There is so much bad news out there, if you look for it. Riots in London, failing economies, famine in East Africa, changing climate causing erratic weather disasters… the list goes on and on. Some days it feels like the whole world is crashing in around us.
It’s enough to make a person completely discouraged. It’s enough to make a person want to bury her head in the sand, and choose to live a self-focused life instead of spending seemingly useless energy on problems that are too big to manage.
Everything I see tells me the same thing over and over again… we need a big hairy audacious paradigm shift.
We need to imagine the world differently.
We need to imagine leadership differently.
We need to imagine ourselves differently.
We need to imagine community differently.
We need to get our heads out of the sand and instead of paying attention to the big ugly negative news, turn our attention toward each other.
We need to keep on caring for each other even though it hurts sometimes and often feels like useless resistance in a tsunami of bad news.
We need to start insisting that our news media focus on the good in people and not just the bad.
We need to engage our creativity and collaboration and stop listening to those people who tell us that consumption and competition is what makes the world go round.
We need to stop believing that the economy is our god and over-consumption is okay because it feeds the economy. We need to seek happiness in other places than shopping malls.
We need to turn to each other, focus on building our communities where we live, and trust that the benefit of local communities will have far-reaching impact (as my friend Kathy Jourdain so eloquently suggests).
We need women and men who will rise up and shift the tide away from aggressive “command and control” leadership to participative “engage and collaborate” leadership.
We need to sit in circles and tell each other stories that will help us understand and celebrate each others’ differences and similarities.
We need to get our egos out of the way and start admitting that the only way to find a new path through the weeds is to trust each other to contribute the necessary skills. And then we need to believe that we are better together than alone.
THIS is why we need more feminine wisdom in leadership. It’s not about women taking over from men (and making their own sets of mistakes). It’s about trusting the wisdom that tends to be more inherent in women than in men. (Even the Washington Post says so.) It’s about engaging our creativity, spirituality, compassion, collaboration, and empathy in the way we lead. It’s about letting our right brains contribute to our decisions as much as our left brains.
None of these problems is going to be fixed overnight. In fact, even using the word “fix” shows limited thinking on our part. These things are not simple problems with simple solutions. There is no linear logic to apply, like a math problem on a high school exam. We can’t just assign more police to the streets of London, for example. We need to look at the systemic problems that shaped what happened long before anything erupted. There is deep complexity that will require a lot of deep thinking and collaborating and failing and trying again and meditating and engaging in conversation.
When change happens, there is always a time of great chaos before new solutions are found. It feels like much of the world is in that place of chaos now. This is not a time for despair. This is a time for hope and creativity. This is a time to gather together and lean on each other.
The world needs new ideas. The world needs YOUR ideas. Get your head out of the sand and start sharing them.
What do you write the day after you’ve released an e-book on writing to impact change and you’ve heard from people all over the world that they are enjoying it and sharing it with other writers? What big and meaningful thing can you say that follows that up in a suitable way? How can you be worthy of the new people showing up on your website who might expect you to have some wisdom to share about writing and leadership?
Ack! DOUBLE ack! You know what’s happening here, don’t you?
WRITERS’ BLOCK!
I started thinking too much about the right things to say, the right way to follow up a successful free product launch (about writing, no less), and the right way to impress you and make you think I’m a wise guru worth paying attention to, and… well, I froze. That old familiar fear lump started forming in the pit of my stomach, and no matter what I did to try to get words onto the screen, my brain and fingers wouldn’t cooperate.
So I decided to go down the path that has always served me best… honesty. (As in… “I am honestly not sure what I should write and I honestly don’t know if this is worth reading.”) And I decided that since nothing showed up that had a lovely sense of flow to it or that could be tied up in a pretty little bow, I’d give you random.
Here are some honest, random things about me, my writing, and the path I’m on these days:
1. I love to write. Love, love, LOVE it. It’s like breathing for me – necessary and life-giving. I don’t know if I could survive a week without writing. To be honest with you, writers’ block rarely gets in my way, because even if I can’t find the words for one particular piece I’m writing, I can almost always dislodge the block by starting on something else (like this random post). And there is no shortage of writing ideas in my brain. Quite the opposite, in fact. Often my problem is that there are too many ideas and I just can’t settle on one.
2. Despite the fact that writing has been a part of my career for more than 15 years and I’ve had oodles of things published, I still have moments when I deal with major doubt. I still question whether I’m good enough, and I still feel the pain when those rejection letters come. I’m pretty sure that’s normal.
3. I have recently completed the first draft of a memoir that began as the story of the impact my stillborn son had on my life, and then grew to be about surrendering to the mystery, especially when life gets painful. I set it aside for a couple of months before starting the editing process, and as I look over it now, I can honestly say that it’s pretty darn good! I am genuinely proud of it and am convinced that it needs to be shared with the world. It will be published one day, I promise.
