Heather Demetrios's Blog, page 2
April 17, 2019
Skillful Thought Work For Writers
[image error]One of the ways we talk about mindfulness practice is to ask whether or not something is “skillful.” I really dig this word. The neutrality of it is what makes it so incredibly useful. When we ask if an action is skillful, we’re not putting a value judgment on it. There is no emotional baggage or social expectation or shaming embedded in this question. It’s simply an honest query: Is this action or thought a skillful means to my desired end?
By “skillful,” mindfulness practitioners are asking whether this action or thought brings you closer or further away from true freedom? Freedom, in this sense, is regarding liberation from all the attachments and expectations that lead to our suffering. If the action or thought is skillful, then freedom is closer.
The Skillful Writer
I’ve found this word to be enormously helpful when looking at my writing practice, from process to lifestyle to craft. Writing is so subjective, and this word—skillful—is a great one to use when you want to articulate why something is or isn’t working. On a craft level, you might ask whether or not a line is skillful: Does it make good use of the words, punctuation, white space? Does it convey the emotional core of the story in a way that will be clear and resonant to the reader? Does it make the reader want to keep reading?
Skillful is also extraordinarily apt when applied to the artistic process. Being a writer often feels like a mental mine field. When we sit down to write, we’re often battling an entire Greek chorus that stands behind us, intoning all manner of things that are generally not helpful to getting the work done. I often ask my clients and students to name every person in their Greek chorus and come up with some banishing words when they arrive. Exit stage right.
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Thought Work
Often, our very thoughts act as a Greek chorus, throwing out criticism, guilt-inducing mental barbs, shame, comparisons to others, obsessive imagery of things going very wrong, and dire predictions. Half the time, it seems like they’re just telling us the gods are not on our side and, furthermore, it’s totally our fault.
I often talk about the stories we tell ourselves—I’m invisible, Nobody will ever love me, I’ll never be published because I’m a woman / autistic / Black / Weird / Christian, I’ll never be a better writer. These stories work on a loop and are strengthened by confirmation bias and by us telling ourselves these stories over and over, gouging mental ruts in our heads that only intentional meditation, mindfulness practice, therapy, or magic can root out. These stories come from thoughts, many of which are not true or—even more important—not helpful.
Thoughts are the building blocks of these unhelpful stories we tell ourselves.
For example, let’s take this story: I’m not good enough to be published.
What are the thoughts that build that story? My craft sucks, nobody who reads my work has good stuff to say about it, I don’t have time to write, So and So is better than me, this story idea isn’t marketable…
I’m going to ask you a question, and I really want you to stop reading this post for a moment and think about the answer: Are these thoughts helpful? Will they get our Thinker closer to publication?
Really think on this. I’ll wait.
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If your answer is No, we’re getting somewhere. But perhaps your answer is Yes. You, like me, come from the School of Hard Knocks. Whiplash is one of your favorite movies. You have the discipline of a Soviet gymnastics coach when it comes to writing. Your answer is Yes, these thoughts are helpful because they act as a motivating force to work harder.
But do they really?
Because all I see is a pity party where everyone invited gets to wear a sad, droopy hat. I also see an engraved invitation to a bed of hot coals you have the privilege of walking over, to punish yourself.
How, in actuality, are these thoughts—which, remember, build the story of I’m not good enough to be published— going to move this Thinker into a space where they are free to create from the heart, write a good story, and feel confident enough to put that story out on sub?
In fact, let’s do a little exercise: Think one of the thoughts above to yourself. Perhaps: My craft sucks. Do you feel tight and stressed inside, or open and jazzed to work when you think this thought? Now, you could revise this thought in order to induce those feelings, such as, I’m going to really focus on my craft this year and be the best writer I can be. Cool. But I’m not talking about that thought. I’m talking about the My craft sucks thought. And that, I think we can agree, doesn’t make you feel jazzed at all.
In order to feel expansive, in flow, and free to create the work of our heart, we must dissolve the thoughts that are not helpful to us.
Ridiculous! : How To Dissolve A Thought
Remember that fab scene in Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban when they learn to banish bogarts?
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As our dear Professor Lupin taught us, we can pivot our thoughts so that they no longer have control over us. We might not have wands and spells, but we can banish our own bogarts with very little trouble, as long we we’re intentional about it. But in order to cast a spell effectively, you have to mean it.
Dissolving a thought does not mean lying to yourself, or pushing a thought deeper into your subconscious (out of sight is not out of mind), or compartmentalizing: This wouldn’t necessarily be skillful, because the thoughts are still there, working like an app in the background. Still taking up storage in our headspace. In dissolving them, we take away these thoughts’ power: we make them irrelevant because they don’t exist anymore. We do this by seeing them for what they are: thoughts. Just thoughts. Not destiny. Not always truth.
How many times have you had a thought that just wasn’t true at all? For example: I’ll never get a starred review, and then you get one? So all that time you had that downer thought was a pointless exercise in self hate, right? And even if you didn’t get the star, how would that thought be helpful, anyway? Would thinking that thought manifest a star? Or make you feel better about not getting one?
In fact, we could say that thought was muddling you up so that you couldn’t have the true mental clarity you needed to align yourself with what you want, to project that confidence in your dreams out into the world, and to be positioned to sit down and just do the work.
So how do you dissolve useless thoughts that drag you down? How do you laugh in the face of your very own bogarts?
One way to judge whether a thought needs to be dissolved is to simply ask yourself : Is it helpful?
Not if it’s true. It might be true. I suppose it’s technically possible that you are, in fact, the very worst writer in the world. But you might not be. Even if you are the Worst Writer In The World (I tip my cap to you for that feat), is it actually helpful thinking this? Will it get you where you want to go, into the fullness of your artistic self?
No.
Helpful Thoughts vs Unhelpful Thoughts
Some thoughts, of course, are helpful. I’m not talking about all that self-help nonsense where you lie to yourself in order to induce positive thoughts. Affirmations can quickly tip into dangerous territory. Such as: I’m going to get on the NYT Bestseller list. You might not. And that thought might be keeping you from focusing on what really matters—the work—and so you end up writing work that no one likes because your focus is on the list, not the work. And so you actually manifested the opposite of what you wanted.
