A Zen Buddhist saying goes like this: "Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water."
That quote has stuck with us since we first heard it. Unpack it and the core message is this: some chores have to be done every day to keep us alive. They might be menial. They might be boring. They might make your eyes roll back in your head just thinking about them. But for anyone seeking enlightenment, the important thing is that no matter what happens, these chores remain. We will still need to eat, we will still need to drink, and we will still need to survive.
We built our app around a simple belief: for writers, poets and storytellers, what matters most to our survival, our survival of each day, is getting to the page. Many of us understand the world by putting pen to paper and working out what we have seen, even when it is just a pile of seemingly meaningless observations. The accumulation of seeing how we see, and what we see, helps us understand both the world around us and ourselves.
For someone with a poet's spirit or a writer's soul, we believe writing is an essential chore, as essential as gathering firewood or bringing water up from the river once was. That is how ChopWord got its name.
Finding a name for the blog
When it came time to build a home for the things we find interesting, the lessons and observations we think might be valuable to other writers, we needed a name for the blog. After some searching and brainstorming, we looked beyond writing to other art forms, including music.
We landed on The Woodshed.
Woodshedding comes from music, and it carries some interesting meaning in jazz in particular, which is why we were so drawn to it. The OnMusic Dictionary defines it this way: "The act of rehearsing a difficult passage of a composition. This typically is where a single performer rehearses the passage over and over until it can be performed flawlessly."
Saxophonist and educator Paul Klemperer, of Texas, wrote about the idea in an article for the JazzThink eZine. He described the woodshed as "the place where you work out the techniques that form the foundation of your improvisational ability." The same piece goes on:
The term woodshedding in jazz means more than just practicing. It is a recognition of the need to sequester oneself and dig into the hard mechanics of the music before you can come back and play with a group in public. There's something philosophical, almost religious, about the term. The musical treasures of jazz are not easily accessed. You have to dig deep into yourself, discipline yourself, become focused on the music and your instrument before you can unlock the treasure chest. At the same time woodshedding is a process of demystifying the music... It can be learned if one is patient. It is a humbling but necessary chore, like chopping wood before you can start the fire.
A cabin, a studio, a few minutes
When Justin Vernon of Bon Iver needed to break through as an artist, and to figure out what exactly was bubbling over inside him that he had not yet been able to put into anything tangible, he went to live in a small cabin in the wilderness. He spent his days living simply and creating from the soul. It was not an expensive studio, and there was no notable producer. It was about giving himself the time, the space and the solitude to just be, and to commune with his soul.
That is what we mean by the woodshed.
Not all of us can rent a cabin for an extended stay and disappear. But everyone who is serious about advancing their craft has the chance to commune with their inner artist child, as Julia Cameron calls it in The Artist's Way. For even a few minutes each day, getting in front of the page and putting one word after another: that is the woodshed.
More than new sentences
Beyond creating sentences of our own, the woodshed is also about taking time each day to learn from the masters. Read the great works. Do writing exercises. Learn more deeply about the mechanics of language and the structure of sentences. Try our favorite exercise: hand-copying novels we consider great, to understand how they work from the inside.
All of it, to us, is woodshedding. Together it should become some flavor of daily practice, as natural as breathing, and as regular and vital as chopping wood and carrying water once were.