4. The more I write, the more I realize that writing has to be part of a holistic experience for me. In order to write well, I have to find space and time for regular body movement, artistic expression, reading, and spiritual practice. I am not particularly disciplined about any of these things, but if I don’t do them fairly regularly, my writing suffers. Writing needs to engage both my left language-oriented brain and my right conceptual/creative brain and to do that I need to do things that exercise both. Movement and spiritual practice engage my right brain, while reading engages my left.
5. Variety helps me write more creatively. I can not do all of my writing at home in my office/studio. Sometimes I write on the couch, sometimes at Starbucks, sometimes on a picnic table in the park, sometimes at the library, and sometimes in the middle of the labyrinth across the river. When I was writing the Wanderer/Edge-walker series, I found that I could only engage that part of my brain if I’d done a little wandering first. I wrote none of those posts at home.
6. I want to make enough income from my writing, teaching, and speaking that I can give my family a comfortable livelihood, but I worry every day about how that will be done. After 9 months of trying, I’m still at a place where it’s not fully sustainable. I have my worst moments of panic about that in the mornings just after I wake up.
7. I wrote a novel once (while on maternity leave for my second daughter) and almost got it published, but life got busy and I set it aside. Now I’m more interested in personal writing than fiction writing. I may go back to it some day, or I may not. Whether or not it’s ever published, it was worth it just for the process and the sense of accomplishment.
8. I teach business/PR writing at the university, and I love it, but I don’t love grading papers and I’d really rather teach the kind of writing that is close to my heart. I’m designing some courses on things like “Creative Writing for Self-Discovery” and “Writing your Stories”, which I can get much more excited about. There will be no grades for these courses.
9. I love to help other people develop their writing skills. Serving as a midwife while they birth their stories gives me great delight. I’ve had the pleasure of watching two memoirs and one young adult novel come to life while I provided encouragement and guidance from the side. If this is something you’re interested in, check out this page and then contact me. The first conversation is always free. 🙂
Good writing changes us, whether we are the writers or the readers.
I’ve taught a few writing courses this year and have plans for more in the coming months. No matter what kind of writing course I teach, whether it’s PR writing, business writing, or personal writing, there is one common element to what I teach. In every course, there is at least one session in which we talk about writing that impacts change.
Whether we write blog posts, newspaper articles, press releases, novels, ad copy, memoirs, or simply emails and Facebook updates, there is always potential for our writing to impact change in other people and ourselves. We may never see it that way (and often it’s best if we don’t), but writing is a powerful medium that can cause a LOT of impact.
While paddling across the lake last week, my friend and canoe-mate Jo, who’s very close to achieving her PhD in Psychology, told me that there is a growing field in psychology called bibliotherapy in which people use books, poetry, and other written word as their therapy. It was a relief to me to hear that this is taken seriously among experts, because books have always been my favourite therapists.
Because I love their advice, and I love playing with images, I put together a beautiful little ebook that I’m thrilled to share with you. (The pages look like the sample above.) Along with a tip, each page contains an original photo taken by me. (Except for the last photo, which was taken by my daughter Maddy.)
It’s a freebie – no strings attached, no need to give me your email address, no need to sign up for anything. Just download it, share it, pass it around, read it out loud at your writing circles, save your favourite pages and use them as your desktop wallpaper, or print and laminate them and hang them on your wall as posters in your writing room.
All I ask is that you PLEASE, pretty please, always remember to credit me and the other writers who graciously shared free advice with you. 🙂
To download, simply click on the image of the cover below. And then… enjoy! Be inspired. And WRITE!
Note: If you’re interested in an 8 week course that I’ll be teaching in Winnipeg this Fall called Creative Writing for Self Discovery, or if you want to know about the 1 day workshop on Writing to Impact Social Change at the university, email me at heather at heatherplett dot com.
1. Pack a few canoes with everything you’ll need to survive for the next few days. Together with 8 other adventurous women (who aren’t afraid to pee in the woods), paddle across three lakes, carry the canoes and all of your provisions across two portages, and at the end of a long, arduous, but beautiful day, set up camp at the edge of the lake in the middle of the wilderness where you will see no other signs of human habitation for the next few days.
2. Sit around a campfire with those women, telling stories and eating food that could possibly be the most delicious food you’ve ever tasted because it was well earned and well prepared and you are outdoors. Finish off your meals with roasted marshmallows and tea or hot chocolate that may or may not have a few twigs floating in it.
3. After the hard work of paddling, spend a day or two doing little else but playing in the water at the lovely sandy beach down a short path from your campsite, and reading your way through a good book or two. As an added bonus, drag your therma-rest out of your tent, prop it up like a reclining chair on a rock under the shade-giving trees with a view of the lake, and create a comfortable little nest where you can curl up with your book.
