because we are being real. Time spent in the dead ends will only produce writing that does not feed us. Choose to graze in your most luscious pasture of words.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to give yourself the best ‘something’ you can manage. Go buy a new pen that flows effortlessly, or those coloured fine tips you’ve admired but never felt worthy of. Open that journal you’ve been saving…

Day 10 - Rest

The best reward you can give a horse is to let it rest. When we ask something of our horse as our partner and they meet us in that request, a moment to stand still and just be is a blessing that can equally be felt by horse and human.

Instead of rushing to the next thing, instead of expecting more the next time, instead of wishing we could move faster, what about if we just stopped, slowed down and created small moments of rest as the ultimate reward for our doing?

Beyond the opportunity to allow things to settle, percolate and integrate in our hearts and minds, the gift of rest says I respect you, I love you and I am attuned to your needs.

We all know the feeling of pushing and pushing and getting nowhere, but how unfamiliar it is to us, in this world of busyness, to experience not doing. In tiny moments can we say to ourselves, enough.

This is a practice not only for writing but for living. Rest is a reward and it is also an essential life skill that most of us need to reawaken. In horses ways every act of doing is met with an act of not doing. Balance is a valued state, a continuing sense of place in the world. We write and sometimes it is a labour, all we can do.

To write and rest, to fully allow ourselves to take a moment of pause, is perhaps the most rewarding and nourishing thing we can do for ourselves. Rest says, ‘well done me’. Rest is a writers most worthy companion.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes – spend the day – pottering. Do nothing.

Day 11 - Embrace Groundwork

Building a relationship with a horse is like building a relationship with writing. Before we impose ourselves on the horses back we are wise to spend time at their side where the relationship can be fostered one on one, on the same level. Ground work is the heartland of building trust, of union and of understanding. At the horses eye the nuances of communication are experienced through direct reflection.

We see, we do, we are one. The time spent walking alongside, of learning habits and simply being with a horse builds security and the promise of endless horizons together.

So it goes without writing. If we think of the groundwork as the writers arena then surely we are reflecting on the importance of discovering and imbibing the beauty of grammar into our writing life. Of becoming at one with the beauty of well-constructed language so much so that it spills out of us with a kind of perfection that comes from learning the rules, and more importantly learning the ways. Good groundwork in grammar is building a foundation where we can trust our worlds and release ourselves from the limitations of second guessing ‘is that right?’.

The groundwork of grammar liberates our writing and liberates us as writers. Once learnt, once nestled inside us we can trust in the process of writing, get on with the words and experience the freedom of being in flow. And it will show – in your stories, and in your self-belief and enthusiasm for your own work.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to write about how it would feel to be able to write without any consideration for whether you’re getting it right.

Day 12 - Write where you are

In the ethos of horse care I resonate with, these beautiful creatures are able to live in the most natural way possible. This means they are able to express their true selves and that we don’t impose human ideas on them without truly understanding the consequences and attending to them.

For example, horses live in herds, outdoors in the natural environment. They eat a varied diet and are supplemented with nature’s pharmacy when needed (yes horses have naturopaths too and seek out medicinal plants when living wild). Barefoot, bitless, there is a way of being naturally with horses that doesn’t require a whole lot of paraphernalia or special conditions or places.

We don’t really need the latest laptop, or even a dedicated writing space to be able to write. If we return to a state of naturalness then we can see that we already have all that we need to be able to write, right now, right here. I have written in paddocks, I have written much in bed. I love my computer but not having it has never stopped me for writing when I need to. So often our environment is our excuse rather than our permission. In stripping back to an understanding of what we truly need we can write unbridled, anywhere.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to sit and write somewhere you have never written before, preferably in nature.

Day 13 - Stop

Day 14 - Seek Inspiration

The Artist Date is, for me, one of the most profound ideas Julia Cameron offers in her book The Artists Way. Taking time, typically alone, to devote time to creative inspiration is an act of devotion. An Artist Date can be anything you want it to be – visit a gallery, take a class, see a movie or buy a new book and head to the park – it doesn’t matter so long as the intention is to spark the inner fire. Take yourself on an Artist Date today. I also go on regular ‘dates’ with my mare–there are no rules, only opportunities.

Week Three

Day 15 - There is no such thing as busy

Horses have no concept of busyness. If you tried to explain it to them they would simply turn and walk away. In fact, that’s exactly how they respond when we approach them with busy minds, or in a state of heightened action. Modern life means many of us are living in highly anxious states – constantly high levels of adrenaline is a modus operandus and mostly we’re too busy to even notice.

Horses interpret this adrenaline as reason to experience fear – our busyness actually makes them feel unsafe – no wonder they leave.

One of the first casualties of busyness is our creativity. Clutter in the mind obscures the radiance of our own hearts and our words will find it hard to make themselves heard

To cultivate a state of non-busyness is to open the pathways to our muse – to the sense of freedom and flow that makes our words rich and real. We cannot write in our fullest potential without the clarity of this openness. Busyness is a blockage that only we can truly manage.

Creativity and spaciousness go hand in hand and if we look to our equine companions we can easily see an example of what the optimal level of activity might be for ourselves. In a world that measures personal success by busyness it can be difficult to unplug from the myth but if we are able to slow into a space of conserving our energy and our time for our creative pursuits then we may just be set free so that we can step into the places that nourish us most.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes doing nothing, every opportunity you get, Period. Forever…

Day 16 - Let the senses unite

Often when I go to spend time with my horse, riding is the furthest thing from my mind. It is enough, always enough to just be in the presence of a horse (in truth it is also enough to be in the presence of the thought of a horse – reassuring news for those who don’t have the opportunities I do).

It is enough for us to simply sit on the earth, in the middle of the paddock and be part of the soft and willing energy that a herd emits through just being. My thoughts slow, and I find all my other sense come alive. The colours of the trees, the wattle, becomes brighter, the sound of horses rhythmically nipping and then grinding their morsels of grass, the feel of wind tickling my arms, the smell of deep earth, or eucalypt, even the sweet smell of manure all collide in a tapestry of being.

What is noticed in this space, all of it, is valuable. It is valuable because it means we are present, and it is also valuable because we are noticing-observing-the world around us. As we go to the page these observations are visceral. They make their way into our words promising a richness in our writing that can only come from sitting still and allowing the world to visit us through all five senses. This is real writing. You will never need a thesaurus to search for an alternative word, when you can sit still in an alternative world.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes writing in a public place. Write a sentence or two from each of the six senses to yourself.

Day 17 - No Agenda

Our diaries carve our days into little blocks of time that then hold the ‘things we are meant to do today’ in check. We set word count targets for the day or insist on ourselves that we spend four or even eight hours at the desk. But life isn’t always like that, and horses, who don’t care what your diary looks like, have a way of showing us the importance of dropping the agenda from time to time and just being. There are times when I go to the paddock and think that I am going to ‘do a particular thing’ with my horse and she turns away from me. There are times when I am taken by the urge to go for a walk in the bush with her and times when I feel she wants to go for a ride. When I drop my agenda of what I want to do, there is a free and open exchange that is always perfect in the moment.

I feel this same freedom when I drop my agenda with my writing too. I cannot always ensure I feel the way I need to feel at the time I need to feel it, and this ability to move into and out of writing space is a skill that once cultivated serves the words at a much deeper level than discipline does. Intention is powerful, but if you are not willing to respond to the forces it creates then it is just a wishful thinking.

Word and horses are incredible wise beings and our respect for them does not go unnoticed. An agenda might make you feel in control but it is an act of domination that appears as expectation, and only serves to shut down any hope of partnering you may have. Imagine your words as sentient beings and treat them as wise companions – partner with your words and set the tone of your time together, together.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes sitting quietly and ask the words what they want to do today? Write yourself a ‘possibilities list’ and sign it from your muse.

