Guided Meditations for Writers Under Fire

“
Remember the linguistic origins of the word yearning: The place you suffer is the place you care. You hurt because you care. Therefore, the best response to your pain is to dive deeper into your caring.”

— Susan Cain, Bittersweet

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In our Writer's Circle, the private writing group I lead, we end each session with lovingkindness for writers all over the world. It's a beautiful practice that binds us to writers everywhere, the inter-being of the word community. Every time we do it, I get chills. Before I send out each newsletter, I do lovingkindness for each one of you, for all the writers receiving my words: may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you be inspired. 


When I thought about what we, as writers, can do to keep supporting writers in Ukraine and all over the world who risk their lives for words, I knew that diving into lovingkindness work would be the best, most accessible answer. 

It is the same answer I have come up with for writers working to end gun violence in the US - my husband, a writer, is a high school teacher in an unsafe environment - and for all the writers who are bleeding on the page to end violence against women and to protect our rights here in the US and around the world. The writers who are desperately fighting this virus, holding those who have lost dear ones to COVID, working hard to tell the truth and heal division. 


This work cultivates compassion and empathy - you can't write well without them. It widens the borders of our hearts. It increases our connection to the spaces outside our imaginations and the bubbles of our lives.

 

There are books you cannot write
until you do this work. 

How can your words help articulate what it means to be human, or midwife your readers through their life's journey, if those words aren't rooted in deep care for yourself and all beings, and for the planet we are so lucky to reside on? Lovingkindness can be the foundation of empathy for one's self and all of creation. It is a form of training the heart. 
 

What's happening in Ukraine is horrifying and very hard to wrap our minds around. (As a side note: it's shameful the world didn't respond to Syria and many other conflicts and genocides and war crimes with such an outpouring of love and solidarity.)


Unless you're someone like me, who writes about war (my WIP is about war correspondents, I've written about vets with PTSD, and my last, CODE NAME BADASS, is about a WWII spy), then what's happening globally and nationally might just be too overwhelming to hold. You might feel numb about it all. There is so much we're trying to do to keep our heads above water in our personal lives and the communities we are a part of. I get it. 


But that overwhelm you're feeling? This work addresses it, and it widens your capacity to meet this world more skillfully and kindly. It's tender work that heals in unexpected ways. It is how I stopped hating myself, how I worked through painful relationships, and how I began to understand what it means to do right by the miracle. 


Lovingkindness practice for other writers is a way to create more inter-being within our scribe tribe. We can carry the poets, novelists, journalists, songwriters, playwrights, screenwriters, bloggers, speechwriters, and journalers in our heart. 

THIS IS NOT A TRITE PRACTICE, NOR IS IT SPIRITUAL BYPASSING.

It may seem like you sitting in a room sending loving thoughts through the unconscious collective's highway system is a bullshit response. But we can't help anyone if we don't truly care about them. Your check to UNICEF without your feelings, that donation out of guilt, that feeling of having done something just because you read the news (then shake your head, put it away, and move on with your day)...we're better than that. 


As writers, a part of our job is push against the edges of our hearts and make a little more room in there. In engaging with this kind of work, we are training ourselves to put that sense of care on the page, pages that might galvanize, challenge, or inspire our readers. 


This work will have a direct effect on your ability to carry others and yourself. It will have a ripple effect like you wouldn't believe on the page. It will help you write better villains, and better heroines. 


It will help. 

Below are two guided meditations I created for our global writing community:

Lovingkindness for Writers and Lovingkindness for Writers Under Fire.

If you’re hurting over Ukraine, over journalists being targeted in Russia and Mexico and Palestine (and everywhere), sick over the oppression of writers all around the world, over censorship, over the silencing of indigenous, divergent, and unheard voices from so many communities, sick of kids and teachers being gunned down and women's lives being put at risk by an unjust Supreme Court, and on and on and on...then Writers Under Fire will give you a chance to erase the borders of your heart for writers around the world who are deeply unsafe.

As Rumi says, Your heart is the size of the ocean.

It really is. 

The second meditation, Lovingkindness for Writers, is guided work focused on compassion toward the writers in our personal lives - ourselves, the beloved teachers, dear friends, authors who inspire us…and the writers who try our patience.

 

May this work be of benefit and may all writers everywhere be happy, healthy, safe, and inspired.

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Here's something very delightful and tactile you can do as a spring project:

Not too long after the war in Ukraine broke out, I walked by a nearby church and saw a clothesline covered in tied ribbons, each representing a prayer. There was a bag nailed to a post and anyone could add their own ribbon - it reminded me a lot of the Shinto temples I visited long ago in Kyoto.


I was struck with the idea of creating my very own Celtic wishing tree - these are a real thing and I've always wanted to see one.


My neighbor and her kids in our side-by-side duplex, my husband and I....we feel things deeply. So I bought this plant sculpture thing - it reminded me of my beloved Ukraine and of good memories in Russia. My husband said it looked like a penis. My neighbor's friend said it resembled a rocket ship. Whatever. It's now a cool-ass wishing tree.


See all those ribbons? They come out of a bag labeled:


Wishes
Hopes
Prayers
Intentions
Miracles
Dreams

MAGIC


I tie one on before a big doctor's appointment. After a tough conversation. When I read something painful in the news. When I'm worried about someone. When I want something and am whispering that want into the universe's ear.


It's grand and it makes me happy, out there in our backyard. The wind never blows it down and the intense Minnesota weather doesn't seem to cause any trouble.


It reminds me of a lighthouse. And how we can be our own lighthouses in the dark. And shine light when others can't find their way through it.


If you make a wishing tree, send me a picture! I'd love to see it. This is a very tactile way of doing lovingkindness for yourself and others, and the planet.

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Okay, and this book is a balm to my bittersweet soul - I have rarely felt so utterly seen and now have a term for what I am: a bittersweet gal who thrives in the minor key. I'm not a wet blanket or a bummer or negative: I am bittersweet, which is the yummiest chocolate so there.


I wanted to share this book this month because of our work with lovingkindness, which Cain also mentions as a wonderful practice for you bittersweet selves.


Can I get an amen to this:


"What is the ache you can't get rid of--and could you make it your creative offering?...Could your ache be, asLeonard Cohen said, the way you embrace the sun and the moon? And do you know the lessons of your own particular sorrow?...You must find a way to transform the pain of the ages, even as you find the freedom to write your own story."


Bittersweet is about that, and so much more. It has been so helpful for me as I navigate writing difficult material and a particularly tough time with my health (the body, as the Zen Master husband says, is my koan). It has helped me work more skillfully with - and articulate - my holy fury at the injustices and suffering in the world. It affirms my choice to channel this fury through words and my work with all y'all.


As a result of this season's global events and deep reflections on mortality and meaning - including studying Cain's work - I'll be adding a fourth key to the Keyring of Desire in my Unlock craft work (the current workbook is on the portal, but the new insights will be in my upcoming Writing Bingeable Characters course).


Being a bittersweet type is a part of my process that I've fully embraced, one that results in much better work. I live and create in the minor key - it's what gives me energy, in much the same way that solitude jazzes me. If you are curious about your own process, let's YHAP together.


I feel so lucky that we have this distinct way - words and lovingkindness - to support our spirits during difficult times.

May you be healthy, happy, safe, and inspired-

The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire

Whenever I teach my annual Mindfulness Immersion for Writers, we’re always looking to see what areas we most need to attend to with our mindfulness practice.

This year, I finally found a reliable quiz you can take and I offer it here as a way to help you assess what next best steps you can take to be more present for this go around of life.

As Mary Oliver said, "Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Devotion to….what? Ah, that’s what you’ll find out the more you awaken.

Let's see where you're at with your mindfulness, shall we?

The Quiz

Here is the questionnaire, called the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. It was developed by Ruth Baer, a professor and mindfulness researcher based at the Kentucky University. The purpose of this quiz is to measure the elements that help us be mindful in the course of our daily lives. The small things we do to be present.

Print it out and take it when you have some quiet time, perhaps with a nice cup of tea, a cat on your lap, and a cozy blanket at hand.

Here's a great article on what the questionnaire is all about.

Scoring Your Mindfulness Assessment

Okay, maybe I'm just not good with numbers (true story), but I found scoring this to be really really confusing. So I figured it out (actually the Zen Master aka Husband figured it out) and here's what you do:

• After you take the test, you'll see a key on the back. We're scoring each of the five facets of mindfulness. For each number in each section you just add up what number you put.

• BUT! For the ones with an "R" you reverse the number. Anything you marked a 3 stays a three. But if you marked a 4, then you only give yourself 2 points (2 is the reverse fo 4, according to this scale). Or, if you marked a 2, then you would give yourself 4 points. The same applies to number 5 and number 1 on the scale.
  

Here's an example:

For question #12, which is the first one with a reverse scoring, I put the number 1 on the scale to answer the question. But I don't give myself 1 point here, because it's reversed. I give myself 5 points.

Now, while it's very frustrating that there is no answer key here to tell us what the score means, the basic idea is: the higher your score in an area, the more mindfulness you have in that area.

40 is the highest mindfulness score in each area. The closer you are to 40, the more mindful you are in that area.

This is great data for us, because you can clearly identify what areas you might need to work on. And if we have a call coming up, we can dig into these results.

I also recommend taking this call periodically, to see where if there are any shifts as you dig into the mindfulness practices of your choice.

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Your Brain on Meditation / Neurological Benefits

This article is a good one, though it's over 10 years old. Below are a few of my favorite bits:


In a study published in the journal Neuro Image in 2009, Luders and her colleagues compared the brains of 22 meditators and 22 age-matched non-meditators and found that the meditators (who practiced a wide range of traditions and had between five and 46 years of meditation experience) had more gray matter in regions of the brain that are important for attention, emotion regulation, and mental flexibility. Increased gray matter typically makes an area of the brain more efficient or powerful at processing information. Luders believes that the increased gray matter in the meditators’ brains should make them better at controlling their attention, managing their emotions, and making mindful choices....

Like anything else that requires practice, meditation is a training program for the brain. “Regular use may strengthen the connections between neurons and can also make new connections,” Luders explains. “These tiny changes, in thousands of connections, can lead to visible changes in the structure of the brain.” Those structural changes, in turn, create a brain that is better at doing whatever you’ve asked it to do. Musicians’ brains could get better at analyzing and creating music...

Over the past decade, researchers have found that if you practice focusing attention on your breath, the brain will restructure itself to make concentration easier. If you practice calm acceptance during meditation, you will develop a brain that is more resilient to stress. And if you meditate while cultivating feelings of love and compassion, your brain will develop in such a way that you spontaneously feel more connected to others...

...concentration meditation, in which the meditator focuses complete attention on one thing, such as counting the breath or gazing at an object, activates regions of the brain that are critical for controlling attention. This is true even among novice meditators who receive only brief training. Experienced meditators show even stronger activation in these regions. This you would expect, if meditation trains the brain to pay attention...


After the mindfulness intervention, participants have greater activity in a brain network associated with processing information when they reflect on negative self-statements. In other words, they pay more attention to the negative statements than they did before the intervention. And yet, they also show decreased activation in the amygdala—a region associated with stress and anxiety. Most important, the participants suffered less. “They reported less anxiety and worrying,” Goldin says. “They put themselves down less, and their self-esteem improved.”

Goldin’s interpretation of the findings is that mindfulness meditation teaches people with anxiety how to handle distressing thoughts and emotions without being overpowered by them. Most people either push away unpleasant thoughts or obsess over them—both of which give anxiety more power. “The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts or emotions. The goal is to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and learn how to move through them without getting stuck.” The brain scans suggest that the anxiety sufferers were learning to witness negative thoughts without going into a full-blown anxiety response.

Quickie For Your Brain on Meditation

This article in Forbes has a quick run-down with linked medical studies that is useful to scan, as well.

Why We Need To Keep Meditating (Neuroplasticity, yo!)

This is a great article from Psychology Today that gets specifically into the brain science. I love how she talks about the body and increased empathy - so key for us as writers!

But I appreciate even more how she gets into WHY we need to keep up this practice:

However, to maintain your gains, you have to keep meditating. Why? Because the brain can very easily revert back to its old ways if you are not vigilant (I’m referencing the idea of neuroplasticity here). This means you have to keep meditating to ensure that the new neural pathways you worked so hard to form stay strong.

To me, this amazing brain science and the very real rewards gained from meditation combine to form a compelling argument for developing and/or maintaining a daily practice. It definitely motivates me on those days I don’t “feel” like sitting. So, try to remind yourself that meditating every day, even if it’s only 15 minutes, will keep those newly formed connections strong and those unhelpful ones of the past at bay.

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Help Is Here

These are my free resources for mindfulness and meditation.

But if you’re up for it, schedule a call with me or, if I have a meditation or mindfulness course, I’d love for those offerings to be of use to you.

All my free resources for writing etc. can be found on this page.

Here’s to attention and devotion!

This Weekend

Breathe. Write. Repeat.

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”

— William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

Join Us

Why Meditation Will Transform Your Creative Life

The writing life is hard.

(And beautiful, expansive, wondrous—all the good things, yes, but right now I want to talk about why it’s hard. Bahhumbug).

Before I started meditating, I was a Type-A hustler workaholic who has literally said the sentence, I don’t understand hobbies. And meant it. (Now I have some hobbies - thank you, Mindfulness, for letting me know it’s okay to have a little fun in life. Still Type A, though).

For so long, all I knew was striving.

Working myself to the bone for my dream of being published.

I wanted the gold star.

I always wanted the gold star.

Now, I think they’re shiny and nice, but I don’t care as much because I’ve begun to understand that you start out with a gold star and simply have forgotten you have one.

Mindfulness helps you rediscover that shining place in you that’s been dark for quite a while.

My Nervous Breakdown

My first book was about to come out and I was finishing up my MFA while drowning in the incomprehensible world of publishing—what do you mean they don’t market the book they bought? Why do they get to keep the draft for nine months, then demand the revision in a matter of weeks? No one likes my tweets, I am invisible, I am worthless, I hate this, I don’t even like writing anymore.

Enter: the nervous breakdown.

Mine happened by degrees, preceded by a manic hustling for my worth (Love me! Love me!) followed by a deep, dark depression in which I was highly functional, yet growing increasingly panicked by creative blocks, decreasing advances (when they don’t market your books, they don’t sell – funny how that works), and a terrible fear of failure. Medication didn’t work and the thought of quitting it all was too awful to bear and seemed impossible, anyway, since I owed several major corporations novels I had yet to write, but had been paid money for…money which was quickly disappearing because I’d moved to New York City and quit my day job. The dream! The nightmare.

Enter Meditation

So I went to the Cape to get some rest: I’d had a total meltdown after a panel and I could feel myself unravelling. The friend I was visiting made me lay down on a couch and listen to a guided meditation. I was desperate, and me laying on this couch was proof of that. It was a weird one—angel stuff and not my thing—but: that shit worked.

Oh, I’d meditated before: on a cliff overlooking the sea in India, at a Korean monastery at dawn (in scratchy monk’s robes thankyouverymuch), in yoga studios at Venice Beach, and in way too many acting classes.

I’m a spiritual misfit, a longtime seeker—this whole going inward thing wasn’t new to me.

But meditation? Nope. I was convinced my mind would not be able to do it. To quote my first agent in an email she once sent me, “Wow, you are a whirling dervish on steroids.” That was a pretty accurate description of mind. (Which means if I could meditate, I bet you can too).

Who else out there can’t stop the spinning, the ideas, the endless thinking, thinking, thinking? Because, I tell you, it’s exhausting.

But then I lay down on that couch and—the reeling slowed down. It didn’t stop. But it slowed down. More dance, less steroids.

I didn’t have an epiphany, or a major spiritual awakening. I just realized that this was good for me.

What Meditation Isn’t

I understood instinctively that meditation wasn’t a way to check out, but a way to check in. The teachers I began to work with over the next months and years showed me that meditation is a tool for working with our minds, to understand them. To observe them. To befriend them. If you’re looking for entertainment, a chill-out session, that’s just a Band-Aid solution. The real healing is in the silence. You and your mind.

When I first began meditating, I thought it was supposed to transport me to some non-thinking bliss state, but that’s not it at all (though some meditation styles go that route, that’s not the kind I’m talking about here). In this space, we release expectations. We let go. And, oh man, letting go for someone like me feels so freaking good. Sitting there, following the guided instructions, they seemed…manageable. Like something I could maybe do. And after I got up off that couch where I had to find my spirit guide and talk to an angel, I felt more grounded, more connected to myself.

And I wanted more. (Without the side of woo, though).

The poet Mary Oliver tells us that, Attention is the beginning of devotion. And I suppose that’s what my meditation journey has become—a practice of attention.

Which, if you really think about it, is all writing really is. For quite a while now, meditation—and by extension, mindfulness—has become a central part of my life, and my writing process. It’s been incredibly transformative, so much so that I got certified to teach it and share the practice with the writers I coach, the students I teach, and anyone who will listen to me yammer on about it. Sometimes, the characters in my books start meditating, too.

