Heather Demetrios's Blog, page 8

Whiplash

(Note: This blog originally appeared on my website two years ago, on 3/3/15)

I am a certain brand of crazy.

As a child, I responded best to tyrannical gurus: a figure skating coach who would be so mad at me for not landing a jump that he’d spit on the ice, yelling at me God, I could just KILL you or, worse—far worse—he’d just look at me with disdain as I fell on my hipbone again and again, that motherfucking Axel jump, that goddamn double salchow. I’d look up at him, my twelve-year-old body splayed on the ice, face first, my chin inches from his blade. Again, he’d say, waving a hand in the air—two rotations I always fell short on. I was never going to be good enough for the Olympics and so I had to stop skating. Didn’t matter if I loved it. There was no point unless I was going to achieve the literal and metaphorical heights I’d dreamed of. My coach agreed in the only way he could: he stopped showing up for practice, he turned to another student, one who landed her jumps.

I loved the hell out of him.

In high school, my favorite teacher was known as an irascible grump, a man who refused to accept anything less than a masterpiece. He scowled, slumped his shoulders, and glared at the half-brains he had to teach. He rarely smiled—unless he was discussing Hester Prynne, the only woman he might have left his beloved wife for. To have him ask for a copy of your paper to keep in his files was the highest recognition a student could hope for, an honor above all honors. He made me cry once. Then he wrote me a four page letter. Not one that said I was brilliant, but that suggested, with some hard work, I might get on okay with this whole writing thing.

I dedicated my first book to him.

In undergrad, I worshipped the acting teachers who terrified the students with their harsh critiques, feared and trembled with pure joy when they got that look in their eye when you finished a scene or monologue that said, You’re wasting our fucking time. The teacher that just shook his head in disappointment during my last scene (A View From The Bridge—I hate you, Arthur Miller), the one who’d seemed to shine a light on me ever so briefly, only to leave me out in the cold after I didn’t measure up: he ignited a fire in me like no one else. His unkindness, his disenchantment with my performances–they made me decide I didn’t want to be an actor: I wanted to be the one to tell the actors what to do. I wasn’t actor material-not a Miles Teller or a Cate Blanchet-but I knew who was and what they should do to be better. If my acting teacher had taken pity on me and nursed along a dream that would never, ever have come true, he would only have been doing me a disservice. As it was, I got off the stage unless I was blocking a scene or yelling at an actor. My first professional production as a director and producer was for a theater company I, along with my husband and a group of fleetingly stalwart companions, created. I wasn’t a nice director, but I got the performances I wanted, the ones the shows needed, and-whether they admited it or not-some of the best work I’d seen my actors do. We received decent reviews from the LA Times and this only happened because of a pitying look on my last day of acting class from a teacher who no longer gave me the time of day, who realized I wasn’t good enough and didn’t want to waste his fucking time. Or mine, for which I’ll be forever grateful.

Okay, I still hate the old bastard.

In grad school, I hung on every word of the MFA teacher who made me cry, who made me angry as hell, who made me work harder than I ever have before. I’ve never had my writing judged so harshly, never felt so utterly incapable of stringing together a decent set of words. She never once blew smoke up my ass THANK GOD. She set the standard for my fiction, taught me never to pat myself on the back. Give it to me straight, I’d tell her. Don’t hold anything back. Fifty Shades of Writing. Hard-core, all the way.

I continue to bow at her feet.

I saw Whiplash at home, curled into a corner of my couch, tense, breathless, every part of me alive and saying yes to blood on drumsticks, yes to a teacher that broke you. Did I mention I’m a certain brand of crazy? My actor-writer-musician husband sat beside me, keeping time with his fingertips on his knee cap, nodding along. Maybe he’s a certain brand of crazy, too. The teacher in the film, Terence Fletcher, is a man after my own heart. A music fascist, hell-bent on a quest for perfection—for himself, his students, his school. He screams in his students’ faces, makes grown men weep, scoffs at blood and sweat and says again, again, not my tempo, play it right you cocksucker. He is a certain brand of crazy, as is his prodigy of a drummer, Andrew. Oh, Andrew. Sweat flies from his brow, his fingers are coated in blood, bandages slipping off wounds. The lengths to which he goes to win the approval of his teacher, to match the greatness of the jazz drummers he loves, to do the thing he is so passionate about, is as heroic as anything Jason and the Argonauts ever attempted. Andrew and Fletcher. Fletcher and Andrew. Theirs is a dysfunctional relationship, to put it lightly. At times even life threatening. Fletcher is the Bela Karolyi of jazz. (Another coach whose tutelage I would have lapped up). Instructors–gurus–like him seperate the wheat from the chaff. They know who’s got it and who doesn’t. If you’ve got it, they’ll fight like hell for you, but only if you’ll first fight like hell for yourself. Don’t waste their fucking time and they won’t waste yours.

Sometimes they’ll even give you the keys to the kingdom.

I love these kinds of teachers because they push you. They make you a masochist in the best kind of way, for the best kinds of reasons. You see, the fire burns in them too. They expect excellence and they are never, ever satisfied. If you are an artist and you are satisfied with your work, then I guarantee you it is likely not good enough. Not nearly. If somebody tells me I’m a good writer, I’m at a loss for words–and not because I’m flattered. Good writer? I want to say. I’m assuming you’ve never read Tolstoy, then? In Whiplash Fletcher says:

I’ve written before about my boundless ambition and for that I do not apologize. Is it egotistical, these heights of hubris? No. (Re: my penchant for teachers who make me feel like shit—I like it. Feeling like shit means I’m getting somewhere. Self-satisfaction: the work is drivel). Ambition as an artist isn’t about money, although sometimes I get lost in the forest of self-pity and think it is. It isn’t about commercial success (and if you have that while you’re still alive, treat all your good fortune with suspicion). To me, having ambition as an artist means wanting to be the best—and being fucking unapologetic about it. In Whiplash Andrew explains it this way: I want to be one of the greats. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s all kinds of right. He wants to go down in history. We storytellers, we artists, we dreamers: this is what we do. We create history, we mold it with our words and our songs and our slashes on the canvas, our ephemeral dances. We embody it, heart and soul. You see, it’s never good enough for us, what we do. All the awards and applause and contracts and good reviews and lists will never be enough because we can nearly always go further, push harder. Be better.

This is not healthy. Then again, nobody ever said it was.

Is art supposed to be healthy? I’m sorry, but hell no. I’m not talking about Paris in the twenties unhealthy: Hemingway, Fitzgerald—they can keep their booze-fueled depression. I’m not advocating for tragic ends: Virginia’s and Sylvia’s and Hunter’s and and and… Sleepless nights because the plot isn’t working? Yes. Pacing and muttering to yourself, cursing yourself because no matter how hard you try you can’t fucking get it right? Yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Despite this, I love Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way. I view struggling artists with the utmost compassion and encourage people to take care of themselves in the hopes that, at some point, they will be able to shrug off the crippling mantle of self-doubt that takes the best of us down sometimes (hazards of the job). Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself (it wouldn’t be a Heather rant without some Whitman thrown in for good measure). I tell my students to read Ms. Cameron. I try to take her advice and be kind to myself every now and again, but I always eventually tire of that kind of coddling. Still, you’re allowed to take a breather every now and again. You’re allowed a nervous breakdown or two. There’s a reason so many artists struggle from mental illness, depression, and a host of other emotional and spiritual mindfucks: yours truly included. An artist who’s died of stress can’t make anything new, now can she? So sometimes you have to get a little chicken soup for the soul.

