lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

jack-o-lantern
Jack by Liz Shine

So often what keeps us from showing up fully for our creative work is fear. What kind of writer would I be if I had been bolder, sooner?

I was perhaps timid by nature as a child. I’ve heard conflicting reports. For sure, experience finished the job. My parents split when I was two, and I rarely saw my dad after that. Mom loved us with all the song and dance of the musicals she also loved, hooking us with one arm to squeeze us tight, singing us love songs. All her emotions came out big. Quick to anger, she’d give a pinch or pull a braid before you even noticed her mood had changed. She was like those waves that seem to rise out of nowhere, tower over the rest. Then I had a stepfather no one even wants to hear about. The moment the story gets to the creaking down in the middle of the night or the belt-beating, the audience gets quiet, turns away. No one really wants to hear your abuse story. The only ones that make it through wrap themselves in the cloak of narrative invention. Considering the statistics, the conversation should not be taboo, but it is, which only adds to the shame for survivors. But oh, how we love a happily ever after! And we are still suckers for the story of the guy who seemed like a jerk at first, then turned out to be a soulmate. I fell for that one too. Took fifteen years of tiptoeing around his addiction and emotional abuse to finally break into a fresh storyline.

And still I kept writing through it all. From the moment I penned my first terrible poem as a teen, I would not stop trying to find my way with words. I brought my pages to writers’ groups who asked, “Why is she (main character) so spineless? You need to give her some strength or the reader won’t care.” I tried to say she would get there; it would take some narrative time.

For over thirty years I’ve been trying to get this right, been trying to write the stories that to me are true, say something about who we are, who we ought to be. I often feel like I am a language others don’t understand, and I’ve struggled with that. I think that’s how it must always feel to try to write something true.

I hope by now it’s obvious that I am really writing about art and fear, how the act of writing (or any art) requires a willingness toward vulnerability and change. When you’ve spent a good chunk of your life not feeling safe or heard, facing that fear and exposing your whole heart requires you to step into the water and become that big wave. To do so even though it will dissemble you and you will never be the same. To do so over and over again.

I wanted to write about fear in the month we celebrate it as a culture. The month when we hang ghosts from the trees, put gravestones out on the lawn. I also wanted to write about fear because I’m on a braver path right now, and I want to stay emboldened through the act of moving it from brain to pen to page, an act that is its own kind of exorcism.

I did promise a couple of newsletters ago that I would share the slideshow I made for the writing workshop I taught at the Breitenbush yoga retreat I went on last month. Here it is. The theme of the retreat was Embrace Elemental Harmony, so I based all the prompts on the five elements. If you give it a try, let me know how it went for you!

My book (It Might Look Like Disaster ) that has been in the making for over a decade is a finalist for the Mainstream Literary Contest at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference this weekend. Considering the finalist status, I decided to conquer a fear and sign up for a pitch block, so this week I am working on memorizing my ninety-second pitch. The thing I am struggling with the most on that is how to make my voice sound natural and not pinched and unnatural. Any tips? Thanks to my critique group for helping me refine the language last Sunday afternoon. Writers groups can also be scary, but boy do you learn from them and laugh with them. Don’t have one? Get one! Not sure how? DM me, and I’ll brainstorm some ideas with you.

Speaking of groups, I joined another one. This one happens to be an accountability group through Olympia’s new writing studio downtown called OlyPages. They have several groups and workshops you might be interested if you live in Olympia. Having people I will meet with in person every three weeks and writing my goals in a formal contract have more than doubled my daily word count.

What I’m saying to you in the month of ghouls and goblins is, feel the fear and do it anyway. These monsters are just costumes we dress our thoughts up in. They are the ghosts that feed on our worries and our wounds.

The title this month comes from the poem “The Conditional” by Ada Limon. Read it here.

Small Things That Have Been Bringing Me Joy

  • TaiChi class on Monday nights at the Soul Healing Center. I am terrible and the slowest learner, but it is teaching me to relax and slow my roll.
  • Bagel Friday! Still.
  • Grooving to songs off my ‘Liked’ list on YouTube music while I cook. Still.
  • My book groups.
  • The fall colors!
  • Tracking the moon and taking a moment when it is full or new to reflect and assess.
  • Watching all the Seattle Arts and Lectures I can. We have a subscription.
  • Getting books in the mail from our SAL subscription. They come at different times, so it feels a bit like it’s raining books!

Found Sentences from What I’ve Been Reading

“Afternoon lay in a coma in the street, like a woman recently loved.” Soldier’s Pay by William Faulkner

Books I Read in September (One sentence review)

The school year hit hard and slowed me down, plus I’m almost done with about four books, but here’s what I actually finished in September:

Why Students Don’t Like School by Daniel T. Willingham: Worth the read, but it was more science than I expected, and I wanted more philosophy than my science teacher friend who also read it—go figure.

The Slicks by Maggie Nelson: A slim bound essay by the talented Maggie Nelson that looks at how Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath both unabashedly sought fame and how we as a culture tend to see women who pursue that sort of recognition.

Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser: This goes on my list of books I should read every year and was a new poet to me, so—yay!

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead: Stunning integration of history and race issues into what on the surface is a crime drama.

A Writing Prompt for October

Write something you’ve been hesitant to write for fear of not getting it right or hurting someone’s feelings or any thought that have kept you from the work. Even if you just write it for yourself.

October/November Goals Goals

  • Follow my writing contract at least 80/20
  • 40,000 wc on my WIP by 11/30
  • Three submissions per week every Sunday

Reflection Question for Your Creative Practice

In what ways is fear getting in the way of your work?

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. I was a writer first, but I’ve been teaching now for over twenty-five years. Coaching weaves those two skill sets in a way that I love, love, love. I work with writers locally and over Zoom. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com or see my website.

You can see my books here and read some of my short works here.

Looking for any of the books I’ve mentioned here? Order through my Bookshop.org affiliate page to support me and my local bookstore!

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.