the Inspirited Word

29. To be silent (Or, turning creative enemies into allies)

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 10:00:00 GMT

Writers tend to have a mixed relationship with silence (either literal or more internal). On the one hand, we sometimes crave more of it, as a way to make space for the words we’re trying to coax onto the page. When those words don’t flow, though, silence can feel more like an enemy—like a space filled with nothing but our own hypervigilant expectations about our work.

But what if you could make silence a true ally and co-creator in your creative practice? What if instead of having to fill the silence (or avoid it), you just needed to meet it, with no expectations?

Maybe that sounds easier said than done. But this month, some insights from a memoir about life in a convent are giving me a few new and surprisingly simple ideas to reshape the role of silence in my writing—and I think they might help you, too.

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Episode links:

The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong

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28. Dreaming big (Or, writing what’s holy)

Fri, 30 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT

This month on the pod, I’m going to be doing something that is sometimes considered obnoxiously gauche and self-obsessed—I’m going to tell you about a totally weird dream I had (two totally weird dreams, actually).

These dreams fall into the category of what you might call “big dreams.” In Jungian psychology, a big dream is a basically one that feels transpersonal. It’s made up of images and symbols that are clearly archetypal. And it comes to us with a big message, something that can shift and shape our process of becoming ourselves.

Join me as I share one of the creative secrets I learned from these big dreams: the difference between writing for an “audience” and writing for the “holy crowd.”

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Episode links:

Episode 9: Hearth and horizon

web link (no timestamp, skip to 1:27)
Apple
Spotify
Overcast

Episode 11: Telling the story that breathes

web link (no timestamp, skip to 2:24)
Apple
Spotify
Overcast

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27. Crafting a creative life with the Witches’ Pyramid

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:00:00 GMT

If you were around for last month’s episode, you may have caught this little line toward the end: “You want to practice your craft consistently as an ethic, not a metric.” And maybe you thought, “Okay, sure... but what does that actually mean, Mary?”

(Or at least, that’s what I thought to myself after the fact.)

So today, I’m exploring the difference between creative ethics and creative metrics, and how adopting a personal writing philosophy can fuel a sustainable, generative, and ever-evolving practice.

Join me as I dig into an example philosophy called the Witches’ Pyramid, to uncover how it could help you meet specific writing goals – without letting those goals determine the way you relate to creative craft as part of your life.

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Episode links:

Éliphas Lévi, creator of the Pyramid

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26. Creating more meaning, more often

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:00:00 GMT

This month on the pod, I’m going to be giving you a little creative pep talk about two things:

Why your consistent creativity matters, even if you’re not publicly prolific
A practical way to reach the level of consistency that feels right for your practice

After February’s episode on managing the overwhelm of productivity culture, I wanted to dig deeper into something specific that surfaced – the creative ideal of being prolific.

How can you escape the productivity ethos but still commit to creating more meaningful work (both in the sense of making stuff that captures deep meaning, and also in the sense of making that kind of stuff more often)?

I guess if last month was me talking shit about productivity, then this month is my follow-up on how to rehabilitate an aspect of it.

Tune in for three steps to nurture a more consistent creative practice – without getting sucked into the productivity trap.

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Episode links:

Rachael Stephen, How to NOT f ** k up your creativity for a decade (YouTube)

Kening Zhu, botanical studies of internet magic podcast

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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25. You don't have to be more productive (really)

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

This month, something very strange happened. I found myself researching a biz-bro productivity hack for writers... and actually wanting to try it.

How did this come to pass? In these manically trying times, it’s been feeling especially hard to avoid getting flooded with information and content – to actually integrate what I’m taking in, instead of being swept up. And ironically, this productivity system might be a way to do just that.

So, does this mean my long-running, deep-seated distrust of creative productivity culture may be misguided? Am I going to pivot to being a prolific, write-and-post-every-day kind of writer? Meh, I still don’t think so.

There’s nothing wrong with being prolific – but there’s nothing inherently good about it, either. Being prolific requires the courage to speak, but speaking well requires making space for deep and surprising thought. Sometimes it requires prioritizing slowness over productiveness.

I think the line between expression and noise comes down to two concepts that sound similar, but are ultimately opposed: “next actions” and “next right things.” And it’s very easy to mistake one for the other.

But when you get it right, you unlock the potential to reclaim what’s truly meaningful to you (no productivity system needed).

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Episode links:

Bob Doto

“Information Dysregulation: This New Term is Changing Everything,” Taylor Heaton (YouTube)

“Do the Next Right Thing: Carl Jung on How to Live,” Maria Popova, The Marginalian

“Slow productivity is a team sport: A critique of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity,” Meredith Farkas, Information Wants to be Free

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24. Resolving to stay curious

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:00:00 GMT

It's January! And regardless of how you feel about the whole “new year, new you” vibe, January is the ultimate case study of goal-setting in the wider cultural zeitgeist. Maybe you’ve tried the often-hyped approach of choosing a word to act as a mantra or touchstone to guide you over the course of the year.

Tools like a word of the year can be powerful reminders of the ways you want to feel and act along the path toward your ideals – but only if they also help you stay curious about that path, and about your actual life, as it exists right now.

This year, what if we all chose questions rather than words? A question is a reminder to keep going deeper, to explore how our ideals are emerging and evolving in the moment.

And for storytellers, the art of asking good questions is maybe the most important gift, even more than the art of writing pretty words.

Tune in for some support and solidarity to nurture your creative potential in the months ahead (regardless of how all those goals turn out).

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Episode links:

On Being podcast: “Foundations for Being Alive Now,” Krista Tippett

Hannah Louise Poston

Episode 10, “Freedom with form (Or, story structure for optimists)”

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23. The creativity of longing (Or, crafting hopeful stories)

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 11:00:51 GMT

I allude pretty clearly to my political leanings on the podcast, but I don’t generally structure entire episodes around specific political issues. And I do like for this to be a kind of quiet space where you can come to recollect your creative self, whatever’s going on in the world and in your life.

But I decided it wouldn’t feel genuine to not talk about the fallout of the US election this month. Because it’s certainly affected my creative practice, and I’d imagine that may be true for you as well.

I’ve realized that the practical aims of the election, and of politics as a whole, have had the effect of substituting a desired strategic outcome for what I actually desire in my life and in this world. Basically, I’ve lost touch with my longing.

And the most immediate and vital way I can reconnect with my longing in the daily way I live is to live creatively – to let my creative sensibility feed and shape the way I interact with others, and the actions I take.

Join me to explore a model of storytelling (from the mind of Ursula Le Guin) that’s been giving me hope and nurturing my creative longing... even when the strategic outlook isn’t so inspiring.

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Episode links:

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”

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22. Magical thinking for practical writers

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:00:49 GMT

This month, sort of in honor of Halloween and sort of just because, I want to share and explore a single phrase about writing that has been inspiring me lately:

Your characters are your ancestors.

This idea unlocks all sorts of potential for me – but I admit that it also feels a little overly sentimental. Even for creatives, there can be disdain around ways of thinking about writing that feel precious instead of practical. There’s a sense that while of course art is magical in its way, your perspective on your own work better not be, or you risk being naïve and unserious.

And it’s not like there’s zero truth to that. When you get too precious about every word that hits the page, you can’t work through projects, and you can’t keep improving.

But magical thinking doesn’t necessarily have to lead to precious thinking – I’d actually say that in the creative life, you have to find ways to maintain a strong dose of it if you want to thrive.

And in that sense, magical thinking can be practical magic.

Tune in to unpack how a magical mindset can help even Very Serious Writers do deep and liberating creative work.

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21. The story is not the territory (Or, stories as maps)

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 10:00:49 GMT

Today’s pod is coming to you from the messy middle of something I’ve been mulling over for a long time. Something I don’t have a tagline for yet, but that still feels worth sharing, in all its in-process, still-forming glory.

If there’s anything I believe in, it’s the power and necessity of creative expression. But I’m going to be talking this month about the limitations of story – the ways that turning our life experiences into stories can maybe keep us from actually living what we experience.

One way to think about the role of storytelling is that stories are maps – ways of navigating the stuff of life. And as maps, stories are representations of something bigger and deeper than any single narrative can encompass.

Or, to borrow a commonly used phrase: The map is not the territory.

This feels pretty self-evident… until you realize how deeply story maps are ingrained into the way you think about how your life is supposed to happen, and what kind of meaning you’re supposed to make out of what happens.

This month, let’s get real about navigating with story maps (and when it might be time to get a bit lost instead).

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Episode links:

Marisa Goudy, KnotWork Storytelling: A Story About Getting Unstoried | S5 Ep12

Feminist takes on the Hero’s Journey model

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”
The Heroine Journeys Project, a website that includes summaries of some of the major feminist responses to Joseph Campbell’s theory

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20. How (and why) to hold creative space

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 10:00:48 GMT

Today’s episode is for any writer who’s found themselves focused more on chasing the perfect creative practice than actually having a creative practice. (So, it’s for most of us.)

This month I’m sharing a writerly angle on the idea of holding space or creating a container. Specifically, what kind of space might actually keep you contained enough to experience sustained growth and discovery in your writing.

One of the challenges of making art in a capitalist world is staying attuned to your vision amid a constant flow of things you’re expected to consume and worry about and enjoy and reject and chase.

But to fully hold space for your creative self… you have to stay there, in the space you’ve made. And sometimes that feels constraining. Sometimes it feels like holding yourself back from dashing out into a wider space where everything is actually happening, and if you stay here you might miss something important.

This month, tune in to explore what it can mean to hold better creative space for yourself and your stories.

Plus, I share a simple formula to help you turn your writing practices into containers that actually support you and your work.

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Episode links:

The Numinous Network, monthly membership community with therapist, somatic practitioner, and spiritual counselor Carmen Spagnola. I learned the somatic exercise featured in this episode from the network’s library of somatic practice videos.

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19. Finding allies for your creative dream

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:00:04 GMT

This pod is usually focused on our personal relationships to our writing, and ways to rediscover and strengthen that alchemical creative connection. But this month, I’ve been thinking about the role other people can play in helping us sustain and carry our creative dreams.

It’s much easier to tap into the flow of creative alchemy if someone else is extending their own alchemical gaze onto you – a supportive gaze that can transform your ordinary self into someone capable of making artistic work with deep meaning.

The further away your ordinary self is from what’s generally considered “ordinary,” though... the more you usually lack carriers for your dream. And carrying it alone can leave your creative reserves stretched pretty thin.

Tune in to explore two ways you can change this state of affairs and access the crucial power of vision carrying in your writing life.

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Episode links:

Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen

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18. No before yes: How to learn from writing you hate

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 10:00:18 GMT

As a rule of thumb on this podcast, I try to keep things generally positive, since most of us have enough negativity in our creative lives. This month, though, I’m inviting you to take a little trip with me to the realm of evaluation, judgment, and yes, even snark.

But let’s be clear: I don’t mean snark directed against yourself. I’m talking about letting yourself just really, really hate something you’ve read that somebody else wrote. And here’s why:

Sometimes, it’s easier to learn from work we don’t like than from work we do like. Sometimes we need to indulge in a really deep “no” to get to an even deeper “yes.”

Let’s get into how to distill wisdom from snark – without being too much of an asshole.

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If your writing practice feels more like a doom spiral than a drafting process... join the newsletter circle to access the Creative Rescue Kit, a set of three easy-to-implement tools to help you reclaim your creative life.

