by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
I have always loved learning.
When I was four, my family lived right across the street from the red-roofed elementary school where I watched my brother get swallowed by the white doors every morning. I couldn’t understand why he got to go to kindergarten and I didn’t. Who cared about being five? They should let anybody in who wanted to learn!
I made my brother teach me what he’d learned as soon as he came back home. So I learned to read right alongside him—and oh, what a world I discovered when I picked up books!
My love of learning continued all through middle school and high school. I set my sights on college—because I didn’t want to stop learning. And even though I did not come from a family of college graduates or even a family that could afford college, I worked hard for that dream.
An even bigger world opened up for me in college. I’d grown up in a small town. College exposed me to different people and different viewpoints and the amazing (and sometimes scary) reality that I hardly knew anything—and nothing for certain.
It was both a humbling and an exciting revelation. Humbling because it’s always a little jarring when you’re faced with how little you actually know. And exciting because it meant I could forge within myself a space for constant growth and learning. I could entertain my wonder. I could explore my uncertainties.
Maybe we don’t always like asking questions out loud, where people can hear, where our ignorance feels like it’s on display. People aren’t always kind and patient with our questions. Sometimes it feels like we live in a world where everybody knows the for-sure answer except for us.
But a question I’ve always asked myself is, What if there are no for-sure answers? And another: What if those of us who pretend to be so certain (and make no mistake—I pretend sometimes, too) are really some of the most uncertain people among us?
Can we know anything for certain?
I’m not talking about our convictions, where we take a hard stance and are unwilling to compromise. My 14-year-old pointed out one of mine the other day. He said, “You know, you’re really open-minded about a lot of things, but when it comes to food and healthy eating, you’re, like, unbendable.”
I made some joke and then followed it up with something like, “I’m unbendable because it’s one of the things that are important to me. Like climate change. And women’s rights. And a lot of other social issues.”
It’s good to have those convictions and hard stances. But even within those, we have to be willing to learn more. I have rigid rules about the food in our house being healthy and mostly plants. It doesn’t mean I’m not open to hearing new information about nutrition. In fact, I actively seek out new information and have since I studied nutrition in college. Science changes. I change with it when I need to.
Being rigid about our convictions doesn’t have to mean we’re closed-minded.
When we remain open-minded, we allow ourselves to consider and accept new information. We seek to clarify. We ask important questions without fear. We wonder. And along the way, we learn that the more we learn the less we actually know.
Which is why it’s important to embrace an attitude of learning.
I love what William Least Heat-Moon, an American writer and historian, said: “Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.”
And Octavia Butler, another American writer, says, “I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more.”
Failure is a good learning opportunity. So is struggle. And joy. And disappointment. And hurt. And…
You get it. Life is a learning opportunity. But we must remain open to learn from it. We can spend our whole lives just existing. Going through the motions. Making the same mistakes again and again and never even noticing room for improvement.
I want to learn as much as I can about the world and its people and history and the present and the imagined future. I want to learn how I fit into the fabric of that past and present and future. I want to learn what I can do to make it a more beautiful place for everyone.
Wonder is good at doing that.
Have a beautiful month full of wonder, new ideas, and learning opportunities.
Here are my favorite ways to learn from life:
1. Let yourself feel what you feel. Then learn.
When my sons are flooded with emotions after an altercation or a disappointment or an experience that upset them in some way, there is no room for immediate learning. When the body and brain are flooded with emotions, that’s all we can consider. We don’t have capacity for learning.
So I have to wait until the strong feelings pass to talk to them and teach.
It’s the same in our own lives. When an experience leaves us flooded with an emotion—fear or hurt or embarrassment at misspeaking, we aren’t ready for learning. But feelings pass. So when the emotions have calmed, we can consider what we might learn from our experience. (And guess what’s great at helping us learn? Journaling!)
2. Read widely.
As if I really need to tell you this. But I often remind my kids: the more you read, the more you know. Maybe you won’t know everything and maybe you won’t know anything for certain (still), but reading exposes you to a wealth of information. Books, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, anything you can get your hands on—read it! When you read about the experiences from the viewpoints of other people, especially people who are different from you, it will open your mind to new information. What an exciting possibility!
3. Listen to other people.
Reading is a form of “listening” to other people. But listen, too, to the people around you. Seek out other viewpoints. Try to understand those who differ from you (this is work I’m trying to do as well…and it has been some of the hardest work I’ve done in my life).
