Sage Cohen's Blog, page 3

He set a goal of 100 rejections

The gap between where we stand and where we want to be is often measured in fear.

This fear energy is so elusive and effective at stopping us in our tracks, it’s difficult to diagnose correctly. We call it procrastination. We call it perfectionism. We say we don’t have the time or the energy or the right notebook. We don’t know enough, we’re not good enough…you get my drift. I’d go so far as to suggest that fear is the root system of any part of our lives where we’re stuck.

For writers, fear of rejection looms especially large.

Letting fear stop us is certainly one option – and we’ve all done it. But I propose that we could start practicing the opposite—for far more interesting results: lean into our fear by doing what scares us as much as is humanly possible. Then attune our writer’s curiosity to what happens along the way.

Here’s the most invigorating example I’ve ever heard of the freedoms and triumphs that await you on the other side of your fear.

 

In this TEDx talk, Jia Jiang shares how he took on his lifelong fear of rejection by seeking out rejection for 100 days. From asking a stranger to borrow $100 to requesting a “burger refill” at a restaurant, this man radically rewired himself and profoundly changed his life simply by staying engaged every time he got a “no”, instead of running.

What Jiang discovered along the ways is that staying with the no—being curious about the objections of others—became an expedited path to some of the most surprising and transformative yesses of his life.

In my own writing life, getting in front of an audience has been my 30-year “overcoming terror” project. Because the first time I spoke my poems out loud to a crowd of listening humans I was absolutely convinced it would kill me, I have sought out every opportunity since then to share my work with people in person.

Over the years, I’ve collected a body of evidence that reading my work in public is something I can survive. And I’ve learned so much about vulnerability, courage, and the power of connecting with an audience.

Jiang and I agree on this: the real gift is what happens when we keep doing the terrifying thing until it its sharp edges get worn down to tolerable—and eventually, even triumphant. When the energy of fear is converted to the energy of momentum (because that’s what happens when we don’t let it stop us), the curse becomes a gift.

Imagine what our literary landscape would be like if Stephen King, Madeline L’Engle, James Joyce, Dr. Seuss, John Grisham, and Audrey Niffenegger had given up after their first several dozen rejections—or more.

And our literary landscape needs equally whatever you’ve been holding back in fear.

That’s why I want to invite you to go get 100 writing rejections. Because this puts you on the path to all of the acceptances that are out there waiting for you to risk reaching for them.

I hope that you will celebrate each rejection along the way as a badge of honor for your willingness to be visible and vulnerable. I also hope you’ll ask yourself and others: What can I learn from this – about my work and myself? Is there a “yes” on the other side of this “no” that I could reach in some new way? With a revision? Or a more suitable agent or publisher? Or a willingness to take an even bigger risk?

Along the way, you won’t just reset your sensitivity to rejection—you may just stumble into grace.

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How have you “stayed with the no”, and what has it taught you? Or what will you do next to risk rejection? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

P.S. Here are nine more ways to harness fear to fuel your writing.

P.P.S. There’s still time to register for Fresh Start on September 30—a live workshop for women ready to get their groove back.

 

 

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NaNoWriMo and facing the blank page together

One of the ongoing debates in my household growing up went something like this:

Me: “But Mom, all the other kids are doing it!”

My mom: “If all the other kids were jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?”

Of course, this is not a question meant to invite an answer–it is intended to interrupt an unreasonable request with a kind of logic that evades most children. Because, what Mom was missing in her grown-up rationale is this: YES, we would most likely jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it. That’s just how human nature is.

Whether it’s a good idea or not matters far less than the community around us and the choices they are making. And adults are equally likely to jump when they see their peers jumping.

A friend recently shared with me her “no you may not” comeback which seems a bit more to the point and leaves no loopholes: “Because I’m the mother and this isn’t a democracy.” But I digress.

In 1999, when a handful of young aspiring novelists decided to commit the month of November to a novel-writing marathon, they translated this age-old adage of jump-when-others-are-jumping to: write-when-others-are-writing so effectively that it has snowballed into a well known movement: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which led to NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) in April.

If this kind of epic writing fest is right up your alley or definitely not your thing, you have probably already plugged in or tuned out. But many of us are in some kind of middle ground. Perhaps it’s simply not realistic to dedicate such an enormous amount of consecutive time, or we have too many conflicting commitments during the designated WriMo month, or maybe we don’t have a project in the works that warrants this kind of attention.

With November right around the corner, I’m curious if there is a middle way—one that invites us to ride the energy wave of NaNoWriMo with more modest (or authentic) expectations of our output. Something equivalent to skipping over the bridge, or standing next to the bridge and studying jumping techniques, or jumping on a trampoline instead.

If you’re feeling totally in sync with writing 50,000 words in a month, fabulous! And if you’re not, I invite you to experiment with riding the wave of momentum in your own way that is authentic to who you are, what you want to accomplish, and the margins you can realistically afford to create for your writing.

When my son was four years old and NaPoWriMo was just around the corner, I was writing so much for clients and sleeping so little that my hands and arms were painful and slow. I decided that at most, I could carve out one writing hour every day for a month. And so I promised myself that I would dedicate that daily hour throughout the month of April to write for my own pleasure, even if I had to wake up in the middle of the night to do it. Period.

In that month, because I had somehow applied the right amount of pressure to show up at the page combined with the permission not to produce anything in particular, almost an entire volume of first draft poems poured through me. Some I finished and published quickly. Others I’ve been refining and reimagining ever since. But what became of those poems was less significant than the fact that I’d found a way to ride the slipstream of a collective, national effort to write. And in doing so, a goal I wouldn’t have dreamed possible 30 days earlier became reality.

Yes, Mom, I jumped off the bridge because everyone else was doing it. And, because moving forward in good company is one of the most efficient and enjoyable ways I know to meet my own goals. Plus, I’m the mom now, and this is not a democracy.

[Adapted from Fierce on the Page ]

Here are some possibilities for making NaNoWriMo work for your writing:

Join a community and ride the wave—whether it’s registering with the NaNoWriMo tribe, joining a Facebook group for accountability and support (a quick search will help you find a range of options, some of which might be local), or attending live writing sessions in your community.
Make November your NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and write a poem every day. (I’m hard at work on a Poem-A-Day class that I’ll tell you more about soon! If you’d like daily inspiration, encouragement, and engaging prompts, I’d love to keep you company for 30 days of poeming!)
Make your own NaProWriMo (National Promise to Write Month—or week, or weekend, or Tuesday nights) commitment to yourself: one that is aspirational and yet also within reach. Leverage the great writing momentum of NaNoWriMo to sustain a rhythm that is all yours.
Tell us what you’re thinking here, in the comments! Or maybe even make a promise that we’ll hold with you in November.

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If you’re a mid-life mom looking for a group of kindreds to “jump off a bridge” with (and find our wings on the way down), I’ve got you covered! Fresh Start is a one-day workshop to get your groove back! We meet in Portland, OR on September 30. Registration closes on September 25. Learn more here!

The post NaNoWriMo and facing the blank page together appeared first on Sage Cohen.

Your best life is their root system

How’s your budget as the back-to-school expenses come rolling in? Because I’ve been using You Need a Budget for a while, I had the money I needed saved in advance for the first time. A life-enhancement enthusiast, I’ve been delighted to discover that consciously spending and saving is core to my self-care.

For my son Theo’s first eight years, I paid the equivalent of a second mortgage every month: first for daycare, and then for his private primary school education. Along the way, I became an indebted servant to the expense: stressed, exhausted, and consumed with producing and earning.

I valued the education my son was receiving, and I felt it was worth any sacrifice to provide it for him. I was limping along pretty convincingly for a while. Until the day Theo and I were discussing the school and camp choices we’d made for him along the way—and why.

“I just want you to live your best life,” I told him.

“What about your best life?” my son asked in reply.

“Of course, I want to live my best life, too. And I work hard at that. But the truth is, your best life is more important to me than my own,” I answered.

“But I need you to live your best life, so I can live mine” he said emphatically.

The lightning bolt of truth delivered by my son woke me out of the dream (nightmare?) of self-sacrifice.

Theo clearly understood at age nine what I had been slow to integrate entirely: My life is his root system. If I’m not attending to my wellbeing as primary, the entire ecosystem of our family becomes compromised. This meant, I realized, that self-care was family care. Scrimping on me meant scrimping on him.

