On Tuesday morning, I am barefoot in the garden, plum juice running down my wrist. Not working on my novel. Not finishing the grant application. I take another bite. The Chickasaw plum, like a marble between my fingers, snaps. Tart skin; sweet, soft middle. The sun is hot on my back, but I hardly notice. I am thinking about how chewing forces my mouth into a smile. I chew and chew.

At my cluttered, dimly lit desk, I write on the novel for another 27 1/2 minutes. Search my thesaurus for “whispering” and “seed.” Click over to the grant proposal. Discover what I am proposing can be named: poetry cycle, redaction, mixed media installation. Edit one sentence fifteen times without noticeable improvement. Rub my eyes.

I glance at my desk-mate. The peperomia stands tall, each leaf like a perfect, tiny watermelon. I reach over and fold one between my fingers and thumb. It bends, like a taco, so I water it.

On Wednesday morning, I stand before the blackberry bush. A Father’s Day gift for my husband. Most berries are red or green. Under the shade of a broad leaf, one deep black berry gleams. I pull it free. The juice is tart. Almost sweet. How long until my mouth doesn’t pucker?

I am at my desk.

I drag the hose around the garden: to my new tree, to my potted basil.

I am at my desk.

I pull three weeds.

I am at my desk.

On Thursday, I sit beside a bridge at Oxley Nature Preserve. I am visited by a squirrel, a frog, two snakes, a bee, three dragonflies, one human. I sketch the sounds I hear. I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

The next morning, I wake at 5 am. I write until 10 am. I don’t return to my desk for two days.

As a young writer, I’d absorbed the expectation I needed to be at work from dawn until dusk. Fuse with the keyboard, the desk, become wooden. Immovable. But writers are not furniture.

Writers are hummingbirds. Bees. Dragonflies. Constantly on the move, briefly landing. Finding story nectar, pollinating ideas.

I am a disciplined writer—just not in the way I once imagined I ought to be.

This is not to say every movement brings plums and blackberries. There’s a load of laundry at 10:15 am. Then work. A sink full of dishes at 3:07 pm. Then work.

Problems resolve in the drifting dance, buzzing from garden (or chores) to my monitor and back again. Movement brings blood to my brain, but it also gives me space to think—even on a subconscious level.

The garden—and the natural world at large—is a constant touchpoint. When I cannot solve something, I go outside. Even five minutes helps me tackle my work with fresh energy.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says:

Many hobbies involve a form of artist-brain mulling that leads to enormous creative breakthroughs. When I have screenwriting students stuck at the midpoint of act two, I ask them to please go do their household mending. They usually balk, offended by such a mundane task, but sewing has a nice way of mending up plots. Gardening is another hobby I often assign to creativity students. When someone is panicked halfway across the bridge into a new life, repotting plants into larger and better containers quite literally grounds that person and gives him or her a sense of expansion.

Spiritual benefits accompany the practice of a hobby. There is a release into humility that comes from doing something by rote. As we serve our hobby, we are freed from our ego’s demands and allowed the experience of merging with a greater source. This conscious contact frequently affords us the perspectives needed to solve vexing personal or creative conundrums.1

When I imagine the garden as a metaphor for my creative process, I find encouragement in Mary Oliver’s poem, I Worried:

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught [...]

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.2

Worry adds nothing to the creative process— it does not add pages, clarify ideas, or make beauty of scribbles. Does the bee worry? And yet they make honey.

I remind myself to go out into the morning.

To be creative is to be in constant search of nectar, drifting through gardens of plums and blackberries, tasting the tart and the sweet alike, chewing, chewing, appearing to be aimless— when, actually, we’re making honey from flowers and time.

When knowledge is scant or conflicting, folklore takes over.
—Paul Smith

Folklore’s power begins in the dark.

As a child, nighttime felt endless and terrifying. I had trouble falling asleep. When I finally drifted off, nightmares plagued me. Alone in my bed, I’d conjure all manner of songs and folktales to soothe myself. Hansel and Gretel. Stone Soup. Little Red Riding Hood.

In my sleeplessness, I became the girl with breadcrumbs, searching for home; the stranger with a stone, needing a warm meal and togetherness; the girl with a basket of food, wondering if her grandmother was a wolf.

Laying there, blinking at the shifting shadows, I imagined I was moments away from a happy ending. One melody from the rising sun.