When I was a journalist, I had to interview all kinds of people. People whose beliefs made me bristle. (Once I had to report on a KKK rally in Austin. It was very difficult to stomach.) People whose stories opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and being. People who challenged me and angered me and delighted me and frustrated me. And at the end of the day I had to write a balanced story as though I was an objective observer of life, not an opinionated participant in it. It was good practice for the listening I’d need to do to maintain an attitude of learning.
Listen without judgment. Absorb people’s stories and knowledge. Weigh them against your own. Think for yourself, but don’t think in a vacuum.
Before every encounter with a person (especially the difficult ones) ask yourself, what might I learn from them?
It’s a question that can change the world, I think.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
The first year I ran track in middle school, I remember my coach telling us, “Running is about 90 percent mental.” I remember thinking, That’s ridiculous. I’m not running with my mind, I’m running with my body. And my body is too tired for this.
And as soon as I thought that, my body was too tired for it.
Which proved her point (but it would take me many more years to concede that).
The same is true for writing. I’m not sure about the 90 percent when it pertains to running, but it’s definitely true for writing, which is all done with the brain and needs positive, clear, excited brains to actually get started on any kind of project.
Just like when I head out the door for a run thinking, This is hard and awful and the run turns out to be hard and awful, if I start my writing session thinking, This is not gonna be good, it probably won’t be good. Our thoughts and attitudes make a huge difference in this career.
The mental game of writing is not an easy one to master. Thoughts break in during the middle of a writing session: Oh, this is so bad. No one’s gonna want to read it. I don’t want to read it, even. I should just trash the whole thing. This was a terrible idea anyway.
It didn’t take me nearly enough time to write that paragraph, because I’m intimately familiar with these intrusive thoughts. They plague me.
Peace Pilgrim, an American teacher, once said, “If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you’d never think a negative thought.” But it’s not quite as simple as never thinking a negative thought again, is it? Because our minds sometimes have minds of their own.
So how can we better play the mental game of writing?
Here are some suggestions.
1. Do the work.
The more you practice, the better you get and the more you can talk back to those voices.
Most skills and talents don’t improve beyond any small measure we may have been born with if we’re not willing to practice. Practice develops expertise and competence. And as we develop expertise and competence, we also practice taking on the mental game of writing, facing all those voices that seek to stop us, pushing through their resistance, and building our perseverance. All of that practice is worthwhile.
But we also have to practice strategically. If we practice mistakes, we’ll get better at mistakes. When I played clarinet in high school and college, I had a rigorous practice routine. I’d spend between 90 minutes and two hours practicing to a metronome. I’d first warm up on every scale, including the chromatic, from memory. Then I’d start with the problem areas, slowing things down until I played the problem area perfectly, then speeding it up and moving on only when I felt comfortable with my competence playing the passage.
I take this same meticulous approach to my writing. I identify my weaknesses, study, play around with no-pressure compositions that challenge my weaknesses and work on strengthening them. It’s a grueling process, but it’s a good boost to the confidence when a part of writing that used to feel so hard doesn’t feel all that hard anymore.
2. Practice turning a negative phrase into a positive one.
Let’s say you sit down to write and your brain immediately says, You can’t do this. Talk back. Say, I can do this. And I will. If your brain says, What’s the point? No one will read it. No one cares. Say, Someone will read it. Someone will care. And the point is also that I love this and someone needs my story. If your brain tells you, This is crap, tell it, It may be crap now, but revision is where crap turns into brilliant.
If it’s too hard to do this mentally, take out a sheet of paper. If your brain throws you a negative thought while you’re writing on your project, use your sheet of paper to record the negative thought (even if it breaks your flow for a second or two). Underneath it, write the opposite of what the voice is saying (preferably in larger, bolder letters. Put that voice in its place.). Do this for every negative thought your brain supplies. And then put your paper on a bulletin board or wall where you can see it every time you write.
Negative thoughts get quieter when you take away their power.
3. Remember every writer faces resistance.
You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. No award, no bestseller status, no three-book deal will eliminate the mental game you’ll have to conquer (nearly) every time you sit down to write. We never feel 100 percent competent. We all deal with imposter syndrome, however many books we’ve written or how long we’ve been doing this. That’s either a source of comfort or a source of despair. I hope it’s the former.
