by Laura Munson | Apr 26, 2020 | The Writing Life
My next So Now What writing workshop is June 14th from 10:00-3:00 MST. To register, click here! (more info below)
You want to learn how to write but you don’t know where to begin.
You’ve heard this phrase: writing prompt and it’s got your attention. But what is a good writing prompt? Here’s some help for you. Please enjoy my new Writing Prompt for you at the end, inspired by this essay!
The writer in me rebels against even an inkling of the phrase writing prompt. I can smell it a mile away, and I run for the hills. In my mind, I sound like a bratty pre-teen— Don’t tell me what to write. I don’t need your woke-ish inspirational launchpad to find what it is that I want to say. You can take your ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ and shove it where the sun don’t shine (get it–haha). I’ve got my pen and my notebook and I am safe from the big bad world with my little picnic basket of words, frolicking through the woods.
Isn’t everyone who loves to write like this? A child with butterflies in her stomach, faking sick so she can stay at home and write in her journal? Where there are no playground politics or mean girls or boys who pull your pigtails? Where there is only a word world of possibility…?
The answer is no. And that’s a very very good thing.
Otherwise, obsessed word wanderers everywhere would be sitting in bed with the covers up to their chin, writing all day. Believe me, it’s not healthy. It took me decades to learn that getting fresh air and sunshine is its own kind of writing prompt. And its own kind of writing.
But most people who want to write aren’t obsessed. They’re scared and scarred. Most people who want to write don’t know how to find the fresh air and sunshine in the written word. And sometimes, vice the verse. Most people need some help finding their words and that’s because somewhere along the line someone told them to speak when spoken to, or that they have nothing interesting to say even if they tried.
And they took their words and went home, and they learned that two plus two always equals four. It was for that reason that I became a creative writing teacher, rebel writer and all.
We need our teachers and their writing prompts. In fact, the healthiest kind of writing makes all kinds of room for being taught, especially by a kind guide, and especially by someone who has some pretty good prompts up her sleeves. I have shed my run-for-the-hills mentality in this regard. But let’s be perfectly clear: there are good writing prompts. And there are not-so-good writing prompts.
A good writing prompt prompts a lot more than words. It prompts truth.
What we’re really looking for in our writing is truth. Even if it’s fiction. It’s all, in the end, truth. Even if the words sprout wings on a woman and she flies out the window into a parallel universe. There is as much truth in fiction as there is in non-fiction, when it’s all distilled. Truth is truth is truth.
Finding your truth, however, can be blood sport.
There are thousands of haunted thoughts that tell a person that their truth is too daunting, or inconvenient, or embarrassing, or just plain wrong. And years of living on this heartbreaking planet have misconstrued the pursuit of finding the words for your truth as one that should look smart, fancy, wise. All of that is a lie.
Truth is usually quite plain. A good writer knows this in the purest way, but if you ask that writer to explain it, you’ll likely get a very long, confusing, answer. Or no answer at all. A good writing teacher knows that the pursuit of truth using the written word is one that for most people needs to be broken down into small measures. Sometimes miniscule. That’s how corrosive the mind can be when it comes to allowing truth to flow.
But I’m stuck.
The phrase a writing teacher hears over and over again is this: “I’m stuck.”
As much as that phrase saddens me, it’s also music to my ears because over and over at my Haven Writing Retreats and Workshops I’ve seen how a good writing prompt moves people out of their stuckness. And not because the prompt is clever or cunning or difficult. But because a good writing prompt shows people how to let it give itself to them.
Huh?
I’ll spin it like this.
Dirty secret: all a good creative writing teacher really does is to help people see what they already know.
Prompt by prompt. And yes, craft-byte by craft-byte. The truth is never that far off. It’s just a matter of getting the writer out of the way so that truth can flow. And that is the power of a good writing prompt.
It’s like a kick ass babysitter. The kind that lets you eat dessert before dinner. Notice that when it’s all said and done…you’re still eating dinner. Occupy the mind—the voice that tells you that you’re stuck. That you’re not creative. That someone else already did it better than you ever could. Occupy the mind with a delicious dessert-first writing prompt…and before you know it…you’re eating your broccoli. Truth broccoli. And you’re even a member of the clean plate truth club. Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone. There are people out there making a living teaching people truth in the prestidigitation of writing prompts. I might be one of them.
But beware. A good writing prompt, just like a good creative writing teacher, will not let you get stuck in prompt worship. Or in teacher worship, for that matter. An effective writing prompt led by an effective writing teacher is designed to allow the student’s knowing to flow. It’s the knowing that begets more knowing, not the prompt. Nor the teacher. And that means that the writing prompt needs to render the mind a-wobble, knocked off its usual course. A good writing prompt should be delivered without a lot of explaining. And shouldn’t court too many raised hands. I like to say, “The fourth grader in you knows exactly how to do this.”
A good writing prompt gets you outside of good and bad, right and wrong, grade-at-the-end, and the big one: PERFECTION. And invites you to play!
It’s like teaching someone to ride a bike. Holding them securely as they get a feel for it and then letting go so that they forget that they were scared to learn how to ride a bike just moments ago. A good writing prompt needs a bit of velocity. Trajectory. Shiny handlebars.
And here’s another secret. It’s not really about the words at all. It’s about occupying the person’s mind with these writing prompts so that the truth can find its way into them, and out of them. I’ll say it again because I can’t say it enough, and for some reason it’s a surprise to so many people attempting to write. What we’re looking for in our writing is truth, no matter what the genre.
So if you want to write, don’t think about writing. Think about finding the words that allow what you already know. What you knew as a child. Think about having a ribald date with your intuition.
And if you’re a rebel like I am and cringe at the phrase writing prompts…consider the probability that fear might be at the root of that aversion. We rebel against those words because we don’t want anybody telling us how to think, and that’s likely because the place where we go mentally and emotionally when we do this thing called writing, is the place we have deemed most safe in our lives. Where no one can tell us that we’re wrong or bad. Where our minds can do what they want.
The rebel writer doesn’t think about what people will say once the words are on the page. She only knows she has to write them. It’s a matter of life or death. (No hyperbole.) Sometimes she decides that what she’s written has a place in the world, and she risks bleeding out by putting her words before others. That’s the part that readers don’t understand. Her words are not ultimately for them. They are for her.
The good teacher understands the rebel writer and the stuck writer and the prompt-worshiping writer and the teacher-worshipping writer. Because a good teacher understands fear. Old wounds. Longing.
A good teacher doesn’t give her student an hour to go sit under a tree and write about the wind. Too much comes in on the wind in an hour. A good teacher gives you something to occupy your mind so that the wind can write itself.
So…it’s fair to say that I don’t teach writing. I teach longing. And I teach slake. How? By helping people find their truth, using the written word, and using carefully designed writing prompts in carefully designed workshop settings. But a good writing prompt should stand on its own. That’s it. There are no ten easy steps to learn how to write a memoir, or how to write a novel, or how to write in general. There is no recipe. And anyone who says there is: run for the hills.
Here’s a writing prompt for you:
Two plus two equals five
Go wherever your mind takes you for 7 min. Use a pen on paper.
***Here’s more for you if you need it: Write a scene that uses this line somewhere in it. Write for at least 20 minutes but only in one sitting. You can return to it later and edit it, add to it, develop it…as long as you write a 1st draft with a landing place in those first 20 minutes.
Have fun!
Laura
Here are some online writing opportunities for you!
Friday So Now What Journal Writing practice:
My weekly gift to you is one hour of guided journal writing to help you write your way through this pandemic. All of us are asking this question right now: So Now What?
Inspired by my new novel, “Willa’s Grove,” I will lead you through the So Now What Journal Writing practice. Come once, learn it, do it solo. Come every week. Join family and friends. I’m here to help.
Here’s the registration link
So many people who have been doing the So Now What journaling, wanted more. So I created the:
So Now What Workshop (and the So Now What community)
To help us through this time of our lives, I’m leading So Now What writing workshops. Join me May 9th for a deep dive into what you want to let go of, and what you want to create going forward in your life. Each of the prompts is inspired by my new novel, “Willa’s Grove,” or my top-ranked Haven Writing Retreats. You do NOT have to be a writer to come! If you ARE a writer, you will find craft instruction that can be applied to any writing project. You’ll also be invited into the So Now What community where we continue to support one another. I’m watching this workshop hold people together right now, and provide the deep relief that comes when we give ourselves the chance to be in our truth in a powerful way. Please give yourself this gift. I’m only offering it during this time of pandemic. I want to help.
My next one is June 14th from 10:00-3:00 MST. To register, click here!
Sending love to you all. Remember to look to the birds for hope.
yours,
Laura
by Laura Munson | Apr 5, 2020 | The Writing Life
I went out to the front porch today, feeling so low. Worrying about the things that we’re all worrying about right now. Trying not to worry. Trying to focus on one breath after the next. Trying to feel my inner light. But still feeling darkness. Wanting to look into eyes, real eyes, of dear friends and family and neighbors, and also of people in India and Nigeria and all the faraway places who are worrying about exactly what I’m worrying about, and not just love and death—the usuals. But this stealth virus which has stopped the world. It was eerily quiet, the way Montana can be in winter, but not in springtime. And I went back inside, back to my bed, where I’ve been self-quarantining for almost a month.
My father always said, “People are the same everywhere.” I’ve made it one of my life’s central goals to see that this is true. I’ve said that you don’t have to look very far. It’s the guy helping you find fresh mint in the produce section. It’s the crossing guard and the way she looks at children as she’s holding up her sign. It’s the view through a window of someone looking through a window. I miss people. But I don’t want to have to turn on the news to see them. The images are too much. Not because it’s bloody gore like war as we’ve known it. But because there’s no visible enemy and so much pain and sickness and loss. It helps to look into an enemy’s eyes. To wonder how we are the same. To practice on those eyes– our love and our empathy, and yes our fear and anger. This one has no eyes.
We are all in our respective rooms, globally, wondering what comes next and if we have any power right now. I won’t list the myriad ways this virus is affecting our lives because it is too overwhelming and never have I felt how important one inhale, followed by one exhale, is…not for just sustenance, but for calm. I have never valued calm before. Not like this. I have valued creativity, and creativity values thought, and thought is dangerous right now because it goes too quickly into the future. And all the unknowns. Even writing this right now feels dangerous. And writing has never felt dangerous to me. The only writing that’s been coming out of me in these weeks has been very short phrases about very small things. Not ideas. Things. The holy mundane. I need to get back to journaling. I need to get back to that practice which I’ve lately abandoned for fear of my own thoughts.
It has been weeks of snow showers and rain showers. I’ve watched it through my bedroom window. I have been sleeping a lot, which isn’t always safe ground. Historically, my dreams are full of saving people from burning houses that I don’t even know but somehow I am responsible for them. All too often my dreams are full of total world upheaval with images that are so terrifying and exacting that I wake up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding, gasping for air. I don’t watch or read anything about the end of the world, as a rule. I know that my mind is too active and I don’t want to be scared or to put darkness into the world, even in my sleep. And yet it oozes into my dreams no matter how calm and settled I am before I shut my eyes. It’s been this way for years.
But lately, I have been dreaming of my deceased family members. We are walking in the radiant sunshine, everything bright green and sapphire blue and lit from within– and all of them so calm and joyful like nothing bad is happening in the world and nothing ever has and ever will. They are so totally free from fear, that I hardly recognize them. I come from people who worry. There is no worry. Their faces are soft and relaxed. Their bodies are easily taking step after step through sunny meadows and dappled forests. They say “Don’t worry. Everything is okay.” They say, “All of your plans don’t matter right now. There’s nothing to do right now but be still.”
I wake feeling so calm, breathing so easily and slowly. I’ve asked my friends if they have been having these dreams. It turns out that a lot of people are dreaming about their peaceful deceased loved ones right now. I guess it doesn’t surprise me. I figure, either they’re angels coming in to help us during this terrifying time. Or our subconscious doesn’t have room for nightmares, life being what it is. Carl Jung would know. All I know is that I need these dreams. I need my elders and their calm. They soothe my soul while I dream, and help me feel less isolated and worried when I wake. I open my eyes and I feel like it’s Christmas morning and everyone’s there and I am little and I am safe and the grown-ups aren’t going anywhere all day and everybody is going to be nice to each other. I get to sit in so many laps and no one’s going to make me take a nap or leave me to play alone so that they can do grown-up things. This day is like one big long hug.
But then consciousness takes over and all the habitual just-waking thoughts rush in: What day is it? Am I supposed to be somewhere? Am I late, am I prepared? And then I remember the calm from the dream and my loved-one’s gentle voices, “All of your plans don’t matter right now. There’s nothing to do right now but be still.” My mind has a fight in it: How do I make a living being still? But like my grandmother’s veiny, translucent, soft hand rests itself on mine, I have this overwhelming understanding that we must honor the feral fact that the world has stopped. And let the lessons come. We must learn these lessons.
The truth is, I’ve been wanting to stop for a long time. Just take some time to myself. To write. To be quiet. To be responsible for only me. But I’ve wracked my brain: How can I stop if the world keeps hammering away? Plus, that’s selfish anyway. The poet Rilke chooses these words to describe the practice of love in a relationship with oneself and others: hearkening and hammering. He means listening, noticing, allowing your senses to be open, and he means hard work on the self and hard work in the relationship. Maybe this is a time to create much space for hearkening. Because humanity can’t not hammer. We will hammer again. So lying in bed, I decide to let all of my thoughts of the future, all of my plans I’ve been hammering away at for years…suspend themselves in springtime sounds and senses. I decide that the hammering I do will be in what love I can give freely to help myself and others. I decide to let go of the future and to embrace this world event from my own small room in Montana. There is so much relief there that I catch myself smiling at the ceiling.
As with most of these days of snow and rain showers, it stops by late afternoon, and the sun comes out. I have been ignoring the sun’s call to come out and bask in it, instead trying to pick up the pieces, the shrapnel, from how this war has affected my life, as we are all doing right now. Trying to put the pieces back together into something that was or something new. Pivoting. Re-inventing. But my deceased loved ones are asking me to be still right now. For a time. Be still. Hearken.
So when the sun came out today, I went out to my porch and sat on the front stoop with a wool shawl wrapped around me up to my chin, and a thick blanket covering my legs and feet. And I closed my eyes and felt each breath, in and out, the sun on my face, warm and tingling, each breath, the gentle breeze, such fresh air. I sat there for a long time. Not sure how long, but long enough for the sun to move through trees and me to move to different places on my porch to stay in its glow. I felt still. And I felt happy. Moving with the sun, breath by breath.
Life reduced itself to one small gift for the senses after the next, but not too fast. Just in perfect time, by a perfect slow metronome.
The musky smell of my neighbors’ sheep riding the breeze through the woods.
A raven just overhead—the heft of the air in its glistening underwings.
A chickadee singing its spring my tree in a river birch, standing bastion after wintering over when most other songbirds leave.
But this…this…this was what I’ve missed. And I wouldn’t have heard it, felt it, looked into the eyes of it, if I hadn’t gone outside and sat down for a while in the sun.
I heard someone pounding a nail. It came across the valley and hit up against the ridge behind my house, and showered down on me in echo.
Someone is building something.
Someone has plans that they haven’t abandoned.
Or maybe they had a dream that they’d put away for a time. And now they’re dreaming it alive.
Someone is creating something.
Someone believes in the future.
So I came in. And I wrote this because I want you to hear the echo of that one hammer, on that one nail.
“All of your plans don’t matter right now. There’s nothing to do right now but be still.”
I’m going to add two more words, “And help.”
In this time of hearkening, and a different kind of hammering—maybe not at the rate we were before, but one nail by one nail…I feel that it is important to hearken for what we can give in the most simple way, from our most pure heart and skillset, to help others. I know that writing is a deeply powerful tool. I know how to use it in my life as a practice, a prayer, a way of life, and sometimes a way to life. I have said for years, “Writing should be up there with diet and exercise in the realm of preventative wellness.” We need to be writing, whether we are writers or not. We all have this tool. We know how to put our thoughts into words on a page. All we need is a pen, some paper, and an open heart. And our worry and our wonder. The hammer: the pen. The nail: the page. The heart: the listening, noticing, allowing, and yes, dreaming.
So for the next four Fridays at 4:00 pm, MST, and maybe beyond, I’m going to host a one hour FREE guided journal-writing session called So Now What Writing. I will continue leading Haven Writing Retreats, and The So Now What Workshops, and will be launching an extensive online writing course later this spring or when it feels right in light of our world upheaval. But for now, I want to give something to you at no cost, because I want this to be available to all who need it. Bring your kids. Bring your partners. Bring your elders. Bring you! We’ll sit “together” in my home in Montana and hearken and hammer together using the written word. We’ll focus on what we want to shed from the past. What we want to embrace right now. And what we want to create going forward. I’ll give you inspiring prompts and time to write, time to share (optional), and I’ll give you a practice that you can do on your own to help you get through this time.
We need this. I need this. Again, “Writing should be up there with diet and exercise in the realm of preventative wellness.” Let’s be well together.
Here’s the info for how to join me:
Fridays, 4:00-5:00 MST
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/983992436?pwd=bnhISHlzNDk0dUplelNwRXBMK1l5UT09
Meeting ID: 983 992 436
Password: sonowwhat
by Laura Munson | Feb 23, 2020 | The Writing Life
As seen on Women’s Writers, Women’s Books
Book ideas are always coming to me. I’m usually working on a few at the same time and always in different genres—different ways to find the truth. That’s what I’m after: truth. Each book begins with a central question—some quirk of humanity that gnaws away at me. Or something that fills me with righteous indignation, and I burn with it so hot that I have to stop, break it down, and look at it from the inside out.
At the root of every book I write…there is the pure longing to understand this beautiful and heartbreaking thing called life. In our quick-fire, button-pushing world, these sorts of burning questions can easily inspire a rant or a manifesto or land too tidily in Ten Easy Steps or the dread red bow.
To me, this approach lacks heart. It is devoid of story, which then fails to build the bridge that as a reader, and writer, I crave.
Stories bring us into the collective, hold us there, make us look and feel and maybe even find answers…which of course, beget more questions.
That’s why I love the novel. Out of all genres, the novel imitates and illuminates our stories—yet relieves the burden of reality with a distilled reality.
To me, fiction is realer than real. And to me, fiction then unfurls those burning questions in a way that is liberated by possibility. Namely, the possibility of finding an honest answer to the questions that work inside of us like a glass splinter.
We live our lives in questions, and we live them in scenes, with beating hearts around us, especially our own. The question that has driven my life for the last decade is one that I really didn’t think would be central to my life. At all.
But my life re-wrote its script, and I’ve caught myself saying over and over again: So now what? Maybe you can relate.
Once I started to tune into that question, I heard it everywhere. I heard it from friends, family, and mostly from the people who come to my Haven Writing Retreats. That central question births brawny answers and writing into the answer, whether for yourself or others, is one of the most powerful, healing, hopeful acts I know.
That’s when these characters started calling to me. Willa. Bliss. Harriet. Jane. They called from across the country and from lonely rooms with bleeding hearts. They called out of their shame and lost wonder. They called out of fear and isolation and loneliness and longing. They called to tell me that I am not alone and neither are you. We are in this together. We’ve just forgotten. And that’s why I knew I had to write this book. We need to build bridges to each other. We need to help each other answer our So now what.
I could have written this book as a memoir. I could have written it as a self-help book. But these women called, and I listened, and in giving them voice—sometimes words I didn’t want to write—I found a hole in our humanity.
