I recently came back from teaching at the Desert Nights Rising Stars conference at ASU. There, I was able to be both student and teacher. Reader and audience. Meals were spent discussing philosophy and workshopping ideas. It was a beautiful and creatively nourishing time.

The experience made me want to revist the concept of devotion in creative work and creative living.

I was once told that devotion is more important than focus or goal setting because devotion is something we can practice every day, through the highs and lows.

Creative devotion mirrors our beliefs and subsequent actions. The beliefs are tied to what we believe about the work we are creating. Are we doing it to check a box? To impress someone? To communicate something too complex for most conversations? To better understand ourselves? I could keep going, but the fact is what we believe influences our actions.

Discouragement comes in myriad forms. It’s not just being told that you need a prefab audience. It can be having bad communication from a publisher or partnering bookstore. It can mean reaching fewer people than we wanted (at least initially).

Some writers take hits because we feel we should be creating more, others wonder if writing even matters in a time of automation and acceptable plagiarism. Still other writers and artists believe they don’t have time to create and release what they take in.

“On the one side were techno-optimists who foresaw a utopian future. AI would eliminate workplace drudgery, diagnose diseases more effectively than doctors could, and save humanity from one of its most loathed burdens: paying writers for anything, ever.” —Brian Phillips

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Whatever the source of our discouragement, we must believe in ourselves and our messages to practice creative devotion. When we start putting pressure on ourselves (or feel external pressure) to meet unrealistic timelines or compete with others (or hit x # of followers), it seems the work responds with rebellion.

“As any classically trained singer or actor can tell you, trying to make your voice sound like someone else’s can do all manner of damage to it.”

—Lauren Elkin

So here we are.

Individually, we can’t change larger trends or industry standards, and many don’t have the luxury to create more time, but we can change our mindset about the whole deal. Easy to say, I know. But this is why fostering creative devotion is the order of the day.

We should all acknowledge that we live in a time that pressurizes artists and tries to diminish contributions by replicating them en masse. Got it, got it! but! Here’s my message to counter such perspectives. If you hit a wall, try these reframes:

• The lack of creative intellectual property (IP) or the prevalence of AI can force us to adopt the “write for myself” mindset.

• Lack of time might add momentum if it is not forced.

• Thinking we should be creating more might mean we believe we have more to give.

• There is only one of us, and the only true way of wasting time is by trying to be like someone else.

And if the reframes aren’t enough for you, here’s a firm pep talk I used in my confidence post.

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Stop wasting time trying to become what and who you already are.

You are where you need to be. You are creating what you are supposed to be creating, and you are creating it at the perfect pace and in a way that will allow the result to find its ideal timeline and audience—be that small or large, be that what you think will meet your current expectations or not. Despite what you sometimes think, you are on the right track, and it matters, and it matters in the way it should. Share your messages in the way you are sharing them, not from a place of pressure or guilt or fear or competition or even urgency. Share what you are called to share and nothing more.

Again, stop wasting time trying to become what and who you already are.

This is a bit of self-talk, but I thought I’d share it here with the intuition that it might resonate with a few of you. Yes, our voices matter, but perhaps the more important message is that we will say exactly what we need to say and release what we observe in our own time. We must remember not to get in our own way or psyche ourselves out.

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Prompt: Explore the possibility of being radically you today. Journal accordingly.

Hey, hey, buy links for RADICALS are here. I promise you won’t regret it. Buy copies for friends and family and co-workers.

Nice words below:

“Radicals by Jen Knox has the bones of a period drama and the pulse of a small-town story: in the 1870s, a woman reaches for the presidency; more than a century later, another woman tries to make her hometown listen.” —Leah Tran

“Radicals is a book I’d give to a friend who likes a story with a real heart beating underneath it. Jen Knox's story follows Victoria C. Woodhull from a childhood marked by hardship into an adult life full of reinvention, while Avery, a young woman in 2026 Ohio, tries to find her footing at home. The two timelines give the book a clear, easy-to-follow shape, and the personal struggles make the history feel close rather than distant.” —Samantha Olsen

A week earlier, I was sitting in the sun on my porch with Potato, my chunky red heeler, by my side. She hadn’t seemed to want to walk, so I was holding the leash loosely, reading something in my phone.

In an instant, a cat rushed across the street and Potato rushed after it. The leash caught on the top joint of my middle finger and twisted my hand, slamming it against the railing. My finger was severely bent, the joint displaced and, I’d soon find out, I had spiral fracture in my middle finger.

I was not sure surgery was the best idea. Costs had been quoted, and I knew from research that my finger would not heal well without it. Meanwhile, with surgery, I would run the risk of nerve damage or scar tissue that would equally deform my finger.

My finger was “on the cusp,” my surgeon said, so it was up to me.

My inability to make a decision led me to postpone the surgery a week, hoping the “buddy tape” method would straighten things out. But the healing wasn’t happening, and my joint ached, so I scheduled.

Then I thought about unscheduling and getting a second opinion. I couldn’t get in anywhere and my window of optimal healing was closing.

Alas, I sat beneath a cooling blanket and answered the same questions again and again. Yes, I was there for surgery. Yes, my right/dominant hand. Yes, I was sensitive to anesthesia. I still doubted my choice. But I was stuck now, a writer who wanted her middle finger in tact. A woman living in America who wanted her middle finger in tact. A woman “on the cusp” fretting over whether she made the right decision.

Have you ever sat with a decision for too long, working it over and over in your mind so many times that you can no longer determine what is instinct and what is fear?

As a meditator, I’m usually pretty in tune.

But if I’m being honest, I’ve been here before while writing. For me, indecision mostly shows up when I am trying to decide on the order of things. I am mildly dyslexic, so I often have to cut and paste clauses or words or even paragraphs to follow a logical order. But the way to tell the story I want to tell is often what I overthink. Should it be first person or third? Past tense or present? Chronological or framed? Experimental?

And each of these choices truly does make a huge difference, as do life choices regarding where to eat or work or what to wear.

The ironic thing is that any seasoned fiction writer knows that a character must have agency. Meaning, they must make decisions.

To dwell in indecision is to believe there is an absolutely wrong decision. If the decision is not hurting anyone, however, is there? Really?

Besides, when it comes to storytelling, to think there is a “wrong” decision is boring.

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After practicing my breathing exercises in the hospital bed to calm, I began to see how deep breathing changed the levels showing on my vitals screen and began to experiment with breath of fire, holding my breath, extended exhales, etc. I was abandoning my doubt and entertaining myself—so much so that the resident anesthesiologist came in laughing. I doubt many 47-year-old women do this while they wait.

After I woke up, I was told it was a “best case scenario” and that while I’d been under, they’d done a closed reduction to pull my bones back together and eliminate the painful twisted position my finger had been in. I was thrilled, relieved, overjoyed, but also … I remembered how much time I’d spent in doubt and fear.

Perhaps in our life decisions and writing, there are no wrong answers. I keep thinking about the numerous sleepless nights and desire to cancel what turned out to be a “best case scenario” and have come to a conclusion you may or may not agree with.

There are no wrong answers. We feel doubt when we are afraid, and sometimes we are afraid for good reason. But worry and doubt can be completely useless distractions. When paired, they simply mean we think we have more control than we do. I’d like to replace them with conscientiousness and presence. Maybe decisions won’t always be easy, but I can do the best I can.

Perhaps on another day, the worst possible outcome would have happened, but my decision would have been the same. It was my best guest, and when I let go of worrying over whether it was right, even for a moment, I found myself living again. Lauging again over the idea that I thought I had some semblance of control.

This week, as I travel to Arizona for a conference and present my historical novel for the first time (still for preorder, friends!!), I am attempting to practice surrender. After all, my finger is healing better than expected. And when we show up for what we believe in, then let go, magic happens.

Prompt: Write about a time you/a character moved forward despite doubt. What happened?

