Fable and the Verbivore get personal about their writing journeys and ask the question “Who are we to create?”.

In this episode, we explore some of the lies that we as writers have told ourselves and how they have sometimes undermined our ability to move forward on our projects. We also discuss methods that have been useful to us for breaking through those mental barriers, how we reframed our thinking of what creatives look like and found motivation to get our words out into the world even when we are afraid.

We hope you enjoy hearing about some of our own struggles as we walk our writing path and look forward to sharing our creations during the upcoming 100 days projects starting on April 7th.

We would also love for you to join us in this exercise and look forward to hearing what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore talks about the line “Who do you think you are? Who are you to think that you could walk a road that no one’s ever walked before” from Broadway’s Hadestown. They performed this song “Wait for Me” at the 2019 Tony awards, and this video on YouTube has the part she references starting at timestamp 2:40.

The Verbivore mistakenly changes a word in the Yoda quote from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It is: “The greatest teacher, failure is.”

The Verbivore mentions re-framing unease as excitement within my mind. This is known in the scientific community as anxiety reappraisal, and studies have supported that individual performance in a task improves when we tell ourselves “I am excited” rather than “I am nervous”. The Ted Talk “You Are Contagious” by Vanessa Van Edwards discusses this study starting at timestamp 16:32.

Fable talks about a paraphrase of the quote: “It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting”. This quote has been attributed to several people, but it looks like it was made by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan.

The Verbivore completely messes up a quote about feeling ready. It is: “Stop letting your potential go to waste because you don't feel confident or ready enough. People with half your talent are making serious waves while you're still waiting to feel ready." - via @thesoulcenteredentrepreneur.

The Verbivore references the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott as calling out her writing paralysis when it came to moving forward with her novel. Here is the quote that she was referencing:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

Fable and the Verbivore are participating in the 100 days project, each day posting a creative work (written, photographic, drawn, mixed media, etc.) from their personal Instagram accounts to the hashtags #The100DayProject and #imitatelikeawriter. “The idea is simple: choose a project, do it every day for 100 days, and share your process on Instagram with the hashtag #The100DayProject”.

We are keeping the scope of our projects to reflections of or inspiration from other works of writing, art, photography, theater, movies, and music. We will post our pieces along with the inspiration each day starting April 7th, 2020 for 100 days. We invite you to join us in exploring creativity together.

• Additional information for the 100 days project can be found at: https://www.the100dayproject.org/

Books Mentioned:

• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

• Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)