Creativity or Wholeness?
Why do you read me? Asking your opinion.
The month of August inspires me to hide from the world. The sun tries to melt the asphalt. The therapists all leave for the beach. The birthday looms. I am honored to get older. I embrace aging with a kind of glee. I am alive! I’ll be 59! But the birthday itself is not a day I enjoy.
Change is hard for me. I bargain with myself. I promise that if I can get through August, September will arrive with cooler, shorter days and autumn colors. Yes, I am a fan of darkness and pumpkin everything, but I’ve never tasted a latte (any flavor). I haven’t had a cup of coffee since 1983. That’s not a typo.
I’m taking the next two weeks off from Substack to recharge. Brave Space will continue - see the schedule below - but I will be using this time to get clearer on what I am offering you.
So if you want to weigh in below or respond to this email directly to me, let me know if you want more on writing craft and creativity boosts, OR if you want more on my trauma journeys from cPTSD and multiple autoimmune diseases, medical traumas and childhood sexual abuse to wholeness, or what I call wholeness, which always feels tenuous because remission is apparently a temporary state. But then so is life!
I try to offer both creativity and wholeness since they seem to be crucial to me in the way my life has unfolded. I am always looking for ways my creativity can inform my sense of well-being and inspire a sense of well-being in others.
I wish I’d been allowed to love nature as a child. I loved the long road to the lake at summer camp, surrounded by forest, where the tiniest frogs could be found if you looked.
https://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2011/02/frogs-are-nearly-upon-us.html
I’d stop to carefully pick them up, to study them up close as we all walked on our little 5-6 year old legs down the dark, cool path. I didn’t want the walk to end. I am a forest person.
I’d carry a frog like a buddy whispering my secrets and feeling it throb alive in my palm. Usually the frog would pee on my hand. To me, this was miraculous. To everyone else, this was gross.
There is a shrinking inside that happens when we aren’t allowed to love what we love. Every year that passes I work to release it, to come out of the shell I built, to find a way to feel safe in the world. When we feel safe, we are free to be our true selves and to access our authentic voice.
Safety, creating a lived sense of safety in the body through our senses, is part of our process in Brave Space. This growing lived sense of safety allows me to write, allows me to hear what rises up in me and to value it for its potential in the process of creation that is my life’s work.
August has morphed into my hibernating time when I reassess my life and get ready for the Jewish High Holidays, a time of reflection and renewal. As we live adjacent to this horrific genocide, I find I need more time to reflect, more time to find all I’m grateful for in my life and in nature, more time to allow myself to love what I love.
artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on Instagram
Writing Prompt:
If you are having trouble humanizing your antagonist, trying giving them a previous failure. If they have previously failed at whatever they are currently trying to do (in opposition to your protagonist), they will be working even harder to get past that previous failure. This will raise the stakes on why they are doing whatever they are doing right now in your story.
We need our antagonists to be as large and desperate and right as our protagonists, or the protagonist doesn’t have enough to push against. Often I see that people know their protagonist really well, but they don’t truly get to know their antagonist. So make sure you’ve dug into who your antagonist is and what they want and what they need that they may not even know they need.
Often when we tell a story from our protagonist’s point of view, our protagonist is based on our own point of view, and it can be hard to shift into the point of view of the antagonist, but it’s so helpful if you can. It will help you to grow as a person, not just a writer, to be able to do this.
Write a letter from your antagonist to their parent detailing what they are up against and what they are trying to accomplish. What would winning look like? What would failure look like? How important is this to them?
Looking at the weakest scene in your story, check to see if you can make it harder for your protagonist. Failure helps. As an option, failure will raise the stakes. Previous failure can help show the audience what the consequences have been for either the protagonist or the antagonist. Failure makes us aware of the consequences this time around too.
Don’t be afraid to let your characters fail. Let me know how it goes!
Announcements:
Brave Space is a community that meets 5 times a week on Zoom. I’d love to add your announcements or events. LMK: Post a comment with a link or send me an email. This is read in 10 countries by almost 700 people! Please check below to see what your community members are doing! Support is important! Also I post a few deadlines for opportunities, like these below.
On Zoom, August 12th: CASTING AGENT Jen Rudin offers ACTORS a free monthly Zoom chat here
Deadline July 31st horror audio scripts! More here
Deadline August 15th! The International Human Rights Art Festival seeks performance work (plays, self-produced). Submit Here
Permafrost Theatre Company in Brooklyn has a monthly newsletter to amplify your work! If you have news, get on their mailing list here or fill out this for August by the end of July.
HearthMath coherence app may be helpful if you’re looking to improve your heart rate variability to regulate your nervous system. https://www.heartmath.org/
Work with Me, Here: Jenna Lourenco is looking for Autistic Theatre People for a study Examining Environmental & Cultural Challenges to Autistic Accessibility in Theatre Workspaces" through the end of October 2024:
Brave Space Schedule:
7/29 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space 7/30 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/wkshp 7/30 Tuesday 7pm ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 7/31 Wednesday 11am ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 7/31 Wednesday 7pm ET Brave Space for All Humans 8/1 Thursday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/2 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/5 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/6 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/wkshp 8/6 Tuesday 7pm ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/7 Wednesday 11am ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/7 Wednesday 7pm ET All Human Brave Space 8/8 Thursday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/9 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/12 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/13 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/wkshp 8/13 Tuesday 7pm ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/14 Wednesday 11am ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/14 Wednesday 7pm ET Brave Space for All Humans w/Brave Sharing Salon! 8/15 Thursday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/16 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/19 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space 8/20 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/wkshp 8/20 Tuesday 7pm ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/21 Wednesday 11am ET Adv Brave Group Coaching 8/21 Wednesday 7pm ET All Human Brave Space 8/22 Thursday Brave Space Cancelled 8/23 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
I admire the bravery in asking for feedback. As a reader, I find it interesting when the author, (I have been trained not to refer directly to the author) tells a personal story of healing, then Zooms out to a larger commentary and zooms in to end with a prompt. I appreciate trigger warnings and prefer not to read about trauma in detail. I also learn from what the author has learned from their health journey. Maybe some craft posts in there sometimes would be edifying, but I seem to be drawn to the personal and I find the narrator's voice and cadence to be engaging and thought-provoking.
Thank you for sharing the work!
Jen (she/her)
I am always blown away by your honesty.
Most of the time, I don't mentally respond to your writing until a few hours or even days after I read what you've posted. Small things stay with me. Exploring. The deep dives into what we see and feel. The self.
After reading one of your posts, I asked a friend if she knows who she is... really knows. She hesitated but said yes. I knew she understood the question, but until recently I didn't understand the question. Now, I understand the question, and that's huge. Thank you.
I'm going to think about this and post again.
s