Welcome into Flight School:

Week 1: What your hero fights for (and which level your story actually reaches)Week 2: Which plot you’re actually writing (not the one you wish you were)Week 3: The egoic trap you can’t see yet (but your writing will reveal)

Over these three classes we had fifty people sign up. WOW. Unheard of. And yet, as you’ll see from the classes themselves, only four to six showed up in person each week. And those who did show up did a great job thinking together.

In this last meeting, we had a great conversation that was raw and personal. I shared fresh material from a tiny book called Born Only Once by Conrad Baars, a Dutch psychiatrist who survived Buchenwald.

I hope you get a lot out of this group with two novelists and two memoirists who covered the full terrain of story.

The question that drove this entire class:

What is the egoic trap your hero is caught in?

And what will it take to set them free?

The Setup: Marilyn Monroe and Hitler

Marilyn Monroe: abandoned by her mother, raised in a house of horrors by mentally ill caregivers, never knew her father, beaten with religion. She had spunk, determination, a strong will. But she was the tragedy of the unaffirmed person attempting self-affirmation. Walking around saying “I’m okay, I’m okay” when she had never been shown her basic goodness.

Adolf Hitler: raised by an authoritarian father (one shot, that’s it) and an indulgent mother (no limits, no boundaries). Average intelligence, failed entrance exams, years of poverty and unemployment. Emotionally deprived at the key formative years. Also had a strong will.

Same foundational wound. Different manifestations. Both destroyed themselves in the end.

The six egoic traps Konrad pulled from the text:

* Amassing material possessions

* Becoming a millionaire many times over

* Success in studies, oppressive array of degrees and titles

* Reaching the top of the ladder

* Attaining fame (or associating with famous people)

* Gaining power over others through authority, dictatorship, gangsterdom

* Promiscuous behavior (there were actually seven)

These are the compensations for feeling worthless, lonely, inferior. And after class, Konrad sent me this terrific chart:

The Counter-Example: Pope John XXIII

Considered unattractive by the standards of the world, yet anyone who met him walked away feeling their own goodness.

Why? He was affirmed. And he carried these qualities:

* Sensitive (not discouraged sensitivity, but awareness of what’s happening in every moment)

* Open to the goodness of life

* Calm, unhurried way of life

* Unselfish and humble (the humility to be wrong, to say “I’m wrong and I’m okay with that”)

* Moral self-restraint (meeting people where they’re at, not expecting them to be beyond that)

I gave my daughter these qualities on a 3x5 card when she was struggling: Be yourself. Stop repressing emotions. Don’t hang on your fears. Be assertive. Don’t put people down to make yourself important.

The Example That Landed: Cast Away

Tom Hanks. Go-go-rush guy. Time is his God. Gets stranded on a desert island. Talks to a volleyball for years. Wants to take his own life because he can’t control anything (same egoic trap as Marilyn and Hitler: Control).

But nature affirms him. Survival tests him. He comes back a quiet man. At the end, he’s at a crossroads. Literally. And it’s enough. He doesn’t need all the answers. He’s been freed from the egoic trap.

Then We Worked on Real Stories

* David (tragedy): “My hero longs for power. Gets it. Blows it. Betrays himself and everything else. Which prompts the rise of an antagonist who becomes the hero in the second book to defeat him.”

Clear when it’s tragic.

* Konrad (novel): “My midwife wants to write the first book about midwifery by a woman. Her husband says women don’t write books. So she becomes unaffirmed by her husband and pushes her daughter to become a doctor instead.”

I gave him the Jung quote: “Children are driven unconsciously to fulfill everything that was left unfulfilled in the life of their parents.”

Konrad: “I never thought of it that way till this piece. Crazy.”

* Chrissy (memoir): “I’m befuddled.”

Me: “It’s almost impossible when it’s about yourself. The lines will show you. Don’t worry.”

* Sarah (memoir about adoption): “My trap was a desire to appear fine. Everything is fine. We were a successful adoptive family. We were fine. We were NOT fine.”

* My own trap (from Blackbird): Blind loyalty to the point of self-sacrifice. So loyal to my mother and father that I created truly dangerous circumstances for myself. Why? Years later in therapy I discovered my father tortured me with cold showers if I didn’t take good care of my mother. I was three and four years old.

That loyalty was a three-year-old’s interpretation, not a grown woman’s understanding.

The Revelation

A woman told me yesterday on a podcast: “I read your book so many times and it gives me courage to recontextualize my own experience. I felt like I was the only one.”

My heart soared. Because that’s the job. We bring forth the human experience. Truth. Goodness. Or in David’s case, a cautionary tale about abject awfulness—but written in such a human way we go, “I know that guy.”

Remember, this is a long-game art form: Your book could last fifty years. A hundred. I just celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary and nothing is more powerful than knowing I wrote something that asked the tough questions and pushed beyond what was comfortable in my era.

All handouts and teaching materials below.

We Have Room in the Live Bones of Storytelling

When: Wednesday March 25 at 5 to 7 p.m.

These three classes are a taste. Bones is the full meal deal. A direction-changing class that will inspire you to go the distance. If you’re a subscriber, you get 20% off. Check the footer of your last email.

Handouts:

✍️Your Turn:

What is the egoic trap YOUR hero is caught in?

Don’t panic if you can’t answer yet. The writing will show you. It showed me ten years after I wrote Blackbird. It showed Patricia in this very class. It might show you on page 200 of your draft.

But start asking the question now. Watch for it. The lines will reveal it.

Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for three weeks of this work. You showed up. You engaged. You’re on your way.

Jennifer 🐦‍⬛

Blackbird's Flight School with Jennifer Lauck is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe