(Re) Considering Trauma In my new day job, I work tangentially with people in drug and alcohol recovery. I say “tangentially” because I do marketing and am not a therapist, but being around it starts to seep in. Most of us have either had some sort of trauma or have known someone close to us who has an addiction problem. One thing about trauma is that once you start to see it or recognize it in other people you begin to see it in yourself. Looking through the lens of trauma puts your own in focus. Most people have trauma – it is very hard to get through your life without an accident, … [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: Writing Your Recipe for Resistance
Sometimes it feels like the world is bent on telling you who you "must" be. As a prompt, write your own recipe for resistance. What do you suggest for shaking it up? Today is a day to look for cracks to move through. Change form. Pick a new exit. Try a new greeting, and a new way of saying goodbye. If it feels like a yes, say yes. If it feels like a no, then no way. Stop coming up with a reason. Today you don't have to explain yourself. Move towards people who you can sit in silence with. Share things you have made with people, but don't ask for feedback. Feel free to change your mind, … [Read more...]
Writing & Describing the Depth of Feeling
I received an email today from my mother, in the postal (snail) mail. It was a printed copy of an email I sent to my dad in 2002, which although it came in time for Father's Day I was too sad to open it with my father's passing. In the last few weeks I have come up with a lot of creative ways to describe how I feel such as, "covered in molasses" for my sticky inability at times to leave the house or that I am wearing "vaseline glasses" to describe that under water feeling where you feel a little bit separate from the world. I've told people that I am raw. Raw like someone took that 70s Lava … [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...]
Embracing the Crazy Wisdom in Your Writing Practice
Overnight the buds popped on the trees and the jacarandas are exploding with brilliant lavender blooms. Spring fever is here and - oh - there's a fat robin red-breast...welcome to working with a Spring fever. The phrase that keeps coming to mind for me is "Crazy Wisdom" (coined by the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa) which refers, according to Steven Goodman, "to someone who seems to be intoxicated with an un-bounded, luminous, loving energy." It aligns with the concept of the sacred fool, or as personified by the famous picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue - the … [Read more...]
Maintaining Your Practice: Your Life is a Writing Prompt
The last few months have been difficult for me as I try to help my family through a devastating illness. I have been in three different hospitals in two states and it reminds me of another sage whose life was cut short, John Lennon. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. So how do you maintain a writing practice during chaos, illness, overwork, stress and change? One way is to treat your life as a writing prompt. At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota I took copious notes. Between appointments with my family I wrote down exchanges between couples sitting … [Read more...]
The Part of Writing That Isn’t Writing
It was back-to-back conferences this last month: Bindercon and AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) 2016. Conferences are full of things that create anxiety - stale air, masses of unknown people, "experts" and the fear of missing out on the mythical connection or panel that could change the trajectory of your writing life. I am clearly not green when it comes to the world of writing. My first job was at St. Martin's Press in the beautiful Flatiron building in New York City. I worked at a literary agency with a brownstone full of (to my 25 year old self) a bunch of … [Read more...]
Spark & Flow FREE Creativity eBook Download!
Let's start with the good news: you don't need to find creativity, it is already inside of you! The Spark & Flow eBook was created to give you ideas about how to access, play with, experiment on, and move with your already existing creativity. Our brains are dialectical storytelling machines. If I give you two images, your brain will immediately compare, contrast, and begin to tell a story about the two scenes. We cannot NOT tell stories. Our very consciousness is a long repeated internal story about who we are, where we came from, and what we want. A recent article in the Los Angeles … [Read more...]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »