What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Friday Chicken #293: wonderfully stormy
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
Today is my birthday!
I’ve never had a birthday coincide with a Chicken before, so this is fun. Coincides With Chicken, it could be a band. Not this week though, we already have one.
So. Happy birthday to me. I’m in my prime! Sorry, there will be prime number jokes all year.
And also: happy birthday to my business: nine years since it came into my consciousness, eight since The Fluent Self and I made it official at city hall in San Francisco.
What worked this week?
Hiding my phone.
Well, not so much hiding it as placing it in the conducting vault to wait for me until morning.
Next time I might…
Trust that the answer is around the corner.
I spent most of this week enormously stressed out about an Impossible-To-Solve Problem, and agonizing over the pain of not being able to resolve it.
Then I went to Seaside, and the ocean cleared everything up, as it does. And suddenly there was completely unexpected intel that meant the Impossible-To-Solve Problem was not in fact a problem.
So. Yeah. I want to remember this the next time I am turning things into Problems.
Also my big clue this week was that what I think is an impasse is actually a riddle, and that is something I would like to remember as well.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- A cold and stomach flu at the same time? Are you kidding me? A breath for how not fun this was, and for patience and presence.
- But wait, you say, stomach flu and a cold on your birthday, Havi Bell? That sucks! Yes, I know. A breath for timing.
- But wait Havi, you say again, did you not just spend the past month incapacitated due to that hellish virus followed immediately by the ankle sprain that would not heal, and now you get a cold and a stomach flu? Yup, that’s what happened A breath for the intense frustration of that.
- Way more work to be done than I have time/energy/capacity to do it in. A breath for wanting a new way.
- Due to all of the above items, my body did not get to do the fun things or the dancing things this week. A breath for missing and craving.
- Trying to feel at home in my body. I know this is just….the work of life, especially in our distortion-filled culture. This week I was in my stuff about this. A breath for releasing things that are not mine.
- I had a nightmare of a certain type/flavor that I have not had in a very, very long time, and thought I might be done with. Nope, not done. A breath for the distress of Middle-of-the-Night-Me.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- You know what? Illness aside (or even included), this has been a lovely birthday. It has also been the first actually lovely birthday in at least eighteen years. So I’m going to say we have officially ended my run of Terrible Depressing Birthdays. That’s pretty big. A breath for delight, and for seeing the good.
- Last weekend was Rose City Swing, and while I wasn’t really able to dance, I was able to walk through three dance workshops where I learned all kinds of fascinating things. A breath for learning and enjoying.
- The Floop, my private community for practice, has set sail. Year 6 in this grand experiment. I feel delighted and peaceful about this group and this year. A breath for play and for process, and the magic that emerges.
- The Spy and I went to Seaside, where all the best things happened. I talked to the ocean. I got quiet. A breath for the beautiful thing that is getting quiet.
- Seaside was wonderfully stormy: I stayed inside while the waves crashed and the winds rattled the inn, listening to the rain. I took long baths and sweet naps, and wrote to my heart’s content. A breath for the just-right thing.
- A perfect simple solution revealed itself quickly and easily. What do you know. A breath for trust.
- I asked Incoming Me, who already knows all about the year of 37, to give me 37 clues or pieces of advice. Mind: blown! A breath for useful intel.
- I feel so fortunate to have so many wise, kind, loving, playful, creative, curious, sweet appreciation-filled people in my life. Thank you for friends, colleagues, the lovely people who hang out here. A breath for being filled with appreciation.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was progress with a certain Big Idea that doesn’t have a name yet. Yes! WHAM BOOM.
Next week? More decorating for Operation Say Everything Twice. Continued stone skipping to learn about Operation Houston It Is The Vicar.
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
The power of asking the right questions, in the right…I want to say tone, but since I don’t speak, it isn’t really that. With the right emphasis? In the right manner? I asked questions in such a way as to elicit great answers, from myself and from others.
Superpowers I want.
The power of perfect simple solutions everywhere, to the point that it is just hilarious how plentiful, perfect and simple they are.
Salve. The Salve of Appreciation.
When you partake of this salve, you see all the small things. What is right, and not what is missing. You notice the way someone set out a spoon for you, with a little spark in your thank-you heart. And you feel appreciated: as if you secretly know that each spoon you set out is also noticed and thanked. This salve smells like springtime and it just melts into your life.
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is angry German metal. The band comes from Richard, it is called Scheissmoodle, and actually it is just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.
Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. #9825;
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
The I’s have it.
A toast!
Here are the things I toast to.
To Integration, the best I word ever. Get it? Haha, yes. To integrating all the aspects of me. My self and my selves.
To the Is. My self and my selves. The Is and the Eyes.
To intel and the receiving of intel, because we are also spies.
To Isis. Isis oh Isis you mystical child.
Interesting…..
A toast to interest — double-meaning? triple-meaning? — and to keeping it interesting.
A toast to being an International Woman of Mystery, as my job.
To Investigations!
To Internal Investigations, the best kind, the practice of self-fluency.
And internal affairs, but in the sense of having an affair with myself….mmmmm….secret rendezvous commencing in five.
And to iguanas, may they be speedily dispatched and/or transformed.
Intensity…..
A toast to intensity, to passion, to a shared Moment of wild wondering.
A toast to isosceles, an impossibly sexy word, thanks to Italo Calvion ….
A toast to things that are impossibly sexy, and just plain impossible.
A toast to imagining.
A toast to Intuition.
Interiors…
A toast to interiors. And to Interior Design, in the sense of changing your internal space.
To Immunity. And a healthy immune system.
To being undercover, also known as…Incognito!
To Inigo Montoya, who knows exactly what he wants. To knowing exactly what I want.
To Innocence, in the sense of newness: pure and full of curiosity.
To Incandescence, and things that shine in remarkable ways.
To Intrigue, and to being intriguing.
Issuing…
A toast to proclamations being issued, and things being issued forth: born, delivered.
To Insight, may it reveal what needs to be revealed, or what is already known but not acknowledged.
To feeling Industrious, those magical periods of doing.
To Inspiration: spark-spark.
To Illumination: may everything be illuminated.
To all things inward and turning inward. The process of Into, which is the process of Becoming.
To Iris, a flower and an Eye which is an I.
To Illustrating, showing and drawing, making real.
To Inventing and inventions, creative play.
To Illusion (sometimes play, sometimes maya), and the ability at certain moments to see through it.
Irreverence…
A toast to Irreverence, to playfulness and fun, to undoing facades.
To Instinct, may I always trust and listen. Na’aseh v’nishma.
To Impulses, bursts of knowing and sensation.
To being impulsive.
To Improvising.
To the Internalship, the writing I am doing about self-fluency.
To Integrity.
To Information, to everything we don’t know yet.
Information is also, as Agent Anna pointed out at Rally, In Formation, like the Rockettes. Or birds. Or things that are not yet formed and are in the process of being formed. Being formed. It is a superpower.
To everything that is being formed.
The I’s Have it.
The Is and the Eyes and the Ayes.
A toast! To the Letter I. May it be so. And: come play.
Thank you, letter I. It was so much fun to play with you at Rally (Rally!) during the week of Rally I, which was also the 35th Rally, I believe.
There are so many delicious I-words, each one a world unto itself. Endless superpowers, I can feel them.
If you want to whisper words or sound effects that start with I, go for it.
If you want to share in any of the qualities and magical words I named here, you can.
They work like the salves in the Friday Chicken: just take some, there is always more.
Whispering loving spells that begin with I, for myself, and for anyone who wants…
Wish #243: It has to do with entering and strength….
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
At the very least, useful noticings about my relationship with wanting. It all counts.
♡
What do I want?
It has to do with entering, and all the forms of entering that are currently going on for me.
And it has to do with strength.
Strength: also in a variety pack. Lots of kinds of strength.
What do I want?
Looking at all the things I am in the process of entering this week…
Entering my birthday.
Entering the year of being 37, and everything that brings.
