Stories of State of Mind: Writing in the Art of Creative Curiosity (Nonfiction)
Creative Contemplation Through Wonder with Amy T. Won (Workshop)
Centered (Community)
How to reach Sarah Selecky
Intro:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.
Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state.
Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of the Resilient Writers Radio Show. My guest today is the amazing Sarah Selecky. Let me tell you a little bit about Sarah. Her debut story collection, This Cake is for the Party, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. And it was long listed for the Frank O'Connor Prize, the New York Times called the stories utterly fascinating, which they are, can confirm.
And her novel Radiant Shimmering Light has been embraced by readers across Canada, the US, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Kirkus Reviews call it a killer satire and a funny, tender, gimlet-eyed dive into the cult of self-improvement. And her latest book, which we're going to talk about today, is called Stories of State of Mind: Writing in the Art of Creative Curiosity and it distills two decades of teaching experience into a guide that helps writers integrate their intellect and intuition to create a meaningful and beautiful writing life. Sarah has her own writing school, Sarah's like your Writing School, which she has been running since 2011, I think, right? Like a while now, long time.
Sarah:
Yeah.
Rhonda:
Welcome, Sarah. So glad you're here.
Sarah:
Thanks, Rhonda. Thanks for having me.
Rhonda:
So I wanted just to open up with a question for you around something that you've said a few times “I approach writing as both an art and a contemplative practice”. Can we talk about that? What do you mean when you say that?
Sarah:
Yeah, I mean, what I mean by that is that it is a meditation. For me, writing has always been a way to actually telling stories is not the primary focus and it wasn't actually when I started writing. Storytelling is secondary to kind of being with what I know and don't know, being in the world, existing as a human being with thoughts and consciousness. All of that can be quite heady. And I came to writing, I think as a meditative practice first and then learned the language around what I was doing later in my 20s and 30s as I began meditating.
And I saw that it was a way to be present. Being present with my thoughts in a moment, also being present as a fiction writer in the story and being present with the characters and being present like in being present with empathy, being present with judgment, being present with all of the things.
So that's the contemplative practice of it. I feel like that brings the aliveness to my work when I can go there. And it also is something, it's a practice. So it gets better and better and deeper and deeper with time. It's not a one and done. It's something, it's a verb. It's not a, in other words.
Rhonda:
Yeah, I love that. I think that's part of what makes writing feel so great, know, feels so, you know, after writing such, I always feel so calm, so grounded, so kind of centered in myself. Yeah, I think that's what you're speaking to. So Stories of State of Mind, tell us a little bit about the book and why you decided to write this now since you've been teaching for a long time.
Sarah:
Yeah, well, I've been wanting to put this book together for a long time. And it just, you know, sometimes books, they come when they are ready. Stories of State of Mind is actually the name that of my first online course. That's what I called my first course in. I launched it, think, in 2012. I had been developing it over time and it is about mindset.
It is about this state of mind that you just described about feeling like when you feel calm and grounded after having written, it's, I think, because you've touched that state of mind that we call presence, curiosity, wonder, intuitive grounding, like lots of different people call it different things, there is sort of a, there's a different state of thinking and being when you are connected to the creative curiosity. That's the, that's the subtitle of the book, and the art of writing with creative curiosity.
It is not about problem solving, which so much of our mind in this world, the culture that I live in and the culture that we live in is really about problem solving. for a writer to come to her work with that state of mind geared up, it can feel very sticky and hard to solve because writing is not an equation to solve. It's an act of exploration.
So I've been playing with my teaching, exploring since like, was teaching actually, I wouldn't say teaching, I was facilitating writing groups about a decade before I opened the school. And then it eased into teaching. And this method, if we wanna call it a method, it's a practice, I didn't come up with it. It's a contemplative practice that is like, it's time honored from so many traditions before now, but I tuned into a way of listening and guiding writers to listen and pay attention and bring presence and awareness into their work.
And then began, and then that is what the portal was that sort of opened, it started to work, it became a method over the years. The book is, as you said, is a distillation of all of these years of teaching. I've been writing, you know, as writers do, I've been writing about teaching. I've been writing about the practice and I've been writing about my students, the writers I work with and myself and how I've developed as a writer through using these practices.
And I thought it was time to, I don’t know, bring it back to paper. Bring it back to book form. It needed to be something that people could have on their desk when they were on a writing retreat. know, was all of my teaching work is online, which is great. It's wonderful. I love that it's online. How magical is that? But I wanted to come back to something that you could unplug and still access. And I know, it just needed to be in a book. It just needed to be in a book.
Rhonda:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that the physical thing that you can take with you on a on a reading retreat or dip in and out to out of, know, as you need to sort of reminded me of Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert that way, you know, like, I just I need a little hit, I need a little something to keep me going here.
So I'm going to guess that in your own writing, you are not a plotter. So let's talk about story and intuition. How do you find your way into story via intuition? Maybe for someone who, because one of the things I see a lot and I'm sure you see a lot is when you're working with writers is, they feel like they should be plotting at some level. And I feel like I do a lot of like recuperative work. I think getting people to trust their own artistic impulses, you know? So how do you think about intuition and story?
Sarah:
Well, I started writing poems. I started writing short stories and pieces like when I was really young. So my practice developed, as I said, not out of storytelling, but out of sort of a refraction of what I noticed in the world and needed to like put it down and write down what I saw, what I felt, what I heard.
So that is not storytelling. I come to storytelling as a skill that I need to learn and plot is something that I need to learn. I also love mystery novels, thrillers. They are so plotted and I think I'm drawn to it because it's not where I go because of the oppositional piece there, right? The yang to my yin.
Also, then my first book was short stories. So I didn't really have to learn I mean the brilliance of the form for me as a young writer, as an emerging writer, that didn't, plotting was not part of it. I didn't mean I could, for the style of short fiction that I wrote, which is not all short fiction at all, but the style that I was kind of getting obsessed, more and more obsessed with in my early years of being a writer was something that emerged, like the story emerged as in and through my writing of it. And that process of being surprised by my own work was the joy. That was like, that was the gem. That was the treasure.
Now, when I moved to writing a novel and working in novels and those novels that I've written in fiction, then I... Uh-oh.
Rhonda:
Different piece. Yeah.
Sarah:
The reason it took me seven years to write my second book because I didn't know how to do it and it's a skill of learning how to plot. And yeah, then I'm sure some of your writers have had this experience or maybe you have, where you learn how to plot and you're like, okay, plot is the thing. And then you plot everything out. Oh my gosh, I spent like a year plotting every single thing. And then I had absolutely no desire to write the book after I'd written the plot.
Rhonda:
Yes. Or do you ever have this happen where like you plot something and then you sit down to write it and the creative unconscious takes over and you're writing something different? You know, so you're supposed to be writing this scene, but actually you're writing this scene in a different color, you know?
Sarah:
Yes. Or like it doesn't, because I think that's the aspect of curiosity. I think that the creativity that the impulse to create has a bit of mystery just in it because it has to be discovering the unknown. So it has to go beyond the comfort, beyond the comfort of what you know.
Yeah, so figuring out how to use intuition within a structure that you can hold loosely with flexibility as an intention of a storyline with intentional gaps left in between was something that I needed to learn. And then tuning into, I have a few practices actually that I use and several in the book, tuning into understanding my own body's signals, so my own unconscious and physiological cues that tell me whether I'm on the wrong track or the right track and trusting them because it's not a conscious thought.
Again, it's not a problem to solve. It's not something that that part of our evaluating brain can actually help us with. Getting out of the known is not something that the left side of the brain actually wants you to do, let alone can help you get there. What it can do is hold some milestones in place for you like how much time you're gonna write today, how many words you're gonna get or how many pages you're gonna get or how many insights you need or you can track things, but not mystery because mystery is at its heart something that you're finding as you go along, something that's surprising you.
So yes, this is my jam, working right in here of like, what do you know and what don't you know and balancing your own internal compass really so that you can use your skills physiologically, mentally, emotionally, intuitively, all in concert to feel good as you are creating something. And by feeling good, I mean like being not forcing, not being, being with the flow of life instead of against it.