4. In the morning, go down to that private beach where nobody but the loons can see you, take off all your clothes, and wade into the crystal clear water. Float, swim, tread water, stare down at your feet (visible through the impossibly clear water), and feel yourself deeply connected to the water, the trees, and the loons playing at the edge of the water. As you float, consider that this is how it feels to be in the womb of the Goddess who birthed you and all that you see.
5. In the evening, after you have completed your supper and you are relaxing in comfort around the fire, catch your breath with wonder when one woman in your circle spots the Northern lights through the hole in the tree canopy above you. All together, rush to the large rock at the edge of the water where you have the best view of the sky. Lie on your backs, watching the Northern lights dancing like playful angels in the dark starry sky. Ooh and aah for extra effect, especially when you notice the way the aurora borealis reflects on the water.
6. Pay attention. Be mindful of everything you see. The bald eagle carrying itself on powerful wings high into the sky where it floats in leisurely circles. The two butterflies sunning themselves on a rock. The sky turning pink as the sun bids you good night. The sound of loons calling across the lake. The taste of wild raspberries, blueberries, and saskatoons. The endless possible shapes of clouds. The loons racing across the surface of the lake, using their wings as paddles. The milky white petals of the water lilies. The many shades of green in the trees and thick beds of moss. The bear that stands up on a rock just as you drive past on your way back to civilization. (p.s. Be grateful that you were in a car when you spotted the bear and not in a tent.)
7. As you are carrying the last of your things away from the campsite and down to the canoes, ready to head back across those lakes, spot the large white feather lying on the ground next to the now cold fire pit. Remember what Amy Oscar, in her book Sea of Miracles, says about white feathers appearing regularly to remind her of the presence of angels. Say a silent prayer of thanksgiving that you have been surrounded by angels for the last few days.
8. Exhausted but happy, carry one last canoe on your back up the hill and over the railroad tracks to the waiting vehicles. As you put it down, and you stretch your aching back and neck muscles, congratulate yourself and the other women for being strong and powerful and courageous. As a reward, stop at a restaurant on the way home to eat a delicious meal on a patio and to share a few good laughs about the adventure you’ve just had. For good measure, add a delicious frozen sangria to your meal. Sip it slowly and mindfully.
9. Return home to your family, refreshed, alive, and full of gratitude for the beauty and bounty of creation. Carry the wilderness with you and remember what it feels like to be wild, free, and beautiful, next to the pulsing heart of Mother Nature.
Picture it – 11 women, 5 canoes, 3 lakes, 2 portages, 5 tents, 1 remote campsite on the edge of the lake, 0 roads, 0 flush toilets, 0 electronic gadgets, 1 garden trowel to dig temporary toilets in the woods, and dozens of great conversations.
This wanderer’s heart is doing a little happy dance just thinking about it.
I have been very fortunate this summer to be able to thoroughly embrace my inner wanderer. Not that I’ve gone on any grand, expensive adventures, but with a trip to Columbus, a week at the lake, a weekend at the Folk Festival, a few days on a canoe trip, three days of walking with three other wonderful women coming up next month, and lots and lots of walking to prepare for my 100 km. walk, I have definitely fit the definition of Happy Wanderer.
Some of my favourite writing this summer has been the stuff I write for A Path for Wanderers and Edge-walkers. The piece I’m preparing to release today is about how wandering silences our logical left brains and gives our creative right brains space to play and imagine. My right brain will be having a hey-day on this canoe trip, and I just KNOW that I’ll come home with lots of creative ideas.
I love that several of the people who are receiving the weekly emails for A Path for Wanderers & Edge-walkers have written to say “Oh my GOSH! How uncanny your timing is! Just when I was wrestling with this issue, your email showed up and helped me find clarity.” There’s something special happening with that little e-course, and I love being a conduit for it. People are learning to embrace the fact that they love to wander and can often be found at the edge of the circle checking out the “road less travelled.”
Just for fun, I’d like to offer one of you a free subscription to the 12 emails (that culminates in an e-book compilation of all of them) that include my wandering wisdom and the wisdom of 12 other wonderful wanderers I interviewed.
To enter the draw for one free subscription (worth $25), either leave a comment about where your wandering feet are taking you this summer, or post a link to this on Twitter or Facebook. (If you’re canoeing, I suppose it’s where your arms are taking you rather than your feet. 🙂
So tell me… how are you feeding your wandering heart? Walks or bike rides through your own neighbourhood, camping trips, journeys to other countries… what’s your unique brand of wandering?
To inspire you, here’s a short slide-show of last year’s canoe trip.
