Jen Knox's Blog, page 19

Stillness & Safety Meditation

Give yourself these twelve (9) minutes to listen to the wisdom of stillness. This practice includes a body scan and guided visualizations.

Here we areAll things writing, meditation, philosophy and leadershipBy Jen Knox

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Stillness Meditation

Give yourself these twelve (12) minutes to listen to the wisdom of stillness. This practice includes a body scan and guided visualizations.

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Thank you for visiting Here we are. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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On grounding & humbling

When have you found unexpected joy?

I adore my husband. I love him endlessly and entirely—from how he cries at the end of movies to his brilliance to his ability to catch wasps that find their way into our home. I love his moodiness and artistic ego. I love his laugh. I love his genuine generosity. I love that he has a clear moral compass.

younger us, San Antonio

For twenty years (almost half of which we’ve been married now), I’ve adored him more with each passing day. But this wasn’t always the case.

not-so-young us, Ohio

When we first met, I wasn’t in the mood.

Not for relationships, not for men, and definitely not for love. I found his laugh annoying and his intelligence all the more so (Who does he think he is to beat me in Trivial Pursuit? I don’t care about his encyclopedic memory—show off!).

I was pretty sure romance was for suckers and love was a lie. I was healing from the horrible relationship (that I explored in the essay linked below).*

Moreover, even if I hadn’t sworn off relationships, I had a type, and Chris wasn’t it. I truly believed that I knew what would make me happy, and at the time that meant getting a black belt in Aikido and crushing the patriarchy. More than that, it meant being the tough and mysterious loner.

So I was wrong about what might bring me joy, but why does this matter now? And what does it have to do with grounding and creativity?

There’s a little glimpse of wisdom here that I’ve only recently unpacked. It’s a wisdom reflected in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill as well as Kant (in a more cynical way).

What we think we want and what we believe will make us happy should not be an aim of life. Happiness is not something to strive toward, it’s either here or not; our delusion that it’s something ahead of us (or something that comes after death) can only hurt us and those we interact with.

“Happiness is such an indeterminate concept that although every human being wishes to attain it, he can never say … what he really wishes and wills.” —Immanuel Kant

Meanwhile, we might be underestimating that guy/thing/annoyance right there beneath our noses. Could there be beauty right here, right now?

Easier to theorize than to identify, I realize. But if we look at what is happening with honesty and not expectation, that might be enough. We might find more than we can imagine.

This awareness is like gravity, bringing us down to earth. Dreams can sometimes make us lose our footing.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them. —John Stuart Mill

I believe this to be true for all pursuits—creative, romantic, and otherwise. We think we want XYZ (publication in the The New Yorker [an old-school goal by this time], or we want to be left alone or find love, to reach some career goal or salary, to afford a vacation) and, in reality, our perfect reality is what we have right now.

There’s something here that is nourishing us. And until we learn to recognize that, we won’t enjoy the publication/relationship/trip to Cancun.

I’ll keep today’s post short, but I wanted to offer a prompt around this idea of grounding and feeding what is.

really, really young us, OhioSo, again, have you ever found unexpected joy that was right in front of you the whole time? Alternately, or to deepen this same prompt…Where have you strived and scrambled to achieve, only to find disappointment with a seemingly positive result?

*The essay mentioned above is “Steady” at Winning Writers (grateful for the Honorable Mention in the Tom Howard Prize today). It’s an examination of a not-so-great relationship that I thought I wanted and the unexpected strength that had been there the whole time.

I’ll post a short practice on stillness and steadiness (without the email notice) soon.

On air & unpredictability

How did you end up where you are right now?

Photo by Sander Weeteling

If yours was a direct path, predictable and steady, I’d love to know. Most people I speak with are baffled by how they end up where they do.

I don't even know how or why I am sitting here at my computer writing to you and hoping, honestly, that we can connect deeply enough that you will somehow feel heard and seen through my personal musings.

I don’t know how I ended up teaching writing and leadership. I don’t know why I started sharing mindfulness practices or combining them with creative output, and I really don’t know why I’m still alive and healthy when so many people from my past are not.

When I think about the unlikelihood of it all, I am all the more terrified and thrilled to see where I'm headed.

When I was the average age of many of my students, I had a general education equivalent (GED) after having dropped out of high school. I did not know basic grammar. I was working one of many jobs that paid me minimum wage and taking one class a quarter at a community college.

I had no clue where I would end up. I couldn’t picture it, no matter how creative I might have been. I didn’t know how to verbally communicate, even when necessary.

All I could see was the day ahead. The grind. The work. The questions about which path might lead me anywhere else.

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One could say I let the wind carry me. And it did. It nudged me toward amazing instructors (shoutout to Dr. Look and Dr. Lakanen). It redirected my gaze from longing to practicality and back again. It gave me just enough fear to take better care of my body. And I trusted it.

If you had walked up to me, a stranger, and given me a ticket to anywhere when I was in my early twenties, I’d have been on the first thing smoking to whatever mysterious lands it promised. All I wanted was that ticket. Permission. Resources. And just as it seemed the world had beaten me down in years prior, the winds shifted.

I wanted to talk about the elements and creativity some more when I sat down to write this blog. I wanted to talk about the value of sitting with thought and watching it swirl, of allowing any fragmentation so as to find a more dynamic puzzle.

But instead, here we are. I suppose I let the wind take this post. It whispers what often seems random but adds up collectively, like fractals, to create patterns more beautiful than we can imagine.

Even those of us who pride ourselves on being creatives.

Sometimes we just need to keep turning corners before we can find the right door. Whether we trust it or not, the wind is almost always at our backs.

Wishing you a little ease of thought and energy as you create this week. I’ll post again after ThurberCon, so it will be a little over a week. If you’d like to join, it’s a hybrid event and quite dynamic. I’ll be hosting events on publishing, submitting work to journals, and AI.

Finally, I wanted to share a breath practice in honor of air (my yoga teacher used to say this one gets you high on your own supply). It’s one I love before events. (Originally recorded for Insight.)

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On fire & creative energy

I often suggest to coaching clients that they come up with a writing ritual.

This could be making a warm mug of tea, lighting a candle, or engaging in a short meditation practice before sitting down to write. It helps to set the stage for creative activity, especially for those of us with hectic lives or a lot of distractions.

All that to say, I never attached much symbolism to the candle I ritually light before my own writing practice beyond the idea of it being this transition or reorientation around my cherished work. Recently, I started to consider why I light a candle instead of something else, and why I generally remember to light it before drafting, rarely when revising.

This sent me down a rabbit hole . . .

Our human ability to control fire offers us the promise of light, warmth, and security on demand. We are able to survive due to our ability to understand the patterns of fire and manipulate it. We learned how to scour land in the aftermath of wildfires and how to make heat in the depths of cold nights.

In short, fire sustains. It is also the perfect metaphor for creative pursuits, which is reflected in global mythology.

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Brigid, the Celtic goddess of the flame, illuminates creative pursuits while also representing the warrior and art of Smithcraft. Agni, a Sanskrit word for fire, is also the name of the Hindu god of fire who brings life and prosperity. Ra, the Egyptian god of fire, is said to have so much command over fire that he can become the sun itself. The symbolism across cultures is similar.

Ohio caught a few hazy days from the Canadian wildfires that raged over the summer. Two days in particular, I remember grabbing my mask due to the poor air quality alerts, and it made me think about the other side of fire—the wild and unrestrained nature of the element.

To think about our own lives and the fiery moments, we often think of those times that carry great emotion or in which stakes were high and outcomes were unpredictable. Fire can be used as a metaphor for motivation, but it can also become an obsession. What was once contained and safe can sometimes catch and turn into all-out chaos.

And what a joy when this happens creatively.

A candle is a contained flame, largely innocuous to indulging its inherent wild ways, and in this sense, it is only a start. As I create, I try to let go, allow the natural spread and expansion, the fast-moving and unpredictable reach. It doesn’t always go well, but it always grows.

I’m writing essays about my personal life right now, which is particularly challenging. This is an important body of work (to me) and one that can’t be replicated. The emotional resonance feels like a fire, and I’m in that unrestrained place where I feel totally out of control.

While I’d like to think I could imagine myself balancing with a clear water-like flow, the fire is where I’m at. Perhaps if we think of the elements as stages of the creative process, it can offer some consolation.