Don’t be one more person who lies to you. Trust me, advertisers are doing enough of that for you. Thinking that thought might give you a mental boost now and then, but what happens if you don’t get on the list? Or, let me blow your mind: What happens if you get on it and nothing changes at all?
An example of a helpful thought might be: It’d be cool to be on the NYT List, but that desire really just means that I want more visibility as a writer. What are some actionable things I can do to create more visibility for me and my work, things that are in my control?
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Martha Beck, aka Oprah’s life coach, has this wisdom to drop about thoughts:
“While thoughts and emotions are wonderful parts of authentic life, they don’t free us from pain; used incorrectly, they intensify it. The way to find your own North Star is not to think or feel your way forward but to dissolve the thoughts and feelings that make you miserable. You don’t have to learn your destiny—you already know it; you just have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you to what you know.”
The way to dissolve a thought is to recognize the thought, note that it’s not helpful, and banish it.
You banish it by telling the thought every time it comes up that it’s not helpful. It’s RIDICULOUS! By seeing the true nature of the thought—that it is only a thought, and not a helpful one at that—you’ve taken away its power. It’s like a fantasy novel: you know it’s name and now you own it.
Skillful Thought Workout
Write A List Of The Thoughts That Are Plaguing You Right Now
Now, cross out each thought that isn’t helpful to you. It might be true! But is it helpful to getting you where you want to go? Is thinking this thought skillful or not?
For the next week, try to be mindful of these thoughts as they come up. When they do, tell them or yourself that they are not helpful. Don’t linger on the thought. Let it float away like a leaf in a stream.
If you really want to go next level, take that list of unhelpful thoughts and have a look at what’s underneath, just like I did in the example above about the NYT List. See if some of those unhelpful thoughts can be revised into helpful ones that draw you closer to where you’d like to be.
For a further deep dive into skillful thought revision, check out Martha Beck’s Steering By Starlight and the Unf*ck Your Brain Podcast with Kara Loewentheil.
Breathe. Write. Repeat.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, A Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
March 23, 2019
3 Things: First Lines
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Hey, hey!
Time for another installment of “3 Things with Heather Demetrios”…This one is all about writing a kickass first line.
I’ve got my top three tips for how to hook your reader and reel them in.
Check out the video below on either YouTube or my IGTV channel.
I’ll tell you how to…
1. Incite The Reader’s Curiosity
2. Arrest Your Reader
3. Establish Your Authority (aka Don’t Confuse Your Reader)
Comment below and tell me your favorite first lines…and even your own first line!
Bonus: Head on over to my Inspiration Portal for a First Line Workout, a worksheet download to help you hone your first line skills.
Write Better Now.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, A Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
March 20, 2019
Hurt Ink
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This post originally appeared on the Vermont College of Fine Art’s blog. You can find that here. I have slightly altered the text for this post to speak to all writers.
I want to talk about hurt.
How many of you write for children or teens (or both) because you were hurt as a kid? Because those wounds from so long ago still hurt? Or because you see the hurt so many teens and children endure, a hurt that is so often hidden, shamed, forced to be invisible—and you want to do something about it?
How many of you began to write with a cry for help on your lips, and now carry a torch in your hand?
It is no mistake that the streets of children’s literature are filled with orphans, with roadside graves, with the grieving, the broken. No mistake that there are so many absent parents, runaways—so many kids going it alone, forced to find their own way, create new families, remaking the world because the one they’ve grown up in is filled with intolerance and hatred and indifference.
Who writes these worlds? These very same children, of course. All grown up—but they can’t quite forget Neverland. Everyone else seems to be able to, but we can’t, can we? We can’t forget what it was like. And that’s why we are uniquely qualified to speak directly to children and teens about their pain. Because we are the adults who remember. Who say: I believe you. I hear you. I understand.
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I came to the world of kidlit because books like Jacob Have I Loved, Little Women, The Giver, Number the Stars, and, later, in college, Harry Potter, were my light in the darkness, and because I found kinship with other kidlit writers. People who took the pain of children seriously. People who saw that the children and teens they wrote for were worthy of respect, that their problems were just as serious as those of their adult counterparts. They weren’t children, they were people. Smaller, younger, maybe—but people all the same.
This is at the heart of the work we do: seeing teens through remembering our own time in that fractured, confusing era of our own lives. Taking the echoes of our pain, and amplifying them until they become universal.
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I recently had the chance to read my friend Laura Sibson’s upcoming debut novel, The Art of Breaking Things and it was yet another example of an adult taking a childhood trauma and turning it into healing art for the teens she writes for. I’ve seen this generosity and word bravery with so many kidlit writers, either taking personal pain or using their deep empathy to explore the plethora of traumas present within the young adult community. A.S. King’s searing fury at the invisibility of so many teens, of the way their sovereignity is denied them by the adults in their lives. Ibi Zoboi and Kekla Magoon’s explorations of what it means to be Black in America. Time and time again, I see my fellow writers digging deep and leaning into the pain of their own experience in order to shed big love on their readers.
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Teens need you and your stories. They need your pain. They need you to be brave. To be vulnerable. To leave it all on the page. To fight for them with your words. To never, ever give up on them. Even when they give up on themselves.
I think a big reason so many of us are drawn to writing for children and teens is because either we hurt, we have been hurt, or we hurt for those who are suffering. I remember seeing a documentary several years ago at a literary event in Boston—I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the film, but my takeaway was something either David Small or Jack Gantos said (given their work, it’s a toss-up who said this, but I think it was Jack): so many children’s authors are the product of abusive homes or have experienced deep hurt in their lives, or suffer from depression. Isn’t that interesting?
We are not the soft, weak, loose things the world would like to fashion us into. Frivolous authors who only write things that are pretty and silly. (Although, let’s be clear: we NEED pretty and silly, too. Pretty and silly is a noble calling, indeed). I say, if you want to write the hard stuff, write for children. That’s the true refiner’s fire of emotionally resonant writing. It’s Genesis and Revelation.
Eric Carle was haunted by his childhood in Germany in World War Two. Many of Maurice Sendak’s family members perished in the Shoah. P.L. Travers struggled with the memory of a difficult childhood, a troubled father. I’ve yet to meet a kidlit writer who wasn’t in therapy, on meds, or working through hurt in some other way (healthy or otherwise). I myself suffer from major depression, and what do I write about? Teens in trauma, abusive homes, abusive relationships—my experiences, re-worked to reflect the life of real teens who email me to say: Yes, me too. Me too.
