Writing from (actual) Brave Space

the thing I do online for people via zoom

I won’t be posting daily, but it’s so exciting to be here, and to have my first 100 views! Thank you all for checking this out. Some of you know I do this thing called Brave Space via Zoom. It’s a global offering I’ve been hosting since 2019, before the pandemic, and yes, I had to teach everyone individually how to use zoom way back then! (And I am NOT a techie.)

Brave Space is what I had to create, what I wished I’d had when I was writing FUKT (a play I wrote, see more here) about healing from trauma. But you don’t have to be writing about trauma to love Brave Space. And yes, I do host All-Human Brave Spaces too, so you don’t always have to be female or nonbinary to join.

FUKT is an autobiographical play where my parts (as in IFS or parts work) duke it out and finally integrate in a moment of brave healing after some truly wacky stuff happens (including a strip tease w/ukulele). Only I didn’t write it knowing anything about parts! As a playwright I was aware of lots of parts inside me, parts I could easily voice as characters.

This is where the plot thickens. Before I wrote that play, I became a health counselor trying to heal from 4 autoimmune conditions/diseases and a traffic jam of ailments as long as the West Side Highway.

I don’t know about you (please share with me!) but my life isn’t a single straight road from point A to point B. I take all the detours, hit all the sights, gawk at all the accidents, taste all the art and eat all the songs, memorizing all the lyrics while clawing my way through the world.

So if I managed somehow, while tripping over myself, to become a mom, wife, friend, mentor, teacher, prompt-writer, producer, entrepreneur, activist, poet, griever, playwright, dramaturg, meditator, nature-lover, feeler, health counselor, life coach, award-winning flash fictionista, lyricist/composer, author of many novels that live in many drawers, author of one hopeful novel about to be a first draft, and a bad ukulele player, it’s not my fault. I throw a lot at the walls to see what sticks.

The world tells us to be small, to stay quiet, to be like everyone else, and I have refused. I sometimes think I just didn’t get the memos, although I do remember being physically tormented with the messages (as in abused), it just didn’t sink in enough! Or when it did, when I started to live small and quiet, I got sick. What helped me heal? Stick around for more on this!

The first healing thing I did: I refused to stay small and quiet. So here I am, way better! Hosting BraveSpace.online both here on Substack and in person on Zoom, several days/week! If you want to join me there to write or to have any kind of creative experience with whatever you want to make, you are most welcome. More info here. I thank you for being here with me.

The schedule for October 9-12, next week’s Brave Space on Zoom for female and afab nonbinary humans is Monday 12pm ET; Tuesday 10am ET; Wednesday 3pm ET; Thursday 12pm ET; Friday 12pm ET. & the next All-Human Brave Space is Monday 10/16 at 7pm ET. Reach out for the link!

Onward Creatively,

Emma

PS a Prompt! In Brave Space everyone gets about 4 pages worth of prompts per week. I’ll try to post a prompt here for everyone whenever I post. Whaddya think of that?!

Here is a CRAFT TOOL prompt from last week’s Brave Space: SURPRISE w/HEART - Tools - what are the tools at our disposal? Language, plot, story, character, thought, diction, music/sound, lights, setting, structure, unities, time, rhythm, song, spectacle, and certainly what is often ignored - surprise. What sort of surprises can you create for your audience/reader? How do you discover what surprise would be organic to your story? Try Freewriting! Inquiring into your story and freewriting (fast w/o thinking or censoring) your ideas/associations/memories. If you don’t want to start from you, start with your characters/their impulses/histories/actions/desires/needs. Or let the world of your piece and all its objects/valuables/scenic views/weather/lost items/heirlooms offer up answers if you ask for them. What is the inevitable-in-retrospect surprise that I couldn’t see coming? LIST as many potential surprises as you can imagine, and then LIST more! It’s actually easier for the brain to make a longer list, and you’ll get more out of it. Write down everything that comes to mind without pause. Don’t think about it or try. Let your hand do it or your fingers or your heart. Take your heart out and put it on your desk - clear off a clean spot for it if you need to - and ask it to help you. Be kind. Let no rising impulse go unwritten.