Episodi
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This pod is usually focused on our personal relationships to our writing, and ways to rediscover and strengthen that alchemical creative connection. But this month, I’ve been thinking about the role other people can play in helping us sustain and carry our creative dreams.
It’s much easier to tap into the flow of creative alchemy if someone else is extending their own alchemical gaze onto you – a supportive gaze that can transform your ordinary self into someone capable of making artistic work with deep meaning.
The further away your ordinary self is from what’s generally considered “ordinary,” though... the more you usually lack carriers for your dream. And carrying it alone can leave your creative reserves stretched pretty thin.
Tune in to explore two ways you can change this state of affairs and access the crucial power of vision carrying in your writing life.
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Episode links:
Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen
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As a rule of thumb on this podcast, I try to keep things generally positive, since most of us have enough negativity in our creative lives. This month, though, I’m inviting you to take a little trip with me to the realm of evaluation, judgment, and yes, even snark.
But let’s be clear: I don’t mean snark directed against yourself. I’m talking about letting yourself just really, really hate something you’ve read that somebody else wrote. And here’s why:
Sometimes, it’s easier to learn from work we don’t like than from work we do like. Sometimes we need to indulge in a really deep “no” to get to an even deeper “yes.”
Let’s get into how to distill wisdom from snark – without being too much of an asshole.
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If your writing practice feels more like a doom spiral than a drafting process... join the newsletter circle to access the Creative Rescue Kit, a set of three easy-to-implement tools to help you reclaim your creative life.
You’ll also receive monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
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Episodi mancanti?
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(First things first: Thank you to thank Taylor Swift for releasing The Tortured Poets Department last month and thus making this episode kind of topical…)
We’re all way too familiar with the idea that emotional suffering or “madness” is the most powerful source of our creativity. It’s the cultural story that just won’t die. But today, I’m sharing a folklore-and-history-informed counter-narrative.
(Note that this is truly not even a lukewarm album take, Swifties do not come for me.)
In this narrative, it’s not madness we’re supposed to be seeking when we go out to the edge of ourselves in search of inspiration – it’s divine joy. The kind of joy that by its nature isn’t going to look or feel the way we’d expect it to, but that will bring us closer to our truest fates.
I think we have a duty to liberate our stories from the cult of the tortured artist. After all, we get to choose the lineages of our creative work. So if we don’t want to be the tortured poet… we don’t have to be.
Tune in to discover what the lineage of the inspired poet can offer us instead.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Cauldron of Poesy translations
P. L. Henry, 1980Liam Breatnach, 1981Erynn Rowan Laurie (non-academic)General historical references
H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2018/03/dead-mad-or-a-poet/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadair_Idris#Myths,_legends_and_popular_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Knockgrafton
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It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring persistence, writing endings is a technically difficult aspect of the craft, no matter what genre you’re writing.
But while getting to the end of a project is often excellent practice... I don’t think it’s actually always best to push through to the finish. Sometimes pushing through becomes a reinforcement of unhelpful craft habits, ways of approaching our stories that we’re ready to outgrow but don’t know how to yet.
How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?
I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Ever found yourself lying awake very late at night or very early in the morning wondering if you've missed your calling in life? I'm guessing most writers will be in the yes camp; we tend to be sensitive souls, primed by school and work and even religion to long for "the call" to a vocation of purpose and meaning.
I think our insomniac worries stem from a common cultural fallacy: ideas about having a calling are often conflated with having a career. And this reduction fundamentally confines our vision of what a vocation can be, who gets to have one, and what counts as valuable work.
But writing as a vocation follows an internal rubric of integrity, not an external one of success — which gives you the freedom to measure your creative life by its impact on your spirit, not by your job or your publishing credits.
Tune in to explore what makes vocation such a powerful idea for creatives, and how reclaiming it might shape your writing.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley
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You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:
Write every dayFinish as many projects as possibleNo exceptionsAnd maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely well-adjusted and reasonable guidance more times than you can count: Being a writer is awful. So if you’re able to walk away from your writing, you should—but if you’re too obsessed to quit, no matter how miserable you get, that’s how you know you’re the real deal.
That last nugget of wisdom scared me away from books on the writing life for years.
This month, I get honest about “failing” this classic (and ultimately unhelpful) advice. And I’m exploring how writing praxis can rescue your writing practice from becoming just a bunch of self-punishing rules spiraling inside a pit of despair.
Plus, I share the four key threads of much better guidance that I learned from finally binge-reading hundreds of pages of writing life advice from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and others.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin
“Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
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There’s a popular New Year meme about picking words to act as guideposts for the year. And in this first month of 2024, I’ve found myself reflecting on two sort of abstract terms I use to describe what I’m up to with this podcast: “visionary,” and “praxis.”
These terms are signifiers for the real core of what I’m grappling with here – the disconnect so many creatives experience between all the beautiful and transformative things we believe about creative craft in theory, and all the doubt and dismissiveness we often feel about our own work in reality.
Today I’m getting into what I’m actually saying when I say “visionary writers” or “visionary storytelling,” and why I think cultivating a visionary approach could free us from all of our creative hang-ups and blocks and neuroses, now and forever.
(I am clearly joking with that grandiose claim… but also, I’m kind of not?)
To kick off year two of the podcast, dive deep with me to discover what could be possible when we define true vision for ourselves and our stories.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
Walidah Imarisha
What is "Visionary Fiction"?: An Interview with Walidah Imarisha.
Books and other projects
Tyson Yunkaporta
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
For the Wild podcast: Tyson Yunkaporta on Inviolable Lore
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’Tis the season of wintertide celebrations, including the ritual of gift exchange... no matter how commercialized and un-ritualized that exchange might have become. But I promise this month’s episode is not an anti-consumption screed, because that’s kind of exhausting to listen to and I’d guess you can fill one in for yourself.
This winter solstice, at the darkest point of the year, I’m reflecting on how to claim our writing as a gift to and from creative mystery - and as a sacred gift to ourselves.
Darkness may not seem to have a lot to do with creative gifts. But writing is in some ways always the act of chasing an edge – the edge where what you’ve written meets what hasn’t been written yet, the story that’s still unmanifest. The story that’s in darkness.
Tune in to explore how embracing the mystery of the gift can tap you into a creative flow that replenishes your energy, and helps you boldly and generously share your own gifts with the world.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
The Gift, Lewis Hyde
Eye of the Heart Center
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The typical ways writers study and practice storytelling often encourage us to conflate “paying attention” to our craft with catching errors or imperfections.
We try to pay our best, most granular attention to the words on the page, in order to bring them closer to some standard of excellence. And at certain points during revision, there’s not actually anything wrong with that.
But when this type of attention seeps into your full drafting process, it messes up your ability to pay attention in ways that aren’t critical or catastrophic or hypervigilant. You can lose the ability to really be present with the story – to find the language that breathes.
This month, I’m exploring ways to pay attention as we write that can take us deeper into presence and relationship with our stories. Ways to write as a living, breathing, imagining storyteller, and not as our own worst critic.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
The Emerald podcast, Joshua Schrei
Ren+Spiritwork, Ren Zatopek
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When writers talk about story structure, we tend to conceptualize it in one of two ways:
As a set of almost mechanical instructions on how to put a story together “correctly”As an organic, intuitive outgrowth of the themes, symbols, and artistic devices within the storyBoth of these views on structure contain a bit of truth. But sticking too closely to either one can lead to sterile rigidity... or to endlessly drafting in beautiful circles with no final, functioning story in sight. (See also: being a “plotter” vs. a “pantser.”)
Ultimately, though, we made this dichotomy up. And if we shift our understanding of what role structure plays in storytelling, maybe we can make something up that works better, both for us and for our writing.
This month, I’m sharing my own working theory of how structure can lead to more creative freedom – and how that new freedom might break our deepest blocks around what makes a good story.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison
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How do we find our creative center, and how do we actually stay in it while we’re working?
It’s pretty easy to feel centered when a story is first emerging. There’s usually that phase where stuff seems to be spontaneously welling up from somewhere inside us, somewhere private and inner and… well, centered.
The act of drafting, on the other hand, tends to feel like searching for something that’s missing. And if we’re too caught up in a perfectionist, idealized view of our story, we quickly get mired in the gap between that shining but vague initial imagining and the specific (unideal) words that are coming out on the page.
Having a center can imply staying in the same place, and being in control of it – but a true creative center is always also fundamentally a threshold. A place where if you know the right tricks, the sacred can be smuggled through the seams.
This month, join me as I explore what the mythological figure of the trickster can teach us about our creative centers (and about the power of the lucky accident in our storytelling).
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World
Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Homeric Hymn to Hestia
Nicholas Cross, "The Hearth as a Place of Refuge in Ancient Greece"
Jean Robert, "Hestia and Hermes: The Greek Imagination of Motion and Space"
Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece (for the ritual referenced in the episode, see Book 7.22)
Bethu Brigte (a medieval hagiography of Saint Brigid)
Cogitosus, Life of Saint Brigid the Virgin
Story Archeology podcast: The Search for Brigid
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You’ve undoubtedly heard this bit of common wisdom at some point in your life: “You only grow when things are hard.”
Incarnations of this advice pop up in all sorts of contexts and snappy wordings (“No pain, no gain” or “Growth and comfort do not coexist” or, my personal Tony Robbins fav, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”).
This brand of wisdom has a kernel of truth. But when we apply it to our creative work, we can end up inadvertently nurturing another uncomfortable but weirdly beloved trope: the “suffering” or “tortured” artist.
This month, travel back from the edge of the comfort zone to discover the stories (and life) you might miss when the wound becomes the whole of the work.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Eva zu Beck: I Quit. (YouTube)
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Have you ever pushed through to meet a writing or publishing goal, only to feel let down once you reached it? Or worse, only to find that the story you wrote wasn’t at all what you wanted to create, and you have no idea how that happened?
If you’re looking for more satisfaction and growth (and even success) in your writing life, it may be time for a new framework.
Write toward your values, not your goals.
There are two reasons prioritizing your creative values is so key to a sustainable and transformative writing practice:
You can’t control what happens to your story once it’s out in the world.Goals inherently narrow possibility.Tune in to learn how this framework can help you reclaim a creative life that supports you as a human, and isn’t just driven by “pushing through” or “doing the work.”
Plus, we’ll explore how to free our values (and ourselves) from the dogma of creativity-as-productivity – so we can become the storytellers we truly feel called to be.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Throughline podcast: No Bad Ideas?
The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History, Samuel W. Franklin
History of the American writing workshop
Workshops of Empire, Eric BennettCraft in the Real World, Matthew SalessesThe Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose ChavezHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In your writing practices, you may be chasing creative flow – that state where you get so immersed that time takes a pause while you hammer away at the keyboard.
(And then four hours later you’re like “Why do my wrists hurt, and why are the cats screaming like no one has ever fed them in their entire lives?”)
But your flow state has a sneaky cousin: dogmatic trance.
Trance states (like meditation, contemplation, and yes, creative flow) are a lot more common than we think. And trance and dogma sometimes go hand in hand.
Dogmatic trance teaches us to think and believe harmful things on autopilot. It’s why maladaptive creative mindsets are so hard to shift – no matter how much we distance ourselves intellectually from those mindsets.
This month, tune in to discover how to spot dogma hiding within your creative flow (and how to kick it out!).
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Ren Zatopek
Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses
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... and that's okay.
If somebody were to ask you outright if you think you’re a creative genius, you’d probably be pretty comfortable saying no (and meaning it). You’re also probably not going to rationally think that this means you shouldn’t be creating anything.
And yet, most of us still have this feeling that our ideas and our work need to be "special," by which we mean "entirely unique yet universally brilliant."
This cultural narrative of genius is really not the most conducive to actually creating stuff, though. It’s part of what makes each story idea or writing session or first draft feel like a verdict on our value and significance as people. And it’s part of what makes us feel like we’re proving something with our writing instead of creating something.