Entering a brief chrysalis (running away to write) at the ocean. Oh, beautiful Pacific. Oh, Oregon coast.
Entering the new Floop, my private online space for practicing the stuff I write about here on the blog, which set sail over the weekend. Year 6 of this ever-changing wild experiment: always an adventure, always new and different.
Entering new configurations with the Spy Who Loves Me. Entering an exit? Exiting an old thing into a new thing? Or is it just exiting? None of this is clear yet, the only thing I know is that this is new territory, whatever it turns out to be, and I am entering it.
Entering the anniversary of my divorce, always more of a thing than I think it will be…
Entering a new relationship with dance, now that — tfu tfu tfu, spit three times, knock on wood — I am reasonably healthy again, after a month of not being able to be in movement. Entering a life that is full of movement. Devoted to. Devotion.
Entering March, the month I am sliding into on one foot. Literally, thanks to sprained ankle. And also the feeling of sliding: like the way Chris taught a variation in west coast swing. Pressure — not a lot but it’s there — in big toe and the very top of the ball of the foot. That’s it.
You place it just so, without letting any of the rest of your foot touch the floor, with the pitch of your body slightly forward, and then you remove the other foot from the ground and lift off and sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide. Hello, march. No marching for me. Just sliding. Which has to do with strength…
What do I want?
I want to be thinking about how I am entering, how I want to be entering.
To come in with intention, presence, pause, breath, a compass.
I am, conveniently, facing north right now. So let’s have north be a breath of strength.
Northeast: a breath for Kindness. I want to enter with kindness. So much kindness.
East: a breath for Ease. I want to enter with ease. Easy sliding.
Southeast: a breath for All Timing Is Right Timing, otherwise known as Trust.
South: breathing Grounding, in and out. Grounded entry. Grounding in entering.
Southwest: a breath for Pleasure. I will find pleasure in entering with strength.
West: a breath for Glowing. All the beacons and lighthouses activating for this entry.
And northwest is for Resonance. Bells and being a bell. Breathing a bell.
What do I want?
The salve in the Fluent Self calendar — the Year of Salves — is the salve of Strength.
With the superpower of seeing the strengths you already have.
I would like some of that, please. And I would like specifically like to see and recognize the strengths I have that will help me with this entering.
What do I want?
This is still related to my wish about letting go. Letting go in order to enter. Letting go in order to see my strengths.
What do I want?
Support, companionship, laughter, playfulness, lightheartedness, delight.
So that these concepts of [Entry] and [Strength] become less heavy, more accessible.
Ahhhh, of course, this has to do with my secret project of Waltzing My Words Into The Light. Yes.
What do I want?
To take pleasure in this week. To enjoy each drop of sweetness.
To be deeply present in the parts where I can’t access the sweetness.
What do I want?
I want to dance my way through, laughing happily. And to remember that I can’t do this wrong. I’ve already set up the frame: entry and strength.
Whatever emerges is held by that. Held. Another wish. It is enough that I have drawn attention to how I want to be in it. That’s what entering is. There is nothing I have to do, or say or become. This is enough.
Anything else coming up? Where do I want to start?
I have to follow my instincts. There is nothing more important than this. When Incoming Me says, go downstairs and turn the lights on, I do it. Like that. She’s right.
And I want to play “What’s in the bag?”
What are the qualities of my wish?
Well, I think the compass I came up with expresses this perfectly. Maybe I’ll combine it with last week’s too:
Presence. Trust. Pleasure. Play. Breathing. Patience. Wellness. Reverberation.
Clues?
I have been feeling unbearably frustrated over the past weeks about a [Situation] that seems like an impasse.
And then suddenly I realized that it is not an impasse. It is a RIDDLE, which is different than an impasse. Even if not being able to solve it feels like an impasse. It is different. It requires different things.
A riddle asks me to use my whole brain, to think creatively and playfully, to look for exceptions, to look under things, to re-examine my expectations.
A riddle is useful. I can work with this.
What else do I want?
Seeds planted without explanation, a mix of secret agent code and silent retreat dreams. Things I’m working on, or might be, someday…
- Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere.
