Zen and the Art of #WritingCommunity

Ever since discovering them in a book entitled Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, I have loved the quiet wisdom to be found in Zen parables.

 

Here’s one of my favorites:

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

 

Nan-in’s actions are difficult to fathom, especially for the professor. The scene is humorous if not surreal. Seated with his cup extended to receive his tea, the professor believes this the preamble to learning about Zen. One can almost see him watching the cup overflow its brim, the tea pouring down the sides and puddling on the floor. He must be wondering if Nan-in is senile.

Nan-in’s actions and words say, “Zen is unlike any other understanding of how to conduct oneself in the world. To truly be receptive to what I have to teach, you can’t question anything that happens in this room. You must be empty and come to Zen like a child.”

“Outside of this room,” Nan-in seems to say, “you are an expert in your field. Here, though, sitting at my knee to learn Zen, you know nothing. Start from nothingness, and we might go somewhere.”

The parable speaks to more than just learning Zen or the ability to release a heightened sense of knowledge and assumptions. In many situations, we bring preconceived notions about ourselves and about the subject that we might experience.

For instance, we might start a math class and already decide we are going to hate it because we’ve hated math classes in the past. We sit in the back of the room with our arms crossed, already shutting out an experience that we have yet to experience. This could be the professor that really makes math click, but we shut her out because our cup is full of our own resistance.

I think about my own experiences and assumptions when I became part of the #WritingCommunity on Twitter. My first assumption was that I wouldn’t like it, but it was a necessary evil because writers have to have a “platform” and a place to share their work. I assumed I would do banal activities like posting Amazon links to my books, even as I cringed doing it. I certainly didn’t think I would meet really interesting and supportive people. I assumed all would be self-serving and looking for the same sales opportunities for their books. I assumed my feed would be filled with self-promoting garbage (and I would be filling the feeds of others with my own seemingly necessary, but self-promoting garbage).

For anyone just getting into the #WritingCommunity, I would encourage you to empty your cup. Ease into the community. Look around. Find out what it’s about. Engage in meaningful ways with others. Also, watch what others do. What works? What doesn’t work?

(Just a note… I don’t think it works just to shout in a tweet, “I need followers! I’m at 300, let’s get me to 400!” These are people you’re trying to connect with, not numbers to be collected. The followers will come naturally if you conduct yourself naturally.)

I can already tell you, just arbitrarily posting links to your amazon page isn’t going to get you very far either… and might even get you muted.

In my experience, people in the community want genuine connections (at least many do). They don’t want to be marketed to. But if they become genuinely interested in you, they might be interested in what you write. And more importantly, you might have genuine human interactions that are even more rewarding than sales and branding.

I can say that I’m very glad that, somehow, I managed to empty my cup. I’m enjoying my experiences (for the most part) in the #WritingCommunity. I’ve changed my mindset from “I need this to brand myself and sell books” to “Hey, I actually enjoy some of the people I’m meeting. This is adding meaning to my life.”

I started this blog thinking about how I would use it to market my books. Instead, I realized I could be useful by sharing what I know after nearly thirty years of writing and twenty years of teaching fiction.

Some of my assumptions about being in the community are true. There are posts that annoy me, but they are far outweighed by positive interactions… especially with the folks who are finding my instructive blog posts… well, instructive.

So, by all means, get involved with the #WritingCommunity, but empty your cup first. Make no assumptions about what the experience will be like, and instead find ways to make the experience meaningful to you.

It’s not a platform; it’s an opportunity for genuine connections in a creative genre that’s often lonely.

In the end, genuine connections will likely mean more for your writing and your sales. It will certainly mean more for your soul.