There is a kind of person in the Buddhist world called a Bodhisattva—a person who chooses to forgo nirvana in order to stay here in the world to help relieve the suffering of others. They are compassionate beings, devoted to helping their fellow human beings out of the darkness and suffering in their lives. I see so many Bodhisattvas in kidlit.
I say, turn your pain into ink. Be a warrior Bodhisattva writer.
For all those teens in the dark and confusion of adolescence who need your words. Who need your advocacy for them. It won’t always be enough. But we can’t give up. On them, or on the wounded child within us all.
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As A.S. King says in Please Ignore Vera Dietz,
“I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. If we’re supposed to ignore everything that’s wrong with our lives, then I can’t see how we’ll ever make things right.”
Here’s to making it right. Together.
Breathe. Write. Repeat.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, A Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
March 17, 2019
3 Things: Dealing With Setbacks
Drum roll please…..
I’ve started a new YouTube and IG TV series called “Three Things With Heather Demetrios” where each video is focused on three pieces of advice related to a writing or creative process problem.
It’s so much fun! I love getting to talk craft and process, so this seemed like a perfect way to do it.
For my innaugural video, we’re tackling three ways to deal with setbacks. Whether it’s a setback with your work-in-progress or your creative life, I’ve got you covered.
I’ve been noticing that March is a particularly challenging month for many writers. I keep hearing from my clients and students and writer friends that they’re hitting a wall. It makes sense. We come into the new year with so much energy, so much expectation, and then by march, we often feel like we’re falling behind.
I wrote about this a bit in my Midnight Missive from this week.
In this video, I talk about three key ways to deal with setbacks:
1. Keep Showing Up
2. Cheat On Your Book
3. The Book Is The Boss
Click below to check out the video – and be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you know when a new one is out! You can also watch it on Instagram, if that’s how you roll.
Breathe. Write. Repeat.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, A Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
March 14, 2019
The Lotus & Pen #2
For the second installment on my series of interviews with writers who meditate, I’ve got the lovely Jessica Conoley, YA writer and meditation convert. Full disclosure: Jess was a meditation skeptic until she went on one of my autumn writing & mindfulness retreats. Her experience there led her to down the rabbit hole of meditation, and it’s been fascinating to watch her relationship to this practice blossom (Ahem: like a lotus perhaps?). She wrote a fantastic blog about that journey here. Jess agreed to answer my series of questions about the intersection of meditation and creativity, and how this practice has impacted her writing. I hope you’re as inspired by her experience as I am!
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How long have you been meditating and what kind of meditation do you do?
I started in October of 2017. I don’t even know what the kind I do is called. I just close my eyes, set a timer, and focus on breathing.
What effect do you think meditation and/or mindfulness has on your creative life?
I’m better at leaving the drama of my personal life behind, detaching from the business worries running around in my mind, & focusing entirely on the task at hand—be that drafting or revision or edits.
Have you noticed a relationship between meditation and flow?
Yes. In the sense that when I first sit down to meditate it takes a good 10-15 minutes for my thoughts to slow down. It feels the same when I first sit down to write for the day. The first 10-15 minutes my minds all dodgy, oh I need to put my hair in a ponytail, I don’t have socks on, did I brush my teeth? etc. I have to keep refocusing for the first 10-15 minutes of writing time and am maybe up from the keyboard & back again, but by the end of that opening mind dump I settle into flow just like I settle into a meditation session.
Has there been a time when you have called upon your meditation or mindfulness work to help you with some of the downs of the artistic life, be it a creative block, a rejection letter, a bad review, etc.?
I got a rejection and it was one of those send me absolutely reeling type of days. Heart racing, mind off the rails, almost like it was a fight or flight response from my body. Before I meditated that type of rejection would have kept me off writing for days, maybe even weeks or months. I DM’d a friend, and had a quick interweb-chat for the immediate shock & then told her “I need to go meditate.” I sat down and focused on my breath. It was a long meditation session and half way through I felt the adrenaline subside. I got in a writing session that night. That was the day I saw how far meditation had brought me in my ability to focus.
Let’s talk craft: you may or may not have thought about this before, but do you think that there are ways in which your practice on the cushion, as we say, has helped you in your actual writing on the page?
I think it may have expanded the depth of sensory detail in my writing. I’m much more aware of my body since I began meditating. I notice when I’m in public and my body responds positively or negatively to what’s going on. It makes me curious and I try to notice what is going on to provoke such a response.
Do you have any go-to creative or writing activities that are related to meditation, visualization, etc.? We’d love to try them out for ourselves!
Not really. I do like to go on walks around my neighborhood and count cats. My best walk was 14 cats. There’s also a little park with a swing set & I stop and swing almost every time.
What are ways you’ve brought meditation into your process? For example, do you meditate before you write?
I use meditation for an energy boost. I sit in the morning, but if I start to lag in the afternoon I’ll do another session to perk me up for the rest of the day.
The biggest way I’ve brought it into my practice is when I have to do public events. I’m an introvert, but I speak at conferences, do workshops, readings, etc. Those events take a ton of emotional energy for me to perform the way I want. I’ve learned to do intensive meditation on the days leading up to the event. I’ll meditate the morning of an event too. It feels like I’m storing up energy for the show I’m about to put on. I also think meditating has helped my recovery time. Normally after a big event it would be a week of me functioning at 5%, meditation seems to speed the recovery time.
What kind of instruction do you get in meditation? For example, do you go on retreats, listen to an app, have a teacher you work with…?
I haven’t studied, other than the Pneuma retreat in October 2017, where Heather taught us through meditation workshops. I just took what I learned over those 4 days and applied it to my existing life. Just that little bit of info was enough to be a huge game changer for me.
Do you have any go-to books or other resources that you recommend writers who are interested in these practices check out?
No. I don’t even use an app, just the on my phone. But I do listen to Ru Paul’s podcast & Michelle Visage said the Insight Timer was a great free app for people who want to meditate. So maybe that’s something to check out.
[ Editor’s Note: I also love Insight Timer and am a teacher on there. The timer itself is great, as are so many of the instructors. And it’s free!]
