Why You Should Keep Writing When The World Is Burning

Dearest Writer:

Don't stop writing.

The world is burning, but:

Don't stop writing.

Everything is uncertain and terrifying, but:

Don't stop writing.

Why? Why do words on pages or stories about made-up things (if you write fiction, which I know most of you do) even MATTER right now?

A thought experiment:

Think of one person in your life who isn't a writer. Who might not have much education. Who has trouble articulating their feelings and thoughts. Think about how that person feels when they read a book and recognize parts of themselves in it - and understand themselves and their place in the world more because of it. Think about how books can help them feel seen and known. Or how these books can open them up to new ideas and ways of being. This can happen in ANY kind of story. The lightest comedy can erase hate. Just look at Glee. I saw with my own eyes people in my life become less intolerant simply because they liked a story with characters who were different than them, characters they came to love and root for. And then, in their real lives, people like those characters? Well, suddenly they weren't "other."

Back when I lived in Boston, I was the Volunteer Coordinator for the Prison Book Program. (A worthy organization to donate to, by the way!)

I received so many letters from Black men--many of whom had been put away in their youth--seeking books. Some wanted practical things like legal aid, while others just wanted a good story. They wanted to get out of the cages our society had put them into through the pre-school to prison pipeline. Books were that escape.

So we need everything you've got, writers. They need it.


Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. This is the spacetime juncture we all find ourselves in right now amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the unrest in the United States that was a LONG time coming.

It can feel like writing is pointless. Like your stories or words--maybe even YOU--are pointless. Spoiler alert: Your words and your stories and * especially * YOU are necessary and important.

So is our fight for justice and the words we choose to take part in that fight with. But your writing and your fight are not mutually exclusive.

Stories are empathy machines and this world needs empathy now more than ever.

Stories are sanctuaries - and this world needs those too.

Whatever you write--whether it's topical or escapist--a reader somewhere needs it.

The past few days, I've been switching between romance novels for escape and books on race. I've been reading non-fiction and fiction that helps me get into the world of my new book. I've been reading poetry. I've been reading the Times and I've been reading my own work-- books written long ago whose characters are my comfort food.

So whatever you're writing: keep writing. Or give yourself permission to take a break if you need it--not too long, though. The world needs stories.

Of course, writing is not ALL one must do.

But this is what I can speak to. I encourage you to seek Black voices in the creativity space to go deeper with how you can use your words in the fight against injustice and to gather their wisdom on creativity.

One great place to start is by following Kate Johnson, a Black meditation teacher and writer who led a retreat on the intersection of spirituality and race that I attended in 2017 as part of my meditation teacher teacher training. You can find her here.

Writer Rachel Cargle has a wonderful Instagram with TONS of valuable resources to both educate and activate in the link of her Instagram bio, as well as a great feed. I've found this to be immensely helpful as I've navigated my role as a White woman in all of this.

Make no mistake: an ignorant writer is worse than not writing at all. So we educate ourselves, we write, and we fight.

There are so, so many ways to get involved and I trust that you wonderful writers are all delving into those options. The key, of course, is to be active characters, just as we strive to write active characters.

Passive protagonists never make for a good story.

To go deeper into how you might align your words and your values, check out this post on How To Write A Writer’s Artist Statement.

To your words-

Scratching

“The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. There is nothing yet to research. For me, these moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message, thumping away in my head: “You need an idea.””

— Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

Writer, tell me if you can relate:

You're in a writing funk.

The problem isn't so much snatching away a few minutes here and there to write--or maybe even a few hours--the real problem is that you just aren't feeling it. Sure there might be reasons (pandemics, an unfilled creative well, writing life trauma), but really you

Just. Aren't. Feeling. It.

You're reading craft books, you've covered the pages of multiple notebooks with reams of notes on possible projects. Nearly all of your sentences to anyone who will listen start with, "What if..."

What if I wrote a story like, um, like Romeo and Juliet, but in Mars?! Or, no wait--Romeo and Juliet ON A SUBMARINE.

Story ideas come and go, and maybe for a minute there you're really digging something. But then suddenly you're...not. They all sound stupid and pointless and you feel like maybe you should write something really IMPORTANT because, you know, pandemics.

The whole part of the process where you're between projects and you haven't committed to the idea for your next one (or even HAD it yet) is DEEPLY uncomfortable.

Just check out the quote at the top there by choreographer Twyla Tharp.

Up until quite recently, I've been in this place—and it’s not the first time I’ve been here. In fact, this is the first stop I make in my writing journey when I want to write a new story.

It’s not an issue of lacking creative wellness. I meditate and walk nearly every day. I have a writer's sabbath once a week. I mean, I literally created something called the Flow Lab. I had scores of ideas because the well was filled and yet...nothing. I felt like a daemon in His Dark Materials that hadn't settled on its form yet. One day, I'm positive I'm writing that WWII novel I literally went to Germany to do research for. The next? Tired of Nazis. I am FOR SURE writing a book about star-crossed lovers. A week later. UGH, this book is crap. Etc.

Scratching

In her book The Creative Habit, Tharp talks about this process better than anyone I've ever read. She calls it "scratching." Seriously buy this book and read the whole thing, but ESPECIALLY read the whole chapter on scratching. (While you’re at it, get the book Art and Fear.) I turned to Tharp again recently--as I turn to this book often over the years--for some comfort. It reminded me this is all very normal and necessary and I'm not alone.

This whole phase where you're searching for an idea is part of the process and one that you can bring a lot of intentionality to. Rather than turning to desperation or moping, you can actively show up for this stage.


A friend passed this Nick Cave quote along to me at just the right time, when I was feeling pretty alone in my writing funk and I reposted it a few days ago on Instagram:

Below is what happens during this stage for me, and it always happens this way because it's my process, but the thing is that I FORGET it's my process until my husband tells me I do this every time.

I share it in the hopes that if you're going through this, you can get some ideas for how to scratch on your own.

A Study In Scratching

1. I finish a book and either it's been accepted or rejected by my agent / editor. Now I have to write something new. Because I'm often juggling multiple projects, I usually have a WIP to fall back on while I'm searching for my next idea. This makes the whole process less uncomfortable because I get to be writing and working on something while looking for the next thing. Except this spring I DIDN'T HAVE ANOTHER PROJECT TO FALL BACK ON. Suddenly, I was in the No Man's Land of story ideas.

1. At first, this was exciting. Yay! I can play in my creativity sandbox and see what I come up with! I do writing exercises, I read poetry, I work on craft. I commit to an hour a day instead of 3 hours for writing because I know that 3 hours of scratching will just make me anxious.

2. I latch on to the first good idea and I'm FULLY COMMITTED. Until...I'm not. Then I start rapidly cycling through ideas. I bring out my trusty cigar box of index cards, filled with story ideas, that I bought at a voodoo shop in NOLA. Oh YES! I forgot all about that great story idea I'd thrown in there! I start working on it, but....no. It's not "the one."

3. I decide that the reason I can't focus on an idea is because of the chaos in my outer life. I begin rearranging furniture, throwing things out, organizing, cleaning. I make a lot of soup. I believe FIRMLY in the Gospel of Soup and that all crises can be weathered with a pot of soup. (We currently have A LOT of soup set aside in the freezer).

4. Throughout this time, my mind is whirling and whirring and I'm trying not to think about the market or that I promised a specific book to my agent by a specific time and now I hate that book idea and that time is getting closer. I start saying, "Merde" under my breath. A lot.

5. Despair settles in, but because I've been here before and I also have a healthy writer wellness system in place, I keep meditating and doing mindfulness work through all this discomfort, and keeping my weekly writer sabbath. I also am sure to be gentle with myself. I don't usually watch much TV, but during this time, I allow more of that. More down time. More binge reading. More gentleness in general.

6. I remind myself, again and again, that this is the season I'm in, that seasons change, that I just need to lean in and let this be uncomfortable. It's going to be okay. I have proof in this pudding: It's always okay in the end. An idea always comes. A story always tugs my sleeve. It's just taking its goddamn TIME about it, is all.

