Welcome to the Potent Summer Series!
Most of us are familiar with that feeling: there’s a build-up, there’s a desire to write, but the words don’t come. It may feel like the landscape is barren or the ground is unyielding, with nothing to till. You might know there’s richness underneath, but you can’t seem to get to it.
Whether we write or aspire to, when we feel an urge to connect through words and stories—but can't—we're susceptible to feelings of overwhelm or frustration.
Even though creativity is a natural expression of being alive, for some reason, when it comes to writing, we often feel stuck.
In this Potent Summer Series, we’ll explore how our ability to grow capacity in the landscape of the body and sensation can not only help us access “the richness underneath it all,” but invite potency into our creative practice, and how our discomfort or heartbreak can act as our most potent creative tool.
After all, what we avoid is often what beckons us to write in the first place.
And we’ll be doing this the “Sense Writing way”: by exploring the edges of our inner world with pleasure and curiosity.
Inside the Echo
This is a particularly noisy time in the world. Many of us are meeting that reality with internal noise to match it.
And when we’re in the middle of all that noise, it becomes hard to tell where it’s coming from. And if we don’t know where it’s coming from, how do we know how to quiet it? Before we get to that (and we will), it’s helpful to look more closely at the noise itself: the racket that obscures the potency of our practice and the clarity of our own voice.
Internal Noise
Internal noise is familiar to anyone who’s ever had a grocery list or a doubt. In our creative practice, you know the type: Instead of writing, you think of every errand waiting for you, questioning the value of your work, daydreaming of the circumstances that will change everything. When you finally pick up a pen, there’s a squirrelly feeling of not being able to get the words or tone or ideas just right. It adds up to a cacophony of anxiety, and it’s coming from inside the house.
External Noise
External noise is familiar to anyone with an internet connection—or ears. You can’t help but listen to other people’s words so much that you’ve forgotten what your own voice can sound like. You get excited about your ideas, but then a notification or email pops up to distract and you’re out of the zone.
And then there’s a third noise that I’ve been noticing a lot lately.
Soothing Static
At first, it seems like the sound of soothing should be silent—but when there’s so much noise to drown out, we tend to turn up the volume on whatever makes it go away, and what we get is not quiet at all, but static noise.
An almost numbing and comforting static that allows us to separate from the heartbreak and pain that’s a part of us. We may think the drone of static keeps us protected from the intensity of life—but in insulating us, it also keeps us from the potency and richness of our full expression as writers.
What would it be like, instead, to meet ourselves where we are—without the static of interference?
In the next blog, we’ll take a closer look at how this separation develops, why it gets so sticky, and how we use the body and nervous system to cut through the distance it create