As an occasional writing teacher, as a friend of writers, and as a student of writing and quote unquote professional writer, there is one thing that boggles my mind, time and again: writers who don’t work and who still claim to be writers. “Writers” who dabble, writers who always have an excuse. Sometimes those excuses are legitimate. Except they aren’t. Beethoven was deaf by the end of his life and was still composing masterworks. Let me say that again: Beethoven was deaf. That’s an excuse for a composer if I ever heard one. Interesting, don’t you think, how that didn’t stop him? I can think of only three writers in my life who have legitimate excuses not to work. They are all very sick and must have pissed off the gods in a former life because life keeps throwing tragedy after tragedy their way. Here’s the thing (and this is why they’re my people): they still work. A lot. And they are beautiful writers. I’ll be honest: I also love them. So I exempt them from my judgment, which does them no service, but every tyrant has their soft spot, don’t they? I gently push because their work feeds them and is how they survive and because the world needs their words – and then I back away. Because, you know what, at the end of the day, it’s not my fucking place. If they want to write, they’ll write. But here on my blog or in the classroom, it is my place.

But back to the writers who make my blood boil, and not in a good way. These hobbyists wouldn’t bother me if they didn’t bitch and moan about wanting to be published or published more or wished they could be as good as so-and so (cue long sigh, aggrieved expression). They wouldn’t bother me if they just admitted that they’re not really very serious about the craft, that they’re just doing this for fun. Unfortunately, so many of these writers claim to be one of our tribe. They claim to want it. Yeah, I don’t get that. Sorry. And, frankly, that’s an insult to those of us who do put in the time–the obsessed ones, the ones the hobbyists pull aside and say, how do you do it? If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…And I smile and make up some excuse, belittle myself because I’m embarrassed, because they don’t want it, but they think they do and what I want to say is, I sit in a chair and put my fingers on the damn keyboard, that’s how I do it. Instead I say something silly like, Oh, I don’t have kids, so I’ve got the time. Because saying anything else at a cocktail party is simply not polite and my mama raised me better than that.

Side note here: that is not to say I’m not grateful to my editors and agent who say things like that to me, though they do so with somewhat concerned expressions. They hold their breath, I’m sure. She has to break down at some point, right? Will it be when she’s on deadline? I imagine they bite their fingernails. And when they are pleased with my work, I am grateful, not satisfied. Their support and pleasure in my work is what keeps food on my table. It’s what allows me to have this journey of striving for excellence without dealing with the hell that is The Day Job. I love them and appreciate their encouragement and praise. I really do. When these people – or my readers – say nice things, I’m not bothered, but I don’t know what to say because they’re complimenting me and compliments don’t make me better so I’m not quite sure how to respond to them (re: look at that image above of Fletcher and Andrew). My frustration with how do you do it?? comes when I get that question from fellow artists. Because if they don’t know how I “do” it and yet claim the title of Writer or Artist, it’s an unearned title until they don’t need to ask that question. We are not we. In the interest of full disclosure, I myself have said this (how do you DO it??) to or about two fellow writers: David Levithan and Maggie Stiefvater. But this is not because of their writing output so much as because of what they do on top of it: David is a top-notch editor and the unofficial director of the YA social crew in NYC. Maggie is a visial artist, a musician, a mom, and a social media queen. I get how they write so many books: I just don’t know how they do the rest of it. In their cases, I suspect deals with the devil.

By now you think I’m not a nice person. You’re right, I’m not. Nice girls finish last, don’t you know that?

If I’ve offended you, I hope it results in the kind of anger that helps you make good art and then blame me for it. That’s what a passionate art teacher does and if you don’t know that I want to be good at what I do by now, then…wait, you can read, right? I suppose my best teachers have rubbed off on me. I suppose I’m becoming like them. I literally do not understand writers who tell me they don’t have time to write. Or writers who only write a few hours a week. Or writers who don’t fucking read. These people aren’t writers, not to me. Listen: if you aren’t tired, if you aren’t getting the equivalent of bloody hands (carpel tunnel, tendonitis), then I suspect you aren’t working hard enough (or have miracle genes, that might be a possibility, too). Do I sound harsh? Oh, I hope so. If I could ever push a student or a friend or myself as hard as my teachers pushed me—and harder still—than maybe we can touch the hem of Tolstoy’s garment, or E.B. White’s, or Anne Lamott’s.

I in no way think I’m an expert or a master of my craft. I am not The Best Artist In The World. I’ll never think I’m good enough, no matter what I create, what I achieve.

And that is why there’s a tiny, infintesimal part of me that allows myself to hope that maybe, someday, when I’m old and gray and even more ornery than I am now, or when I’m dead and gone, the grass under future generations’ feet, I just might be able to be one of the greats.

But probably not. It’s the journey, not the destination.

Inside me there is a Fletcher, cursing in my face, telling me what a sorry excuse for a writer I am. He’s there all the time. Telling me I’m a failure. And I do fail. Every. Single. Day.

Thank God.

Side note added on 5/4/15:

I wanted to respond to something readers of this post have said a few times. I don’t think I clarified that I’m not equating being a writer or artist with output. Some projects take days or weeks or months, others require years of toil and struggle. One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read is I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson. It took her YEARS to write. In it, she includes what has become a mantra for me, a quote by Michelangelo: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” That carving could take a good long part of your life. Would I say Harper Lee isn’t a writer because she only published one book in her life and her second one is only coming out at the end of her life? Hell no. Harper Lee is one of the greatest American writers that has ever lived. I think that being an artist is a state of mind, an act of will, a commitment of the soul to the work – a commitment to your LIFE of the work. You might have kids and I hope you hope you have work-life balance and love them well – none of us want to have to call Child Protective Services on your ass. When I say “commitment to your LIFE of the work” I add this: That doesn’t mean you have no life outside your art. I travel, I walk my dog, I do fun things around New York City with my friends. I also do the not so fun stuff of life: write eulogies for people I love that have left us, help people I love through crises, clean my bathroom. But the work is always on the tips of my fingers, the ideas simmering under my skin. I don’t forget about it. I can’t survive without it. If you can be happy without your work, great. But don’t call yourself an artist. Call yourself a lover of art, a patron of the arts. We need and cherish those people too.

Another thing I’d like to clarify is that these hardass teachers might not get the best work out of every artist. Many of us, myself included, are fragile. Some of us are on meds or are ill or have experienced tragedy. It takes a certain personality to see that angel and to want to carve it, to set it free. Nurturing teachers are wonderful. All kinds of teachers are wonderful. I love the mean ones because they push me, they make me want to be better. But sometimes they can push their student’s over the edge – and that’s not okay. I’m not saying you’re not a good teacher or artist because you respond best to a kinder way of being. Again, this post is a celebration of the teachers who make Marines look nice. But it is not to the exclusion of all those other teachers who champion their students’ work and help give them wings to fly. I love them, too. They just don’t get the best work out of me.

