For those who have felt shut out of the literary or any world (most people), it can feel almost like we are an imposition to step inside and declare a unique perspective. Many of us longed to be invited or discovered.

When I was just starting out as a writer, I loved to simply write. When I got more into it, however, and began pursuing my MFA, I started to want something else. Some kind of invitation. I was urged to study Writer X or Y, and I found myself trying to sound like them—not to study and learn my own style but to fit the mold of what was being picked up by publishers.

An invitation didn’t exactly come.

In fact, quite the opposite often happened. I would be told that I could get an invitation if only I’d … (sound more like X, network like Y). Even recently, a former aquisitions editor for the Big Five recently told me that my forthcoming memoir was brilliant BUT because I’m not Maggie O’Farrell, it wouldn’t sell.

Years ago, this would have destroyed me. Recently, it made me laugh.

Years ago, I might have tried to sound more like Maggie or follow her career formula. Honestly, if a former and hungrier version of me had access to AGI, said version might very well have asked it to help her do so; lucky for me, the tech didn’t yet exist in the way it does today. If that fictional version of my former self would’ve done so, not only would she have outsourced the best part of the process, she would have destroyed her own ability to access the unique power of her own voice. And she would’ve lost out on so much beauty.

True artists radically and bravely self-express. The rawness and willingness to be ourselves unabashedly clarifies things in the world that need clarifying.

Besides, we all deserve to be in the room. We all deserve to be ourselves in the room. And we all deserve to leave the room when we find it boring or limiting.

Even if a handful of folks are working damn hard to erase anyone with a unique perspective, all unique voices are powerful if nurtured.

Accolades do not last. Like-for-like transactional relationships do not last. Your authentic voice will.

If someone doesn’t invite you to the table, sit at your own table. And to push the metaphor a bit based on my experiences: If someone offers you a broken chair, it might not be the best place sit down no matter how tired you are.

I have not met a single person, across genres and disciplines, who does not impress me when they feel comfortable enough to try from a place of pure authenticity. Everyone’s voice can carry incredible weight and teach us new things about this dynamic and confusing existence.

When I started to let it go and just “do” me without caring about marketability, things started to open up, and I got some taste of recognition by winning multiple writing awards in a single year for We Arrive Uninvited and also multiple awards for various essays that will appear in At Work (forthcoming, it took some time to cobble her into a book). Some of these awards carried me around the world or earned me grant money.

But honestly, friends, what did a little taste of recognition change? It wasn’t what I thought, I’ll tell you that. I was happy for a few days, and I spent the money. I added a line to a CV I’ll rarely use.

My path is not one of seeking fame and fortune, and even if I were to stumble into that terrain, it would not be what feeds me.

When I began to let go, to release expectation, I was better able to also focus on what I value. For me, that is curiosity, travel, watching others grow, making new connections with good people around the world, and not conforming or using the easy way to tick boxes.

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When I’ve let them, my values have led me. They have reminded me to process about my process here. They have taken me around the world on grants or teaching assignments. They have helped me to write my best work—award-winning or not. They have reminded me how silly the machine of artistic capitalism is, how empty. Instead, my values allowed me to be messy and human and grab at genuine insight that somehow always leads to opportunity. More, my values allow me to know I can’t change people, but I can create spaces that allow them to grow via Unleash, if they so choose.

Today, I simply write the raw, real shit. And it feeds me. It feeds me more than the accolades ever will. And maybe that’s not true for everyone, but I suspect it is. I really do, friends.

I suppose this is a bit of a riff, but thanks for reading. I need to remind myself from time to time of what matters.

If you can relate to being at any stage of this process (longing to be invited, being invited and it not being what you think, releasing the need outsource your power), let me know.

Prompt: What values guide your creative work? How can they serve your creative journey today?

xo Jen

(Paid subscribers: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Our next CR circle is Oct 3. I will include the link soon.)

For 24 hours, I waited for delayed planes, got ill in tiny bathrooms with surly Irish flight attendants who cut eyes at me after each exit because I got up yet again during the “seatbelts on!” time. There were crying babies and splitting headaches and an inability to concentrate on the work I thought I’d do in transit.

To make matters worse, I kept reading the news (food recalls, flood, no help in sight for many) and worried because the trip I planned 18 months ago now overlapped with extreme rain in my new city, not to mention the beginning of the semester.

I kept wondering if time away from the states would truly feel like a break, whether the extreme rainfall would do damage to our home, and whether I was causing havoc by teaching online the first week (for the first time in 8 years). In other words, for all my regular meditation, I was stuck in a bit of a neurotic loop.

I did my best.

After a pleasant Uber ride, I arrived with hopes lifting and found a heavy gate that took me to my destination. I couldn’t get in the apartment my friend rented, and the place I waited was next to restaurant dumpsters. My friend was delayed for days, she texted, as I went to war with a lockbox and WhatsApped the owners repeatedly, untill they finally answered.

After an hour, I got in. After another hour, I was an American zombie roaming the cobblestone streets and falling in love with Edinburg.

