Write the Light Into the Darkness of Winter
It's *not* snowing near NYC (yet)! But I've had the most lovely opportunity to prepare for a beautiful winter this year.
This is not always my M.O. Resistance often sets in at the reversal of daylight savings in early November. And dread descends when the temperature drops.
But a dear friend, Natasha, has helped change that this year. She invited me to teach with a powerhouse community of women for a monthlong workshop she is hosting in December: Opening to the Medicine of Winter.
As a writer intent on re-writing out-of-date narratives (and helping others to do so, too!), I was somewhat aghast to realize that it never dawned on me to investigate the stories I tell myself about winter!
I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And now my orientation to the months of November through March is undergoing the most marvelous revision.
This, of course, made me think of a story....
We've already established that winter has not been my favorite season.
But one winter night in 1996 the east coast was slammed with a blizzard. I was in my late-twenties and living in New York City. Close to two feet of snow fell on Manhattan. The city that never sleeps was completely stilled by Mother Nature.
Cars disappeared under white mounds. Streets were shut down. People took to cross country skiing down Avenue A in the East Village.
The city and its thoroughfares became an uncharted wilderness. There were no taxis to narrowly avoid. Work and shopping took a back seat. Desire and instinct took on new dimensions.
New Yorkers were drawn out of their famously too-small apartments to rediscover their snow-covered, high-rise-filled island. I disregarded walk signals and roamed the streets in whatever direction drew me. The rush of delight at having everything upended was intoxicating.
But it didn’t take very long before the plows took to the streets. Beeping trucks shoved the thick white blanket toward street corners, which created four huge mounds at every intersection.
Everyone now had to navigate treacherous mountains of slippery snow to simply get from one side of the street to the other. Getting around became dangerous. It took full-body focus. You could easily wipe out.
Then an interesting thing happened.
New Yorkers began to help each other get up and over the hills of snow. A random person coming from the opposite direction would lock hands with you as you helped each other navigate up and over. You had to look each other in the eye. You had to have physical contact and a degree of closeness. There was sometimes a sheepish or awkward or hearty laugh. And there was someone else was on the other side to help you come down.
For a period of a few days this unfolded easily and naturally. Then, as the snow began to melt, people returned to their regular routines, brushing by one another in the rush to get from one place to the other.
This is what I'm left with thinking back to that unexpected late-winter delight: the Blizzard of '96 rejiggered my place within what poet Mary Oliver calls ‘the family of things.’ It helped me to see what I had forgotten to look for – the fact that every moment can be a wilderness and each person, myself included, can act in beautiful and unexpected ways.
Yes, it helps when the sky dumps inches or feet of snow and shocks us out of our habits. But it also serves as a reminder that I can ignite that possibility in any moment, too.
How to Write Ancestral Wisdom
A friend and I were on our weekly walk on the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail that runs from the Bronx 26 miles north to the Croton Reservoir. We came upon a road that crosses the trail and a man dressed in all black, with a black knit hat, was walking down the road toward us.
This man-in-black captured my attention and I stepped off the path to check for something in my shoe and to see who this person might be. As I dug around for the pebble under my heel an older man greeted us with a gentle and kind smile as he passed.
I sorted myself and we kept walking, too, now behind him.
We were yammering on about life and whatnot when, a few paces down the trail, I looked up to see this man standing before a beautiful huge tree with his arms open wide, as if basking in the presence of this arboreal being.
The moment seemed to stretch in time—the simplicity of his body, his form a 't' draped in black, standing before the still-green of this tree. And then he brought his hands together in prayer as we passed.⠀⠀⠀
My friend and I fell silent, as if we were intruding on a sacred moment that should not be disturbed. The man walked to the tree and placed his hands on the trunk as we walked by. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We whispered to each other as we continued, wondering about his ritual. I kept saying, "I do that with trees, too!"
How beautiful to witness this simple devotion.
I looked back to see if he had started walking behind us, but instead of continuing on the trail he was repeating his communion from a different angle, his arms stretched out to either side, open to the tree and the endless sky.
4 Craft Tools to Write Your Deepest Knowing
Indigenous cultures around the world recognize our integral relationship with the natural world and with ancestors who have passed on. The voice of Grandmother, Hawk or Tree are as vital as any living being.
So how do you access this wisdom? And how do you weave it into your writing?
My novel, Tree Dreams, was inspired by my walks amongst the redwoods and old-growth forests of the west coast. My body was drawn to nestle in at the base of these giants, my spine against the trunks that were hundreds to sometimes thousands of years old.
Their presence was palpable. If I could settle myself enough, it seemed, I could learn the secrets they have to share.
Mine became a practice of learning to listen. I was thrilled when a reviewer from Booklist wrote of my novel, Through [Kaye], readers feel the sway of the big trees, how they move “with so many other things, like another language.”
It is another language, indeed! And it is one thing to experience these sacred connections so deeply, and another thing to learn how to capture them in writing.
We have to learn to sense the difference between the dimensions of our experience—the literal physical details and our more mystical experience or knowing. Here are a few craft tools to help translate these moments to the page:
HORIZONTAL and VERTICAL MOMENTS: Horizontal writing describes the chronological series of events and the details of the 'here-and-now.' This helps to set the scene. Vertical writing drops into the interior experience. So once you’ve oriented the reader to the physical world, you can delve into the transcendent experience.
BUILD a BRIDGE: Once we know what is happening in the physical world, offer a 'bridge' to the new awareness. In the story above, the tree and the man’s ritual serve as a great bridge from the ordinariness of the day to a moment that felt sacred. Being aware of what bridges your own personal experience is a great place to start and serves as great material.
NAME WHAT SHIFTS IN YOUR AWARENESS: Describe the new world/ knowing that you have stepped into—do you have a sudden clear knowing? an illuminating narrative that spans years in a flash? is it access to a quality of healing that channels through your body? how does that feel? The more visceral and specific the your description better. Specificity allows the experience to come to life.
RETURN to the PHYSICAL WORLD: Return the reader to the physical world by getting back in your body and immediate surroundings. This helps us (and you!) integrate with the mundane of our day-to-day and helps to hold the expanse of the experience.
Have questions? Please ask in the comments below and I will be happy to reply.
If you have your own connections with ancestors, please leave them in the comments! Hearing others’ deep, moving and mystical experiences (and writing my own) is one of my all-time favorite things to do. I would love to hear.
And here is a photo of that lovely tree…
Finding Stillness in What Flows Both Ways
I recently moved into an apartment that is perched above the mighty Hudson River just north of New York City.
The river is about a mile wide where we sit and the mesmerizing fluid expanse often makes me drop whatever I’m busy with in favor of observing the tides, drifting clouds and, with autumn, the changing leaves.
I previously lived in northern California and I used to say that I lived on Tree Time. Surrounded by so many redwoods, I couldn't help but consider life in 1000-year increments.
But I now seem to be on Sky Time and River Time, learning an entirely new language.
My dining room table looks out upon the Hudson and it’s my new favorite spot to meditate.
The Hudson was originally named Mahicantuck, “the river that flows both ways,” by the native Lenape to describe how the saltwater from the ocean at New York harbor mixes with fresh water from tributaries as far as 150 miles north.
The varying tidal flows are part of what make the river so captivating.
I was recently meditating, noticing the direction of the tides, when seemingly out of nowhere tears suddenly sprang to my eyes.
This happens sometimes.
I’ll be sinking beneath the chatter of my mind and settling into deeper, quiet places when a painful thought or feeling will push its way to the surface. A memory might bubble up or an unrelenting expectation about who I “should be,’ or a fear about the state of the world.
The flood of emotion can take me by surprise, like bumping into something unexpected when walking in the dark.
