Leanne Phillips

I was 15 years old when Steven Spielberg’s Jaws hit movie theaters in the summer of 1975. As far as I am concerned, it has not been safe to go back in the water since.

Jaws apparently touched a nerve with a whole lot of people, but for a 15-year old girl who had lived by the beach her entire life and spent lots of time splashing around in the ocean, it really hit home. Actually, I’m not sure whether it was the movie that ruined me so much as it was the fact that my 12-year old brother Keith was fascinated by it. From that day forward, he couldn’t get his hands on enough books and information about sharks and, specifically, shark attacks. He was more than happy to share everything he learned with the rest of us. We all became privy to little-known facts about shark attacks, including the fact that most shark attacks occur in water less than three feet deep. So much for wading.

My brother also regaled us with stories of notable shark attacks, such as the haunting story of 12-year old Lester Stilwell. In 1916, Lester Stilwell was attacked and killed by a Great White Shark while swimming with friends in a local, New Jersey swimming hole. The shark killed two men just off the Jersey shore during the first week of July, 1916, then apparently became disoriented and traveled from the sea, up a creek, and into the swimming hole.

On July 12th, the shark was spotted in the creek, then entered the swimming hole and killed 12-year old Lester and Stanley Fisher, a man who tried to recover Lester’s body. Two boys were still swimming downstream, unaware of the danger. Someone in the group ran downstream and shouted at the two boys to get out of the water. As the boys attempted to climb out of the creek, the shark grabbled the leg of one of the boys, 14-year old Joseph Dunn. Joseph survived, but was seriously injured. So much for swimming holes.

Jaws was a fictionalized and dramatized account of a shark on a mission. Intellectually, I know that. But, it opened up a new world to me, a world I’d just as soon I’d never known existed. I love the beach. The few times I’ve lived any distance from the ocean, I’ve felt a sort of claustrophobia that is eased immediately when I’m in sight of the sea again. I love beachcombing and gazing out at the water, walking out onto the pier, sunbathing, gathering sea shells. But as far as seeing the ocean as a place to splash, swim, surf, scuba dive. . . those things have pretty much been ruined for me.

Three summers ago, a neighbor and surfing enthusiast offered to teach my 19-year old daughter Melissa to surf at Avila Beach, a quiet spot just a couple of miles north of our home. I cautioned Melissa about sharks, and she laughed at me, her mom, being overly-protective as usual. That’s the thing about shark attacks. They are rare enough to have taken on a mythical, fantastical Hollywood movie quality.

A couple of weeks later, on August 19, 2003, a woman was attacked and killed by a great white shark at Avila Beach. It was the first fatal shark attack on California’s Central Coast in about 10 years. Realistically, I know it may be another 10 years or even more before another fatal attack occurs. Intellectually, I know my chances of being killed by a shark are much less than my chances of being killed in an auto accident, or by lightning, or even by a bee. But I’m a product of the Jaws generation, and I’m just not taking any chances.

Paula Huston, author of Daughters of Song and The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life, has an interesting perspective on the idea of making time to write. “Don’t,” she says.

Paula lives in the next town over and gave a workshop several years ago at a local writer’s conference I attended. What she had to say forever changed the way I look at my writing schedule.

Paula’s advice was to stop putting everything else first and fitting writing in where you can, a practice which often leaves a writer with little or no time to actually write. Instead, she said, writing should be the main focus. It’s the other stuff, things like cooking, cleaning, gardening and PTA meetings, that’s unnecessary.

Paula also recommended learning to say no to things that are not truly important to you and that don’t further your goals. Simplify your life, cut back on activities that are not adding to your life and focus your energies on writing. Don’t do things that really are not important to you out of a sense of obligation.

Don’t make time for writing. Turn that notion on it’s head: If writing is your passion, then make writing the center of your life, and when you feel like it, make time for all the other stuff.

To hear the Beach Boys tell it, every California girl is blonde, tan and can ride the waves on the most bombin’ day with the best of them. As a woman who has lived in California all of my life, I’m here to burst your bubble.

Unfortunately, we California girls are not all Bay Watch babes ready to dive into the surf with boogie board in hand. In fact, if you’re counting on me to paddle out on my board and rescue you from a rip tide, you’ve got a serious problem. First off, I don’t even have a surfboard. Second, even if I did, I’d probably make a unique table or wall hanging out of it.

I tried surfing once, when I was a teenager. I lived in Coronado at the time, an isthmus at the southernmost tip of California. With the San Diego Bay on one side of me and the Pacific Ocean on the other, I spent a lot of time at the beach. It was only natural that I at least give surfing a try.

I consider myself fairly adventurous. I often watched the boys out there riding the waves and longed to join them. (FYI, all California boys are blonde, tan, hot and excellent surfers–that part of the myth is true.) The experienced surfers made it look so fun, so wild, so carefree. One hot summer day, I decided to go for it.