Day 18 - Horses don’t care what you look like

The cultural and societal expectations that we should look a certain way, wear certain brands, keep ourselves presentable mean absolutely nothing to a horse. What a relief I felt when I realised nothing mattered except the way I wore my heart. I could wear whatever I liked and arrive at the paddock without brushing my hair or a smidge of makeup on and my horse would greet me with the same enthusiasm. I was not my outer appearance and in a world where sometimes that is all we feel we are, I found this moment of truth one of the more profound lessons my horse has taught me.

I came to realise what a barrier these expectations were to simply getting on with the words. How many times have we given our precious time to the outer appearance of our words without truly arriving at a place of what they mean on the inside? How often do we not go to the page because we feel we are not ‘presentable’ enough.

Imagine if we could just be with the words and not care about what we looked like. If we could release them with rawness and in the truth of what they are, without that presence looking over our shoulder that is only concerned with expectations.

How much deeper our writing can be when we don’t dress it up. When we are prepared to be seen in our humanness. And our horses respond, with lowered heads and that outward snort of breath that says well done. You cannot know the liberation until you let go of all that holds you accountable to being presentable. To be real. To allow your words to be the same. Horses don’t care what you look like, and neither do your words.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes writing about who you are when you are only words.

Day 19 - Constant Motion

In any given 24-hour period, a horse typically only lies down for about 20 minutes. Sometimes they will go for days without dropping to the ground to even rest. They bear their 500 kilograms of weight by being in constant motion. As they graze they move, as they play they move, as they respond to the world around them they move, sometimes with great speed and other times with the slow steps of those with nothing better to do. They move alone, and they move as a herd. They know where their horse companions are moving to, and feel it in their guts when another member of the herd’s attention turns to something unknown in the environment. Moving keeps them alive.

Writers are meant to move. Known as a sedentary task, there are of course practical reasons why we sit to write. But horses teach us that the art of movement can be woven into our moment to moment activities while we remain on task, and how essential this is to our ‘aliveness’ in our writing lives. Movement creates energy and energy feeds our words. Our pauses, our moments when we stop to think of the right word, are energised when we rise from our chairs and ‘graze on the view’ from our window, or drop to the floor to do a few cat-cows. We can move from the desk to the couch, from bed to the dining room table, walk to the café with our laptops under our arms. Let the blood move, encourage the energy to tingle in your fingers, bring dance to your writing practice. Find a song that makes you move and create your own writing ritual around it. Funk it up when you’re waiting on the kettle to boil (cos probably if you’re a writer you drink many cups of tea!).

Creating is an act, writing is an act. Acts are the way we create art and all of this requires honest, playful motion.

Writing is not an act of the hand but a motion of the whole body.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes pulling together your writers’ playlist.

Day 20 - Shaping Influences

Most writers are readers. What are the books that have shaped you over the course of your lifetime? Take a moment to make of list of the affecting and the unshakeable. Don’t stress too much about order, just as it comes. Reach back to your favourite childhood books and mark the decades of your life with a few chosen books. Notice any themes, styles, or moments when your heart opens. Is there wisdom in that?

Day 21 - Playful

Week Four

Day 22 - Have Faith

The mare who is my heartsong came to me as a scared young girl, harshly trained and fearful of putting a step wrong. It’s taken hours of patient loving and reassurance to soften her edges and build a faithful relationship with her. I had it in my head that for her to feel safe I should walk her through terrain first before I rode her and this had become ingrained in my way with her.

Today I realised it showed my lack of faith in her. So, I rode a new paddock, alone, with the intention of trusting how we are together. And I realised it takes just a little step like this each day to achieve the miracles we seek.

I think it’s like this with writing too. We sit in places of our own limits – constructed carefully and for the right reason but forgetting that boundaries are also restrictions. What would it be like to have faith in ourselves and faith in our words? To evidence that faith in tiny increments by each day asking a little more of our relationship with our words. You can’t help but reach a destination and it may well be your wildest dream.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes, or as long as you can, writing about something you’d never write about usually – perhaps even something dark, or outside your comfort zone. When you feel an edge, push past it by writing one more sentence. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling, just write.