I’m generating (fire), but I do look forward to that time of transition when I can return to the coolness and flow of revision, of tinkering with words and moving sentences like pebbles to clear a path toward meaning.

Photo by Osman Rana

I might write more about flow next week. In the meantime . . . What would it be if you were to assign an element to your current creative state? The groundedness of earth, the flow of water, the (sometimes wild) momentum of fire, or the airiness of thought?

Creative question:

Heartfelt gratitude

On the unquantifiable

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

—Mary Oliver

The Equinox is a time of balance, and in honor of that, I’d like to talk about relationships. Specifically, this post is about loneliness and what I believe to be the unquantifiable but wholly balanced existence.

Let’s begin with our feet on the ground.

In the US, and perhaps much of the world, there’s a lot of pressure to hit “numbers” or find fulfillment in false praise. Many things we buy carry this promise and the promise of safety that seems entwined with being surrounded by those who adore us.

Here are a few extreme examples that have stuck with me:

Personal case study: A good friend with a large family once told me that her mother judged a person’s life by the number of people who attended their funeral. Years later, I saw a news story about a man who put out a paid advertisement for folks to come to his wife’s funeral because the couple had no family and a small group of friends.

Observation: Some writers (many writers) I know obsess over social media followings and the following of those they follow but at what cost to their writing?

Data: People living in the U.S. have fewer close friends than they once did but more social media presence, which comes with the appearance of a larger network. Meanwhile, according to a huge study that compared mental health before and after social media, “Facebook led to an increase in severe depression by 7% and anxiety disorder by 20%” in college students. I’m guessing this can be true for us older folks, too.

When I read or hear or observe such things, I can’t help but think: What if we measured our lives, creative output, and relationships by the way we connected with and related to others, rather than trying to hit a number or go for optics/worry about how we compare?

What if our art helped a few people to see the world differently but never hit a bestseller list or was hung on a museum wall? What if we listened deeply to someone who needed an available ear?

Photo by George Pagan III

Heartfelt gratitude for your support.

To have a small network of close friends and family, or even a small network in business, is something that we often feel pressure to change. It’s bad for our health and bad for business if we can’t cast our nets wide. Accordingly, we often think we need to double down on the number of people we connect to. But I want to argue that in our hyperconnected world, the urge to quantify makes us simultaneously less alone and lonelier.

To be physically alone or to have fewer family members or friends is not true loneliness, and to be surrounded by people who know you peripherally (or, let’s be honest, are even related to you but you don’t relate to) is never more valuable than a single meaningful relationship.

A person can be just as lonely when surrounded by masses of people or with a full calendar. And to be lonely, thanks to the messaging around it, can often be accompanied by guilt or worry that there is something wrong.

There is nothing wrong. In fact, those with more depth than breadth are often more fulfilled. I believe this is true when it comes to artistic reach as well.

"Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize." - Pico Iyer

I always set intentions this time of year, and one of my aims in the last few months is to better understand how to be alone because I believe the moments of solitude we have can be pathways to something divine (something within).

Maybe it’s something of a writer/artist thing to value alone time, but it can’t be entirely that. The pressure attached to belonging to clearly identifiable groups is toxic. The pressure in the writing world to “be seen” can be toxic also. There is so much competition that sometimes it can be difficult to know if other writers are friends or if they just want what you have.

I adore teaching and speaking. I adore crowds; meanwhile, friendships and close relationships, even with family and mentees, are more about deep and meaningful connections. The check-ins, not the comparisons. The support, not the false praise. The forgiveness, the humanness. The outreach. Did I mention the forgiveness?

It is sometimes only within our moments of solitude that we find ourselves able to better appreciate those relationships we value. These moments help us to mine the value of life in new ways.

And for some of us, knowing we had one person to love fully might be more valuable than hoards showing up at our funeral. Those relationships that we can support without the need for reciprocation are not quantifiable, and that’s what I seek.

The unquantifiable.

The moments that swell.

The art and writing that pierces through the numbers and to the heart.

The depth in work and relationship and life.

To me, this is balance. This is integration. The unquantifiable is the beauty of life.

Here is a short meditation on being alone that I created that adds to this post in a way that reminds us of the impossibility of being truly without connection.

