I started this on Sunday, but didn’t finish — so here we go!
Good morning good morning. How are you morning-ing so far this day?
Tag Archives: prompts
without knowing what will arise in its place
good morning good morning from the chilliness. I was not up nearly as early this morning as I was yesterday, and that’s all right. I did wake up with a bit more motivation and energy than I’ve had in a few days, and that feels good. I have come to trust and lean-into the sinking-down that happens for me in December; I get quiet, move more slowly, read a lot more.
A year ago, today, I wrote here in this blog:
I didn’t let you help, not then, and I’m sorry. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that, these 15 and 20 years later: how to lean, how to say, Yes, I’m not ok. Yes, I need you. Please, I need help.
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Tagged identity, prompts, radical self care!, survivors, writing process
(nablopomo #22) a complicated lucky
(There’s some explicit talk of sexual trauma in this morning’s post — just be easy with yourselves as you read, ok? xox, -Jen)
Good morning on this Tuesday– what’s lit for you already at this early hour?
There’s something in my body that’s coming alive, enflamed–I felt like I was glowing as I walked the dark hallway to the kitchen to put the kettle on, like the office was already lit before I put the lighter to the candle.
(nablopomo #21) listening to the hungers
Nous qui désirons sans faims: we who want without hungers
Good morning good morning — just enough time for a blog freewrite before getting ready for work.
This morning’s nablopomo prompt comes again from Ricki Lake: The Business of Being Born is a passion project that has been fulfilling on many levels. Are you pursuing a passion project?
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Tagged desire, hunger, nablopomo, prompts, radical self care!
(nablopomo #10) ready for the story they want to tell through me
Good morning! I’m here again this morning in the chilly dark — it’s time for fuzzy pajama, warm and thick socks, putting the hood up on the hoodie while I’m writing. In the mirror across from me, I look a little like a monk. A sweatshirt-hooded San Francisco monk. There’s a Ganesha batik hanging on the wall just behind me, so in the mirror, there’s Ganesha’s eyes, and then below, there’s my bent head, face lit blue by the computer screen, everything else dark.
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After yesterday’s endless post, I’m going to keep today’s shorter. This morning I finally got back to my novel, put in 1500 words, a good re-entry. It was the first time I’d opened the file since returning from the Tomales Bay workshops. I said I came back charged to do more work with my book, and that’s true — I also came back a bit overwhelmed with how much work/rewriting/going deeper there is ahead of me. It wasn’t a surprise to me, but I got to touch it while I was there, touch the time and effort that was going to be involved in returning to some of the pieces of the novel I’ve already written and opening them up, pushing further in, letting the stories and scenes fall out. The pace, the storytelling: I have to slow it all down. This scares me, too. I like to push it all out, fast, shove the words past you, whether on the page on at the mic, and then maybe you hear one or two things that really stay but there’s not a lot of time for interrogation, for a thorough inspection. What I got at Tomales, what my writing got, was a thorough inspection. These 12 smart, strong women writers told me what I needed to hear: slow down, show us more, let us be in it. (They also said: we care about these characters, we want to read more. That‘s a pretty great thing to hear.) Over the last couple of weeks since getting back, I’ve felt overly confident about my book, and then terrible about it, and I haven’t been able to get back into the story — I’ve been scared.
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Tagged blogher, nablopomo, prompts, tomales bay workshops, writing practice
(nablopomo #8) in the other rooms
Good morning. It’s light already by the time I’ve gotten myself situated at the computer and by the time my poor old pc gets all booted up and warm and ready. I’m tired this morning. The alarm goes off at 4.30 and I don’t even pretend to get up, just reach over, turn it off, and snuggle back down under the covers.
Last night’s Write Whole workshop was fantastic: strong, deep and engaged writing. It’s been a couple weeks of hard processing around my head and heart, lots of excavating writing, all that damn self care and the energies that it stirs up and the way I need to slow down, take some time to process it all without writing, away from the notebook.
I figured that this morning I’d just get up and do a quick blog in response to the nablopomo prompts — last week those were pretty light-hearted, writing-focused prompts, so, no problem.
(nablopomo #6) because my writing had asked more
Happy Sunday evening to you — it’s late-night blog time (at least for me). No prompts today, just the need to blog every day, as a part of my commitment to nablopomo, so I’m going to return to some plain old free-association for tonight.
I want to write about quite a lot tonight, about community and spirit, about radical honesty, about sorrow, about connection and form and hope. But I’m giving myself 20 minutes to pour this stream of consciousness out onto the page (which is the screen before me), so I’m not going to get into any of those. Instead I’m going to write about the pain of attending to one’s desire.
I went to google images to find the image for today’s post, like I always do; using the advanced search, I looked for “graffiti Sunday” in images that labeled for reuse, and the image above is one of the few results returned. It feels like exactly what I hope for in much of my writing, in particular, the writing I do around desire: capturing that moment of profound transgression, when we cross a deep line inside ourselves or within our community, in order to reach for what we need. The bobbies up there aren’t just violating the still-extant taboo about men desiring, embracing and kissing other men, they’re also violating the taboo around those in power showing vulnerability, softness, public displays of affection. Affection, I mean — not laciviousness — certainly, we have plenty of examples of those in positions of power taking what they desire by force and hostility. These two at the top of this post, they are melting into each other, so longing for lips against lips that they don’t care about any of the other rules and regulations. We see how even they, ultimately, are not bound by the stringent rules we place around sexuality and desire, rules they so often are supposed to enforce.
(nablopomo #5) the many ways you find to sustain your fierce and tender spirit
Good morning, owl — thanks for joining me in the quiet. downstairs the neighbors are up, too, getting into their closets — sounds like it’s happening in our own apartment.
What are the sounds that are greeting you this morning?
It’s the weekend, and so I slept in late, didn’t get started with the morning writing until after 5:30. The alarm went off and then I spent a little time being quiet in my bed, having that stretch of just-awakeness where I think about the dreams I’m still not quite out of, noticing that it’s much colder outside the covers than beneath them, tustling slowly toward considering the work of the day. I have this conversation in my head almost every morning:
(nablopomo day 3) what sings to you?
Good morning! It’s the day after Oakland’s general strike — do you feel the transformation in the air? The people are singing. That, yesterday, was real change. Real hope. Real democracy.
We were there for part of the march/action at the ports — I’m so deeply grateful to have been able to participate, to put my body in the place of the work.
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Tagged music, nablopomo, prompts, writing process
everybody is a story
This is one of the quotes I think of when I consider what the Writing Ourselves Whole tagline (restorying our lives) can mean:
“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way wisdom gets passed along, the stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. Despite the awesome powers of technology, many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to each other’s stories once again.”
– Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, from Kitchen Table Wisdom
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Tagged prompts, rachel naomi remen, restorying, storytelling, writing practice