How to trust yourself and your creative vision
A Creative Mornings talk on building unshakable self trust in your creative process, action as antidote, the thing I watched that made me wish I'd written it
Hello readers!
I hope you are doing alright out there, as alright as you can be, and hopefully you’re even thriving in the face of oppression, and supporting and clinging to your community. When I found out about the election results, like many of us, I felt a sense of dread, but pretty quickly snapped into action. We must mobilize ourselves in our community in real ways, I do believe. A tenet from my earliest days of AA that has always stuck with me, is the notion that when we feel subsumed by our own rage, sadness, (insert overwhelming feeling here), we must go help another person. Believe me, I’m alllll for processing, and self care, and going inward, but sometimes we have to just put our boots on and go to work. It’s a great way to instantly de-center the self and get shit done. I promise we all have the capability to be of service to one another in small ways and in huge ways, but most of the time it’s the small ways that really do make a difference.
One thing I’m doing is working with the Raphael House of Portland, a shelter and community resource for survivors of domestic violence, and I even got to partner with Michele at Up Up Books to organize a generative reading event where all the proceeds from book sales were donated to Raphael House. We raised over a thousand dollars, not counting the additional donations that came in afterward. I’d like to give RH a million dollars, but a thousand dollars is still something, and as my favorite line from “The Mars Room” by Rachel Kushner goes… The opposite of something isn’t nothing. It’s everything.
I don’t say this to toot my own horn, though I am a fan of tooting our own horns cause why the hell not; we gotta reparent those little kid parts in us! I’m saying it to remind myself that if I really do care about this issue, I better get out of my own head and DO something. I love action. It’s the antithesis to complacency, to shame, to lethargy. We are all powerful. We are capable of great things.
Okay, moving on to today’s content! Action!
Back in July, my bestie, vision holder, and business partner (The Fountain is a-comin!) Kimberly King Parsons and I gave a Creative Mornings talk here in Portland at the beautiful Blu Dot. It was so overwhelmingly lovely—the people we got to meet, the meticulous planning that made for a seamlessly beautiful event by Kaitlin Carpenter and all the many volunteers, and the space to share a message on that month’s topic: TRUST. When Kim and I saw that was the prompt, it all came together. The idea of honing self-trust in the creative practice is central when we teach together, and it’s central to the work we do with our clients, and it’s also central to the platform we are busy creating for you, The Fountain.
I talk a lot about the importance of not outsourcing your vision to anyone else. That you contain within you the answers and that feedback from others should be taken as a prompt, but often not to the letter. Prompts are generative, prompts are great, and help us learn. We need them. But if not taken into consideration alongside your deeper vision, things get dicey. We go a lot deeper into this idea in our classes but essentially, we must create a system within of things we are unwilling to compromise on in our work, then, all feedback is filtered through this.
As Kim so wisely says in our classes:
“I think things get sticky when people start sublimating what they love in favor of what they believe the marketplace loves. Writers get into trouble when they try to bend the work to suit everyone. Only water is for everyone—colorless, flavorless, and boring—but if you lean into what really moves you, your readers (the right readers) will sense that exuberance, and they will be drawn to you.” -Kimberly King Parsons
Creative Mornings taped the talk and I’d love to share it with you. You can watch it here, and I want to encourage you to attend a CM talk in your city. The beautiful thing is that they happen all over and they are united by the same theme every month. They also all live on their website so you can enjoy a library of amazing content.
What I’m watching:
I go in phases with television and right now it’s on baby! There’s a lot of good stuff right now (season two of Bad Sisters), but I want to just say that Disclaimer with Cate Blanchett blew my mind. I am still processing it. I think it was genius. I am now reading the novel which is also so good. I don’t even want to say anything about it, I want you to fly blind, but the story was one of those that made me wish I’d written it. Watch to the bitter end, okay. It was a slow creep for me but once it got me, WOW. It got me.
What I’m reading: The Stalker by Paula Bomer. Paula is a writer’s writer, a god among us, a hilarious explorer of the darkest depths. I’m excited to share more about this book when it comes out, but it will be in 2025. I’m also reading Renee Knight's novel "Disclaimer" as I just said. Along with a slew of other books.
Make Up: Hydrafacials are great I am here to confirm. I’m not a facial person but have been getting these for a few months and I have to say, I see a difference in overall evenness, brightness, and smoothness.
Also, I’ve been getting romanced by the ads for OGEE products (namely that sexy little trio of contour, blush and highlight—I’m a sucker for a set!) but can they really be better than anything I already have? OGEE if you’d like to send me something know I am here as your faithful test object who is not 20 with a complexion like glass.
Some fun Madwoman updates:
My novel Madwoman was named an Oprah’s Favorite Thing alongside genius women like Miranda July, Rufi Thorpe, Catherine Newman, Danzy Senna, Kimberly King Parsons, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Sally Rooney and more. What what??
And, I was so thrilled Madwoman was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, an award that honors fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture. This feels very powerful to me. Here’s all the brilliant writers on this year’s longlist.
I also did the painstaking task of rounding up all the podcasts and interviews I’ve done and put them in one place. I recently loved being on Word Weavers and Sarah’s Bookshelves.
Okay, I have an essay cooking up for you for next week that I hope will be generative and useful about ‘Creative Dreams and Yearnings’ and until then, I hope you get something out of me and Kim’s talk.
Sending all the love,
C
Should one (I) watch or read Disclaimer first?
Oh my gosh. I am so relieved someone else is talking about DISCLAIMER. It blew me away. The layers!!! The light! The play on perspectives! Genius.
Also, I'm listening to the Creative Mornings talk now and loving it. Thank you for sharing!