Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's Blog, page 18
April 24, 2015
Book sale!
I'm cleaning my garage! SWINGING ON THE GARDEN GATE is now $10 (formerly $15) and ON THE THRESHOLD is now $12 (formerly $23). On amazon.On The Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness
http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Jarre...
http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Jarre...
April 20, 2015
In Dialogue
Maybe it’s the Italian in me, but there’s little I enjoy more than a lengthy, impassioned conversation, preferably over a meal. I like probing questions. I enjoy playing devil’s advocate. I delight in the feeling of spiraling around a subject, each time circling a bit closer to some unreachable core. I like ending a conversation with new ideas, and rising from the table slightly changed.
This same experience of exchange also comes when I write. My side of the conversation is born of curiosity and words and intention. I generate a draft, and then it speaks back to me with images, surprises, glaring falsehoods, brokenness, and emergent wholeness. Writing appears to be a monologue but it’s really a dialogue—between me and memory, between me and the reader, between me and Mystery… This lively encounter keeps me coming back.
Even though I’ve never known prayer as a literal dialogue—that great source of life is usually silent for me—when my prayer or meditation is good, I finish feeling like I’ve just hosted a private conversation. Even I’m not privy to the exchange. Nevertheless, I know important things have happened.
Recently I began thinking about the human journey as one long creative and creating conversation. “Aliveness springs from our making something of what we experience and receiving what experience makes of us,” Ann Belford Ulanov writes in The Unshuttered Heart. Dialogue: Giving and receiving, listening and speaking, pushing and pulling, all the while generating this vibrant web, one thought connected to the next. We can be in dialogue with our whole being, accepting what life makes of us, taking what has happened, and making of it something new. From this dynamic exchange comes aliveness—our own and the world’s. --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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I'm excited to participate in a public conversation with P. S. Duffy, author of The Cartographer of No Man's Land, this Thursday, April 23, 7 p.m. Join us at The Crossings of Zumbrota for Wine & Writing: The Inner Life of Books.
I'm heading down to Faribault on April 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m. for a free reading, signing, and more conversation--at The Loft ~ Bachrach Building, 318 Central Avenue, Faribault, MN.
If you're looking for time alone to write and the company of other writers, two upcoming opportunities are still available: May 3-7 at the 3rd Annual Writing Retreat at the ARC Retreat Center, Stanchfield, MN, and June 15-19: Alone Together: Write That Book retreat at the Madeline Island School of the Arts.
Finally, come to Listen To Your Mother at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis on May 7, 7 p.m. to hear twelve women tell the truth about motherhood.
This same experience of exchange also comes when I write. My side of the conversation is born of curiosity and words and intention. I generate a draft, and then it speaks back to me with images, surprises, glaring falsehoods, brokenness, and emergent wholeness. Writing appears to be a monologue but it’s really a dialogue—between me and memory, between me and the reader, between me and Mystery… This lively encounter keeps me coming back.
Even though I’ve never known prayer as a literal dialogue—that great source of life is usually silent for me—when my prayer or meditation is good, I finish feeling like I’ve just hosted a private conversation. Even I’m not privy to the exchange. Nevertheless, I know important things have happened.
Recently I began thinking about the human journey as one long creative and creating conversation. “Aliveness springs from our making something of what we experience and receiving what experience makes of us,” Ann Belford Ulanov writes in The Unshuttered Heart. Dialogue: Giving and receiving, listening and speaking, pushing and pulling, all the while generating this vibrant web, one thought connected to the next. We can be in dialogue with our whole being, accepting what life makes of us, taking what has happened, and making of it something new. From this dynamic exchange comes aliveness—our own and the world’s. --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
***************************************************
I'm excited to participate in a public conversation with P. S. Duffy, author of The Cartographer of No Man's Land, this Thursday, April 23, 7 p.m. Join us at The Crossings of Zumbrota for Wine & Writing: The Inner Life of Books.
I'm heading down to Faribault on April 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m. for a free reading, signing, and more conversation--at The Loft ~ Bachrach Building, 318 Central Avenue, Faribault, MN.
If you're looking for time alone to write and the company of other writers, two upcoming opportunities are still available: May 3-7 at the 3rd Annual Writing Retreat at the ARC Retreat Center, Stanchfield, MN, and June 15-19: Alone Together: Write That Book retreat at the Madeline Island School of the Arts.
Finally, come to Listen To Your Mother at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis on May 7, 7 p.m. to hear twelve women tell the truth about motherhood.
March 3, 2015
Undoing the Single Story
The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives a wonderful TED talk about the human inclination to tell a “single story” about others, especially those we barely know. When she left Nigeria for college in the United States, her roommate was surprised that she spoke English so well and knew how to use a stove. “Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity.” The roommate’s single story of Africa was one of tragedy and poverty.