We have lost the gift of conversation. Long, lingering conversation. Where no one is looking at cell phones or watches or thinking about checking off the next item on their To Do list. When is the last time you sat for hours with trusted kindreds and really…I mean really…spoke your truth? Told your stories. For a week. No red bows. No easy steps. No prescriptive advice. No shame or blame. And no fixing. What would that even look like and how on earth would you keep it safe? And…what if you did it far from home…for a whole week? In a quiet, wild place like Montana, say…
That’s what these women asked me. They were relentless. It was dire. They each were staring down the barrel of something you, or someone you love, have experienced. I wrote it once the way I wanted it to go…and then they got louder, and I wrote it again the way they wanted it to go. Six years of listening to and laboring with their questions…and I have Willa’s Grove to give to you in March.
I’m going to miss them. That’s what happens when you live so honestly in the central questions of your life, and when you do it in a community of people you can trust. You relax into warm blankets and rocking chairs and cups of tea by the fire. And you feel safe enough to talk– to really share how you feel and what you fear and what you want with all your heart. These women gave me the answer to my So now what. None of them is “me.” All of them are “us.”
You could argue that in writing this book, I remained in my isolation. In my pain and questions. That I lived in imagined community for six years. But I can tell you that the work I do as a teacher, editor, retreat facilitator, mother, and liver of life was made whole by being in this circle of women.
They were my teachers, and we all need our teachers. Thusly, teachers need to be willing to be the student, so the writing of this novel, then, schooled me like nothing I have ever written. (And believe me…there are a lot of books in my office closet that will never see the light of day because I wasn’t ready to be exactly this student.)
Here’s what’s possible when we write so purely from our heart: One day, I was walking in the snowy forest and I came upon a gorgeous aspen grove.
As Willa tells the women, an aspen grove is one organism. And it is not lost on them that by the end of their week together, they are one such grove. Hence the title.
So when I saw this grove, its black veins so pronounced against its alabaster trunk and branches, all set against the Montana snow…I stopped. Smiled. Thought, Oh, the women would love a photo of this aspen grove. And I took off my mitten, unzipped my parka pocket, pulled out my phone, took a few photos, and then looked for the text feed that surely must exist between the women of Willa’s Grove and me. Surely. And then I blinked and laughed out loud and said, “My god! They don’t exist!” Call me crazy. Or call the exactitude of story-telling one mighty form of self-expression. One mighty answer to one mighty question. One mighty supplicant-splay on the altar of truth.
It is my hope that people will read this book and think, “I want to host my own Grove week. I want to sit in this circle. I need to sit in this circle. I need to find my So now what. And I promise you, there are three other people out there in your world…who do too. They just might be hiding, pretending, smiling in the grocery store when their hearts are breaking. Ask them. As the book begins…You are invited to the rest of your life.
—
Come see me on book tour!
Haven Writing Retreats
Come join me in Montana and find your voice! Write your book! Court your muse…all under the big sky. You do not have to be a writer to come to Haven. Just a seeker…longing for community, inspiration, support, and YOUR unique form of self-expression using your love of the written word!
Haven 2020 Schedule:
February 5-9 (full with wait list)
May 6-10 (two spots left!!!)
June 10-14
June 17-21
September 16-20
September 23-27
October 28-November 1
Go here for more info and to set up a call with Laura!
by Laura Munson | Feb 16, 2020 | The Writing Life
Dedicated to anyone who gets on stages with a message they care about.
Pre-order your copy of Willa’s Grove from your local bookstore or here for its March 3rd release!
***My new website, with all the event links, launches this week…so stay tuned! For now, all of my event info can be found on the above websites.
Most every author I know both loves and dreads the book tour. I’m in the LOVE camp, but it also requires some heavy grounding and strong tools that you learn and lose and learn again. At least that’s how it is for me. One minute you’re on the stage sharing this book that has lived in you like a child in your womb, exposing it to the light of day, hoping people will love it like you do, afraid that they won’t, trying to let go of that attachment, trying to focus on being an authentic messenger. And sometimes when you’re on that stage, people assign you power. Put you on a pedestal, even. And sometimes they don’t. At all. (I had a heckler once!) And it’s your job to not take any of it personally, even though…I mean…if you have a kid…it sure would be nice for people to like it. So you do your best to share from the depths of your heart—without giving your heart away altogether, walking that fine line with all your might.
And then the next moment, you’re in a hotel room staring at the ceiling with a 4:00 am alarm set to catch a plane to another city, forgetting where you are in the time-space continuum, never mind where the bathroom is, and the door for that matter, with another bad pillow under your head wondering why you are doing this at all. Isn’t it enough to just write the book, and have people read it and think what they want to think and it’s none of your business? That’s what you ask in that dark hotel room that smells like soggy cereal and institutional laundry bleach. And then you fall asleep and dream that you’re on the stage naked and people are throwing rotten tomatoes at you. And then the alarm goes off and you take in a deep breath because you want to get your kid to the next place it needs to go so you can give it all that a good mother gives to her child. And you do this in seven cities in eighteen days, sixteen times—and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have that kind of support from your publisher, or if you’ve figured out a way to do it on your own. How else could you possibly live with yourself if you didn’t? You have to. It’s just the way it works these days. And you are grateful. Deeply grateful. And there are moments of supreme joy and delight all along the way. AND you are also a little scared. A little wobbly. Hoping you’ll know yourself out there on the road.
I was on the road off and on for six years, promoting my memoir, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, in the US, and internationally, and I learned so much about myself and the life that a book takes on. I was a tireless messenger. I was in it to help people. I was in it to finally realize a very old dream. I was in it to do everything in my power to make that bridge to the reader to complete the connection I built when I wrote that book in the first place. And I’m about to do it again in two weeks. New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. Back home. And then to LA, and on and on. I love the road. I love meeting readers. I love watching my book baby take on life in the hearts of others. I love the prospect of others connecting with my characters, learning from them, feeling their hearts, rooting for their conflicts to find resolve. I’ve lived with them intimately for seven years and it’s time that they be released from their pages. It is a true honor to be their messenger.
The Dread part is usually more like this: (And this applies to anyone who is a messenger for something they hold dear.)
We create in solitude. Even if we’re extroverts (which for a writer is rare…but I am one for sure), it’s a strange thing to be able to coherently, and hopefully wisely, communicate just what our book is about. Part of us wants to say, “I wrote it. Now read it. You tell me what it’s about!”
The tendency is to want to splay ourselves supplicant on the altar of our book’s message, and every single one of its readers– especially those who show up to hear us read from it, ask us questions, receive our answers. This is not recommended. But we love these characters and the place they inhabit so purely and powerfully that it’s heartbreaking to think that others won’t. Or worse—that they’ll loathe and despise them. And that’s like someone loathing and despising our child. Enter: tough skin. Most writers don’t have it. Which is why we can write in the first place. We’re highly sensitive people. We feel everything. We are so full of empathy that oftentimes it’s to a fault. The trick is to not let that empathy derail us.
Advice to all of us on stages everywhere: You can’t control how people will react to your work. You can’t cause an effect for anyone in those audiences. You can’t take their reaction personally. You have to allow yourself to be misunderstood. You have to put your head on that bad pillow in the hotel room each night and let…it…go…
The main thing is that you have to support yourself as you go, and that’s the challenge. Taking care of yourself. And the stuff you do in your daily life in the realm of self-care might not play in Peoria. You might find yourself behaving in a way that totally shocks you. You might feel shame and disorientation. Please…from someone who knows…be kind to yourself. Find people who will hold your hand along the way in your humanity. Who know your heart. Who won’t put you on any sort of pedestal. And who in some way understand from experience what it is to take a message public.
So as I prepare to go on the road for all of March and most of April, doing ongoing promotion throughout 2020, I’m taking stock. As with any of you who hit the road with your message, it requires good boundaries and an open heart…and sometimes those two are hard to assemble into wholeness. So yes Love…and Dread. Take that love and use it to embrace your fear. Take that love and hope and wonder and belief…and wrap it around yourself. I have to believe that when we show up pulsing with love, that it honors everyone. And maybe I’ll even be good at it.
See you out there on the road! If you’re in the audience…please send me a little wink. We’re in this together. As my father used to say, “Shoulders back, Munson!” And that goes for all of the messengers out there!
Yours,
Laura
Come join me in Montana and find your voice! Write your book! Court your muse…all under the big sky. You do not have to be a writer to come to Haven. Just a seeker…longing for community, inspiration, support, and YOUR unique form of self-expression using your love of the written word!
Haven 2020 Schedule:
February 5-9 (full with wait list)
May 6-10 (still room!)
June 10-14
June 17-21
September 16-20
September 23-27
October 28-November 1
Go here for more info and to set up a call with Laura!
by Laura Munson | Nov 30, 2019 | The Writing Life
Pre-order Willa’s Grove now! (from your local bookstore, or here)
Book ideas are always coming to me. I’m usually working on a few at the same time and always in different genres—different ways to find the truth. That’s what I’m after: truth. Each book begins with a central question—some quirk of humanity that gnaws away at me. Or something that fills me with righteous indignation, and I burn with it so hot that I have to stop, break it down, and look at it from the inside out. At the root of every book I write…there is the pure longing to understand this beautiful and heartbreaking thing called life. In our quick-fire, button-pushing world, these sorts of burning questions can easily inspire a rant or a manifesto or land too tidily in Ten Easy Steps or the dread red bow. To me, this approach lacks heart. It is devoid of story, which then fails to build the bridge that as a reader, and writer, I crave. Stories bring us into the collective, hold us there, make us look and feel and maybe even find answers…which of course, beget more questions.
That’s why I love the novel. Out of all genres, the novel imitates and illuminates our stories—yet relieves the burden of reality with a distilled reality. To me, fiction is realer than real. And to me, fiction then unfurls those burning questions in a way that is liberated by possibility. Namely, the possibility of finding an honest answer to the questions that work inside of us like a glass splinter.
We live our lives in questions, and we live them in scenes, with beating hearts around us, especially our own. The question that has driven my life for the last decade is one that I really didn’t think would be central to my life. At all. But my life re-wrote its script, and I’ve caught myself saying over and over again: So now what? Maybe you can relate. Once I started to tune into that question, I heard it everywhere. I heard it from friends, family, and mostly from the people who come to my Haven Writing Retreats. That central question births brawny answers and writing into the answer, whether for yourself or others, is one of the most powerful, healing, hopeful acts I know.
