Emerging Form

Two of the most important tools any creative has? Your experiences and your time to create. And your biggest impediment? Distractions. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with author Catherine Price about how to strengthen “the muscle of attention,” how to set boundaries for yourself, how to give your brain space and how to change your habits. She focuses on our relationship with our phones—designed to be a tool, they are often our biggest distraction, stealing not only our time but also our ability to be fully present in our experiences, the raw material for making creative connections. This is an essential episode for anyone serious about their creative practice.

Catherine Price is a science journalist, speaker, and author of numerous books including How to Break Up With Your Phone, Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food, and the forthcoming book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Parade, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Self, Medium, Health Magazine, and Outside, among others. She's also the founder of ScreenLifeBalance.com, which is part of her mission to help people scroll less and live more.

Openness and curiosity--how do these attributes contribute to the success of creative endeavors? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with science fiction and nonfiction author Annalee Newitz. They talk about back up plans, the relationship between luck and hard work, how writing for free can really pay off, how we frame our experience, challenging our expectations, and creating opportunities. 

Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, and the novels The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among others. They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo. 

Annalee’s newsletter

Our Opinions Are Correct, Annalee’s podcast with Charlie Jane Anders

Annalee’s books

Techsploitation, Annalee’s website

Christie’s book proposal workshop

Struggle. It’s an essential part of the creative process. How do we move past the desire to give up and find the energy and time to continue? In this episode, Rosemerry and Christie talk about recent projects and their longtime experience with how to stay with a project when we’d rather give up. We speak about going back to the beginning, how community helps, ways to create accountability, deadlines, finding “what’s at stake,” and how questions are sometimes the answer. 

David Petersen: Writing Naturally

Georgia Frances King

When creatives show up for their practice, they bring a lot of tools: perhaps books and pens and paper. Perhaps canvas and paint. Perhaps a camera or a script. But all creatives have one thing in common: they bring their bodies. In this episode, we speak with poet/teacher/dancer/zen monk Brooke McNamara about body awareness and creative practice. How did her own body awareness inform her practice and what might we all do to tap deeper into our physical bodies and let our “empathetic kinesthetic awareness” help lead us. 

Brooke McNamara, MFA, is a poet, teacher, and ordained Zen monk. She has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed and Feed Your Vow. She loves to create poems from 3 main ingredients: the raw material of everyday life, wholehearted and visceral listening, and the mind of meditation. For her poetry, Brooke is the recipient of the Charles B. Palmer prize from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught yoga studies at Naropa University and dance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Brooke is creator and instructor of online courses in poetry, meditation, and creative practice, both solo and in collaboration with Lauren Beale and Lisa Gibson. She is a long-time lay Zen student of Diane Musho Hamilton, Roshi, and is empowered as a senior monk. Brooke lives with her husband, Rob, their two sons, Lundin and Orion, and two kitties, Sattva and Mowgli. 

Brooke’s website

Science’s 2021 “Dance your PhD” contest winners, and the quite delightful 2019 winner.

Philip Shepard: The Embodiment Present

Emerging Form Episode 10: The Power of Play with Sherry Richert Belul.

How long must we wait for the form to emerge? Sometimes right up to the last minute! In this episode we speak with Kate Fagan, Emmy-award winning journalist and No. 1 New York Times bestselling author. We talk about her new book, ALL THE COLORS CAME OUT, a memoir about her relationship with her father and his death from ALS. Kate shares with us the differences between writing memoir and reporting the story of someone else, the importance of communicating with the people you love who will be in the memoir and how she wrote the real story vs. the story she wish it had been. And of course, we speak of emerging form, and how for this book, it continued to emerge until the last hour. 

Kate Fagan is an Emmy-award winning journalist and the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of WHAT MADE MADDY RUN, which was a semi-finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting. Her first book was the coming-of-age memoir THE REAPPEARING ACT, and her third book, ALL THE COLORS CAME OUT, comes out this month from Little, Brown. She currently writes for Sports Illustrated and co-hosts the podcast Free Cookies. Kate previously spent seven years as a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She was also a regular panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and host of Outside the Lines. Kate covered the Philadelphia 76ers for three seasons and played college basketball at the University of Colorado. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her wife, Kathryn Budig, and their two dogs. 

Kate on Twitter

Kate on Instagram

Kate’s website

Have you ever felt envious of someone else’s success? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with Dear Sugar herself, Cheryl Strayed, and get practical, heart-opening, career-inspiring advice about how to meet this very natural and difficult feeling. We speak of abundance mentality, leaning in to our own heart’s desires, and the “all boats rise” when one of us succeeds philosophy. Strayed talks about times when she has envied and what it taught her, and she also speaks of being envied herself and how she handles others’ projection. 

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, and the novel Torch. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 and adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon. Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos in a play directed by Thomas Kail that has been produced in theaters around the world. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere. She publishes the popular Dear Sugar column as a monthly newsletter and has hosted two hit podcasts for the New York Times—Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars, which she co-hosted with Steve Almond. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #69: We Are All Savages Inside (Cheryl’s advice to an envious creative person)

Christie’s Oprah Magazine story about envy.