One of the writers I work with told me that a bit after she started meditating, a friend glanced at her and said, “You look free.”

Students tell me that they are flowing more, less blocked, don’t snap at their kids as much, and can handle the stress of agents / editors / rejection much better.

People, this WORKS.

The author Mary Quattlebaum was the first writer who showed me that this practice could support my writing when she began a workshop I was taking during one of my MFA residencies with a guided meditation before we began some exploratory work.

Just a few minutes of sitting there in the silence unleashed creative flow.

The Benefits of Meditation For Writers (Abridged Version)

In my own experimentation, I’ve found this to be true, as well. If you need the neuroscience data to back it up, here you go. The cool thing is that there is so much connection between flow states and meditation (see link), so when you’re meditating, you’re actually in the writer’s gym. Pretty nice, right?

 My work on and off the cushion with mindfulness and meditation—and the feedback I get from the writers I work on this practice with—has proven to me time and again that this practice is the very best thing out there (that I’ve found, anyway) to help you navigate the ups and downs of the writer’s life. It even helps you with craft and story. (More on that later, too).

Meditation helps build our resilience muscles, so when those rejections and bad reviews come in, we have a bit more perspective when we handle them—they don’t rock our worlds as much as they once might have.

It helps us have better focus when we sit down to write, gives us more flow (seriously), and provides a host of other benefits. Here are a few I have personally experienced:

– The end of major creative blocks

– More flow

– More focus

— More resilience

– Depression and anxiety management

– More perspective during tough times

– A healthier response to my inner critic

– Better attention to detail (craft)

– Deeper connection to self and others

– More awareness of how my mind works so that I can work more skillfully with limiting beliefs and other gnarly creatures of the mind

– Greater emotional intelligence

– Cosmic perspective

– Less hustling for my worth, thus more focus on my creativity

– End of my nervous breakdown

— More compassion and a stronger empathy muscle

– Hope

— A bit o’ ye olde inner peace

— Better habit formation

— Actual, for real, self love, which I like to call “self regard”

Next Steps For Getting Your Butt in the Chair…and the Cushion

I look forward to sharing my insights and journey with you here on the blog and perhaps even in one of my online courses or one-on-one mentorship.

I would absolutely LOVE to hear how this practice is helping your own creative life, so do drop me a line and let me know how meditation supports your writing practice. I know many of you out there are meditators and have much wisdom to offer us.

Free Support

I want to make this practice as accessible as possible - this is good medicine that must be made available to all. So, here are ways you can access support from me at no cost:

• My twice-monthly newsletter is all about the mindfulness. I often share guided meditations, exercises, worksheets, book recs, and more. There are also loads of free downloads you get as a subscriber. Get on the list here.

• Thousands of writers around the world listen to my meditation “writer dharma talks” and guided meditation on the free Insight Timer App. Links for this are on my mindfulness resource page.

• For female-identifying writers, join me and your writing sisters every month for The Well Second Sunday Gatherings, where we use a new word each month as a theme to guide us in all manner of explorations - everything I teach uses mindfulness as a base. These are recorded, so anyone on my newsletter has access to the archive, which is also on my SoundCloud page.

• This blog has loads of practices embedded in the posts: exploratory work, how-to’s, mindful mindset for writers, and more.

Here are two posts I want to leave you with:

This first one is about a really practical way that mindfulness has supported me off the cushion as a writer.

This second one is a piece I wrote for LA Review of Books that gives you a sense of the spaciousness found in this practice, and what it might open up for you on the page.

Don’t believe me? If you read my novel Little Universes you’ll see just how much this practice can impact craft. Meditation and the concepts that stem from mindfulness and my own Buddhist practice are threaded all throughout this book. It’s the best thing I’ve written to date, and I credit my practice with that.

Sounds pretty nice, right?

Got five minutes? Close your eyes. Follow your breath.

I’ll see you in the silence—

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*This post has been altered from the original, which was on the Vermont College of Fine Arts “Wild Things” blog, the official blog of the Writing For Children and Young Adults MFA program (my alma mater), where I had a weekly Mindfulness Monday blog from 2018-2019.

The Space Between Breaths: Transitions In The Artistic Life

This post was originally written in March 30, 2017. I’ve re-posted this with some fresh insights at the end.

A Writer’s Creative Dry Season

For the past year, I’ve been going through a transition, floating in a space between. It’s been three years since my first book came out. There was the before publication life, when I’d yet to sell a book and was dreaming hard. Then there was the after, where I struggled to learn the ropes of being a published author, yet still managed to write and sell one to two books a year, hustling like a mother. During that time there were aborted projects and disappointments, but I focused laser-like attention on my work and career, with little time for much else. Sometimes that paid off, and sometimes it didn’t. One thing it resulted in was a near-breakdown, spiritual and creative depletion, and an increasing existential dread that followed me around to the point where I felt like Edward Snowden, always looking over my shoulder.

This was unsustainable. A life of waiting for the other shoe to drop is not a good life. And a writer who doesn’t write, or who writes but finds no joy in it, does not a happy writer make.  It also, incidentally, makes it hard to sell more books. The nervy you feel about a project somehow winds itself through the text, an X factor that makes or breaks a book. My books were breaking. I was breaking. So began my year of transition, which began in July 2016, an awakening of sorts that’s still very much in progress. This wasn’t intentional, not something I planned as a great experiment. It just sort of happened. Out of necessity and desperation and a nameless need.

A Year Of Transition


This year of transition actually started in Spring 2016, though I had no idea that this was what was happening. I started devouring books like I used to, back when I wasn’t writing three of them at a time. I literally bought and read every single JoJo Moyes book I could find (okay, I’ve saved a couple because it’s too depressing, a life without a JoJo book to look forward to), after discovering Me Before You on a Barnes and Noble table. I was working—I had revisions and copyedits and submissions. But when I sent in the last thing that was due, in mid-June, I unwittingly gave myself a for-real break. It was on accident—I didn’t realize I was taking a break until the month of July passed with me having written only a handful of words, most of them non-fiction. I got ideas, I threw ideas away—I briefly considered learning Russian and moving to Moscow.

The bulk of my writing was for a residency application I never sent in, as well as the occasional blog post or lengthy email. I began meditating, reconnected with my spiritual side, read lots of books, treated myself to copies of Vogue, discovered the delights of the French 75 cocktail, and took a poetry class. I basked in sunshine and visited with friends and family. There were still stressful writerly moments: two rewrites gone bad, dismal royalty statements. But for the first time in years, writing was not the most important thing. The most important thing was me. It was as though my soul had given me one of those piercing looks and said, My dear, you are the canvas.

Eureka!


I followed my curiosity, each urge a trail of will-o’-the-wisps that led me deeper into my inner landscape, with its turbulent sea, floating glaciers, and craggy mountains set against endless dunes (yes, somehow my innards resemble Morocco, Ireland, and Iceland).

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert says: I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. She’s absolutely right.

I found such joy poking around in New Age stores and going down the Wiki hole of Romanov research and planning a trip to Prague. I delighted in the plethora of self-help books I kept hearing about, got into essential oils, and finally took a Pilates class. I bought strange rings and drank beer and even started liking kale. I got a Reiki treatment and bought my first deck of Tarot cards and I campaigned for Hillary Clinton. I bought a Nasty Woman shirt and protested with thousands of women all over the world, reigniting that little Marxist-Anarchist activist that has been hiding inside me since the Bush years. I made a few big life decisions, some quite seismic, some still in progress. I grieved, felt confusion, wonder, awe, gratitude, love, solidarity, despair.

I probably drank more wine after November 8th than in the rest of my life combined. I cooked my first steak. I began living according to these wise words from Elsie De Wolfe: I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life. Fresh flowers scattered about the house. Crystals lined up on windowsills. A skirt with red roses splashed across the fabric. I see the changes that all this adventuring has wrought everywhere: in my home, my body, my mind, my spirit. And yet, the writing will not budge.

I am still trekking up a damnably high mountain, hoping to reach a summit and praying there’s a nice little valley on the other side of it, with cool spring water and long, fragrant grass I can lie in when I look at the stars. Alas, creativity is uncharted territory—ever ineffable, a tricksy landscape complete with quicksand, dark forests, and, well, you get the metaphor. I confess, there have been a few occasions in which I actually uttered the phrase, Why am I doing this? Or I don’t want to be a writer anymore. I’m not sure if I meant it or not. I suspect maybe I did. It sounds ever so wonderful to leave work at work, to have boundaries between oneself and what one does for a living, to not be in constant artistic torture.


The election and its aftermath was a huge blow that I’m still recovering from. I don’t think I realized how much it affected my ability to be creative until quite recently, when I realized I have to rewrite a boggart of a book I’m working on for the third time. I cannot overstate how unlike me this is. I’ve never spent two years after selling a book trying to rewrite it. It’s madness. Maddening. But when I began to connect the dots, I could see that the bulk of the problem began in the beginning of 2016—a coincidence? I think not. As I said in an email to the book’s editor: I’m sorry for being the world’s shittiest writer. I blame Trump. 


I blamed my mental health and my infernal inability to understand how time works. I blamed New York City for being so goddamn expensive and loud and distracting and fabulous. I also blamed myself, for not taking my own good advice that I give to my clients and that I myself know works. I only give advice when I’ve learned something (usually the hard way), when I know that something is tried and true. As a creativity coach, I tell my clients that each book is a different beast, and that’s true. And also that writing is a marathon (not a sprint), that you will never be a master, that you will always be learning, and that you should trust the process: the not knowing, the frustration—these are just hazards of the job and an essential part of the process. But each time I find myself uncertain creatively, these lessons are hard to remember. A girl has to eat, you know.

Mindfulness For Writers


One thing my meditation teachers like to talk about is the space between breaths. In mindfulness meditation, you focus on the inhale and exhale, using it to anchor your mind in the present. Between each round of inhalation and exhalation, there is a pocket of pure being, where your body has a moment to bask in its existence, where nothing is required of it. It can’t last very long because your lungs need air, but for just a sliver of time, you are infinite. Free-floating. This is also a space for transition, much shorter than my year of transition, but equally powerful. You can discover things there, though it may take you years, or even a lifetime to figure out. You might even see what you’re made of.


This is an essential part of the meditation process. These pockets of no-breath are not simply a bridge between breaths, links on the path to nirvana. They are teaching moments, rich in the kind of knowledge that lives deep in your bones. And this is where meditation for anyone becomes meditation and mindfulness for writers. These transitions in meditation practice are similar to the transitions in an artist’s life.

Transitions In The Artist’s Life

The space between projects, between ideas, between inspiration and creative wastelands—this is, paradoxically, where the good stuff lives. Transitions are opportunities to grow, to heal, and to change. They give you space (whether you want it to not) to reassess your work, your craft, your goals. These sometimes involve dark nights of the soul, real reckonings that bring who you are and why you do what you do into sharp focus. Sometimes you won’t like what you see.

Transitions, from an artistic point of view, are absolutely necessary. Think about the period when Bowie fled to Berlin, intent on getting clean and reconnecting to his art. He called his cocaine years in Los Angeles, where he embodied the Thin White Duke persona, “the darkest days of my life.” Despite being a rock star, he was going broke and Berlin, at the time, was a cheap place to live while he was in recovery. In Europe, he began visiting galleries, working on self-care through literature and classical music education, and, of course, kicking his cocaine habit and exploring Berlin’s music scene. His roommate was Iggy Pop, and I like to imagine them sitting around late at night, trading notes and blowing each other’s minds. What resulted was the Berlin trilogy, a rich artistic period and a turning point in his life.


Of course, not all transitions need to be so dramatic, and I’m still trying to figure out what this one means for me. When I look back, what will I call this year (or, God forbid, years)? Will I look on it fondly, or shudder, grateful that it’s over? I can’t imagine not being thankful for it. Already, I’m seeing my interests in what I want to write expand in unexpected ways. Adult fiction, young adult nonfiction, historical. I’m not quite sure where I’ll land. I’m getting ideas, but am wary of investing too much in anything. I think I’m still getting my sea legs.

Self Care For Creatives

Meditation, exercise, and healthy eating habits are helping. As is travel and working with my clients, who inspire me every day. I’m taking lots of notes because I suspect that as much as I’m learning right now about what it means to be an artist in transition, I suspect there’s even more to glean from this time later, when I can see how all the dots connected.


Being a creative doesn’t suit our modern world, not if you’re an Artist with a capital A. Because art needs quiet, time, space, privacy. All things that are hard to come by these days, especially in Brooklyn. I stopped using my private Facebook account, rarely leave the apartment, and turn a deaf ear to industry chatter. It’s been a long time since I finished a project. Everything I’m working on is in a different stage and often ends up being cast aside or totally reworked. So of course the age old question of how to make a living as an artist rears its ugly head. If you aren’t producing, you aren’t getting paid. So while artistic explorations sound great on paper, in reality, it’s the paper itself you start worrying about.


The Balancing Act of Livelihood

It’s becoming increasingly hard for artists to make a living—just take a look at Trump’s budget proposal, with threatens to cut the NEA out of existence. It’s especially difficult for writers because of the plethora of content out there. Jesus, how many blogs and websites and articles can exist? With newspapers and magazines folding left and right, writers are forced to make some pretty tough choices. These concerns are ever present, and they will be for the foreseeable future.

Of course, being an artist has always involved financial acrobatics. Chekhov paid the bills through a medical practice, and Tolstoy had to self-publish War and Peace. I’m in good company. I’ve very much begun to appreciate Elizabeth Gilbert’s words in Big Magic about how your job as an artist is to take care of your creativity, not the other way around. It’s been interesting, cobbling together an income that all leads back to writing, but isn’t necessarily writing.

Teaching and coaching and editing allows me to talk about what I love—writing, the artistic process, and creative living—and to help my fellow writers on their own journeys. It also gives me the chance to take care of my writing, rather than requiring it to pay all the bills. I’m already seeing the seeds I’m planting blossoming. For the first time in a long time, I’m allowing myself to consider alternative ways of living and alternative approaches to my writing. Maybe I don’t publish a book every year. Maybe I don’t only write in YA. Maybe I play a whole lot more in my creative process. Maybe I take time to take care of myself.


The journey continues, endless and exciting and horrible and wonderful, an adventure I’m honored to have. I take a breath, exhale, and rest in the transition, looking forward to whatever comes next.

No Mud, No Lotus

Editor’s Note: September 29, 2020

It’s been over three years since I wrote this post, and the joy of it is seeing all the ways that period led me to where I am now, with projects I’m incredibly excited about and having published work I never knew I would have. That woman ended up living abroad for a year, coming back, changing course again and again, proving the point that we never really arrive. We just keep our eyes on that North Star.

I’m grateful that I was able to lean into the discomfort (then and now) and then when I was writing in spring 2017 didn’t see how bad things would get in these Trump years. I see all this pain I experienced then, and the frustrations about making a living as a writer that I still have in my post that went viral around this time last year. I certainly never could have foreseen that.

I’m thrilled that Heather did follow her curiosity and write that nonfiction she was curious about (Code Name Badass, coming out in September 2021). That she’s working on an adult novel, and is discovering new ways to be in this world.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump presidency, as well as the 2020 presidential election, has asked me to take a good look once again and where I’m at and where I want to be. Who I want to be, and how I want to show up for my fellow humans.

It’s been challenging to navigate balancing the uncertainty of a creative’s livelihood with a world that feels more uncertain than ever. To work with so much individual and collective emotional turmoil. To keep the metaphoric - and literal - lights on.

It’s tough right now. Understatement of the year. But here’s the thing: reading this post I’d written in Spring 2017 has shown me that I am capable of weathering the storms. That even at times when my creativity felt imperiled, I am not seeing the fruits of that labor of love toward myself, my curiosity, and my work. Proof pudding.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “No mud, not lotus.”

And so:

The space between breaths has become ever richer and each transition is an invitation to being right here, right now, working with what is on offer and letting all of it be fertile soil for my creativity.

I’m here for it.

Come what may.

Tonglen For Writers

One of the tools that has been supporting me most as my creativity and desire to write waxes and wanes amidst the current global crisis is a Buddhist mindfulness practice called tonglen.

Tonglen is something you can do on the spot, in the moment or as a longer, more intentional form of meditation. It’s so great because it’s there for you whenever you need it.

It’s a counter-intuitive process where you actually invite and breathe in all the bad stuff you or others are feeling—you really take it in. But that’s just the first step. Once you breathe in this negative, gnarly stuff, you breathe out something wonderful: relief, security, health, freshness.

What this does is both offer you some release of inner tension and emotional turmoil while reminding you that you're not alone. That writers all over the planet are feeling just as muddled as you. And this realization can, eventually, ease you out of that moment or even your season of creative doldrums.

