Joy’s Writing
The quiet that comes when we are seen
Finding words that represent who we are at our core is a need as central as food, as shelter, as touch. Surely, when that need is met, something in us quiets. Gradually, we start to feel and act from the need, and live more from its fulfillment.
The color of today
Everything is in technicolor when we are anticipating something. When the thing begins, already there’s a wash over it. It’s a touch more muted than it is during the time of buildup.
What happens for people?
The other day I got a very reasonable question: What happens for people who engage with the process of Soul Writing? How has their writing developed, how have their lives changed? My response was less reasonable.
Done with improvement
How many of us are wearing ourselves out in the name of improvement because we actually feel we’re somehow in need of repair?
Your story is yours
This week I surfaced an email I wrote 17 years ago to the author James Frey. His memoir, A Million Little Pieces, had recently been torn to a billion tiny shreds by Oprah Winfrey and her pack of razor-toothed worshipers.
Keep shaking
Writing and sharing the truth—trusting what is coming through us—is a massive act. Even if we’re in a circle of kind people who we know won’t judge us, the sheer size of what we’re doing might overwhelm us a little bit, or a lot. Can we let that be?
Just say what happened (like it’s that easy)
All that my readers (and my soul!) are asking of me is to say what happened, and yet I find myself gripped by my lifelong habit of doing anything but.
Making it safe to come home
That day, my stories didn’t have to float in the space above me any longer, they could live in me. My body and essence were united through my words. For a few hours, I was whole.
Take a minute
This past week has been a swirling dust devil of transition as I step more fully into the work of my soul. Even though I knew it was coming, the disruption startled me like a spooked horse. I didn’t take a minute. I made a damn mess.
Magnificent garbage
Write this junk out of your organs before it begins to rot them. Toss the magnificent garbage outside to rot on its own. You know what they say about one person’s trash…
What is a writer?
I didn’t start calling myself a writer until very recently. I know, why not? If I have been writing my whole life and none of it qualifies me, what on earth does?
Set your writing free
The best gift I received this season was Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. There’s lots about it that is, well, delightful (you did it, Ross!), but the element that’s inspiring me most this first time through is the simple fact that he wrote a short essay by hand in “smallish notebooks” every day for a year.
Dismantle Grammar
Right now, much of the world is taking scythes to the hedges and corn stalks that have, for generations, trapped us all in a maze of excruciating conformity, very much including the arbitrary rules of English grammar. The way I’m seeing this necessary demolition show up in Soul Writing workshops is pretty cool.
Can you be a gentle reader?
There is room in all writing, all art, all the world, for scrutiny. It’s the posture most of us walk around in all the time, with which we approach everything: price tags, newspapers, social media posts. Part of what we’re doing in Soul Writing workshops is dismantling this automatic way of moving through life.
Walking slowly
“Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.” - Oliver Burkeman
Postcard from a pixelated self
Here’s 10-minute free write I did a few days after a recent surgery, when I was still drug-hazy, largely inert, incisions still hidden under gauze. It’s a messy, staccato, close-in memory of the day: itself a fleeting moment compared to the span of time that has ensued.
An invitation from the planets—and from me
Those of you who are astrologically inclined (or who are, like, on Instagram) know that Mercury is in retrograde at the moment. Astronomically, that means the planet Mercury appears to be moving backward in the sky. On Earth, it’s a lot of spinning beach balls on computer screens, dropped calls, traffic detours and misunderstandings.
Dear muses
Dear Muses, I’m stuck. You know this. You know because you’ve been knocking on the door, calling and getting a busy signal, sending registered letters that get returned. No such addressee. Return to sender. No solicitors. Go away. I’ve refused you.