Inspiration Monday: Dashboard Confessions

Sometimes, when the problems of the world get a little too large, I go for a drive.

When I am alone in my car, I am in my own little pod and whatever is going on with me and my day is isolated there. The other motorists on the road need only be concerned with my driving, and my person-hood is my own. For me personally, it is a time for prayer, deliberation, solitude, creativity, and wholeness.

Sometimes, when I have a client with whom it is difficult to build a relationship, I find a reason to drive them somewhere. I don't know if it is because of the inherent trust of riding in a car someone else is driving, maybe because my eyes are locked on the road and I'm not looking at them, or maybe just because it feels safe, but I find it tends to get people talking about what's on their mind. I jokingly call it "Dashboard Therapy." You won't find it in any psychology textbook, but it works.

A great deal of the miles on my car have been banked directly into the pages of my manuscripts. When I just can't seem to work out what I'm thinking or feeling about a writing project, I go for a drive. I put on some music that fits the mood, or sometimes I just leave the radio off. I drive around and look at things, trying to see them as a character would. I test out dialogue--there's no better way to do it than saying it out loud, (and no more embarrassing way either)--and search for unbidden inspiration.

My dashboard has absorbed so many of my prayers, thoughts, and confessions, it must be a holy relic by now. Who cares that it has cracked in the sun and needs a good wipe down. It has become an integral part of my creative life and of my desperate need for solitude. It may not be exactly poetic, but there's something to it.

Take a ride today. Whatever it is you're working on, whether it be part of your creative life or just hurdles you're jumping in the real world, and dump them in the passenger seat. Talk it out, sing it out, pray it out, whatever it is you need to do, but speak it out loud and saturate your vehicle in the fullness of your mind and heart. If you've got a character you just can't wrap your head around, picture him or her doing this exact exercise--what is it they think about when they're driving a lonely highway with no one to judge them and only the dashboard to listen?

There's no rule that says the same person who enters any room must be the same person when he or she leaves it. I figure the same must go for cars (and probably even trucks. Probably).

Inspiration Monday: Goodbye, Sweet Winter

Goodbye, winter! Hello, spring!

If you couldn't tell, I'm pretty excited that today was a nice day. Nice enough that I tossed my jacket into the trunk of my car and didn't think twice about it all day. Nice enough that I stood in a parking lot leaning on my dirty car, pockets heavy with post-it notes and lists, and I closed my eyes. I pretended for a second that the cars passing by were really the whoosh of waves, and the coolness in the breeze had been born on the sea. My feet were cozy in their shoes and couldn't tell the difference between sand and pavement, so I lied to them. I told them that soon I would dig them into their favorite place, the wet, mushy place where surf and shore are the same thing.

I wasn't really sure what to make of the sirens in the distance or the uniquely oily blacktop smell, but whatever.

My little vacation did what it needed to. I got back into my car and followed the post-it-notes where they led me, but I did it looking in the rear-view mirror at Old Man Winter waving bye-bye for three long seasons more.

I'm a nut for spring--it's my favorite season by far--but I found myself a little nostalgic for the lonely beauty that only winter brings. Winter is all about the insides: trees shiver in their bare bones and the chill runs us all indoors where the frost on the windows takes the rest of the world away.

I've got to respect a season that turns us inward on some level, even if just to get a satisfying bellyful of hot chocolate and to daydream about the beach. Winter gives us a chance to appreciate what we've taken for granted beneath the beautiful, temporary snowflakes.

Now that spring is here and winter is fading into the distance, spare a few creative thoughts to give its due. It is the one season that asks us all to slow down just a bit, and though I despise being cold and scraping ice off my poor, dirty car almost as much as going to the dentist (where I am always cold), I think that's a trait worthy of praise.

Tools of the Trade: Facilitating Daydreams

Today I thought I'd highlight some important tools of the trade that are crucial to my creative consciousness, but which do their work quietly and without heralding their importance to the world. Without these things, I could not do the one thing that fuels my every creative and not-so-creative endeavor: daydream.

I could write an entire post about the necessity of daydreaming (and I probably will), but there are a couple of things that help me be able to daydream, and therefore, to write:

My feet.

My iPod. (Actually, it's my husband's. Shh. Don't tell him.)

A solitary place to walk.

That's it. Without those things, my creative engine short-circuits and my energy is off kilter. Sometimes I have to go and "walk it out" to give my brain time to fire off all the sequences it's processing and pair them to the mood of the music I'm pumping into my ears. From there, I can begin to make sense of the little ideas and snippets that I can't figure out how to put together. While I'm walking, my mind gets a chance to wander in cadence, and it helps get things in line. Not to mention that having an opportunity to open up my senses to new stimuli that I can't directly control can send my mind off in unexpected directions, unlike my desk where nothing changes except the smell when it's time to bathe the dog.

The Feet

Mine are the big ones on the right, pictured with fellow Converse Comrades.

My feet kind of suck. They are flat and they hurt. A lot. They were actually the reason that I stopped working as a bookseller. I put a big ol' stress fracture in my navicular bone and very intelligently worked for six months with a limp before I went to the doc.

Do not do this.

I was in a boot with crutches for the better part of a year, and this turned me into a soggy ball of anxious laborador who waited by the door for Husband to come home every day so that he could drive me in the car while I stuck my head out the window and wagged my tail. I wrote a lot during that period of time since I couldn't go for my walks, but none of it was good...because I couldn't go for my walks.

My feet still hurt, and I still abuse them, but I love them so. They are more than transportation. When it comes to my creativity, they are basically an extension of my brain.

The Music

iPod 5th generation, 2005-2013 RIP (Died of battery cancer. Very sad.)

I am a musician and I married a musician and most of my friends are musicians and I imagine that most of my characters are musicians even if they don't say so. Music is not just an important part of my life, it is part of my DNA, like blue eyes and sarcasm. I devour songs, stringing them in one ear and out the other, sucking all the inspiration off of them and leaving nothing but bones behind. I am always trolling for a new song or band or melody or lyric. I slurp them all up. Without music to keep up my energy and set the mood, my walks become painful and exhausting and my writing empty and without ambiance. I can say unconditionally that I am addicted to music. I hope I never recover.

The Path

I am a solitary creature. I crave aloneness like oxygen. If I do not feel alone, I cannot think. At all. Ever. I do my best writing in the middle of the night when my brain finally feels comfortable that every other sentient being in perceivable range is locked firmly in the "off" position. 

That goes for my walks too. If you're sitting on your porch and see me coming, I will pretend to tie my shoe and walk the other way. I will go back into my house and come back an hour later praying with all my might that you have tired of porch-sitting. Don't take it personally. It's not you, it's me. I go it alone, or I cannot go it. Period.

My neighborhood is great for walking. It's quiet, it's safe, and there are multiple paths I can slink and slide around if I see any other person stick their head out of their home. (Obviously not having gotten the memo that when I am outside NO ONE ELSE is allowed outside. Anywhere, for any reason.)

Achieving Success

If a walk is successful, it means that I have managed for some short period of time forget who and where I am and absorb myself in the more fertile patches of my mind where story ideas and characters are spawned. The music keeps the pain from my feet at bay, keeps my breathing steady, and helps me forget. My feet keep moving, one step and then the next, keeping my energy pumping a cadence. The road sits a silent servant beneath me, rolling on and on until my idea crests its apex and sends me running back in the house for a pen.

Of everything I love about my walks, my favorite part is, was, and always will be running back in the house for a pen.