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reminder to self and others. a practice on courage…

Paid subscribers: Attend our next write-in on Nov 12.

The fact that I didn’t know of Victoria Woodhull as an adult was disturbing. As an Ohioan who learned Ohio history and considers herself a feminist, I had never heard of Victoria, the first woman to run for the U.S. Presidency, and I wondered why. Her story began to come up in small ways over the years, and this led me to read more about her. A social post ultimately pulled the string that got me researching her, and over the last few years, this research led me down an interesting path of discovery.

I consider myself creative (obv), but I’d be hard-pressed to ever imagine a character as enigmatic as Victoria Woodhull. She was a woman of firsts, who made being disenfranchised look like a superpower. It was the erasure of her story that propelled me forward in my personal investigation, but it was also her seeming anticipation of this erasure.

When I began to write about Victoria, what drove me became less about why she was erased and more about how she lived (in a way in which no one would believe her story anyway). I found myself propelled by two questions: Who was this woman, really, and how did she find the fortitude to accomplish so much in one lifetime?

Victoria’s life was filled with enough drama to fill many volumes, but my sincere hope with RADICALS is to explore something different than scandal and suffrage.

I want to explore some semblance of the interiority of a woman who was able to accomplish so much with so few rights. To make the mystery more intense, my research quickly revealed many conflicting stories. I explored clips from her political campaigns and letters, hateful critiques of her beliefs, local news stories that claimed certain things happened on certain dates, while biographies claimed they happened on other dates. Then there were commissioned biographies and Victoria’s own publications. Across these readings, I met many versions of one woman, and I strove to explore these versions with curiosity, not supposition.

A few “facts” overlap. Victoria grew up in poverty; she endured myriad abuses that influenced her political beliefs. Undereducated, she found mentors and leveraged an uncanny ability to understand human behavior to become a self-educated charismatic leader who advocated for women’s rights and a desire for all people to have “untrammeled” lives. She spoke, unabashedly, of beliefs that were radical in the nineteenth century, notably that spirits were guiding her and that every person should have the right to love whomever they choose however they choose.

Ultimately, Victoria found herself surrounded by controversy. She found a way to align herself and get funding from those who were benefiting most from the American system she railed against during the Gilded Age. Even when she became incredibly wealthy herself, largely thanks to the backing of Cornelius Vanderbilt, she advocated for the poor and disenfranchised.

The Licking County Historical Society archives in Ohio provided me with access to Victoria’s personal writings, including the start of a memoir. In it, Victoria states her belief that she was led by spirits, notably the spirit of Greek orator Demosthenes, who she considered a spirit guide and mentor along her quest for power. Victoria’s belief system seemed foundational to her courage. In a world where she did not have much freedom, it seemed she was able to find strength to do the impossible by believing she had the support of those in other realms.

I want to be clear that Radicals is a work of fiction. I do not know another way to tell Victoria’s story without falling into assumption and bias. At first, I thought I’d tell Victoria’s story in the third person, but her character demanded more attention. Then, I thought it would be just her story, but the parallels between the Gilded Age and the America of today begged to be explored, so I introduced a modern timeline.

While this novel is largely influenced by Victoria’s story, Avery plays the role of a filter and philosopher. While Avery takes her own journey toward personal empowerment, she also allows a different view of the past and exposes many of the dilemmas we face today as she finds her own political voice through theater. Much like Victoria was influenced by mythology and spiritual guides, Avery is influenced by the mythology and spirit of Victoria.

I leveraged the scaffolding of a historical timeline to explore Victoria’s life, following her relationships and businesses and campaigns for both business and office. But these accomplishments and dynamics are secondary to me. Who she was and why she was able to succeed in any capacity, despite the odds, seemed an interesting juxtaposition against a modern character who feels powerless, even while having many more rights on paper.

In our modern times, how does a person stand up for what they believe when they don’t know where to begin?

And with all our conveniences, can we still find strength from those who accomplished the seemingly impossible hundreds of years before when much communication took place in person? I began to wonder what Victoria would have to say about what is going on today, in 2026.

