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Archive for April, 2019

emerging form

Who needs an editor? Everyone. In Episode 5 of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, join me and science writer Christie Friesen Aschwanden as we discuss feedback: who to ask, how to ask them, and how to respond to what they say. Also important: at what point in a project do you ask for feedback?

We’ll tackle all these questions, plus we’ll talk about the sinking of the Titanic, how praise can both help and hinder you, eating fire, and as, always, after our discussion we’ll play our game of two questions. Our guest this episode is Andrea Jones-Rooy, a circus performer and stand up comedienne (among other talents). Our questions: 1) How do you get feedback that’s useful? 2) How do you balance being vulnerable and receptive to feedback with being sure of yourself?

 

 

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grief and celebration

share the same bed—

one keeps stealing the blanket

the other

keeps knitting a beautiful new one

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The spam email was simple. Subject: Why?

Body: Answer me. And I thought of Einstein,

who wrote a brief letter to Miss Marion Block,

a woman who had written first to him,

overcome as she was by two world wars.

 

He wrote: The question “Why” in the human sphere

is easy to answer: to create satisfaction

for ourselves and for other people.

 

Almost 800 years earlier,

Rumi answered the same question, saying,

Oh soul, you worry too much.

 

I, too, like Miss Block, like the spammer,

like the soul, I, too, have stood beneath the stars

and asked Why, Why?

And this week, I received in the mail

a typed letter signed from The Universe,

saying, You know this, but may have forgotten:

you have been given a special task

to complete on Earth … the world needs you.

 

And the words from The Universe

leap from the page to form new constellations

inside me and I see so clearly

that I am one of many, many stars,

no longer capable of thinking I’m in this for myself,

certain that we shine for each other.

 

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some flowers bloom

only at night,

 

so it is with certain conversations,

that open in the dark,

 

the whole room

blessed with sweetness

 

 

 

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