You’ll also receive monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

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17. Dead, mad, or a poet (Or, how to be less tortured)

Fri, 31 May 2024 10:00:29 GMT

(First things first: Thank you to thank Taylor Swift for releasing The Tortured Poets Department last month and thus making this episode kind of topical…)

We’re all way too familiar with the idea that emotional suffering or “madness” is the most powerful source of our creativity. It’s the cultural story that just won’t die. But today, I’m sharing a folklore-and-history-informed counter-narrative.

(Note that this is truly not even a lukewarm album take, Swifties do not come for me.)

In this narrative, it’s not madness we’re supposed to be seeking when we go out to the edge of ourselves in search of inspiration – it’s divine joy. The kind of joy that by its nature isn’t going to look or feel the way we’d expect it to, but that will bring us closer to our truest fates.

I think we have a duty to liberate our stories from the cult of the tortured artist. After all, we get to choose the lineages of our creative work. So if we don’t want to be the tortured poet… we don’t have to be.

Tune in to discover what the lineage of the inspired poet can offer us instead.

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Cauldron of Poesy translations

General historical references

H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2018/03/dead-mad-or-a-poet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadair_Idris#Myths,_legends_and_popular_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Knockgrafton

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16. When to let a story go

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:00:02 GMT

It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring persistence, writing endings is a technically difficult aspect of the craft, no matter what genre you’re writing.

But while getting to the end of a project is often excellent practice... I don’t think it’s actually always best to push through to the finish. Sometimes pushing through becomes a reinforcement of unhelpful craft habits, ways of approaching our stories that we’re ready to outgrow but don’t know how to yet.

How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?

I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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15. Reclaiming your creative calling

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 10:00:53 GMT

Ever found yourself lying awake very late at night or very early in the morning wondering if you've missed your calling in life? I'm guessing most writers will be in the yes camp; we tend to be sensitive souls, primed by school and work and even religion to long for "the call" to a vocation of purpose and meaning.

I think our insomniac worries stem from a common cultural fallacy: ideas about having a calling are often conflated with having a career. And this reduction fundamentally confines our vision of what a vocation can be, who gets to have one, and what counts as valuable work.

But writing as a vocation follows an internal rubric of integrity, not an external one of success — which gives you the freedom to measure your creative life by its impact on your spirit, not by your job or your publishing credits.

Tune in to explore what makes vocation such a powerful idea for creatives, and how reclaiming it might shape your writing.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley

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14. Practice vs praxis (Or, getting the real work done)

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 11:00:56 GMT

You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:

Write every day
Finish as many projects as possible
No exceptions

And maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely well-adjusted and reasonable guidance more times than you can count: Being a writer is awful. So if you’re able to walk away from your writing, you should—but if you’re too obsessed to quit, no matter how miserable you get, that’s how you know you’re the real deal.

That last nugget of wisdom scared me away from books on the writing life for years.

This month, I get honest about “failing” this classic (and ultimately unhelpful) advice. And I’m exploring how writing praxis can rescue your writing practice from becoming just a bunch of self-punishing rules spiraling inside a pit of despair.

Plus, I share the four key threads of much better guidance that I learned from finally binge-reading hundreds of pages of writing life advice from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and others.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin

“Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

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13. So... what is visionary storytelling, anyway?

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:00:04 GMT

There’s a popular New Year meme about picking words to act as guideposts for the year. And in this first month of 2024, I’ve found myself reflecting on two sort of abstract terms I use to describe what I’m up to with this podcast: “visionary,” and “praxis.”

These terms are signifiers for the real core of what I’m grappling with here – the disconnect so many creatives experience between all the beautiful and transformative things we believe about creative craft in theory, and all the doubt and dismissiveness we often feel about our own work in reality.

Today I’m getting into what I’m actually saying when I say “visionary writers” or “visionary storytelling,” and why I think cultivating a visionary approach could free us from all of our creative hang-ups and blocks and neuroses, now and forever.