The forests we face

Nighttime frightens all children at one point or another. If it gets to be too much, children cry out in the dark— then someone familiar comes to offer comfort. Hugs and snuggles. Songs and stories. Gradually, the child learns their bedroom is safe and, by extension, the world.

For the first ten years of my life, I slept in the living room of our tiny apartment (me on one wall, my brother on the other, our other siblings down the highway). My clothes were stored in a kitchen dresser. Sometimes I woke to lights flashing in the dark. Sometimes officers removed me from the home while I was half-asleep.

Waking in a strange bed, in a strange room, I had limited data to answer usual childhood fears: Is there a monster in the closet? What made that noise?

As a youth experiencing foster care, every shifting shadow, ceiling crack, and mirror gleam frightened me—not only because nighttime distorts and disorients (it does), but because a foster home is a place of unfamiliar sights, smells, sounds even before darkness falls.

In the language of folklore, the bedroom became a forest. A strange place, where anything could happen.

Across folklore, forests often function as places of danger and transformation. They are unknown places where ordinary rules no longer apply, where witches and monsters might dwell.1

We often think of fairy tales as warnings. Don’t go into the woods. A witch will eat you. A wolf will trick you. You might not get a meal at the next village. My own fears were echoed in these warnings as I tried to sleep in strange homes: Where am I? How will I sleep? Will I be fed? I have nothing to offer, not even a stone. Who can I trust? Who is the witch? Who is the wolf?

But folklore does more than frighten the young. Folklore offers solutions and relief. The forest is a place of danger and a place transformation. A liminal zone between fear and survival. In The Rules of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettelheim explains:

“To a considerable degree, dreams are the result of pressures which have found no relief, of problems which beset a person to which he knows no solution and to which the dream finds none. The fairy tale does the opposite: it projects the relief of all pressures and not only offers ways to solve problems but promises that a “happy” solution will be found.”2

While I lay awake in the dark, too scared to call out to my new caregivers for comfort, folklore became a way to imagine solutions and experience relief. A way to process these fears, fill in the gaps of what I didn’t know, and hope for my own happy ending.

If fairy and folk could work through strange forests, perhaps I could, too.

A folklore of resilience and belonging

Folklore—or the stories, songs and traditions that unite a culture—serve to comfort the growing child beyond the bedroom. Eating the same meal every Christmas Eve, listening to the same story at bedtime, knowing cultural dances or singing the same lullaby— these repetitions become predictable routines and, like nighttime hugs, they help a child make sense of the world and their place in it. Through these repetitions, a child learns:

This is who I am. These are my people. I belong here.

But what if you don’t have a consistent or clear folklore?

A fractured family threatens a child’s selfhood in part because the folklore that situates them in society—that gives them a sense of resilience and belonging—is lost or becomes inaccessible. Removed from the home, you might hear a different bedtime story, or no bedtime story at all. You might miss your sibling’s birthday party. You might never learn to crochet at your grandmother’s side, or how to make her famous stew.

Folklorist Alan Dundes argued that any group sharing a common factor develops traditions it calls its own. That made me wonder:

What folklore belongs to children who move from home to home?

Inasmuch as folklore defines a community—and, I would argue, holds that community together by providing comfort and meaning through consistent repetition in the face of adversity—I am interested in a folklore of resilience and belonging.

Rather than being collected from one location, language or bloodline, I am interested in a folklore that crosses cultures and borders, unified by two ideas: I survived. I belong. A gathering up of traditions and stories, some bestowed in childhood, others found or curated.

There’s a certain kind of yearning that comes with not having a solid family history, for not having a consistent home and feeling always in flux. Like a ship on rough seas, treasure falls overboard. There’s an awareness that things have not been passed down and cannot be recovered. We who are so often estranged from the fullness of what family and tradition can be, have to look beyond the bounds of our heritage to cobble a folklore together.

Some may not believe it can work. Author Terry Windling describes a conversation with a doubter:

“Stories aren’t real,” [the officer] told me shortly. “They don’t feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding ‘family’ in the nearest gang.”

Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath.

A folklore of resilience and belonging is first created on instinct. A little girl, in a strange bed, grasping for favorite songs and stories.

Then, the little girl grows up. Years go by. She keeps adding new stories, songs, and traditions which speak to her deepest fears, and how to overcome them. Gradually, it becomes a living collection that addresses what matters most to her:

How do I survive? Where do I belong?

Some things she adds on purpose. Others, on instinct.

