Conscious Writing

I touched on experience at the very beginning of this series, as part of write what you know. In that opening segment, I defined what you know narrowly, the way beginning writers often do, to make a humorous point about its inadequacy. Many writers interpret this advice as meaning we should write only what we’ve done, adhering closely to facts, or to write only about things we know well, topics we could teach in a classroom.

As an example, I noted that I had helped care for my elderly parents, though I would never describe myself a qualified provider of elder care. It’s not something I consider my expertise. Drop me in a stranger’s house and I might be able to whip up a sandwich or run a load of laundry, but I couldn’t offer any opinions about diet, physical exercise, or medications, and please don’t expect me to initiate small talk. I could barely handle that with my own folks.

So, in the strictest sense, I don’t know how to take care of the elderly.

But still, I had that experience. I couldn’t write a manual about caring for generic old people, but if I were inclined, I could write a story about siblings coping with the physical decline of their parents, about two old people who weren’t very good at the parenting thing and who perhaps didn’t care for their children as well as their adult children (a few of them anyway) would eventually come to care after them.

I could write about the tedium of preparing the same three or four meals on rotation and the constant blare of the television and having to hide the remote control from my mom because she had terrible taste in shows and an inexplicable habit of changing the channel ten minutes before the end of a program, which more than once sent me to Wikipedia to find out how an episode of Little House on the Prairie ended, even though I didn’t want to watch it in the first place.

I could tell you it was easier to get my dad to give up his car keys than for my mom to relinquish the check book, and that would tell you a lot about their personalities and marriage. I could write about watching for signs of forgetfulness or changes in eating habits that might suggest a new question about their health. I could tell you about all the information they withheld from their doctors over the years, because for my parents not knowing was always preferable to knowing, and I could probably connect some dots between that and their lifelong habit of keeping secrets.

I could tell you a lot more, but I won’t because most of it is gross. I’ll save it for the book.

As we parse write what you know into various components, there will be overlap. It may be hard to distinguish the difference between various strata but there is nuance.

What you know is transferable. You can teach what you know to someone. However, knowledge may or may not be relatable, depending on whether it has bearing on another person’s interests or well-being. In contrast, experience is relatable but not transferable. You cannot truly understand an experience unless you go through it.

Put another way: I will listen to your experience caring about an elderly parent, but I would never read a how-to manual about it.

Experience is also more than observation, though both can help you gain knowledge. When you observe, you watch, but may not interact. What you observe might make an impression on you, but it doesn’t touch you the same way internally and may not stay with you. In contrast, an experience is something you’ve done or something that has happened to you directly. Experience is intimate. Experience is a choice. Ideally, the choice is yours, but sadly others may choose to impose an experience on us.

Observation is passive, experience is active.

Importantly, experience has no regard for performance. In most cases, your experiences are more interesting because you didn’t excel. You had to struggle. You had to overcome obstacles. Experience is something you lived through. Experience is story.

What have you experienced?

Childhood, your teenage years, rites of passage, various first times, relationships, jobs. You may not believe your experiences amount to very much. I had that bad idea in my head for a long time. Some of your experiences might embarrass you or make you feel ashamed. Some might be too painful to talk about. But you have permission to talk about your experiences, even the ugly ones. And if you want to, you should.

Another difference: Experience triggers deeper emotions than observation.

If you’re writing with me, reflect back on experiences that have stayed with you. You might recall a moment that changed how you see the world or a peak experience, something that made you feel alive. Though I brought up sad and challenging experiences, don’t limit yourself to them. Rapture, belonging, and fulfillment are also experiences worth exploring. You might write about a time you crashed and burned or a time when you felt the full glory of faith.

Remember to cross-pollinate what happened and how you felt. What you felt adds context and depth. It adds perspective. In contrast, something you observe may anger or amuse you or make you think, but you may not have a strong emotional response until what you observe resonates. It may remind you about a time when you had a similar experience, which could trigger anger or empathy. Pure observation can prompt ideas, but experience shapes a story.

If you wanted someone to know you well, what would you tell them? If you trusted someone implicitly, if you were certain you wouldn’t be laughed at or betrayed, what would you share? Write that down. You don’t have to show this to anyone. Trust yourself and trust the writing.

The most important thing you know is what you feel.

Everyone has feelings of some kind. A person may experience them strongly or not, express them or not, feel them in their physical body or not, but they exist.

Emotions drive us, guide us, and trouble us. They can be confusing and annoying. They often get in the way of our ability to make good choices or pursue our goals. Emotions are valid but they also lie. People can live long lives without ever learning to moderate or even name their feelings, but they have them.

Unlike opinion or even factual knowledge, emotions are incontestable. If you feel sad, no one can tell you that you don’t. They might try, but they are wrong. Your feelings may occasionally lead you astray, but no one can tell dispute what you feel, even if there’s more going on than what’s apparent at first glance. Even when your feelings are confusing, they exist.

Understanding emotion is a vital component of creative writing, and the best place to start your search for understanding is within.

