Notice: The Kishōtenketsu Workshop I am doing with Andy Mort is coming up next week! You can find more info and sign up a this link. 

In this episode I discuss two women I've learned about recently who are lights in the dark for me. They inspire me to keep going through tough times, and to not lose hope. Table tennis phenom Zhiying Zeng, who is making her Olympic debut in Paris this summer at the age of 58, reminds me that it's worth it to try for a dream a second time around. And singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, whose wonderful song "Brave" is worthy of the number one spot on the charts even if it didn't make it that far, reminds me that if we let go of our attachment to specific outcomes, we allow for even better things to happen.

I recently discovered a notebook filled with poetry I wrote thirty (!) years ago, and in one fell swoop it reconfigured my understanding of myself as an artist. In this episode I contemplate the threads that define who we are as artists that weave their way through our lifelong body of work (creative or otherwise). And I read one of those thirty-year-old poems (eep)!

Find out more about my Kishotenketsu workshop partner, Andy Mort

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In summer I like to  mix it up on this podcast, so I decided to share some of my short stories. "The Trash House" is a women-centered retooling of the Japanese Kitsune (fox) folklore. Enjoy!

Last episode I discussed the "conflict free" Japanese Kishotenketsu storytelling framework as a gentler alternative to the Western-style Hero's Journey. In this one I contrast the two as lenses through which we can interpret our creative lives. The Hero's Journey, though it may make for compelling entertainment, can be toxic when used as a way of understanding our own progress and successes. The Kishotenketsu lens provides a more realistic and less competitive perspective that suits those of us who are gentle souls, HSPs, and neurodivergent.  

I'm dealing with some personal life stuff right now and so dug into my Patreon archive for an episode for you all today! In this one I discuss the Japanese (and more broadly Asian) narrative structure called Kishotenketsu. This is generally seen as being a low-conflict or even conflict-free form of narrative, and it's a balm to the soul for those of us who have highly sensitive nervous systems. I compare Kishotenketsu to the typical Western Hero's Journey/three-act narrative structure using the examples of the films Kiki's Delivery Service, Parasite, and the show Bones. Enjoy!

Note: I mention references in the original show notes for this episode but unfortunately these were lost when I closed down my Patreon. I always like to cite my sources and give credit where credit is due, so I apologize about that. I was able to source one of them.  

Last week I made the trek down to Tampa to attend a writer's  conference and live pitch my novel to two agents! This type of experience can be overwhelming for creatives who are highly sensitive or have other types of sensory processing conditions--or for those who struggle with anxiety and/or mental health challenges. In this episode I discuss all the special accommodations I made for myself so that I was able to get through it successfully, plus how I am dealing with the emotional aftermath.

Thank you for coming along with me as I've transitioned into this next step on my creative journey with my novel, the querying phase! There have been a lot of personal update episodes lately, but I'll be back to regular topical episodes starting in two weeks.

The episode I mentioned in this one:
E27: Breaking Into the Chocolate Factory

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Rejection sensitivity is one of the primary challenges neurodiverse and highly sensitive creatives face in reaching for their dreams. It can cause us to isolate, not seek out opportunities to share or showcase our work, or even keep us from doing creative work in the first place. If we do put ourselves out there, we risk severe mental health consequences when we experience real or perceived rejection, even of the mild kind (and rejection is inevitable on any creative journey!) How can we pursue our creative dreams in this context? 

In this episode I discuss the ins and outs of rejection sensitivity and its more extreme form, rejection sensitive dysphoria. You'll hear what it is, why neurodiverse folks are prone to it, what it looks like in real life (using some examples from my own), and some tools I've developed over the last five years of my own creative journey that have helped me go from not wanting to share my fiction at all to live pitching my now completed novel at a conference next week (wish me luck!)

Several resources I used for this episode:

Emotional Regulation and Rejection Sensitivity (Dr. William Dodson, October 2016)
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and Its Painful Impact (Dr. Neff, blog)

Past episodes I mention:

E41. The One About Writing: My Writing Journey and Path Toward Publication
E65. In Which I Read One of My Short Stories

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This episode begins with an update on my preparations for the writers' conference I'm attending in Tampa on April 12. You can skip ahead to the 10:36 mark for the topical discussion.

We're often counseled to follow our own vision or intuition in our creative work, but what does that actually look like in practice? How do you do it? In this episode I discuss a new lens that I'm finding useful right now: you follow what's alive. You'll hear about when following our internal impulses and rejecting the "shoulds" matters, how to differentiate between what's "alive" and what's "dead" in a creative project, and what to do then.

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At loooooooong last, I am (nearly! almost!) ready to start querying my novel to agents, so I decided it was the right time to do an update episode on where things stand and my plans going forward. I touch on topics such as what it feels like to be done, preparing for querying, and finding opportunities for professionalization as a prospective author.

Writing Day Conference info (Tampa & Orlando)

Jane Friedman classes

Mary Kole resources

Most timelines of the creative process depict it as linear and progressive, an "up and to the right" trajectory (like on a graph). But what I am finding in the final stretch of writing my novel, though, that this phase is entirely different from every part of the process that came before. Nothing about how I'm working as I struggle toward that finish line is like my ordinary creative practice, and I've had to alter both my approach and mindset. It truly is extra-ordinary (in the sense of being outside of the ordinary), and it does not fit with linear-progressive models of the creative process.

In this episode I discuss different cultural conceptualizations of ordinary vs. extraordinary time, and how we can adapt these to help us understand those periods in our own creative process that seem to take us far off course even as we struggle to maintain our bearings.