Only now, ten years later, do I realize my five-year effort to cook a meal from every country in the world—the project that became Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness—was part of a growing folklore of resilience and belonging.

Folklorists use the term foodways to describe not only what people eat, but when, where, how, and with whom. In other words, food is never just food.3

I began cooking the world as a new mother. As mothers, we look to our own childhoods, gathering a harvest of traditions and values we want to serve to the next generation. Only, when I looked back it was difficult to separate the good from the bad— to tease out the grain from the chaff.

There were songs and stories and traditions— but many of them were wrapped in husks of loss and heartache, of disruption and confusion.

What could I offer my growing family? How could I create a new heritage, after so much heartbreak?

I can now see that my impulse to cook the world was about adding to the harvest: intentionally curating a warm and loving heritage for my growing family from the good I inherited—and from what I gathered along the way.

Foodways are central to folklore because they are one of the primary ways culture is passed from one generation to the next. The food we make, and who we make it with, helps shape cultural identity, connects us to our ancestors, and is steeped in communal practices and stories across time.

Many of the recipes we tried are traditionally cooked in large groups, with music on. Empanadas. Ravioli. Momos. If I had only wanted recipes, I could have bought more cookbooks. Instead, I hosted potlucks and cooking parties. I found a way to gather around the table, weaving friends, family, and strangers into a larger story of belonging.

Every country I cooked affirmed a sense that—no matter what happened to us—we belong to a global family with a rich and varied cultural heritage. We are part of something larger than ourselves.

All of us are.

Even now, we celebrate Global Table Adventure’s birthday on February 3rd by cooking a meal together from those days.

A new tradition, added to the harvest.

F is for Folklore.

In early 2024, my novel needed major edits. It would be more than a year before I could face doing the work. The primary goal, as stated by my editor: add a proper villain.

I trust my editor. This bears mentioning because—when in the trenches of doing something difficult / unbearable / tedious / overwhelming—it is helpful to remember you agree with, and trust, the premise. Never mind my first response was to tell Genevieve, while pacing on top of our retaining wall, balanced above the sidewalk, through tears, I don’t think I can do this.

In terms of editing, adding a character is about as hard as it gets.

Think of it like this: you’ve just knit a sweater. It’s maybe not perfect, but it has two arm holes, slips over your head, and would warm you on a cold day. But then you realize it doesn’t have a neck hole and you can’t see a thing.

So, you pull the thread until there’s a huge, tangled pile on the floor. Then, you add another thread to the pile, probably blood red. We’re talking about adding a villain, after all. You begin to knit all those threads together. Now, instead of a sweater with a neck hole, you realize that you’re making something else. A skirt, maybe. I don’t know. But it isn’t a sweater anymore. It will never again be a sweater.

Now you’re knitting with twisted thread. You have a pile of thread that has the kinks and knots of having been worked into a sweater. Characters, scenes, the entire thrust of the novel no longer make sense. This is structural work. The other characters will react to this new character, motivations will shift and the plot will change. It would be odd if it didn’t.

I did nothing for a year. An entire spring followed by summer and fall, then another spring spent not writing. Not opening the draft, not taking notes. It wasn’t just resistance. Every time I thought about working on the edits, I would go blank. If I was lucky, a vague thought would materialize like skywriting in my mind. Villain, who are you? Like that bereft guy, who, instead of phoning his ex, commissioned a plane to skywrite: “POOH BEAR COME HOME.”1

No one knows if Pooh Bear ever came home. I wasn’t sure my villain would either.

Where are all the villains?

I hadn’t yet decided I agreed with my editor. Not only had I told Genevieve I don’t think I can do this, I’d said: I’m not even sure I believe in villains.

Belief in villains was probably trained out of me in childhood. Foster home after foster home, aging out, abuse. In that kind of environment, many children get angry. They have no trouble pointing fingers. You—you’re the one to blame for this. Boom. Villain identified. For me, trauma forced a sanitized look at conflict. The mental gymnastics: An unstable childhood is bearable if it is unfortunate, rather than being the result of someone’s villainous actions. If there’s a villain, it really was that bad. So, I joined the legions of children who repress their anger or blame themselves for what they went through.2

A highly sensitive person whose repressed anger turns into subjugation may be out of touch with their anger. […] They may immediately switch the focus onto other people’s needs […] To avoid conflicts, the highly sensitive person usually opts to be the peacemaker […].3

If you know me from Global Table Adventure, this is uncanny. My whole project was all about cooking a meal from every country in the world as a peacemaking initiative. A celebration of our shared humanity and a refuge from the evils of the world. While we all need a reprieve from the ills of the world from time to time, refusing to acknowledge villainy doesn’t make for a good novel.