Why is this important?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

Long after readers have finished your book or story, they might not remember every character name or plot turn, but they will remember how you made them feel. Readers often describe their favorite books not in context of craft but of the emotions they felt, such as a sense of hope, comfort, reassurance, or joy. A thriller or horror novel might evoke fear, excitement, awe, or power. Your science fiction novel might create feelings of wonder and optimism. A magazine article or blog post might make readers feel confident, like an insider, or even smug.

Feelings are the connective tissue of your fiction. A thrilling plot may fall flat if the reader doesn’t feel anything, but a commonplace premise can be elevated by a strong emotional underpinning.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

It follows that the better you understand your emotions and the more capable you become of mining them for your work, the better you will connect with your reader in fiction.

Where do you start?

It might help to have an inventory. There’s no need to recreate the wheel when you’ve probably seen the one below, which has been going around the internet for years. I wasn’t able to track down an original source to give proper credit. There are multiple versions, but this one is commonly used in educational and life coaching settings, and has appeared on numerous writing blogs.

When the various emotional states are parsed in this manner, it’s easy to see why emotions can be confusing. You may recognize you feel sad, but is your sadness triggered by guilt, helplessness, loneliness, or boredom? Names are important. As in any magical system, knowing the names of things gives you power over them. If not power, at least some understanding.

Earlier in this series, I started a conversation about the shame cycle and how it can inhibit our creativity. We are often taught that certain people, events, or ideas are not to be discussed, certainly not written about. Considering the above list, are there any emotions you were taught not to express?

Anger isn’t polite. Don’t appear too eager. Don’t get your hopes up. Never let them see you sweat. Don’t ask too many questions.

Were you taught that some of the emotions on the color wheel were unseemly, stupid, or even nonexistent? Did you get in trouble if one slipped out? What were the repercussions? Did you get grounded when you expressed anger? Were you teased when you showed fear?

How do you start?

It might be best to start simply. Most of us don’t spend a lot of time contemplating the nuances of emotion, so this exercise may feel awkward or even daunting. You may have to overcome conditioning that warned you against talking about your feelings.

Go around the wheel and write down the emotions that resonate. Write down whatever immediately comes to mind. You might recall a person or specific event that made you feel that way. There might be a person, object, or event that represents the emotion for you. Perhaps an era of your life was dominated by one emotion or one of the color sections. High school. Mom’s second marriage. Summer after graduation. The year on unemployment. Write that down.

There might even be one emotion that’s dominated your entire life.

“That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry.”
― Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk in The Avengers

Dig deeper

As you continue, you may find that the exercise gets progressively easier. When you write about one memory, another will attach itself and move forward. Keep writing.

If you’re struggling – writing about emotion can be hard – don’t pile on the pressure. Writing exercises aren’t a race. They’re practice. Go around the wheel and write down simple statements of emotional fact. You may have begun by simply filling in blanks.

I get angry when _____________.

__________ makes me feel sad.

I’m afraid of _______________.

I worry about _______________.

I feel disgusted by ____________.

You don’t need to write a statement for every emotion, only those that prompt you. When you’ve exhausted your list, go back and choose one to examine further.

What does this look like as a story?

Perhaps your fear statement was “I’m afraid of snakes.” This fear didn’t come from nowhere, but likely originated at a specific time and place, perhaps in your back yard or at school. Write down that memory and then explore it further.

The key to writing about abstract emotions is attaching them to something concrete – a person, object, or event. You might be tempted to find 27 words meaning fear, but instead describe the time, the place, and circumstances of your anger. Describe the physical sensations of your body without using the word fear. Write what you did or would have liked to do in the moment, again without identifying the emotion.

What was going on around your experience of fear? What triggered it? Who was there? Was anyone else afraid? Who wasn’t afraid? Were you comforted or teased? Did you tell anyone about the experience or your fear? Describe the setting and people in as much detail as possible. What other emotions come forward?

In this hypothetical example, a kid finding a snake in the backyard might feel fear first, then a sense of violation, as the safety of home is called into question. If no adults are around, the child might feel helpless or abandoned. In a school setting, the child might be worried being teased for being afraid of a snake. They might feel isolated if their emotional response doesn’t mirror their friend’s, or they might be ashamed of themselves for not being brave.

Emotions travel in packs. We tend to feel the broad emotion first – happy, sad, angry, disgust, fear, surprise – and only later whittle that down to the nuanced feeling. We often feel two or three things at once, as in the above example – worry, isolation, shame. Pro tip: Emotions amplify each other. Fear compounded by shame is much stronger than fear alone.

When you zero in on an emotion, focus on concrete detail, look for the sub-layer or amplifying emotions, and see how rich your writing becomes, even at this early stage.

In an earlier post, I made the distinction between what we write and what we write about. In the above example, being scared by a snake is the story, but feeling helpless, abandoned, embarrassed, or ashamed is what the story is about.

Why are you always talking about childhood?

Good question.

I’ve already quoted Anne Lamott saying that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of their lives. In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland also wrote of asking her students to write about their childhood memories.

“And I asked for childhood experiences for this reason. A child experiences things from his true self (creatively) and not from his theoretical self (dutifully), i.e., the self he thinks he ought to be. This is why childhood memories are the most living and sparkling and true.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

Childhood emotions are powerful. Our early years are a cascading series of new experiences, including emotional. If we put thought into it, we could likely point to our first remembered encounter with fear, affection, or offense. These new experiences land harder. They feel bigger. A first experience with shame may be confusing, because it comes with no warning or explanation. We don’t know what it means and we might not even have a name for it.