Rhonda:
Yeah. I guess I'm I'd love to hear if you have some practical tools or I say tools, but I guess I really mean rituals to kind of access a space that space to write from. Because I think that for people who maybe haven't been writing for a long time, it's hard for them to trust their own creativity, to trust their own creative process, to believe that they have an artistic impulse, you know. So I'd love to hear sort of some thoughts on ways in.
Sarah:
Absolutely. I have a really lovely simple exercise that I can share here that's really short. And the key thing I think is that for writers who you describe who maybe don't know that they have that creative impulse, first of all, if they're listening to this, like not everyone's going to listen to it. Like if you're drawn to writing, you're drawn to writing.
There are people out there just like as a sidebar who really genuinely want to just have a book out that if someone else could write it for them, they'd be happy with that. And there are services available, many, where you can just have a book created because you have something you want to impart and give out there.
But writing, the verb writing, is different. Just putting a gap between whatever your internal narrative is about just pressing pause on whatever your internal narrative or description or definition of what creativity is, it can be really useful. So here's a way in, actually for everybody, even for right, because we all start to get definitions and they start to calcify around what a creative practice can look and feel like. So getting out of that narrative and getting into the practice with very little at stake is a way to do it.
And the steps are use a pen and paper. So for this exercise, especially, I know that this is so controversial in this today, but I stand by it, use a pen and paper because you want to bring your whole mind engaged. So you want to actually just quiet down the part of your mind that you use a lot of the time when you're typing, emailing, reading reports, surfing, scrolling, finishing things, putting things in your calendar, anything of the evaluating linear model. You actually wanna just quiet that down and make room for a part of you that is embodied because that's where a whole part of your knowing comes in. Intuitive, sensing, physicality, emotion, all of the stuff that actually doesn't use language to get its message across. You want to bring that online.
So the quickest way to do that is bring your hands, bring your body to the page. So when you're, when you have a pen and I'm, you know, this is getting longer than it needs to be, but make sure it's a pen that you like, not a sticky ballpoint pen, make sure it has like a sensation that has some interest for you. So that you can actually, the part of your mind that you don't have to consciously be thinking about it, but the part of your mind that is involved in your motor skills and sensing things actually has some data coming in, some info, some extra interesting info coming in.
So use a pen, use paper and write a list of words that start with a single letter, like B. And you can write them across the page. You can write them in a column. It doesn't matter how you write them down. I encourage you to go slow again so you feel like you're making a mark on the page, which is bringing on the part of your mind that is active when you're drawing or doodling or making pictures. So getting out of logos and getting into this feeling.
And then you just write, set a timer for three to five minutes and you write down all the words that you can think of that start with the letter B. And what happens is all of the things that happen in any writing session happens in that little fractal, in that little three minute time capsule. You have words coming to you. You're faced with a blank page and no words are coming to you. You have words that surprise and delight you. You don't know where they came from. Oh. Bonnie, why? Bonnie, why did that word come to me? I have no idea. Where did that come from?
Then you also start gaming yourself. You go through the alphabet and you're like B-A-B-B-B-B-C-B-D-B, and you try to find words in a logical way. And then you have thoughts about that. You might have words that are just one syllable, like B. And then you might add a letter to it, like Scrabble style. Bees. Does that count? Is that another word? I don't know. So you get to see your thoughts as you're writing all these words down. And what that does is just show you that there's a part of you that is always on the lookout, judging, evaluating, telling you things to like, sometimes it's louder than other times. This is why it's a practice, like going to a yoga mat. It's like, sometimes your muscles are stiff, sometimes they're really loose, sometimes it feels good. But the point is not, is not like to be clear and have no thoughts.
The point is to just remember that there are thoughts thinking all the time. And then you can sort of take your, I call it taking your temperature. It's like you take your temperature in this practice and you're like, oh, there's nothing at stake here. There's not a story, there's not a character. There's literally not even a sentence. You're involving yourself in the realm of words and you see what a controversial place it is for your mind, for the left side of your mind to like watch you doing something that has no purpose.