Writing this post is an act of hubris. It is my opinion and not written in the style of discourse that has become so popular today. It’s not PC, it doesn’t apologize for itself, it hurts feelings. Fortune favors the brave, does it not?

Here is the dialogue between myself and the other writers who chimed in after reading my original post above. I was really inspired to see how different people reacted. Some were on fire in a good way, some gutted, and some pushed back. These are important conversations to be having!

An update:

So it’s been a little over a year since I wrote my Whiplash post, and I wanted to continue the conversation with an update about some things I realized about myself. As much as I love those hard-ass teachers, I’ve found that when I teach or coach my creativity clients, I’m not quite like that. I think (I hope) I tell it like it is and am not afraid to push or say the hard thing, but I’ve discovered that I’m naturally nurturing. THIS IS HUGELY SURPRISING TO ME. As I said in the original post, I’ve always had a deep passion for encouraging artists, especially hurting artists and those on the brink of really going for it. I’m also super interested in working with people who honestly don’t know if they’re artists and they need someone to help them process it all. Reaching out to artists in need and doing my own writing go hand in hand as my vocation. I found that, despite loving those mean teachers, I catch myself gently pushing those in my tribe (as opposed to kicking them in the face) who are talented but don’t believe in themselves. Surprisingly, I don’t act as though I’m taking cues from a Marine drill sergeant. So while the tough teachers work best for me, it doesn’t work for me as a teacher or motivator or mentor—unless I’m working with someone like myself who is looking for some serious ass whupping.

It kills me to see talent wasted, to see lives that seem, from the outside, to be a breeding ground of regret, dissatisfaction, and sorrow. There are few things that break my heart more than an artist who doesn’t give herself the permission to create, an artist who believes the lies of society that says pursuing your creative passion is not a legitimate lifestyle. I’ve spent my entire life–no joke, my entire life–doggedly pursuing my love of art and my refusal to buy into the Man’s idea of what success is. I’ve made lots of sacrifices and I’d make every single one of them again if that’s what it takes for me to be a writer, to live my life intentionally as an artist. I think about this all the time, about the challenges and joys of living a creative life every single day. There have been dark, DARK days and ones so full of light I could scarcely breathe. And it just hurts me so much to see the brokenness of some of my fellow artists, to know that their dark days are far outnumbering the light ones, where they get to do what they love. We’re up against so much, we’re so sensitive because you have to be in order to do what we do, and life just loves to beat us down (let’s be real, it loves to beat everyone down). And sometimes it seems impossible for them to follow their souls’ calling. Some give up. They don’t let themselves do what lights them up.

It’s agonizing to behold.

I’m just starting out my side work as a creative coach, a decision born out of nearly twenty years of puzzling through what it means to be an artist, to live as an artist, to study and train as an artist, and to work as an artist. It’s borne out of studying how the greats do it, and encouraging others on this crazy life path. The decision to nurture the creativity of others is also inspired by nearly a decade of bowing at the feet of Julia Cameron, of The Artist’s Way fame, who completely changed my life and gave me the courage to finally call myself a writer. I’ve been working hard these past few months thinking about the ethos of my coaching and exactly who I want to be working with. My Whiplash post has often come to mind because it has been, in many ways, one of my guiding principles. An essential part of my Artist Statement. But it’s only a part of who I am, both as an artist and a coach.

There is such a need for nurturing and compassion in the field of art instruction and therapy and coaching and mentoring. I recognize that and am happy to see that I naturally give what my people need—at least, I hope I do. I don’t put it on and pretend to be sympathetic when I’m really thinking nasty things about them. Relief! I’m not a terrible person! But at the same time, I don’t go all ooey-gooey, let-me-hold-your-hand or say just-do-your-best (I did once, because there was a serious extenuating circumstance). Your father died? Write. You’ve got a long-term illness? Write. You’re going through a divorce? Write. There are very few life situations in which I would advise a writer not to write. Because if you’re really a writer, then getting words on a page—no matter how shitty they are—is what’s actually going to get you through the shit times. When my grandfather died, I was nearly inconsolable. I love the hell out of that man. What got me through was writing his eulogy.

A quick side note here: my husband mentioned to me that sometimes I come across as though I believe a creative person who is not goal-oriented (as in, a writer whose goal is to be published versus a writer who writes simply for herself) is somehow living a small life, an inferior life. There may be the impression that I seem to view a non-goal oriented creative as a kind of failure. I want to be really clear about this: when I get on my soapbox about what makes someone a writer or an artist, and when I advise them to give it their all, I’m not talking to the people who are happy to have a bit of creativity in their life. People who sometimes paint or take a dance class or sketch or write a story. They are creative people who veer toward creative acts. I would call those people creative people. But I wouldn’t call them artists (again, this is just my personal opinion). And I don’t – I repeat, I don’t – think their lives are small or less worthy than those who believe art is an essential part of who they are. Many of us have talents we choose not to explore or proclivities that only go so far. I know many people who enjoy doing artisitc activities as part of their life, but it’s a hobby or done for relaxation or spiritual reasons. That’s the gift of creativity that we all have and can choose to use or not. I think living the life of an artist is the greatest adventure there can be and I certainly think it’s a pretty freaking cool life path, but that’s because it’s my thing. I find all kinds of jobs and lifestyles fascinating. I also don’t think that being particularly goal-oriented is necessary for calling yourself an artist, although those are the artists I most connect with. Artists who work hard and want to get their work out in the world, who are hardcore, are my people. BUT, they are not the only kinds of artists and they are not *better* than other artists, though I clearly have my bias.

I have a really good friend who is, hands down, the best singer I’ve ever heard in my life. His voice is out of this world. Like, he could be on Broadway tomorrow, if he wanted to be. He took voice lessons as a teen and was in lots of shows in high school and college. He even had a stint in college as a vocal performance major. But, he decided ultimately that pursuing a career in the arts wasn’t for him. His priority is his family, the job he loves, his faith. He’s very active in the community, helping to vocally direct shows at the local high school and leading worship services at his church. He doesnt want the big city, uphill battle of a Broadway actor. It would have taken the joy out of singing for him. He’s an artist, period. You can’t think of him and not think of singing. It’s a huge part of his identity. It’s a gift he uses daily (I wonder how many people have heard him belting along to Hamilton on his ride home from work). Just because he doesn’t want to be famous or get his paycheck doing his art doesn’t mean he’s not an artist. He’s literally the most talented person I know.

Another few things I want to add. First, I haven’t really talked about the sleeper artists. There are some people out there who are wildly talented, but choose–either on purpose or subconsciously–not to pursue a life in the arts. My friend I talked about above isn’t a sleper artist. Everyone knows he sings. Sleeper artists are people who are secretly artistic, so much so that even those closest to them might not be aware of their talents. Sometimes someone is a sleper artist because they’re struggling with fear: they’ve been told that being an artist isn’t a good life choice, or they don’t believe in their own self-worth and talent, or they’re absolutely terrified of ending up homeless and stark raving mad. Sometimes they’re sleeper artists because other things are more important to them, or life is just too hard: single moms come to mind. They just don’t think they are allowed to make time for art in their lives. Or they think they don’t have time. These people are artists–they just don’t know it. Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to say, hey, you’ve really got a gift. Talent is something that needs to be nurtured and affirmed–it’s how most of us who are card-carrying artists ever came to be that way. Most people don’t wake up one day and feel empowered to make art. They need people from when they are a young age encouraging their creativity, praising their efforts, applauding. They need to win second-grade art contests and have their story in the school newspaper and get an A on a photo in photography class. There are so many little things–and so many people–that go into the making of an artist. Maybe you’re a sleeper artist. Maybe it’s time to wake up.

Also, and I think I said this at one point earlier in the Whiplash repsonse post, but I don’t equate time you spend making your art with your identity as an artist, although, again, if you never work on your art or do it, then you probably aren’t an artist. Again, my singer friend. It’s not like he’s in a room for four hours a day doing vocal exercises. But he sings ALL the time. He’s always lisening to music, playing music, thinking musically. It’s just an integral part of his day. So if you only have time to write for half an hour a day, but you’re always jotting down little notes to yourself and thinking about your story and reading and all that, then don’t sweat it. It probably goes without saying, but who the fuck am I to tell you that you are or aren’t an artist? Own your shit. Prove me wrong.

I have seriously gone on a tangent here. The whole point of adding onto my Whiplash post was to say that that while I stand behind everything I said in the post, I’ve found that I myself am not like the teacher in the film, although I bet I could get closer to that with the right student, with someone like me, who says, Girl, give it to me straight. And I will delightedly, joyfully, tell you that you suck but you won’t always, so keep sitting in that chair and writing. But I will also love the hell out of you and do everything I can to help you be the artist you want to be and live the creative life you want to live–if that’s what you want.

I thought this update was in order because I realized that I might seem to be totally contradicting myself. How can the Heather who writes gentle, encouraging emails to her friends and students and clients be the same Heather who’s like, Fuck you, you’re not an artist? I’m learning to just accept that I am both of those people. I can both admire the Whiplash teacher and adore Elizabeth Gilbert and Julia Cameron, both of whom nurture the hell out of their readers.

Finally, and this is maybe the most important part of the whole post: if you want to be an artist you can start being one RIGHT NOW. No one can stop you if it’s what you want. Paulo Cohelo didn’t choose to really go for it with writing until he was forty years old. It is never, never, NEVER too late. And don’t listen to anyone who tells you it is. Go pick up that pen, that paint brush, that sheet of music. Say yes.

Kids being shamed for their poverty? Not on our watch.

read this article in the Times this morning and it made me so angry and so sad and so disgusted that I determined I have to Do Something about it. This one's personal for me: when I was in high school, we were super poor and so for a while, my sister and I qualified for free school lunches. In order to eat each day, we had to present a green ticket to the lunch lady. Doesn't sound bad except that the only people who paid for lunch with green tickets were the poor kids. I was so embarrassed and ashamed. Lunch was a source of daily anxiety for me. I didn't want my friends to see the ticket, so I would try to rush over there before meeting up with them. Or say I wasn't hungry when they all went, then sneak over to the car before the bell rang for classes. Some days I went hungry because it was just too humiliating. Once, I accidentally brought the wrong ticket (each one had a date) and the lunch lady refused to give me food. I was so hungry for the rest of the day, and so full of shame and jealousy.



Why was it so much easier for other kids, who could just present some cash in exchange for food like it's no big deal? Or bring food from home? I've now talked about my green ticket horror in two of my books and it's something…

Why You Need To Go On The Pneuma Autumn Retreat

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I wanted to take a couple minutes to talk a bit more about why I want you to come to the Pneuma retreat this October. It’s the kind of thing that would be easy to dismiss out of hand, even if you felt a deep stirring to go, because it costs money and is far from home (for some of you) and might necessitate all kinds of things: negotiations over childcare, reconfiguring your budget, getting over the guilt of spending money on yourself for this thing you love.

For me, there are few things more empowering than getting away from my daily life and going to a place where I can live and breathe writing with fellow writers. Every time I’ve been on a retreat or at a residency, I’ve had growth–sometimes huge, shocking growth–as a writer and artist. I get inspired by the lectures and the workshops, of course, but–most of all–I’m inspired by the other writers on the retreat and the actual space we make our home in. The late night conversations, the energy of a group of writers being together and sharing what they love, and the gorgeous natural settings always leave me filled to the brim with creative energy and joy. It fills your well like nobody’s business.

Originally posted by calucarmin

You know all the details about the retreat at Highlights this October, so I won’t get into that (if you missed out, go here). What I want to touch on are some of the things that hold us back from taking these leaps. Maybe you feel like you shouldn’t go to stuff like this until you’ve made some real money off your writing. Maybe you feel like it’s not right to spend so much on yourself–you’ve got kids or other responsibilities. Maybe you’re worried it will be more like a vacation and less like a transformative, life-altering experience and you don’t want to spend money on a vacation right now. Maybe you’re scared: holy shit, I’m going to have to be vulnerable and show up. People are going to read my writing and talk about it. People are going to know I’m a fraud, that I’m talentless. I’m going to feel like shit because I don’t have an agent yet. Everyone will be better than me. I’m shy. I’m depressed. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t do this–I want to stay in my writer hole. 

I’m sure there are reasons I haven’t touched on, but that last one is really important for me to address. So many writers are ruled by fear: of failure, of getting found out (imposter syndrome, etc.), of ruining their lives chasing a dream. To those of you who are struggling, I say this: you’ve got one life to live and you better start living it. You are a writer: it’s in your bones. Stop denying yourself, stop sabotaging your future. Whether or not you go on this retreat, if you are ruled by what others might think of you, or fear of putting yourself out there you must, must, MUST work on that. Like, really WORK on that. It will keep you from your best writing and from the fulfillment that comes from doing what you love (I’m not just talking about publishing. I know plenty of published authors who lose sight of what they love because they’re ruled by fears of failure and invisibility).

At this retreat we will be holding space for one another. We’ll be getting into all the shit that freaks us out: the work, how to stay sane in the crazy of publishing, how to live life as an artist, and what it means to be a woman and a writer in these times. We’ll be shoulders to cry on, cheerleaders, and warriors. For four days, our world will be whittled down to our little group, our beautiful space, and the pursuit of words that open gates and doors and crash through the walls we’ve built up. It will be good work. Hard work. FUN work. And when it is over, your creative well will be full, you’ll have a plan for the next several months (or longer), and you’ll have a better sense of who you are as a writer and who you want to be.

Inspiration. Transformation. Restoration. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. 

Email me if you have questions or just need support in talking through this decision. Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back. xo

Originally posted by indieteen

My Keynote Speech For The 2017 VT Teen Lit Mob

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Usually when I give talks, I have a few notes, but mostly I follow my heart and wing it, which seems to suit everyone just fine. Whenever someone’s reading from a paper, I always feel like it made them seem less clever, or like they’re too nervous to get in front of a group of people and talk. Of course we all want to seem cool and like we’ve got it totally together—we want everyone to think it’s not the least bit terrifying to stand in front of a crowd for thirty minutes and hope you can keep them from falling asleep. I used to be an actor, so reading from the script on stage always seemed like amateur stuff. I pretty much decided that I would never write out my talks, even though I’m a writer and I’d probably be doing everyone a favor by sticking to what I do best.

However, when I saw on the schedule that I was giving a Keynote Speech I decided that I’d better bring more than just my A game. “Keynote” sounds so official, so important—to me, it sounded like something I could totally screw up. Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling give Keynote Speeches. Heather Demetrios does presentations and intimate hang-outs with her readers. I confess, my ego got involved. It wasn’t enough to say some things that inspired you and let you go on your merry way. Suddenly I decided I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than making you see books in a way you’d never seen them before. I’m a girl who’s always liked a challenge, so let’s see how I do.

First, I’d like to thank all of you for being here—it’s pretty much Heaven on Earth to have a whole day to geek out over books and writing. There are so many amazing books on the Green Mountain Book Award list and I’m honored that I’ll Meet You There has been nominated. In fact, I’m totally floored. It means so much to me that this book—the one I call the book of my heart—has found its way into other people’s hearts as well. I’d also like to thank everyone who’s played a part in making this event happen, especially Peter Langella from Champlain Valley Union High School, librarian extraordinaire by day and super writer by night, for inviting me and being so supportive of my work. It takes a lot of time to wrangle authors and students and teachers, to find a space to get a bunch of people together, and to organize all the details. The only reason people go to all this work is because they love books and they know how life-changing they can be. It’s why I write, and I suspect it’s why a lot of you read.

When I got the call to come out here, it was a no-brainer—I love Vermont. I’m originally from Los Angeles and now live in Brooklyn, but Vermont has had a special place in my heart ever since I got my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. I love all the art that happens here, the natural beauty, Ben and Jerry’s…But what I’ve really come to love are the people. I have made some of my best friends in Vermont, and even though not all of them are actually Vermonters, I think there’s something in the air here because it seems to bring pretty fantastic people together. There is honestly nowhere else I’d rather be right now then here with all of you fine people.

This week I’ve had the chance to do workshops and presentations at Essex High School and Champlain Valley Union High School and it’s been so much fun getting to know Vermont teens. We talked about heartbreak and dreams and haters; we talked about the things we’re excited about and the people that inspire us. We talked about books and writing and Spring Break plans. Many of these students had the opportunity to write letters to Heartbreak as part of a project I’m doing for an anthology I’m editing called Dear Heartbreak, which comes out next Valentine’s Day. Some of these letters will be chosen for the anthology and answered by YA writers like Becky Albertalli, Andrew Smith, and A.S King. Some of you might be taking this workshop with me later today and I can’t wait to see what you’ve got hidden inside of you.

Since the letters are anonymous, I told the students to write from the heart, to write the secrets they can’t tell anyone, to let it all out. No one could possibly know who they are—they didn’t put their names on the letters and I can’t recognize their handwriting because I’ve never seen it before. This gave these writers freedom, a chance to put some blood on the page. What I read each night in my hotel room after I left the schools blew me away. Though these letters are anonymous, I feel like I know every single one of these writers. They are brave, gutsy letters that show, more than anything, that every person you know is hurting. Everyone.

Guys just as much as girls. Seniors just as much as Freshman. The coolest, prettiest girls in those classrooms are going through the same stuff as the kids those girls barely know exist. They feel unloved, rejected, ignored. There are horrible things happening at home and friends they don’t know how to help and drama like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t even make this stuff up, which is saying a lot because I’m starting to get a reputation for going to some pretty dark places with my books.

I’m doing this project for the same reason that I started writing YA in the first place: there is a part of me that will be seventeen years old forever—but not in a weird Edward Cullen vampire way. And that seventeen-year-old Heather who was too scared to use her voice, too scared to stand up for herself, is finally ready to tell the world what’s up. And this is what’s up: it’s really freaking hard to be a teenager, and it’s really annoying to have the adults in your life treat you as though your heartbreak and your struggles and your dreams and your secrets are just a “phase.” When I was a teen, we didn’t have young adult books like there are today. I wish I’d had novels like I’ll Meet You There or Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda or My Heart and Other Black Holes to read. I would have been able to see that I wasn’t alone, that there were people who were just as poor or confused or hurt as I was. I would have been able to see that love—real true love—wins. Every single time. As Lin Manuel-Miranda of Hamilton fame said last year at the Tony Awards, “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, [it] cannot be killed or swept aside.”

My book that’s been nominated for the Green Mountain Book Award, I’ll Meet You There, is a love story. It’s about people who find each other and fall in love despite the odds, despite their huge differences, despite war and poverty and bombs and drunk mothers and dead fathers and dead best friends. It’s about people who overcome the challenges of being young and scared and confronted with a world that promises to be so much harder than they could have ever imagined. But it’s also my love story. It’s a story about me falling in love with a character who couldn’t be more different than me if he tried.

Josh Mitchell is a nineteen-year-old Marine who went to war because joining the Marines was his only option. He was poor and didn’t like school and the Marines were offering a signing bonus. It was that or work on local agricultural farms for minimum wage in 110-degree heat, or maybe become a truck driver or work in a factory—if he was lucky. So, no brainer, right? He chose the Marines. While he was in Afghanistan he stepped on a bomb. By the time he came home, he’d lost his leg, his best friend, and his entire future.

Josh is kind of a jerk. I’d use other words to describe him, but they’re not appropriate. If I’d met Josh before he became a wounded warrior, I would have written him off as a dumb jock who only cared about sex, beer, and sex. And I wouldn’t have been wrong.

But I wouldn’t have been right, either.

When Josh first appeared in my book, he was supposed to be a small character that we only saw once or twice, not really part of the story at all. He was going to be set design, to show how hard-up Creek View was, and how sad the lives of the people there were. He would have just been an object of pity, something Josh Mitchell hates more than anything else. And then, when my writer friends forced me to really look at him, Josh became the heart of the book. In fact, he became the only reason I wrote the book. My dad is a Marine with PTSD, which means he went to war and saw some bad stuff, maybe did some bad stuff, and then he came home and no one gave a crap. So this guy who fought for his country and who was now psychologically messed-up had pretty much no pride left. My dad became an alcoholic, then a drug addict. When he talked about the war—the Gulf War—he’d get this faraway look in his eyes and I’d realize he wasn’t with me anymore, he was there—in Iraq, and Kuwait. With his buddies. When my dad came back from the war, he couldn’t hold down a job, couldn’t keep a promise, couldn’t do anything. So it makes sense that when Josh Mitchell appeared in my book I was like, whatever, dude, I feel bad for you but, like, I can’t deal. Go away. 

The process of writing Josh made me realize something important, and if this is the only thing you remember about my talk today, it’s this: books are one of the best ways we can understand people we never thought we could care about. When you read a book—or write a book—it’s an intimate act, it’s getting inside a stranger’s skin and seeing the world through their eyes. And because you’re in the thick of things with them, you start to understand them. You start to care about them.

You start to love them.