As a little girl, I couldn’t even find a villain in movies that were organized around a clear good vs. evil dichotomy. I wished Snow White and the Evil Queen could just get along. Something to unpack in therapy, yes. But also, getting in the way of my rewrite.

In B is for Beginning, I talked about how we bring our essential concerns to our work. But what about repressed concerns? The Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, said:

“Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.”

This suggests I already knew the villain well. If I could identify just one thing I was really, truly angry about—and point a finger at the kind of person that would cause it, I would have my villain. Boom! Conflict. Spine. A real novel.

That year away from the writer’s desk unexpectedly gave me the perspective and answers I sought. It was an excruciating time for our family. In brief: Someone I loved experienced something terrible, which reminded me of something terrible I’d experienced, which reminded me of how many people experience this same terrible thing.

I stopped sleeping through the night. From 3 am to 6 am, I’d lie in bed upset and worrying. None of it had to do with my novel—or so I thought. But, then, something began to happen during those agonizing, sleepless nights. I could no longer rationalize or contextualize evil. I got angry. For my loved one, for myself, for all of us survivors. And I was able to admit something I couldn’t as a child:

Only a villain could do such a thing.

I’d finally found the blood-red thread.

This past September, a 36-page outline incorporating that villain poured out of me. Turns out I have a lot to say about survivorship. About how villains haunt us long after they’ve hurt us and how their cruelty cannot be undone, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise.

My editor was floored by my outline. No notes, she said. If you get stuck, go back to your outline. This time, my tears were of relief and gratitude. I got to work knitting the old and new together. The villain shifted the arc of the novel, but thankfully parts of the old draft were usable with modifications. The characters, stakes, and plot have all sharpened. As of today, only seven months later, I’m about three quarters of the way through. This is lightning fast for me, especially because I am usually only good for about 2 hours of writing a day, and often must set aside my writing time for other obligations.

In praise of (not) sleeping on it

Tough problems (like a major edit, or finding a villain), are often be solved by ‘sleeping on it.’ The eventual breakthrough can feel sudden, as if it simply “poured out.” As Frontiers in Psychology explains:

… setting creative problems aside for a period can allow unconscious processes to generate solution ideas, which are then experienced, either as spontaneous breakthroughs into consciousness while attention is focused on other matters, or as very rapid solutions on returning to previously intractable problems.4

My year of restless nights was a form of sleeping on it. My subconscious worked overtime, helping me acknowledge and define villainy, see forces of evil for what they are, and take a stand against them. I’m not sure a soft heart can do that work. If you want to write a villain, you have to get angry.5

Edit comes from the Latin edere: to bring forth, to produce, to put out into the world.

What do you want to put out into the world? If the prospect of editing your book feels impossible, try not writing for a little while. Consider what you really want to say about the things that burn you up. Sleep on it. Or don’t. Get honest about what keeps you up at night, and put it on the page.

E is for Editing.

The first desk I ever bought myself was the size of a kitchen tile.

12 inches x 12 inches. Before I show it to you, let me explain.

I made the purchase in my early thirties, after touring William Faulkner’s home. Not only did Faulkner outline his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Fable on the walls of his office in red grease and graphite pencils, he had two desks on which to write: one he built with his son, the other his mother gave him. This second desk held his portable typewriter and he carried the setup outside to work from time to time. This was before air conditioning, in humid Mississippi.1

Unlike Faulkner, I did not have a desk, let alone an office. Our modest home was stuffed to the brim with the trappings of a growing family: toys, art supplies, and children’s books.

Until I purchased my desk, I was a creative nomad. When I wasn’t at the library, coffee shop, or couch, I wrote at the dining table. I loved spreading out my books and papers on the broad wooden surface, though it required frequent cleanup or eating around stacks because we use our dining table daily.2

We’ve since moved into a larger home. Though I now have a study, I still occasionally spread out at the dining table— and, like Faulkner, love to work al fresco.

So, why buy such a tiny desk? If I was happy enough at the dining table, what was this purchase about?

The desk I chose came from an antique store 40 miles away and cost about $60. Slimline mahogany3 with a single drawer, it was small enough to fit just about anywhere. I had ample room for it in my bedroom, living room, even across from the kitchen. But instead, I chose to put it in the corner of our dining room, in a dead space designed for the back door return. A dead—and battered—space. The door swung and hit the desk every single time we opened it.