Our thoughts can be powerful. But we don’t have to let the negative ones have the final say.
Have a wondrous month of talking back.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Here are 5 things worth sharing this month:
1. Reading: “Its heart was heavier with the weight of the young worker’s words. But should a heart not be heavy, in a world full of injustice?” I just finished Sacha Lamb’s brilliant YA book, When the Angels Left the Old Country, and my gosh was it good. It won the Stonewall Book Award, the Sydney Taylor Award and was a Michael L. Printz honor book, and I can definitely see why. It’s about an angel and a demon who leave the “Old Country” to come to America and help address social injustice for Jewish people. This is Lamb’s first book; I can’t wait to see what comes next.
2. Reading: “I wonder what it’s like to be with someone who can love you through your rage.” I guess I’ve been on a YA kick, because I also finished All My Rage, by Sabaa Tahir and loved it as well. This book won the National Book Award and the Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. It’s a love story about family and forgiveness. Don’t miss it!
3. Watching: Looking for a funny, quirky, entertaining, bingeable dramedy? Check out The Great, on Hulu. It’s loosely based on Catherine the Great, German queen of Russia. It stars Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, and Phoebe Fox, along with many others. Warning: It can get a bit raunchy at times. But it’ll make you laugh out loud.
4. Reading: I also just finished The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel A. Van der Kolk. It’s a long and in-depth book about trauma and effective methods of healing. Highly informative and enlightening, it also gave me a little hope for my own persistent trauma. I will acknowledge that in 2018 Van der Kolk was fired from the Trauma Center, where he did his research work, over allegations that he bullied employees. Nothing has been proven, but it’s worth acknowledging. I don’t think it detracts from this book and the research findings presented in it.
5. Watching: My kids and I just finished Season 1 of Netflix’s Down to Earth with Zac Effron. It’s a docuseries that follows Effron and a partner to different places in the world to learn how climate change is affecting other cultures and what innovative techniques people have developed to address climate change as well as social injustice. I absolutely loved this series. My kids and I have already begun on a more eco-friendly plan for our family. We’ve been on this journey for years now, but this show lit another fire under us. This year we’re tackling plastic—no more plastic! Maybe I’ll write about our continued and more fervent journey. 🙂
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
We’ve reached that time of the summer where my kids are at each other’s throats, everyone is growing tired of the family togetherness, and the oppressive heat of Texas is wearing our patience thin.
And my emotional wellbeing begins to slip.
I call this time the “summertime sadness.”
It’s more than just the title of a Lana del Rey song, though. For those of us who wrestle with Major Depressive Disorder, seasons of sadness are a real thing. Summertime is one of those seasons for me.
Knowing this about myself, I took what precautions I could. Even though my latest book released at the beginning of the summer, I made sure I scheduled some renewal time between my in-person events, for rest and reflection and time spent with the people I love. I scheduled more therapy sessions. I doubled up on my journaling practice.
And yet, depression still found me.
It’s a persistent illness that frequently reminds me I can take all the necessary precautions, structure everything just so, prepare myself for its eventual visitation and even still it will surprise me.
This time it snuck up on me while I laughed and played some improv games with my kids. One minute we were playing “Alphabet,” the next a pain gripped my chest and (metaphorically) shook me.
This won’t last forever, it said. Time is running out. Have you done enough?
That little standoff with time was all it took to send me spiraling into a whirlpool of questions.
Why do you work so hard? What’s it all for? What have you really done, besides waste time you could have spent watching your kids grow up? Who cares about your stories, really? What about your kids?
I’m well acquainted with these questions. They plague me at the most inconvenient of times. It’s one of the results of living as an ambitious woman in a still-patriarchal society, growing up and coming of age in a religion that calls me a helper, not a leader.
So in some ways, I expect the questions, usually around the time I feel depression creeping in. It’s unclear why it happens…maybe I’m too exhausted to put my guard up and combat the messages I’ve internalized. It’s exhausting being a woman.
What I didn’t expect was for the questions to turn into definitive statements that bludgeoned me every single time I opened up my notebook to write.
You’re wasting your time. No one cares what you have to say. You’re sacrificing your kids for stories no one reads, books that don’t matter. You’re selfish. Get a life. Do yourself a favor and quit. You only have one life, and it’s flying by.
On and on and on it went.
I could scarcely write a thing.
Maybe I need a break, I thought. I took a week off. I read and watched movies with my kids and baked two treats with two kids instead of one.
