Welcome Back

Welcome back to my newsletter, coming at ya from a brand new platform. Since we last spoke, I’ve birthed an entirely new human, have come to some big conclusions about work and life and literature, and have read some great—and very not-so-great—books. Six months away has felt like an incredibly long time…

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I’m feeling both a bit rusty and wildly renewed. I have so many ideas percolating and forming, some already baked and ready to serve for you, and some in the deep stages of creative development, I’m not sure where to even start with this first communication back behind my desk.

The Mirror: Time Spent Gazing in Reflection

Like most of us who feel programmed to constantly produce, constantly slice up parts of ourselves to offer to others, who never feel relieved of the burden of creativity, stepping away for six months was harder than I expected. I missed work. I missed my community.

And while I was tucked away with a new baby on my chest and a toddler on my hip, sipping tea in the dark of the morning, rushing to feed, clothe, and soothe everyone all at once, my brain and my heart never stopped plucking inspiration from the quiet recesses of those moments—or from the abundant chaotic ones, too. I realized in my time away—my very necessary time away—that, for me, rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. Rather rest means engaging in daily creativity for me.

And while that seems like an obvious nugget of wisdom now, on the other side of the learning, it is something that has been missing for me in the last decade of my business.

My own creativity has often found itself shuffled to the back burner in service of my clients’ projects, often until it is quite literally bursting out of me (re: Blue Rooms and The Remembering Room), until all of my resources have been so exhaustively loaned out that I spend the little time I reserve for myself filling up notebook after notebook exploring the ideas for things I will create “as soon as I finish [fill in the blank with literally anything].” This is not a noble pursuit, and I’ve found in this time away that it has not only limited my own career and output, it has limited what I have to offer to everyone. The more I strengthen my own creative practice, the MUCH more I have to offer my clients.

Showing up and investing in myself in this time has birthed not just a new little girl (she’s so perfect), but a slew of new offerings that are entirely authentic to my own creative process—offerings that I will open up to you FIRST in my next communication; to this loyal and passionate community of creatives who I so genuinely care about and appreciate.

Offer Your Creativity to Yourself First

So, what exactly has this meant for me?

Highly investing in myself first. I’ve known Kate Juniper for many years as a colleague and friend in the publishing world. We have similar backgrounds—both editors and book coaches, and similar tastes in all things progressive, revolutionary, literary, and magical. After long admiring her and her work, I knew Kate was onto a special and important journey when she closed up her very successful business in pursuit of a new venture. Upon her recent return, I immediately signed up for all of her programs. Literally. I need everything she has to offer. And you probably do, too. You can find her here: https://www.thisiswholehouse.com
As a somatic book and business coach, Kate is quite literally morphing the way I approach myself, my business, and my creative process.
I’ve been writing. And writing. And writing. And writing. I’ve shepherded thousands of writers, but now it’s time to see my own books leave the pasture. I’ve turned one finished draft over to my editor, another is in process within a book coaching container program, and a third is being queried. I want to be in this process with my clients, with all of you, together, facing the same challenges and heartache and excitement. To do this, I severely paired down the number of slots I had available for The Author Architect Program, but I will be opening a new way for us to work together very soon.
Lastly, I want to leave you with a new mantra of mine (Thanks, Kate):
Creativity is regenerative.
And this means a number of things that help me stave off burnout once and for all. It means that if I am scheduling daily creativity for myself then I am filling myself up with the emotional and cognitive tools I need to better show up for my family and my business. It means that the more I create for myself, the more I create for others. It means that rather than pour myself out, I have to fill myself up until I am literally overflowing, and that overflow is available for everyone to drink from. When we all come to understand this, we all come to worry less about getting things done fast and more about creating space for everyone to feel they're most abundant.

What’s To Come

Here’s a list of what you can expect from in the next 2 months (eeeeek!)…

Keep your eyes peeled, friends, and add Musings From Your Editor + my email to your contact list to stay informed!

—A live writing workshop with a very opportunity to read your work in front of industry professionals

—Two long-form course offerings: one for authors who want to MAKE MONEY selling their books and one for aspiring book coaches

—The announcement of a very big, very exciting new… creative place (what could it be??!)

—A new community offering so we can all combat Lonely Creative Syndrome

Happy (regenerative) writing.

Recent Posts

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Today I had lunch with my dad

In the deep hibernation of December and January, I have been creating. I have been channeling all of these things around me into workshops and programs and talks and paintings and weavings and drawings and poems. My hands have been busy in communication with my heart with the knowledge that under the threat of an ethnostate, the mere act of creativity is political resistance.

Musings: Is the publishing industry a scam? Is it truly possible to be mindful? Why nostalgia feels like a lie.

Ultimately, this is a toast to my community. To your unbroken creative spirits. To the Bloomsbury of the new ‘20s. To the beatniks of Gen Z. Let us find ourselves inside the writing. Let us discover a new world in the quiet moments on the page, in the tough moments, in the grit of literary discourse and the way it builds you up, turns you out, makes you reshape yourself into who you truly are and want to be. Here’s to demanding better, to leading the charge of a new vision of publishing, and to demanding that the culture value it all the same. Because without art, without writers, without our ability to turn life inside out and pour it over the page; our ability to make you look up from a sentence and sit in a mindful moment where you can hear the buzz of time rotating around the idea you’ve been left to chew on, who will contextualize the times we live in? We are the interpreters of the present moment, and in such a time as this we are gravely needed.

So go track some mud on the carpet.

How to Tame a Paper Tiger: On Writing With Intentional Vulnerability

I’m at ground zero. Right where I meet many of you.

And I want to talk to you about the perceived pains of this stage—the stage that comes before the story begins to write itself; the stage you spend clawing at your own brain for the answers while you flip through the pages of a notebook filled with half-written scenes and character one-liners; the nebulous space of a white page that breaks the spirit of a lot of writers before they’ve had the chance to give their story a real voice.