I used the desk a few times, but could hardly fit a piece of paper on it, let alone my laptop.

Looking back, several competing impulses were at odds in that tiny desk purchase. Psychologist Richard Schwartz4 calls these inner tensions “parts.” One part of me wanted to remain small and “low maintenance.” Another longed for beauty, rootedness, and creative dignity. Still another didn’t yet believe she deserved more. Schwartz’s theory suggests that the part of me longing for beauty, rootedness and creative dignity was starting to win.

Too often, those of us with hearts for creative work have been told to keep our passions as hobbies. We wedge our creative impulses between “real” work and family life. We doubt ourselves. Avoid buying the tools we need. Make ourselves smaller.

A history of trauma amplifies these challenges in overwhelming ways. Food insecurity, financial instability, and family inconsistencies leave us feeling like it’s actually dangerous to follow our dreams. If we try and fail, we might lose our homes. Our marriages. People will leave and never return. With post traumatic stress disorder, getting our work done is not a straightforward self-talk game. It is a nightmarish dance between fight-flight-fawn that can leave us depleted and unable to do our life’s work.

Our ability to take up space depends greatly on our physical environments, but also our mental landscape: what we’ve been through, and what we believe we deserve. I have so much compassion for my younger self, who thought all she deserved was a desk too small to put a piece of paper on— in a dead zone.

Which raises another question entirely.

What is a desk, anyway?

The word desk was first used in the 14th century and, at first, referred to a portable piece of furniture. Used by scribes, it was lightweight, I imagine so it could be moved closer to windows, or outside, as with Faulkner’s desk.

According to Merriam-Webster, the root of the word “desk” comes from:

Etymologically, two roots of the word desk stand out in this context: Round mirror and gong.

To think of the desk as a mirror! A gong!

This is exactly it.

Seeing Faulkner’s setup awoke something in me. It was never about the desk as a place to write or create art. We can do that anywhere—and many of us do. It was about what the desk reflected. What it announced.

Standing there in Faulkner’s office, I felt a pang. I wanted a writing desk. I wanted to write on the walls. I wanted to take up space as an author and creative, the way Faulkner took up space.

As a symbol, my tiny desk represented my first attempt to claim creative legitimacy.

I looked in the mirror, and struck the gong, asserting for the first time:

I am—writer! I am—artist!

I’ve since gone on to purchase two more desks. My second desk was only a little bigger than the first. It had room enough for my monitor and a few books, but no storage except a keyboard drawer. The third desk is full-sized, with drawers and built-in filing cabinets. That’s the one I use to this day.

Finally.

I haven’t forgotten where I started. I keep that first, tiny desk by my front door. Whenever I go in and out of the house, the door swings wide— in the other direction. No longer cramped or slammed, the desk has a place of honor. On top of its water-stained surface, there’s a bronze statue of a little girl standing on top of a chair.

A reminder that, in this house, we take care of our inner children. We make room. We give them what they need to flourish. What a gift for creativity.

D is for Desk.

“Was writing it cathartic?”

This is one of the most common questions people ask me about writing my memoir.

I want to shout yes! I want to grin and nod and make us both feel great. Oh good, I’m so glad, they would say. Me, too, I would say. But, inevitably, I go quiet. Some part of me hesitates.

I wrote Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness under deadline over the course of a year, almost exclusively in coffee shops and libraries. The really tough scenes, like my mom giving me away to another family and my brother’s death, I wrote by pulling all-nighters in hotels.

There were phone calls with my editors and agent and family, while pacing in dimly lit hallways, in front of single-use bathrooms, crying. Tiny goblets of port, sipped too often in bed. That year, my deep brown hair started to show white, like a sudden snowfall—with the kind of speed where you think, this is going to be a blizzard.

What is catharsis, anyway?

Catharsis is supposed to feel good. It implies some sort of sigh and release. Like drinking a glass of ice water in summer.

Writing my story, I did not feel a release. I felt scared. I had a lot to say, and I worried what people would think. So, I surrounded myself by strangers in public places, as if writing in public was the only way to protect myself from being undone by the ghosts of my childhood.

Where is the catharsis we are promised?

