It is time to flip the switch to "ON" and get started. Here are my ideas on what works for finally making the decision to begin. Schedule a life-saver. Many people tell me that it is easier to get up earlier than to carve time out of their already existing schedules. Set an alarm for your appointment with yourself and your creative process. The time you choose should be when you are the most active mentally. Schedule your date and pretend it is your dialysis – your hookup to a life-saving process. Consider your writing time sacred but also realize that non-writing time is creative … [Read more...]
Writing Into the Mundane and Discovering Ourselves
I hear this voice all the time. No one is going to want to read this....it sounds...too personal, too unprofessional, like nothing I've read in the pages of the New Yorker. I am here to tell you that sometimes it sounds crazy. Sometimes it is rough around the edges, gap-toothed and feral. Writing that is batshit bananas is on to something - something new, perhaps honing into your own style, unique voice, and personal experience. I was recently circling something in my life and trying to figure out why it made me so *incredibly* emotional. I have always said, if trouble shows up on my … [Read more...]
Orienteering Your Life With Personal Maps
The lyrics from the song Once in a Lifetime from the Talking Heads plays in my head sometimes: And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack/ And you may find yourself in another part of the world/ And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/ And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife/ And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?" There have been quite a few periods of drastic change in my life. You look up, the dust has settled, and you wonder, where does this leave me? Where do I go now? What are my new, and bigger dreams? … [Read more...]
Three Contemplative Books for Hard Times
Most of last year I was in a contemplative mood. I was traveling back and forth from Los Angeles to Chicago trying to help my mother manage my father’s illness. I needed some books to hold me while experiencing some of the most grueling emotional days of my life. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen: This is the book that comes up when you search for something to read while you are grieving. The book is a travelogue of the writer’s trip hiking in the Himalayas in 1973 with two hopes: to make it to the Crystal Monastery and to see a snow leopard. Along the way he wrestles with his thoughts, … [Read more...]
Writing Advice to My Fifteen-Year-Old Self
New Writing Prompt: How to write a letter to your teenage self! Try starting out with second-person to make it intimate (I recorded a video here on YouTube about the second person if you need a refresher). A good jumping off place is "You think that..." or "When you try...." Really imagine yourself - get out a photograph. One of those hideous school photos or a yearbook. Doesn't it look like a different world? What would your teenage self be the most shocked by? Is it something personal that has happened to you? Have you overcome something you never thought you would be capable of? Can you … [Read more...]
MemoirClass’s First Livecast: Community, Politics, and Goals
Did you miss our LiveCast? I know how incredibly difficult it can be to sign in at the right time so I have the recording available below. In it, I discuss how to use Stunt Writing as a tool for political engagement, the idea of setting up a local Stunt Writing group, and "organic" vs "futuristic" goals for 2017. Enjoy! P.S. I am working on higher resolution for next time! Sorry for the "underwater" feel. … [Read more...]
Writing Prompt: What are Your Life Gifts?
There are certain things that are woven into the fabric of your life that become part of who you are, but because they seem so inevitable it is hard to think of them as a gift. One of my friends experienced a rift in her life - when she was a child her mother decided to leave her husband in the US - and she took her daughter and resettled in Portugal. Leaving San Diego, California behind as an 8 year old, and starting her life again in Lisbon with her mother was a strange process. Not knowing the language or customs, not having any friends or people to go to for comfort radically changed … [Read more...]
Stunt Writing Featured on the Secret Library Podcast
I am so excited to share my appearance on the Secret Library Podcast, in conversation with the always amazing Caroline Donahue! She created the Secret Library Podcast (available here on iTunes) because, "Most people believe that books are created in cabins all alone, where authors pound away on some manner of keyboard. Then they hand this masterpiece off to a publisher and it feels very much like it goes down a tube and comes out the other side as a book. By speaking to authors and other book lovers, I'm diving into the mystery that is the book world today." We spent an hour chatting about … [Read more...]
Metamorphosis a Writing Prompt
When you Google the word "change" and ask for images, you get pictures of butterflies. These miraculous creatures undergo a metamorphosis that boggles the mind, from a caterpillar to pupa to butterfly. Change implies that we are many things at once and there are not clear boundaries. Being in flux means that we hold different viewpoints, and some that are in conflict. We are not whole because we can not be contained. Our edges seep between being a man/woman, natural/synthetic, right/left, living and dying...the list goes on. Anyone who thinks they are one thing are in for a big surprise, … [Read more...]
Memoir: Untangling Life’s Longings
I've just finished Stephen Levine's book, A Year to Live. It is about how to live this year as though it was your last. Morbid? Not really. Doesn't everyone occasionally want to skip to the end? Even if just for a quick, curious glimpse? In the book he makes a few statements that are truly about memoir. He writes, "We untangle the present by unraveling the knots of the past. Remembering the etymological root of "nostalgia" is a "reminiscent pain," we do not hold on to the past but relieve it of its burden." Nostalgia contains the knowledge that we can not go back and relive a moment we … [Read more...]
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