I believe that we have a lot to gain from exploring historical figures through the lens of fiction, especially those whose stories have been muddied by time and political motive. After all, it is only by admitting the fictions and exploring stories from new angles that we can find our way to some semblance of truth.

All this to say, my novel is now available for pre-order. Distribution is just getting going. I hope it does this enigmatic woman justice and, if nothing else, asks questions we need to ask about our absurd reality today. How might Victoria respond to the America of today?

The full link to order direct from the publisher, along with all populating buy links through Simon and Schuster are here. If you enjoy it, please share in reviews or with friends … this book didn’t come easy (case-in-point).

Cheers!!

Prompt: Write about someone, real or imagined, who breaks barriers. Explore the full human, not just the heroic figure.

Life prompt: Join me on Halloween for a mind-body event. Attend our next write-in on Nov 12. Yesterday’s was nourishing.

One of the first abstract painters, Hilma af Klint, believed her best work, the work she didn’t sell but kept to share with friends and loved ones, was the work that guided her. Not the work she did quickly or for income. She believed she channeled the work, and myriad writers have said the same, or aligned their process to the feeling of release. An ego release, perhaps.

Whether you see your own writing as a partnership with the spirit world or good old fashioned hard work or hard living that is finally paying off, the same thing is true. The work that connects over time and the work that is the most nourishing to create is the work that extends beyond the ease and convenenience of fast typing and writing-to-market.

The problem is, there are times when creativity is … slow to find us. Most of us are wired now to rush, so we fill our space with other things:

We click the “breaking news” story because it’s habitual and we are endlessly curious about human behaviors. Also, it might actually be breaking news this time! We need to do a safety check, after all.

We click on the funny videos because we want distraction. Is it real? Probably. Maybe. Though most cat videos, I’m guessing, are AI at this point.

We click publish before we’ve put our all in.

We zone out when we’re at dinner or speaking to a friend because we’re thinking about all we have to do.

We trip over a branch on a hike because we’re trying to get a picture of some aspect of nature.

Maybe we don’t do all of these things, but the point is, we humans are easily distracted, and our desire to capture everything keeps us running from the very beauty we seek.

What happened to sitting around bored, waiting for the muse to inject us with some divine inspiration? What happened to taking time to figure out, then listen to, our inner truth?

We also know know the value of writing to clear our heads and explore the nuanced beauty of life. Still, we click. We mindwander. We put the book down. We decide to skip writing group. We feel helpless to busyness, distraction or information overload.

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In a post that’s part of my Year to Live series, I asked folks to look at a clockface for a full minute. You can do that here if you’re curious (or at home if you have an analog clock). This exercise is common in beginning meditation courses because it shows you how busy the mind truly is. If you have trouble with the exercise (or have no time to do it), I assure you. We can rebuild our stamina.

Reading enables us to connect by slowing us down and relating to another’s story. Writing becomes a release, then a release valve loosens and it becomes something else. It flows. The dopamine-addicted and distracted part of the mind is suddenly less important than the brilliance of connecting across time and space.

So let’s slow down, shall we?

I taught this at the Cultural Arts Center not long ago, and it reminded me of the value of ekphrasis to exercise for the concentration muscle and reawaken that flow of creative energy. Let’s try together.

Prompt: Spend 5 minutes with “Altarpiece” by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944).* Simply explore it.

Blow it up, zoom in, and see what you can find beyond the obvious. Look at the color choices, the textures created, the details you didn’t notice at first. Write a piece that either a.) describes the art in a poetic way, b.) explores the meaning through an entirely new story or lens, or c.) speaks to the artist directly, across time and space, inquiring and sharing your thoughts as honestly as possible.

Let me know what materializes.

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An offering to paid subscribers on cultivating stillness and reframing limiting beliefs is here. Our next live write-in RSVP is here.

We will cultivate inner stillness so that we can be equipped to better navigate the change we want to see internally and get a little closer to the core sense of self that knows how capable and strong we are.

A little reframing exercise f…

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You are creative, and there are many patterns that need interrupted right now. I believe strongly that it is up to the artists (abstract thinkers) to help humanity course correct.

Tall order? Uh, yeah.

Lady Mary Shepherd, an 18th century Scottish philosopher I read about on my trip to Scotland, believed there were a variety of intellects. There was the scientific way of looking at things (order, manipulation, understanding, expertise) and there was abstraction (arts, language, spirituality). Contrary to the much-better-known Hume, she believed that scientific inquiry was aided by abstract thought and that our ability to break patterns is where we find the ability to better understand new phenomenon.

In many ways, I agree. While she was speaking more about an abstract belief system such as religion, I believe we need abstraction as a path to come to clearer conclusions, the way most humans do: by messing up. We begin unraveling truths by figuring out what it is not true, and this begins with BIG and abstract thinking. We find out how to succeed by failing.

Abstract language is a good example.

We create metaphors that are easy to remember and make us feel; they represent something (see: business jargon, politics, anything that is commoditized) until, ultimately, said words lose meaning and we are left facing what is beyond the abstraction.

For me, “triggered” is a word that seems too simple in the colloquial sense lately. It’s loosing meaning because it’s used too much, for too many scenarios.

The word often refers to something happening in our current timeline that causes an emotional reaction connected to trauma. Somatic instructors say we hold the past in our bodies and we need to let go with breath. Therapists say we create thought patterns to offer a sense of safety or try to correct what we perceive as a threat.

But triggers are a daily thing.

If I read enough news, I could find multiple triggers in a single hour.

To be “triggered,” if we look deep enough, simply means to be human.

And as much as it is human nature to want to find contentment at all times, struggle and anger and fear are part of being human. They are not definicies. And they FEED art, inquiry, and often empathy.

No one is always content. Nothing in nature is always at ease.

Watching the skies darken yet again, even after the weather app predicted sun and the patterns promised far less rain, reminds us how precious and fragile our ecosystem is. We can talk about the “super” el nino, building from a phrase that orginially came from fishermen who noticed patterns of ocean warming around the holidays every few years, but when a Midwestern neighborhood floods in August and we look squarely at that harshness, we can learn a lot about our capacity to recognize our part in that harshness.

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How we not only create abstraction but also how we respond to it are how we shape our reality, and this feels like the artist’s call.

I believe, like Lady Shepherd, that we can find ways of healing from patterns that are deeper than a passing disappointment or isolated storm. Sometimes finding something closer to the truth means allowing ourselves to break down. Allowing all the solid parts to break apart in order to rebuild as something stronger.

This journey is part of almost every narrative arc, after all.

A tree can be knocked down by a storm, but it will eventually make its way back to the ground, adding a nutrient-rich offering to the earth or lending itself to the warmth of fire. It will reform purpose by responding to circumstance.

Creative exploration helps us to decode the recurring patterns and ways we numb.

Instead of saying, “I’m triggered,” we can ask, what is recurring and why? What reality do we want to create, and how/where do we need to reinvent ourselves?

Anyway … anyway … I invite your abstraction.

Prompt: What is something (a behavior, a circumstance, a business deal) that triggers you/your character? Use the trigger as a catalyst for a new reality.

Alternate prompt: Write about a character who successfully avoids all triggers. (If you can actually pull this off, please email it to me. I’d love to read it.)

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Note: I am having to make video trailers for all my Insight Timer courses. As such, I am downloading them all and plan to slowly add them to this site. They will be available to paid subscribers by the end of the year. Also, for my cherished supporters, here is an invite to write with me. A silent accountability followed by some creative exploration.

Meditation: Honoring our uniqueness, our unique journeys.

🎤︎︎

Extra note: RADICALS is going to be available for pre-release everywhere soon. It’s currently available on Kindle and at LTP. If you’re on StoryGraph, enter here.

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.

T…

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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.

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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 …

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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 stor…

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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 int…

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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 the…

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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 g…

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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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