Day 23 - Step by Step

When gentling or teaching a horse, there are plenty of people with philosophies and techniques that will supposedly foster quick learning or development. But the most essential quality we can bring to our interactions is that of time, of patience and slow steading loving. Nothing happens any faster than nature will allow it and our enculturation to want quick solutions and instant gratification is putting enormous pressure on our relationships – with ourselves, with each other, with nature, and with our writing.

What we want in our horse may take months, or even years to foster but when it lands, it is deep and trustworthy and mutually beneficial. We find the best moments are built in the simplest steps, in breaking things down until there is no resistance, then building step by step on a foundation of trust and willingness. We can’t just saddle up and ride a horse from the wild, first we need to earn trust to even get close, then a sniff, then a scratch. These baby steps may take weeks. Finally, we may be invited to touch their ears, and perhaps then we can pop a halter onto lead–a simple walk to the gate can be months in the making. But we do this quietly and confidently knowing that each moment of connection will make the next just a little bit easier. Slowing down is the real gift.

What would it be like to take a similar approach to our writing? To realise the gift of taking it slowly, of breaking down our ‘tasks’ until there is no resistance to them, and then building our text and our writing life up in this steady way. Our expectations kill us. They make us demand results that may not be ripe yet. We need to have a discipline in our writing but

minutes spent or word counts are not always meaningful measures. There are steps to take before we even get to the page, moments that will enrich what you have to say when you do write. Rushing to the end post or page may mean you miss the juice along the way.

TO WRITE: Notice your ‘big’ writing goal and how it feels when you consider its breadth and weight. Tease out the essential things you can do today towards that goal that feel easy and light. Do them.

Day 24 - All a Horse wants is Relationship

It’s a miracle that animals are so accepting of us humans. That my horse sees me and says ‘that woman is mine’ is a humbling experience. As sentient, pure beings they have no fear of us and wish to be willing accomplices. Humankind would not have evolved as it has without the willingness of the horse. So my mare seeks me–she may not always rush to me in the paddock but she welcomes me. She rests in my dreams, and shows up in my internal world when I need courage or valour, or am just searching for the right word. She has carried me on her back a thousand times and we haven’t even been near one another. She feels me and I feel her even when we are kilometeres away from one another. All she asks for is relationship.

And horses make great partners. They don’t judge, and they don’t care about how many likes your latest Facebook post has gathered. This is a liberating friendship. Horses embody good relationship.

Our writing seeks us for relationship every day too. It wants us to show up and let it come rushing to the page. Our writing wants to be in a relationship with us. We are our writings greatest lover and even when we resist, the words will seek other ways to find expression. Like the bond with a horse, our bond with writing, once we have taken the time to live into it, is ever more and across time and space. When we understand that our writing is seeking us as a partner, we too can offer the same in return. Our kindness, dedication, insights and pleasure exist as essential elements in our writing relationship. And in this is our deepest reward.

One of my favourite words is ‘meraki’ which means to do something with soul, creativity or love, leaving a piece of yourself in what you are doing. We leave something of ourselves in our writing, just as we do in our relationships and in every horse we connect with. I’m certain they leave something in us too.

TO WRITE: What kind of a relationship do you have with writing? Spend a few minutes journalling about how it is and how you know it could be.

Day 25 - Sacred Space

Sometimes I can experience the most exquisite moments of grace with my horse. I am standing at her shoulder in the middle of a paddock quietly just breathing her in and I am filled with a sense of being in a place that is sacred and special. There is no action I have taken, or prop that I have used to create this moment– it is as random and as simple as a breath.

And I think we can find this same sacred space in our writing – in fact I think we must seek this. Carl Jung called this sacred space ‘temenos’ a safe place where we can heal.