Why? Kids are bombarded with new feelings, but can’t put them into context. They don’t have any practice moderating their emotions, or emotional traffic signals to put them on pause or slow them down. Kids don’t yet have negative experiences to add melancholy to their first feelings of love, so crushes loom larger. They don’t have memories of overcoming difficulty to leaven their first big disappointment, so failing can seem catastrophic.

Children also lack filters. An emotion bubbles up, so an emotion is expressed, no matter how inappropriate. Ueland shares a story about a child who had witnessed a funeral and wished her grandfather would die so that she could go to one. In her innocence, the girl had no context for death or what it would mean for her grandfather to actually die. She only knew that people dressed up for funerals and brought flowers, and decided she’d like to attend one. An adult expressing this wish would give even the most open-minded person pause.

As adults, we tend to forget what it was like to be a kid. Many find children unfathomable, unknowable, illogical, perplexing. But the truth is kids are emotion engines. If they are unfathomable, unknowable, illogical, and perplexing, so is life, and this is how they experience it.

That’s not to say we don’t have big feelings in adulthood, but in my experience, these emotional highs tend to be more complex, often combining multiple and even conflicting emotions. In childhood, our foundational emotions are more pure. As you write what you feel, look for those big childhood memories. Don’t add nuance or context, or apologize for your younger self’s selfishness, naivete, or melodrama. Remember what those pure experiences felt like, and add context later.

When you want to feel emotional fire, go back. When you want to make sense of emotions, come forward.

What do you mean by context?

Context comes with experience and understanding. Adults have feelings too but unless we are under extreme duress, we do a better job regulating them. We can control our anger so that we don’t get fired from our jobs or get into a fistfight. We swallow our pride to apologize, even if we don’t mean it this time.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are at a shopping mall with your mom. Maybe your mom is not in the picture, for whatever reason, but imagine. Pick another person in your life who served as a trusted adult.

Imagine you have separated and agreed to meet at a specific place in the mall at a specific time. If your mom is a few minutes late, even fifteen minutes late, you are not likely to worry. If you are window shopping or otherwise entertaining yourself, you might not even notice. Experience has taught you that people can run a little late. Your mom may have lost track of time or might be waiting in a long checkout line.

Now imagine you are a child, eight or twelve years old. Your mom said to meet her at noon at by a certain exit and she is late. How does child-you feel? In your experience, your mom is never late. She has drilled into you the importance of punctuality. She may have levied a mild threat of punishment if you did not adhere to the agreed upon time.

For the first few minutes, you might not think anything of it, but after five minutes or ten, you might start to worry. Time goes by much more slowly for children than adults, so a ten minute delay may feel like hours, especially if fear starts to gnaw. If you were an imaginative child – as I was – you might think something bad has happened. Maybe she forgot you had come along and drove home without you. Maybe your mom is hurt. Maybe some ailment has befallen her, or maybe something has happened to her – some person has happened to her – as you have heard on the news happening to other women.

Imagine the difference in how you might feel as an adult and how you’d feel as that child. Scanning faces and bodies for your familiar mom. Wondering if you should go look for her. Wondering who will help. Is there a security guard? Will the people working in the shops help you or not take you seriously? Can the other shoppers be trusted?

When you consider your feelings, write freely and with vigor about whatever comes to mind. Follow your feelings to wherever they lead. But when you have your list of feelings to consider, also look back as far as you can, to times in your childhood when you felt these emotions for the first time or most strongly.

“Where do you get your ideas?” the beginning writer asks. “What should I write?” The question is so common it has become a punchline in writer conversations. An unkind one, in my opinion, but I digress.

Of course, for the beginning writer, the question is vital. It is also more than one question.

Sometimes, this is a question about development. How did Margaret Atwood turn an idea about women lacking physical freedom and bodily autonomy into The Handmaid’s Tale? How did the concept of Germany winning World War II become Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle?

Sometimes, this is a question about the premise. How did Atwood come up with the concept of Gilead or PKD arrive at the premise of the Allies losing WWII? What made Andy Weir ponder an astronaut trapped alone on Mars (The Martian) or Susanna Clarke the scenario of two great magicians with opposing philosophies of sorcery (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)?

Both are great questions, important questions. The answers are long and specific to the writer and the story. If Atwood had the inclination to explain, I suspect we’d learn that the origin and gestation of The Handmaid’s Tale were wildly different than the development of Alias, Grace or The Edible Woman.

The answer to the question of premise is often opaque, involving platitudes like observation, brainstorming, or asking “what if…” Not that you shouldn’t do those things, but as advice goes, “observe” is a headline, not an article.

What the young writer needs is the long answer, which can’t be obtained during an author Q&A. For that answer, we have to go back a bit further in the process to examine the third question buried in “where do you get your ideas?”

That question is Where do I start?

The interior writer

The answer is inside.

As I wrote last time, writers often look for story ideas externally. Unfortunately, when writers seek inspiration solely from external sources – emphasis on solely – they will discover this method is hit or miss. A newspaper article, a friend’s secret, or a fairy tale turned on its head might produce a hot hook, but when we try to write through it, we falter. The story may fall apart at the midpoint or when we realize the catchy premise was the only good idea we had.

