Mary Panttaja

(This will be a series of posts.)

This week I am delivering the third major draft of my novel, Illumine, to my readers. This happens about once a year, hopefully not indefinitely. It’s is a moment when the work of that project glides into a slow drift in the current.

The metaphor I am using for the creative process, catching the updraft, is something that I have experienced more fully with this project as my philosophical understanding of the process has been evolving in parallel to the novel work itself. Both projects have been arising together. So one of my threads in this blog is to write about my own experience.

I have talked to many friends in the last few months mentioning my work, and my enthusiasm for it. I usually use a phrase like “my work is really demanding more of my time.” “I have so much that is compelling my attention.” And they can see that the work is a passion for me that pulls me along, or, we should say, I am caught in the updraft. I have seen a pensive look in their eye, and they explain that they would like to find that passion for something. But they are not sure what it is, and they are not sure how they find it for themselves. And, though I have caught the updraft of many projects, few have been as challenging and long-lived as this one. And I can point to the precise moment that the updraft came into my life. The nature of that moment illustrates one of the important parts of catching any updraft, of finding the source of your creative passion.

Stillness

In the story of Illumine, the character George writes this passage in his journal:

“How does one find the dead point? No, the still point of surrender where one’s path arises into the light before you? And you are quiet enough to be in that moment and see the universe present it to you.

How you come to be still is a matter for the gods or your own will. You can push and prod yourself into stillness or you might land there inadvertently or the world might crush you into it.”

In 2001, all of my plans for the future came to a blinding halt—everything ran out of momentum, all the updraft and self-induce momentum fell away. In this case, events in my life came together to create a vast stillness, a profound lack of movement. And in this stillness lies the secret to finding an updraft—to being quiet enough to sense it coming through.

I will continue the story in the next post.