In practice, it looks something like this:

You’re sitting at your desk or in your kitchen or your cramped apartment filled to bursting with your family, sheltering in place or trying to stay alive out there in the wild. You’re going a bit nuts. A feeling of despair spreads over you. You’ll never have creative flow again. You’ll never be published now that the economy has tanked. Everyone else is being productive while you’re sitting here in creative sludge.

Step One

As soon as you are mindful of this feeling, take a pause. Think about all the other writers around the world who almost certainly are feeling the same way you are right now. Thousands, millions, of writers who are desperate and scared and haven’t written in months and they are tearing their hair out and dying to write, but more afraid of dying from COVID-19.

Step Two

As crazy as it sounds, breathe all of that in. Your suffering and that of all the writers who feel just this way. You’re not alone! This suffering that feels so big and heavy, you can handle it because all these writers around the world are carrying this same suffering with you. So you do your part, you shoulder this collective burden alongside all your fellow writers and you breathe in the tightness in your chest and the coldness in your belly and the panic crawling up your throat. You invite it in and you let it fill you.

Step Three: (This is the yummy part)

When you’re full to bursting: plot twist! You breathe out what you wish for yourself and all these writers. On a long, delicious exhale, you breathe out flow, freshness, enchantment, lightness, health, book deals. You send this out to yourself and all these writers, your wishes on a breath of goodwill. GOOD particles, far enough away that they’re safe for all the writers everywhere to breathe in.

Step Four

You get back on with your life. Maybe you write that day. Maybe you don’t. Maybe the panic returns later (okay, so now you do tonglen again - this isn’t a one and done).

The thing about tonglen I love is that it reminds me that whatever I’m feeling, no matter how heavy it is, I’m not the only person feeling this way.

So often we get to thinking our pain is singular. That no one else feels as we do. We feel ashamed of our pain or confused by it. We don’t know how to work with it, so it just gets bigger and bigger.

This is what leads to seasons of feeling creatively stuck. And that sense of being trapped between wanting to write and actually writing lingers—we can’t seem to find our way out—because we don’t have the tools to get free.

Tonglen is a tool to get free when you’re creatively stuck and your flow is a trickle at best, a dry well at worse.

“Meditation and tonglen are well-tested methods for training in adaptability.”

— Pema Chödrön, Buddhist writer and teacher

The more you engage in practices like tonglen, the better able you are to go with the flow. To adapt to whatever challenging circumstances are keeping you from your ideal writing life, whether those circumstances are internal (Inner Critic and such) or external (pandemics, divorce, day job woes).

As writers, being fleet of foot is a make-or-break skill. When we get good at rolling with the punches—and there are many in the writing life—we’re better able to stay on our feet the next time a rejection or dry spell or terrible review comes in.

I don’t believe that all the writers in the world necessarily feel my goodwill as I’m doing tonglen. But I believe many of them feel after I do this practice. Case in point: you feel it now, as you’re reading this post, right? And you’ll be inspired if I can get through my own stuckness and back to the page during dry seasons to do some tonglen on your own too. Hey, you’ll take anything. And then you’ll get unstuck or less stuck, and this will inspire another writer and so on and so forth to get unstuck too. Maybe with tonglen or with some other tool.

But how does this practice get us unstuck? How can breathing in and out actually shift us out of creative dry spots?

We get unstuck because tonglen invites us to become a friend to what’s troubling us. To curiously and compassionately engage with it, instead of pushing it away, or self-medicating. With the latter, you know that stuff just rears its ugly head later. Maybe as a massive creative disappointment or an inability to stay aligned with your dreams. Resentment, fear, the Inner Critic having a heyday. With tonglen, we deal with what we’re feeling head on, but in a way that’s nourishing and gentle. It’s not time consuming or overwhelming as a practice. We don’t need to “learn” or “win” a new thing. It’s free. It’s as easy as, well, breathing.

The most beautiful part of tonglen, though, is that it reminds us that we are not alone. No matter how big your pain is, knowing you’re not the only person experiencing it is immeasurably comforting. And that comfort, it loosens some of those bands of panic and fear and self-doubt that are wrapped so tightly around us. We can breathe a bit easier. Sitting down to the page is a little less difficult. We take our fear less seriously. Silly fear. Tricks are for kids.

Eventually, we write.

Our collective suffering as writers can also be our collective liberation.

“Rather than beating ourselves up, we can use our personal stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.”

— Pema Chödrön

Watch me blow your mind: Isn’t that what our job is as writers? To be able to understand what people are up against and then write about it?

This means that tonglen doesn’t just help you get to the page—it helps you while you’re on it. It works the writing muscles you need to tell emotionally resonant stories.

Tonglen As Sanctuary

I always encourage the writers I work with to find ways for their writing to be the harbor, not the storm.

If you’re having trouble getting to the page right now, tonglen can be that harbor where you can safely dock your creativity until you’re ready to take it out on the open seas.

When feelings of panic, despair, overwhelm, etc. arise within you (whether you're writing or not), you're invited to breathe it all in. You breathe it in for you, for the writer in Japan and in Italy and in Russia and Kenya and Mexico and Australia. All writers everywhere. All the writers who are feeling exactly as you are. Because they are.

Then, you breathe out RELIEF. Freshness. Flow. Sanctuary. Not just for you, but for ALL writers who are in your same boat.

Sounds great, right?

There’s more where that came from:

To go deeper into this practice, you can read this short article by the queen of tonglen, Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. She writes wonderfully about tonglen, so if this practice really resonates with you, I highly recommend getting her book When Things Fall Apart. It’s a must-have for all writers, anyway.

A similar practice and one more widely known is that of lovingkindness, or mētta. I created a Lovingkindness For Writers meditation in Insight Timer that you can check out too, if that’s of use.

Wherever you are right now, I’m breathing out sanctuary, flow, enchantment, rest, and love.

For all of us.

Walk This Way

This post originally appeared in my Mindfulness Monday column on the Vermont College of Fine Arts blog

One of my favorite practices as a writer is walking. I’m not at all alone in this.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

 ”

— Henry David Thoreau

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”

— Hemingway

It’s been calculated that William Wordsworth, whose poetry is rich with natural imagery and public spaces, walked as much as 180,000 miles in his life (six and a half miles a day beginning at the age of five – what?!).

Walking has been a part of my writing process for years and years. Somehow, it always does the trick when I need to shake out the cobwebs, reboot my system, or find some inspiration. Without fail, a walk will help me sort out a tricky plot problem, give me a cool new story idea, or provide a line or scene that I’ve just got to get down on the page as soon as I’m home. There’s a reason walking works, and it’s worth making an effort to bring more of it into your process.

In this post, I’ll be getting into WHY walking is so helpful for writers (this great New Yorker article outlines some of what I’ll be sharing below) and then I’ll be getting into some practical things you can do to bring walking meditation into your writing process to increase flow and focus—and maybe get some of those Eurekas! you’re hoping for on your WIP. I even have a handy video tutorial!

Why Walking Is A Magic Potion For Writers

What is it about walking that is so helpful to us as writers?

• Chemical stuff in the body. Namely, your brain gets more oxygen. Think improving focus and memory.

• Ever had an Aha! moment while walking? That’s because the act of walking promotes new connections between brain cells.

A fairly recent study has shown that walking actually helps us have innovative ideas and strokes of insight. This is because the mind is allowed to wander freely and things can naturally bubble up (more on this later, because this is somewhat counter to what I’m going to tell you about traditional walking meditation practice). Maria Popova has some great insights about walking as creative fuel on Brain Pickings that’s worth a read.

Where we walk is important too—think green. Think nature. Think expansive. This is because nature gives rise to tuning in more to the senses. To paying attention. And this is what meditation is all about.

Walking Meditation For Writers

In his New Yorker review of Frédéric Gros’ book, “A Philosophy of Walking,” Adam Gopnik asserts that walking “is the Western equivalent of what Asians accomplish by sitting. Walking is the Western form of meditation.”

Gros seems to agree. In Philosophy he says: “You’re doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing, the joy that permeates the whole of childhood.”

Walking is actually one of the four postures of meditation suggested by the Buddha. It’s as legitimate as sitting. So it’s a great option for those of you who aren’t ready to hit the cushion or chair just yet. (Although, if my mile-a-minute monkey mind can do it, so can yours.).

What I love about walking meditation is that it’s a great head-clearer. Sometimes, I’ll just set my meditation timer and do five minutes of walking meditation between hour sessions of writing, just to get my body moving. It really helps. It doesn’t have to be this big deal. Get up and do the practice for a few minutes. You’ve got to start somewhere. Longer walking meditation sessions—twenty minutes or so in a backyard, if I’ve access to one, or in a living room if the weather isn’t playing nice or I don’t have a yard to use—is great for going deep. It’s a proper meditation session and very often yields enormous results. Some of my biggest life choices have come as a direct result of walking meditation.