In the silence of the morning, as I let the tears roll down my cheeks, a boat came into view heading south toward New York City. The river is a surprisingly busy thoroughfare of barges and container ships, fishing boats, sail boats and sometimes ferries.
My tears were rolling, the river was flowing and the boat was clipping along.
But then the boat seemed to slow to a stop in line with where I sat and, almost imperceptibly at first, it started to turn toward me.
Over the course of many minutes the bow swung a long arc, as if changing direction.
The direction of my sadness changed, too, and I became riveted by what this boat might be doing.
How come it didn’t drift with the south-moving tide? Had it dropped anchor? There is no marina where I live and I’ve never seen a boat stop smack in the middle of the river, so what was it up to?
This turn felt somehow connected to a turn within me, to a turn in the world. The moment held a confluence of the rush of forward motion, how much energy it can take to stop, what it means to change direction.
The question—where are we heading?
When the boat was almost fully facing north, I felt a flush of relief that it would finally move on again and waited in eager anticipation to see it finally start to pick up speed.
But the boat didn’t head north. It simply faced in its new direction and sat stationary.
And I thought, “Huh. Isn’t that just it?”
So much happens in the turn.
It can be important to sit before we move on.
Stillness can be motion, too.
This is as true in life as it is in meditation as it is in writing.
We’ll explore the explosive power of these moments in my upcoming workshop Mining for Gold: A 5-Week Writing Workshop to Unearth Hidden Narratives to discover:
What stories have been driving you?
What anchors you in the midst of a turn?
What new story wants to be told?
I hope you'll either join my there or leave a comment below and let me know: what is true for you?
When Writing is the Remedy
The curious thing about writing personal narrative, be it an essay or a book, is that we often set out to write something that we haven’t been able to fully articulate yet. The process itself is what unlocks the meaning and leads us to our insight.
But in pursuing this knowing that lives just beyond our fingertips, we often first run into what has kept the words only partially formed.
It could be that we need to complete additional research to better understand a topic. Or it could be that we need to improve a writing skill, such as nailing the idiosyncrasies of dialogue, to better bring an experience to life.
In many instances, however, we first encounter what has made the words difficult to say—a fear of being seen, an unhealed trauma that still lives large in our heart, a seeming lack of courage to own the truth that we’ve known all along, the unsettling feeling of writing against the tide of popular opinion, the questions, 'Who am I to do this?' and 'Am I worthy?'
This can be the real work of writing.
The invitation is to leave the shore of insecurity to follow our instinct to a truth that needs to be known and then written. To say the words that are ours to say means that we have to own the right to say them, trust that our inner voice will serve as our guide and live our way to the wisdom that arrives at the end of the story.
This is when writing through becomes our remedy. This is when our lives become mythic. This is when we become our own heroes and heroines.
Yet every heroine needs to attend to her own healing at times, and it can really help to have a few tools at hand when you hit an emotional rough patch.
“The Universe came calling and I had to say, ‘Yes.’”
Karen Solt wrote her memoir, Why We Hide, in Story Alchemy’s book writing course, Crucible (formerly Literary Alchemy). But to write that book, Karen would have to face a deeply traumatic event that caused her to hide in the first place.
Covid created time to write and after decades of silence, Karen finally committed to writing the truth.
Karen served in the Navy for 22-years. And within her first year of service she discovered that she was gay. She served before and during the Clinton Administration’s policy, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—the days when it was illegal to be gay in the military.
The Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) regularly conducted “witch hunts” to root out gay service members. To keep her job and avoid being convicted as a criminal, Karen had to constantly hide the truth of who she was.
While she ultimately came to love serving in the Navy and would rise to the rank of Senior Chief, Karen and those she knew and loved suffered devastating consequences for the hiding that became a requirement.
I recently sat down with Karen to discuss her writing process and what helped her to finally deliver the truth of her story to the page. We discussed tools for working with painful experiences and more (video links below).