That day, I moved myself from the end of the list up to the front—with Theo as #1 and me as #1A. And that fall, my son transferred to a public school, where he is thriving. Without the financial burden of paying school tuition, I have more time, energy, and delight to share with him. I cook more meals. We play more games and leave home for more adventures. Win-win.

As my life became more spacious, I started hearing the things my colleagues, friends, and clients were saying about themselves in a new way. One mom confessed when she buys berries, which she loves, she never eats them – they’re only for her son. Another lost her writing practice to the massive undertakings of carpool and laundry and food prep for her three boys. A third had lost her pristine diet and exercise regimen in the early years of motherhood—a decade ago. In short, the care of their families had unintentionally become a roadblock to their own self-care. And this was costing everyone.

When zoologist Alan Rabinowitz, a wildlife biologist and explorer, decided because of a cancer diagnoses to stop his wildlife conservation work around the globe, he discovered he wasn’t the father or husband he wanted to be without deep engagement in his work. When his family encouraged him to get back into the field, he realized “I had to live the life that defined me the best—both for myself and my family.” Which is how he spent the rest of his days.

I believe the same is true for you.

Whatever makes you most YOU is what your family needs to thrive. And if putting on your oxygen mask first means they have to forage snacks for themselves (or take turns making dinner) occasionally while you’re locked in a closet writing or making origami or playing solitaire, everyone’s going to be the better for it.

What have you sacrificed in the name of family that you’re ready to reclaim? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

I believe that the inverse of what many of us practice is true: doing what is essential to our wellbeing to us gives us more energy and capacity to be in service to others. Investing in ourselves is one of the most potent ways to invest in our families.

But it’s not easy to shift a long-established slump—especially without support and community. I’d love to help.

If you’d like a boost in getting your groove back, I hope you’ll join me for Fresh Start, a one-day live workshop on Sunday, September 30. Together, we’ll put the habit or practice that is essential to your wellbeing front and center again. So everyone in the family can thrive. There’s room for only 15 people. Learn more and register here!

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When does it start to feel good?

How are your last days of summer treating you? Back-to-school season always puts an extra skip in my step. As I’m readying my son for the fresh, unwritten pages of fourth grade, I’ve been contemplating one of my own primary school memories.

Reproductive education started in 6th grade in the suburban New Jersey public schools where I grew up. Not-quite-ten-years-old, I sat stunned and stricken as I began to comprehend the trajectory of the adult female body.

What I remember most from that time was a cartoon of a naked boy standing on a naked girl’s shoulders. The caption coming from him said, “We took off our clothes. I got on top of you. When does it start to feel good?”

This cartoon has become one of my totems of the human condition.

Very few of us are taught how feeling good is done — or that it even matters. Women often end up with the idea that our happiness is the pot of gold at the end of the endless to-do list. That when everyone else’s needs have been met, we can finally attend to our own.

Flash forward forty years to (what I hope to be) mid-life, and most of us are still flailing around with the same mysteries we faced in sixth grade. We work hard. We do the right thing. We run the household, the business and the family. We contribute to our community, save for retirement, pay the bills and the rent or mortgage, fill the gas tank, drive the carpool, weed the yard, get the dog groomed.

We’ve got the whole family and maybe even community piled on our shoulders. When does it start to feel good?

 This is the question many of the mid-life moms in my community are asking these days. Some are married or in relationships, some are not. Some work as employees or entrepreneurs and others work at home. Everyone is kicking butt in the realms in which they’ve sought success. But when we’re really honest, we’re not feeling good. Something essential to our happiness and wellbeing is missing. And we’re not sure exactly how or when we lost it.

When does it start to feel good?

I believe it starts to feel good when we take a first step toward feeling good. And I believe the most powerful (and achievable) first step is to put down something we’ve been carrying that’s not working. Then replace it with something better.

For example. Maybe we could replace going to bed at midnight with going to bed at 10:00 p.m. so we are more likely to sleep eight hours. Or we could swap the wine we’ve been drinking to mask our isolation with a quarterly girlfriends’ weekend away. Or trade the sweetness of marshmallows for the sweetness of an abandoned passion: a pottery or tango or memoir class. Or swap the grudge we’ve been holding since childhood with a Pema Chodron book that helps us breathe in life as it is.

When we acknowledge what we feel (exhausted, lonely, uninspired, hurt), we’re in a much better position to figure out what we really need. So we can go get it.