How Walking Meditation Is Different Than Taking A Stroll

When I go for a walk outside, that’s a walk—not walking meditation. The meditation practice is very intentional, along a short, set path. You go back and forth, focusing entirely on the feel of your feet moving across the earth. The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says to, “Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”

Your object of meditation is the feel of your feet moving. So when your mind wanders, you actually want to bring it back to your object of meditation. Now, this is counter to what that study earlier in this post said is so great about walking and creativity: it allows your mind to wander freely. True, we do bring the mind back to its focus for the meditation, but I haven’t found this to be a creative hindrance because it’s working my flow muscle (That’s because what’s happening in your brain when you meditate is the same thing that happens when it’s in flow. I talk more about that here).

I’ve found that walking meditation gives me laser focus and calm. In fact, this same study I mentioned earlier about the connection between the free-floating mind while walking and creativity says that if you want laser focus, an ambling walk isn’t actually ideal for that, so walking meditation is PERFECT for you procrastinators or very distracted writers out there.

So, if you’re looking to clear your head, regain your focus, re-align yourself: a traditional walking meditation session could be just the thing.

If you really want to have your mind wander freely or play jazz with walking meditation, you can still do the traditional set up, but then allow your object of meditation to be what we call in the Insight Meditation tradition “Choiceless Awareness.” This means that you allow your mind to notice the different things around you: sound, like, a thought, a feeling. You stay with that thing until the next thing comes, and so on. In this way, you allow yourself the openness and expansiveness of a stroll, but you’re more intentional about the process.

How To Do Walking Meditation

 

Thich Nhat Hanh Technique

In a profoundly moving interview that Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh did with Oprah a while back in which they discussed many things, he spoke quite a bit about walking meditation as a means toward self-realization. I really love his technique, and I share it here with you. (I can’t recommend watching the interview enough. It just might change your life).

• He says that when you walk, you should take a few steps and think to yourself, I have arrived, arrived, arrived in the here and the now. Then in your next few steps think, I am home, I am home. This is to instill a deep knowing in yourself that your home is in the here and now. I tried it and really enjoyed practicing this way.

I always do walking meditation with my writers when we’re on retreat together, and the writers really dig getting to learn more about this practice. Slowing down is really, really good for us writers. And getting out of a chair is good too.

Walking meditation can open up a lot for you, and create space in the clutter that comes into our minds in such a chaotic and busy world. I hope this practice brings you all the Ahas! and focus and flow you long for.

Hold Your Seat

Note: This post was originally published on October 14, 2017 on an old blog of mine. I'm posting it below in its original form (I no longer live in NYC, there's a global pandemic currently on, etc.)

 

A couple days ago I had an experience that happens all too often as a meditator (and writer who enjoys silence while ruminating) in NYC. I sit down on my cushion all ready to get my calm on when the jackhammers start right outside my window. Oh to live in Brooklyn in 2017 when everyone and their mother is gut renovating buildings or tearing them down to build overpriced condos. I’ve lived here for over four years and – I shit you not – there has been construction in close proximity to my building pretty much every single day. As a writer who works from home, I’ve had to make relative peace with this.

I am now an expert in white noise sound mixing and, when that fails, I push in the earplugs. Construction symphonies are an annoying soundtrack when you’re writing, to be sure, but they’re really REALLY crazy making when you’re trying to meditate. There’s a reason (most) monasteries are way up in the mountains, accessible only via dirt paths wide enough to let a yak through, and why writers fantasize about cottages at the end of the world to finish their novels in.

So here I am on my cushion and I have two choices: give up on sitting until much later or roll with it and hold my seat. Keep in mind that after sitting, I’ll have to start writing and, so, unless I’m going to pack up and go to a coffeehouse, there’s not a whole lot I can do to control this situation.

If there’s one thing being a meditator has taught me, it’s learning to be in the present, to accept what is happening without allowing events to control my emotions or hijack what little chill I have.

When we’re on the cushion, we practice this in various ways: instead of railing against my neighbor’s loud music or the jackhammers or the roar of loud trucks going up 20th, I try to just acknowledge what’s happening and return to focusing on my breath. If I feel annoyed, I sit with that feeling. I let the emotion be there, locating where it rests in my body (usually my chest and throat) and just ride it out–instead of letting the emotion ride me. In meditation, we call this “holding our seat.” It means that we don’t throw in the towel if a meditation session is uncomfortable. We stay even if the jackhammers start or we have an uncontrollable itch between our shoulder blades or we’re suddenly experiencing strong emotion.

We stay on the cushion. We stay in the present. We don’t bail. We hold our seat.

On this particular day, I held my seat. I accepted the situation as it was and by the time the gong rang on my meditation timer, it was all good. Sure, it would have been nice if the only sound was a bubbling brook and bees buzzing in warm sunshine, but I bet even then I would have found * something * to take issue with. And there’s this, too: we don’t judge our meditation sessions. If our minds were racing the whole time, okay. If we experienced enlightenment, okay. As long as we held our seat, it’s a win. The same goes for writing.

As long as you hold your seat and don’t let distractions or not feeling it pull you away from your writer’s seat, the writing session is a win.

As it was, I opened my eyes more relaxed, centered, and grounded than when I sat on the cushion thirty minutes before, and I call that a win.  I stood, stretched, then sat at my desk, opened Scrivener, and started writing from that place of relative balance. The jackhammers eventually stopped, but I didn’t. I wrote for hours.

Before I started meditating, I would have let my anger and frustration over that noise build. I would have abandoned my plans for meditation and gone into a whole inner rant about fuck this city and why can’t these rich assholes stop building condos and it’s impossible to live here as an artist, I can’t handle this noise and my apartment is too small and now I’ll never write another book and so I won’t be able to pay rent and I’ll be evicted…and…and…The incident might have ruined my whole day and certainly would have made it damn near impossible to focus on my book once I sat down to write. I would have worked myself into an emotional tizzy, allowing one jackhammer to instigate an existential crisis.

But because I’m committed to my practice and because meditation is training for life, I was able to simply see those jackhammers as part of the landscape of Now. And, like it or not, I was in that landscape, too.

As so often happens, what I experience on the cushion has a ripple effect in my writing life. I’m working on a couple of books right now, both of which I love and both of which are complicated for very different reasons. In those moments when I’m staring at the screen and feeling that familiar tension and frustration arise (why can’t I figure this character / plot out?!), I have my training on the cushion to fall back on.

I allow myself to feel that inner turmoil, locating it in my body and accepting it as part of the landscape. I don’t let it run me or turn into the spark for a wildfire of shame, anger, fear, comparison and the million other frustrations that can happen when we’re sitting in front of our screens. Just like when the jackhammers started when I was on the cushion, I accept what’s happening now–and what’s happening now is I have no idea what to write next. But because of my training on the cushion, I know that this snag is temporary because everything is impermanent: the good and the bad. I know this frustration won’t last because nothing lasts. I know, as when I sat on the cushion, that if I hold my seat and accept what’s happening, I will be the better for it.

And so will my writing.

Halting Your Thought Traffic

“Who am I,
Standing in the midst of this
thought traffic?

”

— Rumi

As we struggle to focus and write during COVID19, mindfulness and meditation are more helpful than ever to help us manage all the thought traffic that leaves us stuck creatively. These practices are what bring us back to ourselves.

Writer wellness = Intention + Devotion x Community

My husband’s grandmother went to mass pretty much every day of her life, and I think there’s a lot to be learned from that devotion. We can also consider the intentionality a dancer brings to the barre in class each day, even if they’re a prima ballerina, or how a musician will work their cello eight hours a day. As writers, we can build strong artistic habits ourselves. But it must start with devotion.

So how do we cultivate intention and devotion?

• Showing up.

• State out loud why you are or aren’t writing that day in order to set your intention and keep yourself honest. (“I’m writing today because…” or “I’m not writing today because…”).

• Gratitude (check out the hand blessing meditation on the recording): For your hands, your literacy, this writing tool you’ve got, your imagination, etc.

• Ritual: Light a candle, read a poem, do something that makes your time at the page sacred, set apart

• Transitions: Meditate beforehand, or do some kind of ritual (as above) to ease from non-writing time to writing time

• I spoke about how doing the Morning Pages from The Artist Way is a great practice, as well. You start your day off with words and emptying your mind. Win/win.

But a key practice? TRUST.

How do we trust ourselves as writers?

How do we cultivate authority and ditch arrogance? Basically, how do we know when to trust our guts and ignore feedback that doesn’t resonate with us.

As usual, my answer comes back to meditation and mindfulness.

The more that we tend to our minds by creating more inner expansiveness, and the more that we listen to our bodies, the better we’re able to understand where our North Stars are pointing. We can feel if something is tight and constricted (that’s a NO) versus warm and open and loose (that’s a YES). By decluttering our minds, we create more space, more bandwidth for our creativity. And the more we create, the more we set a foundation for trusting ourselves. We begin to know what works and what doesn’t. We have our own direct, lived experience to look at as opposed to just taking in what the million craft books and classes and talks tell us we “should” do as writers.

Even with my own advice, you have to try it - don’t just take my word for it. And if it doesn’t work for you, then ditch it!

Below is one quick mindfulness tool to begin cultivating some inner awareness, tending to your spaciousness. If you're like me, your mind is going a mile-a-minute all the time. You're running numbers, rehearsing for a conversation, lost in story lines or personal drama, going over the To Do list, obsessing about your career or social or - sometimes, if you're lucky - thinking about your new book.

It's a lot of thought traffic. All of this runs us, and runs us down. It's exhausting. And it doesn't cultivate the inner spaciousness we need to get our stories onto the page. This is where a bit of mindfulness comes in handy.

 

Hit Pause

• As soon as you become aware of your thought traffic, first note it: "Thought traffic." As in fantasy novels, when you name something, it loses some of its power over you.

• Direct your attention away from your thoughts and onto the physical sensation of your clothes on your body. Your hair on your head. Curl your toes or flex your feet to feel the ground beneath your feet. What does the jewelry on your body feel like, that weight? Notice the temperature - warm or cool.

• The Pause can last as long as you wish. Even if it's just ten or twenty seconds, it's a mindful break in your thought traffic.

• Do this every time you become aware of your thought traffic.

• It might not seem like much, but what you'll notice is, over time: less thought traffic. More inner spaciousness. It won't happen all at once.

• Don't take my word for it. See for yourself. Give yourself the gift of being truly aware of your one wild precious life.

• Note: You can also hit Pause with sounds. Tuning into the sounds around you. I find external objects of meditation easier for The Pause, because it really launches you out of your headspace, but you can absolutely do this by focusing on your breath - 5 or 10 ten nice intentional breaths or just focusing on your breath for a bit as you breathe naturally.

• If you struggle even noticing when you need to hit pause because you’re a victim of what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “habit energy” - habits that you do without thinking - then be practive and either set alarms on your phone to have some intentional pauses or always pause when you’re in a transition (such as when you go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, stand up, etc.).

I hope this helps as you navigate the ups and downs of the writer’s life! Courage, dear hearts.

Let It R.A.I.N

This past Sunday, the writers I was on a call with finally let the tears fall.

After weeks of being in quarantine during a global pandemic, they finally had a TOOL to work with the emotions they were carrying. I led them through the R.A.I.N meditation, which is an incredibly effective and healthy way for dealing with emotion.

I say “meditation,” but it’s really a mindfulness tool that can be done in real time, when you’re activated in some way - distressed, anxious, sad, or feeling any feeling at all.

The R.A.I.N Method

R = Recognize (I’m having a feeling)

A = Allow (I’m going to let myself feel this feeling, rather than compartmentalize or push it away or distract myself from it. Even if this feeling is unpleasant, I’m going to sit with it and feel it).

I = Investigate (I’m going to get curious about what this feeling physically feels like. Where do I feel it in my body? What does sadness or fear or anger or peace physically feel like? I’m going to just sit and investigate the physical sensation of the feeling. I’m not going to attach a story line to it (why I feel it or how I shoudld feel about feeling it or who I want to blame for me feeling it).

N= Nurture (After I’ve felt the feeling - and by now, it probably holds less intensity and heat because I’ve born witness to it and let it play out - I’m going to give myself a little love. Maybe I put my hand on my heart and say, “You are enough. You’re okay. Good job being human.” Or I’m going to do some lovingkindness for myself (“May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I be in flow.”)

This is a great practice to do on the spot or on the cushion. We explored how it felt to be writers during this time, wanting to write, but maybe not having a lot of bandwidth for that. We shared our experiences, and I offered some thoughts and suggestions.

The key is that we need to let ourselves feel what we’re feeling so we can give voice to that on the page.

Being present with what we’re feeling right now is how we hold space for the world’s feelings too. We have to be in it so that we can later articulate this collective experience with specificity and meet the world’s needs for our words.

“It’s good for the world for a writer to bear witness, and it’s good for the writer, too. Especially if she can bear witness with love and humor and, despite it all, some fondness for the world, just as it is manifesting, warts and all.


All of this is to say: there’s still work to be done, and now more than ever.”

— George Saunders in a letter to his students during the pandemic

One of the questions that we dug into was from a writer on the call who asked:

“If I can’t write my novel right now, should I write anything that’s coming up?”

I suggested they check out George Saunders’ letter to his students in the face of the pandemic, which was absolute word medicine to me. I also mentioned he did an interview about it on Cheryl Strayed’s new podcast for writers, Sugar Calling.

George’s letter was a great answer to this question, but we got into some practical tips:

• Journal - Jot down feelings, impressions, word lists, whatever you want

• Bear witness to what’s happening because in the aftermath of this, it’s us writers who will be on the front lines, helping a world that is shell-shocked and confused.

• Write emails or letters - the epistolary form is great for flow! Save them all or take pictures of anything you mail out.

• I suggested doing some fun things like flash fiction (I like to copy Erin Morgenstern’s prompt for her Flax Golden tales).

“What are some tips for being on screen all day, then having to go and write on a screen? I’m burned out!”

My suggestions for this are:

• Create transitions between screen time events and especially between not writing and writing. I like to use meditation or stretching or a walk as a transition so that when I sit down to write, I’m fresh and more expansive.

• Rituals are helpful too: Ring a bell before you write. Draw a tarot card. Read a poem. Say a prayer. Something that makes THIS time on the computer sacred.

• Write in a different place than you do your other work. (If possible). Or at least clear other work from the space when you’re writing.

• Try using a notebook more for note taking and side writing.

• To save your eyes, I recommend the free f.lux blue light app. I have it on my computer and it’s a lifesaver.

• Disable Internet. Use the laptop just for writing when it’s writing time.

The most widely recognized teacher of this method is Tara Brach, though the method was conceived by mindfulness teacher Michele McDonald. Brach is a meditation teacher and trauma therapist who has also written one of my favorite “dharma” (Buddhism) books - Radical Acceptance. She has a slew of resources on RAIN, which you can access here.

For a writer’s bent on the practice, you can listen to my RAIN meditation for writers on Insight Timer.

Really, at the end of the day, writing is about intention + devotion. Put those two together and you’ll be right as R.A.I.N.

I’m rooting for all of you!

Suggested Reading

Radical Acceptance (Tara Brach)

Burnout (Emily & Amelia Nagoski)

The Monkey is the Messenger (Ralph De La Rosa)

Tea and Cake with Demons (Adreanna Limbach)

Eff This! Meditation (Liza Kindred)

The No Guilt Club

I had no idea I was presiding over the first meeting of the No Guilt Club last Sunday until someone spontaneously announced that we writers in quarantine need a No Guilt Club. There was a resounding “aye!” from the group, made up of callers in this past Sunday’s Live Q + A for writers during COVID19. You can listen to the whole thing below, or check out the highlights in this post, which include a few useful practices you can do on the spot to help with the challenges of writing during social distancing.

What were we deciding not to feel guilty about while stuck at home and dealing with a global pandemic?

• No guilt over not writing. We’re moving to what feels like YES, YUM, ZING! What feels warm. Joyful. Nourishing. Needed. We’re moving away from “should.”

• No guilt over not using this supposedly extra time to write the Great American Whatever. You might have time, but that doesn’t equal creative bandwidth, not with everything you’re dealing with emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally.

• No guilt over choosing what gives us joy over what doesn’t (especially if writing falls under “doesn’t”). Maybe you just want to journal. Or color. Or bake. Or binge watch something trashy that you normally never allow yourself to waste time on.

• No guilt over our words not being the “right” words for this time. Writing the silly thing. The funny thing. The less-than-perfect essay.

• No guilt over changing our plans and moving the goal post further out. It’s not a great time to be sending work out on sub. It’s not a good time to expect a novel to get finished, unless that feels nourishing to you.

• No guilt over doing lazy things.

• No guilt over playing. With words, with food, with time.

We all agreed that this was an especially good time for journaling. See the Inspiration Portal for some great journaling exercises that you can download and work with right now.

