The Art of Being Gentle with Your Creative Self
Novelist Laura Pritchett on writing fiction with self-compassion
“Plot has been my weak point and I say that lovingly. I don’t need to wag my finger at myself. Over the years I have learned to treat myself with more compassion.” —Laura Pritchett
Preview: Emerging Form Episode 125 with Laura Pritchett
How can your creative practice be enhanced by self-compassion? When we invited novelist Laura Pritchett to speak with us about her two new novels that came out this year, Playing with Wildfire (Torrey House Press) and Three Keys (Random House Books), we imagined we’d speak mostly about how to write a novel. What thrilled and surprised us was that we not only got practical advice about how to write (Pritchett is a “pantser,” who writes her first draft “by the seat of her pants” without an outline), but also about how that might look when done with kindness, self-discovery and even joy. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any struggle in novel writing. “You should love it so much you are willing to put up with the bad days,” she says. “Embrace the joy, and if you are not loving the struggle, maybe it is not the right relationship.” We also cover revision techniques, ambition for her work beyond telling a good story, and letting characters drive her novels.
Laura Pritchett is the author of seven novels. Known for championing the complex and contemporary West and giving voice to the working class, her books have garnered the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado book awards, and others. She’s also the author of two nonfiction books, one play, and was editor of three environmental-based anthologies. One novel, Stars Go Blue, has been optioned for TV rights. She’s published hundreds of essays and short stories in national venues, most recently in The Sun, Terrain, Camas, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, and others. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University and holds a PhD from Purdue University. When not writing or teaching, she can be found sauntering around the West, especially her home state of Colorado. She particularly likes looking at clouds and wildflowers.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
Sometimes, we hear someone tell the truth so utterly that we ring like bells from their words … that’s how it is with this short film on surrender, love, grief and life. Made by Reflections of Life, this is one of 12 explorations in film, this one filmed in South Africa, exploring surrender and how grief can help us “shift in ways that would not have been possible.
Perhaps my favorite poem I have read in months—“On Living” by Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet back in the mid-1900s. It met me exactly where I needed to be met this week. It puts life into astonishing perspective.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar’s poems have long called to me. They are clear, which is to say that the mind can be immediately on board, making meaning, gathering wisdom, but they are also clear like spring water, in that you can read them and feel as if you have just ingested something essential, necessary to your wellbeing. She finds and shares small moments of beauty and epiphany that somehow stand up against whole chapters of ache and woe. And oh, her poetics—so musical, so nuanced with image and langauge. I love her new collection, Lately: New & Selected Poems. A treasure.
Christie:
I picked up The Nix by Nathan Hillafter reading Hill’s second novel, Wellness. There were things I didn’t love (it needed more editing, and one of the storylines toward the end was kind of tedious), but I enjoyed the writing a lot. The novel is a sweeping story covering many decades, from the 1960s to 2011. Writer and middling academic Samuel Andresen-Anderson is the center of the novel and the story examines his relationship with the mother who abandoned him as well as her story and her father’s. There are multiple storylines about protest movements. Sam’s mother is briefly involved in student protests around the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and demonstrations at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City and the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park also feature prominently. Hill is great at social satire. There’s a hilarious section regarding a student that Sam catches plagiarizing and her response (it’s all his fault and he’s the one who needs to get booted). The book’s take on the publishing industry and politics is also hilarious (and sometimes infuriating). Worth a read.
Somebody, Somewhere is back, and season 3 (which will be its last) is every bit as good as the previous ones. This HBO series stars Bridget Everett, and she is fantastic —funny, talented, honest, and above all, vulnerable. She can sing like no other. Please stop what you’re doing and go watch.
Inviting Spaciousness
Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,
I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings
in a desperate attempt to unravel it.
I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.
Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it
with my hands like something precious,
something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.
I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.
I imagine all the other frightened hearts
and imagine them all being held in love.
And I breathe. I breathe and feel
how the breathing invites a spaciousness.
I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing
as I open and soften. Open and soften.
And nothing changes. And everything changes.
The heart, still a knot, remembers
it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.
—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. Starting this month, only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support.
This week, we speak with Laura about carving out creative time where “the self that needs to exist in the world” doesn’t come in, the gift of never being stuck, the awareness of how our egos can block us, and the invitation to write in new genres. 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)
How does self-compassion inform your creative practice?
Novelists: Are you a pantser or a plotter? Why?
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