Jessica Conoley was raised on 80’s action films, Jem and the Holograms, and older-brother mandated Star-Wars. Sitting in the back of class she never felt like she fit in with the other kids and escaped reality by reading. She writes fantasy novels, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, and essays to help her readers escape their own realities. From 2011 to 2017, Jessica served on the executive board of Whispering Prairie Press—a non-profit dedicated to art and literature. In 2012 she became the Managing Editor of Kansas City Voices arts and literary magazine and spent the next five years publishing emerging artists and writers. Her creative non-fiction piece “I Am Descended From Giants” won 1st place in the Bacopa Literary Review’s annual contest in 2016. In 2018 she launched a coaching program for authors on the path to traditional publication. Learn more about her work and coaching programs at https://jessicaconoley.com/
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, A Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
March 7, 2019
Picassos On The Page
This is from my blog vault, written way back on August 23, 2013. The part in green at the end is what I’ve added today, 5 1/2 years later. I always work from character as a writer–this is how I plot my books, this is what moves me as a reader. You can have all the twisty fun plot in the world, and luscious language to boot, but if you don’t give me a great character, I won’t care. This blog explores characterization, but it also gets in to why writing real people has, suddenly, become unfashionable.
P.S. I’m teaching a YA Novel Writing Class this April, and I’d love to have you join me!
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Last week I was at the MET with my grandma, taking in as much as we could in the hour and a half we had before closing, which is to say, not a whole lot. We were sort of running through Impressionism, giving quick waves to Van Gough and Monet and the rest, when Picasso stopped us in our tracks (he’s pretty good at that). It was unlike any Picasso I’d ever seen, without all the pizzazz of cubism. I’ve seen things from his Blue Period before, but nothing hurt to look at so much as this one. It’s called “The Blind Man’s Meal,” and if you want to be geeky like me, you can read more about it here. The photo below doesn’t do it justice, but hopefully it’ll give you pause, too.
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So what does Picasso and, more particularly, this painting, have to do with writing? In a word: character. Picasso didn’t just paint any blind man – he painted this blind man. He is absolutely singular, caught in a private moment of sorrow and longing. And yet there’s also something tranquil here, a sort of acceptance of his condition. What kills me is the way his hand seems to almost be stroking the jug of wine. I can almost feel the grainy texture under my own fingertips as I imagine him running his skin over it. Perhaps he’s wondering what color it is or wishes he could see how much is left. Or he wishes there were someone he could share it with – this blind man feels very much alone, no? This is a study in solitude.
And look at his face. He’s beautiful, but does he know it? The swooney girl in me wants to kiss those perfect, pouty lips, but does he have someone in his life to appreciate them? I don’t think so. He’s skinny and sitting alone and he only seems to have that one piece of bread. Picasso shows us his poverty here; I’m not exactly sure what “telling” looks like in a painting, but my guess is that the blind man is not a representation or a stand-in–it’s him in all his raw humanity. Picasso doesn’t need to beat us over the head with it, we get it from the way his shirt hangs a little loosely around him, the meager meal, the blue tones that immediately evoke sadness.
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I wonder how Picasso got us there. It’s not just masterful technique or a great subject. It was something deeper. Pieces of himself that he mixed in with the pain and an awareness of the human condition so keen, so empathetic, that there is no doubt that Picasso, however briefly, went to this sightless place with the blind man in order to see him more clearly. When he painted this in the early nineteen-hundreds, Picasso himself was a poor artist. But he wasn’t blind. He, as editor Patricia Gauch says, “went to the mountain.” You look at this painting, you see this character in this deeply private moment, and you feel something. An ache, a hurt in the pit of your stomach that has nothing to do with pity. It’s beautiful because it’s real.
YA is full of unreal characters. Broody boys and pretty girls who don’t know they’re pretty and everyone sounds the same and has the same problems and BLEGH. Or, you get characters who seem to put the quirk in quirky, as though weird ticks and habits and hobbies slapped onto a teen prototype can somehow render them unique. You can see the author trying too hard. Give me the real deal, however messy it is. Give me Eleanor and Park, two characters who are so real to me that I swear I’m going to run into them on the street someday. Oh Lord, give me Sean Kendrick from The Scorpio Races, where author Maggie Stiefvater takes the broody boy to a whole new level. Or how about e. lockhart’s wonderfully conniving Frankie Landau-Banks and the heartbreakingly broken Lennie in The Sky is Everywhere? These are some of my favorite characters because they aren’t perfect. They’re messed up and make bad choices or they’ve got so many sides to themselves–hidden sides, beautiful sides–that they’re kaleidoscopic.
I was recently told that maybe my books are too “brainy,” too deep for YA. That the complexity of my characters, the subterranean levels of their desires and misbeliefs within them require readers to have to show up more than they want to. It’s not that my books are complicated, twisty, or cerebral. It’s that I don’t make it easy for you to put my characters into neat little boxes. You don’t get to say, Oh, he’s the bad guy, she’s the good girl, she’s the mean girl. You actually have to get in the trenches with my characters, to watch them fuck up, and know that when you close my book, they’ll probably fuck up again. Because they’re human. Nothing is ever really tied up in a bow. They’re still hurting, they still have mountains to climb. Lazy readers don’t like that. SO many readers just want junk food these days. Don’t get me wrong – I can be one them, too! There are days when I don’t want to really feel deeply–I just want to read a good kissing scene and call it a day. And there is absolutely a place for books like that. Fun, light fare–guilty pleasures: McDonald’s fries books.
But.
We live in a time right now where it seems, more and more, that the color gray is not acceptable. A time when labels and boxes are the norm. You are THIS or you are THAT and there is no in-between. No real center. I find that to be so boring, so inauthentic, a farce of reality in which everyone is suddenly required to participate, and then become de-sensitized to what is happening because it becomes normalized.
I live in the gray. I work in the gray. It is the sweet spot of art.
We are all super complicated, complex beings. And that makes for great art. I recently watched a documentary about a politician that I had some major aversion to, and what I loved was that, because the filmmaker did his job, by the end of the documentary, I could no longer put this guy in the snug box I’d crafted for him. Oh, sure, his policies are, in many ways, against my ethics. I’m not going to vote for him. But I got to see little quirks that made me realize: This is a man. A human being with a complex series of wants and needs and fears. He is not all bad. Not all good. He fucks up. He also does beautiful, brave things. It felt so GOOD to feel conflicted. To want to dislike someone, but not be able to write them off completely because I was now finally seeing them. It doesn’t make me a bad person for seeing a supposed enemy’s humanity. It makes me a person. It makes me an artist. Because what we are called to do as writers is to LOOK. To SEE. To bear witness to what it means to be human and report back.
Our job is not to do what you want. It’s not say the “right” thing. It’s not to be didactic.
Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to report on our characters’ individual lives. I’m writing a character right now who is deeply saddened over the abortion she had. I’m Pro-Choice. So is she. But this singular girl is sad about what she had to do. And she felt she had to do it–most women in her circumstances would have made the choice she made. I would have, too. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be sad. And it doesn’t mean that writing ONE girl who is sad about her abortion is somehow a message that all women and girls are sad about their abortions and that abortion is wrong and we judge you. NO. THERE IS NO FUCKING MESSAGE. I am reporting back about this one girl’s experience. She did this thing. It hurt. It might not hurt you. That’s fine.
I guarantee you, there will be people who read this book and will make all kinds of assumptions about how I feel about abortion. They will forget that I am a vessel for my characters and that I also am a storyteller. Yes, parts of myself go in to all my books and characters. But I’ve written serial killer characters, too, and, I assure you, I am no serial killing maniac. I went to the dark place. Observed. Reported back. I’m seeing this character–my girl who got an abortion–as Picasso saw this particular, singular blind man in his painting. Maybe he painted other blind men while they were mid-laugh. This painting isn’t a commentary on blindness, a statement about all visually-impaired people. Picasso was reporting back about this man in this moment.
Art is a freeze frame. A moment.
If writing complex characters is too brainy for YA, then we are in a bad place, indeed. I don’t tell my readers what to think: but I give them stories that give them the opportunity to think. That’s the gift I give. And, if you’re a writer, I hope you can give it, too.
Writing a truly unique protagonist is hard work. It requires the writer to dig deep, to go further, to walk on hot, shifting sands and brave soul-sucking winds. Like an actor, you need to channel them, meditate on them, talk to them. And listen. Because they always talk back and they’ll let you know when you’re making a false move. Avoid the easy route. Cross out the cliches and find the characteristics and moments that are as unique as a fingerprint. The process is arduous but when it works…well, when it works, we call that art. Writing a Picasso is like closing your eyes and searching with your fingertips for that jug of wine, that hunk of bread, the hunger that nothing seems to fill.
It’s dancing in the dark.
Breathe. Write. Repeat.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, a Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
February 27, 2019
Your Fellowship of the Pen
Happy February! I’m writing you from Marrakech, Morocco, where I’m soaking up the sun and loving the colors and flavors and sights of this gorgeous city. I’ll be here for a few more weeks, then it’s off to Spain, Scotland, and Greece. We’ll be back in the States in May (oh, Mexican food, I miss you). Hopefully, I’ll see some of your lovely faces soon. I FINALLY wrote a long-ass blog post on how to do international and domestic housesitting. It really is the ultimate creativity and travel hack.
Here’s me having a laugh because Zach took a picture of me and I was trying to be serious and cool on a street in Morocco, but it was the most hilarious sad face ever. Tragic AF. Pics are so much better when you’re not being a poseur.
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This month I’ve got LOADS for you. A new website, new Inspiration Portal, downloads, reading fun, and more. See below for all the shenanigans. Remember, this year my word is BLOOM. I’m excited for us to grow a beautiful garden together. I put my heart and soul into this site, really hoping that the Inspiration Portal and other resources there will be a doorway into the magic and wonder of your own creativity.
Your Fellowship of the Pen Worksheet Download
Way out here on the other side of the world, I’m seeing that you can’t BLOOM without community. Sure, you can be like the thorny rose in The Little Prince, shouting “Let the tigers come with their claws,” but, you know, it’s nice to not go it alone. As I mentioned in this post for the Barnes and Noble blog, it’s so much easier to get through with a great crew–Aelin’s court, anyone?
I keep hearing my clients longing for other writers to connect with, to help them on their journey, and I’m in that place too. As many of you know, the word I’ve chosen for this year is BLOOM. And the fact is, you can’t bloom as gloriously alone. A garden usually has more than one flower. You’re going to be a kickass flower if you’re the only rose in the bunch or one of hundreds, but it’s nice to have some companionship, no? Someone to buzz with other than the bees.
To that end, I’ve come up with a couple of excellent resources for you on the Inspiration Portal (which is all new and CHOCK FULL of awesome: the skinny on international housesitting for writers, dipping our toes in the tarot waters, ergonomics so you don’t hurt, all my artist soul food inspiration, and SO MUCH MORE).
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You’ll find my Fellowship of the Pen worksheet download to help you suss out who your crew into Mordor is and who you SHOULDN’T take on this writing journey. What’s your dream writing community? How can you bring that into your life? Conversely, what writers (or non-writers) are not supporting you? Who is bringing you down, tearing you apart, or just making you feel shitty? This worksheet will give you strategies to find your very own garden of buddies to bloom with.
We need each other to bloom. I know this. You know this. If you don’t have it already, you can get the password for the Inspiration Portal here.
Meditation Downloads
You’ll also find a special guided meditation download on lovingkindness for writers, where all the people you choose in this powerful meditation are SPECIFICALLY related to your writing life. I wrote a blog about that here. You can get the download on the portal.
I ALSO have a revision meditation download for you, which you’ll find on the front page of the Inspiration Portal, along with all the other deliciousness.
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Autumn Retreat Update
Heads up: I’ll be sending out info soon, but mark your calendars because the next annual autumn retreat is October 5-10th at Highlights and I’m bringing on an all-new super-cool co-leader who you WILL LOVE and is one of my favorite people ever. More on that soon, but keep those dates open!
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This Planner Will Change Your Life (No Joke)
It’s okay if 2019 isn’t in full bloom yet. It’s only February! You’ve got this! And if you need some help, I swear by the Best Self planner. It’s really saved me, no joke. (Full disclosure, I’m an affiliate). It’s quarterly (easier to reach your goals!) and blank, so you can start whenever. It helped me write nearly half a million words in less than a year. If that’s not a shining endorsement, I don’t know what is.