The problem? Despite a great premise, you had no reason to write that story. You had no driving force, and when a story lacks drive, it falls apart.

As readers, we discover a book like The Handmaid’s Tale or The Martian, and wonder where the authors got these great ideas. Why did they want to write about Gilead or Mars? But consider this: What if neither was particularly interested in Gilead or Mars?

That sounds nuts, I know. They wrote whole books about them. Atwood wrote two. Andy Weir’s first three books are set in outer space. But I suggest that neither Gilead nor Mars were the driving force of these novels. Surely Atwood didn’t sit around daydreaming about Gilead, thinking “Wouldn’t that be cool?” There’s a reason we’ll never see a novel set in Gilead from the man’s point of view.

Rather, Gilead and Mars were the methods the authors used to convey something they found inside themselves.

Margaret Atwood writes about women’s roles and identities, societal restrictions, autonomy, inner strength, and individuality. You can call this many things – her opinions, themes, philosophy, but these central ideas are what drive her writing. The specific story concept is built on top. In the Gilead novels, Atwood created a repressive, patriarchal culture as her method to explore the idea that intrigued her.

What was Andy Weir’s idea? Weir has mentioned being intrigued by the idea of an astronaut trapped alone in outer space. However, I suspect the story started to come together – to feel real to him – when he came up with the central organizing idea.

Here’s a quote from early in the novel:

At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say ‘This is it. This is how I end.’ Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home.

Andy Weir’s central idea for The Martian reflects his belief about the best way to live: You face your problems and solve them one by one. The driving idea of the story is survival and an astronaut stranded on Mars was the method for exploring it.

Along the way, both authors found that external idea. Atwood certainly had plenty of real-world examples of Gilead to inspire her. Weir had a hobbyist interest in orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of spaceflight, and had played with the concept of humans stranded on Mars in his webcomic, Casey and Andy.

But where they found their specific story premises – Gilead and Mars – is far less relevant than why and how they pursued them. Certainly, the methods (external) were both of longstanding interest to the authors, but without the point of view (internal), the novels would not have become what we know today. I argue that the method was far less important than the driving force behind the story.

Don’t believe me? Read that quote from The Martian again. It’s the central theme of the novel, the premise that drives every moment of the plot. I’ll wait.

Did you see the words Mars or astronaut in that paragraph? Remove that idea from The Martian – and all the ways it cascades through the novel – and the result would be a decent, but much blander, version of the novel, a techie page-turner, but not something to stir your emotions. This belief drives the narrator, who in turn drives the story. However, separated from the method, that idea still sounds exciting. Can you imagine that quote in the voice of a soldier, someone recently unemployed or divorced, a convict arriving at prison, a politician facing a scandal? Read it again.

That bit of dialogue is the heart of the novel, and it came from inside the author. You have some of that inside you, as well. You only need to find it.

Ideas

The process of creation can feel mystifying. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I had “it” – that special something that makes the difference between a writer and a non-writer, or a great writer and a story hack. But I wasn’t missing anything. I just kept looking outside myself, when the answer was inside all along.

This mindset requires an expansive and perhaps idiosyncratic definition of ideas. The writing zeitgeist tends to focus on the narrow view – the idea is what’s interesting, the reader hook. A boy wizard, a man dressed like a bat, horny hockey players, a clown that eats children. But none of those are actually interesting without the elements the author brings to them. Observations, experiences, opinions, biases, life lessons, and strongly held beliefs. Give your attention to the latter and the former will take care of themselves.

If you’re not sure what to write or where to begin, start by asking why you want to write and what you want to tell us. Once you understand that, you’ll find it easier to find ideas that excite you. In fact, I’ll argue you’ll have more ideas than you can ever write.

If you aren’t sure what your passions are or your beliefs or your themes, that’s ok. We’re heading in that direction. But first, let’s talk about what’s stopping us from accessing our raw material and ultimately our story ideas. This isn’t therapy, so I’ll be brief.

Shame

Shame comes in many colors. Nearly every writer I know has dealt with shame involving the creative process. Parents discourage artistic pursuits in favor of academics or sports. Our efforts are judged against best-in-class artists. Your friends want to know how your life is going, until you start talking about your novel in progress. Everyone loves music, movies, and books…until you want to create some.

Families keep secrets. You may feel shame around cultural or societal taboos. Your faith may discourage you from writing about certain topics or writing about them in a raw or honest way. Trauma and enforced silence keep us from connecting with our passions and even our thoughts.

The problem is not that you lack ideas. The problem is that you have rich material that you have been trained not to talk about.

So what do you lack?

Permission

• Permission to write badly
• Permission to write what someone else thinks you shouldn’t
• Permission to sound like yourself
• Permission to not write the Great [Your Nationality Here] Novel
• Permission to write small, personal stories
• Permission to write about things that are ugly or sad
• Permission to write only for yourself
• Permission to skip the get-together scheduled during your writing time
• Permission to call yourself a writer

Like your ideas, permission comes from within. The only things between you and your writing are your time, your thoughts, your creativity, and your desire. That’s it. And those are all within your control.

I won’t sugar coat – this can be a tough obstacle. Unlearning what you’ve been taught, especially what you been taught by shame, isn’t easy. Giving yourself permission to be yourself – or even simply to be – does not come naturally for everyone. If this describes you, take baby steps. Start with permission to write badly and to sound like yourself. Work up to permission to write about family secrets.

If you are more open to it, take the leap. Look in your metaphorical mirror and give that person permission to write whatever comes to mind, as badly as needed, and repeat.

What next?

For the next 20 weeks or so, I won’t be talking about finding premises or developing those premises into stories or novels. Rather, we’ll examine the simple quandary of wanting to write but not knowing where to start. By the end, you’ll have twenty or so first steps you can take.

As we go, I hope to point you places where you might find your raw material and start to build a solid foundation from which to write with purpose. As a bonus, when you lay this foundation you may find it easier to spot story ideas in the wild, ask those brainstorming questions, and develop your premises into complete tales. You may also start to hear what will become your voice.

We’ll start by discussing where your internal ideas come from and then explore concrete exercises for putting them on the page. Next week I’ll share some bad advice and tell you why it’s bad, and then we’ll get to the good stuff, where I’ll try to point you in the direction of material you will feel passionately about.

Spoiler alert: We’re going to spend a lot of time looking inward.

Bonus: It’s cheaper than therapy.

For now, think about permission and how much more you need for yourself. Maybe you’re raring to go or maybe you’ll need some time to think about it. Regardless of where you stand today, remember: most of your writing will not be published. Most may not be shared with anyone else. Not all your ideas will turn into stories or completed pieces. You may have good reasons not to write about a topic or to not pursue a story idea. But do consider the idea and strive to give yourself both permission and grace.

Homework

Other than your writing, I don’t intend to assign homework at the end of every post, but I may suggest some reading here and there. This time, I want to share three writers who have given me permission to write small, intimate vignettes and autobiographical fiction. None of these suggestions contain traditional, Big Idea-driven stories. All of them focus on the kind of small moments we experience every day, but don’t recognize as story material. All of them are lovely. All of them are art.

In Heating and Cooling, Beth Ann Fennelly writes 52 micro-memoirs, some lasting no more than a half-page paragraph, sharing brief moments of her childhood and adult life. Topics include an annoying couple on an airplane, memories of a starring role in a fourth grade play, and a doctor appointment with her mom. As much poetry as prose, Fennelly lands both beauty and humor in a few sentences.

Harvey Pekar’s writing leans minimalist, and focuses on autobiography and memoir form. Often lasting no more than a single page, Pekar’s stories might follow his fictionalized self on a trip to the record store, recount a brief conversation in an elevator, or break down one of his many appearances on the David Letterman show. He made a whole career of documenting moments most of us miss, long before social media culture taught the more generations their every step or facial expression deserved to be recorded.

Raymond Carver’s writing has been described as minimalist and as dirty realism, though he generally rejected labels. For our purposes, I’m most interested in how Carver eschews tidy endings and answered questions. Often, his stories, even his longer ones, linger in the arena of vignette or character study. Situations do not resolve. Stories may end with a key character simply walking off the page or two characters deciding to call it a night without any conclusion or realization about their problems. You don’t need to have a grand character arc to write a story. Sometimes, simply following people in their difficulty is enough.

As you’ll see in these works, a piece of writing does not have to be lengthy or complex to be memorable or meaningful. Observations, experiences, memories, or idylls are all stories of a kind. They are all writing. I hope you find them encouraging and inspiring, and will look for similar moments in your own lives. I hope you’ll write them down.

Here are two things I know about showing up.

If you missed my last 2 posts, I talked about taking the next steps in your creative journey and that moving forward requires action that is simple and yet not easy. I referred to it as showing up – showing up at writing events and meetup opportunities, showing up at your desk to write, showing up for yourself.

For some of us, this requires a big leap of faith, which is harder than it looks. It’s easy to look confident online, because we are sharing less than 1% of what’s really going on in our lives. But there’s a reason that every decent writing blog has a regular cycle of posts about imposter syndrome, overcoming doubt, building confidence, dealing with setbacks, and working through our blackest moods.

We’re a sensitive lot.

And sensitive people tend to get hurt and hurt people throw up barriers. These barriers keep us from fully connecting to our creativity and our community. We hold back opinions or ideas in our writing. We don’t make the time commitment necessary. We hesitate to take the next step in our career. If you’re like me, you may even feel foolish referring to your writing as a “career.”

So we hide. We may avoid future hurts, but the cost of hiding is invisibility. Learn from my mistakes: being invisible makes it really hard to find your people. You may find it hard to connect to your creativity. And frankly, it will prevent you from feeling fully alive.

It might feel safer to avoid the spotlight or to not take a creative risk or not reveal some truth you’ve experienced or learned, but this is a false safety and it doesn’t compare to the glow of community, growth, and authenticity.

So, here finally are the two things I know about showing up.

