Why write now?
Maintaining your creativity is an act of resistance | Fledgling Newsletter #83
“I’m not in the mood to write poetry lately,” I told a friend last month.
Let’s be honest. People are bummed the fuck out. If you have a pulse (and a heart) how can you not be?
In the midst of the dumpster fire that is the human experience as of late, I have been focused on survival. Morning pages, EMDR therapy, calling my representatives to get ICE out, driving my kid to daycare, feeding her, consuming banal television until I’m exhausted enough to sleep, reading nonfiction on how we got here, looking for the way out. This behavior feels a little like progress but doesn’t leave much room to notice birdsong, imagine another world, or even develop a heartwarming little thesis on which a poem needs to fly.
Writing with others in Fledgling Writers Nest sessions feels especially good right now, because we can suspend each other in shared purpose for an hour. But once the Zoom meeting ends, reality seeps in again. Maybe you can relate.
In a world inundated with atrocities, describing the particular glint of your grandmother’s sewing needle or working on your vampire novel may not feel as necessary.
Still, after learning of Catherine O’Hara’s death at the end of last week, I managed to blurt out an essay. Yesterday that essay was published in HuffPost and has neared half a million views. It felt good to write something about how humanity can oftentimes, when you least expect it, be wonderful, and from the feedback I’ve gotten, I think it felt good to read something like that, too.
What I’ve learned is this: for the love of all that is good about the world (and there are many good things!) tell me about your grandmother’s sewing needle! Finish your vampire novel! For every picture of Jeffrey Epstein I want to read about a little speck of cloud that caught your eye. For every gunshot heard round the world, I want you to describe a laugh only you know well.
Reader, I’m just here to remind: your writing will always be necessary.
I will not stop my survival endeavors, because those things are helping me, too. I am learning in EMDR therapy not to look away. That the only way out is through. I learned in the book One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This that there is a difference between passive and active resistance, and one makes a difference over time that the other doesn’t. Passive resistance looks like dissociating with distractions and keeping your opinion to yourself. Active resistance can look like walking your neighbor to their door, refusing to patronize a corrupt organization, talking to your friends about how you feel about an issue, or continuing to make your art.
Writing, no matter what you write, is a revolutionary act of engagement—with your mind, your imagination, your values, and your community. To give up on your creativity is to give up on it all.
After I told my friend I was not in the mood for poetry, I pushed myself to write one with my Fledgling Writers Nest crew in our last Lunch Break writing hour. It felt more like progress than anything I’ve done lately, and it paved the way to my piece about Catherine O’Hara, back to my novel-in-progress, and out of my funk.
I imagine, sometimes the sun is not in the mood to make a ray, but that’s its job.
If you’re a writer—even if only something you’re willing to admit to yourself alone in a quiet room—then there is no mood for it. There is only the blank page and your responsibility to fill it.
Shine on without embarrassment, writers. Why write during these unprecedented times? Write for life, for healing, for resistance. We need you.
Upcoming opportunities to write with me:
Become a paid subscriber
Have you heard about the Fledgling Writers Nest community? Paid subscribers gain access to two weekly writing sessions over Zoom. Lunch Break, a prompt-led writing hour, Tuesdays at noon EST, and Committed Creative Club, an accountability hour for finishing, revising, submitting, and creative exploration, Thursdays at 4pm EST. For only $200 a year, each session is around $2.
Join Flight Behavior before it flies away
After ten years of running workshop courses through Fledgling, I’ll be making some changes this year, stepping away from the disguise of my business to teach more as myself—just Sammi. My tried and true course curriculums will appear in exciting new ways, through outside institutions, so look out for that news coming soon. In the meantime…
My beloved novel planning course, Flight Behavior, will run for its final time starting March 3rd! Always wanted to write a novel, but don’t know where to start? This class is stacked with info and dialed to perfection, in my humble opinion. With six weekly sessions and a daily prompt calendar for accountability that will help you reach 20,000 words in six weeks, this one’s a no brainer if you want to write a book. Sign up! It’s always so fun, inspiring, and productive.
Prompts:
Turn your phone on airplane mode. Choose a prompt. Write to it freely and without judgement 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...
Write about your own celebrity encounter. There are always layers here. How they look and seem compared to how you expected they would provides a natural arc to the story no matter what it is. Don’t have a celebrity encounter story? Imagine meeting your hero, make the tale taller and taller until, voila, it becomes fiction. Are you working on a character? Which celebrity might they meet that would change them?
Here’s one from our last Lunch Break that might help you sort your complicated emotions in this difficult historical moment with steps borrowed from my understanding of nonviolent communication:
Make a list of unfulfilled feelings you’ve had recently. Aim for 5-10. (Discouraged, helpless, lonely, confused?)
Now make an accompanying list of moments from your life or in history where you or others may have felt that way, too.
Then jot down what needs were fulfilled to get past those difficult moments. (Spending time with friends, physical exercise, volunteering, smoking a cigarette…)
Use this list of allusions, memories, and needs to write a poem or essay of resistance.
And lastly, something to read:
If you found me because of my Catherine O’Hara piece for HuffPost, I think you’ll love my friend Elizabeth Austin’s work. Try her earnest, irreverent take on Heated Rivalry she published with Jenny magazine last month.