And then you can just compassionately look at it and say, okay, great. I see you, I see all of your thoughts and thinking, and now I'm going to just, now you can go into your writing work, understand, it just quiets it down a little bit. It makes it less alarming. If you were to go straight to writing a story or writing a memoir or writing, you know, working on your chapter. All those thoughts are still present, but you might listen to them more because there's something at stake and you you care, but a list of words, you don't really care that much. So that's my, that's my warm up exercise. That's the one that I really recommend.
And then you can start to see how it feels. So then you can go, you know, if you do that every day for a week, you'll start to feel that certain words have a different energy than other words and you're curious about them and they're interesting. You'll start to feel the sensation in your body when a word comes out of nowhere and you can recognize that as a place of wonder. You can recognize that as just something that you can arrange your life, in other words, to have more of that with your practice. It's really great. That doesn't, everyone has, everybody has a sense. Everybody has an innate sense of wonder, I believe that.
Rhonda:
I love that idea because I think it's so easy for us to just sit down, start to write, and we're bringing the part of our mind that has just paid the bills. And it's that left brain evaluative part of our mind. And the voice of the inner critic or our inner editor, that's in that part of the mind. And so we sit down and we start to work on a scene and all of a sudden it doesn't, we're like, this is horrible. No one's ever gonna wanna read this.
Whereas if you clear it and kind of allow for some, allow for a space that is more generative, more, yeah, has a little bit of wonder and mystery to it. A lot of the anxiety that we normally bring to the practice, I think, the practice of writing flows away. Like it's just, it's, you find it's not there and you look up and it's been 45 minutes and you're like, wow.
Sarah:
Yeah. When you're in a place, mean, two things came up for me when you were sharing that one is that even, even worse, I think, than having the judgments on what you have written is when it fastens down so tightly on us as writers that we can't even write because we're too afraid to upset the status quo. We're too afraid to make mistakes.
Rhonda:
Yes.
Sarah:
Then that feeling is such a painful feeling of wanting to write and not being able to. It's so painful. It's such a like, it's a spiritual pain. It's like almost a, it's just, it's, it's very, very tough. I think that's even worse.
And the other thing, the anxiety, the anxious thoughts, actually prevent the creative thoughts. And the creative thoughts are actually an entity to the anxious thoughts. They actually are like mutually exclusive in the mind. like there's a gate. So if you are feeling any kind of anxiety, it's actually better not to push through. It's actually better to go do something that calms you and makes you feel a little bit of joy or even just like calm, even just like space before you face it because then you can't play when you're scared. It's not like you can't play if you're scared. It's like mutually exclusive chemicals in the brain.
So bringing on the play, that's the other reason that the list of words is a good way to start because it actually brings on a sense of, I wonder what it's just like, I wonder dot dot dot. That is, that's the gateway. Right there.
Rhonda:
And I don't think just because my brain sometimes operates in leaps to opposites, but I don't think you're saying that, you know, the more left brain side of craft isn't useful, right? It's just about when we use it, how we use it. Do I have that right?
Sarah:
We need the left part of our brain because we're working in language. And if we didn't, everything you would write would be like a chaotic fever dream. It would not make any sense. Language works. Syntax works in a linear way. We need that. Even just to write a first draft, you need to have your left brain on. works. You wouldn't actually be able to write without it because language exists in that hemisphere.
It is a binary, it is like an evaluative, it's like word meaning, word meaning. But the artistry of creative writing is getting in there and playing with word and meaning. That's why metaphor is so much fun because the light isn't butter. The yellow light in the window isn't actually butter, but the magic of a creative writer is that we can make, we can turn light into butter.
And so no, we definitely need it. I think it's just, well, we're in a dominant, a left brain dominant world and culture. So all of those very natural ways that the left and right brain work together to make us a full, beautiful human thinking, creative being, it just needs to be practiced. We need to bring more of the right online with the left. So we remember what it feels like.
And I think one of the things I start my classes with is just pointing out to writers that what we're doing when we're writing creatively is very, it's neurologically complex work because we're using language to make art. And, you know, a sculptor, a basket weaver, a dancer, a musician, in the moment of the art making, they leave language behind and then they can bring this whole-minded state on.
But we, when we're writing a first draft, especially when we're generating a first draft, we are using language, which is evaluated by nature, to make something that doesn't exist yet, that is an art that can't be evaluated in the act of creation. And that's like, super tricky. It's super tricky and it's worth practicing and it's also worth giving ourselves some grace, like a lot of grace because what we're trying to do is not, we're not wired for this. Like we're wired for oral narrative and singing together and dancing together, but the act of reading and writing and transferring, making these glyphs on a page turn into an emotional expression is not, that's like, high mastery technique for our minds to do. So, a lot of grace, lot of grace and space for that practice.
Rhonda:
Yeah, so important I mean As you were talking, I was thinking, I think that my writing life helps me survive the rest of my life. Like it's kind of an antidote to the go, go, go left brain evaluative plan, plan, plan, assume that all plans are perfect and everything will always work out kind of culture, you know, that it's, it's yeah, there's a kind of a rich antidote kind of quality to it.
Sarah:
And there's, you know, me too. Me too. And I think as a child, when I was writing as a young person, it very much saved my life. I look back on that as it helped me live through what I didn't understand was happening.
Rhonda:
Yeah, right. Same.
Sarah:
And what the contemplative practice, like what bringing this practice of write, I mean, if you choose to if a writer chooses to do this and make this a practice of life, this thing happens where the antidote begins to like, I'm just seeing like watercolor, like it just begins to like wash into the rest of life.
Rhonda:
Yes.
Sarah:
The way you express, the way you think, it's a mindset, it's a way of being, it's a state of mind. And when you bring that with practice without shutting it off as like an either or, with practice over time, it begins to seep into the rest of your life and you see that actually your life is a narrative too.
And if you're paying attention on the page and making that a practice, paying attention in your real life and being open to that, having more of your intuition open, more of your awareness, more of this sense of approaching the day with wonder instead of a to-do list. It starts to affect, it starts to blend. Your life starts to change and your writing life, your life as a writer starts to change. And then, and that's a really magical, beautiful thing that starts to happen as well.
Rhonda:
Yeah, that's so true. I'd love to talk a little bit about the role of community in a writer's life. It's been essential for me and it was been important to you. Can you talk about the role of community in your own life? And then I'd love to talk a little bit about centered as well.
Sarah:
Yeah, I love this topic and it is, it's close to my heart because as an only child and a writer who's been writing all her life, like opening up to the importance of community has been, you know, it's been a paradox for me. It really has. And the model that I've looked to writers, it's a competitive model.
It's not, it's a model where writers are so low, first of all, it's a solitary art, you're working alone. And then, you know, when you start publishing, it's about being picked out from other people. It's not, so the market that writers live in seems to be counter to what actually creative writing needs and is asking for in order to flourish. So community is super important.
First of all, we write better when we're regulating together think it's like, it's a co-regulation when we are creating together, just quietly, like if you've ever had the experience of just writing with another person beside you at a cafe.
Rhonda:
Absolutely.
Sarah:
It's like a switch turns on and there's some magical, like what is that potion? What is that signal? What our bodies open up to it? It's just like being, doing it alone is so much harder. And I've come to understand that when something is hard in that way where it feels like a force, not hard in the way of like, have a jigsaw puzzle to solve and I'm really enjoying solving it, but hard where it feels like I'm forced. My life force feels kind of like, uh, oppressed by.
Rhonda:
Push energy. Yeah.
Sarah:
The way through. So writing together just makes it better. I also feel, um, that, you know, I'm just, I just finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry, her-
Rhonda:
Good? Recommend? Okay.
Sarah:
It's a beautiful book and she writes a lot about the reciprocity and abundance and the gift economy, in other words. And Lewis Hyde wrote a great book, totally different style.
Rhonda:
Love that one, The Gift, right?
Sarah:
Similar topic where it's like understanding that creativity is not, it's not in, it's not scarce. To have a scarcity, like the market economy is based on scarcity and dividing things up and paying things and art and writing and ideas and story actually don't exist there. They're not a commodity.