1. Showing up requires you to be your authentic self. You can’t hide your talents under a bushel. If you want to talk writing, make friends with creative people, put your work out into the world, or make money, you need to show a little leg. An ankle, at minimum.
2. Showing up as your authentic self is the best way to meet other creative people who are like you, who are seeking the same connections and fortunes, who will be the best people to help you along the way, and whom you will help the most in return. Trust me on this: There are other writers – right now – who want to meet someone like you. Not the writer you’ll be next year. Not You 2.0. The person you are today, reading this.

Take some time to reflect. Is there a big step you’re avoiding? Is your avoidance based on fear of being criticized or rejected? Shine some inquiry on that feeling and see what it reflects. Why are you carrying this?

I’ll go first:

As I wrote last week, I had a lot of excuses for not showing up. I blamed the voices of imposter syndrome, but also, those excuses created quite the cozy environment.

Not showing up kept me from confronting my social anxiety about meeting new people. It helped me avoid imposter syndrome, because I wasn’t trying to portray myself as anything; I was sitting at home. It helped me avoid feeling judged or rejected, because I wasn’t sharing anything with anyone.

Not showing up is easy. Not showing up is safe. It feels good not to feel judged, not to feel like an imposter, and to avoid situations where my social anxiety kicks in. But does that support my writing goals? When I avoid those feelings, am I becoming the writer I want to be? Am I making any new friends?

No.

Lean into this as far as you’re able, but only that far. Self-honesty doesn’t mean self-immolation. If and when you can, go deep. Reflect on your fear without judgment. Discover its layers. Listen to the promises your fear has made. Consider the benefits of safety. Can you let this go? If you can’t let go, can you loosen your grip on it, maybe just a little? Do it.

Then jump.

Your people are waiting on the other side.

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The holiday season is also a good time for indulging traditions, and here’s one of mine.

I’ve gone into the background on this meditation in previous blog posts, so if you’ve read this before, feel free to skip to the end. If you’ve joined me in the last year, this will be new.

I adopted this creative exercise from the writings of psychologist Gay Hendricks, fittingly from his book Five Wishes. The process is intended to help one focus on the emotional development and success stories that would be most vital for your long-term happiness, and turn them into lifelong goals. Hendricks learned this exercise from Ed Steinbrecher, an astrologer (I know; bear with me), teacher, and metaphysician. The exercise is a simple, but not necessarily easy, four-step process.

Step 1: Imagine today is your last day of life, and someone asks you if your life was a complete success. How would you respond? We have all heard the cliché deathbed laments: I wish I’d worked less. I wish I’d forgiven more. We may also have happy thoughts. I climbed a mountain, metaphorical or physical. My kids turned out ok. Maybe your answer is a resounding yes! If – like me – you feel that your life, if it ended right now, would not have been a complete success, continue to step 2.

Step 2: Now, still imagining yourself on your last day, consider why you might say your life was not a complete success. What did or didn’t you do? Express that idea as a wish. I wish I’d had a better relationship with my parents. I wish I’d spent less time at work and more time with my kids. I wish I’d gone to college. I wish I’d learned to swim or play guitar or had travelled more. I wish I’d been more spiritual. I wish I’d had the confidence to pursue my dreams.

The specific answer doesn’t matter, because it’s personal and unique for each of us. The only restriction is that your answer should be something within your control to accomplish. I wish I’d been taller doesn’t count. It may also be helpful to focus on spiritual or emotional success, rather than something like “I wish I’d had written a bestselling book and made 10 million dollars.” We’re looking inward here, people.

For the exercise, it’s important that you be honest about the accomplishments that would have made your life a complete success, whatever that means to you. Take time to consider why this accomplishment would be important to you and why you would feel fulfilled if you achieved it.

Repeat this step until you have identified five things you wish you’d done. Five regrets and five wishes. If you have more than five, that’s fine. If you don’t have five, that’s ok too. Actually, that’s pretty good, right? We should all have so few regrets. But you probably have at least five.

Step 3: Next, reframe those regrets and wishes as positive present-tense statements. Consider what you might regret not doing today and turn it around. Here’s a paraphrased example from Hendrick’s own attempt at this exercise:

• Wish: “My life was not a complete success because I did not follow through on significant communications with people who are important to me. I wish I’d gotten around to saying all the things I wanted to say to my family and close friends.”
• Present-tense statement: “My life is a complete success because I say and do all the important things I need to say and do. I leave nothing significant unsaid or undone.”

For Hendricks, this meant taking responsibility for any lack of integrity, making amends, expressing appreciations, and fully committing to loving, honest communication. If something is on his mind and he thinks someone else needs to know it, he’ll say it. If you read any of his books, you’ll find he is committed to a level of honesty that may feel off-putting if you aren’t prepared for it. Fortunately, his wife is playing from the same game plan.

Consider your regrets and celebrate that today is probably not your last day. You have time to take action. Write down your five wishes as if they are already happening. Write your success story.

Step 4: You’ve now identified the accomplishments that would make your life a complete success, and you are ready for the hard part: putting them into action. Take some time to set goals for how you will turn those present-tense aspirations into a real state of being.

Some of your goals may require time, planning, or resources you don’t have right now, but others can be acted upon immediately. Some may have concrete actions and some may require discipline and practice to develop a good habit. You probably can’t leave today to spend six months backpacking across Europe but you can start writing poetry again. You can’t heal a broken relationship overnight, but you can make a phone call or write an email. You can do something as simple as express appreciation to the people in your life who lift you up.

