Emerging Form

In this bonus episode with author Kristi Nelson, we talk about how she transitioned her self-perception from “creativity appreciator” to “creative person.” She also talks about the gift of envy and how it has served her. Kristi Nelson is the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living and author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. She has spent most of her adult life in non-profit leadership, fundraising, and organizational development. In a wide variety of roles, she has helped to lead, fund, and strengthen organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. In 2001, Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and training, and leadership coaching business, and in this capacity worked with organizations such as the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spirit in Action, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. During this time, she was also founding Director of the Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. She received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University.Kristi Nelson’s book: Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing For GrantedKristi’s moving story of living through stage IV cancer  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How might gratefulness infuse your creative practice with trust, awe, acceptance and wonder? In this episode we speak with Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful: the Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted, about the surprisingly practical ways gratefulness inspires and fuels our creativity. She offers lots of prompts and how-to steps. Kristi Nelson is the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living and author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. She has spent most of her adult life in non-profit leadership, fundraising, and organizational development. In a wide variety of roles, she has helped to lead, fund, and strengthen organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. In 2001, Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and training, and leadership coaching business, and in this capacity worked with organizations such as the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spirit in Action, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. During this time, she was also founding Director of the Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. She received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University.Kristi Nelson’s book: Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing For Grantedhttps://gratefulness.org/Kristi’s story of moving through stage IV cancer https://gratefulness.org/resource-category/poetry/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a crystal ball so we could see where our creative road might take us? Or, perhaps as we discuss in this bonus episode of Emerging Form, perhaps what we really want is to just stop worrying where our path might take us. We talk with science journalist Jill U. Adams about her own creative arc and the surprising chat with a college counselor that sticks with her.Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. She shares her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1.Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Everyone agrees: creative routines can ignite our creative practice. But why are they so hard to maintain? How can we create more sustainable creative practices? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with science writer Jill U. Adams about her morning routine--how she established it, how she changes it, how it serves her, how it pushes it, and how she makes it sustainable. A sweet surprise: How postcards have become a way to engage with letting go of perfectionism. Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. Check out her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1 Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Early to bed, early to rise, coffee and quiet--these are some of the daily routines that help drive the creative life of poet, editor and writing coach James Crews. In this bonus episode, we talk about life on the farm in Vermont with his husband, the importance of trust in our creative life, how we can sabotage ourselves by trying to know where our creative path will take us, and Crews’ mentor Ted Kooser’s advice about conditioning the mind. James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.Jack KornfieldTed Kooser This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How might stillness and a heightened sense of awareness infuse your creative endeavors? In this episode we speak with poet, editor and writing coach James Crews about how a daily mindfulness practice can help us meet creative stumbling blocks such as self-judgment and writer’s block with more clarity, curiosity, acceptance and even surprise. Can mindfulness be a hindrance to creativity? Are there “rules” for how and when to to do it? Can being quiet really help an art that depends on words? How might your creativity infuse your mindfulness? James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.John Kabat-ZinnSharon SalzbergJane HirshfieldNaomi Shihab NyeDarn Luckyfor James CrewsIt happens, you know—the day opens itselflike a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someonewho amazes you with their willingnessto be a thousand percent alive, someonewho makes you feel grateful to be you.And it’s as if life has been keeping a beautifulsecret from you—like the fact that they makeelderberry flowers into wine. Like muscadine.Like the yellow-green floral scent of quince.Like the perfect knot for tying your shoes.And it turns out life does have wonderfulsecrets waiting for you. Even when the newsmakes you cry. Even when some old pain returns,that’s when you will meet this new friend.Someone wholly themselves. Someonewho makes you smile in the kitchen, a smile so realthat when you go out, the whole world notices.It’s enough to make you want to wake up in the morning.To go into the day. To be unguarded as a tulip, petalsfalling open. You never know who you might meet. --Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

A few words about what happens at a writing retreat. Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Photo: Rosemerry’s altar for her recent writing retreat. What would it be like to give over completely to your creative self? To get away from daily distractions and responsibilities and just write or paint or dance? In this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie talk about writers' retreats--why going away somewhere to write (or create) is so important, what it might look like, and how you might plan for one. From food prep to altars to finding daily rhythms, we talk about some of the ins and outs. Do you need one? Maybe you can’t afford not to have one.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How do we abstract our sense of self-worth from our creative work? That’s one of the themes in this bonus episode in which we converse with writer/artist/poet/editor Sarah Gilman. We learn about her reliance on small blank notebooks, the efficient layout of her office and the importance of having books around.Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesignshttps://sarahmgilman.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How can working in one art form strengthen our practice in another? Our guest Sarah Gilman describes herself as a “creative smush,” and in this episode, the artist/writer/editor talks about how all these art forms inform each other--how all of them allow her to “think in terms of metaphors.” As she says, by working in multiple fields at once, she can enter into a place where “themes can combine in immersive ways that foster empathy, respect for nuance over polarization, and a sense of awe for and accountability towards the world as it is—still huge and full of mystery and beauty, however threatened or diminished.” We also talk about how to get out of our own way, the importance of going outside, and how community and connections can fuel our work. Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesignshttps://sarahmgilman.com/South America's Otherworldly Seabird, Sarahs’ narrative and illustrations of how scientists are working to save a tiny seabird in the Atacama Desert. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe