Writers are always invited to shadow work, whether they expect it or not. That’s because writing a good story always seems to bring us there! Whether we take the time to integrate that work into our consciousness is a bigger question. Meeting our shadow is incredibly difficult, because it means looking directly at the most vulnerable parts of ourselves, the aspects of ourselves that are steeped in shame. Psychologists call these the disowned parts of… [Read More]

I have had the joy of cultivating several collections in my life: stickers, vintage suitcases, pencils, manual typewriters, rocks and crystals, single-estate chocolate bars. I still collect stamps. (It’s a tiny, lightweight art gallery!) Anything can be fun to collect, if you twist your perspective to suit. What if you started collecting rejection letters? You’ve heard me talk about tracking your submissions since forever. Tracking is another kind of collecting. You can track in this… [Read More]

You know how they say sitting is worse than smoking? In lockdown, I’ve spent the past months mostly sitting down. Sure, I sit in different ways and places: on the floor, in hard chairs, on the soft couch. I move around, but I don’t go out and about like I used to. I know my movement has lost… variety. Now my body is saying, this is not good. It has its own language. An arresting… [Read More]

Many years ago, I was trying really, really hard to write my second book. My first book had taken me 10 years to write, and then, unexpectedly, it was accepted by a publisher and selected for a prestigious literary prize. This experience changed the course of my professional life and career.  I worked really hard to write my first book, and I was really lucky that it was noticed and picked. And in the years… [Read More]

Writing asks us to cultivate wonder.  That state of mind that allows us to approach the unknown with curiosity and awe.   In wonder, we become open, present, more susceptible to being astonished. I’ve been teaching about this all month, and today I want to affirm: Writers need to nourish our own curiosity. We can learn how to allow rather than avoid the unusual and the unfamiliar. We can get more comfortable sitting in the unknown…. [Read More]