Getting honest about pain in art and writing

One of my favorite creative souls is Frida Kahlo. In 1925, she was in a devastating bus accident. An iron handrail impaled her abdomen and uterus, leaving her with lifelong injuries. Over the following decades, Frida turned her pain into stark and unapologetic self-portraits, many of which she painted while bedridden. In them, she put her wounds and her nightmares.

Her first self-portrait after the accident, Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress is sweet, even innocent. Nowhere to be found any obvious indication of her story or the stark symbolism that confronts the viewer in later portraits. Compare that painting to La Columna Rota from 1944. In it, she depicts the handrail that changed her life. The land is barren. Her gaze, hardened. Her body, enduring the nails of chronic pain, held together by a medical corset.

A few years ago I saw an exhibit of her work. Around me, people seemed either drawn in or repulsed. The reality is, brave creative work is not easy to make or digest. Was there a release for Frida? Or was she simply walking beside her pain? Allowing it to exist without denial?

The Myth of Release

As writers and artists, and as viewers, we hold onto the myth of catharsis: that there will be ultimate release, an unshackling of our burdens. Whatever drives us to create is usually a powerful, painful thing. We may want to release it, but it may not release us.

We imagine it will feel cleansing from the start.

In reality, catharsis starts with revulsion. At some point you’re holding a shit sandwich, thinking, this is awful, unbearable. How is this my lunch? I wanted the ice water on the summer day.

The first part of catharsis is looking directly at what’s true. You can’t move toward release until you realize you are, in fact, holding a shit sandwich.

The next time you’re making your art (or writing), you’re like, Oh yeah, here’s that shit sandwich again. Why does it keep showing up on my table? When I’m done feeling sorry for myself, I ask: What do I have to say about it this time? As I wrote in B is for Beginning, we are always going back to our old preoccupations and concerns.

Who is Catharsis for?

Traditionally, catharsis has often been focused on the viewer’s experience. With origins in Greek theater, the idea was to give the viewer a release by letting them identify with a tragic character. Britannica1 never mentions the author or creator in the catharsis experience:

My childhood cannot be rewritten. Frida could not get off that bus one stop earlier. Those situations do not release us, no matter how much work we make. In fact, sometimes we feel their grip tighter over time. But when I look at the evolution in Frida’s paintings, I see a woman becoming clearer about her story, better able to articulate it.

Meanwhile, catharsis lives in the reader’s armchair. In the art gallery. For those of us who read a memoir with tears streaming, for those of us who move through galleries in stunned shock, there is catharsis. The catharsis of seeing another person’s pain and understanding your own more clearly.

This relational and transformative element of the work is catharsis.

Reconciliation

The question remains: Are we supposed to feel catharsis when we make our work?

If catharsis is for the viewer, and not for those of us making the art— is it something we even need to be concerned with?

For me, the artistic process is something like this:

1. Experience the thing.

2. Face the thing.

3. Make something.

4. Feel something.

5. Understand the thing a little better.

6. Find myself a glass of ice water. A real one.

7. Do it again.

Embedded in this cycle is the ongoing act of getting memories and feelings out of the body into material form. This act transforms me into a viewer of my own experience.

While I no longer think ultimate release is the point of making our work, I do think there are micro releases and purifications every time I make work.

When considering the tragedy, we observe multiple philosophies of catharsis that expand the meaning further:2

Do we experience Hegel’s satisfaction of spirit from reconciliation through the creative act? Behind the fear of saying something honest about my lived experience, I do feel a sense of satisfaction in facing it and making the work only I can make. Getting memory out of my body, so to speak, and holding it up to the light.

While my lived experience will never fully release me, I no longer think that’s the point.

The act of creating is not pure groundhog day. We gain new insight, we resolve certain thought-patterns and, perhaps most importantly, we see reality for what it is. If we continue making our work, being honest about what we’ve experienced, I think we will find satisfaction, as Hegel said, precisely because we are moving towards some sort of reconciliation with that reality. Like Frida, we begin to walk beside our pain and allow it to exist without denial. Then, we do it again.

That same article quotes Nietzsche:

“We have art in order that we may not perish through truth.”

If the only catharsis I get is to become reconciled with my reality and not perish, I’ll take it.

C is for Catharsis.

If you’re new here, I’m writing an abecedarium on creativity for artists and writers: ideas, essays, and creative invitations, each corresponding to one letter of the alphabet. You’re invited to consider each prompt along with me in the context of your own creative practice. You can learn more on my about page.

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The breath I draw over my lungs mixes with the scent of fresh cut grass, with falling snow, with the dust of a passing truck. Like a snake, I shed my skin. Slowly. At least fifty billion cells die in my body every day.

My body is new and new and new again.

And yet, I am already.

This tension also lives in the creative process. We pick up our pencil, hoping to make something new. We stare with panic at the blank page, forgetting that something essential already exists within ourselves. We just need to bring it out.

Seventeen years before he published The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, “I cannot think of anything more to say about Hobbits.” Only two months later, on December 19th, 1937, he wrote: “I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits—‘A Long-Expected Party.’”1

What happened between those two letters? How did Tolkien go from having nothing left to say to beginning one of the most expansive works of his life?

In another letter, written between the two, Tolkien frets about time slipping away, about “having accomplished next to nothing of any kind.” Tolkien was famously hard on himself and constantly worried about not getting work done. But I think he was accomplishing something important. A lot happens in the gap, when we’re “not writing.” Listening to ourselves, for one. Remembering what we care about, finding the essential thread.

In my opinion, Tolkien had to figure out what The Lord of the Rings was all about. Tolkien did not want to write books for children, and had no interest in being “typecast” by his publishers simply because The Hobbit was a success. The Hobbit was only a small part of a much larger world Tolkien had been building for years, complete with invented languages, fully developed history and lore. He began to dream it up in the years after he was orphaned, and during his service in World War I.

Listening to the audiobook of his letters, it seems to me that when Tolkien thought about what the publisher wanted, he stalled. That first winter was marked by creative misery and the insistence that there were no more ideas.

A Long Expected Party

Maybe that misery was the result of being pulled in two directions. Tolkien cared deeply the world he’d invented and was concerned about how his work would be received.

Tolkien got started, once he decided to write LOTR on his terms. He wanted a more complex narrative for an older audience.

Seven years into writing, Tolkien’s work sped up considerably. His son Christopher had enlisted in World War II. Having lived through early loss and war himself, worry for his son’s safety (and the world at large) overtook Tolkien. He tried to offer fatherly comfort in his letters, sharing what he’d learned from his own service. To me, these letters were frequent and, at times, obsessive.

Meanwhile, as he drafted The Lord of the Rings, he developed themes of power and corruption through the use of the One Ring. This is also when he brings Frodo to the gates of Mordor. Themes of war, corrupted power and even orphanhood2 clarified and deepened as he wrote those final chapters.

I don’t think that timing is a coincidence.

Fast forward to the 1950’s. Coming in at nearly a million words, Tolkien knew he’d written a book that was likely unpublishable (and stated as much in letters to Stanley and Unwin, his publisher). But seventeen years had passed, and by this point Tolkien was clear and uncompromising about his life’s work and what it meant.

Tolkien had allowed what obsessed him to drive the work. The Lord of the Rings was not something new in the way we often imagine beginnings. It was, as he wrote in that first chapter, a long-expected party.

In my own work, I see the same struggle.

This past autumn in my studio, I made a small book bound with nutmeg, and another with cinnamon. The cover and spine were made from the actual spices, the pages splattered with coffee. These ingredients from my childhood were loaded with memories, their scent warm and familiar as I handled them. Like Proust’s madeleine, they took me back.

These artist books are not, strictly speaking, new. Called The Next Chapter, they consider what it takes to stay in relationship, especially when it feels like there are only scraps between you. They belong to a childhood shaped by tough circumstances and by making do with what we had on hand. Stretching ingredients, while learning what it takes to make something together.

I’ve visited these themes before, in prose and poetry, and I visit them here again, in small artist books. The materials have changed, but their essence feels familiar.

Our essential preoccupations and concerns always seem to find their way into our creative work. I don’t think we can help it. In fact, my work suffers when I try to leave who I am out of it. I try to remember that whenever I’m faced with the blank page.

The work is already within me.

B is for Beginning.

When I was a little girl, I tried and failed to have an imaginary friend.

All the other kids had them. They’d talk and laugh with them. Not me. Having failed to conjure up a little girl or boy to play with, I decided to try an imaginary dog. I made a leash out of a shoelace, and even dragged it around the playground for a few minutes. I cannot tell you how dejected I felt holding that shoelace.

Mud pies were another matter, entirely. I could spend hours alone, gathering and mixing my ingredients. I’d pack my muddy creations into old muffin tins and set them in the sun to “bake.” Tipping the hardened pucks out at the end of the day and topping them with grass sprinkles filled me with such satisfaction.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about how my mind works (and doesn’t work).

A short list of things I cannot do that many people seem to enjoy:

• Make imaginary friends

• Journal about my day

• Meditate

When I got older, I rode horses, then, briefly, motorcycles. In both cases, I was nervous and slow. Instructors were clear with their advice: look where you want to go.

Look where you want to go.

The idea is simple: shift your gaze to a target, and your body will follow. Without even realizing it, your hips will lean, your shoulders will turn. Suddenly, you’re giving the horse (or motorcycle) the signals it needs to reach the right destination.

Maybe that was the issue with those other activities. I didn’t know where it was all headed. What was I supposed to say to someone who didn’t exist? Journaling felt similar. I had already lived through my day. At least meditation felt pointless by design, but what was the use of writing: I woke up, ate breakfast, and went to school. Science was fun today?

There was no revelation in it for me and, perhaps worse, there was no end in sight. No mud pie to turn out of the tin and say, yes, I’ve done it.

I thrive with goals, especially when they are within some kind of structure or framework. I think this is largely because they remove decision paralysis and exhaustion. Cooking a meal from every country in the world worked for me precisely because I established my goal (before I ever began cooking): one country per week, for 195 weeks. On Monday mornings, I just had to cook the next country. What a relief for my anxiety-riddled brain!

Likewise, my poetry collection Trail + Terminus was organized Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This limited me to five sections: poems of beginning, safety, love and belonging, self-worth, and self-actualization. Just like with cooking the world, having a five-part structure focused me (and informed the actual content). I ended up writing nearly two-dozen poems, all organized around Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

With both of these projects, I’d built in a way to know I’d done the thing.

On Attention and Motivation

For decades, I wondered if I was a plotter or a pantser. I would think of a project but soon stall out. I couldn’t really place why (or what to do about it). I hadn’t yet noticed what I was doing on those occasions when the work flowed effortlessly.

I am in the middle of a novel rewrite. If you’ve ever knit, it’s like pulling the thread on a sweater you’ve just finished and starting all over again. It’s a painful, messy process and for about a year I wasn’t convinced I could actually do it.

One day, I was, yet again, trying to brainstorm how to approach the rewrite. My work explores resilience and belonging, especially after trauma, so I started flipping through the different psychology books I’d read on my own healing journey. Suddenly, I saw how a psychotherapy model could be applied to my characters. Just a few weeks later, I had a 36-page outline.

The writing began to flow.

I still have a ways to go on the rewrite, but I now know where I’m headed. When I sit down, I am not aimless. I have a direction and purpose. It makes me think of the few times I’ve done archery. There’s a target to aim for. Of course there is. Shooting “wherever” isn’t the game.

A Creative Shorthand

Structure is such an effective motivator for me that it has become creative shorthand. I now begin every new project by sketching out the framework. Deciding where I want to go before I really get going. It’s kind of like checking a map before pulling out of the driveway.

Of course, frameworks evolve. Sometimes they need to adapt (my poetry collection was first organized around the emotions wheel before I realized Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was a better fit). Sometimes they simply reveal my disinterest in a topic. But at their best, they sustain complex, multi-year work.

When I look where I want to go, my attention naturally sharpens.

It turns out I can journal within a structured practice. Doing The Artist’s Way, for example, has expanded my creative life in surprising ways. Though I still wasn’t the kind of person who wants to write about eating a muffin for breakfast, working through the 12 chapters on creativity gave me direction and structure.

As a creative, I struggle with perfectionism. I can spend a week working a paragraph to death without much improvement. It’s much the same when making art. I could work a project into the ground. Having that structure and limitation helps me move on. Helps me know that I’ve done the thing I said I was going to do.

I have an artist friend who lets the paint flow without a plan. I have a writer friend who cannot and will not outline. Each of them shuts down within the kinds of constraints that energize me.

This, I think, is one of the great gifts of paying attention to ourselves as artists. When we understand how we work, we move faster and and more confidently.

Mary Oliver’s famous instruction for living a life is simple:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.1

What sharpens your attention? What process leads you where you want to go?

Answering these questions can provide a truer understanding of how we work, so we can stop judging ourselves harshly and get down to the joys of creating.

A is for Attention.

If you’re new here, I’m writing an abecedarium on creativity for artists and writers: ideas, essays, and creative invitations, each corresponding to one letter of the alphabet. You’re invited to consider each prompt along with me in the context of your own creative practice. You can learn more on my about page.

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