This month, tune in to deconstruct the contemporary concept of genius and reframe it with a much, much older one—to see what might happen if we stop trying to be geniuses and start doing genius work instead.
(Plus, Mary shares some initial thoughts on last week’s SCOTUS decision against The Andy Warhol Foundation, and how genius intersects with legal issues around fair use. You know, just fun, chill summer vibes.)
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Andrea Barrett
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, Elizabeth Winkler
Your Elusive Creative Genius (TED Talk), Elizabeth Gilbert
AWF v. Goldsmith (Pt. 1): Misapprehensions, Clarifications, and a Truth Bomb, Katherine de Vos Devine
Classical Roman religion
Religion in the Roman Empire, James B. RivesLarariaHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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What role does having a message really play in crafting a powerful, living story?
I often see two opposing bits of advice on this, depending on the type of story you’re writing. If you’re working on genre or mainstream writing, you’re probably going to hear this: Your story should have a message, and every single scene or section of your story should reinforce that message.
On the other hand, if you’re writing in a “literary” style, you’ll hear the opposite: You must avoid any kind of overt message and think primarily about the aesthetic shape and value of the story. By defining a clear message, you’ll end up stripping all the nuance out, and that’s where the real meaning is.
But both of these approaches to message in storytelling are... sort of missing the point.
In this episode, we’ll unpack how our core superpower as writers can help us make better decisions about crafting meaningful stories—and I share the single best piece of craft advice I’ve ever received.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Byung-Chul Han, Non-things / Undinge
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When you show up to write, who's setting the course for the journey—your inner storyteller, or your inner critic?
We all have an inner critic, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a manifestation of the same cautionary voice that tells us some basic truths like “Hey, you do know that if you go around doing a bunch of stupid shit, you might literally die, right??”
The inner critic has their place. But they're a uniquely terrible storyteller. You can't play and explore with somebody who thinks you're going to literally die if your first draft has too many adverbs in it.
Here's the good news: To write transformational work, you don't have to kill off your inner critic. You just need to stop writing in partnership with them.
Tune in to discover two key shifts to create deep, lasting change in your relationship to your inner critic:
Practicing real self-compassion (not just self-care)Freeing yourself from the Hero's Journey_____
If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
John O'Donohue
Sophie Strand
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If you’re dedicated to mastering the writing craft... you may be missing out on discovering your most powerful storytelling.
Before you object: No, this isn’t a pass on learning writing skills. But powerful, transformative storytelling is more than craft mechanics like dialogue, structure, character arcs, or even themes. It’s more than a series of interlocking parts with the goal of making readers feel or think a certain thing.
Deep storytelling is a living relationship between you, your story, and your reader. And as writers, it’s our responsibility to cultivate right relationship at each of these points of the storytelling web, instead of simply pushing a reader’s buttons to get a predictable response.
That’s how the act of storytelling becomes a relationship—and an encounter your reader will remember long after your book cycles off their Kindle carousel.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, hit subscribe and visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Episode links:
Bayo Akomolafe
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Do you have a list of beloved books that changed your life... but can't finish one of your own stories to save your life?
In the first episode of the Inspirited Word, Mary has some core questions for all visionary writers feeling disconnected, disenchanted, or dissatisfied with their stories and their creative practice:
If we can encounter stories in ways that are surprising, personal, and ever-evolving, ways that exert tangible change and transformation in the world—can’t stories be described as alive?When was the last time you encountered one of your own stories this way as you were writing it?What might be possible if you did?Tune in to discover how reframing storytelling as a living relationship can revitalize and re-enchant your creative practice (and help you get unstuck so you can write your most powerful and necessary stories). Plus, a glimpse of the road ahead for the Inspirited Word pod.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, hit subscribe and visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
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Introducing the Inspirited Word, a new podcast and digital practice community for visionary writers ready to re-enchant their creative lives.
On the pod, we’ll explore ways to enliven the technical mechanics of our craft with the full visionary power of our imaginations—so we can finally uncover our most potent, most transformative, most necessary work.
If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, hit subscribe and visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox. See you here in January, 2023!
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/
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