Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Just write until you find the ‘Zen’ of the exercise
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; instead explain how the glint of light on broken glass reflects through lace curtains and how it dances on the wall.”
In 1961, I was told that during a conversation with Brother Jean Martel Baptist, my English teacher.
“A Zen writer gives form to everything they see and puts it in the language of the soul,” he said.
I struggled for years attempting to untangle his meaning. I finally solved the riddle years ago; but I wasn’t sure until I became closely connected to the works of Mari Sandoz, the Zen writer from the Sand Hills of northwest Nebraska.
In 1935, Sandoz published “Old Jules,” a portrait of her pioneer father that grew out of “the silent hours listening behind the stove or the wood box when it was assumed, of course, that I was asleep in bed.” She told how Jules shaped the land and how the land shaped him.
During my recent travels through Nebraska, I picked up a copy of the Sandoz masterpiece and read its 400 pages in one sitting. Before opening the first page, I drove to the Lakota Sioux grasslands, found a dirt road, then drove some more. I sat in the center of her universe and must have felt like she did, the only person on Earth. I began reading the book and, as the last light vanished on the western horizon, I finished. I learned that what makes Sandoz a Zen writer is her ability to intellectualize the disparity, loneliness, beauty and mysterious magical quality of the Great Plains.
Mari Sandoz graduated from the eighth grade at 17 and became the principal teacher of rural schools throughout the Sand Hills.
For the past 40 years, I’ve helped students transition to the university with a particular focus on the college essay. Most of my mornings are spent sitting in Starbucks, nursing a cup of black tea, writing my novels, and editing the work of my students who hope to dazzle the admissions committees of the top colleges in the United States. I have found that in La Cañada it is typical for parents to push their children toward the most highly regarded universities. Each morning, parents stop by and ask me questions about the process of writing. Somehow I’ve commandeered the reputation of being able to put two sentences together. That’s a big stretch for a street kid from the Bronx. But I had Brother Jean, and I wrote down everything he said in my journal.
When the La Cañada moms ask for perspective on writing to pass along to their children, I quote him. “To write is like staring at a blank page until your ears bleed. No short cuts!”
While waiting for Hugo to brew their morning blend, a parent might ask, “Dr. Joe, how can my son/daughter become a good writer?”
Since Hugo can serve up a latte faster than you can say “sweet Lucy wine,” I know to be quick with a response.
“Read great literature, expand your vocabulary and travel,” I say.
“Thank you,” they exclaim as they grab their coffee and quickly exit the door.
The La Cañada schools produce the best and the brightest students, yet much of the writing that evolves is typically “subject, verb, object.” I understand that, because Zen writing takes time to develop, and even if you are genetically predisposed to write well, you still have to find it within you.
This year, one of my students, Taryn Harris, a senior from La Cañada High School, has a style of writing that Brother Jean described 56 years ago as “Zen writing.”
Let me end with a quote that Brother Jean stole from Somerset Maugham and regularly repeated: “There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. Just write.”
JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