Here’s the thing about surfing: It’s not as easy as it looks. On my first attempt, I managed to maneuver the board into the water and paddle out past the breakers. I even managed to turn the board around, start paddling for shore and stand up on the board. From there, however, it went downhill very quickly.

Without so much as a warning, the Pacific Ocean picked the board up, with me on it, and hurled us both forward. I flew off the board and ended up face down on the ocean floor with a mouth full of sand and a nose full of sea water. Needless to say, I didn’t like it one bit.

It’s not that I couldn’t have mastered surfing had I given it the effort. But at that moment, I realized that, before I could be out there riding the waves with grace and dignity, I would first have to taste a lot more mouthfuls of sand. I would have to invest valuable time that could be better spent lying on the beach and reading. And after all, someone has to watch the hot surfer boys. Otherwise, who would they show off for?

My writing day is filled with interruptions, most of them welcomed, but interruptions nonetheless. From the telephone ringing, to e-mails and instant messages, to checking in on writing message boards and job listings, to the sudden thought that I need to run the mail downstairs before the mailman comes–the interruptions are constant and never-ending.

As a writer, it is important to set aside uninterrupted writing time each day. I find my writing day goes much more smoothly when I turn the telephone ringer off, let the answering machine pick up, shut off the e-mail notifications, let messages pile up in my in-box for just a bit, and focus totally and completely on my writing, even if it’s only for a couple of hours.

When I am interrupted, it is not just the moment of the interruption that is at stake. It is several moments afterward as well, the moments it takes me to remember where I was, to get my mind back to that magical place, and to pick up where I left off.

If you are a writer and you want to increase your productivity, I highly recommend giving yourself uninterrupted writing time each day. Set aside time for answering telephone calls, answering e-mail and running errands, but let your writing time be totally and completely your writing time.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, when I feel that I don’t have enough time in my life to write as much as I’d like: The thing is, I do write. I write a lot, each and every day.

In addition to paid writing, I write blog entries and journal entries, I respond to e-mails from friends and posts on community message boards to which I belong. I post messages and respond to messages in a couple of professional groups. Writing today is not the solitary profession it once was, and by networking and sharing information through e-mail loops and groups and writing forums, I’ve learned a great deal, and more rapidly than I would have been able to do if left to my own devices.

But I’m wondering lately how many words I really do write every day. If I added up the words in every e-mail, every post, every blog and journal entry, every letter to a friend, every update on Twitter or MySpace or Facebook, I think I’d have easily written the entire Harry Potter series by now. It’s something to consider.

One of my favorite credos is from The Four Agreements, by don Miguel Ruiz, who writes that, among other things, we should be impeccable with our word. I’ve always taken that to mean to speak truthfully and kindly and fairly. Now, I’m wondering whether being impeccable with our word might also mean to value our words, to use them well, not to fritter them away. At the end of my life, what percentage of the words I’ve written and said will I wish I could take back and redistribute to better use?

Before I started writing regularly, I used to be afraid that I would run out of words, that I would not have enough to say. I think that fear is one of the things that kept me from beginning.

Having spent 20 years working in the legal field, being analytical and logical. I was afraid, too, that all of this left-brained thinking had ruined my ability to be creative. I was afraid that, when I sat down to write, the words would not come, and the words that did come would not be creative, but logical and dead and boring.

Frankly, my fears were not unwarranted. It was hard to get started. I couldn’t think of anything to write about. I took to carrying a tiny notebook with me, so I could write down the ideas as they came to me. This is something I heard about from another writer. The notebook did come in handy–it was gradually filled with reminders about dental appointments and shopping lists.

Once I sat down to write, getting the words to come out was difficult. I was becoming more and more convinced that, during the years I hadn’t been writing, my writing muscle and my coming-up-with-ideas-for-things-to-write-about muscle had completely atrophied. But I kept at it, and I kept carrying the notebook around, and one day, it was if the floodgates opened.

I was trying to come up with ideas for a blog I was working on in connection with a travel website. I was browsing in a book store, not really thinking about it, when the ideas started to come. I jotted down one idea, then a couple more, and suddenly the ideas kept coming and coming. I even tried to shut it off at one point, so I could continue with my browsing. But I finally had to give in to it, sit down at a table and write out page after page after page of ideas.

Writing, thinking, being creative, ideas…those things are like muscles. If we don’t use them, they may hide away for awhile, but they are always there for us to use. I’ve found that, if you keep at it, if you keep thinking and keep writing and keep trying, you will work those muscles and they, in turn, will begin to work for you again.

I’m working on this new, blog-style website.  My theory is that it will be much easier to keep current what with my very busy schedule. ;)