In this sacred place, I have no need for a shiny new set of boots, a spangled halter or any of the other gimmicks life might try and impress on us as necessary. I am me. The parallel to our writing life cannot go unspoken. Truly we don’t need the latest model of laptop, another workshop or a special journal or set of pens to meet the sacred. Instead we can cultivate this feeling in tiny moments that are bare and full of our longing. The less stuff you have the closer you can be to the essence of what you seek. Neither horses, nor our writing, really care about what we have but more about who we are. Showing up as an authentic human being is the most natural place we can occupy.

These moments in scared space can reach outwards into our words and our way to be if we let them. Our writing will be enriched by creating and holding moments of grace. Cultivating a moment without expectation, placing my hand on the warm shoulder of my mare as we breath together–all we need is each other.

That is all our ‘room of our own’ needs to be–a safe container for our expression. We do not need distractions or things, but we can treasure the symbolic and the meaningful and pause to invite presence into the meeting places where we write. This is in internal state that exist regardless of where we land. We can feel the warm skin of our writing against our palm if we stop to allow the sacred space to seep in.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes to list a few places or experiences you have had where you have felt truly alive. Give voice to this feeling and write yourself a short travel guide of how to get there.

Day 26 - Confidence to Lead

One of the things that defines a herd of horses from humans is the herd’s ability to get on with it. They will only turn back out of instinct, a necessary self-preservation. The herd gathers all its resources and moves forward as one. There is a natural confidence that all will be well and life moves forward for each member. There is no ‘what if’ rumination, there is forward momentum and encouragement in the simple act of taking a step, even while grazing. Quite simply a horse will always be moving, somewhere. The horse believes in their own sovereignty.

We can read every latest book about manifesting our writing dreams, we can spend our time with friends or therapists listing our strengths and our aims and these are all necessary and lovely things to do. But nothing means anything if we don’t also understand the moment in which we leap off the edge and actually do something. It doesn’t have to be grand, just a step (and always balanced with rest) but this is often the singlemost hardest point that we arrive at. We stand on the edge, ready to launch and then something else intervenes. Mostly that ‘intervention’ is fear masquerading as a lack of confidence. And we need to discover in our own truths how to find ways to override the inertia of lacking confidence.

We have to do something. We need to actually pick up the pen, or open the laptop and write, no matter what. Because that is how we build confidence, in the doing, the simple and loving act of doing.

This is not something we can learn in a book, but we can observe this natural and confident momentum in nature. Horses are teachers of many things, and confidence is perhaps one of their greatest gifts to us – just try being relevant to a 600 kilogram horse and you will see how deeply confidence affects our lives. As women, our personal relationship with confidence is often conflicted within the cultural norms we are born into, but horses teach us how to redefine our sense of self. Most people are surprised to learn the herd leader is not the stallion but the mare. The true leader, the one that steps up and shows the way with confidence and harmony is the feminine.

So as writers we can also be that leader. We need to lead ourselves forward, step by step, installed in the brilliance of the doing just as that mare does.

In the writing life, there is never a real reason why you can’t write today, or tomorrow, or the next. Writing is ever present.

TO WRITE: Spend a few minutes listing what you let get in the way of writing. What are the typical excuses? Have fun with this, some of your reasons will be ridiculous! Reflect on the absurd and what isn’t serving you.

Day 27 - Why do you write?

This is a moment to dig deep. Can you articulate why it is you want to write? It’s often the most difficult question we have to answer. Maybe we are a writer in the same way a horse is a horse, but it is worth jotting down your reasons for writing and feeling into what drives this passion in you. When you understand this you can frame disappointment and frustration in a bigger picture. Your ‘why’ is the key.

Day 28 - A Manifesto

This program isn’t perfect – if I waited for perfection, it may never have happened. Instead here is a human version – what is here now.

And it hasn’t been about ‘how to write’ as much as its been about what in us is served by our writing life.

So make this the day you write your ‘Writer’s Manifesto’ – your own unique artist’s statement about you, your reason to write, your unique writing being and what is valuable about what you write. Tell somebody.

And celebrate this moment. All of nature is conspiring with you to greatness.

Natural Wisdom for Writers

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