5 Tools to Help Heal Trauma & Change Your Story
Find a therapist: While this might seem obvious, finding professional help might not be your first thought when you begin to write. But if your work begins to veer into challenging territory, additional support may be just the thing that allows you to process difficult experiences and deliver the story to the page. Somatic Experiencing and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Releasing) are two techniques that are especially helpful in working with trauma.
Join a Writing Community Where Your Feel Safe: Something shifted when Karen read her pages to the other writers in the Crucible book writing class—she felt seen and heard. This helped to ease the pain of carrying her story alone, build confidence in owning the truth of what happened and broaden her perspective, which ultimately helped her to move through the events of her past.
Read to Yourself in Front of a Mirror: Writing the experience down is the first step to diffusing its power. Reading the work aloud is an important second step. An audience of one—yourself—can be a great place to start. Ultimately, you are the one who needs to become comfortable, heal and find peace with what has happened. Take baby steps in the comfort of your home by reading in front of a mirror and witnessing yourself directly.
Pace Yourself: Writing might offer access to a powerful story, but we get to choose how to work with difficult material. Karen found that once she decided to write about what happened, she couldn’t stop. It was deeply cathartic and she wrote until she was done. But it can be equally beneficial to write small bits at a time. Choose the pace that feels best for you. There is no right way to do this.
Write to Discover a Wider Perspective: The pain of traumatic experiences often fix our perception of a given event. But writing can open that up. Empower yourself to try on different perspectives through writing. Create a list of all the possible scenes or topics related to your subject or the event itself. On any given day, choose what to write about—will you choose to write what’s hard? Or will you pace yourself and write something beautiful or fun or informational instead? Giving yourself this option allows you to keep the project moving along without being obligated to face hard things when you’re not feeling up for it.
Karen’s book, Why We Hide, will be published in spring, 2024. You can find Karen at Hideology, on Facebook: @solt.karen and Instagram: @karen_solt.
If you’re interested in hearing more about Karen’s story and other insights, I invite you to watch the short video clips below. And I’d love to hear what works for you when you write about hard things. Please leave your comments below.
Finally, if you’re interested in writing personal narrative or a memoir, there are two Story Alchemy courses to support your writing journey: Mining for Gold is a 5-week deep dive to help you unearth your hidden narratives and generate valuable material for your memoir, personal essay or work of literary non-fiction. And a new cohort for Crucible: A 6-month Book Writing Intensive begins in January. Applications to participate will be accepted in October, 2022.
Karen shares the events that transpired that inform her memoir, Why We Hide.
Writing your experience, reading it to others and being witnessed in the truth of who you are can give you the permission you need to keep going.
On the move from self-blame to allowing grief.
5 Unexpected Ways to Reset Your Writing Practice
Do you have writing days that are moan-inducing when a blank page feels more like a black hole? Or do you begin to write, quickly nix the idea, start on a new idea only to scratch that and start over again (and again)?
After writing six books and many articles, I know the woes of writing all too well. But I’ve also discovered a few things that have changed my writing life from feeling somewhat painful and anxiety-filled to waking up excited to see what will appear on the page that day.
It turns out that how you go about writing can be as important as what you write.
The secret lies in how you create your writing practice.
Every writer I know has had to figure out how to open the door of inspiration. Luckily, there are lots of tips and tools to help.
In Story Alchemy workshops and The Alchemists Writing Community we talk about the art and alchemy of writing great articles, essays and books. We also talk about the nitty gritty, day-to-day stuff, like how to create a practice that makes writing fun and helps you be a better writer. Below is a taste of the boots-on-the ground writing guidance you’ll find in Story Alchemy.
5 Unexpected Ways to Reset Your Writing Practice
Learn to sketch:
I always feel jealous of painters because their process looks like so much fun (painters, forgive me if I’m wrong on this!). They often sketch first to study their subject before painting. Then they block out the image on a blank canvas and create form in broad strokes. Next comes color and texture. The painting comes to life through layering and adding finer detail.