The summertime sadness was worse than ever. The voices came back louder and crueler. They called me names. They repeated all those definitive statements I’d already heard. They added more.
Mordechai Anielewicz, a Polish activist, once said, “The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves.” I’ve found that to be true in my own life.
Our struggles show themselves in depression and anxiety and OCD and a negative and critical inner voice and in so many other ways. They’re heavy. They can weigh us down. It’s hard to crawl, let alone walk, when we’re carrying so much on our shoulders—not just our own mental health struggles but also the burdens of our children, our partners, our friends, our family, the world. How does anyone escape the summertime sadness?
For some of us it’s different. It’s not a sadness, per se. The struggle within ourselves looks like lack of focus or lost hope or saying yes to too many things or forgetting to treat our enemies with love and respect or losing belief in ourselves or failing at work/life balance. Maybe we all struggle with all those things. At any time in our lives we’re faced with any number of internal struggles. And usually, just when we sort of figure one out another comes knocking.
We face so much internal resistance. It’s a wonder we manage to do anything worthwhile.
Sometimes we just have to embrace the struggle. Know it will pass. Have faith that we will come out on the other side not only still standing but standing a teeny little bit stronger.
I’ve begun listening to the arguments in my house, and instead of immediately sighing and thinking, I really can’t take this anymore, I think, They’re learning to express themselves, and I get to teach them how to resolve conflict respectfully. The family togetherness may feel stifling at times, but it’s a chance to connect in small ways, and we’re all learning what we need and what we can handle. I’ve begun accepting the triple-digit heat, instead of wishing it away.
And as for the critical voice, well, she’s not quite as loud when I argue with her.
No one needs your stories, she says.
I do, I say.
And I try to remember that someone else put that negative, critical voice inside me—and it’s the constant work of therapy that will extract it.
The most difficult struggle we have is within ourselves: the internal battle to be who we are. To do what we were made to do. Or maybe simply to survive the summertime sadness.
We’re living a story; what kind of story do we want it to be? I know my answer to the question.
Have a victorious month of slaying your internal struggles.
Things that can help when we’re internally struggling:
1. Assess
Journaling can be a great way to assess our internal voices and track down their origins and search for some perspective. But if you’re not a journaler, try some other form of assessment—taking out a blank sheet of paper and listing all the negative voices you hear and tracing them down a timeline or connecting them to the people (or situations) you remember hurting you in real life.
Sometimes we pick up negative voices not because someone actually said them to us but because a situation or person made us feel a certain way—accidentally or purposefully. It’s worthwhile to find those places and write a different story.
2. Talk to someone
Having someone to talk to who can challenge you on those negative voices can be supremely helpful. It could be a partner, a trusted friend, a group of friends, a therapist. Everybody struggles with negative voices and imposter syndrome—and chances are, if you share about your struggles, someone else will have been there and can listen with an empathetic ear or walk you through it, if that’s what you need. Don’t underestimate the value of relationships to get you back on track.
3. Take some time off
We overlook this piece often—because we don’t want negative voices to win. And it feels like taking time off is letting them win.
But it’s not. I’ve found in my own life that my negative voices get loudest when I’m tired and I’ve been working maybe a little too hard and I haven’t had enough connection or restoration time. When I’m most in need of a break. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We can’t fight the “internal bad guys” when we’re tired or distracted or trying to hold a plate that’s way too full.
Set some things down. Put your feet up. Read a book. Watch a show or documentary. Call your sister. Take a walk and get out in nature. Listen to music. Dance. You’re not running away from the voices, you’re dismissing them—and having fun while you’re at it.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
There’s a myth out there that says the longer you write the better you get at it.
Okay, that’s not a myth. Practice makes progress, after all. But where the myth shows its face is in the belief that as you get better at writing, it also gets easier.
Uh…I’m sorry if I have to burst some hope-filled bubbles here (and I’ll try to give you new hope-filled bubbles by the end of this), but writing does not get easier with practice.
I mean, in some instances it does. I now have sort-of a process for getting a first draft written and revising it endlessly and perfecting it even longer—it’s not all just loose ends flapping in the wind. So I suppose that’s gotten easier. But what hasn’t gotten any easier is getting started. Or dragging myself through the middle—although I have gotten better at them…it’s just that by the time you get to the middle of a project your excitement for the newness of it has worn off and you’re not yet excited for the end because you still have so…far…to go.