Wishing you depth of art, relationships, and experiences. If you’re free on Monday, join me here. It’s free.

xo

On Being Alone: A Meditation

A short practice to provide a new way of looking at loneliness and what it means to be alone.

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Photo by Anja Bauermann

On a Small Press Book Getting a Second Life

It is rare that a small press book gets a second life. Actually, it’s rare that any book gets a second life.

I am overjoyed to announce that The Glass City, a collection of climate fiction that won the Press Americana Prize for Prose in 2017, was re-released by Press Americana (Hollywood Books International) with a new cover and a new foreword.

Before I discuss what it was like to go back and revise published work, I am including the new cover below and an extract from the foreword that the brilliant and acclaimed poet, Sheila Black, wrote.

The original 2017 cover depicts the Toledo, Ohio landscape. Toledo is also known as “The Glass City,” which is examined in the namesake story. This is the revised cover. Buy it here *ALL 2023 ROYALTIES go to ONE TREE PLANTED.

From Sheila Black:

We are on the cusp of something unimaginable. That is how wrapping our mind around the planet in global warming time often feels. Which is why, as Amitav Ghosh has famously noted, given the urgency of the crisis, it is astonishing how little of it has thus far entered our fictional worlds. In his work The Great Derangement, Ghosh reflects on why this is so. He argues that part of the problem is that the catastrophic and unpredictable nature of climate change seems to make a mockery of the kinds of structured plots and epiphanies and character arcs that serious fiction depends on. He explains that “in the era of global warming, nothing is really far away; there is no place where the orderly expectations of bourgeois life hold unchallenged sway. It is as though our earth had become a literary critic and were laughing at Flaubert, Chatterjee, and their like, mocking their mockery of the ‘prodigious happenings’ that occur so often in romances and epic poems...these are not ordinary times: the events that mark them are not easily accommodated in the deliberately prosaic world of serious prose fiction.”

Yet Ghosh also argues – for me, very movingly – that neither is science fiction nor magical realism entirely equipped to prepare or console or teach us how to live through this complicated time. He states, “But there is another reason why, from the writer’s point of view, it would serve no purpose to approach them in that way: because to treat them as magical or surreal would be to rob them of precisely the quality that makes them so urgently compelling – which is that they are actually happening on this earth, at this time.”

As I read Jen Knox’s stories in The Glass City, this phrase from Ghosh keeps knocking around my head: “actually happening on this earth, at this time.” The reason I keep repeating it under my breath is that Jen Knox has somehow managed to combine the serious attention to the real, the deep facticity of great prose fiction as we have known it, with precisely the science fiction or magical elements that our time – this remarkable and terrifying age of miracles – seems to demand.

…

Put simply, reading The Glass City allows me to grasp with a more whole self what I see unfolding with my own eyes. For example, here where I write this in San Antonio, we are experiencing a heatwave, with seventeen days over 100 degrees in the last month, the hottest June ever on record. When I go into my garden, only the sunflowers are hanging on without water; each day another plant shrivels up and just gives over. Yet the stories in this book are not about despair, they are about the moments, like feeling the water in the hose in my yard go from bathtub hot to cool again as it trickles over my hands. One of the stories is about the sisters who trust the knowledge, and the muscle memory they carry in their hands and fingertips:

“They folded dough and eyed wax paper lined with their homemade truffles, prepared to instruction. They baked cookies and scones, mixed batters, and blasted French pop music as customers, one by one, began to line up in anticipation. The smells of fresh breads and sweet creams, of chocolate eclairs and almond macarons, enveloped the sisters.”

There is not a story in this book that does not evoke its particular landscape with thrilling immediacy and intensity, so we understand a little more what it is to be here, to see and listen and feel what is “actually happening on this earth, at this time.”

Sheila Black is the author of All the Sleep in the World and Iron, Ardent

Thanks to Sheila. Also, as a writer distanced from my own work, I wanted to discuss questions I myself have about the text. Because I wrote this book as a different person.

The pre-2017 me wanted to better understand my own reaction to the implications of climate change through the lens of fantastical fiction.

While it was a delicious challenge to revise the book years after it was released, our perilous situation on this planet has become less like fiction and more like reportage. Meanwhile, the planet is resilient. As are humans—when we have to be. We can come up with solutions and will, no doubt.

Right?

If you are a writer and can rummage up old work, truly old work that a former version of yourself completed, you’ll see that in some sense we are more often than not mystically clear about the general direction things are headed. I returned to this work with a scalpel and a few sets of generous eyes who found the human error in the last edition. (It’s always there if we look hard enough.) But I also returned to it wondering how much of the magical elements might’ve been seeking a solution.

Perhaps climate change, or global weirding, is a larger call, more filled with magic and power than we can realize. Perhaps it’s a call that beckons us in a stern but loving voice that if we don’t move forward on our own, we’ll be pushed.

Back to my regular rantings next week. I’m writing something about quantifying and the unquantifiable and death.

In the meantime, check out the book. It’s very different than my lit-witch novel, WAU. Still magical and still odd, it is a collection of questions I had years ago. And while this former me was an entirely different writer, her questions remain.

In community,

Heartfelt gratitude.

Do great artists really steal?

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I was featured in a blog called Great Writers Steal, which was a brilliant site that dissected some aspects of craft from a short story I wrote about a dog. I was especially honored. Mostly because I liked the way the site toyed with the concept and used it as a front for truly great critique and reviewing.

But I have to admit . . .

I think a lot of people oversimplify the idea behind Picasso’s attributed quote (Good artists copy, great artists steal). To say there are no original ideas is a common stance. And if you wanted to take that stance, I’m sure you could find evidence.

There are plenty of writing tropes to back up such a claim. Formulas and models speak to the value of recycled ideas. They evoke emotional responses again and again, predictably. Love stories, mysteries, poetry, and literary fiction alike have tells and techniques one can study or imitate. Common themes and analogies come up ad nauseam before being considered cliche.

In this sense, formulaic work is a lot like advertising. It’s about bringing a few existing concepts and images together in a slightly new way to evoke an emotional reaction that gets people’s attention. It takes a bit of creative theft, I suppose, and a knack for rearranging ideas.

But at a certain point, to combine ideas just to sell a thing begins to feel cheap. “Stolen” art or borrowed personas help an artist create a brand or product with a short shelf life.

Combining existing ideas, much like an algorithm, rarely leads to what endures, which is one way to define “great art,” and it’s the way I’m going to define it here. In fact, it’s the way I define art in general. Everything else is just a bit of success (capitalist success, that is).

True creative prowess takes something different and less derivative. But even great artists steal a little bit, right?

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To me, the great stuff begins with appreciation. Influence is an undeniable factor as an artist is developing her voice. But the difference in intention and formulation is the difference between something easy and shallow (that, say, AI could create) and something with a ring of originality. Something with legs.

We exist individually for a reason, to contribute unique ideas. And this kind of creativity takes time, deliberation, and, undeniably, a lot of work and . . . more time.

There is another adage that says no one can see the world through your eyes. Or no one can tell a story the way you can.

It’s easier to copy or ask an algorithm. It’s faster, too. More efficient. But it’s also more forgettable and more of the same, more inclined to blur and fade from the mind of those exposed to derivative creative works.

Replicating others can offer a decent training system for new writers and artists, and it can be done with purpose, especially if one is kind enough to pay homage to those they “steal” from. This makes for appreciation, rather than a simple grab. Appreciation is the catalyst from which we can find our unique voices.

What’s the point of an often-long, arduous journey, rather than just a quick grab? What’s the point of sacrificing a sure thing for a more enduring work?

I suppose it’s down to the person. But, to me, exploring the world authentically and creatively offers us purpose and offers our audiences something new. Something authentic. And that, my friends, just might lead to GREAT ART.

The kind of art that jostles a person from the norm and offers them a new way to see.

xo

PS - This is my goal anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts. While I admit that my own writing life has been a bit of a slog, I wouldn’t trade any small part of it (especially the slow, painstaking parts) for the world. The process of personal discovery contains more than I can express. I guess that’s what I’m getting at here.

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From Worry to Love - Day 3

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. —Henry David Thoreau

Meditation 3 of 3

Total Time: 9 minutes

Grab a paper and pen

Photo by Javardh

Today, we'll seal our practice wi…

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