In the study in my mother’s house is a photograph of a young woman in a Victorian dress. My mother hasn’t been in the room for years. Dementia has taken her ability to read the books or organize the paperwork that crams every shelf.

I’m not sure who the woman in the photograph is. I lift it off the wall, wipe the dust from the top of the frame, and turn it around. Nothing on the back.

Next to it is a tinted photograph of a baby in a blue sash, in a small oval wooden frame with hand-painted flowers around it. On the back, a handwritten yellowing label. Harkness.

On the shelf, I find a manila folder filled with family history. In it, a photograph of the same woman. Same face, but this time my age. The curl of her hair tells me it was the ‘20s. Underneath, “Constance.”

Constance Harkness. My great-grandmother. The woman who made the friendship book I discovered hidden on the bookshelf. (Read that story here.)

I wish my mother was there just to say, yes, that’s my grandmother.

Three Constances. The baby in the blue sash. The woman in her early twenties, a rose at her neckline. Curls piled high. Deep-set eyes looking back at me over a century. And the woman my age, with the 1920s wave, a string of pearls, those same eyes looking out.

A hundred years ago my great-grandmother trod a path that led to me. I am grateful to her. I want to know her.

I am fascinated by lineage.

My mother talked about Constance in not-so-flattering terms. Stern. Frightening.

And yet, her friendship book is so full of humor and life. The object itself is a story.

Objects with words and pictures telling stories of my family.

When my father first got sick, my parents bought a narrowboat. We had it on the canals in the Home Counties. It was a place where our family could be together and be quiet, away from London and all the manic insanity of that town. The boat was named after my Grandmother, Frederica.

I loved it as a child. As a young teenager it became a difficult place for me to be. I was disruptive. Angry. I stopped going.

My parents both wrote long descriptions of their travels, in multiple logbooks bound in colorful hardcover. The stories weren’t of my father’s illness, they were of the locks and the mooring sites. Pages and pages of it.

Another treasure. Another boat logbook. This time from the boat trip where my grandparents met. Constance’s son Gerald met my grandmother Freddie on a sailing trip in Scotland, and Freddie’s father, Cyril Bernays, logged the whole trip. Gerald, the sturdy and reliable hand on the boat. Freddie, the adventurous girl. Nothing of the love story.

Four generations of breadcrumbs, leading to the story of my family. The facts. The dates.

The moral of this story? Write the feelings. I have all these records of lives lived but no real sense of who the people were.

It’s hard to write your feelings. Maybe you’ll have to relive moments of trauma over and over. I know I did. First in the writing. Then in the editing. Then in the talking that happens after the book is published.

Don’t just do it for your family or for posterity, immortality. Write about your feelings because it helps. That’s not just an opinion.

Psychologist James Pennebaker has been studying expressive writing since 1986, and more than 400 studies have tested it since. His method asks people to explore their “deepest thoughts and feelings” about a difficult experience. Feelings. Not the logbook version.

The practice

When I was writing my memoir I used a practice that was more like meditation. No writing prompt. No inspiration from outside.

Close your eyes and focus all of your attention inward. Send the mind’s eye down into the body and notice what flutters to the surface.

When images and ideas start to float, let yourself go down that thread. Imagine it like a tunnel through time. Folding space and time until you find yourself there, in that scene.

Open your eyes. Not in real life. In the scene. Look around.

Look for the specific, poignant details that make the story real. And feel the feelings.

How does it feel to be in that room?

Leave a story that’s more than a logbook.

NOTE: Go at your own pace. This practice works best when you’re not in the middle of a mental health crisis. If something comes up that’s too difficult to process, talk to a mental health professional.

Memories of my childhood are squirreled away all over the house. A painting of a hot-air balloon shoved behind a dresser. Stacks of photo albums at the bottom of a closet, a chronology of my youthful smile turning sour. She kept my school reports. What do I do with these? Polly’s performance remains erratic. Polly is capable but needs to focus. Polly has obvious ability but needs to hand in her homework if she wants to improve her grade.

Then, clearing the bookshelves, I find something, like a scene in a movie: a package tucked behind the books. Inside is a treasure, a gift from another time. My great-grandmother’s friendship book.

In the Victorian era it was fashionable for a young lady to keep a book like this and pass it among her friends: the social networking of its day, I suppose. Each friend copied out a favorite quotation, painted or drew a picture to go with it, signed and dated the page, and handed the book back. Now I hold the story of my great-grandmother and the friends she grew up with.

On the first page, in neat handwriting, she has written her name and the date: 1890. She was twelve years old. On another page is a list of every place she lived. Twenty-three homes. A life that took her from the West Country to Brussels, to Rome, to Canada, and back to England and the Home Counties, with a trail of tragedy along the way.

The entries span from the 1890s to 1940s. In 1962, at the age of eighty-four, she wrote: “I leave this book to my granddaughter Joanna.” My aunt.

Constance Harkness was born nearly 100 years before me in 1877. It’s hard to imagine how much the world has changed since then, but I now have this object to remind me.

I am moved by this object in ways I can’t explain. The hours that went into making it. The care given to every page. How much she treasured it. So unlike the fleeting way we express ourselves now.

I am nostalgic for this slow moving art.

Art that takes decades to create and is kept safe for decades more.

Art that is treasured, not because the maker of it is famous, but because art makes meaning of life.

So I’ve decided.

I’m going to start a friendship book.

Revive the tradition.

Create a treasure.

If you’d like to be part of it, let me know.

When I first started taking my writing seriously I heard about “show don’t tell.” The phrase was repeated to me with an air of smugness by fellow students in a workshop. I understood the basic principle: to give the reader a direct experience, AKA “showing” rather than recalling a story as you would if you were speaking AKA “telling.” But I was so confused about what it actually meant.

Besides that, I am PUNK RoCk and I hate rules 🏴‍☠️ . I question everything. Especially writing advice. Surely, I thought, there would be times where telling made sense. Or where showing wouldn’t be the best approach. But if I couldn’t figure out which was which I wasn’t making a conscious choice, I was just failing to differentiate between the two.

With that in mind I have compiled some writing advice on show don’t tell to make this path a little easier for people like me who hate fixed paths but need to be shown a way.

Read them in order coz they build. First is the classic that smacks you with the absolutes. The tool is defined. Then the next shows the cost of the tool and what is lost when it’s used too much. There’s permission, then the failure of taking it too far. Then I approach alternatives with a sense of curiosity, and question who the rule was built for.

This is a range of perspectives that I hope will leave you with more clarity and more questions. More direction and more options. A path to choose. Or not.

The tool is a hammer.

When I first read this essay I finally got it. I went through all my writing and, on Chuck’s advice, stripped out all thought verbs from my draft. “Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.” If Chuck said it had to go, it had to go. I was ruthless. I interrogated every is and have to make sure they earned their place. I unpacked the story behind it. Show don’t tell.

To be fair, Palahniuk does say to use this advice, “at least for the next half a year.” He’s not saying do it forever. It’s training wheels.

Chuck Palahniuk, “Nuts and Bolts: ‘Thought’ Verbs”
litreactor.com

But a hammer is not the only tool.

It didn’t take me long to realize that sacrificing every piece of telling meant sacrificing interiority. Yes, my prose became more immediate, more alive. Action. Movement. Senses. It became very Palahniuk. But the thing is, I am not writing Fight Club.

Beth Week’s honest take on Palahniuk’s essay puts it better than I ever could. She respects it but won’t let him get off so easy.

bettspages, “CEAD #12: Nuts and Bolts, ‘Thought’ Verbs”
bettspages.substack.com

Permission to pick your own tools.

According to Le Guin, show don’t tell was “...developed in response to faults common in the writing of inexperienced writers — abstract exposition without concrete imagery, windy vagueness unsupported by experience. As guides for beginners, they’re useful.”

Simple rules can support beginner writers, but they must be learned and integrated, not taken as bible. If you’re just starting your journey I do recommend Palahniuk’s exercise. It’ll show you how to show. But once you get it, know that it’s a tool you can decide to pick up.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy”
ursulakleguin.com

Sometimes a hammer is the wrong tool entirely.

The danger is that if you take “show don’t tell” too literally you might spend a whole page trying to prove your character is nervous with twitches of the eye and fluttering of hands, but that might be really fucking boring. Most beginner writers struggle to learn how to show, but when they figure it out they can over-show. Dramatize everything. I only say this because I’m so guilty of this. The first draft of my novel was a never-ending description of things happening with zero idea about what was going on inside my protagonist’s head. There was way too much eyebrow raising. Too many pointed looks. You can’t always dramatize what someone is thinking.

Jeff Somers, “Bad Advice Boogie: Show, Don’t Tell” (Writer’s Digest)
writersdigest.com

Throw the hammer away.

This one is an extreme perspective but I wanted to include it here because there are so many articles on this subject and not enough of them argue for more telling. I’m not saying tell don’t show. Use tell to get inside the protagonist’s (and the reader’s) head. Use it to explore what isn’t visual. It’s not a screenplay. Not everything can be seen.

Blake Butler, “The Rules Are Myths (1): Undoing ‘Show, Don’t Tell’”
blakebutler.substack.com

Who made this hammer anyway?

Let’s get down to the roots of this question. Why has this writing advice become so ubiquitous that it has spawned a generation of writers who abhor even a whiff of telling. Could it be the blinkered perspective?

“...are we, in 21st-century America, overvaluing a sight-based approach to storytelling? And could this be another case of cultural particularity masquerading itself as universal taste?”

Literary Hub, “Is ‘Show Don’t Tell’ a Universal Truth or a Colonial Relic?”
lithub.com

So what advice am I actually giving here? Well, I’m not, and that’s kind of the point. There’s no tidy answer.

A hammer is a tool, but so is a hemorrhoid cream applicator. Don’t try and tell me the hammer works for everything.

Bring the reader into the room with you. Show them the poignant details. They experience it through your protagonist’s eyes. Some things only work if they’re right there with you. Show don’t tell.

There are times when telling is needed. There’s exposition that puts us where we need to be. And sometimes things aren’t seen. They happen invisibly. You bring the reader to a place a movie could never show them. Internal dialogue. Distance, atmosphere, intimacy, or intention that makes sense to be stated clearly. Tell don’t show.

Pick up the hammer when you need it. Put it down when you don’t. Know the difference. Choose wisely.

Imagine this: Your desk is clear, you have the afternoon off, you’ve planned for this time, you know what you want to do. You sit down to write. First you adjust the pillow behind your back. You get up and fetch a glass of water. You return to the keyboard and wait, fingertips poised. You pause. You think. You review what you wrote in your previous session. Then you begin. A paragraph. Two. A page. You pause to re-read it.

And you realize you wrote a bunch of garbage.

It sucks and you know it.

What do you do?

Do you throw your hands in the air and give up? Maybe you start questioning your motivation. Why are you doing this? Who is even going to read it anyway? It’s one thing to put yourself out there, it’s another to do it when you suck. Add that page to the 3.0_Final_FINAL_this_one.doc and go binge-watch some Netflix instead. Eat a whole bar of Tony’s Chocolonely.

The difference between published authors and people with growing files of writing on their hard drive that people never see isn’t talent. Let’s be real, a lot of bad writers have published books. The difference is that the published authors kept going even when they sucked. That is the true challenge.

When you write a lot, you get used to that feeling. The sickening desire in your stomach to throw it away and hide. The horror of being seen. The cringe of knowing someone won’t like what you write. It doesn’t go away. You practice overcoming it. You face the beast and you don’t back down. Sword (or in this case, pen) drawn, you walk toward it.

I like to think of it like a video game. I don’t play a lot of video games, but I remember what they’re like. You run along collecting coins or points or mushrooms, jumping over flaming chasms and making progress, then to level up you have to fight the boss.

Think of the writing process as all that running. It can feel pretty good. Pew pew. You overcome little challenges. Figure out how it works. Then it grinds to a halt and an 8-armed demon with a tongue in the shape of a flaming whip crushes you and you have to go back to the start. I just made that up, but it sounds like a pretty cool game.

Level one: but why would anyone want to read my story anyway?

That boss is your inner critic. The key to beating it is to keep your cool. If you panic, that whip is going to slice your head off and the sad music will play as you float down to the ground.

Level two: This writing is really vulnerable. Maybe I don’t want to share it. What will people think?

In truth, this video game advice is something I apply to all aspects of my life. Try it at the DMV. If the goal is to keep your cool and the boss level is just trying to suck your life force, then when they say, “You’re in the wrong line. You’re going to need to take another ticket,” it becomes funny rather than hard. Boss level DMV game goes deep.

Level three: There’s still so much to write. I’m never going to finish this anyway.

Reality check! It’s not real! It’s a game! There is no flame whip tongue! It’s just you! Everyone’s first draft sucks. Even really, really good writers. It’s the price of admission.

When you sit down to write and you write a bunch of garbage, don’t take it as a sign that you suck as a writer. Don’t let it make you question if what you’re writing is worthwhile. Just keep playing.

Write one shitty paragraph, then write another. Cringe at how bad it is. Let your inner critic have a tantrum. You can fix it. As Jodi Picoult said, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

Don’t let that boss convince you to leave the game.

Somewhere in the material you’re creating is the thing you came here to write.

Here’s a weirdly counter-intuitive ADHD hack: Write with a friend, and you’ll write more.

I am very easily distracted. It takes immense amounts of energy to keep my focus on a single thing. In fact, energy isn’t enough. I need strategies. Without them, I’m a squirrel-brained disaster. There isn’t enough energy in a human body to stop me from looking at my phone when it’s sitting next to me on my desk, or to prevent the idle click on another open tab when I’m struggling to write. I have to remove these temptations entirely from my field.

Which is why it’s weird that the one thing that actually gets me to focus is the presence of another human. I would expect that the idle moments of conversation or the sound of their breath would send me into a frenzy of inescapable distracto-land, but it doesn’t.

As a result, I have organized my creative life around the extremely helpful, surprisingly undistracting presence of humans. Twice a week I host online writing sessions where I sometimes write more in 45 minutes than I do the rest of the week combined. Every 6 weeks I host retreats at quiet houses with nooks for shared writing. These strategies have worked so well they have become my new career. I guess they work for others too.

At first I thought it was about accountability. To have someone there who knows about my writing. If I fail, if I desert the book, they will know, and I will be so ashamed. But no. I don’t really feel that way. I thought perhaps it was a yearning for company. But I’m an introvert! I am perfectly happy writing alone. The mystery of why doesn’t really matter when something works as well as it does.

Then I found out about body doubling.

This is the practice of taking on a task with a partner to help overcome distractions. Not working on the same thing together, but working near each other on separate tasks.

I couldn’t figure out why this worked so well so I did a little deep-dive and discovered that the strategy I am constantly drawn back to is well known in neuroscience. Well known, just not well studied. And there are many personal accounts that confirm my experience: working alongside another human gives you improved focus, increased motivation, reduced procrastination, improved time management, improved mood, and boosted productivity (add.org).

So it turns out that one of the main advantages of these retreats isn’t connecting with kindred spirits, the relaxing vibe, the embodied approach to writing, or the delicious food that arrives magically when you’re hungry (although all these things help). It’s the simple presence of other people.

That’s what happens at these retreats. People in chairs, laptops open (or pens racing over the page). Quiet. Focus. Everybody finishing something. That’s why people keep coming back.

The next retreat is on the calendar! Oct 23-26. That’s 4 days to write. To finish. Or maybe to start. All levels welcome. Bring a blank page and an open heart, or an almost-not-quite-finished manuscript to completion. This is where the writing actually gets done.

Register Now

When I can’t write, I get in the tub. Or I take a shower. Or if I’m lucky enough to be at a hot spring, I soak in that rich, healing, mineralized water that seems to magically draw the words from my body like a salve.

When it comes to warm-water immersion, science shows measurable changes in the autonomic nervous system when we soak. That’s just a fancy way of saying that it’s relaxing to be in warm water. But we know that. Our lived experience of relaxing in a bath gives us that lesson firsthand.

This scientific perspective doesn’t prove that you’re going to magically become a better writer if you get in the hot tub, but it does give a physiological explanation for something that I have noticed over and over again: that changing the state of my body changes how I write.

Soaking helps me regulate my nervous system. It gives me space within my own brain to focus on what I’m writing. It connects me to my experience as embodied consciousness. That relaxed state of being is what allows me to connect with my creative voice.

We often talk about writing as if it's something that happens exclusively in the brain. The words move from the brain through the hands to the keyboard or the pen. We imagine that when we sit down to write, we engage the brain, and the body serves. But we aren’t a brain in a jar. We process memories and experiences through our senses, nervous system, and bodies. Recalling or imagining stories to write requires more than just our brains.

During my last retreat, I picked a place on the river. A gorgeous spot. A wonderful group of people. Five days. It was next level. The extra space we needed to dive deep. Right on the river with its own dock. Beautiful view. Nature was gorgeous. Yoga was down on the deck with the sound of the water. We wrote down there too. In the evening, the bats came out and silently circled our heads as we bent over laptops and notebooks. Magical.

But there was no hot tub. Nobody who was there complained. Everybody said they had a great time, that it didn’t take anything away. They were off kayaking, paddleboarding, and swimming in the river. All kinds of water activities. We mermaided, for sure. Just no soaking in a hot tub.

After the retreat, I was like: I’m never going to do it anywhere without a hot tub again. I personally needed it. To me, it just wasn’t the same.

So, for this next one, I had to pick a place with a hot tub. So there’s an opportunity to soak. Because to me it’s such an important and vital part of the whole process of what I call the Word Flow Method. That’s nervous system support, facilitated by soaking in warm water, to help your writing flow.

This is, incidentally, why I named this writing community Writing with Mermaids. It's not just whimsical branding. It has a distinct flavor of being. It represents fluidity and flow. A writing practice that isn't about forcing words through a clenched body. I want to create the conditions in which words float within me.

When you’re stuck, stop trying to solve the writing problem with your mind and get into warm water if you can. If you can’t get into warm water, try just imagining it; the sensation of water on your skin can sometimes be enough. Let your attention move from your thoughts into your body and don’t try to write. Allow yourself to become a little bored.

Instead of reaching for a prompt or a book for inspiration, try getting quiet. Whatever it takes for you to get there.

I’m not evangelizing the benefits of water (well, maybe I am a bit). For you it could be different. Taking a long walk, meditation, gardening, dancing, listening to music, or lying on the floor. Instead of looking to prompts or vision boards for inspiration, try getting quiet and looking within rather than reaching for it outside yourself. Give it a go and see how it changes your writing.

And if you like the idea of soaking and writing (and soaking and writing) in a quiet environment at a California retreat with fellow creative misfits, I’ve got one on the calendar in October.

“What’s the point of your book?”

Something about this question cuts close to the bone. Maybe it sets you off into a shame spiral. It’s certainly not a question I could answer while I was writing my book. That insight only came about after. And it still isn’t fixed. Ask me tomorrow what the point of my book is, and it might be different from today.

I got the question from Jennie Nash (Blueprint for a Book): “Every book is, at its heart, an argument for something.” She claims that the point is what drives the story. Her idea mirrors Robert McKee (Story), who calls it the “controlling idea.” Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) calls it the “moral point of view.” The thing that you care about so much it drives every editorial decision.

In spite of all this, I’m not in the camp that believes everyone should clarify their point to a crystal-clear shine before they start. I know that the meandering style I write might not be for everyone. Some people want to bang out a book with clarity and conviction. I write around ideas in a prolonged process, mining my own writing for meaning. Unconscious themes bubble to the surface. The process is as important as the destination.

In Flannery O’Connor’s essay Writing Short Stories, she argues, “When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.” Ouch. That opinion turns everything on its head.

Having said all that, “What’s the point of your book?” is a question I ask my clients early on in the process. It helps to think about these things, even if it might reshape itself later. You can tell a lot about a writer and the kind of story they are writing by their response to this question. Some people are ready with the title of their TED talk. They know exactly the point they want to make. Some don’t know where to start.

As with most writing advice, I abhor a prescriptive one-size-fits-all solution.

I don’t think that anyone who can encapsulate the point of their story is failing at storytelling, as O’Connor does. But I also don’t believe you absolutely have to know the point of your story before you begin. What I do think is that this is a foundational question that can give you some insight if you ask yourself with a light heart.

Asking yourself the point of your book allows you to see your story from the reader’s perspective. It gives you meat and meaning. You aren’t just telling a story, recounting events; you’re making a point. And your point is….?

There’s an element of cringe in sharing your writing. I’m not gonna lie.

So often we talk about the empowering part of writing. The proud author signing books, basking in a sense of accomplishment, the launch party, the photo with the cover. But there’s another side, and it’s the reason so many people never finish, never share.

Telling your truth on the page, and then having someone actually read it, isn’t just one thing. It’s empowering and fulfilling and embarrassing and humiliating, all at the same time. That’s a lot of big feelings. So a lot of people just choose to hide. To ignore it. To pretend the book isn’t sitting right there, half done, waiting.

Here’s a trait that a lot of women, queer people, and neuro-spicy folks share: a deep fear of outshining our peers.