When I started writing I was weirdly under the impression that I had to know what I wanted to say first and simply pound it out. I’ve only learned over time how writing is more like painting—it’s helpful to sketch first and add layers to bring the work to life. Writing is rewriting after all.
It became infinitely easier and more fun when I gave myself permission to sketch until the shape of the piece began to reveal itself. So you can let go of the creativity-squashing notion that you have to be perfect from the get go. Allow yourself to sketch the essence of a beautiful moment or a big idea and see where the process leads you.
Give yourself room:
Whether you have an office or a small corner of your bedroom, it helps to create a dedicated writing space where you can unload the contents of your brain and keep your tools at hand. My tools include a journal, a laptop, a folder to collect loose papers, a good filing system, note cards and sticky notes, objects and books that inspire me. Whatever helps is worth having at your fingertips.
When I wrote my novel Tree Dreams, I gave myself permission to use my entire studio. I painted a wall with chalkboard paint and wrote all over it. I plastered magazine clippings and notecards everywhere so I could “see” what I was thinking (and my then 5-year old left me sweet messages, too). It felt so satisfying to break the rules and let creativity reign (that’s a photo of my studio on the left).
Find the door at the back of the wardrobe:
In The Chronicles of Narnia, the Pevensie children discover that there is a door in the back of a wardrobe that leads to the land of Narnia. It can be very useful to create your own ‘door’ that helps you to shift from everyday concerns to the as-yet-unknown world of your work. The way I open that door is to read other writers I love. I meditate. I dance to out-there music to shake off the day. I take a walk. Or I might take a shower. Mindful transitions help you reset and better see the work at hand.
Know when to quit and write the next thing (tomorrow):
Give yourself a quitting time. It can help to know that you don’t have to work longer than an hour (or a few). You will come to trust that you can try again tomorrow. Building this trust allows you to relax deeper into your work knowing it will reveal itself over time. And if you have wild bursts of inspiration and go over your designated time, all the better. You will feel victorious!
As you get to the end of the session, you may be filled with ideas that you wish you had time to write. Jot them down as starting points for the next day. This offers an easy and inspired place to begin when you return to your writing and helps to connect the work over days and weeks.
Don’t (always) write alone:
Writing is, by its very nature, an isolating experience. We can easily conceive of an idea, map it out, write it, edit it, doubt ourselves and want to throw it all away, then edit it four more times … without ever speaking to another soul.
I often consider the isolation that comes with writing to be a work hazard. But this is tricky because I love the isolation and need the quiet to think. I also love people and hearing their stories and sharing my own.
It’s such a relief to read an important truth aloud. And it may be even more important to laugh at our very human experiences with others.
In Story Alchemy classes I’ve seen writers discover courage and perseverance they never knew they had. I’ve also seen many people drop the veil of loneliness and find deep contentment supporting other writers on their journey. Having accountability, feedback and a safe space to explore the terrain of your work can make all the difference.
This is one of the reasons I created The Alchemists Writing Community membership. Writing is so much better (and way more fun!) when we do it together. I’ll be offering a free trial for the month of September–stay tuned!
On deep sea diving, octopi and finding our hidden stories
There are ten minutes in the breathtaking film, My Octopus Teacher, that encapsulate the full scope of my love of writing and meditation.
I often ask the writers who take my Story Alchemy classes to watch these ten minutes because not only are the diver’s underwater adventures staggeringly beautiful, but they are instructive for any creative explorer compelled to plumb the depths of everyday busyness in search of meaning—and rich material to work with.
In the documentary, there is the world above the surface of the ocean that stretches to the horizon and then there are the infinite mysteries below. When our world-weary diver takes to the sea one day he discovers a creature covered in shells. He swims closer to take a look only to have it dart away. But his curiosity is piqued. He resolves to return every day to see what he can discover about this underwater being.
The diver swims to the chilly bottom in search of the octopus and finds that he sometimes startles it away when he approaches too quickly. On other days he gets his approach just right–a slow, smooth and easy swim that doesn’t unnerve his new companion. And so he returns regularly and a magical relationship grows that changes his life forever.
And here is the secret for our lives as writers and deep sea divers into the rich and wondrous realms of psyche and nature. It lies in our intention to return to the world every day to see what exists beneath our busyness. We begin to notice images that speak to us, phrases that people say that play on repeat like music in our mind, a sense of presence given off by a river or a tree that seems to want to convey something vital.
This is our job: to notice and nurture what invites our curiosity and to not rush too quickly to try to capture it (counter-intuitive, I know!).
Our job is to relate with it and wait and see what wants to be revealed. This is where to find some of the hidden stories of our lives
The Beauty of Being a Ghost
I have always loved being a book coach and ghostwriter because I have the privilege of knowing my clients intimately and witnessing the trials, the beauty and the unexpected wonder that can fill a life.
To write well means that I have to listen well. I need to learn to see the bigger picture of my clients’ lives and the way that the particular story we are writing fits into it.
Whether it was the horror of escaping a violent civil war that tore a family apart and rendered their memories mute (until the writing process allowed them to piece their lives back together again) or the way a female Episcopalian minister-to-be unexpectedly claimed her spiritual authority in Buddhism, I discovered the story by listening for not only what was said, but also for what was not said.
I had to become curious about the gaps in the story. And I always welcomed the times when someone felt compelled to tell me a story again (and again), because details often shifted each time—not because someone was being untruthful, but because there is so much to a memory or a moment that it can take many tellings to truly see it all.
And so we return to the rhythms of our own lives to learn what wants to reveal itself. This requires equal parts noticing and listening and being patient and writing and, as Rilke famously wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet, learning to “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Here are five ways for you to discover some of your hidden stories:
What captures your attention?
Each day before you go to bed, take no more than five minutes to write down three things that captured your attention that day. Use the ‘First Thought, Best Thought’ method of writing the first three things that come to mind. You’ll be amazed by how quickly you begin to get attuned to new observations.
What is on repeat?
Notice if there are themes that cycle through your nighttime lists. Does nature seem to play a big role? Or do relationships take center stage? Has an injustice made your blood boil? Or have mundane moments–roadwork outside your office window–made it hard to think? Related topics point to bigger stories that are begging for your attention.
Activate your curiosity
Whether you notice themes or not, kick your curiosity up a notch. Take the next step and explore the topic further. What do you want to understand? Do you simply need to learn more about a given system? Heartbreak over clearcuts near where I lived in Portland, Oregon made me want to learn everything I could about trees, so I signed up for Urban Forestry 101. This informed my novel Tree Dreams.
Or is it more internal, an inner dialogue that needs to play itself out on the page for an emotional truth to come to light?
Make lists
Write down everything you’d like to learn. Make a list of five or ten things that you’re really curious about. You can divide your lists into specifics (I am going to research more about trees in my neighborhood) or general categories (I know I want to learn about forest activism). Either way, lists help to set the wheels in motion.
Give yourself time
Give yourself a week or month and work with your “To Explore” list every day (or at least a few days a week). Write down everything you discover. And before you know it you are deep sea diving into stories hidden in plain sight that can become a blog post, an essay, a book or a whole new direction in your life.
What’s Ahead for Story Alchemy
I’m in this very process myself at the moment as I make changes to Alchemy. My online writing classes began as a 6-month book writing course that I called Literary Alchemy, which I launched at the start of COVID.
These classes truly were the light in the darkness these last pandemic-filled years. To my surprise and delight, requests started coming for more classes, shorter classes, a community.
And so I have been listening and learning what wants to reveal itself. So Literary Alchemy is becoming Story Alchemy in September, with a community membership and more classes, to embrace all of the ways that stories weave their way through our lives (and not only in books). I can’t wait to share it with you!