- I go out dancing at the ballroom.
- This doesn’t require my input!
- Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS
- I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- Hawaii.
- I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things and it is not even a big deal, and I still get sparklepoints, yay.
- This week’s ops: more progress on Saying Everything Twice (Saying Everything Twice!), and writing about whatever I want. 37, baby.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka release disperse release disperse… My wish had to do with the specific way that I need to release things, which is through MOVEMENT.
I did a ton of deleting and reorganizing, moving things that are not my body while still getting a whoosh of energetic movement. Very slow Old Turkish Lady Yoga in tiny increments. Changed things up in my internal video game.
And now I am moving again, and everything is moving again.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.
Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. #9825;
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play.
Let’s throw things in the pot! And: Amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
xox
Friday Chicken #292: under the surface
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
REMINDER…
It ends Sunday night! Operation SUSTENANCE. Password: fredastaire
What worked?
Congruencing
The thing that nearly always happens after Rally…
No matter what my mysterious Rally project turns out to be, it invariably reveals all sorts of areas of my life that are not congruent with how I want to be living.
And then during the weeks after Rally, stuff has to move around. It actually starts moving itself around. Insistently!
Organizing and reordering happens. There are reconfigurations. Of small things like sock drawers, and larger things like my relationship with time, or with people.
Sometimes a fit of congruencing — making the necessary shifts, changes and adjustments — is invigorating, and sometimes I fight it.
This week I was able to just recognize it for what it is: ah, yes, I’m congruencing. Like scratching an itch. I let it feel good. Yes, everything is moving and being moved. Yes, this is hugely important.
Next time I might…
Look at the almanac.
The Alamanac is for notes about how I tend to react to different parts of the year.
It tells me how I like to celebrate the various Holy Days Of Havi Bell, which days I need to hide, when I am most likely to fall apart.
This week I was down about everything. Everything.
Until it hit me: this is my annual week before birthday slump. I can experience it as an Existential Fit Of Hating Everything, or I can experience it as Useful Intel Thanks To Heightened Awareness About What I Want And What Isn’t Working.
Turns out I have lots of notes about this, as well as about how to take care of myself while I’m in it. Almanac! And maybe a pop-up reminder on my phone?
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- This week was straight-up miserable, both for me and pretty much everyone I know. Blame mercury in retrograde, blame whatever you want. A breath for waiting this out.
- OHMYGOD. My neighbors decided Wednesday was a good day for two chainsaws and a wood chipper. The noise was unbearable. I am wildly HSP and can’t handle loud noises. I couldn’t leave the house because of my sprained ankle, and my housemate was out running errands in the car, so there was no escaping. I basically just curled up in a ball under a pile of blankets and cried all day, and then when it was over I cried some more because it was still loud and jangly inside of me. A breath for the pain of this.
- Working impossible hours trying to get everything ready for the Floop launch. Dry Dock is always rough — and busy, and this year I cut it in half to give everyone an extra two weeks on the Floop. The software upgrade is a nightmare, but only one of many. Too much to do, too many decisions to make, everything breaking. Richard was up until 2am tearing his hair out. The usual. A breath for patience.
- The ballroom and the Fluent Self and the Floop and Rally and writing. It is too many jobs for one person. A breath for solutions.
- Got some financial news that is on the one hand terrible, and on the other hand, the least terrible financial news of the past [period of everything sucks, aka the last two years]. We high-fived. We high-fived about terrible news. Because it was better than it has been. So depressing. A breath for sustenance.
- Thanks to the virus from hell and then my sprained ankle, I have been completely sedentary for TWENTY FOUR of the past thirty days. Movement is my sanity. And I have missed all the dance workshops I have been looking forward to all winter. If I can’t dance soon, I might explode. A breath for every aspect of this.
- There is more of me now, in the sense that I am visibly larger than I was thirty days ago (see above), and I cannot fit into any of my clothes, and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow night, and each of these things is disproportionately frustrating for me right now. A breath for this too.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- A long talk with TJ about a mission dear to my heart. A breath for confluence and for sparks of ideas.
