Be soft. And other ways to refind your magic.
November Happy Hour link, Fledgling Newsletter #52
Psst…Your Lunch Break 11/30 and Happy Hour 12/1 links are at the bottom of this email!
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
So go the words of one-time earth angel, now actual angel, Kurt Vonnegut. Excellent writing advice, necessary life advice (which I did in fact have tacked to my bulletin board throughout college).
November was not easy, and in turn, I was hard.
Hard muscles that seemed to snake back to tension mere hours after stretching or massaging them.
Hard jaw clenched until my head hurt.
Hard to talk to, hard to get ahold of, even for my creativity.
On a walk in Vermont earlier in the month I told my husband that I know I am sad when I don’t feel like writing a poem. That is something so true about me, I almost hate to know it. He said I would get my magic back, but I told him I was finding very little inspiring these days. We rounded a bend and at that moment a white chested hawk flew up from a bush only a few feet ahead of us. As if Kurt himself, in a dramatic, poetic flash decided to pay me a visit. No stranger to a hard time, Kurt wrote to relieve his traumas. I’m not sure how he got back on the horse after a low spell, but here are some ways I do it:
1. Listen to beloved books: I have a new favorite self-care method. I hate to reread a book when there are so many other books to begin, but recently I have started listening to books I have loved in the past. Even better if read by the author, it is so soothing to hear a story you love and know read aloud to you. Listening to Ocean Vuoung’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous this month (a third reading for me) lit a fire in me that forced me to start jotting ideas, lines, and sentences again. Those baby steps, eventually returned me to the blank page.
2. Use existing work: If you can’t seem to catch a new idea, return to an old one. Read a piece you once wrote that you are proud of. Edit slowly with a pencil (not on the computer). Rewrite a piece in a new way after reading it through once and then putting it away. Or try what we did last week in Lunch Break and write the “photo negative” of something you’ve already written. (I’m sharing this prompt below).
3. Don’t rush it: So much of a writer’s life is learning to forgive yourself. For not writing, for writing very little, for leaving behind something you didn’t finish. You are your own boss and assistant and cheerleader and about 100 other jobs when you are a writer. Self loathing only loses you more time (and softness). If you decide “I will write again on Thursday,” and then you don’t, perhaps the most master writer thing you can do is forgive yourself for your extended hiatus immediately. Your words will all be there when you’re ready. I promise.
4. Watch movies that inspire you: Contrary to what some writers may want you to believe, television is not the root of all evil. In fact many contemporary writers I’ve worked with or heard speak like T. Kira Madden, Connie May Fowler, and Julia Fierro, credit film for (at least partially) teaching them to structure a story. Absorbing a well-crafted narrative is never a waste of time. If your magic is buried deep under a hard soil, take a break and try a film you’ve already seen and loved. Return to Wes Anderson, tuck into a Harry Potter movie, get taken on a Coen Brothers ride. Let your coziest couch blanket and that three act structure thaw you and chalk it up to a lesson in craft.
5. Write about what’s keeping you up at night: This is a guideline I use in trauma writing sessions. We may think to write to heal you have to write through an entire traumatizing experience in grisly detail. But maybe it’s just the laugh of a loved one you’re missing, so start writing only about that.
For me, when there is something big on my heart I cannot see what else there is to write until I write about that big thing. Writing for even 15 minutes about what is most troubling at the moment makes my thoughts containable, so I can get back to the other projects I hope to accomplish.
6. Seek out your writing people: When you’re ready, join a writing group, ask a friend to write with you in person or on Zoom, go to a poetry reading, or even try sitting down at a library with only a notebook and pen. Writing with others has always been the most effective and most gentle kind of kick in the pants for me.
The holidays are the most wonderful time of the year and sometimes the most melancholy. Go softly this holiday season, my Fledglings! And please! Come write with me!
News:
🚨Want to write a book but don’t know where to start? Stuck on page 40 and feeling stuck in the weeds? Flight Behavior, our generative novel planning course, is open for registration! This unique 6-week course (open to memoirists as well) includes weekly generative lessons along with a daily prompt calendar to keep you writing daily. The biggest favor you can do for yourself when starting a book is to start off with intention, so your first draft reads like a third draft and you avoid time-consuming pitfalls. Read more about the course and sign up here.
👯♀️In 2023 the ladies, trans, and nonbinary NY locals who are paid subscribers to Writers Nest can enjoy a new perk ~ a Fledgling writers’ circle once a month at Fledgling HQ. Part support group, part generative writing session, and part writerly social event these casual 2 hour sessions will focus on writing to heal techniques and connecting with a writing community most often pushed to the margins. If you’re interested in joining the circle, please take a moment to fill out this form for your preferred dates and times for our monthly meetings.
🎁Did you know you can gift a paid subscription to Fledgling Writers Nest to a friend? Give or ask for the gift of some community writing time this holiday season by clicking or sharing this link. It’s that easy!
📝Fledgling’s weekly writers’ hour Lunch Break is tomorrow 11/30 at 1 pm EST and our November Happy Hour is this Thursday 12/1 at 6 pm EST. We’ll be discussing how to own our individual writing styles this month! Don’t miss these chances to write with a group before the month is up! Scroll or upgrade to paid to join us.
Prompts:
Turn your phone on airplane mode. Choose a prompt. Write to it for 10 minutes. If you want to keep going, keep going. If you like what you write, reply it back to me and maybe see it in the newsletter next month...
Here’s one we worked on in Lunch Break this month, but that I think is so useful as a revision practice and even a healing practice. Using a technique suggested by Brooklyn poet Darrel Alejandro Holnes, choose a piece you’ve written and dubbed unworthy or perhaps one you just want to get to know better. (You might also choose another writer’s piece to work with and begin a bit of a dialogue with.) Write the “photo negative” of that already written piece. As in, write the exact opposite of what you first set down in whatever way that means to you—you might go word by word, line by line, or maybe you simply shift the tone from one extreme to another (for example: from desperate to hopeful, exuberant to quiet, lyrical to sparse).
In the spirit of refinding your magic, choose a book you read long ago and loved that you have on your bookshelf. At the top of your blank page write that book’s title, then flip through and randomly pick five words to start a word bank for your piece. Do not reread the book, simply write a poem or scene that aims to invoke the feeling that book left in you. No book nearby? Borrow one of my beloved books and words within it: Title - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Words - bones, microphones, soar, feathers, buried
And lastly, something to read:
a poem by prompt designer Darrel Alejandro Holnes originally published in the American Poetry Review
Marvelous Sugar Baby
A black woman sings azúcar!
over polyrhythmic African drums
on the Latino radio stations
blazing from my smart phone
on the above-ground subway line
in Houston. La negra tiene
tumbao, sings queen Celia Cruz bluntly
about a señorita who doesn’t sweat
the small stuff and is therefore
unstoppable
as she commands us all to dance
to the ton-ton of a conga drum.
But sugar is so soluble and
precious that all it takes is a drizzle
to end the night early
and send the band home.
You’d think stronger stuff
would come from sugarcanes
so hard to chop down that white men
once thought only the Negros
could do it. Perhaps
that’s the thing about making,
the strongest structure is that which
is inevitably torn down,
temperance making
beauty making la vida un carnaval.
This is where we find joy: a rumba despite
the high chances of rain at the Taco Milagro salsa night,
a sing-along about the sweetness of life despite
salty sweat drowning our faces
as the drum rhythm picks up
and our bodies move faster together
toward their own inevitable ends apart—
A black woman, demanding our attention
despite how we stare her down,
struts the street earthily shaking from
side to side. Gracias a Dios,
la negra nos tiene tumbao.
Gracias a Dios, camina
de lao pa lao pa lao.
After Kara Walker
Find out how to join the November Happy Hour focused on Owning Your True Style below!
(Thursday, December 1, 6-7:45 pm EST on Zoom)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Fledgling Writers Nest to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.