You heard me.

Maybe that makes you squirmy just to think about it. Me? Outshine people? Surely not. Let me just hide in the corner.

We cling to guilt for our own desire to be great because we’ve been told, over and over, that it’s not our place. We’re told to respect other people’s feelings, so we play it small. We don’t want people to think we’re trying to be something we’re not. We don’t want them to know about the extent of our ambition. The utter shame and mortifying embarrassment of our own creative brilliance is too much to bear.

The sad part is, some people will think your writing sucks, that you’re trying to be something you’re not, that your voice isn’t worthwhile. Facing those voices is part of the game. Some people will tut at your creative brilliance because secretly they wish they were as brave as you are. That’s not a hypothetical to scare you off. That’s just what happens when you share your writing.

Well, I’m here to say fuck that.

Be bold and brilliant and make people think you suck. That discomfort you feel is important. It means you care. You’re making something meaningful. Something beautiful. If you don’t feel the cringe you’re probably playing it safe. So many people keep their pages hidden away in a drawer. You can’t participate in a cultural conversation from a drawer.

So you get to choose. You can keep the manuscript safe and unread and quietly protect yourself. Or you can accept the price of admission and let the thing exist in the world. Build resilience.

I’m gonna end with a bombshell here: the more you can share your art with the world, the more you’ll shine. You’ll be happier, engaged, creatively satisfied. And, yes, you’ll have to face the cringe too.

That cringe is the price of admission. Pay it, and finish the book.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’ve struggled with writing. Faced the blank page. Wondered if the words would ever come back. I’ve hidden in bed, in work, in partying, just to avoid facing it.

One day I was right in the middle of writing my memoir and I felt it. The dreaded arrival of “writer’s block”. Frozen. Couldn’t write. Couldn’t do anything. Hating myself. I was living in an absolute pigsty because I hadn’t been taking care of myself. I dragged my sorry ass to yoga, and on the way home heard a poet laureate being interviewed on NPR. New book out. The interviewer asked what she does when she gets writer’s block.

What she said blew my mind. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to hear it if I hadn’t just done yoga. The tight coil had already been released.

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. When I can’t write, it’s time to do my laundry.”

I went home. Cleaned my apartment. Did my laundry. Washed the dishes. Made myself dinner. Gave myself a break. The next day I could write again.

I’ve been saying I don’t believe in writer’s block ever since. I wish I could remember that poet’s name.

My environment is a direct reflection of my state of mind. When I’m chaotic on the outside, I’m chaotic on the inside. My friends can tell how I’m doing by how orderly my house is. When I’m doing well, my house is pristine. When I’m struggling, there’s a pile of laundry.

Doing the laundry, clearing the clutter, makes space in my mind. That’s when my creativity flows.

Naming the block gives it power. Makes it a thing. A monster.

I have self-critical tendencies. Days at a time without taking care of my body. The sink fills with dishes. The laundry piles up. Body seized, hunched over a laptop, without stretching, without moving. Forgetting to drink water. Forgetting to eat.

Hyperfocus is an advantage and a disadvantage. My hyperfocus days are the ones that feel really, truly me. Alive in my mind. Doing the work of 10. The brain fog doesn’t feel like me. The crash.

Self acceptance has been the key. That lightning fast person is me. The blob is also me. Be soft with the blob. I am tender.

The voice always comes back. No matter how scared we are that it won’t.

In Nick Cave’s interviews with Seán O’Hagan, he says whenever he starts writing lyrics he gets this existential dread. This fear the songs won’t come. He gets anxious, irritable. His wife Susie always says, “Have you started writing again?” And he says, how do you know? And she says, because you always get like this. That feeling is so familiar. We push ourselves into anxiety, thinking we’re blocked, when actually that’s just what the process looks like.

Is Nick Cave ever going to be so blocked he can’t write another song? I don’t think so.

It’s not failure to be blocked. It’s part of the process.

Over the years I’ve read a lot of books on the craft of writing. I never got to study it formally. I’m self-taught. A few workshops here and there, but most of what I know came from books.

There’s one thing that keeps showing up in the first pages of craft book after craft book. And it’s a question almost every writer who comes to my retreats, or works with me one on one, has never actually considered. It’s supposed to be one of the most foundational questions any author can ask. And somehow it’s still a blind spot. A question people avoid.

It’s a cornerstone. Build without it and you make your life harder. The arc of the creative process will be unsure. Like building a bridge without knowing what’s on the other side of the river.

The question is: why are you writing this book?

In the essay “Why I Write” George Orwell wrote: “Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death.”

Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones wrote the more humble “I don’t think everyone wants to create the great American novel... Writing is a path to meet ourselves.”

Stephen King, in On Writing, draws a line: “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends.”

Maya Angelou said it in one sentence, internal and external at once: “So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.”

Ask it early and it gives you something to reach for. When the going gets tough, and it gets tough in a project this big, coming back to your why is what keeps you moving. It gives you focus when writing wants to meander. A clear path.

Jenny Nash, in Blueprint for a Book, splits it into two, crediting Simon Sinek and Start With Why. The internal why and the external why.

Internal why: what motivates you on a personal level. The reason it keeps you up at night.

External why: what you want to accomplish. How you want to influence culture.

My clients tend to lean one way or the other.

Some people are just making art. Motivated internally, no real idea why they want to share it. And without that clarity, it will probably never be seen.