- Against all odds (and despite everything going ridiculously wrong), the Floop is ready. The new design is beautiful, the new boards delight me, everything feels right, and I am proud of what we built. A breath for about to embark!!!
- The spy who loves me kept me company during the hard, reminded me to go have a yoga and Love The Ground, brought sweetness to the scary. A breath for comfort, for being adored, and for Loving The Ground.
- I am enormously happy about the 25,000 words I wrote for Operation Say Everything Twice. Those of you in last year’s Year of Emptying & Replenishing, and in this year’s incoming Year of Emerging & Receiving, will get to read it soon! A breath for the beautiful thing that is process.
- The shellbacks (the graduates from my 2012 Crossing the Line retreat). So much love and appreciation. A breath for companions in deep internal voyaging.
- I’m doing the best I can. A breath for trusting, deeply, that nothing is wrong, even as I walk through some hard places.
- Last night I walked TEN WHOLE BLOCKS, which is SEVEN MORE BLOCKS than I could the day before. I am healing. I am getting there. A breath for this.
- Two sweet letters from my mother, postcards from Agent Prairie Blue and my favorite uncle and my father. My red flannel hot water bottle from Germany is, still, the most magical thing. I have the most amazing friends. Also: Patsy Cline! A breath for everything that is good, everything worth appreciating, so much.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was to let go of the three ops-in-progress and back-burner them, and then start over with Operation Say Everything Twice. Not only did I start over, I am almost done! WHAM! BOOM!
Next week? Probably a ton of Editing (whoops I mean, Decorating) Everything Twice, and also to skip more stones regarding Operation Houston It Is The Vicar.
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
The powers of Nesting and of Releasing Through Words.
Superpowers I want.
The powers of Remembering That Shit Is Not About Me, of Saying Thank You Twice, and easy letting go.
Salve. The Salve of Readying Under The Surface.
This is the salve for Winter, also known as the salve of rest, the salve I need to remember when I have a sprained ankle, or when it is cold and dark out, as it is here.
Instead of trying to describe it, I will give you this poem by N.P. Van Wyk Louw. Thank you, The Living Chicken (Agent!) for pointing me here, and thank you, Eleanor for reminding me how much I need to remember this.
The earth now lies through nights drenched
in the still dark benediction of the rain
and dusky houses and branches stand out bleak
each day in mist, in white, and in the rustling wet.
All, all is rich and restful, with heavy
and secret and rich growth finding its way
through warm soil to every leaf and shoot
and binding everything – near, far – mysteriously
with moisture, fruitfulness, and great desire
– till one clear afternoon suddenly we see
the glistening grass, the tenderly rising grain
and know that life is served by rest.
How could I ever have thought of summer
as richer than this season’s mystery?– N.P. Van Wyk Louw (South Africa, 1906-1970)
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band plays zydeco hip hop fusion. The band comes via Kathleen, it is called It Will Think Up A Z, and actually it is just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
You guys! THIS WEEKEND is your last chance to get cool stuff from our sail/sale, because it ends this Sunday.
We only have a few calendars left….and the Floop (my private online community of agents, entering its 6th new year) begins this weekend. So we are closing out Operation Sustenance, this is the last chance to get stuff this year.
To get cool stuff and/or read about the cool stuff: https://fluentself.com//sustenance
PASSWORD: fredastaire
You can join any of the ops through Sunday night when we shut it down.
If this is the time, much rejoicing! And if not, I trust that we will play together some other time, and I am invoking the superpower of All Timing Is Right Timing.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
Let’s end this story about Who Is A Writer.
I was reading a piece and the writer mentioned she’d stopped writing during [hard life thing], and how she needs to start again, because that’s what writers do in order to be writers, she said.
Many words bubbling up in response. They must wait. And at the same time, this cannot wait:
The states of in-between, those times in which we are engaged in not-writing, let us not use these as monster-evidence in support of a fear-driven theory that we are not actually writers. Of course we are.
Writers who do not happen to be writing, well, that is a very writer-ey sort of thing to go through, and it doesn’t change who we are. We are still writers, still and always.
Beware the dangerous myth, that is what I want to say…
Beware of “That’s how you know you’re a writer, because you write.”
It exists everywhere, it is beloved by monsters, and — like so many things that are not true — it is partially true.
That is one way to know that you are a writer: writing. If it works for you and it helps you have a more harmonious relationship with your craft, it’s a blessing, enjoy.
There are also other options.
Other ways to know you are a writer…
If you find yourself avoiding writing, even though you care about it tremendously.
Or you allow yourself to do other things, intentionally following the rabbit holes, trusting the process that is growing your writing under the surface.
You tell stories in your head, describing moments and elements, playing with process.
Or you delight in words, their lusciousness, their aliveness.
Maybe you like playing with forms, when they are presented to you. (Or you don’t like them, and feel strongly about that, and have to go journal about it!). What are forms? Like stone skipping, one of my favorites. Or this beautiful thing where you write what you notice: my toes lifting up in a little dance.
If you feel conflicted about writing.
For sure you are a writer if you feel conflicted about it. Double-for-sure (extra points!) if you pretend that you are not a writer and/or won’t admit to it…
So many ways to know. Doubt is a clue that you care, not a sign that you don’t get to be what you already are.
Writing, like so much of life, often needs time to emerge.
From a writer I know:
Truth of life. Things can take time to emerge, and we don’t always know how long (or how miraculously quickly, in some cases) that will be.
So we think we’re procrastinating when actually what is happening is percolating.
We think we are late or behind or not good enough or avoiding, when actually we are emerging. The thing that is coming is emerging.
I wrote that.
And even if — for some unknowable reason — I never write another word again, I will not stop being a writer. I cannot, because I wrote that, and it is truth.
We forget about truth.
We forget about truth, and this is dangerous. We hurt ourselves with un-truth.
We set up traps for ourselves: “I’m not a real X, because I’m not doing Y.” Or: “I’ll never be able to Y until I pass all these external standards.”
No. You are a writer if you grapple with these questions. You are a writer if you doubt. You are a writer if you care, even if sometimes you care so much that your tangled relationship with not-writing keeps you in bed crying. You are a writer if you yearn for something and don’t have the words to describe it yet.
There are many ways to know you are a writer, and doubting it is something writers go through, so let’s drop this pain-heavy rule that you must be writing now in order to claim that lost part of you.
That isn’t how it works, it isn’t helpful, and it isn’t the loving spark of truth. Sometimes writing lives in the spaces in between the words. Sometimes the process of not-writing is how you get quiet enough to return to it. Blame about the not-writing make this harder.
Let’s not perpetuate that. Let’s not tell these stories anymore. Let’s not pretend that ASS IN CHAIR is the only answer.
Let’s end it here and now. With love.
With love.
I have a heart full of love for everyone in these states of in-between which I have inhabited so many times and will continue to inhabit, because, as far as I’m concerned, they are part of the creative process.
In my experience, permission and legitimacy help whatever is growing beneath the ground reach the surface.
You are a writer. You are. Whether you are writing or between writing, or intentionally choosing some not-writing which will ready the ground for whatever words are coming next.
I am glowing sweetness (I wrote “sweetnessing”, which should be a word, maybe like a warm witnessing?) for everyone visiting these states of in-between. Seeding endless trust for your process, your writing and whatever is in the not-writing, may it reveal itself to be treasure.
Commenting, and footnotes.
I treasure this incredibly rare thing that we have here that is safe online space to play:
We take care of ourselves and we take responsibility for our Stuff when it comes up. We remember that people vary. We do not tell each other what to do or how to feel. We are kind. We are on permanent vacation from advice-giving and care-taking.
I am receptive to hearts, sparks sparked for you, words you want to share on the topic of compassion for our not-writing selves in our periods of not-writing, or about claiming the writer identity with love.
And if writing is not your [thing you have a possibly-passionate, possibly-troubled relationship with], substitute painting, lindy hop, embroidery, Appalachian clogging or whatever might fit for you….
Love, as always, to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers, and everyone who reads.