One of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read on the creative writing process is A Walk Between Heaven and Earth: A Personal Journal on Writing and the Creative Process by Burghild Nina Holzer. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in wanting to express themselves in writing. The book ends with this final journal entry found on page 124.
EVENING
One day
I walked on the mountain
and the flute song
went through me.
That’s all.
I became the reed
and the wind went through
and I wrote it down
in my journal.
Read my first blog post about this wonderful book: Burghild Nina Holzer inspires us to write and discover who we are and what we have to say.
I include an excerpt from one of her entries that the publisher edited down to put on the back cover. The four-sentence paragraph starts: “Talking to paper is talking to the divine.” I include that paragraph and the full eight-sentence journal entry from which it was taken. Together they represent the essential message of this inspirational little book.
A 4-line poem by John O’Donohue says a similar thing—how he was amazed by each revelatory moment and turned them into poems.
A recent post on the writing experience is intimately expressed in this lovely poem, “Morning Prayer,” by Deborah J. Brasket.
Last year I discovered inspiring quotes about writing and the writing life by this Canadian aboriginal author that I shared in these blog posts: Coincidences happened that introduced me to the great Ojibway storyteller Richard Wagamese | Insights from Richard Wagamese’s Meditations | Richard Wagamese bravely entered the cracks in his life to reveal the hidden gold buried within.
Another writer worth listening to what she says about her writing life is Sue Monk Kidd on empathy and the purpose and power of literature to enter the common heart.
I’ve posted earlier entries on writing you may also find worthwhile: Writing—a poem on the writing process; INSPIRATION, a poem by Nathanael Chawkin; Elizabeth Gilbert—Some Thoughts On Writing; Writers on Writing–What Writing Means To Writers; and Words of Wisdom on Writing from Literary Lights.
Tags: becoming an innocent instrument for creative expression, Burghild Nina Holzer, creative writing, Deborah J. Brasket, Elizabeth Gilbert, inspiration, John O'Donohue, journaling, Nathanael Chawkin, Richard Wagamese, Sue Monk Kidd, the creative process, writers on writing, writing it down
The Uncarved Blog 
March 30, 2021 at 2:08 am |
[…] I posted another excerpt from her book: B. Nina Holzer’s final entry in her journal shows us how she is an innocent instrument for writin…. […]
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March 30, 2021 at 10:13 am |
Thank you for this, with many threads worth following. I’ll add a paraphrased quote from Greg Brown, the last time I heard him live in Fairfield. “People ask me what my songs mean. Hell, I don’t know. It’s enough for me to write them down. I’m just God’s secretary.”
Happy Tuesday,
~Melinda
On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 2:05 AM The Uncarved Blog wrote:
> Ken Chawkin posted: ” One of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read on > the creative writing process is A Walk Between Heaven and Earth: A Personal > Journal on Writing and the Creative Process by Burghild Nina Holzer. I > recommend it to anyone who is interested in wanting to ex” >
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March 30, 2021 at 10:29 am |
Thank you for this anecdote. What a character! I love it! It’s perfect and worth remembering.
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April 2, 2021 at 7:15 pm |
Thank you for all these great links on writing. I loved the Donohue poem. Also what Holzer says about being the reed the wind blows through. I wrote a poem with a similar image called “On a Bus to Papeete” writing about a “flow” experience. Here’s part of it.
Objects like petals on a dark stream,
streaming through me, leave me
Clean and empty as a hollow reed, still
faintly tingling with the rhapsody of being.
Writing produces that sense of flow as well as those moments of spiritual bliss. I blogged about the flow experience here: https://deborahbrasket.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/into-the-flow-bringing-the-mountain-top-into-market-place/
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April 2, 2021 at 11:09 pm |
Thank you for sharing another beautiful poem and post about your flow and witnessing experience. Interesting that you also described it the same way as Holzer did, being a reed the wind blows through. You obviously do experience “that sense of flow as well as those moments of spiritual bliss” as described in your sublime poem, Morning Prayer, which I posted. Glad you’re sharing your gifts with the world!
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April 3, 2021 at 2:21 pm |
Nina its Frank Conway from Hidden Villa in Calif., Sweatlodge with You and Red Hawk at Mt. Shasta.Your Poetry class and seminars . And Accupressure were life changing for me, I am eternally Grateful to have learned so much with you. Today I thought I saw you on Master Mingtong Gu livestream session, was this you? How are you? I would love to see you again. Im in Albuquerque now. The eagle feathers you gave me are one of my most treasured possessions . They are still hanging high. Please grace me with the blessing of your presence. Always sending you good thoughts and prayers, ever grateful; Frank
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April 5, 2021 at 1:29 pm |
BEAUTIFUL. May we all be the reed, the hollow bone, the instrument of life force, SPIRIT
Nathanael Chawkin, M.A.”All things change when we do” Integral Martial Arts | LinkedIn
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April 9, 2021 at 3:48 pm |
Now that I think of it, I remember writing a haiku that has a similar rasa or flavor to Holzer’s poem.
Winter Memo
On seeing snowflakes
written on a piece of bark
I copied this down
Winter Memo was published in two different poetry anthologies. First in 13 Ways to Write Haiku, A Poet’s Dozen, published in The Dryland Fish, An Anthology of Contemporary Iowa Poets, 2003, https://theuncarvedblog.com/2010/12/17/13-ways-to-write-haiku-a-poets-dozen/. The second time was in Five Haiku, published in This Enduring Gift — A Flowering of Fairfield Poetry, 2010, https://theuncarvedblog.com/2011/01/06/five-haiku/. Those five haiku were selected from The Dryland Fish.
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