Not only did I meet amazing people quickly, but the apartment overlooked one of the main areas for street shows, so I was able to watch performers from my window. I saw people juggle fire, spin soccer balls on tall sticks, balance heavy latters on their chins and write poetry on command.

On walks, I passed dozens of singers, some better than others, and quite a few visual artists working in their chosen medium, from markers to dance to clay to paint.

Writers love to observe, to search for the depth in every smile, interest in every botched performance and successful land alike, and to wonder after onlookers’ boredom and awe.

After watching dozens of performances and audiences, I noted patterns.

There’s always a story, always a dozen repeats of one’s name, always audience engagement (“scream with me,” “clap,” “put your hands up,” and always—always, an invitation for people to get closer). For many, there was also a false start. A dropped ball or a close call with fire, for instance, so when the finale came and there were fourteen balls in the air, it was all the more impressive when nothing was dropped.

The audience was invited in. The audience was engaged and often stalled but always entertained.

Most performers do not make an income from Fringe; in fact, most take on debt for the opportunity. An artists’ plight is, all too often, to give their work and energy to others in order to feed more process.

While the crowds were a little overwhelming at times, Fringe was delightful, and it reminded me of the love so many have for art, entertainment, and bringing people together. And this trip started to remind me how valuable getting out of one’s comfort zone can be to reinvigorate a writer’s sense of wonder and novelty.

When my friend arrived, we walked forty minutes to the River Leith, which happens to be a family name of mine (though Leith means “damp” or “wet”, so the family connection might be less relevant than the fact that it’s a river).

This is where the trip began to transform for me.

As I admired the craggy trees and stumbled forward on cobblestone, I found myself less hurried and more aware.

Perhaps just enough time had passed or perhaps it was views like this. Whatever it was, I was no longer a disgrunteled US citizen who was underslept and Googling how much an average artist loses at Fringe (quite a lot). My home was safe, and I was here to enjoy myself (gasp!).

I began by appreciating the cool breeze and stopping near every craggy tree. By the time I returned to the faint, then loud, applause as we reentered the fray, I paused again, noting how much the artists give and instead of feeling bad for them, I felt a cheer well up in me.

I stood and laughed at jokes. I applauded as loud as I could when I saw talent, and I took in a lot. I looked around and saw the admiration of those who watched, and I realized the artists can be fed in a way that many will never understand. Support them (us), but also recognize the power of dealing in energy instead of numbers.

Cost rarely equals value.

If you are an artist (in any form), please know that I appreciate you. You create wonder. You create community.

You create, and that is what matters.

I think I’ll have more to say about this trip, but for now, I’m going to simply absorb. Friends, I made it to Scotland!!

An oldie but goodie: The Practice of You.

Thank YOU for your support and attention.

I run a podcast at my job in academia, where I recently I mispronounced an interviewee’s company name (which we didn’t catch till after the fact). When I suggested I rerecord the introduction to patch in, the sound engineer sent back a file of my voice with it corrected.

“I stole your soul,” he joked.

He’d taken 2 minutes to feed my voice into an AGI model that recreated the entire intro with a “cleaned up” version of “me” introducing the guest I’d met in person.

The AGI can replicate my voice and redo an intro, but it can’t capture anything worthwhile. In fact, the topic of personal voice and artificial intelligence is driving me back to reading more memoirs and craving more personal story. Memoir has always been my favorite genre anyway because reality is strange, and I find that even the worst memoirs are fascinating.

AGI can tell redundant, unoriginal stories, but it can’t tell your story, not the story of emotional truths and textures and positions and personas. It can’t capture the human journey of searching for self.

My very human story is about work, as you may know, and this is a sneak peek of its cover (thank you, Cornerstone Press UWSP — this will be out in ‘27, so this is an early glimpse).

I wrote about work because I’ve had a lot of jobs, and I found myself reaching for something at each.

From my first foray into the working world as a bagger at a grocery store to a short stint selling fine jewelry to bussing tables early mornings at a breakfast diner, the writer in me has always been collecting material and imagining the next best thing.

I’ve worked at a large corporate firm and a small nonprofit. I’ve worked in dance clubs and Sam’s Club (though I never wrote about Sam’s - I sold OdoBan in the aisles to passersby [note to self: write about this]).

All these decades later, I am a business owner, writer, and academic program manager whose voice is being replicated by AGI.

As you can probably deduce, I am well beyond the 21+ category above. Part of this is because long before it was the only option, I was a gig worker. I often had 2 or 3 positions at once and participated in more orientations than I’d like to admit. Each was a study of self and the world.

I remember sitting in rooms participating in this phenomenon known as "orientation” and feeling so much potential. I love the word and its inherent possibility. The dictionary definition states that it is about determining the relative position of someone or something. At work, it’s about a person’s position within a system.

We orient to new environments as humans in a far-from-robotic way. As humans, we are messy and often either over or underconfident, which makes new starts both exhilarating and anxiety-producing. And each time, at least for established industries—even the arts—a specific role seems attached to a desired persona. For a writer, or creative mind, this means possibility. This means we can imagine what we want.