Tell me below what you love best about your own Fellowship of the Pen. Who’s on your crew? How do they support you? While you’re at it, what’s your word for 2019? If you don’t have one yet, it’s not too late. I recommend BLOOM. 
February 24, 2019
All New Lovingkindness For Writers
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This post originally appeared on the Vermont College of Fine Art’s blog. You can find that here.
The writer’s life can often be full of what my friend calls “haterade”: we have self-hatred (how many of you have beat yourself up more than once?), we have Inner Critics who hate on us, and real critics, and readers on Goodreads who forget authors have feelings. We have beta readers or critique partners or teaches who might throw shade on us or our work. Then there are the publishers and booksellers: a challenging dynamic between artist and manufacturer/distributor if ever there was one.
Enter lovingkindness meditation.
The fact is, we need to find a healthy way to not only deal with the intense feelings the writer’s journey can bring up, but a way to transform them. Lovingkindness meditation might sound warm and fuzzy, but it’s emotional judo, destroying the walls we put up around our hearts and spirits that ultimately keep us from creating the work we want to on the page. In order to do the hard work of writing, we need to be emotionally intelligent, present, and open. The more haterade we consume (against ourselves or others), the harder it is to do good work. Especially now, when the country has gone batshit crazy. We need the love. We really do.
The cool thing about lovingkindess is that it plays meditation jazz – meaning, you don’t have to sit in a traditional posture and the phrases you repeat like a mantra are whatever works for you. It’s the doing that counts. I always feel more centered after I do it, less angry, more receptive. A good place to be for writing, no?
How To Do Mētta The Writer’s Way
The traditional lovingkindness meditation (mētta) is a series of phrases that are repeated silently while visualizing different people. You start with yourself, visualizing yourself perhaps as you were this morning or as a child, then repeat the phrases for a while. If your mind wanders, you bring it back to the phrases when you become mindful of the wandering. You might feel uncomfortable, especially doing this for yourself. Just roll with it. Accept what comes up and just sit with it—you don’t have to make it better, you just have to bear witness to whatever emotions are arising in you, using the phrases and visualization as your anchor.
Breathe.
When you’re ready, you move on to other people, using the same phrases for each person: a teacher / benefactor, a beloved one, a neutral person (a stranger, maybe a barista or someone you see on your street but don’t know), a difficult person, and then the world at large.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be fun to do one specifically for our writing life. So here’s my Lovingkindness for Writers, my own riff on the phrases and people that we choose to focus on (feel free to make up your own phrases, but make sure to use the same phrases for each person):
Go here to get a guided, downloadable recording
May I/ you be happy
May I / you be inspired
May I / you flow
* For each person, call up whatever visualization of them works for you – book covers are totally acceptable.
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Person 1: Yourself
Lovingkindness starts with you. Self-love as a writer is so important. We deal so much with our Inner Critics, with doubt, fear, failure, rejection. We are often our worst and cruelest critics. So take this time to be gentle and kind to yourself. Put your hand on your heart and give yourself some love. (You can do just this for a few minutes for yourself each time you’re at the laptop or the bookstore or the grocery line and your Inner Critic comes out to play).
Person 2: A Teacher or Benefactor
In this case, a writing teacher, mentor, editor, agent, coach, therapist, or fellow writer who has taught you a lot about writing and the creative life.
Person 3: A Beloved
Let this be a writing friend or an author who you just love to pieces. My friend says they choose someone who makes their heart smile. You could also go for someone in your life that has really championed and supported you. Ideally someone you know, but it can also be a favorite author, living or gone, who has inspired the hell out of you.
Person 4: A Neutral Person
Have this be a fellow writer that you don’t know, but also don’t have any feelings about one way or another. You could literally choose a book off a bookstore shelf you’ve never heard of and send some lovingkindness to that author.
Person 5: The Difficult Person
Choose your Inner Critic, or an actual critic, or someone who is difficult for you in your creative life—an unsupportive partner, a teacher who hates on your work, whatever. I like to also do this on the fly: I once did mētta for the (ahem) unknown Kirkus reviewer who wrote an indifferent review of one of my books. Rather than rage, I closed my eyes and sent them some lovingkindness. Didn’t mean I liked them any better, but I felt less tied down by my feelings about the review and moved on from it easier. Remember, this one is really for you—forgiveness frees you. That’s the great thing about it. You’re not letting anyone off the hook for bad behavior—you’re just not letting their behavior run you.
Note: Please don’t choose someone who will trigger you in a serious way, throwing you into trauma. Just someone who is challenging, annoying, frustrating.
To end: Say, “May all writers everywhere be happy and free.”
This last sentiment is a chance to take a break from a scarcity complex that might be running you, from your competitive edge, from the crippling jealousy and comparison. It’s an acknowledgement that we are all part of this art family, and that all are welcome. There might not be “room” for all of us in the publishing world all the time, but we are all creators and thus kindred.
The traditional phrases, in case you were wondering, are:
May I/you be happy
May I / you be safe
May I / you be free
To learn more about how this mētta practice can be of use in your writing process, you can check out my podcast episode on Insight Timer here.
Wherever this post finds you, I wish you much mētta: may we all be happy, inspired, and in flow.
Breathe. Write. Repeat.
Subscribe to my newsletter for writers and readers, The Lotus & Pen, to get a download of the short story that inspired Bad Romance, a Revision Guide, and access to my Inspiration Portal: a world of resources and downloads to help you make word magic.
February 2, 2019
The Ultimate Creativity Hack For Writers
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When I tell people–anyone, but especially writers–that I get to live abroad for free while I write, and that, when I live in the US, I get to have free accommodations whenever I travel FOR LIFE, they immediately turn into John Mulaney: SAY MORE RIGHT NOW.
Okay, I’ll bite.
I’m an international housesitter. I live in other people’s houses, all over the world, and while they’re away I take care of their house and pets. Usually cats or dogs. I * did * see an opportunity to care for reindeer on a farm in Norway and was sorely tempted. The houses are everywhere, and yours for the taking if you’re not shady af and do a little legwork. No money exchanges hands, ever. In most house sits, you don’t even pay utilities. I love this whole set-up. It means that world (and domestic) travel is truly accessible to anyone who can cover the cost of their flight and their time away from their job. If you have severe health issues, lack of childcare, and other financial concerns, then, of course, right now might not be the season for you to try this. But housesitting gives me hope that more people can have access to this dream lifestyle of traveling and living abroad, and especially creatives, who thrive so much on experiences like this, but who often can’t afford to have them.
