Emerging Form

Creative projects are rewarding, but let’s be honest: they’re also hard. Today’s guest, Steve Magness, is an expert on doing hard things and he has some good advice on how to break through. Steve discusses the benefits of a quiet ego, how to feed and reward the positive voices in your head, how shifting to talking to yourself in second or third person can help you quiet negative self-talk, and how spending time alone and practicing boredom can foster creativity.Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance. He is the author of the new book Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness. He’s also coauthor of Peak Performance. The Passion Paradox, and the author of The Science of Running. Magness has served as an executive coach and a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams, including some of the top teams in the NBA. Steve’s writing has appeared in Outside, Runner’s World, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, Men's Health, and a variety of other outlets. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Houston and a graduate degree from George Mason University. He currently lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Hillary. Once upon a time, he ran a mile in 4:01 in high school, at the time the 6th fastest high school mile in US history.Steve’s website Steve on Twitter https://twitter.com/stevemagnessEmerging Form is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new bonus episodes and help us make this podcast sustainable, consider becoming a paid subscriber. 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

Emerging Form is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Imagine researching a theoretical global disaster that, while you are writing your book, comes to pass. In this episode, Emerging Form welcomes Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh, who were writing their non-fiction book Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine before the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk about writing as metabolic process–how it helps to coalesce life into meaning and purpose. We talk about writing with a partner, Scrivener vs. Word, how to shape a book, how to research, and how to turn reporting into a cohesive narrative. Nicola Twilley is cohost of the award-winning podcast Gastropod, which looks at food through the lens of science and history, and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. Geoff Manaugh is the author of the New York Times-bestseller, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, as well as the architecture and technology website BLDGBLOG. He regularly writes for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Wired, and many other publications.Nicky and Geoff live in Los Angeles.Until Proven Safe Website  A Burglar’s Guide to the CityNicky at The New YorkerInstagram: @untilprovensafe@nicolatwilley@geoffmanaugh 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

In all of our other shows, we have talked about creative practice and how you develop your own voice, your own identity, how you make your own creative mark. And in today’s episode, we speak with poet and performer and teacher Kim Rosen, who will guide in thinking about the opposite–how we might let go of our creative identities as we age, and why that is essential work. Kim Rosen, M.F.A., author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, has awakened listeners around the world to the power of poetry to heal, awaken and disarm individuals and communities. She is a poet, spoken word artist, ritualist, and guide of inner exploration. Her current passion is weaving poetry, music, teaching and self-inquiry to invite us to turn towards aging, death and letting go. Her upcoming Fall audio release,  Feast of Losses, is a collaboration on the same theme with cellist Jami Sieber. She is the co-creator of several recordings of spoken poems and music and her writing has been published in The Sun Magazine, O Magazine,The Texas Review and Spirituality and Health Magazine. In 2007, she spoke a poem to a group of Maasai girls in Kenya who had fled FGM and Early Childhood Marriage, and that moment became the seed of the Safe House Education (S.H.E.) Fund. www.kimrosen.net   www.shecollegefund.orgFalling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr Talk at Science and Nonduality Conference: 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 has creativity served us in times of trauma? Last year, Christie and Rosemerry released an episode mid-September about the very difficult life events that had occurred for them in August–Christie’s father’s nearly fatal stroke and the death of Rosemerry’s son. As we come back from a much-needed summer break, we revisit the past year to look at how things have changed–and stayed the same. In this episode, our hosts talk about how years of creative practice can be a gift we give our future selves to help us meet a difficult chapter, how sometimes when we think we already know the end of our real story we can stymie our creative process, how sharing our creative practice can be very healing and how you might know you are ready to return to a creative practice after an emotionally traumatic event. Christie writing about visiting her dad on his birthdaySusan Tweit (Ep. 53) on reflectionRosemerry’s poem, For When People AskRosemerry’s poem, ContentmentCatherine Price (Ep. 45) on the importance of down timeChristie on finding delight in a terrible year Finding Creativity in Times of Trauma (Ep. 50)Rosemerry’s Chair Poem, Circumventing the Busy SelfChristie on finding Rosemerry’s unwritten poems 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