How is this about writing?

I’ve completed this exercise for the past few years, always around the New Year. I focus on spirituality, relationships, integrity, self-acceptance, and creativity. I then go through the meditation a second time, focusing on my creative work and goals. There’s quite a bit of overlap, but the creativity exercise concludes with more concrete steps around my writing. I’m not always successful, but I make progress. I might even forget about some practices, but then the New Year comes round again and there’s a chance for renewal.

My wishes

Last year, I was coming off a rather trying 2024, and I happy to report that 2025, while not perfect, was relatively smoother. I hadn’t set any new expectations for 2024, which turned out to be a good thing, but at the beginning of 2025 my Five Wishes were:

• My writing life is a complete success because I work on projects that are personally meaningful and allow me to explore my big questions about life. I write fearlessly, dig deep for emotional truth, and share my observations, without worrying about anyone’s judgment. I carve my own path.
• My writing life is a complete success because I’m committed to continuous learning and development, I’m unafraid to challenge myself, and I’m excited about trying new forms, genre, strategies, and other elements of writing.
• My writing life is a complete success because I finish the projects I start and share my work with others.
• My writing life is a complete success because I’m not competitive with other writers. I share my knowledge, offer encouragement, and celebrate their successes.
• My writing life is a complete success because I engage with other writers, foster community, and seek out creative collaborations.

How did I do? I’m happy. I’m not a complete success, because I haven’t typed “the end” to my novel yet, but I’m committed to finishing. I’m ok being a slow writer, and if you count my blog – I do – then yes, I’m completing projects and putting them into the world.

Wish Five has long been my stumbling block. Every year I express my wish for community, and every year I come up empty. There are reasons – not ready, not good enough, not a good fit – but let’s roll them all up under a general category of self-doubt and fear. But every year, I express this wish again and keep my heart and eyes open for the possibilities.

This year, I’m happy to say I’m on my way to being a complete success because I am engaged with other writers and fostering community with my blog readers, my writing meetup, and my networking group. I sat on a panel discussion – two, in fact – for the first time since my mini-publisher days and got way more talk time. We’re early days still but I see a future and it’s good. This is the first year where I feel I haven’t let down the side.

My writing wishes don’t change much year to year. When I go out, I want to have a few books under my belt, written to the best of my ability, and without regard to what anyone else thinks I should be writing. I want to keep learning and freely share what I know, and I want to do all these things with a community of friends. And every year I get a little bit closer to being a complete success.

What are your five wishes for your creative life this year?

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While many writers see only the negative in love – its madness, the jealousy, the loss of good sense – Rob Brezsny recommends that Aquarians instead look for the good, whatever is interesting, educational, or healing about love.

Love can break you but it can also heal. It can frustrate you and while revealing your best self. It can both obfuscate and enlighten. Love is easy when it has somewhere to flow, and can carve you to pieces when it doesn’t.

Brezsny says that the next few months will provide Aquarians with ample reasons to embrace his attitude, which if history is any guide, means that I’m due to get my heart broken a few times. For the learning.

This week, Brezsny also shares some ways to be an Aquarian and while I don’t believe there is any one way to be any kind of person, some of these do sound a bit like me:

• Because few people truly understand us, it is wise to cultivate affection within yourself and become one of your own best friends.
• All our lives we seek instructions on how to be our best selves but we never receive them and honestly, if we did find some, we would ignore them.
• People love you because you are freaky and eccentric and yet also sincere and kind. You are unconventional, non-conformist, unique, unusual, odd—and also trustworthy, tolerant, non-judgmental, and compassionate. This is true.

Lynda Barry’s craft books are a great source for writing advice and inspiration. While focused on cartooning, the advice on memory work, creativity, and freedom from imposter syndrome are important for any writer. I’m not going to book-club any of them, because they are heavy on art class exercises, but I intend to share a few quotes over the next few weeks.

As in Bird by Bird, Barry recommends memory work in her own Syllabus, a review of her instructions and experiences teaching her college-level creativity class. In Barry’s case, she’s helping her students prime the pump for ideas for short comix, either 4 panel cartoons or short 2-4 page stories, with an eventual goal of creating a longer work as their final project.

In the first class, she gives her students a noun and tells them to write down the first ten memories they associate with that word. Then, each student picks the memory that piques the most interest and expands upon it, answering specific questions: where they are, the time of day, their age, who else is there, what they notice. Finally, using those notes, students draft a short narrative describing this scene and their memories and emotions. During the class, the students follow this process on their own, using prompts they find during their coursework.

Since this occurs early in the semester, Barry starts with an easy word: Car. This is a great word for memory work, because cars are ubiquitous in the western world. Even if your family didn’t have one, you knew someone who did. Most likely, you don’t remember your first car ride, because it occurred so early in your childhood, and you couldn’t possibly count the number of times you’ve climbed in and out of one.