(I am clearly joking with that grandiose claim… but also, I’m kind of not?)

To kick off year two of the podcast, dive deep with me to discover what could be possible when we define true vision for ourselves and our stories.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

Walidah Imarisha

What is "Visionary Fiction"?: An Interview with Walidah Imarisha.

Books and other projects

Tyson Yunkaporta

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

For the Wild podcast: Tyson Yunkaporta on Inviolable Lore

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12. Your writing is a gift

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 11:00:06 GMT

’Tis the season of wintertide celebrations, including the ritual of gift exchange... no matter how commercialized and un-ritualized that exchange might have become. But I promise this month’s episode is not an anti-consumption screed, because that’s kind of exhausting to listen to and I’d guess you can fill one in for yourself.

This winter solstice, at the darkest point of the year, I’m reflecting on how to claim our writing as a gift to and from creative mystery - and as a sacred gift to ourselves.

Darkness may not seem to have a lot to do with creative gifts. But writing is in some ways always the act of chasing an edge – the edge where what you’ve written meets what hasn’t been written yet, the story that’s still unmanifest. The story that’s in darkness.

Tune in to explore how embracing the mystery of the gift can tap you into a creative flow that replenishes your energy, and helps you boldly and generously share your own gifts with the world.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

The Gift, Lewis Hyde

Eye of the Heart Center

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11. Telling the story that breathes

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 11:00:12 GMT

The typical ways writers study and practice storytelling often encourage us to conflate “paying attention” to our craft with catching errors or imperfections.

We try to pay our best, most granular attention to the words on the page, in order to bring them closer to some standard of excellence. And at certain points during revision, there’s not actually anything wrong with that.

But when this type of attention seeps into your full drafting process, it messes up your ability to pay attention in ways that aren’t critical or catastrophic or hypervigilant. You can lose the ability to really be present with the story – to find the language that breathes.

This month, I’m exploring ways to pay attention as we write that can take us deeper into presence and relationship with our stories. Ways to write as a living, breathing, imagining storyteller, and not as our own worst critic.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram

The Emerald podcast, Joshua Schrei

Ren+Spiritwork, Ren Zatopek

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10. Freedom with form (Or, story structure for optimists)

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 10:00:49 GMT

When writers talk about story structure, we tend to conceptualize it in one of two ways:

As a set of almost mechanical instructions on how to put a story together “correctly”
As an organic, intuitive outgrowth of the themes, symbols, and artistic devices within the story

Both of these views on structure contain a bit of truth. But sticking too closely to either one can lead to sterile rigidity... or to endlessly drafting in beautiful circles with no final, functioning story in sight. (See also: being a “plotter” vs. a “pantser.”)

Ultimately, though, we made this dichotomy up. And if we shift our understanding of what role structure plays in storytelling, maybe we can make something up that works better, both for us and for our writing.

This month, I’m sharing my own working theory of how structure can lead to more creative freedom – and how that new freedom might break our deepest blocks around what makes a good story.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison

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9. Hearth and horizon: Finding creative center

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:00:32 GMT

How do we find our creative center, and how do we actually stay in it while we’re working?

It’s pretty easy to feel centered when a story is first emerging. There’s usually that phase where stuff seems to be spontaneously welling up from somewhere inside us, somewhere private and inner and… well, centered.

The act of drafting, on the other hand, tends to feel like searching for something that’s missing. And if we’re too caught up in a perfectionist, idealized view of our story, we quickly get mired in the gap between that shining but vague initial imagining and the specific (unideal) words that are coming out on the page.

Having a center can imply staying in the same place, and being in control of it – but a true creative center is always also fundamentally a threshold. A place where if you know the right tricks, the sacred can be smuggled through the seams.

This month, join me as I explore what the mythological figure of the trickster can teach us about our creative centers (and about the power of the lucky accident in our storytelling).

