How to Follow the Story's Lead
Writing as a tool for discovery with runner and author Katie Arnold
“I don’t have to control story. My job is to express it.”—Katie Arnold
Preview: Episode 112 Katie Arnold
After a traumatic accident on the Salmon River, runner and author Katie Arnold tells us she needed to “learn how to heal my body using my mind.” One of her most powerful tools? Her writing notebooks. “My heart, my spirit and the future of my running were at stake.” In this episode, we speak of her new book, an exploration of running, Zen and marriage and how writing was “a way to endure.” We speak, too, of how beginner’s mind, key to exploring a Buddhist practice, is also a main component of her writing practice.
Katie Arnold is a longtime journalist and bestselling author of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free (2024), which tells the story of a traumatic wilderness accident and her path to healing. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Running Home, was published in 2019. An elite ultra runner and student of Zen, Katie teaches writing workshops exploring the link between movement and creativity. A former managing editor at Outside Magazine, she has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Outside, ESPN The Magazine, Runner’s World, and Elle, among others, as well as been a guest on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday and The Upaya Zen Center Podcast. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell and Ucross. Katie lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Steve Barrett, their two teenage daughters, and two dogs.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
We’ve done multiple episodes now on humor and comedians, and I am always struck by how similar comedy is to poetry—and in this great podcast with Neil Mullarkey, I realize that improv is also a lot like teaching. I loved this interview on Life Examined podcast exploring leadership and navigating our lives with the principles of improv.
Sometimes a poem cuts me wide open, and though it hurts, I am so grateful for the cut. That’s true with Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit,” published in Vox Populi last week. Ouch. And thank you.
Christie:
I recently listened to an episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast, Wiser Than Me, in which she interviewed Bonnie Raitt and it’s just so good. So many insights about performing, creativity and aging.
Memorial Day is behind us, but Phil Klay’s op-ed to mark the holiday, “What Do I Owe the Dead of My Generation’s Mismanaged Wars?” is still on my mind. “I’ve come to feel that airbrushing out the complexities of their wars is, ultimately, disrespectful to the dead. We owe it to the dead to remember what mattered to them, the ideals they held, as well as how those ideals were betrayed or failed to match reality.”
Even Before the First Step
we draw the starting line
and dig for the courage to toe it—
this, too, a beginning
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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This week, we talk with Katie about how paying attention is a secret weapon, the mystery game she plays to get herself inspired to write, zen and the art of writing, and how music informs her practice. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com, or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
What sign/quote/poem/bumper sticker/fortune do you have above your writing desk? (send a pic!)
How is beginner’s mindset a part of your creative practice?
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That Naomi Shihab Nye poem cuts right to the heart of my grief for the current war in Gaza. Thank you, Rosemerry.
Beginner's mind is so powerful. Whenever I think I know enough to write something useful, I remind myself to remember who I was and what I thought before I learned what know now. And I do my best to write from that place, the humble, doesn't-know-everything place. Because we all are beginners. We all start from somewhere. Being an expert is boring and isolating.