And I think that we experience that in an embodied way when we are writers in community, when we understand that sharing ideas, sharing our practice time, sharing our process, sharing our resources actually enhances the entire writing life. And it's undeniable. Like when, you're a writer without community and you're struggling, find a writing friend, find a buddy, find a group.
And then I will say a caveat though, because like be careful about who you pair with because it's not, I don't think it's our fault. I think that writers and writing schools and writing clubs, book clubs and reading and writing clubs, can have a tendency, I wanna be careful how I say it, but it can be a tendency to provoke the competitive edge and provoke a sense of scarcity. That can create, some people like really get a rise out of that. is like, there's some adrenaline that comes from there and that can help you finish something faster if you want to do it better than someone else.
And in the short term, being critical of other people's work so you feel better about yourself can, or being in an environment where that kind of adrenaline is flowing can stimulate some activity, but it's stimulated out of a place of fear. It’s not sustainable for the long term. And it's also not a place where the creative arts flourish. They don't flourish in fear. So being really mindful when you are looking for a community that prioritizes elements that you understand for your own self, gives you a sense of life.
Rhonda:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there are practical elements to community, practical. I mean, definitely I've had folks, you know, people say, oh, have you heard about this contest or have you heard about this, you know, this publisher and, know, the editor that used to be here has moved there and, you know, all of that kind of thing. But when I think about community, just think, I don't know if I'd still be writing if I didn't have a place to go where I could say to someone, you know, I was shortlisted for this award, but I didn't win and it stings, you know, and just be able to be vulnerable about the crazy things that writers experience in our writing lives that someone who isn't a writer just doesn't understand.
Rhonda:
Yeah, no, it's really, really true. I mean, even just the act of writing, the vulnerability of, of being a writer and writing itself is something that non-writers don't really understand. Like the, the state of mind, go in the need to carve out and create space where it looks like you're not doing anything, just to like stare out the window. It's neither rest nor work. know, it's not work the way the outside world understands work. It can't shut it off. I mean, you take your work with you when you sleep, you take your story with you when you're in the shower, you take it with you when you're observing anything in your day. It's all part of the container of how you're processing your story.
And neither is it rest. You're not like sitting around by the pool. You're definitely at work when you're writing. And this third space of creative work is really hard to understand. And when you're with another writer in a community, it's so affirming so you don't have to feel like...like if you feel like you have permission, you have permission to create that space, which without the guilt.
Rhonda:
Without having to explain or yeah, being in a group of people who understand what it's like. So tell me a little bit about Centered. So this is a community that you run and I have been in it before and I loved it. And so, and I see that you've got something coming up on mid-May Creative Contemplation Through Wonder, which is a session with Amy T. Won. That's amazing. And there's both a drop-in fee or if you're a member of Centered, it's free. So talk to me a little bit about Centered. Why did you create it and what is it?
Sarah:
Sure. I created Centered, it emerged. It was an emergent form and it's ongoing and emergent. I created it in coming out of the pandemic. So when we went into lockdown, I felt pulled to start something where we could be together, writing in presence, contemplative writing. And I created a little group, little ongoing group. was free to anyone who wanted to come. I think we had like 700 people who just were like, yes, please. And it was just a daily writing group. It was called Writing Through Uncertainty. And it was just grounding writing practices, not story writing, nothing, just being present with what you saw in your just reflective exercises of presence and contemplation.
That community stuck together and became, we just realized my partner, Ryan, who really was, I have to give him credit. He was like, we need to start a community. I was like, I don't know, that seems like a lot of work. I'm not good at community, I'm an only child. And he was like, no, we need to start this community.
Rhonda:
I love that.
Sarah:
I was like, I don't know people. I don't know how to be with people. I'm learning and I love it. So we started Centered and we called it Centered because that's what came out of Writing Through Uncertainty. It was a feeling of being centered. It was also centering writing in your life. And it was also a way to be, it was a circular form, which also was inspired, it inspired the whole community. So we meet in both Zoom calls that are recorded and saved like classes, workshops.
I run meditations once a month and we have guest mentors come the second Wednesday of every month. So it's not a class, it's not a program, it's a space where writers who are already either involved in a class or a program on their own, either like in person in their home communities or online or in one of our schools programs or a combination therein come with other writers who are also interested in having an interdependent, non-competitive, mutually flourishing community. So, we, you know, there are submission days.
There are days where it's not that we're not, it's not that we're not trying to get published and make a successful career. It's that this is a space, this is a home base where writers know that, we stand for rest, we stand for intuition, we stand for technical mastery and learning, we stand for a really healthy and sustainable writing life. And then we all also go out into the world, into different economies and different communities and do what we need to do in the world and then come back to a home base where belonging is like centered and creativity and wonder is centered.
So, it's the other thing that we have in Centered that I love is a place for writers to meet 24/7. So it's a space that's off social media, it's online and it doesn't require someone to set up a Zoom call. The meetings aren't recorded for posterity. It's just an ephemeral space of writing together. So every week we have free rights on Fridays and it's member led.
So members show up in the space. We have like a simple structure of how to check in, how to write. I have daily prompts that come every day there. It's kind of like anything you need for your writing life. And you can pick and choose how you want to engage. The price is low enough that you don't have to feel like it's like a course that you're investing in, but it is enough of an investment that it helps you center your writing life. You know, it helps you really like prioritize that time.
Rhonda:
Yeah, that's so important. And community can really help us do that because otherwise it's so easy to get caught up in the doing of life, right? And so the being space and the writing space just gets pushed and pushed and pushed aside. And when you join a community and you're with other writers who are also prioritizing writing in their life.
You know, it just, feels so much easier. There's like a, I don't know, there's kind like a weight that is, you know, that comes off your shoulders when you're with a group of people who understand the world the way you understand the world, right? Which is essentially what this is. Yeah. Okay. Great.
Sarah:
That beautiful thing that happens over time when you're growing and learning together and it's, it's like, it's cumulative. You know, you experience the highs and lows, like as you say, like you submit things, they get picked, they don't get picked. We celebrate together. We celebrate taking a break from writing. We celebrate those publications. And we also are there when it's like, when there's disappointments and it becomes part of this bigger fabric, which is a feeling of belonging, a feeling of belonging, which.
Rhonda:
Absolutely. So I'm going to put a link to Centered in the show notes so people can go and check it out and particularly this coming up in mid-May, this fabulous workshop, which sounds amazing with Amy T. Won, but you have regular workshops every month. So people can always drop in and try it out and see if it feels right for them, right? Yeah, good.
Sarah:
It's always month to month. So there's no like sign on and starting in June of this year, actually I've done, so every, .every month we do go through the Wheel of the Year in Centered and every month has a theme and those themes mirror beats in story structure. Also beats in the seasonality of life, like the human life and also just phases in nature because they all layer on top of each other. There's like beginnings and endings and you know, cycles and phases.
And so the Wheel of the Year has a lot of like energy output and it has also a lot of like reflection and restoration. And we work through the fullness of the year. And I have a guest mentor who comes and gives a talk or a workshop every month along those themes. And for the past 12 months, I've actually done a hypnosis, like a guided meditation and a hypnosis also for every one of those themes. This month, May, or next month, May is the last one of that series of 12.
And then starting in June, I'm actually starting Stories of State of Mind sessions. So these are similar, but different. They will be contemplative practices. They aren't themed hypnosis the way that, but all of those are recorded and you can get those as well. But starting in June, there's actually a way to dive into the book together in writing in the community.
Rhonda:
Oh, I love that. That's great. Yes. Okay, so run out and get Stories of State of Mind. I think it fits naturally on your bookshelf next to Writing Down The Bones (Natalie Goldberg’s book) next to Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert’s book). You know, the books that you go to when you need to feel understood in this crazy thing you're trying to do and, and nourished, you know, so Stories of State of Mind is the name of the book and I'll put a link in the show notes. Thanks so much for being with me today, Sarah. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Sarah:
Me too.
Outro:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.
Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.
POWERED BY: 
CONNECTED
Grab the Planner and a cup of coffee or tea. Give it a quick read and learn how to think about and plan your week like a productive writer. (Yep, this resource is totally FREE!)
