I’d like to make a confession. On Sunday mornings, I sit in church internally spinning out a reactive, biting critique of the service, how hollow and performative it is, how the sermons charge us to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly without ever addressing how, feeling mightily superior about the vibrancy of my prayer […]
Creative Bypassing: Grist for the Mill Read More »
Unsurprisingly, these days I’ve been pondering the word “release”. Prisoners are released from jail, butterflies are released from cocoons, classified documents are released to the public, singers release their latest albums, and when we weep or rage we release emotions. My favorite definition of release is “to allow something to move, act, or flow freely”;
When the Creative Beaver Dam Bursts Read More »
In preparing to launch The Release this October, I’m dizzied by the ironies of releasing a book about releasing creative work. If ever there were an opportunity to heed my own advice! So between now and then I thought I’d share some excerpts, in part to give you a foretaste but mostly to remind myself. The Release shares spiritual
This Queer Divine Dissatisfaction Read More »
On a weekly basis, one client or another will tell me, “If I wind up on my deathbed without finishing this project, I’m seriously going to regret it.” This population of writers is, admittedly, peculiar; they share an intense enough degree of passion, compulsion, or vocation about writing to pay me good money. Or perhaps they seek
A few years ago I submitted an essay to an anthology of queer Minnesotan writing. I called it “Wearing Bi-Focals” because it explored bisexuality as a lens much as my progressive lenses help my eyes integrate what’s near with what’s far. I sent the essay out and promptly forgot about it. Six months later the
Flourishing in Creativity’s Gift Economy Read More »
My family occasionally prays down by the Mississippi River with the Nibi walkers, a group of Indigenous women and other water-tenders. Water is life, so we plant our feet in the sand and offer thanks. One morning, the Anishinaabe elder Sharon Day translated her prayer for us: “Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou, have pity on us.”
With some regularity I’m overtaken by timely, pretty-darn-good (I almost wrote “brilliant”) inspirations bursting with agency—that I don’t want to heed. The first time this happened, I’d submitted my MFA essay to the editor of my memoir, hoping she’d publish it as an afterword. “The memoir should stand on its own,” she insisted. “Why don’t
The Sly Muse’s Guises Read More »
For years I’ve practiced strange medicine, resting my ear on the body of whatever story I happen to be writing. Is it alive? If so, what does it want to become? Even though we play a part in generating them, stories have heartbeats all their own. Once the draft is out, I listen beyond my
We’re in the throes of deep revision and the only way out is through.
Deep Dive into Chaos Read More »
What’s different now is that, after banging my head against the wall for a bit, I occasionally see the blessings of being thwarted. Whatever tiny openings I find release in me a fierce and focused effort and creative solutions that otherwise might not have been possible.
In Praise of Being Thwarted Read More »