THE MEMOIR NOTES #1
You’ve made the decision to do the thing. Now what?
Well, hey there, friends!
What follows is the first installment of the new focus for this bi-monthly newsletter. As I announced last week, I am writing a book and I will be sharing the process with you here. I hope you enjoy it and that it supports your own creative pursuits!
xo Mary
The Memoir Notes #1: Setting The Stage
Beginning a new creative endeavor is a sacred activity.
It is essential to align our internal and external energies by paying attention to both our physical environment and our internal state as we prepare to begin any heart-centered project. Truly, well begun is half done.
In the sections below, I’ll share suggestions for you from my own practice and current situation as I prepared for the commitment of writing this memoir.
— Allow your physical environment to reflect and support your creative intention —
Setting up the physical environment
I set things up for myself so that I want to be in the space and do the thing. I refreshed my writer’s altar on the wall and rearranged my writing desk to face the direction of both my writer’s altar and my primary altar. (Yes, I have two altars in the room. Little Altars Everywhere could have been my memoir title, but alas, it was taken.) Anyway, they inspire me.
I brought out my giant post-it note that I had folded up and put in the closet, and pressed it back up on the main wall of the basement room I’ve turned into my makeshift studio. The giant note holds the smaller notes of memories grouped by year on my timeline. These are the memories I pull from to write my stories.
I tidied up and set things up in such a way that everything I need in order to write is close at hand, and the surroundings make me want to be there. Everything in my immediate environment visually talks back to me and says, in essence, we are doing this thing and you are supported.
— Prime the internal pump —
Setting the Internal Stage
To start afresh, I needed to reintroduce myself to my landscape of my stories. I have been capturing memories and writing short stories in rough drafts over the past year or so, but as I said last week, it has been many months since I wrote from any new memories. I think it was helpful for me to see the evidence of my earlier work and to be reassured that I had indeed made progress. In fact, I was feeling pretty sassy when I saw how much I had already written. I then tuned in to what memory might be raising its hand and saying, in essence, Write Me Next. I paused. I quieted myself. I prayed for guidance.
— But First, Some Reminders —
Remember not to make this “getting ready” process into a major project in and of itself. I spent an hour or so one afternoon. This isn’t about making your space perfect, it’s about making it feel good to you so that you want to be there and do the thing. Keep it simple. Have what you need ready and waiting for you so that all you have to do is show up. Anything else is perfectionism and delay which keeps you stuck and not doing the thing.
At the risk of stating the obvious, let me also remind us that the process of getting ready to write, while important, isn't actually writing.
— THE HEART OF THE MATTER —
What came up for me as I sat to write:
Initially, it was hard to jump back into the rhythm of writing my memories after being away from the work for many months. And now that it had been dubbed “a book” (gulp) it took on a different emotional weight, which immediately led to fretting about what kind of structure I needed. This started an internal whirlwind. Should I write in the same way I was writing last year - story by story, memory by memory, Bird by Bird, as Anne Lamott would say? Or should I change it up and write on a particular theme or insight and then pull out a story to illustrate it? I was already spiraling in indecision and inaction. That didn’t take long! I knew that the only way out of this spiral was to stop my racing brain by centering down within myself. I knew I didn’t want to write this book fueled by anxiety. I want to write from a centered, contemplative stance as much as possible. I closed my eyes and noticed my body. I breathed into the tense places. I reminded myself that I do not write alone. I asked for guidance again and began.
What I wrote:
It didn’t take long for the answer to arise. I settled into what felt steady and good at that moment in my body. I decided to write a simple overview of my first 5 years of life. The longer arc instead of the micro-stories/memories I had been writing up to this point. I needed to experience a timeline of sorts, but this time not a giant paper timeline on my wall. I had done that. I wanted to move through the 5-year timeline in my writing without getting mired in minutiae. I wanted to discover the connections between the stories. I ‘d been zooming in and I needed to zoom out. I began by writing a few pages summarizing those first early years. As always seems to happen, a few pages became many more, and I was surprised by the discoveries and connections I began to make.
WANT TO COME ALONG AND READ WHAT I’M WRITING?
»»»»»»> I’ll be sharing what I wrote in this month’s intimate, bonus newsletter for my paid subscribers. If you want to follow along with what I’m writing and get a true sneak peek behind the curtain, you can subscribe here.
Thanks for reading!
I hope you found some support for setting the stage for your own creative work.
I’d love to hear your thoughts or learn what you are focusing on right now.
xo Mary
3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through the process is one of the bravest things we’ll ever do.” - Brene Brown ( I’ve shared this before, but maybe like me, you needed to hear it again.)
“As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.”
- an excerpt from I Sing The Body Electric by Walt Whitman
This 3-minute Divine Feminine blessing. It was recorded last July at our Living School Symposium, led by Mirabai Starr.
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Mary, I really appreciate the window into your writing process and preparation. It’s a gift for us to be able to follow you as you work on your book.