If you’re in sales, you will almost always benefit from displaying charisma and enthusiasm. If you are an expert, you are expected to share a lot about a single topic and carry a certain weight to your words. If you are a teacher, you are tasked with knowledge sharing in a way that is equal parts nurturing and disciplinarian.

If you’re an artist or writer, you are often expected to cultivate a captivating persona to sell your work. Persona can stem from our identity as well as the identity we attach to the work we choose to share, but it’s often only a small window into the artist’s true self.

I grew up thinking adopting an artistic persona meant owning pet alligators or lobsters, having drinking problems, engaging in mysterious downward glances often, being surrounded by impenetrable cliques, and wearing either the latest fashion labels or only thrift-bought clothing. Seeing as how I am a sweatpants and sneakers kind of person, this version of a persona felt like the opposite of authenticity.

Creating a persona for work, even artistic work, is often something that happens without us even realizing. It’s ego doing ego’s thing.

It’s survival, connectivity, and familiarity. And it often earns us a sense of belonging or safety in a space where we spend many of our most alert waking hours. But I believe it’s also necessary to keep a safe distance from that persona, so we can always have enough wiggle room to adjust and realign. Or reorient.

For most of my working life, finding identity in a day job was a losing game, and as much as I’d probably have enough pension to retire in ten years if I’d stayed at one place, I wouldn’t give up the wild experiences I’ve had.

I liked being an outsider at jobs I disliked because I never got too attached to the wrong situation, and it taught me more about myself and others than comfort ever could. I learned that belonging in a space that is not right will never feel rewarding, no matter how hard we try to make it work. So throughout my teens and twenties, even in my early thirties, I treated each role as a case study, and I’m glad I did. And now that I’m an artist, I’m satisfied to align my persona with whatever work is at hand.

Paths are made by walking. —Kafka

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Our ultimate career or vocation can be rewarding. The day jobs and gigs and projects we do to fulfill expectations or survive offer us something else: clear and poignant insight into what we don’t want, do want, never want, and why.

There is so much a lackluster job, in particular, can teach us that can’t be learned second-hand, through simulation or the classroom.

I’m thinking of putting together a class on how to write about day jobs before my book is released. I think it could apply to any genre, because I think there are a lot of interesting entry points for this material. It’s worth meditating about how, across experiences, our identity shifts, even if slightly, from role to role. The way people see us changes, and this can often change the way we see ourselves. When we realize this, however, we can see the ego for just what it is: an actor in need of a role.

Where have we been most aligned with our working persona? Where have we felt unable to abide? These questions get to our essence.

Writing prompt: What did the role, the way you dressed, the shift, the breaks, the expectations, and the lighting do to your sense of comfort or belonging, and how did your leader get it right or fail miserably?

This is a fun exercise, and one I’m finding adapts well to fiction. I hope you’ll try it. Disclaimer: It’s a lot easier to dissect roles and work that reside in your past.

If you’ve ever written about day jobs or plan to, tell me about it. If you’d like to read one of mine, go here.

If you want a breath practice with a dose of mindfulness fix (esp. after that personal story), go here. Our next Creative Resiliency circle will be posted soon.

And if you missed my performance, watch away. My story of voting actually starts whilst walking from one job to the next.

I have done boring things.

Technology is designed, according to the tech evangelists, to replace manual tasks and support the human race to evolve (how, I’ve never heard a solid answer to, but most promise more free time). It seems specifically designed to eliminate jobs such as the one I h…

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This can be acheived in any form, but I find the dual narrative a powerful entrypoint. There’s a level of craft and attention needed, which we’ll dig into, but there’s also an emotional undercurrent to the process of taking on two perspectives to tell a single story.

When we can escape the trappings of a narrow point of view, after all, we find a little more creative freedom. And it is my belief that the best stories (and arguably, the best people) do not dwell in a single perspective, even if they do have a clear personality and belief system. They are open, curious and willing to examine the other side of any system.

“All it takes is just a little change of perspective and you begin to see a whole new world.” — Bob Ross

Then there’s the challenge of actually pulling this off. To show an expansive yet emotionally close narrative view of the world means finding a way to harmonize the two.

I’ve always been drawn toward dual narratives in fiction. A novel with two voices can offer a single story more depth and curiosity, especially when we’re looking at difference (and similarity) across time.

But, writer friends! It is a lot of work.

I felt I had no choice but to do it. My narrative is about a woman in our confusing modern age who is protesting the build of another data center in her small rural hometown as she studies a woman in the 19th century whose unlikely political career inspires her. The connection between the two is just as important as their contrast.

To prepare, I read a few contemporary dual narratives, including The Lost Apothecary, which I was attracted to because of the premise (an apothecary in 18th century England secretly dispenses poisons to help abused women poison their abusers). There are three different narrators here, across time, and they were all compelling enough to follow. As a reader, however, I had my favorite voice.

I was most gratified by the apothecary herself because she was most mysterious, but as a writer I also saw the value of offsetting this voice with a new perspective to maintain that mystery.

And here’s the thing. It’s almost impossible to not want to stick with a particular narrator if the characterization is done well. That delayed gratification—to get back to the other voice—can be leveraged.

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The trick writing dual (or multi) narratives is that all characters have to bring equal weight in value to the overall experience of the book. For me, this was a challenge, and if you know anything about Victoria C. Woodhull, you know her energy is tough to match.

My modern-day character, Avery, is sure of herself but constantly rejected. She has more freedoms than Vicky, but she can’t seem to achieve anything. Meanwhile, her mother is suffering from memory problems that challenge the family. Avery takes solace in Victoria’s tale and tries to sustain the same level of self-belief but struggles. She’s a character with a clear story, but how to make her a compelling character?

That was my big puzzle to solve.

I went back and forth about removing Avery altogether and keeping the tale a fictional retelling of VCW. It would have been so much more straightforward, but I chose the dual narrative because I like to see relationships form across time and explore the cycles that repeat themselves (please read my book and try to ignore the parallels between 19th century Robber Barons and today’s oligarchs, for instance).

So, I’m not sure I’m in a position to give advice as my process was a little messy, but I found after much trial and error that to write both timelines separately with an idea of how they intersect made more sense for me. Otherwise, I would get too caught up in one or the other.

Here are a few recommendations:

1. Focus on the unique offering of each voice, not the balance. They will never be perfectly matched in your or anyone’s mind.

2. If you are called to have more than one perspective in your novel, don’t let anyone talk you out of it!

3. Try writing both perspectives seperately first.

4. Be willing to invest a little more in the outlining process, and be flexible—whether you do this before you write or after, develop a clear overview of where the stories will transition and where you can plant connections.

5. Have fun. It’s not torture. It might be some days, but mostly not … really. It’s okay. It’s really okay.

The benefits to a dual timeline include more perspective, more questions, more depth. The challenges are keeping interest, not pissing off a reader who is curious to see what happens next, and harmonizing the content without obsessing about how they match up against one another.

If you’re a writer, do a little exercise with me.

Prompt: Write a short scene in which you have at least two characters facing a challenge. Focus on one of the character’s perspectives of that scene.

Now, write from the other character’s POV looking back a year from the scene, remembering it either fondly or not so fondly.

Let me know how it goes. Let me know if it brings a little more perspective.

Speaking of harmonization, I recently participated in a podcast interview in which the interviewer called me “The Fort Knox of Tranquility,” which I rather loved. I’ll be sharing that here soon. It was one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had about the book so far.

In the meantime, I’m offering you a practice I posted to Insight Timer that uses breath to find balance - calm energy, not adrenaline. Please accept my sincere gratitude for your support. I ask that if you are able, become a paid subscriber, share this post, or give it a like so I know you’re here.

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Invite!!

This Saturday at 5 p.m. ET (on my birthday weekend), you are invited to hear my slam story through the lens of the very first presidental election I participated in. This story is fierce, and I’ll be sharing the stage with amazing women at Join us!! Thank you to for hosting and championing so many voices (while being an amazing storyteller herself).

Another invite!!

I’m looking for a few early readers of my book. A “street team” if you will. If you are interested and want to see how/if I pulled off this dual narrator thing, let me know (jenknox395@gmail.com) and I’ll send info. I’ll post the FINAL book cover here soon.

The character is lacking agency, the narrative is flat, the ideas feel stale. Worse: you don’t even know what’s wrong. Things just feel off.

I had professional development funds to use or lose at work, so I asked to be signed up for a Design Thinking course at Harvard. I thought it’d be super easy and intuitive. I’m a creative person, after all, and design thinking is all about creative problem-solving. I teach this. I do this all the time.

Or do I?

I’ve spoken about DT before (always circling), but I want to introduce a new concept adapted from what I recently learned that might ring familiar to many writers: Imagining Alternate Worlds.

The curriculum suggested that in dilemmas, there are many ways to think about creatively designing a solution. This is just one, and its value is found in pretending to be someone else.

Let’s say you have a problem running a restaurant due the fast-paced nature of the work leading to inconsistent customer service. OK, then, let’s think about what other people who inhabit different roles and struggle with fast-paced work. Perhaps an employee at a hospital or a roofing team lead on a hot day. How might someone doing one of these jobs problem-solve in your restaurant scenario?

As writers, we’re always considering alternate worlds. Even in nonfiction, we can explore the interior and exterior as one, exploring perspectives from many angles.

But when we get stuck and are unsure what to do next—in our careers or in the story (or blog) we’re trying to write, we can implement this same kind of thinking as a solution.

What would others who are inventing things do if they were stuck? A scientist whose theory proved wrong. A hiker needing to traverse a wide creek. A chef who is missing an ingredient.

Then ask how they might move forward if they had to keep going.

How might a scientist respond to an explosion in the lab? How might a hiker use what’s around her to create a bridge? How could a chef experiment with ingredients? How might a first-grade teacher support a student who is struggling?

more questions …

How might your own character write this part of your book? How might a hostage negotiator deal with a publisher that disagrees with edits? How might a psychologist explore agency with your character?

Another way to look at this is adopting an alter ego.

When I think of alter egos, I think of Prince. He famously had many, including a symbol that I’m not sure the world will ever decipher.

One of his AEs was Camille, who he channeled when he wanted to sing in a high-pitched and transcendent way. He had others for song writing in different genres, and yet others for business.

Prince occupied many worlds for and with his art.

However you access the alternate, I think it begins with listening and trusting that we can use creativity to tackle creativity problems. Seems on-brand, right? Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

This post is public, but I would be grateful if you’d support by considering a paid subscription or donation; alternately, share it with a friend, a writer, or anyone who needs a reframe.

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Prompt: Next time you or your piece hits a wall, needs inspiration, feels stale, take a Quantum Leap (anyone?) and see how it feels to tackle this from a non-writer’s perspective.

Paid subscribers: THANK YOU! Here is a link to our next meet-up. Just bring your creative self. https://luma.com/jqd53cf6

From memory, rewrite a conversation with someone who has been influential in your life — for better or the worse.

Alternately, write about a character who is trying to remember what someone said.

Human memory is complex, and I want to talk about it.

I want to talk about memory because it comes up a lot when one writes nonfiction, especially personal stories, and I happen to be teaching a workshop for Thurber House on memoir in a week.

I studied creative nonfiction (CNF) in graduate school. We learned techniques for telling emotional truths in responsible ways, by clarifying when a memory is biased or setting the stage when we fill in dialogue we only half-remember. Of course there are disclaimers and mentions of our own tendency toward human error.

I also know the way memory works because I’ve read numerous articles on neuroscience and have watched dozens of videos that re-explain how the memory works and why, at times, it doesn’t work.

As covered in the video I link above, memories can be lost through encoding errors (lack of attention), consolidation (how we store information), and retrieval (takes practice).

Despite our human tendency to be wrong, I believe that we can write responsibly with our fallible human memories, and we can use what we DO remember as endless fodder for creative material. We can also rely on memory to help us imagine.

Compelling CNF often relies on episodic memory, and this is defined as how we remember scenic events, such as conversations or pivotal events in our lives—things we deem important and resonant enough to embody. Various sensory details come into play in our episodic memory, and some of us remember with more or fewer colors, scents, tastes, textures and sounds.

How does our nervous system react to various events or ideas? When you hear the word “networking,” for instance, do you get excited or does your body contract? What about the word community? What happens when I mention your favorite food?

Digging into these reactions is revelatory, fun, and sometimes tough.

I used to have brilliant episodic memory, but lately, if I’m being honest, I have serious short-term memory problems and brain fog. It might be age/hormones/stress/diet/sleep (though I sleep like a champ)/glutamate or dopamine issues/environment issues/distraction or […] fill in the blank.

I’ve pursued all these possibilities through allopathic and alt therapies. And I still have issues (though much fewer), which I believe are exacerbated by distraction (I do too much, always have) and stress.

What helps are pauses. Prompts like what I led this blog with. Repeating information on paper or recalling it more often seems to be the best strategy to support my ability to hold information that matters.

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The more we nurture our memory, the less we rely on cloudy emotions to tell our story, and the deeper with can mine our material. We don’t have to write nonfiction or get all details perfect to find that deepening our episodic memory deepens our writing. And, ironically, it helps us connect to the emotions of readers because we are inviting conversation and connection.

I always do these prompts I offer you, but usually I try them before I post. This time, I’m writing with you and contemplating conversations I thought I remembered well but don’t, and I realize this is most often because I’m not paying attention.

What might my memory be like if I slowed down a little? What opportunities did I miss by rushing? What realizations await if I just chill a little more?

Lots of questions today, but here are my thoughts.

Memory aides writing and creative output. Writing and creative output clarifies memory. And what seems to help with both is slowing down and deepening our ability to listen.

While much of the world is in a hurry to get nowhere, we are passing by moments we’ll want to remember.

Case-in-point: Where is that guy in the Bronco weaving in and out of traffic at 90 mph in a 65 going that’s so important? I highly doubt it’s to visit his grandmother in the hospital or to support the rehousing of a displaced family. Perhaps it is, but I doubt it.

This isn’t just about presence. There’s room for contemplation and potential in any moment. Our brains will never be static, but we can slow down. We can.

We can make time to read by refusing to scroll as much. We can make time to listen by planting our cellphones facedown when we’re out to dinner. We can have deep conversations on long walks, rather than just before an appointment or over text messages. We can contribute to conversations worth remembering, worth writing down five years from now, worth our precious and ephemeral time.

If you write to the prompt at the beginning of this post, please let me know how it goes.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

This post is public, but I would be grateful if you’d support by considering becoming a paid subscription or through donation; alternately, share it with a friend, a writer, or anyone who needs a reframe.

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If you are a paid subscriber, I’m offering a few complementary 30-min coaching sessions over the next month to YOU (first come, first serve).

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Here’s a short meditation on exploring the moment and coming back when we feel the scattered nature of being rushed from here to there. Man in the Bronco, you can slow down. You’ll still get there. I promise.

If you are doing the kind of work that people will remember, you will not be universally liked.

Writing that has a heartbeat sparks reactions varying from adoration to disgust. We see the hyperspeed version of this on social media, but unlike clickbait, thoughtful and intentional art can cause a person to question their perspective.

When I was a kid, the first book that did this for me was Flowers for Algernon. I remember reading it and thinking it was sad, it was strange, it was impossible to put down, and it was confusing because it scrambled everything I knew about being successful or important in the world. It caused me to better understand that there was and is a myopic version of intelligence and that looking/sounding/being status quo can sterilize the heart (though I wouldn’t have used those words at 9).

Not everyone is a fan of every perspective, nor is everyone willing to step outside their bubble. Not everyone is tolerant. Not everyone is kind.

As such, if you are doing the real work, some people will want your words to disappear. I wrote about this here and here. And here I am writing about it again.

Violette Leduc was born in the early 1900s and became a friend of Simone de Beauvoir with whom she shared her creatively courageous work. Already with a platform, Beauvoir championed Leduc’s personal writing and connected her to the right people to get published.

But Leduc was a woman who explored body issues, such as her self-proclaimed ugliness and her unabashed passions as a gay woman, without shying away or hiding behind layers of metaphor. She was compelled to share her truths and didn’t have tolerance for the illogic that told her she was crazy for wanting to do so.

“I want to be remembered,” Violette Leduc wrote. She believed she could do that through writing.

Her first book, La Bâtarde, was edited for “offensive” content. Leduc was called hysterical (as one is when doing anything real in the world) and ridiculed for being honest about her desires. But she was adored by the few who were conscious enough to see her story for what it was. Human.

I never assume to know why a writer writes. But if I were to guess, Leduc didn’t write for acceptance from the mainstream gatekeepers. She wrote to be remembered by those who understood and didn’t speak as freely as she could. And she wrote for those who would read with enough openness to try to understand.

Leduc is not the focus of my next book, but she’s one of many who inspire me to keep going. She’s influencing my reason for continuing to write by hand under a willow tree while the world seems to care less about the musings of a strange middle-aged woman who is relishing in something as simple as sitting on the ground beneath a shady tree.

Those of us who are not mainstream, not wealthy, not hiring ghostwriters or having AI write for us, need to keep going until we have nothing left to say. The more diverse and nuanced the human tapestry is, the less language can be used against us. The more muddled and diluted we allow it to be, the more our reality will look less like a tapestry and more like my mother’s yarn after her cat gets into it.

So here’s a prompt for you.

Anything that you’ve outsourced or rewritten or censored deserves to be resuscitated. Breathe life into its lungs again and let it reform. The sentences and paragraphs you’ve rewritten into something polite and unrecognizable might get likes, but likes are cheap.

Instead of adding a filter to our work, let’s allow the rawness. Let’s invite people to try to remove passages because we know our true audience will find them.

Prompt: Write one paragraph that scares you this week. Write the emotional, uncomfortable work. Write what AI cannot. Write about passions or what is taboo or what you disagree with that you know you’d take shit for.

And don’t do it to fit in with yet another group or to sound cool or counterculture, just write your truth. See what comes. You can always burn it later if need be.

Two items remain at our old house, one of which is a monstera plant that lives on the back deck. We left it for the new resident to babysit because a wren nested there. As I was doing backyard cleanup and hauling boxes, mama wren would watch me as her babies began to open their little mouths each time they sensed movement.

Stopping to greet them brought peace during the roller coaster of cleaning up and cleaning out our old home.

Moving our worldly possessions 18 miles meant filling and unloading a U-Haul truck four times over days that boasted temps in the 90s F (32.2 C)—it was an extreme sport.

Beyond the financial, physical and mental taxation of a move, the process has been like holding an unforgiving mirror up to my own state of mind and patterns of behavior.

For my husband, who is more sentimental than me, there were realizations about what he was ready to let go of and what habits he wanted to break.

For me, the pangs came as I flipped through dozens of unfinished notebooks. Some were journals. Some contained story ideas or half-finished novels that will never see completion, at least not by me. Seeing the sheer number of them reminded me of the dynamic nature of this human experience—the various states of mind and ideas—but more, it reminded me of the value of this practice.

I remember reading a cynical but cool and well-crafted essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion, and have a slightly different take.

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.” —Joan Didion

For me, and for many in 2026 I’d venture, to keep a notebook offline is something more entirely. There is something about drafting longhand in our digital and sterilized world. It is a record of impressions and ideas that are true.

When I’ve been in times of transition, handwriting offered a palatable balance of clarity and understanding.

Yes, I was particularly exhausted and emotional during the move. Not just due to the sheer amount of work and details to keep track of but also because my life wasn’t stopping and I had no time to process.

When I was a kid, journaling was not “being a writer,” it was more than that. It was everything. Curiosity, clarity, creativity, fun … magic. I used to dream of sitting under a willow tree, making this magic happen. I imagined feeling sheltered in wonder, and writing or drawing or just dreaming.

I’m here in my new home now, staring out at this majestic tree. Sit with me a moment. Take a few breaths.

There are moments like this. We take a breath and pull in the entirety of the scene, embodying it.

Then there are moments when reality stings. As I sit here in days to come, bugs will crawl over my legs and I’ll have to refresh the sunscreen, a neighbor might try to give me a flyer about being saved, the unpacking could be endless, or I’ll sit beneath the willow and notice nothing but yard cleanup (adulthood!), then think about work emails or data centers.

Nonetheless, I think about a prompt a good friend and former student gave me that allows wider perspective. He suggested I think about who I was when I arrived at the old place and who I was when I left.

I plan to visit this in my journal soon. Shortly after writing this, in fact. In the meantime, I do know who I am here and now. I have it in writing. I’m grateful because I know I will nurture and create here. And if you know my story, this vision realized is nothing short of the very magic I did in my imagination.

I hope you find a place that fills you up this way, too, where you live or where you can visit. I had beautiful places to write where I used to live, too. There are spaces and places that call to us.

I suppose this blog is offered with the suggestion that we all remember to sit reverently in those places. To call back what gave us wonder as children.

When we reconnect to what mystified us as kids, after all, we come back to ourselves.

Prompt: Write longhand for a week and see what happens. Maybe ask what your childhood self might’ve found magical about your current enviornment.

It’s harder to delete what we write longhand. It’s harder, and that’s why it’s everything.

So, I’m off to explore my friend’s prompt, then unpack some more boxes. I’ll post what I’d originally planned to post here soon.

Friends, thank you for slowing down with me and taking time to read.

Paid subscribers, join me here for a Creative Resiliency circle: https://luma.com/jqd53cf6

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Part of resilience is about finding ways to deal with failure. And I often feel I have failed more than most people I know. Is that true? Maybe not, but it sure feels like it.

As writers, we can get rejected, which I think is the most straightforward way of failing. Or, we can fail by quitting or comparing or not believing in ourselves.

I was recently asked to help create a class for undergraduates at OSU that centers on resilience and, specifically, how to bounce back from failure.

To go beyond the empirical, I’ve been diving into studies and therapies and business theories and poetry and interviews to come up with the most engaging way of helping students understand what makes a person able to handle failure and even thrive because of it (rather than despite it).

Especially when the failure is recurrent. (What do we do then?)

As mentioned, I fail a lot. Writers do. I have piles of rejections. In fact, as I started packing to move, I found a little chest full of paper rejections from the years I first started submitting my writing to literary journals in my 20s. The chest was full.

I’ve had books flop and publication processes go horribly. Once, in my late twenties, a story I thought was my greatest work to date was published in a college journal I won’t name. It was a print journal from a prestigious place, and due to a lot of experiences I won’t name here, I wanted every word to be perfect. I edited and proofed and had friends check it.

When my copy came in the mail, I felt the bubble of excitement as I tore open the envelope. The journal itself featured a poignant image and felt silky to the touch. I flipped to my story and saw the title and smiled, then I read the first line. Typo.

I’ve failed at jobs. I’ve failed at getting jobs. I’ve failed as a friend. I’ve failed in initiatives as a business owner (I tried to put on a literary conference for Unleash last year that utterly failed). I’ve failed myself in conversations. I’ve presented job proposals to get funding I desperately needed and was ignored. I’ve had relationships with agents and friends fall apart. I’ve been ghosted, notably by my best friend when I was in my early 20s. I’ve been illogically upset numerous times due to a failure of emotional regulation.

Failure is not fun. And even if you’re used to it, the numbness of perseverance is not real. Unless you’re heavily medicated, it hurts.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett

In my research, and while reflecting on my life experiences (which a blurber of my forthcoming essay collection called “tumultuous”), I realized what it takes to fail … if not well, at least with some artistic flair.

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I can break this down more. Here are some of my notes and observations over the last weeks:

1. Meditative perspective. Don’t quit. Or quit. Either way, don’t be hard on yourself. You can come back. You can always come back to the present, and despite the memes, it’s okay to also stay in the past or future at times. It’s how we reconcile it all.

2. Social perspective. Comparison and competition can kill fun and make a person forget why they do the thing. My only advice here is a social media fast. And a call or email to the person who has something you covet that thanks them for their contributions in the world.

3. Research perspective. A course on failure at Duke University applies the nine-dot puzzle, which has been around since 1907, to help people think about limitations and how to redefine it. Exercises like this can be frustrating in of themselves if we don’t figure it out right away. (I didn’t, and I like to think of myself as a wildly creative person.) The point is, even creative people fall into patterns of thought.

   

4. Practical perspective. Failure and disappointment are real. We can fail in many ways. We cannot avoid it by not having goals or not trying because not trying in of itself is a failure. So, if either path leads to failure, let’s return to Beckett’s words.

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As we get better at watching our own patterns of thinking, we can identify expectations that don’t match reality. We can shatter expectations and create from a place that’s more complex than success/failure. And this is when we can trust ourselves. This is when we open up new worlds and find a strange beauty in failure.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

This post is public, but I would be grateful if you’d support by considering a paid subscription or donation; alternately, share it with a friend, a writer, or anyone who needs a reframe.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Prompt: List a few of your failures with the awareness that failure = human experience. Failure = Living.

Pick one and write in any genre, just using the failure itself as a catalyst. I’ll do this with you. Here’s the mishap from my childhood that I plan to expand on.

🎤︎︎

P.S. - Next time I post, it’ll be from my new house. Till then, fail well, and please tell me about it.

When I say that, what is the first thing that comes to mind? (Please put it in the chat before reading on … I’m so curious.)

Identifying regionally as a writer can offer some interesting material, and we don’t always have a choice about what that is or how others label it. More (and this is the toughie), where we are located influences what and the way we see reality.

What does it mean to be a writer or person in the world where you are right now?

How does it impact the way you see the rest of the world?

I grew up knowing that I was in the state that was “round on the ends and ‘hi’ in the middle.” Please don’t hold that against me. Then again, if you do, that’s part of my story.

I grew up in a test market city, middle America, where businesses got their start or realized they wouldn’t make it because we, Ohioans, supposedly represented what was average about the American experience.

To be born in the Midwestern states can mean different things today, but to me, growing up in the 80s and 90s, it meant being raised with an appreciation for honesty and sarcasm in equal measure. It meant having access to endless lush green (but mostly flat) land, to be surrounded by an abundance of creeks and cardinals and crawdads. It meant to call the little bugs that light up at night either lightning bugs or fireflies, depending on the side of town.

To be from the capital of Ohio also meant to come from a bustling downtown that was just a few miles from an abundance of farmland; Columbus, during my lifetime, was always a growing city where the freeways couldn’t keep up and everyone was supposed to love football. To be from here means being from a swing state that shifted red, not by population shift but through redistricting.

Ohio is the target of many stand-up jokes. It’s understandable. But even within that, there is material to mine as a writer. Regionality, like any experience, shapes how and what we see.

I often tell coaching clients: start where you are. Not in the ‘write what you know’ sense alone, but in the more literal sense. Where does the ground under your feet lead you? What assumptions has your region baked into you without your consent?

Even when I was in Texas, I often wrote stories centered in the Ohio that was imprinted in my mind, and as I look back on all that I’ve examined, I realize, increasingly, the distinction of that lens.

It’s there in Radicals (my forthcoming historical novel), too. Ohio shaped Victoria Woodhull, born in Homer, raised in a family of grifters and visionaries, who left and kept leaving and never fully escaped the place that made her. She became the first woman to run for president, and almost nobody in the state that produced her knows her name. That erasure feels very Ohio to me. The flatness that swallows things whole.

But tapping into where we are doesn’t have to be limiting. It can be freeing.

It can open our eyes to what we have to offer and what we have to learn.

What’s outside your window? What do you see during your commute or when walking the dog? What landscapes fill your vision? What is available or not available at your local grocery store?

Being present and honest about where we are and how it influences us helps to set the stage for creative exploration and helps us to question our assumptions, so let’s do that.

Prompt: Take some time to explore what it means to be where you are right now. What does your geography ask of you? What stereotypes are placed upon you, what nature surrounds you, and how does all of it reflect and resist who you are?

Mindfulness practice: Try it for a week. Get all regionally aware. :)

Sidebar: Along with my narrative about Victoria Woodhull, my forthcoming novel interweaves a current-day narrative that reflects a truth that is emergent and terrifying here. The modern-day character, Avery, is searching for Victoria’s strength as she tries to stand in the way of the construction of a new data center in her neighborhood.

As I move, this is actually happening in the town I will soon live. The good and the bad both feed our narratives. They are part of the human story and dilemma. I am not amused by the coincidence.

I, Jen Knox, am a writer from Ohio. I am also more than that.

Here’s a little sample of how the state showed up in my early work. I wrote this flash piece I wrote for my sister when I didn’t think we’d speak again (I look so young! Eek!).

Keys tapping or the gentle pen scratch sooths my heart and mind. Writing is medicine, and while life sometimes gets in the way, I never talk myself out of the act of writing and flow—the creative stream weaves its way around any block … even…

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I am cold beneath my blanketlike coat as we traverse winding Ohio roads after the first snow. My husband drives fast below a winter sky that reminds me of images I’ve seen of the Arctic Ocean. I tell him to slow down, and he tells me not to backseat-drive as the news thrums, sinking our hearts. I watch the sky turn to pure ice.

A white …

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—George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin)

Everything in the creative world builds, if given the right care.

Through one heroine’s story, we find another source of inspiration, a new question. Sometimes fictional characters nag us or follow us from one story to the …

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—Margaret Atwood

In the last few weeks, life has felt particularly heavy due to many unknowns.

I found myself navigating the process of buying a new house during a faltering economy and job uncertainty; meanwhile, my husband was diagnosed with a genetic dis…

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Their characters and ideas, however, were very much alive inside me and other readers. And, to my young mind, I believed this to be magic.

I still do. The magic of genuine, human storytelling = nothing short of traveling across time and connecting with others in the quie…

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I’ve always been fascinated by people who sacrifice convention and its de facto safety in exchange for an unrelenting devotion to vision and creative integrity. Such people are often said to be ahead of their time.

This fascination is what led me to write about Victoria C. Wood…

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While I was in Vermont, I didn’t want to think about social media or my website. Well, at least not at first. But after I met an artist who asked if I’d help her navigate my website so she could…

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