Create the Container for the Writing Life You Desire

Containers for life and writing and a special practice from me to you.

Think about water. Water is life-giving, powerful, essential—but without something to hold it, water simply runs wherever gravity pulls it. Pour water onto the counter and watch it spread in all directions, eventually evaporating or dripping onto the floor.

Your creativity is like that water. Your ideas, your voice, your perspective—all of it is valuable and life-giving. But without a container, it dissipates. It gets soaked up by emails and social media scrolling. It evaporates under the press of self-doubt. It drips away into the cracks of busy schedules and others’ expectations.

A container gives your creativity somewhere to gather, to deepen, to become substantial enough to nourish you and others.

I've been thinking a lot lately about these kinds of containers. Not the kind you might be picturing—Tupperware for last night's pasta or those mismatched lids that never seem to find their partners (just me?). I'm talking about creative containers, the invisible boundaries we set up that, paradoxically, don't limit our creativity but instead allow it to flourish.

Here's what I know to be true: most of us wander around with a story we desperately want to tell. It sits in our chest, sometimes for years, quietly pulsing beneath daily tasks and obligations. We dream about writing it. We scribble notes in our phones. We think about it in the shower. But somehow, between the morning rush and evening exhaustion, between the needs of others and our own depleted energy, the story remains untold. I find myself in a place I have been before, where life feels “too busy” to write, too full of…hard to say. I feel I’m in a phase of deep transformation and processing. And my practice feels a little…uncontained.

I’m a big proponent in keeping a writing diary that just tracks your writing sessions and logs notes about the process. I have several journals that document the process of writing Madwoman, and it’s useful to look back and remember that I’ve felt this uncontained way before. With that book, there were long stretches of time where I did not know the answers to the mysteries my heart was asking. Long periods where I was dealing with other life things. And yes, times I felt lost. But I finished the book, I solved the mysteries, and I did it all by just maintaining connection to the project. I can also see the biggest spurts of forward motion were when I made myself containers.

What is a Container?

Sometimes this is simply about establishing a consistent creative practice within our daily lives as they usually exist—same time, same place, similar ritual—our brains begin to recognize the cues. “Oh,” your brain says, “we're sitting in this chair, with this cup of tea at this time of day. Must be time to write.” The resistance lessens. The words come more readily.

But sometimes, I’ve needed to impose a more seasonal container on things. For example, setting a goal that by the end of summer, I will have completed a full draft of my work in progress. Nothing about my current pace is necessarily leading me to this goal, which is why I need to set it. Immediately, my day to day changes to accommodate this. And the season of summer becomes imbued with intentionality. There’s a big shift in mindset that occurs, for me at least, when I declare a season is about something specific. Then I go about the business of figuring out how I will make it happen, versus cataloguing all the reasons writing feels hard to squeeze in right now. It also makes me look forward to the season, too, in a new way.

Why Containers Work

Look at the last week of your life. Where did your creative practice live in your schedule? Was it relegated to “if I have time” status, or did it have a protected place in your day?

I think if we write whenever we “can find the time” means we will find that time very rarely. When I approach my work this way it leaves me feeling scattered and my progress painfully slow.

It wasn't until I began treating my writing time as non-negotiable—as crucial as picking up my children from school or showing up for a doctor's appointment—that something about the process felt more easeful.

Now is a good time to mention that this changes over time—what I needed in terms of container was different ten years ago than it is now. Even a few months ago. Each book might have different requirements too. It’s good to listen and ask frequently—what do I need to make my writing happen NOW? What does THIS BOOK need to come forth. Get quiet, and ask it. Sometimes we’re stuck trying to adhere to routines that worked for us in past seasons but that are out of date for us now or for a new project.

But here's what I've learned from working with countless writers and studying my own BS: the problem rarely lies in not having enough time. It almost always lies in the story we're telling ourselves about the time we have.

Maybe you've been telling yourself:

• I can only write if I have at least two uninterrupted hours

• I can only write in the morning when my mind is fresh

• I can only write when the house is completely quiet

• I can only write when I feel inspired

• I can only write when I know exactly where the story is going

These are the sneaky stories that steal our creativity. And the tricky part? We've often told ourselves these stories for so long that we don't even recognize them as stories anymore. We treat them as immutable facts when really they are not.

Creating Story Containers

Interestingly, the stories we write also thrive within containers. Every compelling narrative has boundaries that create tension and forward momentum. Often when working with students or clients I ask what the container is for their novel or story. Tom Perotta writes brilliantly about this and uses his novel Election as an example of a story with a very clear container—the school election. He knows the story time is up when the election is over. When I wrote Madwoman, I wrote my container into that present story time—Clove has “the summer and no more” before her mother’s feminist lawyer will take their case public. That means I knew that my main “story-time” needed to be compressed into the span of one summer. Otherwise that thing could have just kept on keeping on forever and all the ticking time bomb energy lost.