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Homeric Hymn to Hestia

Nicholas Cross, "The Hearth as a Place of Refuge in Ancient Greece"

Jean Robert, "Hestia and Hermes: The Greek Imagination of Motion and Space"

Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece (for the ritual referenced in the episode, see Book 7.22)

Bethu Brigte (a medieval hagiography of Saint Brigid)

Cogitosus, Life of Saint Brigid the Virgin

Story Archeology podcast: The Search for Brigid

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8. When the wound becomes the work

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 10:00:04 GMT

You’ve undoubtedly heard this bit of common wisdom at some point in your life: “You only grow when things are hard.”

Incarnations of this advice pop up in all sorts of contexts and snappy wordings (“No pain, no gain” or “Growth and comfort do not coexist” or, my personal Tony Robbins fav, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”).

This brand of wisdom has a kernel of truth. But when we apply it to our creative work, we can end up inadvertently nurturing another uncomfortable but weirdly beloved trope: the “suffering” or “tortured” artist.

This month, travel back from the edge of the comfort zone to discover the stories (and life) you might miss when the wound becomes the whole of the work.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Eva zu Beck: I Quit. (YouTube)

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7. Valuing your storytelling vision

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:00:49 GMT

Have you ever pushed through to meet a writing or publishing goal, only to feel let down once you reached it? Or worse, only to find that the story you wrote wasn’t at all what you wanted to create, and you have no idea how that happened?

If you’re looking for more satisfaction and growth (and even success) in your writing life, it may be time for a new framework.

Write toward your values, not your goals.

There are two reasons prioritizing your creative values is so key to a sustainable and transformative writing practice:

You can’t control what happens to your story once it’s out in the world.
Goals inherently narrow possibility.

Tune in to learn how this framework can help you reclaim a creative life that supports you as a human, and isn’t just driven by “pushing through” or “doing the work.”

Plus, we’ll explore how to free our values (and ourselves) from the dogma of creativity-as-productivity – so we can become the storytellers we truly feel called to be.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Throughline podcast: “No Bad Ideas?”

The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History, Samuel W. Franklin

History of the American writing workshop

Workshops of Empire, Eric Bennett
Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose Chavez

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6. When creative flow meets creative dogma

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 10:00:35 GMT

In your writing practices, you may be chasing creative flow – that state where you get so immersed that time takes a pause while you hammer away at the keyboard.

(And then four hours later you’re like “Why do my wrists hurt, and why are the cats screaming like no one has ever fed them in their entire lives?”)

But your flow state has a sneaky cousin: dogmatic trance.

Trance states (like meditation, contemplation, and yes, creative flow) are a lot more common than we think. And trance and dogma sometimes go hand in hand.

Dogmatic trance teaches us to think and believe harmful things on autopilot. It’s why maladaptive creative mindsets are so hard to shift – no matter how much we distance ourselves intellectually from those mindsets.

This month, tune in to discover how to spot dogma hiding within your creative flow (and how to kick it out!).

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Ren Zatopek

Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

5. You're not a genius...

Fri, 26 May 2023 10:00:33 GMT

... and that's okay.

If somebody were to ask you outright if you think you’re a creative genius, you’d probably be pretty comfortable saying no (and meaning it). You’re also probably not going to rationally think that this means you shouldn’t be creating anything.

And yet, most of us still have this feeling that our ideas and our work need to be "special," by which we mean "entirely unique yet universally brilliant."

This cultural narrative of genius is really not the most conducive to actually creating stuff, though. It’s part of what makes each story idea or writing session or first draft feel like a verdict on our value and significance as people. And it’s part of what makes us feel like we’re proving something with our writing instead of creating something.

This month, tune in to deconstruct the contemporary concept of genius and reframe it with a much, much older one—to see what might happen if we stop trying to be geniuses and start doing genius work instead.

(Plus, Mary shares some initial thoughts on last week’s SCOTUS decision against The Andy Warhol Foundation, and how genius intersects with legal issues around fair use. You know, just fun, chill summer vibes.)

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Andrea Barrett

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, Elizabeth Winkler

Your Elusive Creative Genius (TED Talk), Elizabeth Gilbert

AWF v. Goldsmith (Pt. 1): Misapprehensions, Clarifications, and a Truth Bomb, Katherine de Vos Devine

Classical Roman religion

Religion in the Roman Empire, James B. Rives
Lararia

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

4. Does your story need a message?

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 10:00:51 GMT

What role does having a message really play in crafting a powerful, living story?

I often see two opposing bits of advice on this, depending on the type of story you’re writing. If you’re working on genre or mainstream writing, you’re probably going to hear this: Your story should have a message, and every single scene or section of your story should reinforce that message.

On the other hand, if you’re writing in a “literary” style, you’ll hear the opposite: You must avoid any kind of overt message and think primarily about the aesthetic shape and value of the story. By defining a clear message, you’ll end up stripping all the nuance out, and that’s where the real meaning is.

But both of these approaches to message in storytelling are... sort of missing the point.

In this episode, we’ll unpack how our core superpower as writers can help us make better decisions about crafting meaningful stories—and I share the single best piece of craft advice I’ve ever received.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Byung-Chul Han, Non-things / Undinge

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

3. Cultivating creative compassion

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 10:00:00 GMT

When you show up to write, who's setting the course for the journey—your inner storyteller, or your inner critic?

We all have an inner critic, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a manifestation of the same cautionary voice that tells us some basic truths like “Hey, you do know that if you go around doing a bunch of stupid shit, you might literally die, right??”

The inner critic has their place. But they're a uniquely terrible storyteller. You can't play and explore with somebody who thinks you're going to literally die if your first draft has too many adverbs in it.

Here's the good news: To write transformational work, you don't have to kill off your inner critic. You just need to stop writing in partnership with them.

Tune in to discover two key shifts to create deep, lasting change in your relationship to your inner critic:

Practicing real self-compassion (not just self-care)
Freeing yourself from the Hero's Journey

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

John O'Donohue

Sophie Strand

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2. Writing in right relationship

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 11:00:30 GMT

If you’re dedicated to mastering the writing craft... you may be missing out on discovering your most powerful storytelling.

Before you object: No, this isn’t a pass on learning writing skills. But powerful, transformative storytelling is more than craft mechanics like dialogue, structure, character arcs, or even themes. It’s more than a series of interlocking parts with the goal of making readers feel or think a certain thing.

Deep storytelling is a living relationship between you, your story, and your reader. And as writers, it’s our responsibility to cultivate right relationship at each of these points of the storytelling web, instead of simply pushing a reader’s buttons to get a predictable response.

That’s how the act of storytelling becomes a relationship—and an encounter your reader will remember long after your book cycles off their Kindle carousel.

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, hit subscribe and visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Bayo Akomolafe

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Your stories are alive

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:00:13 GMT

Do you have a list of beloved books that changed your life... but can't finish one of your own stories to save your life?

In the first episode of the Inspirited Word, Mary has some core questions for all visionary writers feeling disconnected, disenchanted, or dissatisfied with their stories and their creative practice:

If we can encounter stories in ways that are surprising, personal, and ever-evolving, ways that exert tangible change and transformation in the world—can’t stories be described as alive?
When was the last time you encountered one of your own stories this way as you were writing it?
What might be possible if you did?

Tune in to discover how reframing storytelling as a living relationship can revitalize and re-enchant your creative practice (and help you get unstuck so you can write your most powerful and necessary stories). Plus, a glimpse of the road ahead for the Inspirited Word pod.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing the Inspirited Word

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 19:26:11 GMT

Introducing the Inspirited Word, a new podcast and digital practice community for visionary writers ready to re-enchant their creative lives.

On the pod, we’ll explore ways to enliven the technical mechanics of our craft with the full visionary power of our imaginations—so we can finally uncover our most potent, most transformative, most necessary work.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.