What I’m trying to say is the mechanics of writing get a little easier the longer we’ve been writing. But the thing that gets in all our ways—the headspace of writing—doesn’t necessarily get much easier.
Unless…
You know I wouldn’t leave you with something as hopeless as it never gets any easier, didn’t you?
The truth is, our heads get used to the constant persistence after a while. We feel that initial little oh, wow, this is a big commitment, I don’t have the time, and we know we’ve done it before. We’ve found the time. We hear those voices that say, Well, this idea is crap and no one will ever want to read it, but we also know we’ve taken a crap idea to a brilliant idea before, so it stands to reason we can do it again.
We’re faced with a blank page and that little surge of panic that accompanies the thought, I don’t know what to write, and we remember what Frank Choi, a Korean American poet, said: “Just start a sentence and hope brilliance will strike.”
And we get started, like we did last time.
We just start a brainstorm and hope brilliance will strike. We just start a sentence and hope brilliance will strike. We just start a revision and hope brilliance will strike.
And brilliance usually does, eventually, if we’ve put in the work and the time.
Here are some ways we can help brilliance along:
1. Write the first draft by hand.
I know it’s a radical ask. We live in the golden age of technology! Why would we write an entire book by hand?! It takes so much longer!
Sometimes that’s the point. When we fly through scenes, we sometimes don’t get everything out of them that we may have gotten if we’d slowed down a little. Maybe there’s a significant look one character gave another that meant something ominous. Maybe there’s a vital line of dialogue we missed in our hurry to get all the words typed into the document. Maybe we’re missing an entire point in our essay because we haven’t slowed down enough to let it marinate.
And besides that, scientific research indicates that we use a different part of our creative brain when we write by hand. So if you write the first draft by hand and subsequent drafts by computer, you’re using your whole brain. How cool is that?
So grab a notebook and start writing. And if you don’t want to write an entire book by hand, try just the first chapter.
2. Put your composition away for a while.
When you’ve finished a draft of whatever you’re writing, I always recommend putting the story aside for a while before picking it back up. Time and distance allow our brains to approach stories with fresh ideas, and we can more clearly see problem areas and places that need fixing.
How long should you put it away? Well, that depends on your preference. My first drafts often get put away for three or four months before I dust them back off. And hopefully in that time I’ve not only grown as a writer but also as a person, and I can make vast improvements to the story.
Later drafts (drafts 2-6 or so) get put away for between two weeks and a month. Fresh eyes are valuable.
3. Remember you’ve been here before.
The longer you practice writing and the more stories and compositions you complete from start to finish, the more likely you can remind yourself, at any step of the process, that you’ve been here before and you’ve written your way out. The exciting beginning, the not-so-thrilling middle (I know I’ve been dumping on the middles, but truthfully the more middles I write the fonder I get of them), the I’m-not-sure-how-to-end-this…you’ve been in all these places before. Which means you can confidently and expertly (maybe) see yourself through them again.
Writing comes with all kinds of resistance. But the more practice we get putting words on a page and pushing through the resistance that’s bound to come, the better at it we get. And…dare I say it? The easier it all gets.
Not easy. Just easier. Marginally.
But we don’t do it because it’s easy, do we? We do it because we love it.
Have a fantastic month of starting and finishing sentences—hopefully brilliantly.
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Here are 6 things worth sharing this month:
1. Reading/readers: Have you met Afoma of Reading Middle Grade? Her site is a wealth of information about middle grade and YA books and includes author interviews and blogs on various subjects. I’ve used her middle grade lists to find all the best reads, so be sure to check her out if you have young readers in your life or you love reading children’s literature (like me). She’s also on Instagram and has a fantastic Facebook group that gathers together lovers of children’s literature.
2. Reading: I recently finished the YA book We Are All So Good at Smiling, by Amber McBride, and it was fantastic. It’s a lovely novel in verse that explores clinical depression in sort of an ethereal way. I loved the language and the fantasy-like quality about it. McBride is also the author of Me (Moth), which is another novel in verse I highly recommend.
3. Watching: My husband and I just started watching Apple TV’s series Loot, starring Maya Rudolph, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nat Faxon, and Joel Kim Booster, among others. This is my second time watching through it, but I wanted to share it with my husband, because it’s so good! Maya Rudolph plays a wealthy woman who divorced her husband and now has to figure out what to do with her $87 billion settlement—and the rest of her life. It’s funny and heartwarming, as I’m coming to expect from Apple’s comedies!