Noticing and being present are two essential ingredients for creativity, and in today’s episode, writer Laurie Wagner discusses how travel can facilitate creative traits like these and help you connect with your muse. She tells us about how being in a foreign place helps her move slower and see things anew. “Our lives are passing, and we think we are going someplace,” she says, but meanwhile life is passing us by in this present moment, and that’s where creativity lies. PLEASE NOTE: we are taking a short summer break after our Episode 69 bonus next week. If you are a paid subscriber, your subscription will be put on hold (you won’t be charged) until we’re back in late August. Laurie Wagner has been publishing books and essays, and teaching writing for the last 25 years. She is a process guru and has a genius for holding space, helping people unzip what’s inside of them, and get ink on the page. A creative brain-stormer, she specializes in out of the box ways to tell your stories. Her Wild Writing classes are the cornerstone of her live work. She teaches weekly, small groups, and also hosts The Wild Family, a large group of writers from around the world who write together weekly.  She is the author of Living Happily Ever After: Couples Talk about Long Term Love, and Expectations: 30 Women Talk about Becoming a Mother. Check out her blog at: 27powers.org 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 does a book come together? We speak with Rachel Feltman, author of Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex, about the evolution of her book, from first inklings to years of research to organization to completion. She explains how she answered the burning question, “How do I make this a book and not just a pile of words?” Her secrets include A 500-mile ride on a tandem bike, a morning routine, a great agent and editor, the willingness to turn in her “hottest garbage,” and a three-word mantra that will help jumpstart every creative process. Rachel Feltman’s first paying gig was organizing a bookshelf full of textbooks on vulvar disease at the age of seven, and she never looked back. She’s the Executive Editor of Popular Science and hosts PopSci’s podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. In 2014, Feltman founded the Washington Post’s Speaking of Science blog, known for headlines such as “You probably have herpes, but that’s really okay,” and “Uranus might be full of surprises.” Feltman studied environmental science at Simon’s Rock and has a master’s in science reporting from NYU. She’s a musician, an actress, and the stepmom of a very spry 14-year-old cat.Rachel’s website https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/rachel-feltman/been-there-done-that/9781668605042/  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

Need inspiration? Look to other arts. This practice, known as ekphrasis–the art of making art inspired by other art, can “fill the well” and create a rich field of ideas to play with. In this episode, Rosemerry offers a provocative list of specific ways one might engage with another work of art and gives examples from her recent poems responding to the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and the music of our previous guest Kayleen Asbo (episode 27, Creative Communities). And Christie talks about novels she’s read this year by Emily St. John, Anthony Doerr and others that are teaching her new ways to engage audiences around the pandemic, the destruction of the natural world, and how to live in a broken world. Kayleen AsboLove Letters to Vincent Salon with Kayleen and Rosemerry“In the Wheat Field with Crows” by Rosemerry“Wheat Field with Crows” by Vincent Van Gogh“Almond Blossom” by Rosemerry“Almond Blossom” by Vincent Van GoghNovels Christie recently read and lovedEmily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility, Station ElevenBenjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the WorldAnthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo LandRichard Powers, The Overstory and BewildermentLily King, Euphoria 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

Some projects take on a life of their own–what begins as a side project might grow into a life-style change and new career. But how do we know if or when to end it? How do external factors influence it? What do we learn about adaptation and trust? In this episode of Emerging Form, we bring back podcaster Laura Joyce Davis, host and executive producer of the award-winning narrative podcast Shelter in Place. We talk about committing to projects you don’t know how to do, learning from failure, spin off projects, sustainability, finding closure and learning into the next chapter. Laura Joyce Davis is the host and executive producer of the award-winning narrative podcast Shelter in Place. She and her writer husband Nate together created the Social Impact Award-winning mentorship program Kasama Collective, as well as Labs Weekender, a self-paced narrative podcasting course. Podcast Magazine named Laura in their Top 22 Influencers in Podcasting for 2022. A writer for more than twenty years, her fiction has been recognized with a Fulbright scholarship, a Poets & Writers Magazine Exchange Award, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and occasional praise from her 3 children who believe that anything is possible with a good book, a cape, and a crown (she doesn't disagree). 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

Walking. So simple, and yet putting one foot in front of the other is one of the most profound things you can do for your creative practice. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with award-winning poet and painter Valencia Robin about how walking has inspired her practice. We bring in science to support what we all know intuitively–moving the body helps open the brain. And Robin (as we call her throughout the podcast) shares poems by contemporary poets and herself, too, that invoke the art of walking. Valencia Robin’s debut poetry collection, Ridiculous Light, is the winner of Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, a finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and was named one of the best poetry books of 2019 by Library Journal. Robin’s other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Emily Clark Balch Award, the Hocking Hills Power of Poetry Prize and fellowships from Cavé Cahnem, the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the University of Virginia, Bennington College and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A poetry instructor as well as a co-director of the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop, Robin has an MFA in Creative Writing from  the University of Virginia and an MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan, where she also co-founded GalleryDAAS. Also a painter and curator, Robin’s visual work has been exhibited nationally and supported by the King-Chavez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowship and the Center for the Education of Women’s Margaret Towsley Fellowship.Valencia Robin’s websiteStanford study finds walking improves creativityRebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of WalkingRoss Gay, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian”Ada Limón, “During the Impossible Age of Everyone” Valencia Robin, “After Graduate School” 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

“You wouldn’t yell at a preemie baby,” says poet, lyricist, playwright and teacher Alison Luterman. In this bonus episode, we talk about Alison’s “coaxing” approach for her new work, about patience, self-compassion, starting the morning without screens, the benefits and detriments of having many projects at once, and, of course, the importance of coffee. Alison Luterman's four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. Her poems and stories have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, Nimrod, Salon, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Review, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and in numerous other journals and anthologies. She has written an e-book of personal essays (Feral City, originally published through SheWrites.com, now available through audible.com), half a dozen plays including a musical The Chain about a chain of kidney transplant donors and recipients), lyrics for a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, and is currently working on two different musical theater projects as well as new poems and a longer version of her recently-published essay about learning to sing as an, ahem!, older adult.Previous episodes with Alison: Creative Practice as Political Action and A poem and a song from Alison Luterman 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