If you’re new here, Story Work is the name of my current book-in-progress. It describes a process of reflection, reclaiming, and reimagining the stories of our lives. It involves looking at your life experiences as creative material that you have the power to shape. Paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et.
A time-sensitive reminder before we dive in to the exercise, if you’re seeking a soul-focused creative mentor and community, today is the last day to join the Inner Story Writing Circle at a 12% discount by signing up for the full year of 2024. You can learn more here.
Read on for a preview of our weekly exercise.
So far we have looked at creative courage three ways:
the makings of courage - as we are seeking deeper courage and fuller expression, we should be aware of our body’s energy centers, specifically the throat chakra, and how our creative tools and practices open it.
the right invitation - finding an inviting path out of your comfort zone that adds meaning to your life and doesn’t feel forced can make all the difference in how you approach creative risk.
a form of constancy - the connection between courage and consistency and what daily habits, activities, and patterns of behavior help you build courage over time.
Today let’s explore the courage it takes to drop into the present moment and value it as a snapshot of our one precious life.
Writing is daunting for many reasons. We’re afraid that our words won’t adequately capture our ideas, and we fear what we will discover about ourselves. In the words of James Baldwin, “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.”
What will our confessions require us to face? Revealing your honest creative expression is a naked experience, laying yourself bare in the light of day. Your truth on the page reveals blemishes, wounds, and vulnerabilities that weren’t visible when hidden in the dark of your subconscious. Often we face blocks because we realize that we’re revealing this nakedness, and we don’t know what will come from it.
We rarely feel more vulnerable than when we are naked. It’s not just because of our hidden insecurities, it’s also because of our hidden beauty and complexity of shape and form. To just put it all out there can feel almost life-threatening, as if just being seen this way might kill the protective identity we’ve developed to shield ourselves from pain.
Perhaps we are afraid of writing because we’re afraid of capturing who we are in the present moment.
We often say, “I’m a work-in-progress…”, “I am becoming…”, “I am growing…” and we place a high value on a version of ourselves in the future. We romanticize this wise, knowing future self who is fearless, accomplished, and above reproach.
Do we overlook the value of who we are right now in the present moment when we do this? What role does courage play in our ability to celebrate who we are and where we are right now today?
Imagine taking a photo when you were twenty years old. You wouldn’t say, I can’t take this photo because it will forever capture what I look like in this moment, what I’m doing, what outfit I’m wearing, this hairstyle. What if one day I change my mind about how good I look in this dark lipstick or this floppy hat? What if I regret wearing matching outfits with this guy who’s going to cheat on me a month later? What if I’m embarrassed about who I was?
We don’t do that, do we? We embrace the moment and take the pictures, knowing we don’t want to forget a thing. Knowing that we will evolve and look back and be glad that we have the memories: snapshots of prior versions of ourselves and the characters in our lives, documentation of our evolution, and gratitude for the journey.
This is the way we need to think about our writing. All of it has value. All of it. Those stories you wrote about unicorns when you were 10-years old. The poems you wrote as a teenager about feeling unseen and misunderstood. The journal entries you wrote to cope with love, loss, and longing. Your first attempts at writing publicly. They’re all beautiful and necessary as part of your unfolding, and this is why I won’t let any writer in my presence talk bad about their creative efforts.
We only have the present version of ourselves for a moment. Too often, we don’t value it until it’s gone.
When you write, think about it as a snapshot in time, capturing who you are in this moment. Your voice, opinions, fears, obsessions, observations, and beliefs may change one day, and that will not undermine the value of who you are and what you have to say today.
Finding the courage to embrace the present moment is difficult when our minds so easily drift into the past and the future, and the world’s dominant narratives have us constantly measuring ourselves against so many standards and norms. To own the worthiness of your lived experience, your authentic expression, and your right to take up space exactly where you are right now, devote yourself to continuously bringing yourself back to the present moment and the gifts it has to offer.
“The courage to live in the present, between time and timelessness. No matter the circumstance, it is where life is found.”
―RJ Blizzard
Exercise:
For this week’s exercise, let’s use flash memoir as a creative way to appreciate a moment, a snapshot in time that marks a valued part of your life. Choose a recent photo from your camera roll and travel back to the moment the picture was taken. Study the photo, then close your eyes and reenter it. Look outside the frame beyond what’s visible in the picture. What did you perceive with your five senses? Who’s behind the camera? Why was this picture taken? What associated memories come up? Why do you value this photo?
Search through the layers of wanted and unwanted feelings. No matter how extraordinary or mundane the moment is, describe it with reverence and detail.