I have recently given up the sugar and flour I used to numb my grief for years. In their place, a fridge stuffed with vegetables. Why? Because I’m ready to let go of sleep deprivation and brain fog. I’m ready to start my day radiating energy and stay that way until I go to sleep.

Are you doing something that doesn’t serve you? What is the ache below the complaint, and how can you fulfill that need even better? What could you let go of right now, and what can you replace it with, to start feeling better today?

(I’d love to hear in the comments below.)

Need some support making a shift? I’m here for you! I’m offering a one-day live workshop in Portland, OR next month called Fresh Start.

Fresh Start helps mid-life moms (and others) release what’s robbing you of vitality—then commit to a practice to get your groove back. There’s room for only 15 people. I hope you’ll join us. Get all the details here!

The business education every writer needs

The essential guide for your writing career is here!

The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman), recently released by The University of Chicago Press, delivers comprehensive insight from my favorite thought leader about successfully navigating today’s publishing landscape.

About a decade ago in her role as editor at Writer’s Digest Books, Jane acquired my first creative companion Writing the Life Poetic. Since that time, her panoramic writing and publishing expertise (shared on her award-winning website,  as a columnist with Publishers Weekly, and as co-founder of The Hot Sheet, among others) has continuously helped me break new ground in my writing life.

In her new book, Jane offers an in-depth education about what it takes to make a life and a living as a writer. Check it out in  the following guest post excerpted from The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman.

Brand Building

A reliable way to upset a roomful of writers is to promote the idea of “brand building.” Unless you are already comfortable with the idea of running your writing career like a business, it goes against literary sensibilities to embrace the idea that you, or your writing, might be boiled down to something so vulgar. It can also feel suffocating—who wants to feel beholden to their “brand”?

I use the word “brand” to indicate strategic awareness about what type of work one is producing, how and where that work is being seen, and who is seeing it. Brand is about how you and your work are perceived. In a word, brand is expectation. What do readers expect from you? Like it or not, they will  form expectations. You can wait and let it happen by accident, but it’s better to consider how you can shape expectations yourself—or decide when and how to work against them.

If you haven’t given this the slightest thought, a good starting exercise is to inventory everything you’ve written or published. What topics or themes emerge in those pieces? Where have they appeared, or who has read them? What patterns can you identify? Almost every writer is preoccupied with something, and it shows up in their work. Awareness of these preoccupations is the start of identifying your brand. Hopefully the type of writing you’re doing now—whether it’s published or not—bears some relation to the work you want to be known for. (If you find there’s a disconnect, ask yourself why. Do you lack confidence to tackle the work that feels most important to you? Are you distracting yourself with easier writing work?)

One of the keys to building a strong brand as a writer is producing more work, and getting it out there, continually and frequently. The explanation is simple: You get better the more you practice and receive feedback, plus it helps you avoid the common psychological traps of creative work—such as waiting for the muse or for your skills to match your ambition. (Such a time never arrives!) When Ira Glass describes that problematic gap between your good taste and the quality of your early work, he also offers a solution: “The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.”

Once you’ve identified patterns in your work, you have the start of a brand-related statement that you can put in your bio (discussed later in this chapter). But you want to go beyond simply listing ideas or themes; you want to tell a story about why. There is tremendous creative power and marketing power in forming a narrative around yourself and your work. Regardless of whether you’re a poet or a businessperson, everyone recognizes the allure of story. To help spark the story you want to tell, consider these three questions:

• Who are you?

• How did you get here?

• What do you care about and why?

Deceptively simple questions! Some people spend the greater part of their lives answering and reanswering them, so don’t expect to solve this puzzle in one night. The truth is, your story (or brand) will evolve over time—it’s never meant to be a static thing. It’s something that grows, it’s organic, and it’s often unpredictable.

Another interesting exercise is to come up with a brand statement that gets at the essence of what you do without using external signifiers. For example, creative writing students from selective programs may be tempted to say, “A graduate of [prestigious MFA program] . . .” and lean on that credit to telegraph who or what they are. This is also a common tactic if you’ve worked for well-known publications or won awards. Set those qualifications aside for the moment, and dig deeper: How does your creative work transcend markers of prestige or transient characteristics, such as your current job title? It’s not that you should leave out signifiers (which may be an important part of your identity); rather, this exercise pushes you to think beyond resume accomplishments.

Once you have a partial handle on who you are and what you’re about, you can benefit more from connecting with others and talking about others who have a similar why. This helps you build up a network not only of good will but of genuine relationships that will support your writing career.

And relationships are key.

Note from Sage: If you enjoyed this guest post, I suggest that you go get your own copy of The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) right now! I believe this is a book that belongs on every writer’s bookshelf.

What is your one, true thing?

A few years ago, I was presenting to a community of writers. A woman asked, “I have 12 projects, I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t know what I should be working on at any given time. What should I do?”

“That’s what the middle of the night is for!” I joked in response.

I knew then from my own experience that being unclear about what matters leads to feeling out of control of our time, struggling to meet deadlines, and working at hours that don’t serve us or our work.

Yet, I didn’t suggest what this woman might do to improve her focus and results. Because this was my own productivity blind spot at that time.

As a poly-passionate writer, I have historically had 3-5 projects cooking on each of my virtual burners at any given time, while also running a business, running a household, and raising my son. I believed wanting more than I could ever actually manifest was exhilarating. Until I became so exhausted and frayed around that edges that I knew it was time to re-evaluate.

Today, I am committed to simplifying life and amplifying wellbeing. By my definition, a simple, thriving life does not involve working through the night — or having more on my plate than I can ever hope to accomplish or enjoy. I want to sit down at my desk every day feeling spacious instead of overwhelmed. Clear about what matters, instead of muddled about what’s next. And full of desire for the work on my plate. I also want to be fully present with my son and partner and pets. Plus, have time to rest and rejuvenate and play.

To get there, I have re-imagined both my identity as an epic producer and my life practices of nonstop action, informed and inspired by two books. Jessica Abel’s Growing Gills reminded me how to radically simplify—by doing one (most important) thing at a time, until it’s finished. And Courtney Carver’s Soulful Simplicity reminded me why this kind of streamlining is non-negotiable—because it makes space for what I value, in all dimensions of life.

I wish I’d been able to share with that overwhelmed writer of yesteryear this three-step process I am now using to move from a poly-project writer to a serial monogamist:

List every writing goal, project, and priority you can think of.

Keep the list current with any new ideas that pop up. Acknowledging all your desires will help you relax, knowing they’ll all be there waiting for you when you’re ready.
Choose the one project that is most important right now.

When you choose you one true thing, ask yourself if it is what’s most important NOW. I’ve been surprised to discover ideas that spent years at the top of my list no longer belonged there. If you’re not overcome with desire to make the project happen, let it go—for now—and choose something else.
Do only that project until it’s done.

Dedicate every scrap of writing time to that single project for as long as it takes to complete it. Once you’ve crossed the finish line, you can revisit your list and choose the next one, true thing.

Narrowing down my writing life to a single point of light—my one, true thing (for right now)—has opened surprising vistas of energy to put toward that project, as well as everything else I value. This laser focus quiets the noise of options and distractions. My work is entirely on-purpose, and there is nothing else to consider or decide until it’s complete.

The paradox is that I had to let go of my story that multiple projects made me a high-producer to produce more.

Two simple tools have made the transition easier and more fun for me. Grab ‘em for free if they sound useful to you. The “My One True Thing” 1-page worksheet invites you to name your goal, find your motivation, eliminate obstacles, and plan your action steps. Keep it close (I have mine posted over my desk) to remind you where you’re headed and why. With each step you take, you can celebrate your progress by coloring in a bit of the Fierce Writing Life Mandala.

You and your work deserve to thrive. When you know what matters most, you can tend it—and complete it. This kind of momentum is invigorating and empowering. The more you finish, the more you’ll believe in yourself and your work.

What is your one, true thing? (I’d love to hear in the blog comments.)

 

 

 

Let’s jump off the NaNoWriMo bridge together!

One of the ongoing debates in my household growing up went something like this:

Me: “But Mom, all the other kids are doing it!”

My mom: “If all the other kids were jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?”

Of course, this is not a question meant to invite an answer–it is intended to interrupt an unreasonable request with a kind of logic that evades most children.

But what Mom was missing in her grown-up rationale is this: YES, we would most likely jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it. That’s just how human nature is. Whether it’s a good idea or not matters far less than the community around us and the choices they are making. And adults are equally likely to jump when they see their peers jumping.

A friend recently shared with me her “no you may not” comeback which seems a bit more to the point and leaves no loopholes: “Because I’m the mother and this isn’t a democracy.” But I digress.

In 1999, when a handful of young aspiring novelists decided to commit the month of November to a novel-writing marathon, they translated this age-old adage of jump-when-others-are-jumping to: write-when-others-are-writing so effectively that it has snowballed into a well-known movement: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Today, NaNoWriMo is a month-long deep dive into writing a 50,000 word novel—in community with people all over the world who have taken on the same commitment. When you register to join, you get your own dashboard that lets you declare your project, track your word count, reward yourself with badges, and find local events and global buddies. This has the potential to give you an elevated feeling of accountability, shared purpose, collaboration, and momentum.

I’m not (yet) a novel writer, but in recent years I have found the winds of NaNoWriMo quite mobilizing and energizing for my own work. Just knowing there were writers around the world taking on a big commitment and going for it has helped me write nonfiction books, craft poetry collections, and develop new products for my business in the month of November.

And this year, I’m jumping off the bridge! I’m all-in for NaNoWriMo! I have a memoir project that’s wanting to come through. And in the month of November, I intend to start and finish a complete draft of it.

Would you like to join me?

Do you have a novel or other meaty writing project that you’d like to spend 30 days writing into existence? Could you use some extra accountability, camaraderie, and support? You don’t need to feel ready. You don’t need to be prepared. You don’t even need to know what you intend to write. You just have to say yes, commit to the journey, and start writing.

Shall we jump together and write ourselves all the way down to a 50,000-word landing?

Yes, I’m jumping off the bridge because everyone else is doing it. And, because moving forward in good company is one of the most efficient and enjoyable ways I know to meet my own goals. Plus, I’m the mom now, and this is not a democracy.

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Are you with me? Will you take the NaNoWriMo leap this November?  If so, what will you write?

If not, could there be a middle way, with more modest expectations of your output?  Something equivalent to skipping over the bridge, or standing next to the bridge and studying jumping techniques, or jumping on a trampoline instead? Perhaps there’s a way to ride the wave of momentum that is authentic to who you are, what you want to accomplish, and the margins you can realistically afford to create for your writing.

I’d love to hear what you’re taking on this November! It will give me a feeling of momentum to imagine us moving our work forward together.

 

 

Writing the unbearable

These are unbearable times for so many of us. With the natural world and human landscape full of turbulence and terror, many of us feel out of control and unsafe.

I believe that in times of deep difficulty, we have an opportunity to both soften and strengthen, and that both are essential. I believe that feeling it all is, paradoxically, the path to withstanding the inevitable storms, fires, and tragedies. And that writing is one way we can learn to endure and transform the most difficult moments of our human experience.

For we who write, this practice can become a sacred passage from trauma to wisdom, and eventual healing. Through pen and paper, keyboard and screen, we can inhabit more authentically the front lines our lives, retrieve the fuselage and daisies we find there, and mine these for insight.

I was reminded of this when I tuned in to this conversation with Ron Hoffman on NPR. Founder of an organization called Compassionate Care ALS, Ron helps people and their families navigate the complexities of living and dying with ALS.

Though this man’s purpose and commitment to service is exquisite, Ron objects to any suggestion of saintliness. Instead, he credits his own brush with death as a child to the circuitous path that led him to this calling.

At age 10, when Ron’s alcoholic and terribly abusive father pointed a gun at his mother, the boy dove in front of her—and took the bullet at the base of his spine.

Hoffman calls it a “sacred bullet,” because being shot led to a moment he considers sacred. He was on a gurney at the door to the hospital, when an orderly met him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I just felt the warmth and love of his hand,” Hoffman recalls. “And he just looked at me and said, ‘Ronnie, I’m here.’ It was a moment that I’ve never forgotten all my life. Someone was actually there for me.”

We can’t control the events of the world around us. Or even protect ourselves from them much of the time. But we can influence the stories we tell and the poems we write. Through writing, we clarify what these events mean to us, how they inform our lives, and how we can learn to live alongside them.

The way we tell our story shapes the person we become.

Through the writing of his memoir Sacred Bullet: Transforming Trauma to Grace while Tending the Terminally Ill, Ron alchemized grace from the most broken moment of his life. He learned that other people could be there for him—and that he, in turn, could be there for them.

Like Ron, we can make what breaks us sacred—just by writing it that way.

We can dig deep into the terrors of human experience to source the truths of our heart. We can rewrite and reclaim what breaks us into what heals us. We can let writing be a path to inheriting ourselves and finding our rightful place in this flawed and glorious world.

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Every poem, essay, story and novel I have ever read has schooled me in my own quest for survival—and grace. Sharon Olds, Marge Piercy, and Dorothy Alison were some of my early guides.

Who are your literary guides?

What is your sacred bullet?

And how has your writing helped you navigate and transcend the unbearable?

I’d love to hear in the comments.

 

Love the dog you pick

I was lying on the floor next to my dog Hamachi, rubbing her belly and crooning into her ear about how beautiful she is, what a wonderful friend she is, how much I love her. As she smiled and yowled back at me through her crooked little front teeth and her black-lipped snarl, I marveled that I had lived with this dog for twelve years and neither of us had ever uttered a comprehensible thing to the other.

If you live with dogs, you know that this language barrier doesn’t matter. We affirm our affection and devotion through our daily charades of feeding, petting, walking, and intertwined sleep. Not only does it not matter that my dog and I can’t talk to each other, it may be exactly why our love is so undeniable. When I shared this observation with my friend Dale, he elaborated: “You don’t ever hear people asking, ‘Did I choose the right dog?’ We are just happy to love whatever dog we picked.”

It’s true: We don’t tend to wonder what our relationship with our dog should give us, or worry that we could have had a better walk with a different canine. We just show up, day after day, year after year, and do what needs to be done to cultivate a shared love and a shared life.

Our writing lives can be this simple and uncomplicated—and can benefit from this same kind of unconditional devotion.

As writers, we have a tendency to doubt our choices, question our themes, reconsider our genres, and imagine that every writer on the planet is doing something more important, more impressive, more coherent, and more likely to result in success.

Well, guess what? I hate to burst your envy bubble, but you’re not going to get any more important, impressive, coherent, or successful by being someone you’re not—or by attempting work that you are not called to create. Doubting your commitment and your capacity, or wishing that you or your writing were something else entirely, will only keep you immobilized.

My whole life I have been consumed with making sense of how people evolve and heal in relationships with other people. This was once a source of humiliation for me. For decades, I yearned to write about the more “important” themes other people addressed in their writing. Then, after half a lifetime of writing what I couldn’t help but write, I started to notice that the current of my deepest question, How do we become our most authentic selves and live our best lives?, was leading me to some surprising and life-changing revelations that deeply affected my readers and me.

In effect, I loved my writing so much that my doubt had little room to generate turbulence. Had I listened to my (very loud and quite insistent) inner critics, who were unconvinced that my theme of choice was worthy, I never would have arrived at the vistas of insight and liberation I’ve discovered along the way.

This is why I believe our job as writers is to welcome the writing we are called to do in the same way we love the animals in our lives: with everything we’ve got. To trust that the material we have chosen (or that has chosen us) is the path to our deepest riches. When love leads us, day by day, we can cultivate a practice through which our accountability to ourselves and our work becomes undeniable.

Let yourself be obsessed. Let yourself coo in your writing’s ear and tell it that it is the most beautiful, the most perfect companion you could ever imagine. Know that it is the sound of your voice the writing loves, as well as the sound of your footsteps as you approach your writing chair. It waits for you in the lost place that is the unwritten page, one ear pricked, with the enormity of its single-minded desire to join you wherever you are headed next.

(Excerpted from Fierce on the Page)

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What are you called to write, and how have you learned to welcome it? What are you struggling to accept in your writing life, and how might you make a little more space for it in your heart and on the page?

He Taught Me How to Go Pro

This week I read Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield and attended Sam Blackman’s celebration of life, two events that seem deeply intertwined as I settle more deeply into Sam’s loss.

In a museum-sized swell of mourners that could not begin to fill the space Sam left in his wake, I was seated next to my eight-year-old son, Theo. Next to him was Jon, the man Sam introduced me to more than a decade ago who has traveled my heart as husband, father of my child, ex-husband, coparent and soul friend.

While the adults spoke at the podium about who Sam was and what he meant to them, Theo studied the patterns: wall moldings, a logo behind the bouquet, the border of the simulcast as it faded out at the edges of the screen. As a child, I had a similar practice of anchoring myself in this world: by laboring to repeat shape, shadow, and light on paper. Repeating what I saw in every detail, as if that could keep me safe.

Last night, Theo asked me if I thought Sam had prepared a will before he died.

Before entering elementary school, Theo’s lifespan-type curiosity first surfaced with questions about how one prepares for retirement. He wanted to know how we can be sure we’ll have what we need when we stop working at the end of our careers. With a conversational style that approximates an extroverted scientific method, he studies how the adults around him are handling themselves and collects their best practices.

Yes, I assured him, I am certain Sam prepared well for his death with a will. Sam prepared well for everything.

I met Sam 15 years ago when I was new to Portland and dipping my toes into alumni waters at an event featuring one of my favorite professors. Sam was the Chair of the Brown Club of Oregon then. As he introduced the professor, I saw in this 26-year-old a kind of leadership I wanted to risk growing in myself—one that was authoritative, yet unassuming and inclusive.  By the night’s end, I’d join the Brown Club board.

A handful of us would meet monthly at a coffee shop in Sam’s neighborhood. Our leader more than three times younger than the average alumni, every one of us sat up straighter and raised our hands to do more in his presence—because if Sam thought it needed doing, we wanted to be a part of it. Powered by Sam’s one-man force of love for his community and superhuman capacity for making things happen, the readings, social gatherings, and benefits we organized became an alumni mecca that sustained our little tribe of expat east coast academics.

The shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. Sam was that line for me, connecting what I valued with my tentative sense of power and possibility.

I always described Sam as the most coherent person I’d ever met. It seemed he did not, as so many of us must, need to lose years wandering his own proverbial desert before finding himself and emerging as a contributing adult. Rather, Sam felt like someone who had been on-purpose and on-course his entire life. He was a Pro at being a human. And he made this amateur want to do more, be better, and call herself into her own unclaimed and uncharted authority.

I was not surprised to hear at his memorial that this was everyone’s experience of Sam. In fact, I’m sure there are people who turned the entire ship of their lives around after having a single conversation with Sam on the MAX, or on an Ultimate Frisbee field. Such was the infectious nature of his optimism and the ferocity of his will to do the right thing, and do it exceptionally well. No matter how peripheral our planets might be, Sam brought the gravity and warmth of the sun to all he touched. Our own orbits were clarified, illuminated, and heightened in the radiance of his brilliance, generosity, and inclusiveness.

When Sam stepped down to nurture his new business (Elemental) and baby (Abe), I took over as Chair of the Brown Club of Oregon. A behind-the-scenes kind of contributor until that moment with no inclination for “public life”, I believed I could be a leader of this community because I’d seen Sam do it. I wanted to lead, because it meant doing right by Sam. In this same year, I started lecturing at libraries and bookstores, teaching my own creative writing classes online, editing multiple writing zines, and then pitching, writing and publishing my first book.

Looking back now, I see that the baton leaving Sam’s hand for mine was the moment I went Pro in my literary life.

Theo was cold in the museum air. We wrapped him in Jon’s sport coat and wrapped our arms around that. As the grief of Sam’s loss and the poetry of his epic, profoundly impactful life washed over us, the call was clear. Though there is not likely another human on earth as relentlessly efficient, happy, inspiring, civic-minded or tech-industry-transforming as Sam, we all have a pilot light of Pro burning in us. And not one of us has a precious moment to waste in bringing that light forward.

I noticed that my hand around Theo’s belly and over the coat was sort of holding Jon’s hand—which was around Theo’s belly under the coat. This most precious and beloved child who would not be in our arms without Sam’s introduction. These layers of shattering love and loss that brought us to this moment. This little family that has found a way to make good on our blessings in our own broken, repaired and illuminated-through-the-cracks kind of way.

It became clear to me in that ballroom, in that moment, that the shortest distance between any two points is love.

We’ve gone Pro, Sam. You brought us all together, and you showed us how it’s done. I’m going to keep loving like the next moment could be my last. I’m going to honor this privilege of minutes and hours and days with clear intentions and a whole heart.

I’m going to keep making you proud.

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Who showed you how to go Pro—in life, love, writing, work, family, or service? What did they mean to you? What have you learned from them? And who have you become as a result? I’d love to hear.