This is the only way I can explain that aside from my husband, Josh Mitchell is the freaking love of my life. Who would of thought that a girl who read War and Peace for fun and loves having afternoon tea at fancy hotels could fall for a boy who sometimes has nothing better to do than throw empty beer bottles at abandoned gas stations for fun? This is the guy who hit another person’s car, then left a note on the windshield that said Oops. He is the bro-est bro you could ever imagine. And I love the hell out of him.

One thing I realized about Josh—and all of the Marines and Soldiers I talked to when doing research for this book—is that he’s kind of a poet. He would come up with these phrases like she broke through the mess of me, that I would never expect a dude who didn’t finish a book until he was eighteen to say. I once asked a Soldier who’d been in Afghanistan to describe what the country looked liked from the air—he was a medevac—and he said, “moon dust.” He gave me permission to steal that for the book. Guys in the military get a bad reputation, and sometimes for good reason. But there is more honor and dignity and loyalty in their ranks than I’ve seen anywhere else in my life. The guy telling fart jokes on base and reading Maxim is the same one who’d take a bullet for any Marine he’s fighting beside, and is willing to put himself in danger to protect a family from suicide bombers. That’s Josh Mitchell. I wrongly assumed that guys like Josh weren’t intelligent, that they didn’t have a soft side. But then he’d be so incredibly sweet and generous in the book and that would throw me—suddenly, I had to look at my prejudices and my unfair assumptions. I had to realize that I was kind of a bigot, that I was too quick to judge books by their covers. Writing this book opened my eyes, made my heart and my world a little bigger. It made me a better person.

This is the power of books. The power of story. When you hear someone else’s story—their truth, what they’ve been though, what hurt they’re hiding—when you really listen to them, it’s sort of impossible to hate them, or think you’re better than them. And we need books because books are a safe place for us to learn about other people and cultures and religions. I’d spent my whole life being against the military, even though practically everyone in my family is either in the Marines or the Army. Even my mom was a Marine. To me, the military was the opposite of everything I was about. I’m an artist. I love flowers and New York City museums and silk and poetry. I wanted nothing to do with drill sergeants and guns and going on patrol and following orders.

But then I spent over two years talking to Marines and Soldiers about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. One is a special forces dude who secretly loves romances. Another has spent his life after the war trying to get therapy dogs into military bases and hospitals, because he knows it’s the best way to get these men and women back to themselves and it’s what saved him. Another told me how to get your dead friend’s blood out of your combat boots so you don’t get in trouble during inspection. After that, it became impossible to see these people as strangers. Once I heard their stories, I cared about them. And once I cared about them, it became really hard to judge them for the life they had chosen. All of a sudden, I was asking my dad to teach me the songs he learned in boot camp and I was writing checks to help veterans and I began fantasizing about adopting one of the bomb dogs that the military uses in war. Believe it or not, they have PTSD too. Just like the Soldiers they serve with, these dogs are messed-up from combat and coming home is sometimes the hardest part.

We live in really scary times. If you believe some of the stuff that’s in the news today, it would be easy to be afraid of people who are different, to believe that our country is safer if we keep Muslims out or build walls or deny women the equal pay or the healthcare they need. It would be easy to think that people are poor because they’re lazy or that there’s something wrong with people who are gay or trans or bi. It would be easy to think that dumb jock bro Marines don’t have beautiful souls or the biggest hearts you could ever imagine.

So this is my challenge to you: if there’s a group of people you don’t like, read a book about them. If you don’t understand gay kids, read Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda. If you can’t figure out why a kid in your class tried to kill himself, read My Heart and Other Black Holes or 13 Reasons Why. If you don’t get the whole Black Lives Matter movement, read The Hate U Give. If there’s a culture you don’t understand or a religion that seems insane to you, listen to the stories of people who are part of those cultures and religions. I bet you’ll have the same experience I did with Josh Mitchell: when you listen to someone’s story, when you see the world through their eyes, they become family. They become a part of you.

Everyone is hurting. Everyone matters. And at the end of the day, that’s what books are all about.

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love. 

Thank you.

VT Teen Lit Mob Keynote Speech

However, when I saw on the schedule that I was giving a Keynote Speech I decided that I’d better bring more than just my A game. “Keynote” sounds so official, so important—to me, it sounded like something I could totally screw up. Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling give Keynote Speeches. Heather Demetrios does presentations and intimate hang-outs with her readers.…

The Space Between Breaths: Transitions in the Artistic Life

[image error]Me, in Iceland 4/17

 

For the past year, I’ve been going through a transition, floating in a space between. It’s been three years since my first book came out. There was the before publication life, when I’d yet to sell a book and was dreaming hard. Then there was the after, where I struggled to learn the ropes of being a published author, yet still managed to write and sell one to two books a year, hustling like a mother. During that time there were aborted projects and disappointments, but I focused laser-like attention on my work and career, with little time for much else. Sometimes that paid off, and sometimes it didn’t. One thing it resulted in was a near-breakdown, spiritual and creative depletion, and an increasing existential dread that followed me around to the point where I felt like Edward Snowden, always looking over my shoulder.

This was unsustainable. A life of waiting for the other shoe to drop is not a good life. And a writer who doesn’t write, or who writes but finds no joy in it, does not a happy writer make.  It also, incidentally, makes it hard to sell more books. The nervy you feel about a project somehow winds itself through the text, an X factor that makes or breaks a book. My books were breaking. I was breaking. So began my year of transition, which began in July 2016, an awakening of sorts that’s still very much in progress. This wasn’t intentional, not something I planned as a great experiment. It just sort of happened. Out of necessity and desperation and a nameless need.

This year of transition actually started in Spring 2016, though I had no idea that this was what was happening. I started devouring books like I used to, back when I wasn’t writing three of them at a time. I literally bought and read every single JoJo Moyes book I could find (okay, I’ve saved a couple because it’s too depressing, a life without a JoJo book to look forward to), after discovering Me Before You on a Barnes and Noble table. I was working—I had revisions and copyedits and submissions. But when I sent in the last thing that was due, in mid-June, I unwittingly gave myself a for-real break. It was on accident—I didn’t realize I was taking a break until the month of July passed with me having written only a handful of words, most of them non-fiction. I got ideas, I threw ideas away—I briefly considered learning Russia and moving to Moscow. The bulk of my writing was for a residency application I never sent in, as well as the occasional blog post or lengthy email. I began meditating, reconnected with my spiritual side, read lots of books, treated myself to copies of Vogue, discovered the delights of the French 75 cocktail, and took a poetry class. I basked in sunshine and visited with friends and family. There were still stressful writerly moments: two rewrites gone bad, dismal royalty statements. But for the first time in years, writing was not the most important thing. The most important thing was me. It was as though my soul had given me one of those piercing looks and said, My dear, you are the canvas.

Eureka.

I followed my curiosity, each urge a trail of will-o’-the-wisps that led me deeper into my inner landscape, with its turbulent sea, floating glaciers, and craggy mountains set against endless dunes (yes, somehow my innards resemble Morocco, Ireland, and Iceland). In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert says: I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. She’s absolutely right. I found such joy poking around in New Age stores and going down the Wiki hole of Romanov research and planning a trip to Prague. I delighted in the plethora of self-help books I kept hearing about, got into essential oils, and finally took a Pilates class. I bought strange rings and drank beer and even started liking kale. I got a Reiki treatment and bought my first deck of Tarot cards and I campaigned for Hillary Clinton. I bought a Nasty Woman shirt and protested with thousands of women all over the world, reigniting that little Marxist-Anarchist activist that has been hiding inside me since the Bush years. I made a few big life decisions, some quite seismic, some still in progress. I grieved, felt confusion, wonder, awe, gratitude, love, solidarity, despair. I probably drank more wine after November 8th than in the rest of my life combined. I cooked my first steak. I began living according to these wise words from Elsie De Wolfe: I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life. Fresh flowers scattered about the house. Crystals lined up on windowsills. A skirt with red roses splashed across the fabric. I see the changes that all this adventuring has wrought everywhere: in my home, my body, my mind, my spirit. And yet, the writing will not budge.

I am still trekking up a damnably high mountain, hoping to reach a summit and praying there’s a nice little valley on the other side of it, with cool spring water and long, fragrant grass I can lie in when I look at the stars. Alas, creativity is uncharted territory—ever ineffable, a tricksy landscape complete with quicksand, dark forests, and, well, you get the metaphor. I confess, there have been a few occasions in which I actually uttered the phrase, Why am I doing this? Or I don’t want to be a writer anymore. I’m not sure if I meant it or not. I suspect maybe I did. It sounds ever so wonderful to leave work at work, to have boundaries between oneself and what one does for a living, to not be in constant artistic torture.

The election and its aftermath was a huge blow that I’m still recovering from. I don’t think I realized how much it affected my ability to be creative until quite recently, when I realized I have to rewrite a bogart of a book I’m working on for the third time. I cannot overstate how unlike me this is. I’ve never spent two years after selling a book trying to rewrite it. It’s madness. Maddening. But when I began to connect the dots, I could see that the bulk of the problem began in the beginning of 2016—a coincidence? I think not. As I said in an email to the book’s editor: I’m sorry for being the world’s shittiest writer. I blame Trump. 

I blamed my mental health and my infernal inability to understand how time works. I blamed New York City for being so goddamn expensive and loud and distracting and fabulous. I also blamed myself, for not taking my own good advice that I give to my clients and that I myself know works. I only give advice when I’ve learned something (usually the hard way), when I know that something is tried and true. As a creativity coach, I tell my clients that each book is a different beast, and that’s true. And also that writing is a marathon (not a race), that you will never be a master, that you will always be learning, and that you should trust the process: the not knowing, the frustration—these are just hazards of the job and an essential part of the process. But each time I find myself uncertain creatively, these lessons are hard to remember. A girl has to eat, you know.

One thing my meditation teachers like to talk about is the space between breaths. In mindfulness meditation, you focus on the inhale and exhale, using it to anchor your mind in the present. Between each round of inhalation and exhalation, there is a pocket of pure being, where your body has a moment to bask in its existence, where nothing is required of it. It can’t last very long because your lungs need air, but for just a sliver of time, you are infinite. Free-floating. This is also a space for transition, much shorter than my year of transition, but equally powerful. You can discover things there, though it may take you years, or even a lifetime to figure out. You might even see what you’re made of.

This is an essential part of the meditation process. These pockets of no-breath are not simply a bridge between breaths, links on the path to nirvana. They are teaching moments, rich in the kind of knowledge that lives deep in your bones. It’s the same with the transitions in an artist’s life. The space between projects, between ideas, between inspiration and creative wastelands—this is, paradoxically, where the good stuff lives. Transitions are opportunities to grow, to heal, and to change. They give you space (whether you want it to not) to reassess your work, your craft, your goals. These sometimes involve dark nights of the soul, real reckonings that bring who you are and why you do what you do into sharp focus. Sometimes you won’t like what you see. Transitions, from an artistic point of view, are absolutely necessary. Think about the period when Bowie fled to Berlin, intent on getting clean and reconnecting to his art. He called his cocaine years in Los Angeles, where he embodied the Thin White Duke persona, “the darkest days of my life.” Despite being a rock star, he was going broke and Berlin, at the time, was a cheap place to live while he was in recovery. In Europe, he began visiting galleries, working on self-care through literature and classical music education, and, of course, kicking his cocaine habit and exploring Berlin’s music scene. His roommate was Iggy Pop, and I like to imagine them sitting around late at night, trading notes and blowing each other’s minds. What resulted was the Berlin trilogy, a rich artistic period and a turning point in his life.

Of course, not all transitions need to be so dramatic, and I’m still trying to figure out what this one means for me. When I look back, what will I call this year (or, God forbid, years)? Will I look on it fondly, or shudder, grateful that it’s over? I can’t imagine not being thankful for it. Already, I’m seeing my interests in what I want to write expand in unexpected ways. Adult fiction, young adult nonfiction, historical. I’m not quite sure where I’ll land. I’m getting ideas, but am wary of investing too much in anything. I think I’m still getting my sea legs. Meditation, exercise, and healthy eating habits are helping. As is travel and working with my clients, who inspire me every day. I’m taking lots of notes because I suspect that as much as I’m learning right now about what it means to be an artist in transition, I suspect there’s even more to glean from this time later, when I can see how all the dots connected.

Being a creative doesn’t suit our modern world, not if you’re an Artist with a capital A. Because art needs quiet, time, space, privacy. All things that are hard to come by these days, especially in Brooklyn. I stopped using my private Facebook account, rarely leave the apartment, and turn a deaf ear to industry chatter. It’s been a long time since I finished a project. Everything I’m working on is in a different stage and often ends up being cast aside or totally reworked. So of course the age old question of how to make a living as an artist rears its ugly head. If you aren’t producing, you aren’t getting paid. So while artistic explorations sound great on paper, in reality, it’s the paper itself you start worrying about.

It’s becoming increasingly hard for artists to make a living—just take a look at Trump’s budget proposal, with threatens to cut the NEA out of existence. It’s especially difficult for writers because of the plethora of content out there. Jesus, how many blogs and websites and articles can exist? With newspapers and magazines folding left and right, writers are forced to make some pretty tough choices. These concerns are ever present, and they will be for the foreseeable future. Of course, being an artist has always involved financial acrobatics. Chekhov paid the bills through a medical practice, and Tolstoy had to self-publish War and Peace. I’m in good company. I’ve very much begun to appreciate Elizabeth Gilbert’s words in Big Magic about how your job as an artist is to take care of your creativity, not the other way around. It’s been interesting, cobbling together an income that all leads back to writing, but isn’t necessarily writing. Teaching and coaching and editing allows me to talk about what I love—writing, the artistic process, and creative living—and to help my fellow writers on their own journeys. It also gives me the chance to take care of my writing, rather than requiring it to pay all the bills. I’m already seeing the seeds I’m planting blossoming. For the first time in a long time, I’m allowing myself to consider alternative ways of living and alternative approaches to my writing. Maybe I don’t publish a book every year. Maybe I don’t only write in YA. Maybe I play a whole lot more in my creative process. Maybe I take time to take care of myself.

