Taming and Tethering the Runaway Mind

Three writers share their voyage of ink and introspection

An open mic 🎤and community share of the Essay in Eight Steps. Plus a behind the scenes look at the creation of the prompt. And an exclusive writing lab with critique.

“Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

Hi all and welcome:

Several of you posted your prompts in the comments (to my giddy delight) and more sent essays via email. Nicely done. Lovely. Inspiring.

One writer, Julia, went as far as submitting in workshop at Studio this week. The unanimous agreement was “WOW.” And C, a writer who hates writing about herself, did it, and sent it to me. I read it last night and once again: WOW.

What I love about the prompt is the honesty and vulnerability it generates. I’m going to put up three and comment on them as an expansion on the teaching but first…

…a little history

This prompt was born around 2010-11 when I had younger and very energetic, expressive kids.

My son was over at an arts school in SE Portland called DaVinci, having been transferred after some surprising bullying at a to-be-unnamed school where a couple bigger boys shoved him around in the bathroom and threatened to set him on fire.

When reported, the nuns at this school (yes, this was Christian school) refused to take disciplinary action.

“Everyone is at fault here,” my son’s dad and I were told by these nuns. “Each of us needs to assess our part in the process. We need to show compassion for all parties.”

This was an expensive school, and sure, my kid might have had some hand in the situation, but he didn’t physically assault anyone or threaten to set them on fire.

Yeah…this is a kid who has a problem with compassion

We pulled him of that and put him into DaVinci which was around the block from my house so I could get to him if there were any issues.

At the same time, I was in an unhealthy relationship with a man who was also a gaslighter (see a pattern?)

At the same time, I was also traveling quite a bit to writing conferences and to teach in an MFA program where I had the pleasure of working with another gaslighting man…but I digress.

Bottom line: It was a hard time of my life when challenges abounded.

In early May of that year, it was wet and cold out, with flowers bursting all around but I didn’t see them, rather was filled with anxious worry as I hurried along a damp sidewalk to Spencer’s new school. I had a meeting with the counselor to talk through his transition. As I went, this this prompt fell into my consciousness.

An essay in eight steps, I thought. In order to help put some boundaries on the thinking mind and stay connected to the senses within the present moment.

I stopped and blinked while the whole of it unfurled before me. 1-2-3…

To breathe

Inspiration comes from the Latin inspiratus (the past participle of inspirare, “to breathe into, inspire”) and in English has had the meaning “the drawing of air into the lungs” since the middle of the 16th century…However, before inspiration was used to refer to breath it had a distinctly theological meaning in English, referring to a divine influence upon a person, from a divine entity; this sense dates back to the early 14th century.

~ Mirriam-Webster

The issue with writing memoir, and I struggle with it myself, is how the thinking mind moves at 170 MPH according to some experts which then overtakes the writing process and obliterates our scenes into a hell-scape of rambling thoughts.

The mind is great, don’t get me wrong. It has a lot of powerful qualities but it is also the source of misunderstandings and misconceptions. Almost every problem we have is generated by the mind-gone-nuts.

So, reeling this mind in and setting a few boundaries is an essential practice for the memoir writer and this prompt does both.

A Closer Look: Skylark

I’m going to bold-type what I love and say why below:

1. The forest out my writing room window is somehow both deeply shadowed and pierced by stripes of sunlight. The aspen are budding. The wind is perfectly and unusually still. To the east, the powder blue sky is clear but to the west the clouds look gently whisked and almost spreadable. Its quiet. A distant neighborhood dog barks. A sparrow trills.

2. Inside, my desk is draped in that same half shadow half sunlight and is forested in plants. Pickle cactuses. Hoyas. A Venus fly trap that hasn’t managed to catch a single goddamn gnat. To my right, my bookshelf overflows with authors that range from spectacularly dim to excruciatingly brilliant. There’s a small collection of photo albums on the bottom shelf, more hoyas, a pathos, two mini palms, and a three leggy callea on the bookshelf’s top. To my left, there are more plants. At least twelve. Okay, more like twenty.

3. My head aches. It aches like this nearly every morning. The ache is half physical, half mental; half a dull throb, half an exasperated will-I-ever-get-a-break type exhaustion.

4. The aches started when I was fourteen. I shared a room with my sister. I had the top bunk. Every night I’d stay up till midnight, mind racing, chest tight, and every morning at 4:45 AM my alarm clock would go off and I’d bound out of bed, down the ladder, and relish the one and only time of day when the house was still and free of screaming. I’d chug a pot of burnt coffee. Sometime before 6 AM I’d catch the bus.

   “You know it’s not good for teenagers to get so little sleep,” a woman on the bus once said to me.

   I thought of my stepfather, the greedy way his eyes raked over my chest.

   “I’ll be fine,” I said.

   By 6:30 I’d get to school. The lights were always dark, the gates closed, the nuns sleeping. Sometimes I’d fall asleep on the stoop. Sometimes I’d find a back door unlocked and on those days, I’d wander the halls in the pitch black and feel a small rush of power as the motion lights kicked on around me. I’d wander zombie-like into the gymnasium, collapse onto the mats. I’d sleep until first bell. I’d do it all again the next morning. No one seemed to notice I was always the first one there.

5. As I look back I realize those mornings taught me perseverance. They taught me that there is always a place to rest should I choose to look for one. As Hallmark as it sounds, I’ve been thinking about those mornings a lot recently. How I could look at them as tragic. How those exhausted mornings were some of the most magical I’ve ever had.

8. Now, out the window of my writing room, the forest is more light than shadow. The dog has stopped barking. 6. The ache has lessened. The day is asking me to get a move on and stop dwelling. 7. In front of me, on my laptop, the Scrivener icon seems to jeering at me. 6. My headache will subside completely. Eventually. For now, it’s time to write.

JL THOUGHTS: Okay, first of all, Skylark is a gorgeous writer. It’s clearly her super power. Her ability to land and unpack details is a constant source of inspiration and delight. Her humility is breathtaking, too. She’s one to watch.

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