Ira Glass on patience and the beginner’s mind.
For those of us just starting to tap into our creative juices and those of us who have been doing it a while, but have hit a slump.
Things Ira wishes he had been told. Lucky us that he shared it.
Family Secrets. We All Have Them.
But some of us like roll up the rug to see what’s been swept underneath.
There are still a few spaces left for my one-night workshop on Monday, September 30.
Let’s talk. Then write.
Our Universal Tongue
There’s no denying that as a writer, I’m all about words. But when words are put to music and made into a song, a universal language is created that can move a mass of people all at the same time. Often it does the job better than mere words can.
I’m just back from my first trip to Nashville and the button of my music-loving soul has most definitely been turned on. I road tripped down there with my husband and two dear, longtime friends for the annual Americana Music Association’s Festival and Conference http://americanamusic.org/who-we-are. Americana music is folk, country, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, often called roots music. All four of us love the many flavors of Americana music and the mess it makes with our emotions so we went down there to marinate in it.
Writing as Risk
She’s writing a memoir of that year in Paris to remember. He wrote the academic journal article on book preservation for professional advancement. She’s finishing a personal essay on that anxious stretch of time during her pregnancy for fun. He described how his dreams inform his painting for that college application essay. She wrote a summary of a medical journal article for a school assignment. He’s putting the final touches on a collection of essays on family life that spans fifty years for posterity.
Writers bring their words to the page or screen for a range of reasons and in a multitude of forms. But with each project – work I’ve been witnessing from my private coaching clients – no matter what the mission, there is risk in the writing.
There’s so much at stake. Hurting someone’s feelings. Inaccuracy. Negative response. Rejection. Changing your mind. Putting your work out there. Getting your work out there, and not feeling seen or heard. Like taking a running leap from a lush green pasture into a white, open sky.
Family Tree
Last week, the giant ash that has lived across the street for the more than two decades we have lived here, the one whose branches create an almost-arch over our street and whose leaves I could see when I was laying on my bed, which filled my window, always the first to turn colors in the fall, was cut down. My neighbor Ruthie told me it was just a twig when they moved in 42 years ago.
It was infected with emerald ash borer, the name of a green beetle who is so very unhappy to be away from it’s native Asia or Russia and is taking it out on Chicago area ash trees. Those of us who happened to be around that morning – there were at least seven or eight of us – watched, our mouths in pout, as four strong men took their positions in and around the tree and two worked the chipper. It was loud and fast. Forty-two years for it to grow to it’s towering state. Gone two hours later.