Every writer must think about it, the make or break moment of their career – when they go on their first radio interview, for instance, or hold their first book signing, or some other such pivotal event that indicates that they have “arrived” in the eyes of the public.

But this is not the pivotal moment Paul Jarvis is talking about. In his book Everything I Know, the Canadian designer, musician, author and freelance guide describes something much more elemental – the proverbial terror of the blank page, which he identifies really as an avoidance of the truth and authenticity in ourselves.  In a culture and time when we hear much discussion about the tech-driven “crisis of attention,” he offers a simple antidote, veined with other insights on tapping into our aliveness through our work.  

Among thoughts and stories illustrating the importance of vulnerability, fearlessness, taking a stand, risk, and dealing with rejection as well as straight up being wrong about something, Jarvis astutely describes that pivotal moment, the creative moment when one sits down to write and a familiar feeling sets in:    

You panic. You breathe more rapidly. You probably grab your phone and refresh Facebook instead of pushing through the fear.

This post also appears on The MFA Project, an online resource for writers seeking educational alternatives to a degree in creative writing. 

Perhaps it’s that I’m preparing to set out on the great American road trip – the first in my life, as it happens – or roads just keep appearing all over the place in my poems, prompting me to wonder whether I’ve developed some kind of unconscious obsession with the romance of wandering, pursuing wide open spaces, and getting lost. But of late, roads and the mythical journey they represent have come to figure large in my thinking about writing and my approach to a writing education. And not just any roads, but the abandoned ones, the neglected ones, or the ones most people don’t seem to be taking at all. It’s not even that I am on such a road myself at the moment, but the topic for whatever reason intrigues me, like a terrier after a scent. And I find myself rooting around in it.

This is where I warn you that my findings are irreverently and unreservedly self-serving, contrarian, and anti-creative writing MFA. What do they call it in psychology, confirmation bias?  

I owe Maria Popova and her Brain Pickings blog at least three years’ worth of gratitude and homemade pies for all the wisdom that’s come my way via her gleanings from the world of literature, covering every arts/sciences discipline and topic imaginable. One of her latest posts, entitled “Leonardo’s Brain: What a Posthumous Brain Scan Six Centuries Later Reveals about the Source of da Vinci’s Creativity,” snagged my attention earlier this week and wouldn’t let go.

Here’s what I pulled from the post that I found pertinent to the above.

The road less traveled  

Owing to his illegitimate birth, Leonardo apparently didn’t have a formal education. Banned from the liturgical schools of his time, he was entirely self-taught in Greek and Latin, the languages of the Italian Renaissance that were the portal he would later access to become the mathematician, artist, and scientist that history remembers. Long after he had established his career, people questioned his expertise numerous times on the point that he lacked the 16th century equivalent of what would have been a college degree.

His reply?  

They will say that because of my lack of book learning, I cannot properly express what I desire to treat of. Do they not know that my subjects require for their exposition experience rather than the words of others? And since experience has been the mistress, to her in all points I make my appeal.

Experience as mistress? Is he saying that the hours spent reading and writing at my desk is experience enough without an advanced degree? That I’m getting the “book learning” he too missed back in his day, by reading writers I admire, analyzing their works and seeing how they do it, which is maybe an education in its right? These are genuine questions, but that’s the drift I got from it.  

The story that inspired this post is brought to you by Jenny Heishman and Andre ten Dam, my new friends who are currently afield in the Netherlands!

I still can’t believe my luck: on the heels of the social storm that was VORTEXT, I’d been thinking how perfect it would be if I could get just three weeks to disappear from the world and produce some new writing. (I am an avid editor and polisher, but first drafts are like blood from a stone every time). “If I could have just three weeks,” I said to Phil. Not three days after that, I received an email from artist Jenny Heishman on Bainbridge, asking whether I would be available to do a house-sit for three weeks while she and her partner Andre visited his family in the Netherlands. No more; no less. Furthermore, would I be willing to take on the cuddly task of caring for their two Rhineland bunny rabbits, Jacco (M) and Koos (F) (pictured below in all their long-eared lettuce-munching glory)?

Yes, yes, and yes! 

Jacco (left) and Koos (right)

I’ve been here three days, and Jenny and Andre’s cottage is love itself. Nestled in seaside woods on the southeast shore of Bainbridge Island, the place has turned out to be the perfect spot to wander, brood and bang out those constipated first drafts. Even more so, truly, for what the rabbit people have taught me so far about how to be a good writer (the appellation seems to suit, given how very much they act like people, a trait that’ll hopefully become evident in their lessons to me, listed thus):