You can do this if you have kids
You can do this if you only have a couple of weeks–or days
You can do this if you’re financially strapped, and have access to enough money to buy a plane ticket
You can do this internationally OR domestically
Sometimes, you can even invite a friend to visit you
Or, housesit with that friend! Or your spouse! Or your sister! Or luxuriate in being alone.
Find out how you can get in on this creative hack, too
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Me, during out housesit in Lyon, feeling French AF
From August 2018 until May 2019 I got (“get” since I’m still on the journey, as I write this) to live in Lyon, France; Bournemouth, England; Bäch, Switzerland; and Dunfermline, Scotland. In between my housesits, I got to do important research for one of my books in Germany and decided to live in Morocco for ten weeks because I was literally in the area and my friend in Marrakech could arrange an apartment rental for 500 euros a month. Right down the street from a UNESCO World Heritage souk. Before that, I got to live in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with a doorman and all the fanciness I could never have afforded to enjoy in my humble Brooklyn former-tenement walk-up.
To see the housesitting life in action, check out our Insta, Sits Ahoy!, to see what daily life is like on this strange, wonderful road.
The Benefits of Housesitting For Short Stints
:: A few days, a week, or more of a retreat all your own ::
I can’t tell you how many clients, students, or writer friends have been pulling out their hair, dying to get a break to go on a creative deep dive. They want some peace and quiet, they want a break from their normal life, they want to WRITE. But that costs money: retreats are expensive, and so are hotels and cabins and Air BnB’s. But what if you could scrounge up the money for the plane ticket, or the gas money, to go somewhere to write FOR FREE? All you have to do is walk someone’s dog, or clean out their cat’s litter box. (Plus, there’s the therapeutic benefit of furry friends).
What if you could go ANYWHERE in the world? No rent, no utilities. A fair exchange of you keeping their house unburnt and their pet alive and them giving you free reign in the house. Imagine getting to write in your own English garden, on the balcony of your apartment in Lyon, at a desk overlooking Lake Zürich? (Ahem. I did all these things). Find out how.
:: A way to research that book of yours on the cheap::
Part of why housesitting came at the perfect time in my life was because I was working on two books that required deep research in France, Germany, and England. How was I going to do that, when my publishers weren’t willing to help cover the cost? Well, I was able to live in Lyon for two weeks while researching a biography, which gave me the chance to get to know the city REALLY well, and allowed me to afford other travels in France for the book, since I saved so much on accommodation.
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Writing on my balcony in Lyon
And when I had a two-week stint between housesits, I was able to go to Germany to research the other book. (I could have found a housesit there, too, but I didn’t have time). I lived in England for 10 weeks, which made it possible for me to bop over to London as needed to do archival and other research. I paid for accomodations in London, but the whole trip was cheaper because I was literally living in England at the time and didn’t have to make three seperate flights across the Atlantic for all this research.
With a little planning, it’s possible you could do the same to help lower the cost of your research trips. Find out how.
:: Go on an international vacation, even on a writer’s budget–even with your family::
We writers aren’t usually rolling in it. As a lifelong traveler, I was terrified that I had to give up my traveling in order to live my life as a full-time writer. Now I know that I will get to travel all over the world, my health willing, as long as I can afford the ticket. And with my eye on cheap flights and some flexibility, if the right house sit comes up and we’re a match – bon voyage! If you have a family, many homes allow for that. The French countryside empties out in August and is a great time to go there and housesit.
And that bucket list? Get ready to start crossing things off. In just a few months, here are a few things we got to do:
Visited Stonehenge, which was an hour from my house in England
Went to Versailles on a short stint in Paris after my Lyon housesit
My husband got to ski in Switzerland-at Klosters-which was an hour and a hlaf from our home in Switzerland
Went to Oxford on a day trip – a few hours from our home – to visit the Bodleian and drink in the pub where the Inklings talked about their books
Next up? The Scottish Highlands. Helllloooooo Jamie Fraser!
What’s on your Bucket List? Let’s get that pen ready to start crossing things off.
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The Benefits of Housesitting Long-Term
:: Saving Money & Reaching Longterm Financial Goals ::
This is obviously not an option available to all, but if you have a way to work remotely as a digital nomad, this is a viable option. I’m a full-time writer, writing teacher (online), and writing coach (which just means I need Internet for calls and communication). My husband’s a writer, but his primary income comes from teaching, so he left his public school job and began teaching English online. We basically lived off his income so I could work on paying off student debt with all that rent, utilities, and car insurance money we were saving.
:: Writing Your Face Off ::
In addition to the financial benefits of living rent free (and how that will help you reach some long-term financial goals quicker), I have also been INSANELY PRODUCTIVE.
In my first seven months of housesitting I wrote four books and nearly half a million words.
Think about it: you’re not going out all the time, your social commitments and family commitments are nil (except for the phone), and you’re saving money on going out because you’re on a major budget. There are no distractions – and there could potentially be zero if you choose a really remote place with poor Internet, which you just might want if your income doesn’t depend on it.
Bottom line: living abroad makes you more expansive, and this could certainly help to increase your flow – and give you loads of new story ideas!
:: Travel – A Lot Of It ::
Not only will you get to tons of cool places, but you will experience cultures in an authentic, non-touristy way. It’s an immersion, and a great chance to learn a language or culture more intimately. And, once you’re abroad, it’s so much CHEAPER to take a vacation somewhere amazing. Our planned vacation to Greece after our Scottish housesit only cost us a few hundred bucks to fly as opposed to thousands. And other opportunities for living abroad could crop up. Once you’re out on the road, a lot more possibilities present themselves–for both business and pleasure.
:: Lifelong Friends Around The World ::
You will often get to meet the homeowners and, depending on your living situation and how long your sit is, there is the potential for real friendships to bloom amongst your neighbors.
Not only that – you get SO MUCH LOVE from so many animals. And if you’re a broke writer who is stuck in rentals that don’t allow pets, this can be a big boost.
