an interview with

DAN WAKEFIELD

by D. Patrick Miller

As a young writer from Indiana coming of age in New York City, Dan Wakefield remembers making a pilgrimage to see the “holy of holies” — the table at the White Horse Tavern where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas had his last drink before staggering toward the door and collapsing, thence to be taken to a nearby hospital where he died of alcoholism at the age of thirty-nine.

“I was thrilled,” recalls Wakefield. “Maybe I, too, could someday be a great writer and a romantic figure . . . and die of alcoholism before reaching the rotting age of forty!”

In fact, as a drinking writer Wakefield had considerable success during the decade of the 1970s, when he wrote the bestselling novels Starting Over (made into a hit movie starring Burt Reynolds) and Going All the Way (filmed a few years ago in an independent production starring Ben Affleck just before he became a hot Hollywood property). But Wakefield began to dry out gradually during his late forties, after an unhappy sojourn as a Hollywood screenwriter during which his medical doctor alerted him to danger signals of high blood pressure and a rapid pulse. Rather than bottoming out abruptly and going “cold turkey,” Wakefield gradually weaned himself from alcohol during a years-long process of regaining his physical health — and returning, to his own surprise, to the spiritual inclinations of his youth.

Since that time Wakefield has become a leading voice recommending a healthy and creative path of personal spirituality. This message is reaffirmed in his recent title Releasing the Creative Spirit (Skylight Paths Publishing). Below, Wakefield dispels some popular myths of creativity and offers veteran advice on getting past those pesky “blocks” that can obstruct creative expressions.

* * * * *

You’ve been creative and successful as a steady drinker, and creative and successful through many years of sobriety. Which approach do you recommend?
WAKEFIELD: When I was “creative as a drinker” I wasn’t actually drinking while writing! Looking back, I feel that writing the novels saved my life. During the process of working on them, I had very little to drink — a beer or a few glasses of wine at night. It was between the books that I went on binges and got into heavy drinking.

As it turns out, even the “big drinker” writers weren’t usually drinking during the process. If they did, they faded quickly, or died early. Though famous for writing about acid, Ken Kesey pointed out that he never did it while writing. Some people have imagined that you can actually have great visions and get them written down while tripping. But Jack Kerouac wrote that the psilocybin Leary gave him was really harmful to his writing. None of these reports fit the “image” of the boozing, drugging writer, so the truth of the situation is not so well known.

Some people might see the spiritual life as one of meditation, stillness, and nondoing. What’s creativity got to do with it?
WAKEFIELD: Creative work is always spiritual if it means you’re trying to get at the truth, or express the truth as you see it. A Zen teacher once told a writer who was “looking for a practice” that “Writing is your practice!” It’s a form of meditation in itself, because you can’t be thinking of twelve other things while writing one sentence. Thus the process of writing can serve as the “mantra” one would use in traditional meditation. After all, a mantra is used to keep your mind focused, to shut out the babble of the undisciplined “monkey mind” — and writing does that too.

What are some of the ways of being creative that we don’t usually think about? Does creativity always have a “product”?
WAKEFIELD: We often forget that we’re being creative in our own daily life — for instance, we create relationships, friendships, and alliances, and we can create new attitudes toward people we already know. A great saying of Eastern wisdom suggests that “When I change, you change.” We can’t change anyone else except by changing ourselves, and that necessarily transforms how other people relate to us.

We can also create moods, ambience, and a creative environment. Instead of waking to a jarring alarm we can waken to music. I have a friend who lights candles for breakfast — oatmeal with candles by the bowl! And anytime we cook we’ve got a great opportunity for creativity. Anyone who reads the great food writer M.F.K. Fisher (The Gastronomical Me is a good one to start with) can see what amazing creativity is involved not only in cooking but also in eating, in appreciating one’s own sense of taste!

Are there any particular spiritual practices that help further creativity? Is there something you do on a regular basis to help you get started writing, for instance?
WAKEFIELD: To get started writing I get quiet, put in ear plugs, and say a personal prayer — not about writing, but about my personal spiritual connection, which in my case is with Jesus. In my book How Do We Know When It’s God? I describe myself as a “Plain Christian”— not orthodox, not fundamentalist, not right-wing or left wing or any kind of designation. I have a very personal interpretation of Jesus and The Gospels. The closest things I have read that connect with my own faith are by Reynolds Price (Three Gospels), who I feel is the most eloquent writer today in terms of Christian spirituality of a personal nature.

As a teacher of creativity, what blocks do you see getting in people’s way most often?
WAKEFIELD: One of the most prevalent blocks to creativity has to do with people being stymied by others’ judgements. They’re told they’re not part of the elite who get to be creative in life, or that what they’re doing isn’t good enough. In the book I have an interview with the singer Judy Collins, who tells how she stopped writing after being accused of plagiarism by a high school teacher who didn’t think she was capable of writing as well as she did. She only wrote in her journals till a fellow songwriter read the journals and said “I see you’re writing songs.” She said no, she couldn’t write. Then he pointed out certain sentences and said “If you put those words to music it’s a song,” and she began writing her own songs.

A woman in one of my workshops just sat there when we were doing a simple drawing exercise. I asked what the problem was and she said “I’m not visual.” Someone had told her that in grade school so she stopped ever trying to draw anything! I explained that our workshop was just for ourselves, and she could draw stick figures if she wanted to. When she saw what others were doing and how simple it was, she began drawing again, and she did fine.

What are your favorite recommendations for getting past writer’s block?
WAKEFIELD: Read writers you like, who have a vision of the world you like. Henry James does it for me, because he loved he people he wrote about. Even when they did terrible or dumb things, you could tell he respected them, had a deep feeling for them. That always lifts me up.

In tough times I read the Psalms — especially the 139th Psalm, which speaks of how God is everywhere — even “if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. . .the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” But the whole thing should be read to be appreciated — except for some warlike stuff at the end it is one of the great statements of the human condition, and the presence of God.

Yoga and exercise are great un-blockers. I have had ideas really “pop out” doing a yoga pose after feeling stuck at the word processor.

Many people may hesitate to do creative work because they doubt that they can ever succeed in the marketplace with their end result.
WAKEFIELD: In today’s marketplace I don’t think anyone knows what will succeed.You have to do it for the love of the thing itself, for the act of doing it, for the feeling you are saying something true that maybe others are afraid to say. Look at the great “failures” when they came out — Moby Dick, Ulysses, Walden being prime examples. Hawthorne could never sell more than 5,000 copies of his books, while popular writers of the day were selling tens of thousands. Melville couldn’t get an advance at one point. Can you imagine Thoreau worrying about his book being “successful?”

Your book has successive chapters on “emptying” and “filling up.” What does the creative person need to empty out, and what’s good to fill up with?
WAKEFIELD: You need to empty out the myths — like drinking and drugs will help you, or you have to have the perfect time and place to create, or you have to be miserable to do anything profound! Fill up on getting into shape mentally and physically. Willa Cather had great insights on this; she said that to be a writer you have to take care of yourself the way a singer does. Fill up on great writers, read their biographies, see how few “had it easy” so you won’t feel sorry for yourself. Fill up on music you love, on good talk, and good friends, whatever energizes you.

Use taste as a stimulant to creativity. Eat an apple, for instance, and see if a story comes to mind. I did this with a graduate class, and good stories came from everyone. A woman wrote how she ate her first apple when she came to Miami from Cuba at age 9 and it wasn’t like what she thought it would be. It was tart, not sweet, turned yellow where she bit into it, was hard, not soft or “dessert-like.” This set off memories of how many other things weren’t like she was told they would be when she go to U.S. She ended up with a wonderful memoir, starting with that single bite of an apple. And remember that Proust got his great work out of tasting the madeleine that reminded him of childhood!

For more information on Dan Wakefield, visit his website at www.danwakefield.com.

Copyright 2002 by D. Patrick Miller. All rights reserved.
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