But individual cars…those you remember. If you want to try the exercise, make a quick list of ten items. You can write down specific cars or experiences with cars. The family car, your uncle’s clunker, the first car you bought with your own money, the car you envied, the car that struck your pet. Pick one item from the list that jogs a lot of memory, and write down everything you see in your mind’s eye. Don’t worry about narrative – start with notes and lists and get down as much as you can. When you exhaust your ideas, now turn this into a short first-person narrative. You don’t need a great opening line, nor do you need to craft a story. Put the memory on paper as it comes to you and let it be.

Here’s mine:

I’m in the back of the Chevy II Nova, not wearing a seat belt. I’m 3 or 4 years old, the car is much older, from the 1960s, bought long before I was born. I don’t remember if there even were seatbelts in the back. It will be another 20 years before society gets serious about car seats.

It is mid-morning, Spring. The sun is high and warm, but not too hot. My mom is driving. It must be Spring because she’s brought me along on errands. I’m too young to be left home alone so my siblings must be in school.

The air is clear but the car smells of oil and exhaust, coming through the rusted out hole in the floor. Through the hole, the road zooms by, grey and black mottled with streaks of color. I slip from my seat to lay face down on the floor, eye pressed to the rusted hole. I do this quietly, as it seems like something I shouldn’t do – being curious, investigating, observing, having fun. No one has said explicitly that I shouldn’t press my eye to the hole in the floor while the car is moving, but small children know. We have an instinct for what will cause trouble.

But mom doesn’t notice. She doesn’t carry conversations well, not with her children. She probably assumes I’ve laid down to sleep. I’m not missed.

So I lay on the floor of the car, nose against the threadbare carpet, eye against a jagged opening, watching the world zoom by, lucky that I won’t lose an eye to a twist of metal or sharp stone.

What’s your definition of personal wealth? Most of us would agree that means financial gain and security, but each of us also has our own idea of what we’d like to have in addition.

You might measure wealth in relationships and family. Or maybe you have an abundance of time for your spiritual or creative pursuits. You may express the concept of wealth as self-fulfillment, contentment, ease, and appreciation.

Rob Brezsny says that 2024 will be a good time for Aquarians to build our wealth, but it’s up to us to define it.

My desire in life is to be rich with friendships and love, the time and ability to learn and create, and simple contentment. I don’t need to be ecstatically happy and I’d like not to suffer terrible sadness. I’m ok in the middle. This year, I strive to be more present in the moment, to enjoy what I’m doing as I do it, and to fret less about what’s out of my control. I want to spend more time with friends, reconnect with people I haven’t seen in a while, and build my writing community. Throw in some decent health and maybe a dog, and I would consider myself satisfactorily wealthy.

On the other hand, I’m also looking to get that dough. Dice are rolling on that front. Wish me luck.

Today’s thought is simple.

Take some time today to honor your journey over the past year and the people and experiences who have brought you to where you are today.

You may recognize a pivotal moment that lead you in a new direction or taught you an important lesson. Or you may honor the slow burn of learning and wisdom you accumulated every day.

Celebrate the work you accomplished, whatever it is. Reflect on the people who shaped and guided you, in the past year or farther back.

Count your blessings and pay them forward.

Thank you for being here this past year. I appreciate you.

If I learned anything from last year, it’s this: Simplify, simplify, simplify. I began 2023 by setting weekly goals for reading, learning, blogging, research, and writing, and also wanted to start a podcast and make time for drawing and painting, which I love. Two days before the end of the year, I want to reach back and give 2022 me such a pinch.

Blog and possible redesign. I promised myself that if I kept up blogging every day I could splurge a little to upgrade the site. I don’t plan to add a lot of bells and whistles, but the templates that come with basic WordPress are on the dull side.

Novel. I did good work on my novel last year. I’ve hit the mid-novel wall and gone back to the plotting stage multiple times over the last two years. Mid-year, I took a break from the writing to do more craft reading and focus on research for inspiration. I’m cautiously optimistic that I can push through the muddy middle this time and actually hit the end note. While I can salvage most of what I’ve written, I’ve had to pull out characters and scenes that didn’t serve the story, and I need at least a few new chapters to start the story and bridge some gaps. But I have a map and I’m happy with the new writing I’ve finished over the past 2 months. I’m still in the struggle phase with some of these chapters, but I know I can get through them because I’ve done it before. When the going gets tough, nothing engenders confidence like looking back at the other puzzles you’ve solved.

Community. I didn’t achieve my vision of community this year, but I’m proud that I got out of my shell to join some online workshops and writing sessions. More of that in the New Year. I need to carve out some “giving” time if I want to make this happen, and that was tough this year. It’s easy to get discouraged, but I know my folks are out there. I need to make a stronger effort to put myself in view, because none of them are going door to door looking for me.

Drawing. I’d like to get back to doodling this year. I’ve never been a great artist, but I love it. It’s a shame I don’t make more time for it. I’m going to schedule some time over the next year to work through Lynda Barry’s Syllabus, a memoir/outline of her cartooning workshop. Lots of low-stakes drawing exercises that also include writing and memory work, which will also serve the prose writing. I might post a few things I don’t hate too much.

Change. Finally, I commit to changing any of these goals that don’t serve me well. If I’m struggling, I promise to examine the reasons and the solutions. Do I need a mental break? Is this a problem I can muscle through? Can the goal be postponed? What would bring joy back into the process?

What are your plans for 2024?