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Zach with Yannick and Hubert (and Gunther!)- our homeowners- in Lyon
:: Mindfulness ::
My experiences living the housesitting life have helped me so much with my mindfulness practice. It’s teaching me to accept what is more easily, to be less attached to material things, to be okay with change and impermanence–and goodbyes. (Oh the kitties and dogs and places I miss!). All of this, in turn, helps me better accept the uncertainties inherent in the artist’s life. It’s a pretty amazing way to learn these lessons.
More About My Housesitting Journey
I got the idea a decade ago, when I was living abroad as an ESL teacher in South Korea. My husband and I were spending a holiday in Langkawi, a gorgeous Malaysian island, and the owner of our guesthouse, Dee, let slip that he was going to London for a year and that some nice Aussie girl he’d never met was going to take care fo the guesthouse and his SEVEN dogs for him. He told me he found her online, that there was this whole WORLD of housesitting.
It didn’t seem possible to do any time soon, so I kept this idea in my back pocket, a little escape valve, should I need it. And then? In the winter of 2017, I needed it.
Back in the spring of 2018, my husband, Zach, also a writer, and I put out an email to our family and friends to tell them we were going on an adventure that might be a shitshow or the great discovery of the modern age. Some sad things happened in my personal life and, on top of that, Brooklyn had eaten all of my money. I was also becoming increasingly frustrated, professionally and creatively.
My husband was still digging the NYC life, but I had to get out. It was killing my creativity and I couldn’t stand writing in a tiny, cramped apartment one more damn day. I was struggling creatively and focusing became harder. I was miserable. And, remember, BROKE. Enter, housesitting. Since Zach and I really had no idea where we wanted to move to in the US from NYC and we were going to have to pack everything up anyway, we decided to go for it.
It hasn’t been easy-breezy, but I’m so glad we took the leap.
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The Drawbacks
It’s not all rainbows and roses. There are some obvious challenges to this lifestyle – homesickness, isolation, constant change, getting in homes you don’t love, animal drama, etc.
And in order to do this, it’s important that you have access to the medications you’ll need, and the support Stateside. We couldn’t have done this–or at least not as smoothly–with the enormous help of my in-laws, who have really helped us out with becoming our permanent US address and running USA errands for us.
And, sometimes, emergencies happen. Zach had to go home for a week, and it was lucky there were two of us to cover the housesit.
You will absolutely be giving things up: opportunities, financial security (if you have a nomadic job that is less secure than the one you had Stateside), community. You could totally do this alone, but I think it would have been very lonely indeed for more than a few weeks or months if I hadn’t been with my husband. But being in close quarters with one other person so long has its own challenges.
There’s a lot to sort out if you want to do it long term, but if you want to use houseitting as a way to go get some creative zest in your life here and there, then it’s very easy. Got a couple weeks’ vacation? Go for it!
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Ready to find out more? I’d love to help. Schedule an Explore Session with me to live the hell out of your creative life.
We’ll have a 60-minute call followed by an email from me with curated resources for you, plus you’ll get my Housesitter’s Guide, which is only available through the Explore Sessions. This is chock-full of resources, check-lists, insights for every level of this experience, exploratory journaling, and more.
I’m so excited for those of you who are thinking of starting this journey. If you decide to housesit, please keep in touch! I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Bon Voyage!
Sign up for my newsletter, The Lotus and the Pen, to get your free Revision Guide and exclusive links to start your housesitting journey deep dive through my Inspiration Portal.
The newsletter = special downloads of guided meditations and worksheets, discounts on my courses, creativity and mindfulness hacks, and access to my Inspiration Portal.
Letters To A Young Writer
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The following is an excerpt from Colm McCann’s Letters To A Young Writer. I have a print-out of it that I keep tacked on the wall of my office, part of my writer’s soul food on the hard days.
Without further ado…
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Do the things that do not compute. Be earnest. Be devoted. Be subversive of ease. Read aloud. Risk yourself. Do not be afraid of sentiment even when others call it sentimentality. Be ready to get ripped to pieces: it happens. Permit yourself anger. Fail. Take pause. Accept the rejections. Be vivified by collapse. Practice resuscitation. Have wonder. Bear your portion of the world. Find a reader you trust. They must trust you back.
Be a student, not a teacher, even when you teach. Don’t bullshit yourself. If you believe the good reviews, you must believe the bad. Still, don’t hammer yourself down. Do not allow your heart to harden. Face it, the cynics have better one-liners than we do. Take heart: they can never finish their stories. Enjoy difficulty. Embrace mystery. Find the universal in the local.
Put your faith in language — character will follow and plot, too, will eventually emerge. Push yourself further. Do not tread water. It is possible to survive that way, but impossible to write. Never be satisfied. Transcend the personal. Have trust in the staying power of what is good. We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, become your own voice.
Write about that which you want to know. Better still, write towards that which you don’t know. The best work comes from outside yourself. Only then will it reach within. Restore what has been devalued by others. Write beyond despair. Make justice from reality. Sing. Make vision from the dark. The considered grief is so much better than the unconsidered.
Be suspicious of that which gives you too much consolation. Hope and belief and faith will fail you often, but so what? Share your rage. Resist. Denounce. Have stamina. Have courage. Have perseverance. The quiet lines matter as much as those which make noise. Trust your blue pencil, but don’t forget the red one. Make the essential count. Allow your fear. Give yourself permission. You have something to write about. Just because it’s narrow doesn’t mean it’s not universal. Don’t be didactic — nothing kills life quite so much as explanation.
Make an argument for the imagined. Begin with doubt. Be an explorer, not a tourist. Go somewhere nobody else has gone. Fight for repair. Believe in detail. Unique your language. A story begins long before its first word. It ends long after its last. Make the ordinary sublime.
Don’t panic.
Reveal a truth that isn’t yet there. At the same time, entertain. Satisfy the appetite for seriousness and joy. Dilate your nostrils. Fill your lungs with language. A lot can be taken from you — even your life — but not your stories about that life. So this, then, is a word, not without love and respect, to a young writer: write.
From Colum McCann’s Letters To A Young Writer
As usual, you can sign up for my newsletter, The Lotus and the Pen, to get your free Revision Guide.
The newsletter = special downloads of guided meditations and worksheets, discounts on my courses, creativity and mindfulness hacks, and access to my Inspiration Portal.
