Things That Have Inspired Me Lately

Any creative process requires getting out of the chair and interacting with the world somehow.

Hi, it’s me.

Wow, thank you for your generous feedback and comments about last week’s draft memoir excerpt, both in the comments and in the emails, texts, and IRL conversations throughout the week. I’m energized by the fact that I’ve been hearing from a diverse range of readers who are getting something out of my stories, such as:

• parents of adults

• godparents

• folks without children

• parents of tweens

• parents of young kids

• parents connected to the church

• ex-vangelicals

• people who can handle my shits and fucks

• men who are dads

• men who are not dads

• parents of kids getting ready to launch

Thanks to all of you for contributing your perspective. I’m taking it all in and using it to help shape the story.

Today I’m sharing a little of what I’m absorbing behind-the-scenes that helps fuel my creativity. Any creative process requires getting out of the chair and interacting with the world somehow. Going for a walk, joining writing groups, reading books, listening to podcasts, etc. We can’t create new things out of a vacuum. We need to be mindful of filling up our creative reservoirs.

Multi-genre Inspiration

I went to my first writer’s retreat in November, which I wrote about here. One of the things I loved about this retreat was that the four teaching artists were from different writing genres: fiction, memoir, song writing, and poetry. In the past, they’ve had screen writers and editors, among others. Even though I’m strongly in the personal narrative category, I learned something from each session that applied to my project directly or to my writing process in general.

• From Tiffany Harrison, author of the novel, Blue Hour, I gained ideas for how to draw out my character’s emotions and personality (that’s me, I’m the character in my own story). When I’m writing a scene, I learned to take a moment to ask myself a few questions: What is my character feeling in this moment? What does her skin feel like? Her breathing? How is she holding her body? What does she hear around her? etc. For example, a few weeks later as I read the novel Lessons In Chemistry, I noted the main character, Elizabeth, “Gathering her hair in both hands, she wound it twice before placing it in a knot on top of her head. Then she secured it with her pencil.” This is a small indication of the character’s personality.

• From Kristi Coulter, author of the memoir, Exit Interview, I learned to write my memoir scene by scene, like a novel. Too much summary and reflection feels like someone telling you the plot of a movie you haven’t seen, and pretty soon you start to lose interest. I default to summary and reflection, so this was helpful to reset my writing direction. Kristi also reminded me that the first draft is mostly for “collecting material.” She didn’t worry too much about making a shape out of her story until the fourth draft when she finally made an outline and a list of what needed to be added or changed.

• From Adele Barclay, author of a poetry collection called, If I Were In a Cage I’d Reach Out For You, I practiced writing a poem to someone to help me define my voice and develop a familiar and intimate tone.

• From Tito Ramsey, singer-songwriter and frontman for the band Legs, I practiced listening to the sounds around me that can tell whole stories. We wrote personal sound histories, and mine included things like “loons crying on Spoon Lake,” “my mom’s teaching voice in a room full of 3-year-olds,” and “the metal screen door slamming when someone comes home.”

Adele Barclay teaching at Write Doe Bay, November 2023 (plus me on the left).

(Photo above by Chase Anderson)

Studying the Creative Process

My favorite podcast about the creative process is Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. As a writer, and in the spirit of cross-genre inspiration, I love hearing how musicians create their music — the actual process of writing a song and producing the sound. Even if I don’t know or like a particular song, I always get something out of an episode.

What I love about songwriting in particular is how collaborative it can be. Lyrics and sound can come together serendipitously through a jam session, through experimentation, through fucking around and finding out with other song writers, instrumentalists, or producers.

I think this dynamic is why I love sharing pieces of my in-progress memoir with you. We may not be in the same room together, but my ideas are bouncing off your ideas and our jam session is helping me shape the story.

Mapping out my chapters on the back of my office door.

Recently I was listening to this Song Exploder episode featuring Kiss From a Rose, by Seal. In it, Seal talks about the process of writing and producing the song for his second album. It topped the charts at #60, then dropped to #80. DJs weren’t playing it, so nobody heard it, and he was discouraged.

Later, it was used for the end credits of the Batman Forever movie. More people heard it, the song rose to the top of the charts, and it won a Grammy for Single of the Year.

“It was always a great record.” Seal said on the podcast. “The only difference is that people got to hear it. You know, there’s a lot of luck involved. You do need that luck, that windfall. [They] found a way to get that song heard.”

I’ve struggled with the idea that luck is involved, that I can be good at something but skill or talent might not be enough to make a breakthrough. We also need opportunity. A lucky break. A serendipitous encounter with the right person who can help us take it further. I’ve always referred to this as throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. But even better, I love how

Amanda B. Hinton

writes about it in her newsletter, The Editing Spectrum. She says luck needs a place to land:

What if Luck is like … an invisible spaceship? And it’s just looking for a place to settle in for a pit stop?

If Luck is roaming the Earth with no particular aim, I realized that I had not done any of the work to offer it a place to land. All these years, I had been angry that Luck wasn’t landing in the field of my fitful writing habits and self doubts, when perhaps Luck was hovering, like, “Give me a landing spot, lady.”

I don’t think I’ve ever related to something more than this, career-wise. I used to assume other people were better than me at Making Things Happen. But the idea of luck needing a landing place reframed my thinking away from a random helplessness (throwing spaghetti and waiting to see what happens) toward self confidence and strategic planning (creating more and bigger landing pads to welcome Alien Luck Spaceships).

Seal continues this theme in the Song Exploder podcast:

“I was broke, I was struggling to be heard. Trevor was the one guy who not only heard me, but who knew what to do with my voice. I can’t emphasis enough the importance of finding that one person who sees you and hears you. Who gets you. I think it’s a good song, but it’s a great record. And that’s not to do with me, that’s to do with Trevor and the people who put that record together.”

In hearing Seal tell the story, I notice that luck landed twice for him — once when Trevor, a producer, heard the raw song and saw its potential, and a second time when a movie director fished the song out of obscurity to use in his blockbuster movie. But as he said so confidently, “It was always a great record.”

Similarly, I have the confidence to know I’m a good writer, but I haven’t done all I can do to get my writing out into the world. I haven’t done all I can do to edit and polish and get even better. I’ve allowed myself to be isolated.

All that is changing, now. I’m saying out loud to you and anyone with ears that I’m writing a book. I’m scheduling time to write. I’m taking myself on writing retreats. I’m sharing my work in writer’s groups and sharing some here with you. I set a deadline to finish my first draft by April. I’m giving luck a place to land!

Here I am, ready to welcome all the Alien Luck Spaceships:

Thanks for being here, for reading, and for building the landing pad with me.

• What are some of your creative inspirations?

• How has luck visited you and carried your hard work forward?

Would love to hear from you in the comments.

Until next time,

Jen

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News + Notes 🌼

The writing retreat I went on in November is hosting another retreat in April. If you’re in the area or want to make a trip of it, you can find more information and register here (link). I’ll be there!

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Here’s the post I wrote about my experience:

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And here’s a post I wrote about some of the activities we did: