How a Project Evolves
Elizabeth Preston on manifesting the "big idea"
“Let the subconscious deal with it. .”—Elizabeth Preston, author of The Creature’s Guide to Caring
Preview: Emerging Form Episode 170 with Elizabeth Preston
How did we get here? That was the question that drove Elizabeth Preston’s new book, The Creature’s Guide to Caring: How animal parents teach us that humans were born to care. While the book itself is looking at biology, this week’s episode (out on Thursday) focuses on the evolution of creative process in writing and how to manifest “the big idea”—especially when you have young children. We talk about bringing value to a reader, being more bold, imposter syndrome, how personal experience can drive empathy, and how walking away for a while can be the best way to serve our creative projects, and the importance of humor. Plus Elizabeth shares about the gnomes in her head and just how they help her process.
Elizabeth Preston is a science journalist who contributes regularly to The New York Times and has written for Science, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Orion, Slate, Audubon, Discover, National Geographic, and others. She is a winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award. Preston is also a humor writer whose work has appeared in outlets such as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Parents, and Real Simple, and was the editor of Muse, a magazine about science and ideas for kids. She lives in Massachusetts.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
Someone sent me this glorious blend of poetry/music/movement … it’s a transfixing four minutes of Rilke’s poetry (“let everything happen to you, beauty and terror”). The underwater scenes are so haunting and oddly lovely … and these harmonies!!!
I had the great joy of being on a panel yesterday with Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey. We were at the National Federation of State Poetry Societies conference in Kansas, and the theme was Advocacy, Activism, Community. I was so moved by his heart, his clarity, his generosity of spirit, and his wisdom, that I came home and looked up his poems and loved what I found. Here’s a poem based on the children’s book If You Give a Moose a Muffin. His take, “If You Give a Black Boy a Dollar.” Check out his whole website for info about him and the film about him.
Christie:
I really loved Nathaniel Ian Miller’s first novel, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, and I liked Red Dog Farm almost as much. The novel takes place in Iceland and tells the story of Orri, who grows up on a rural cattle farm. Orri leaves home to attend university in Reykjavík, where he still feels drawn back to home, where his farmer father, Pabbi, is floundering. Meanwhile, his mother, a Lithuanian Jew who teaches at a local university, is entrenched in the world of academia, and Orri struggles to find his place. There is also a romance, and a friendship and best of all, a very good dog. I am a sucker for stories where the dog does not die. Also, the cover is beautiful.
“It is not science journalism’s job to improve trust in science,” Elise Cutts writes. I agree, and I appreciated her nuanced and thoughtful discussion of the issue. I liked it enough to subscribe to her substack, Reviewer, too.
New Epoch for the Heart
I think of how the narrow blue bodies
of the dragonfly ancestors
once skimmed clear lakes—
over a hundred million years
before the great diplodocus
came to wade—
how they flew through the Permian,
the Cretaceous, through mornings,
through meteors, through floods,
through to the Holocene, to now.
How much change they have seen
before coming to balance here
on the reeds beside me,
their bodies like thin blue proofs
of resilience, endurance, constancy.
Meanwhile, the sun is disappearing
below the horizon.
Meanwhile this heart, too,
is learning to adapt, to become
something as surprising as beauty
that survives great challenge,
something as durable, as delicate
as gossamer wings.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Only our paid subscribers receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support. This week, we talk about human cognitive bias and how we devalue the things we achieve—and how to circumvent this as a pitfall and help ourselves see our successes more clearly. We also talk about how having a strong sense of purpose can motivate us to keep working on a difficult, longterm project, making the leap from short form to long form projects. Plus, we talk about naked mole rats and beekeeping nuns.
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
Tell us a story about the last time you laughed at yourself in a creative endeavor.
How has empathy been a part of your creative practice?
PS: Rosemerry, Caleb Rainey's poem and his reading of it are breathtaking. I listened twice, I was so moved. And after reading your capsule review of Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller, Christie, I put it on my to-read list. I love stories with dogs in them too, especially when they don't die!
The word "terraphilia" exemplifies the empathy in my creative work: empathy for this burning Earth, for the myriad lives we share the planet with, for we humans, floundering now but capable of so much love and beauty.
Rosemerry and Christie, you inspire me. Thank you!