The journey continues, endless and exciting and horrible and wonderful, an adventure I’m honored to have. I take a breath, exhale, and rest in the transition, looking forward to whatever comes next.

The Space Between Breaths

For the past year, I’ve been going through a transition, floating in a space between. It’s been three years since my first book came out. There was the before publication life, when I’d yet to sell a book and was dreaming hard. Then there was the after, where I struggled to learn the ropes of being a published author, yet still managed to write and sell one to two books a year, hustling like a mother. During that time there were aborted projects and disappointments, but I focused laser-like attention on my work and career, with little time for much else. Sometimes that paid off, and sometimes it didn’t. One thing it resulted in was a near-breakdown, spiritual and creative depletion, and an increasing existential dread that followed me around to the point where I felt like Edward Snowden, always looking over my shoulder.

This was unsustainable. A life of waiting for the other shoe to drop is not a good life. And a writer who doesn’t write, or who writes but finds no joy in it, does not a happy writer make. It also, incidentally, makes it hard to sell more books. The way you feel about a project somehow winds itself through the text, an X factor that makes or breaks a book. My books were breaking. I was breaking. So began my year of transition, which began in July 2016, an awakening of sorts that’s…

Valentine’s Day: Respond to the Call

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(Image from here)

Happy Valentine’s Day, beautiful writers! The quote of the day comes from my man Rumi:

“Respond to every call that excites your spirit.”

I think Valentine’s Day provides an opportunity for us to think about what we love to do, what lights us up inside, what gets our hearts beating faster. For my fellow writers, that would be writing and storytelling and reading. Words and words and words. So this is a great time to do a gut check, to see if we’re really dedicating ourselves to a passionately lived life, whatever that looks like for you.

Taking that a step further: the most important person you can love is yourself. I know, this sounds self-helpy and crazy and selfish and all the bad, negative self-talk we throw on ourselves. But I’m learning that if you don’t love yourself, it’s very hard to love other people, or to at least love them well. Loving yourself teaches you compassion, gentleness, and a go-with-the-flow mentality. In learning not to be too hard on yourself, you learn not to be too hard on others. In discovering that you can royally fuck up and still be a person of worth and dignity, you are training to extend that same grace to others.

There’s a lot of negativity in the writing community. We like to bitch. A lot. I know I’ve been guilty of it. We live in a culture that values overwork and exhaustion, as though these things should earn gold stars. And sometimes we’re afraid that people will know how much fun we’re having because then they won’t take us seriously. In those moments, we feel like we’re getting away with murder. Or maybe we really ARE miserable, but we perpetuate this in a million different ways that don’t serve ourselves, our writing, or those we love. That’s not to say that it’s all roses and that we have to pretend to be okay when we’re not. But it can be very easy to get stuck in this cycle and I think, at the end of the day, this touches a little bit on the issue of self love. We can be so brutally hard on ourselves. I generally side with that school, viewing being an artist in the same way an Olympian trains for their event. BUT it’s important to be able to leave it all on the page. And there’s a balance that you need to achieve between loving yourself and going easy on yourself. Laziness and excuses is, ultimately, not loving yourself well. Because you feel like crap when you don’t give it your all, right?

What do you love most about yourself? Write yourself a love letter. No joke, do it. Apologize for any ways you’ve done yourself wrong, and make gallant promises to do better. A little romance never hurt anyone.

Happy Valentine’s Day! xoxxo

Awake

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(Image from here)

Last night I took a class with the deeply wise and warm Sharon Salzberg. I was struck by how applicable mindfulness is to us as artists. I’m a broken record about this, but meditation will change your life and help you SO MUCH. Not just you – your whole family. Sharon posted this excellent guide on meditation that was in the NY Times. It’s really comprehensive and has several audio recordings. A really great place to start!

For those of you reading Sharon’s Real Happiness, how’s it going? What are you learning? How are you doing in terms of sitting every day? The important thing to remember – and this is something Sharon said last night – is that we don’t see the transformations we’re looking for when we’re on the cushion. The effects of our meditation will be seen where we matter – in our daily lives. Little and big ways. Once you begin meditation, try to track things. You might notice results right away, or you might notice them a few months down the road. The practice works where it counts the most. You’ll sleep better and need less of it. You’ll have more energy. You’ll find you’re less susceptible to irritation. You’ll be calmer during stressful times. You’ll feel more relaxed and you’ll find that you’re more present in your life and in your relationships. You’ll be able to better access your flow state and you’ll feel more calm, centered, and grounded in who you are and your place in the world.

It can be really hard to start this practice because most of us have major blocks in regards to sitting – I know I did. I was dead bored, restless, anxious to be getting back to my work. I couldn’t turn my mind off (news flash: you will never be able to turn it off, but you will eventually notice that you’re aware that you’ve drifted off more often). I kept forgetting, couldn’t find the time, got distracted by my dog or noises outside. But I kept showing up because I knew I needed to. Stress was making me physically ill, depression was weighing me down, and I felt unmoored in the world. So I sat. Every day. First for ten minutes and now for two sessions a day, 20 minutes each. I look forward to it now. I need it.

The thing that helps the most is just putting it into perspective. Dude, it’s 10 minutes. Then it’s 20 minutes. Out of your whole day. Seriously, how much time have you been on Facebook? It’s crazy, the excuses we come up with not to sit. The science is catching up with this ancient practice and study after study is showing that meditation can rewire the brain, increase creativity, and majorly reduce stress, which, if left unchecked, can literally kill you.

Now more than ever, we artists have GOT to find a way to unplug. It’s damn near impossible to be creative when we’re in these fractured states, multitasking and constantly dealing with the stress of email and messages to keep up with. Packed schedules and new apps and buy this, and watch that, and be this. We are drowning in this culture and it hurts us creatively, emotionally, and spiritually. Meditation is a way to take a step back, to ease into delicious silence. Peace. It’s just you and your breath.

So breathe. Sit. Chill the fuck out. And get ready for your life to change. Love to you all. xx

Catalogue Your Weird and Own It

One thing I’ve been thinking about is how, as artists, we don’t fit the mold. We’re weirdos–even the most A-Typical, ambitious, logical, and responsible of us. Every now and then, I like to take stock and think about the ways in which I don’t subscribe to social norms. How do I rebel? What offends my spirit? What do I just not get? In what ways do I out myself as a weirdo artist? Cataloguing your weird is a great way to see where your heart and values lie. It’s an empowering exercise that reveals secret desires, unexpected convictions, and opportunities for wild abandon. Lofty words, perhaps, but true nevertheless.

How are you weird? Make a list. Make it pretty. Put it up and own the hell out of it. You are part of a tribe of iconoclasts and warriors bent on fighting all that is ugly and ignoble, an army that seeks to ignite and awaken and soothe minds and hearts. When you own your weird, you take an important step towards your true self and tumble into acres of possibility in your work as a wordsmith and in your place as a member of your community.

I’ll give you an example of something on my list: grocery stores depress me. A lot. It’s some combination of the fluorescent lights and air conditioning and the rows and rows of pre-made, packaged shit. The music-god help me, the MUSIC-and all these people pushing around carts looking tired. Bored cashiers and Low Fat this and cases of meat that’s…