Our previous episode about how envy brought Christie and Rosemerry together.

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #48: Write Like a Motherfucker

To listen to our bonus episode with Cheryl next week, become a paid subscriber to Emerging Form at emergingform.substack.com.

Can envy help your creative practice? The origin story of this podcast would seem to offer a resounding yes! In this episode, Rosemerry and Christie recall the strange circumstances (Christie’s word is “mortifying”) in which they first met in 2008--lots of laughter--and how play and vulnerability are now at the heart of their friendship. Christie offers insight about envy and how it can be an invitation to live into your true wishes for yourself. We also talk about STTUC (sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison), Shine Theory, and why, as the poet David Lee says, it might be important for your creative practice to surround yourself with people better than you. What began as envy became admiration and inspiration and has grown and flowered into a mutually supportive friendship and this podcast, a merging of creative energies. 

Christie’s Last Word On Nothing post how she and Rosemerry met and yes, those envy poems.

Rosemerry’s TEDx Talk: The Art of Changing Metaphors

Christie’s TEDx Talk: How Envy Can Guide Your Path to Success

Christie’s Oprah Magazine story about the benefits of envy.

After Having My Manuscript Rejected by Ghostroad Press, I Read the Bio of Christie Aschwanden, Award-Winning Writer and Phenomenal Nordic Skier

Comparison is the root of all unhappiness. —Michelle Kodis

Not only is the grass greener on her side,it’s also taller, thicker, more nitrogen rich,and more appealing to grazing deer.Her snow is whiter,her summers warmer,her sky more starry by night.I wish it were just the grass.Why do I bother to breatheknowing she breathes more deeply,more fully into her more fertile belly.And she’s published in O Magazine.So I tell myself: Fertilize your own front yard.Compost. Weed and feed.And I tell myself she probably seeded with Kentucky Blue,a selfish choice in this drought-prone land.And I tell myself, she probably didn’t.It’s probably an organic greener lawnand she’s a better gardener with a greener thumband she’d probably invite me over to her yard to playbecause she’s more nice, more generous, more willing to share.To hell with grass.I tell myself,I’d rather xeriscape.But man, it looks green over there.

from Holding Three Things at Once  (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2008)

In this bonus episode, Kim Langley tells us about dealing with imposter syndrome and going to not one, but two writers retreats where she couldn’t write.

Kim is the author of Send My Roots Rain: A Companion on the Grief Journey, 60 poems and brief reflections combined with suggestions for mindful activities and journaling. The book was well received by individual grievers as well as hospice, palliative care, social work, chaplaincy, and other helping professionals and so is in its second printing. Kim has facilitated numerous writing/discussion circles based on her book.

She has been president of her own speaking/training/coaching company (LifeBalance Enterprises, Inc.) for 20+ years and for more than 10 years has been leading poetry circles, using poetry as the springboard for a “deeper dive” into conversations of belonging. Kim is the founder of WordSPA, a vehicle for sharing the joys of poetry as an inclusive and healing art..

Kim Langley

Kim Langley is the author of Send My Roots Rain: A Companion on the Grief Journey, 60 poems and brief reflections combined with suggestions for mindful activities and journaling. The book was well received by individual grievers as well as hospice, palliative care, social work, chaplaincy, and other helping professionals and so is in its second printing. Kim has facilitated numerous writing/discussion circles based on her book.

She has been president of her own speaking/training/coaching company (LifeBalance Enterprises, Inc.) for 20+ years and for more than 10 years has been leading poetry circles, using poetry as the springboard for a “deeper dive” into conversations of belonging. Kim is the founder of WordSPA, a vehicle for sharing the joys of poetry as an inclusive and healing art..

Christie’s tribute to her editor David Corcoran, “Farewell David Corcoran, Dearest of Editors.”

Christie’s Runner’s World essay about her sister-in-law’s death, “The Painful Truth.”

How poetry helped express what Christie was feeling after her sister-in-law’s death.

After we recorded this episode, Christie’s friend Kristina died, and she wrote this Last Word on Nothing post about that loss.

Kim Langley’s book, Send My Roots Rain: A Companion on the Grief Journey

Sitting Beside My Brother at the Funeral

June 1, 2018 by Rosemerry | Edit

There was a time when I’d pull his hair out

if he sat too close to me on the couch.

Now, I curl into his right side,

lean my head on his shoulder,

feel the trembling of his chest

as he weeps. How good it feels

to be close to him as we grieve.

How familiar, the shape of his head,

the heft of his hand as he reaches for mine.

How deeply right, this leaning

into sorrow together.

In this bonus episode with author Kristi Nelson, we talk about how she transitioned her self-perception from “creativity appreciator” to “creative person.” She also talks about the gift of envy and how it has served her. 

Kristi Nelson is the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living and author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. She has spent most of her adult life in non-profit leadership, fundraising, and organizational development. In a wide variety of roles, she has helped to lead, fund, and strengthen organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. In 2001, Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and training, and leadership coaching business, and in this capacity worked with organizations such as the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spirit in Action, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. During this time, she was also founding Director of the Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. She received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University.

Kristi Nelson’s book: Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing For Granted

Kristi’s moving story of living through stage IV cancer