At the other end: people motivated by wanting to be seen as an expert, or make money, or become an authority. To influence, educate, entertain. They don’t always know what’s driving them internally. Those people usually struggle to finish. They can’t articulate the source of their own motivation, and an external why alone isn’t enough to get a book done.

The people who don’t get stuck are the ones with both. Internal motivation, clearly understood. To have your voice heard. To claim your story. To prove to yourself you can do something hard. Maybe something deeper. An emotional exorcism. A burning, rageful sense of social injustice. There’s usually a deeper layer under there.

Given how many experts in writing point to this question, it’s become the first beat. The first thing I ask myself when I start a new project. The first thing I ask my clients when they come to me for support.

Why do you want to write this book?

Internally: are you motivated by something deep in your subconscious? Bring it to the surface. Admit it to yourself, if only to yourself. Get past the knee-jerk first answer. There’s probably a quieter, simmering truth underneath that wants to be said. Maybe writing makes you feel less alone. Maybe you want to be loved.

Externally: do you want recognition? Validation? Do you want to make an impact on the world? Change culture? Do you want to entertain people? Do you want to make people laugh? Do you want to comfort others, give them a story they can relate to so they feel less alone?

Whether you’re struggling to begin or crawling your way to the end of a manuscript, the block might just be that you haven’t yet articulated your why.

I invite you to sit with it. Write it out as a prompt. A page or two. Notice how it feels. Breathe into your truth. Get familiar with your why, even if it’s something you only admit to yourself.

Follow me on instagram for inspiring writing pep talks and nervous system resets from my hot tub.

When I first started writing my book, I had a conversation with a published, kinda famous author. He told me to be prepared to throw away at least three-quarters of what I was writing.

I didn’t believe him.

Maybe you’d have to throw away three-quarters of what you wrote. I’m a pretty good writer.

I was delusional. Thought the stuff I was writing was great.

I had no idea how to write a book before I wrote a book.

Never got the opportunity to study writing.

I like to call myself free of the confines of academia, but the truth is, I would have loved that. To go to college and study writing. To get guidance from experienced writers. To go deep. Work closely with a pro. It’s a lot easier to be taught something than to teach yourself.

Instead, I took a few workshops. Read a bunch of books. Learned a lot. Applied what I learned as best I could.

Then I used a manuscript assessment service. Basically, they write a book review on your manuscript, and you get a ton of feedback in a report. You don’t get to actually speak to them. Just a report. I had to face it alone.

And it crushed me. Me and my enormous ego.

It wasn’t just the technical and grammatical mistakes. It was structure and basic tell-tale signs. I was sloppy. Made the kind of errors every writer learns to spot after their first interaction with a professional editor. The ones that scream amateur. Somebody who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing.

Couldn’t see it myself until they showed me.

But once I learned, I looked back at the things I’d written at the beginning. And sure enough. Had to throw a lot of it away.

It’s all compost. Nothing is lost. It all gets stirred back in.

That shitty first draft is a necessary journey to the final product. You can’t avoid it. There is no shortcut.

Being willing to let go of the work you’ve written, to see and understand why you must. It’s humbling. It’s hard. It’s heart-wrenching. But it’s necessary.

Margaret Atwood said it best in her MasterClass: “You become a writer by writing. There is no other way.”

Follow it up with Anne Lamott: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper.”

If you’re working toward a book, just know: writing your first draft is fun, it’s inspiring, it gets overwhelming, and then it breaks your heart. And then it begins to become real.

I kept seeing the same face.

I would tell someone about the retreats or the writing sessions, and their expression would shift. A kind of pained recognition. They’d say something like, “I have a half-finished memoir in a drawer.” Or, “I want to. I just wish I had the time.”

I’ve heard that enough times that I started thinking about it seriously. How do we get these stories into the world?

Of course, I care about everyone’s stories, but the ones that really call to me are the ones that feel like they don’t belong in traditional writing spaces. Stories that are too weird, too queer, too sexy. Too raw. Too honest. Too intense. Too whatever-the-reason-is-that-they-think-they-don’t-fit.

These are the stories. These voices need to be in the world. Not because it’s nice. Because we’re in a moment where cultural pioneers and edge cases and misfits are exactly who we need to be hearing from. That’s the bigger picture here. That’s what I really care about.

So I made the Word Flow Jumpstart. A way to move through the block, the resistance, and get some movement, some flow. The first step. Support. Courage.

You have an idea. Maybe you start. And then something happens. You stall. You don’t finish it. It sits there.

That’s creative resistance. I know it well. I’m not above it.

The thing I always keep coming back to in all this is my yoga practice. I’m not talking about stretching, I’m talking about calming the mind, bringing consciousness into the body. That process helps me with writing more than anything else. The connection of the mind and the body. Using the body as a tool to access the mind. It’s always been central to my practice, and we use it at the retreats. When discipline doesn’t work, when willpower isn’t enough, the breath works like a charm. When the mind is stuck, move the body.

I’ve been doing this for years; now I’m teaching it.

The Word Flow Jumpstart is your little rocket booster. Three days. Short. Free.

If you’ve got a writing project half finished in a drawer and you can’t make it to a retreat, this one’s for you.

SIGN UP FOR THE WORDFLOW JUMPSTART

I can’t stop thinking about something someone wrote this weekend.

I hosted a retreat at Mercey Hot Springs. We soaked and we wrote and we rested. On the last day, someone put something brave on the page that they’d been wrestling with for years. I don’t want to say more than that. This story isn’t mine to share. But I’m so inspired by that little act of bravery.

I got some writing done too, which is always a bonus. Sometimes I forget I’m writing a novel when I’m working so hard supporting everyone else’s writing. This time I got fresh eyes on it and I feel pretty good about the direction it’s taking.

I will also note that the compliments I received on my cooking were so heartfelt that I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t utterly delighted.

In July I’m taking another small group, this time to Guerneville. Five days at a house on the Russian River. Writing, eating, resting, swimming in the river, surrounded by redwoods. I can’t wait for the longer format. It’s the only way to really go deep.

One thing I keep hearing, and feeling myself, is how much we need to get off our phones. Off our screens. To be in a room with other human beings, creating and sharing our work. Unplugging from the hungry pull of the feed. No screens, people. Well, some people write on laptops, but nobody is scrolling.

It’s really not about productivity. The goal is to allow enough space that something true can be revealed.

We share the days mostly in silence. Writing, resting. When mealtime comes it’s more social and chatty. The rest of your time is yours to fill or to rest.

Yes, this space is for writers. But it’s also for people who don’t know yet that they’re writers. People who are desperate to tell their story but don’t know how to get the words on the page. People who have written thousands of pages and don’t know how to get them organized or share them with the world.

July 9–13, Guerneville, California. Small group. All levels.

Come to the river with me.

People think Kinky Salon is my life’s work, but it isn’t. That might sound weird to some people, but just hear me out.

I threw those parties for twenty-five years. Sexy, arty, ridiculous, colorful. People tell me it changed their lives, and I saw it happen. My life was changed too.But the life’s work I’ve been exploring runs so much deeper. I’ll be honest here for a moment… I kept going, kept creating, kept throwing events because of the love, the feedback, the people, the hugs, the shining faces who held me up and reminded me why it mattered. Like that moment at the end of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life that actually’s kind of sad if you really think about it. I thought that if I stopped, the love would stop too. Maybe it’s a childhood trauma thing. Anyway. I kept going. Even when I was exhausted, even when it stopped being fun, even when I knew it was time. I was trapped, and leaving, really stopping, saying I don’t want to do this anymore, has been the most authentic step I’ve ever taken in my life.

And then I started throwing writers retreats. But here’s the weird part: I didn’t realize until I’d been doing it for about year, but it’s the same work. Every skill, every foundation I built at Kinky Salon, all of it was needed here: Creating safety and trust so we can go deeper. Opening up to vulnerability. Bringing together cool, creative people and giving them a space where they can be a little more themselves. That is the work. It started with Kinky Salon, and it continues at Writing With Mermaids.

A lot of parallels. But the retreats aren’t a sex thing. I just want to be clear about that. It’s still my people though. Creative, open-minded, brave, probably a bit pervy. The kind of people who showed up to Kinky Salon not just to party, but because they were looking for something more. Community. Permission. A space where they didn’t have to pretend to be something they weren’t.

It’s the same, even if it looks different. A little quieter, a little more relaxed. And honestly, I’m so much happier. So much more fulfilled.

I miss people from the Kinky Salon days. I miss the big parties. But this is different and the same in so many ways.

Our next retreat is April 10–12, and it’s the last one in Death Valley until the fall. If you feel the call, I’d love to welcome you.

JOIN US IN DEATH VALLEY

Our final Death Valley retreat before the fall is approaching, and I would love for you to join us.

This ethereal place, where the land opens so wide that our creative voice has no choice but to spill out.

I thought I’d share a short piece I wrote the last time I was there, to give you a glimpse of what the weekend feels like…

I crunch across the moonscape that surrounds the hot spring.
Powdery residue cakes the bottoms of my slippers.
A breeze catches my robe and I pull it tight around me.

In the distance, the mountains turn red.
A trick of the light.
A sunset treat.

A coyote yells somewhere nearby and is answered by a chorus of yips.

The clouds here are a multitude. They streak high and hang low in dramatic configurations—both bulbous and wispy. As the sun lowers, they light up: orange, pink, yellow.

I stand for a moment, awestruck.

The sky.
The sky!
Tutti-frutti sunset.

Steam rises from the springs, curling into eddies before it dissipates. The water is still, save for the occasional ripple. I tuck my slippers beside a chair and hang my robe over its back.

I scamper toward the water, momentarily chilled. My discomfort melts the instant my toes touch the surface.

Toes.
Ankles.
Knees.
Thighs.
Hips.
Belly.
Breasts.
Hands.
Arms.
Shoulders.
Chin.

One smooth motion.

Then a sensation I can only describe as a bodygasm.

Warm, shuddering pleasure.

I close my eyes and allow it to consume me.

“Crruk-crruk,” the raven calls from the top of a phone pole.
I watch him as he scans the horizon.

“Hi, Odin,” I whisper, leaning back, succumbing entirely.

JOIN US

There’s broad scientific consensus that expressive writing can reduce stress, support emotional processing, and even boost overall well-being. Researchers have found that translating our inner experience into language helps the mind make meaning, organize emotions, and create a sense of clarity.

As we move into the holiday season, life speeds up. The world gets louder, busier. Sometimes it can feel like there’s no space to breathe. The good news is that even small practices can support your well-being. Try setting aside a little time for writing. Maybe during one of my online writing sessions (there’s one today at 5:30pm PST), or simply in a quiet moment on your own.

There are many ways to engage in this process. The list below isn’t exhaustive, but it might give you some ideas.

Journaling:
Most people assume that when I talk about expressive writing, I mean journaling. Some people love it, and I’m not knocking it. Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-reflection and emotional grounding. But for me personally, it doesn’t work. I just end up feeling like a navel-gazer who’s boring myself with my own thoughts. I’m saying this to reassure you: if you hate journaling, don’t beat yourself up. You’re not alone!

Memoir:
The difference between memoir and journaling isn’t always obvious, so I’ll spell it out. Memoir is a journey into memory. Instead of chronicling our thoughts or activities, we step inside a specific moment from our past. We wander through the scene, recalling (and sometimes imaginatively reconstructing) sensory details. We relive an experience. We hear the voices of a conversation. This can bring emotional insight and healing. As I often joke, writing memoir is cheaper than therapy.

Poetry:
Ah, this is where I find my pace when the world feels too fast. Poetry forces a gentle slowing down. It isn’t just about the story, it’s about the telling. The pleasing (or intentionally uncomfortable) structure. The attentive choosing of words, the rhythms that emerge, the moment when it all coheres: A lotus blooming from a mud puddle. It does something good for my brain.

Fiction:
We can’t help but embed our stories with pieces of ourselves. Our experiences, our questions, our longings. Fiction offers creative freedom. When memoir feels too raw or direct, fiction lets us explore difficult emotions at a safe distance. The circumstances might not be literally true, but the emotional truth still comes through, providing a powerful path to self-reflection.

Cultural Commentary:
Processing how we feel about the world around us can be just as healing as processing our personal experiences. We’re social creatures, wired for connection and collective meaning-making. Critiquing, questioning, and imagining improvements about the culture we live in helps us understand not only our world but our place in it.

Join Our Writing Community

Some days, defeatism overwhelms me like an avalanche. It thunders my way. I am consumed by it. Buried by it. This heavy world. The endless scroll of bad news. My sense of agency numbed like frozen fingers trying to write under ten feet of snow.

I am useless here.

Doom thinking is seductive and dangerous. It says: if there’s no hope, then we’re off the hook. If everything is ruined, we don’t have to try. Hopelessness serves the systems that want us passive. Hopelessness keeps the people exhausted, disconnected, unable to imagine anything different.

Hope, on the other hand, is radical. We can’t pretend everything is fine. Clearly, we are not ok. Hope isn’t blind optimism; it takes commitment. Courage. Tenacity.

We can change the world.

We are the edge-dwellers, the ones who test the boundaries, who imagine new ways to live and love. We are the deviation that drives evolution to express itself in new ways. New possibilities. We do it through words, art, performance, ritual, sex, play, and deep rest. These are not distractions from “real” work—they are the work. This is how we reclaim pleasure from shame, and imagine a liberated future.

We are living in a century of great unraveling. The rigid structures that have dictated how we should live, love, and express ourselves have cracked. The dusty old books have been holding up broken shelves. You can’t thump those books anymore. For those invested in maintaining centuries of control, that’s terrifying. For everyone else, it’s the dawn of something new.

It’s the dawn of something new.

Hope is not a guarantee that everything will be okay. Optimism isn’t naive. It’s the courage to show up even when we don’t know how the story ends. Even when it looks bleak. This isn’t smug or self-assured. But I am open to the possibility that perhaps, perhaps, our art, our words, our fully expressed humanity can help birth a better version of this world.

I’ve never done something like this before, so apologies for the sibilance. If I had time, I would figure out how to correct it. The recording is raw, but the intention is there.

Even if you’ve never been to one of my online sessions, this is a good introduction! If you’re a regular, then I hope you enjoy this little gift. If you write something, feel free to share it in our Discord either as text or an audio recording.

Many of us want to support equity but aren’t sure how.
This is how.

This fund is 100% community-powered.
As DEI programs disappear and funding is cut, we must build what institutions won’t.
We can do better.

For every $175 scholarship funded, I’ll personally donate $100 back into the fund.

DONATE

If you are a Queer, Immigrant, BIPoC Writer, or someone living with severe rent burden who would like to attend a retreat or become a member of Writing With Mermaids, please apply for this scholarship.

APPLY NOW

Let's be clear: This is not charity. This is responsibility.

Our bookshelves, media, and institutions still overwhelmingly center white voices.
This is our chance to do better.

• With support, these voices ripple out into the world, into books, art, conversations, and culture, benefitting future generations.

• Everyone at the retreat benefits. BIPoC and other marginalized writers bring stories we rarely get to hear. Their presence transforms the retreat for everyone.

How You Can Help

• If you’ve ever benefited from Black, brown, immigrant, or queer creativity, or from the creativity of the disability justice movement—from literature, music, fashion, language, or spirit—this is a powerful way to give back.

• Donate any amount → $25 a month recurring payment sponsors one writer's ongoing membership. Sponsor a writer’s spot at a retreat for $175 (and I’ll add $100 in your honor) Click here to donate.

• Share this page with your people

• Skip one small luxury this week—a latte, a cocktail, a snack—and invest in a voice that can change the world

The Yoda Fund is named for my beloved friend, Yodassa Williams, a brilliant, queer, Black writer whose bright light left us too soon. Yoda believed in the radical power of storytelling.
She’s the reason these retreats exist.

This fund continues her legacy by making space for queer, BIPoC writers to rest and create.

DONATE