Single stories are the stuff of stereotypes, “and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” The same fallacy occurs in writing. A first draft is a single story. Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths. The central work of revision is to discover radical new ways to see the subject.
Isn’t this also the life-long work of personal growth? We’re always breaking apart the containers we’ve made to hold our limited understanding and creating new and bigger containers–ones better able to hold paradox, better able to ask the big questions, better able to embrace the enormity of loss and joy and mystery. With every revision we, along with Adiche, “regain a kind of paradise.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thanks to Jill Mazullo for introducing me to Adichie.
Single stories are the stuff of stereotypes, “and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” The same fallacy occurs in writing. A first draft is a single story. Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths. The central work of revision is to discover radical new ways to see the subject.
Isn’t this also the life-long work of personal growth? We’re always breaking apart the containers we’ve made to hold our limited understanding and creating new and bigger containers–ones better able to hold paradox, better able to ask the big questions, better able to embrace the enormity of loss and joy and mystery. With every revision we, along with Adiche, “regain a kind of paradise.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thanks to Jill Mazullo for introducing me to Adichie.
November 14, 2014
Sale on HANNAH in November!
All forms of HANNAH, DELIVERED as an ebook are on sale during November for $1.99!
November 3, 2014
The Healing Imagination
I am passionately in love with this book. In fact, I've decided to put myself on a diet that includes at least one Ann and/or Barry Ulanov book a year. Yes, they are heavy-duty Jungians, but the prose is lucid and luscious and I always come away feeling nourished to the core.THE HEALING IMAGINATION is my favorite thus far. Imagination, according to Jung, is the primordial channel between the divine and humanity. The images the come to us in our fantasies, dreams, imaginings, and I would add memories and experiences, are communications from our source. They are the wellspring of our insights, a healing balm, our call to awakening. I leave this book more convinced than ever that nurturing and developing the imagination is key to spiritual maturity, psychological awareness, and a rich and fulfilling life. I also leave this book wishing for a spiritual community that reveres the imagination like the Ulanovs do.
I'm so grateful that the Ulanovs have helped me reframe my work as a writer and teacher: I now consider myself an imagination professional. What noble and worthy work!
Here's a taste:
Through [the imagination] we achieve our firmest participation in being, reaching as far as the dual-nature of the God-man. In that hypostatic union of spirit and flesh, we know our citizenship in the world of country and nation, of jobs and taxes, of lovers and friends, of children and society. … The special joy of the imagination is that with it we can reach to the source of both time and timelessness and find that support which will be the greatest of healing forces in our life.
We need to unite our egos with our imaginative selves, to put our time-centered parts in touch with the timeless source. … We are, in many ways, like hybrid creatures seeking unity.
--Ann & Barry Ulanov, The Healing Imagination 148
October 10, 2014
HANNAH, DELIVERED Book Group Discussion Questions
I'm pleased to announce that HANNAH, DELIVERED now has accompanying book group discussion questions on my website: http://www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com....
I'm excited that book groups are reading and discussing the novel! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
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I'm excited that book groups are reading and discussing the novel! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
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October 1, 2014
Website relaunch!
Dear readers and writers,
I'm so pleased to relaunch www.spiritualmemoir.com. The site is a resource for readers and writers of spiritual memoir. Check it out! As always, I welcome your suggestions for good books to review and journals that accept submissions.
Elizabeth
I'm so pleased to relaunch www.spiritualmemoir.com. The site is a resource for readers and writers of spiritual memoir. Check it out! As always, I welcome your suggestions for good books to review and journals that accept submissions.
Elizabeth
September 27, 2014
Tending Home
Emily and I recently had one of our two garages torn down (for the sake of more garden) and replaced the hole in our house with a magnificent bay window. The immediate consequences of this project is a house full of dust and a tremendous amount of painting. In my every spare minute I’m sanding and priming. And in my dreams beyond the high rafters the drywall is bare and unreachable, the task of covering it overwhelming. Some part inside me needs painting, too.
Most days I live in my house unthinkingly, but when I’m deep in a home improvement project I grow acutely aware of how the walls I live within aren’t just random; they reveal and shape my interior, and will do so for every soul who ever lives here. How this is so is a mystery. I remember an article by Maya Angelou in an architectural magazine in which she blamed her first two divorces on the structures of the houses they lived in.
When I bought my first house, the previous owner had decorated the kitchen with quirky black zigzags and painted the claw-foot tub’s toenails red. His boldness inspired me to paint a mandala on the front porch—a creative act I’d never have done otherwise given my decoratively conservative upbringing.
More: http://www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com...
Most days I live in my house unthinkingly, but when I’m deep in a home improvement project I grow acutely aware of how the walls I live within aren’t just random; they reveal and shape my interior, and will do so for every soul who ever lives here. How this is so is a mystery. I remember an article by Maya Angelou in an architectural magazine in which she blamed her first two divorces on the structures of the houses they lived in.
When I bought my first house, the previous owner had decorated the kitchen with quirky black zigzags and painted the claw-foot tub’s toenails red. His boldness inspired me to paint a mandala on the front porch—a creative act I’d never have done otherwise given my decoratively conservative upbringing.
More: http://www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com...
September 3, 2014
Accepting Rejection, Rejecting Acceptance
(A big thanks to participants in the Book Binders’ Salon for a stimulating conversation last night about rejection. I’m indebted to you for most of this post!)
Grungy Text Abstract“Rejections slips,” wrote Isaac Asimov, “however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil – but there is no way around them.”
The hard reality for every writer is that we face rejection prior to publication—from grantors, contests, agents, and publishers—and after publication, in the form of bad reviews (if we’re lucky enough to have our work reviewed), readers’ scorn, and sales numbers. These “lacerations of the soul” are a given. We fear their sting long before we feel it. Once we’re rejected, and rejected repeatedly, it’s impossible not to be affected. We believe the rejections, we form a thick skin, we reject our writing prematurely so others don’t have to do it for us, we despair, we rebel and self-publish, we lash out at the publishing industry, and (hopefully) we return to our desks to continue writing.
It’s so easy to get thrown off kilter.
I’m curious about what a centered, soulful response to this publishing environment might look like. There’s a refrain in authors’ advice about rejection: Return to the work. Trust the process. Remember your path.
“There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments, but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.” ― Anton Chekhov.
“I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’“ ― Saul Bellow
“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” ― Barbara Kingsolver
“You ask whether your verses are good… You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now…I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.” ― Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.
But wait! the doubter inside says. Maybe my work really isn’t good. Maybe I could make it better. This is true, and yes, you should always strive to grow as a writer. Rejection, well received, can keep us humble. Good rejection teaches us how to improve. In working toward acceptance, we strive for a higher quality of thought and craft. But we should never give editors, publishers, grantors or the marketplace complete authority over what deserves to be written and shared. Even the best gatekeepers are imperfect. And no gatekeeper has authority over your soul. We get thrown off track whenever we give others’ opinions more power than our own, which is why success can be just as damaging as rejection. “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance,” Ray Bradbury wrote.
Experienced authors know that real authority resides in our initial and steady drive to create. We tap a source of inspiration, guidance, and perseverance, and this source is reliable even in the face of an audience. I think the spiritual challenge of publishing (in whatever form) is staying connected and faithful to this source.
If you have any stories about how you do this, I’d love to hear them!
Grungy Text Abstract“Rejections slips,” wrote Isaac Asimov, “however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil – but there is no way around them.”
The hard reality for every writer is that we face rejection prior to publication—from grantors, contests, agents, and publishers—and after publication, in the form of bad reviews (if we’re lucky enough to have our work reviewed), readers’ scorn, and sales numbers. These “lacerations of the soul” are a given. We fear their sting long before we feel it. Once we’re rejected, and rejected repeatedly, it’s impossible not to be affected. We believe the rejections, we form a thick skin, we reject our writing prematurely so others don’t have to do it for us, we despair, we rebel and self-publish, we lash out at the publishing industry, and (hopefully) we return to our desks to continue writing.
It’s so easy to get thrown off kilter.
I’m curious about what a centered, soulful response to this publishing environment might look like. There’s a refrain in authors’ advice about rejection: Return to the work. Trust the process. Remember your path.
“There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments, but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.” ― Anton Chekhov.
“I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’“ ― Saul Bellow
“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” ― Barbara Kingsolver
“You ask whether your verses are good… You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now…I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.” ― Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.
But wait! the doubter inside says. Maybe my work really isn’t good. Maybe I could make it better. This is true, and yes, you should always strive to grow as a writer. Rejection, well received, can keep us humble. Good rejection teaches us how to improve. In working toward acceptance, we strive for a higher quality of thought and craft. But we should never give editors, publishers, grantors or the marketplace complete authority over what deserves to be written and shared. Even the best gatekeepers are imperfect. And no gatekeeper has authority over your soul. We get thrown off track whenever we give others’ opinions more power than our own, which is why success can be just as damaging as rejection. “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance,” Ray Bradbury wrote.
Experienced authors know that real authority resides in our initial and steady drive to create. We tap a source of inspiration, guidance, and perseverance, and this source is reliable even in the face of an audience. I think the spiritual challenge of publishing (in whatever form) is staying connected and faithful to this source.
If you have any stories about how you do this, I’d love to hear them!
July 9, 2014
New Q&A opportunity
Goodreads just added a feature where you can submit questions to authors! Feel free to drop me a question any time.