That’s when these characters started calling to me. Willa. Bliss. Harriet. Jane. They called from across the country and from lonely rooms with bleeding hearts. They called out of their shame and lost wonder. They called out of fear and isolation and loneliness and longing. They called to tell me that I am not alone and neither are you. We are in this together. We’ve just forgotten. And that’s why I knew I had to write this book. We need to build bridges to each other. We need to help each other answer our So now what.
I could have written this book as a memoir. I could have written it as a self-help book. But these women called, and I listened, and in giving them voice—sometimes words I didn’t want to write—I found a hole in our humanity. We have lost the gift of conversation. Long, lingering conversation. Where no one is looking at cell phones or watches or thinking about checking off the next item on their To Do list. When is the last time you sat for hours with trusted kindreds and really…I mean really…spoke your truth? Told your stories. For a week. No red bows. No easy steps. No prescriptive advice. No shame or blame. And no fixing. What would that even look like and how on earth would you keep it safe? And…what if you did it far from home…for a whole week? In a quiet, wild place like Montana, say…
That’s what these women asked me. They were relentless. It was dire. They each were staring down the barrel of something you, or someone you love, have experienced. I wrote it once the way I wanted it to go…and then they got louder, and I wrote it again the way they wanted it to go. Six years of listening to and laboring with their questions…and I have Willa’s Grove to give to you in March.
I’m going to miss them. That’s what happens when you live so honestly in the central questions of your life, and when you do it in a community of people you can trust. You relax into warm blankets and rocking chairs and cups of tea by the fire. And you feel safe enough to talk– to really share how you feel and what you fear and what you want with all your heart. These women gave me the answer to my So now what. None of them is “me.” All of them are “us.”
You could argue that in writing this book, I remained in my isolation. In my pain and questions. That I lived in imagined community for six years. But I can tell you that the work I do as a teacher, editor, retreat facilitator, mother, and liver of life was made whole by being in this circle of women. They were my teachers, and we all need our teachers. Thusly, teachers need to be willing to be the student, so the writing of this novel, then, schooled me like nothing I have ever written. (And believe me…there are a lot of books in my office closet that will never see the light of day because I wasn’t ready to be exactly this student.)
Here’s what’s possible when we write so purely from our heart: One day, I was walking in the snowy forest and I came upon a gorgeous aspen grove. As Willa tells the women, an aspen grove is one organism. And it is not lost on them that by the end of their week together, they are one such grove. Hence the title. So when I saw this grove, its black veins so defining against its alabaster trunk and branches, all set against the Montana snow…I stopped. Smiled. Thought, Oh, the women would love a photo of this aspen grove. And I took off my mitten, unzipped my parka pocket, pulled out my phone, took a few photos, and then looked for the text feed that surely must exist between the women of Willa’s Grove and me. Surely. And then I blinked and laughed out loud and said, “My god! They don’t exist!” Call me crazy. Or call the exactitude of story-telling one mighty form of self-expression. One mighty answer to one mighty question. One mighty supplicant-splay on the altar of truth.
It is my hope that people will read this book and think, “I want to host my own Grove week. I want to sit in this circle. I need to sit in this circle. I need to find my So now what. And I promise you, there are three other people out there in your world…who do too. They just might be hiding, pretending, smiling in the grocery store when their hearts are breaking. Ask them. As the book begins…You are invited to the rest of your life.
Love,
Laura
As seen on Women Writers, Women’s Books
***Now booking the February Haven Writing Retreat
…and it’s filling fast!
Come join me in Montana and find your voice! Write your book! Court your muse…all under the big sky. You do not have to be a writer to come to Haven. Just a seeker…longing for community, inspiration, support, and YOUR unique form of self-expression using your love of the written word!
Haven 2020 Schedule:
February 5-9 (filling fast!)
May 6-10
June 10-17
June 17-21
September 16-20
September 23-27
October 28-November 1
Go here for more info and to set up a call with Laura!
by Laura Munson | Jul 28, 2019 | The Writing Life
Now Booking my Fall Haven Writing Retreats in Montana…
September 18-22 ( one spot left)
September 25-29 (a few spots left)
You do not have to be a writer to come…just someone who is deeply longing to find your voice and set it free.
Click here for more info and to contact me to set up a call… Running specials through 7.31!
I wanted to name a child Haven. But when I met my children in the flesh, it never quite felt like the right fit. I’ve always been attracted to the word Haven: the concept. The practice. To me the idea of Haven comes from a knowing that scary things happen. Big brothers lurk under canopy beds and grab your feet—make shadow hands on the wall until you wet your bed. Grandmother caretakers who are from “good, strong farm stock” fall when your parents are out of town– and you can’t pick them up—and you see what it is to have paramedics in your kitchen for the first time who tell you that everything’s going to be okay. But you know it’s not. Your best friend’s angel-of-a sister dies of brain cancer when you are six; the last time you see her, she’s bald and you’re afraid of her and you know you shouldn’t be, but you are, and you feel deep dark shame. It doesn’t take long for the average human to understand early on that happiness can turn to heartbreak fast. Things happen. And that’s why your mother cries in church. And why she hugs you extra hard on your way to the bus. And why your father looks so pained by the fact that you’re too heavy to carry up the stairs any more for bedtime. The bigger you get, the scarier life gets. There’s no amount of money or luck or good works that can change that.
But even so, and maybe especially so, we can still create the feeling (never mind illusion) of safety. Of haven. It can come in a knowing glance from someone you love. Or a familiar smell that radiates from your kitchen most Sundays. Or the feeling of a cool sheet on a hot summer night. I have always slept with at least a sheet over me, even on the most humid mid-western nights. I don’t feel safe without it. It’s silly, I know. But I like the feeling of this kind of safety in small things.
I’ve settled upon that belief along the way: safety best comes in the smallest things. Less to lose. More to believe in. I think that’s why so many little girls love Anne Frank. She found safety during horror, hiding in a small space, writing. Yes, she was hiding. But she was also creating. She could control at least that. When I think of all the places in which my friends and I used to seek refuge…it was always a closet, an eave, a secret trap door that led somewhere—a root cellar, a crawl space. Or a tree house. A play house. Always small, simple places that felt like uncharted territory. We’d put a poster on a wall. Bring in a candle (kids, don’t try this at home). Bring in pillows and blankets. Flashlights and books and magazines. And we’d sit there in uncomfortable positions, practicing refuge. And for most of us, not much had happened yet in the way of scary things. Still we sought haven.
By the time we become adults, things have happened for sure. No one can escape the “scary” things. No one. So what do we do with that? Hide? Probably not. We have bills to pay, and people who need us to stand there in the kitchen playing short-order-cook with a smile on our face. They look to us for that glimpse that says, everyth
ing’s going to be okay. And we give it our best shot. Sometimes we pull it off. Sometimes we make dessert instead and that does the trick. Or not.
It occurred to me about ten years ago, after a tri-fecta personal-life sucker-punch to the girl-balls, that life was scary—really scary…and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. So I decided to change my relationship with fear. The first thing that went out the window was the notion that there was such a thing as complete safety in the first place. Ahhhhhh. That was a weight-of-the-world purge that brought with it instant liberation. Because if there was no such thing as safety, then maybe there was no such thing as danger. Not as I had known it. The world was as dangerous as it was safe, so why not play with danger? Why not disarm danger? Why not find safety inside of danger?
Rather than waiting for the big brother monster under my bed, I decided instead to claim my safety wherever I am. I didn’t want to be run by fear. I wanted happiness to reign in my self-created kingdom. Joy. Peace. I wanted to understand what Grace was. So I re-trained my mind. When I started to feel that ol’ bastard Fear…I flipped my thoughts into Creation mode. What can I create right now in this moment? What can I be responsible for that would bring me the feeling of safety even in the line of fire? What can I claim for myself in the way of inner peace? It felt a lot like the little girl I once was, bringing pillows into her closet with a flashlight and a good book. I was going to create my own yes, Haven, in my mind. Breath by breath. Heart beat by heart beat. And it worked.
It’s not that I didn’t look down the dark alleys of life any more. Quite the opposite. It was that I didn’t see them as dark. I saw them as chances to find some sort of haven in the midst of the darkness. And the one place I could control that haven, was in the way I thought. I started working with creating that pillow-bedecked closet in my mind. The more pillows and flashlights and cool sheets and good books…the better. I pictured it. I took solace in it. I believed in it. And sooner than later, I found that I could breathe my way into that feeling of haven whether I was on a really bumpy flight over the mountains, or in a hard conversation with a family member, or in a daunting business meeting. I got good at it. Maybe a little addicted to it, in fact. Because it’s absolutely exhilarating to have the opposite emotional reaction to the things that people say and do to you than what society says is the norm. It’s like watching a storm come in hard and fast over the prairie, and get suddenly blown off in another direction. And quite when you least expected it…you’re in rainbow weather. That’s what I want. Rainbow weather.
So I didn’t name a child Haven. I took my new way of looking at the world and created retreats for adults who likely are looking for the same sort of way to process the “scary” bits of life. My way has been through writing and reading and so that is what I’ve created in Haven Writing Retreats. If I could build a series of tree houses and pillow forts and call it Haven Writing Retreats, I would. Instead, at Haven, we go to the tree houses and pillow forts of our minds, digging deeper into our creative self-expression on the page, in a nurturing group setting…that helps us know that yes, life is full of challenges. But we don’t have to look at them as scary. We can use those challenges. We can breathe into the groundlessness of them. We can take five days to practice this together on retreat, away from the stresses of life. And then we can bring Haven home to our daily lives wherever we are…in the safety of our minds and the words we choose to create in that sacred space.
I wish sacred safety for you, wherever you are. Find a pen and some paper. Write a new script. Find your haven. I’d love to help you.
Love,
Laura
Email: laura@lauramunson.com for more info and to arrange a Haven Writing Retreat call…
Haven Writing Retreats 2020 schedule:
February 5-9
May 6-10
June 10-17
June 17-21
September 16-20
September 23-27
October 28-November 1
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