With Godshot, the novel took place over the length of a pregnancy. I had 9 months to make shit happen.

In fiction, these containers might be:

• The ticking clock (solve the mystery before xyz)

• The threat of something being exposed

• Limited resources (survive with only what's in your backpack)

• Physical confinement (a stranded ship, a remote cabin)

• Social constraints (forbidden love, family expectations)

• Impending event (wedding, funeral, high school reunion, etc.)

• A literal season/month, etc.

• A character’s goal

These narrative containers create the necessary pressure for our characters to transform. Without them, stories often meander without purpose or urgency. In the same ways, I believe we can meander without our own mental containers for our work.

When we have unlimited time to complete a creative project, we often accomplish very little. But give us a deadline, a word count, or a clear deliverable, and suddenly our focus sharpens. The container creates the conditions for flow.

The 100-Day Container

This idea of containers is what led Kim and me to design our first Fountain Summer Intensive, "100 Days to a Full Draft." Often our classes are born out of what we are desiring in our own lives. Our content is built out of what we wish existed and what has worked for us. There's something almost magical about saying: “For the next 100 days, I'm committed to this process.” The question is no longer if you'll work on your book, but how today's specific task will move you forward.

The intensive creates multiple layers of containment:

• The 100-day timeframe (a clear beginning and end)

• Daily curriculum (specific tasks that build on each other)

• Weekly coaching sessions (guidance and course correction—the biggest thing I’ve noticed in successful writers is their ability to begin again and to bounce back quickly when things go off course. Because they will go off course.)

• Small group check-ins (community, accountability, and sharing pages)

• Custom Clearings (guided audio experiences for neural retraining) that match the course work.

These nested containers create a powerful incubator for your work. The structure doesn't limit creativity—it creates the conditions where creativity can thrive.

I've watched writers who've struggled for years suddenly produce consistent, focused work within these boundaries. Not because they found more time in their busy lives, but because they created a container that made their creative work non-negotiable.

A Contemplative Practice

I invite you to explore your own relationship with containers through this brief exercise:

1. Find a quiet moment with your journal. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths, feeling your body settle into the chair or floor beneath you.

2. First, consider your story's containers:

   • What creates urgency within your narrative?

   • What boundaries or limitations do your characters face?

   • What's the ticking clock in your story?

   • Write for 5 minutes exploring these questions.

3. Now, consider your life's containers for creativity:

   • Where does your creative work currently live in your schedule?

   • What boundaries have you established (or failed to establish) around this time?

   • What signals would help your brain recognize "it's creating time"? (we love listening to our Buffer Clearings for this purpose.)

   • Write for 5 minutes exploring these questions.

4. Finally, imagine your ideal creative container:

   • When would you work?

   • Where would you work?

   • What boundaries would protect this time?

   • What support systems would help you maintain this container?

   • Write for 5 minutes exploring these possibilities.

The gap between your current reality and your ideal container represents your opportunity for growth.

Remember: the next 100 days will pass whether you write your book or not. The question is whether you'll create a container that supports bringing it into being.

If you're ready to commit to that container, join us for our 100 Days to a Full Draft intensive starting June 1st. Together, we'll build the structure your creativity has been waiting for, guiding you systematically through every stage of creation—from establishing foundations to crafting powerful endings and everything in between. Kim and I have really enjoyed the process of building out this curriculum. It’s literally a book that you get to keep at the end.

It’s also a manifestation of exactly the kind of teaching I want to be doing. We created our own business because we wanted total freedom. We wanted to create the things we know work without someone else’s constraint. We wanted to build our own containers. I’m so so happy to bring this to life now. I taught in a more traditional workshop model for many years, where the container seemed to be around work that was already written, confined to what was currently on the page. I find so much more energy and life force in teaching generative classes where the focus is on the practice, the progress, and the deep skill building necessary to really move the needle.

I really do believe you don't need more discipline—you need devotion. You don't need more time—you need a container.

What containers will you create today?

Also I’m excited to share my new US paperback cover for Madwoman soon! At this point I can’t even count how many cover iterations I’ve seen for this story. The UK had many, many options. It can be a really emotionally draining process to be honest. It’s your baby, your story, and then someone else comes in and sort of defines it for you. Talk about a practice in releasing control.

Anyway, more on that later, and for now, thank you for being a subscriber. It means the world to me! Tell me—what containers are you setting for yourself and your projects? How is the sausage getting made? Also, what are you reading? :)

Before I go, a book I’m currently re-reading at the behest of my therapist and loving so much:

xx

C