7. So I'm showing up and being mindful and filling the well and sitting with this uncomfortable uncertainty. I'm feeling kind of enlightened about the whole thing. I just REALLY MISS WRITING. I miss it! I miss writing a book! Telling a story! Living in new worlds with characters I love.

8. This is all made worse when triggered by comparison (someone I know gets a book deal etc.) or some sort of rejection in the industry (a book I have out doesn't do well etc). The only thing that saves me here is my mindfulness practice, which is why I harp on all the writers I work with to practice. We don't practice for the good times, we practice for these tough moments, so we can be ready when they come and not lose our shit. 

9. Throughout this time, I'm working hard to be intentional (which is my number one rule for all writing, whether you're in this stage or drafting or revising). Show up. As Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." An hour a day of scratching. More reading throughout the day. More walks. More permission in general. I try to clear my schedule more than usual.

10. And then: EUREKA! The story comes. Out of nowhere or maybe it's been there all along and I just needed to see it in a certain light. Something clicks. I can see why this is not only the right story for me, but the right story for me RIGHT NOW. Just because it's a good idea doesn't mean you have to write it. I have to feel really jazzed and jazzed for a while. I have to want to WRITE the story, not just think about it.*

    
    *As of press time, so to speak, I think I HAVE found my next project. Ask me in a month if that's still true.

“A good idea is one that turns you on rather than shuts you off. It keeps generating more ideas and they improve on one another. A bad idea closes doors instead of opening them...Scratching is what you do when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you.”

— Twyla Tharp

Me, meditating in the Word Garden at Highlights Foundation during the Secret Garden retreat I led in 2019.

One of the things I tell the writers I work with is that we have to think about writing as seasons.

Sometimes, you're in a really prolific, working season. Other times, you're a fallow field, taking a rest and waiting for ideas to plant themselves in you. All of that is good. All of that is the path.


Getting the book deal isn't the path. Those are ephemeral and they aren't writing. They're selling - two different things entirely. So the PATH of the writer is writing and creating and dreaming up stories. The PATH is the goal. So you can chill out because you've already achieved your goal, so long as you're still scratching and, eventually, writing in earnest.

We don't look at a fallow field and think it's a lazy piece of shit or that it's uninspired or that it's never going to amount to anything. We see it for what it is: earth, resting and regenerating.

During these scratching periods, I often begin questioning my place in the writing world and the world in general. This is all healthy. It's a time for reassessment.

Each new project is an invitation to challenge yourself, to create something new and to integrate who you are right now into your art. It's normal. It's part of the process. I literally do this every time.

So the first step is recognizing that this is your season: the season where you are waiting for something to bloom. Once you name it, you can work with it.

“As Pema Chödrön, the meditation teacher, says, “When we realize the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability.””

A Few Scratching Ideas To Get You Going That Work For Me

Be intentional. See below to download my Writing Cave Sign In Sheet. When you're in scratching mode, sign in to your cave for an hour and do any of the below, or your own scratching activities.

• Meditate every day for at least 10 minutes. Meditation works the same muscles you use when you're in flow. It calms you the fuck down when you're in a creative panic. There are answers in the silence. You just have to listen.

• Take a writer's sabbath once a week. A whole day with no writing or scratching. You need to keep that well filled and you need to give yourself a break otherwise you'll go into a creative tailspin. Speaking from experience here.

• Read Poetry. One, it will help you improve your craft. Two, it will get you in the mood. Go through an anthology or pick a poet and read one of their collections. This is an excellent way to begin scratching.

• Do tarot spreads. Ask questions about yourself, your life, stories, etc.

• Go down the rabbit hole and get curiouser and curiouser. If you're thinking about textiles, just go down that hole. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote what she felt was her greatest novel by simply indulging in her interest in gardening when she was scratching for an idea. Just stay off social. Stick to Wikipedia.

• If you have a hobby that really helps nourish you, do that too. I make soup and do tarot and play with my cat and nerd out about whisky and Scotland.

• Take walks. I wrote this post on how walking is a game changer for loads of writers and thinkers, including yours truly.

• Read. Pick up whatever is striking your fancy. Read outside your genre. Read omnivorously. Read, read, freaking read. Seriously. It's literally your job.

• Use this time to grow in your craft and lean in to your writing community. Get some mentorship. Take a class to grow in a particular area of craft.
  
  
  Here's to your scratching!

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.

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)

What It’s Like To Have A Book Come Out During COVID19

My new book, Little Universes, came out today. On a day in the middle of a global pandemic, when all bookstores and libraries are closed, much of the world is in some form of quarantine, when readers spend more time devouring updates on the CDC website than novels, when getting a package in the mail is a cause for stress and Lysol wipes.

I’ve done one signing: I wore gloves while I signed a cart of books, pushed toward me from a safe distance by a masked bookseller at my local indie. There will be no book launch, no events, no pictures with my cheek squished next to readers holding my novel in their hands. That’s as it should be: My book is pubbing on the week that COVID19 is projected to hit my country the worst thus far.

The woman it’s dedicated to—my best friend—is a nurse whose hospital does not have a mask for her to use during one of the worst pandemics the world has ever known.

My sister, who inspired much of this story about sisters, is a single mom trying to homeschool two kids. My entire publishing team is in New York City, which is expected to be pummeled by the pandemic this very day, trying to keep themselves out of medical tents set up in Central Park while also somehow finding the bandwidth to promote a book to a world that is falling apart.

The only person in my family who will likely be able to read my book is my dad, who’s a truck driver who loves audiobooks. The last picture I got of him was a selfie in a laundromat in which he wore gloves and a mask. We had a discussion about whether or not he was applying enough bleach on the surfaces of the public showers he has to use at truck stops—showers used by people from all over the country crossing multiple state lines—and how he had to cancel a load going to Brooklyn because he’d have to quarantine for two weeks after and he can’t afford to do that. Should he get that small business loan the government is offering? What would he do if he got sick? Where would he even live, since his truck is his home?

Every time I’ve posted something about my book since the pandemic hit the world in earnest, I’ve felt conflicted: Is it okay to take up a few moments of people’s time right now to share about a book I love, an offering I made for the world, something I think will help them during this crisis, but would require them to do nothing but read words on a page for a while?

Is it okay to feel sad about what having this book come out now means for me and my career when the entire world is suffering through a shared crisis? Is it okay to celebrate the long, hard road I’ve walked to write a book that, to me, distills everything I know to be true?

Since most of the people reading this are writers, I will tell you what I tell the writers I work with, and tell myself. I will tell you how I answered the questions above:

Right now, the people on the front lines of this crisis are our health care workers, scientists, and policy experts. Our job as writers is to bear witness to what’s happening, and to be foot soldiers in the fight for morale. Hold space for others through our words, whether they provide escape or solace or clarity.

But when the dust of COVID19 settles, it’s the artists who will be on the front lines of the crisis.

The artists who will be keeping the world afloat through the waves of grief and loss and uncertainty that will threaten to drown us all. When the people of the world open their doors and step back out into the world en masse, a world that will no doubt be significantly different, it is the writers and painters and musicians and makers of things who will be taking their place to do battle with humanity’s greatest enemy: The fact that we and everyone we love is going to die, and to be okay in the face of that. To thrive in the inhospitable environment of mortality.

And that’s where Little Universes comes in.

I think my book and the universe conspired together to have Little Universes come out during a global pandemic.

Just look at the epigraph, a piece of Tracy K. Smith’s devastatingly brilliant poem, The Universe As Primal Scream:

I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long.

I always say that our books are our teachers, and Little Universes has been my toughest and most rewarding one thus far.

Like all good teachers, it never stops instructing me. Little Universes is about impermanence, about how nothing is for keeps; but the deeper lesson, the one in its tender beating heart, is how to be okay with loss and uncertainty. Really okay. No matter how much of it you experience. No matter how many times the rug is pulled out from under your feet.

In the book, Hannah and Mae lose their parents to a tsunami—the experience is as horrible as it sounds. But they learn something vital as they rage and grieve and curse and question—a truth I believe only the hardest lessons can teach us:

The same wave that threatens to drown you also has the power to carry you safely to the shore.

I won’t lie: Publishing has been a painful experience for me from my first book to this, my seventh. Many of you read a piece I wrote last year that went viral, about how bewildering the ups and downs have been. Perhaps, with a different sort of book, helmed by the Heather of olden days who did not meditate, having a novel come out in the midst of COVID19 would have been the wave that killed me dead.

But this Heather is on the other side of Little Universes, a book which taught her that her only job on this planet—her only job—is to do right by the miracle.

We are made of the stuff of stars and, if that’s not WOW enough for you, then consider how many atoms and choices and people and loss and gain and luck and tragedy and mystery had to conspire for you—your individual self—to be here on this planet, at this time. Whether you bow to the Buddha, pray to Jesus, or tip your cap to Carl Sagan, the fact of the matter is that in order to do right by all that brought you into being, you’ve got to show up. Right here, right now.

How will you, writer, do right by the miracle?

Little Universes is one humble attempt I’ve made to do right by the miracle. An offering. I like to imagine placing it before my readers as though they are an altar or doorway in Bali, the novel resting on a banana leaf covered with flowers. To me, it has already done its work because I’ve done my work, the hard inner work of not placing my value or the value of the art I made on how well it sells, or how good the reviews are, or whether it stays in print. I made the thing to help us all navigate this thing, life, a little easier. Mission accomplished.

I sort of feel like God on the seventh day: It is good.

You’re hurting right now. I know that not just because that’s the First Noble Truth—suffering is a part of life—but because you’re a human on Earth during the COVID19 pandemic. I wrote this book during a hurting, and a healing. And so I hope it can give you some of the warm assurance it gave me—tough, but tender love.

Tough: This book and, by extension, the books your yourself might one day write, might totally sink. Drown in the waves of “content” in the world. This book might be a tinier blip than I or anyone close to it hoped for.

Tender: That’s okay. Because we did our job—we did right by the miracle by offering our words to the world, to help make it a little less confusing and a little more bearable for those in it.

As Jo, one of the characters in the book says:

“This one life: It’s all we get. It’s not about the likes and the degrees and the bank account. It’s about the love, man. It’s only about the love.”

I finished the first draft of the book during a major depression, unaware that a new medication I was on for migraine had a side effect of suicidal thoughts. It was a great wave and as I clawed for the surface, I, like Hannah, realized something very important:

“Under the wave, I found out what I was made of. Realized nobody is going to save me but me, that there is sometimes a choice—to stay or go—and that you might not know what you’ll choose until the breath has left your lungs and…you suddenly come face-to-face with the voice in your head, the hidden you, that spark of light that has been singing you out of the darkness for as long as you can remember. And she is wise and beautiful—maiden and mother and crone—and she says, she says, You are enough. And now you have a choice: to float or drown, and if you are enough, then drowning isn’t an option.”

You are enough, writer. Drowning isn’t an option.

Little Universes was borne out of a lifetime of spiritual questing, my own relentless search for meaning in an incomprehensible universe. From walking with monks in a Korean rice field to poking about the oldest magick shops in London, from temples in Calcutta to Midnight Mass in Rome, I have searched and searched only to have my book teach me the most important lesson of all in my darkest hour of need:

Everything you are and need is within you. It has been all along.

So what is it like to publish a book during COVID19? It…is. It’s what happening right here and right now. It is a wave and I am riding it to wherever it will take me.

When I began working on this book, I was ready to meet what refuses to let us keep anything for long.

Today? I have met that great What. I greet her / him / they / it with one of Hannah’s poems from the book:

Last Words

1. Say thank you
2. Say I love you
3. Say these words until you die

So reader, and fellow writer: Thank you. I love you.