We also talked about a simple gratitude practice for writers.

Gratitude For Your Writing

Whether you’re writing a ton or not at all, a way to re-establish yoru connection to your writing is to simply be grateful for it. I recommend writing a short list or reflecting on reasons you are grateful for your writing, your creativity, your imagination. These are amazing tools to have that so many do not. You are one of the lucky ones: you carry this medicine inside you all the time.

You can incorporate this practice into your daily writing routine to give it more structure (by the way, structure is a key component of building and sustaining a flourishing writing practice).

• What are you grateful for? The ability to imagine a better world, the stories you can think about and write in order to escape for a bit? The way writing helps you make sense of the world?

Gratitude is a game changer - I’m sure you’ve read some of the research. It’s quite the self-development trend right now, but it’s popular because it works. People are beginning to see how much simply practicing gratitude can create massive mindset shifts. So even if you’re blocked, I bet you can be grateful for your imagination, your creative spark, or just story in general. This re-establishes or affirms your relationship to your creativity. Don’t take it for granted. Give your writing some love and it will love you back.

Speaking of love….

Lovingkindness Meditation Practice For Writers

In an effort to focus on feeling nourished, we practiced some lovingkindness meditation with phrases specifically suited to our coounity. You can do the whole practice here, guided by me. These are the phrases we worked with:

• May I / we be happy.

• May I / we be healthy.

• May I / we be inspired.

• May I / we be in flow.

We first repeated the phrases to ourselves, then widened it out to all writers on the planet, struggling as we are to keep the flame of our creativity burning during the COVID19 epidemic. This sense of being part of a community while also first giving love to ourselves is a good exercise in maintaining that balance we have as writers too: love for ourselves, our work, and the readers who interact with it.

One thing I mentioned was that, in addition to tools like gratitude and meditation, we can’t forget that for writers:

Writing is self-care. Writing is wellness.

Journaling, poetry, word play - all of this can be viewed as a mental health practice.

So no guilt when you shut the door or turn off you phone and write when your family is asking for more, more, more from you. You’re a member of the No Guilt Club now, remember?

What is the point of writing right now?

The call circled around many different things, but at the end of the day, the kicker was really this question:

“What is the point of writing right now?”

I answered with the words of Harold Thurman:

“Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

If you’re struggling with feelings of pointlessness, like your words don’t matter, your stories don’t matter, your thoughts or opinions don’t matter, remember: you’ve got an invitation right here, right now, to the No Guilt Club. No guilt over what lights you up. And if that thing isn’t writing right now, rest assured that it is feeding your writing in ways you can’t yet possibly know.

• What lights you up? Do that.

Curiosity is the key to Flow. Go down whatever rabbit holes you fancy. There’s usually a story once you hit the bottom.

Hang in there, friends-

Writer In Quarantine: How To Access Your Creative Well

Below is a recap of our discussions and meditations for the first live “Dandywood Circles” Zoom calls for writers in the first few weeks of massive social distancing. For four Sundays, I’m inviting writers to my home, affectionately called Dandywood, where we’re gathering together to share thoughts, advice, and support during quarantine. The goal is to work on staying connected to our writing practice during this time of massive social upheaval.

Both sessions are recorded and you can download the audio below, or just check out the highlights in this post.

To get in on the next calls, be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get the links.

Dandywood Circle #1: March 22, 2020

Q: Is it time that I stop making myself into the writer I’m supposed to be and make room for the real type of writer I am, who knows words are her playmates?

My resounding answer to this excellent question from one of the writers on the call was YES! 

One of the things that comes up in quarantine is a re-assesment of who you are as a writer and where you’re at. The “shoulds” also come out to play a lot. Instead, just play. Explore. Allow this to be a time of getting in touch with what got you writing in the first place (hint: it might have been processing stress or escaping it!).

Right now we’re in transition, and transitions are delicious opportunities for growth. It’s a liminal space where a lot of clarity can come through.

We talked on the call about how to move toward YES and JOY and whatever feels jazzy and yummy and expansive. That may or may not be writing. We gave each other permission to not write if writing felt like a drag.

I spoke about how curiosity is key. Now is a great time to fill the well and go down rabbit holes. All of my best books have come from being curious about something.

The funny thing about curiosity is that it’s a bit like falling in love: you can’t look for your next story idea. Rather, you show up and it finds you. The way you show up is through curiosity. My lifelong curiosity of spies led me to a visit to the International Spy Museum, which led me to discovering Virginia Hall, which led me to writing my biography about her, CODE NAME BADASS, which comes out in Fall 2021.

So while you’re in quarantine, following what sparks your curiosity may very well gift you with a new story, solutions to a current one, or simply fill your well so you have more flow.

Q: “How do we know when something that seems like a block is really a blessing in disguise - something that’s saying No, this isn’t for you…?

This question from someone on the call was a great one because it generated a discussion about how to be in touch with our bodies, which know a lot more about what’s really going on than our minds.

In my experience, the best way to get in touch with out bodies is to meditate. Ever since I got serious about meditation, I was able to listen to my gut more…and trust it. This allowed for enormous creative dividends.

To work with Jennifer’s question, I led our group in a meditation I created for this session to explore what our inner creative wells actually feel like. You can check it out in the recording below, but here here is the gist:

Creative Well Meditation: Part One / Submersion

To get some inner quiet and access your inner Knowing. Your gut. The part of you that will let you know when to ditch a writing project, and when to stay (among many other things):

• Close your eyes and envision a wide, endless sea. You’re bobbing in it, gazing out at the water. See the sunlight flickering across the surface. The waves. The horizon.

• Now, pull yourself beneath the surface. Feel the heaviness of the water. The immediate, comforting weight.

• Observe how quiet it is here below the surface.

• The water is clear and warm. You are absolutely safe. You’re breathing gently through your nose only - inhale and exhale.

• As thoughts come, or outer distractions, notice that those are just waves on the surface of the ocean. You are below those waves. In the deep. In the quiet. In the inner sanctuary.

• Notice the shafts of light cutting into the water.

• Allow yourself a few minutes to just be there beneath the surface. Your object of meditation is your breath or whatever visuals are coming through here under the surface.

• This is where creative flow lives. In the quiet. In the deep.

• You can stay here, enjoying this, or move onto the next portion:

Accessing Your Creative Well

• You’re still here, under the surface of the water.

• Think back to a time when you felt really in flow. It could be when you were writing, but it could also be other times, when the ideas are coming to you, a moment of deep inspiration that sparked something for you.

• Go deep into that memory. How did it feel in your BODY? Don’t put words to this but, rather, feel into the actual sensation. For me, I feel an expansive loosening in my chest. My fingers tingle. My temperature rises.

• Feel that feeling. Amplify it. Home in on exactly where it is in your body. Notice all the shifts that happen inside you.

• Where you feel flow in your body is where your creative well lives.

• Sit there for a bit and enjoy the feeling. When you’re ready, push up, up, up to the surface of that ocean, take three nice deep breaths, and slowly open your eyes.

The takeaway: After the first time you do this, I recommend journaling a bit to get some concrete ideas of where the well is and what this experience in the meditation was like. Then, I recommend doing this meditation every day for the next week, or as long and often as you wish, to keep reconnecting to the feeling of flow.

Work like this is how writers train in flow. It’s the equivalent of a ballet dancer going to class, doing work at the barre.

Q: Is there a hack for writing essays? Right now, I don’t have the bandwidth for creative work.

My big piece of advice here was to consider what you’re adding to the conversation when you write essays or blogs.

There’s a lot of content out there, a lot of half-assed stuff. A lot of lists or rants. So when you do put something out there, consider who your audience is and how they’ll benefit from what you have to say.

There’s also just a lot of value in processing for yourself right now. Writing essays or journaling as a way to cope. As writer self-care. Check out the Inspiration Portal for some good journaling prompts.

In addition to these big questions, we also talked about ways to bring more mindfulness and intentionality into our writing practices. What works for one writer might not work for you. I talked baout the helpful tools in the Flow Lab Sneak Peak, which you can download here (the full 30-Day Flow Lab will land in my newsletter subscriber’s boxes in April). The sneak peek includes a Do Not Disturb doorknob sign, a writing cave sign-in sheet, and some helpful mindful hacks to get your work done.

We dug into how to set healthy boundaries around your creativity, especially with people at home or constantly calling and texting, and how to guard your solitude.

It was wonderful to see each other’s faces, to connect with writers around the country, and to remember that as isolating as writing can be—and social distancing—it really does take a village to sustain a flourishing writing practice. This is how we have each other’s backs.

Keep calm and carry on, camerados.