Tonight there is a super moon. A time for release. For moving on. I think I’ll go sit outside with Hannah and Mae. Together, we’ll look up, as Whitman says, in perfect silence at the stars, many of which shine though long dead.

Gone, but we can still see their light.

Begin The Journey

Below is the playlist I listened to on repeat as I wrote this book. It is, as Hannah says, sound medicine. From my heart to yours.

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Writer, You've Been Training For This

I hope you're healthy. I hope your heart isn't hurting. And, either way, I hope you know that you're not alone (but I will guard your solitude, if you desperately wish you were).

First: Permission not to write right now.

Second: Permission TO write right now.

Either one is A-Okay. The world needs people who are doing what lights them up - all the time, every day, and especially now. If writing lights you up, do it. If it doesn't, then why torture yourself? (Or us). Do what feels like a YES, like YUM, like MORE PLEASE.

This social upheaval is a season. Either it will be okay, or it will pass. (My new favorite Norwegian proverb. Actually, the only Norwegian proverb I know). Also: All. Things. Pass. Do you know anything that doesn't?


Regardless of where you're at with your writing right now, I come bearing good news:

As a writer, you have been training for the world to fall apart your whole writing life. Because uncertainty is what we writers swim in.

From not knowing the outcome of a story to whether or not that story will sell to being uncertain as to what will happen inside you or on the page each and every time you sit down to write. Will the story come together or fall apart? Will the Inner Critic win today? Will you be deep in flow? Will you give up? Will you be interrupted? Will you remember why you do this in the first place?

The uncertainty we experience as writers has often been painful. But it turns out, it's our superpower. Being a writer is one of the least certain jobs or passions you could ever have. So in times of global uncertainty (and, camerado, ALL of life is uncertain), you are positioning yourself to more elegantly navigate that feeling of groundlessness. And guess what? From a physics standpoint, we--the entire universe--is in a perpetual state of free fall. Moments like this, when we share and have each other's backs so we can write in community are how we catch each other along the way.

If there's anything I've learned as a writer, it's that the more I relax into uncertainty instead of fight it, the more I feel like a steady ship's captain in a storm.

I've had so much practice with the rug being pulled out from under me. I've become so accustomed to having to pivot when I reach story tangles and career roadblocks and rejection and just the sheer not knowing if my gambles will pay off.

Case in point:

I have a book coming out on April 7th. When all the bookstores are closed. And you know what? I'm bummed sure, but I'm okay. I really am. (But, also, I hope you snag a copy. This one hits all the sweet spots we need right now about what to do when things fall apart) I'm holding fast to my love of the book itself and I can let everything else go. I can't control what happens. I can only show up, do right by the work, and then let go. (It's a paradox, isn't it? You must let go to hold fast.)

What's kept me steering through the storms of uncertainty is my love of words.

Writing them and reading them. Even if I just have a few minutes in a day to get some words down, even if that's all I have, I've reconnected to what keeps me from being thrown overboard. I've held fast. To myself. To my dreams. To how I best show up in this world and serve it.

Gifts From Me To You Right Now:

Build the writing life you long for.

This sneak peek offers loads of resources to help you find and stay in flow. If you decide later to subscribe to my newsletter, you get the whole free 30-Day program. Click below to download the sneak peek immediately.

give me flow

All of the things below are for newsletter subscribers. Jump on and get all the goodies.

In this month's Rough Draft, I’ve got the perfect writing process/exercise for when you're feeling overwhelmed, mindfulness hacks for creatives, and loads of exploratory questions to find what feels most delicious to you right now.

And if you want to jump on this Sunday's free Dandywood Circle call with me to talk all things writing during social distancing, you’ll get the link right when you sign up for the newsletter.



Sunday at 2:00 PM EST. A recording of the call will be available on the homebound resources page later that day, in case you miss it.

Send me an email with any questions you want answered, or ask on the call.

A little heads up: I've been building a community for us all on Mighty Networks for some time now. It's not ready yet, but I can't WAIT to share it with you when it is. Just know it's coming SOON. Email me if you have any wish lists for the ultimate writing sisterhood.

Hold fast, 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.