4. Reading: If you’re looking for an intriguing adult nonfiction read, be sure to pick up The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear, by Kate Moore. It was a fascinating account of Elizabeth Packard, whose husband had her committed to a mental institution, which spurred her journey into working for women’s and mental health rights. It reads like a fiction book, which is, in my opinion, the best kind of nonfiction to read! Moore is also the author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women,which is next on my TBR list!
5. Reading: I’m not sure what made me pick up Dan Santat’s new(ish) graphic memoir, A First Time for Everything. But I’m glad I did. Santat highlights a time in his life when he felt awkward and invisible. A trip to Europe changes his perspective and infuses him with a little confidence. I sped through this one, not just because it’s a graphic novel but because the story was fun and engaging. Santat is probably best known for his picture book, After the Fall (How Humpty Got Back Up Again), which sits on our shelves here at home and is often requested for read-aloud by one of my kids, and The Adventures of Beekle, which is a heartwarming story about an (un)imaginary friend.
6. Watching: Every summer my kids and I watch documentaries together on Tuesday mornings. This week we finished watching through the Disney+ series Becoming, which tells the story of entertainers and how they became who they are today. It’s deeply inspiring and touching (you’ll probably cry, if you’re like me) and is a great series to watch with kids. My kids are still talking about some of the things they learned.
If you want to go deeper into some of these books, be sure to check out my YouTube show, On My Shelf:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtmdj4SXf2Csy5uu6WEyLDtYlvg9t1FqE
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Schwipp schwipp schwipp schwipp schwipp bang!
That seems to be all I hear in the early mornings anymore. Either that or talk about solving times, brands of cubes, or Max Park’s new 3x3x3 record of 3.13 seconds.
I have a son who is currently obsessed with Rubik’s cubes and becoming a speed cuber.
He’s had a lot of obsessions over the years, some that stuck around, some that didn’t. He’s a talented kid. His biggest challenge will probably be deciding which thing to focus on, instead of all the things.
I’ve been thinking about him a lot—not just because he’s usually already sitting at the kitchen table solving Rubik’s cubes when I get back from my morning runs (and he’s a teenager; aren’t teenagers supposed to sleep the days away during the summer?). But also because I sometimes find myself thinking, If he spent as much time studying and practicing music and acting—which he says he wants to do as a career—as he does on Rubik’s cubes, he’d pull way ahead of the rest.
But that’s not my decision. I’m not him. I’m just a parent. Who am I to say whether the direction he’s heading is the right one or the wrong one?
And this obsession with Rubik’s cubes is teaching him something valuable—that it takes time to get where you want to be.
Most of us want to get somewhere fast. We have our dreams and we have our plans and we want them to be in our hands already!
But the world has its own timetable.
There are few careers better at proving this than a writing career.
It’s a career of slow. A career of waiting. We become professional waiters—and not the kind who get tips.
Everything about it takes such a long time. Finishing the first draft of a book. Finishing the eighth or twelfth or the nineteen other drafts of that same book before I let it out of my hands. Finding an agent. Finding an editor. Actually publishing a book.
So…slow.
I often find myself thinking, I need something to happen. I need this contract to come through, this character to tell me what in the world she has in mind, someone to return my email.
As Mo Willems once titled one of my favorite Elephant & Piggie books: “Waiting Is Not Easy.”
There’s a well known piece of advice in the running world: Run slow to run fast. It reminds me of something I recently read from Simon Sinek, a British American writer and speaker: “It’s better to go slow in the right direction than go fast in the wrong direction.”
Sinek doesn’t say anything about it being easier to go slow in the right direction, only that it’s better. (Did you notice that, too?)
And on my good days, I believe it is.
Because if I run fast every single day I go out for a run, my body will exist in depletion mode. My energy levels will fall to practically nonexistent. I will burn out as quickly as a firework. And I’ll risk injury, too.
What going slow does is it allows us time and opportunity to prepare ourselves for what’s waiting for us farther along that journey. When I run slow to run fast, I’m building the proper muscles and lung capacity and cadence to run my race. So when I stand at the starting line and the gun goes off, I’m ready to give it my all.
We have to put in the work. And we definitely have to move in the right direction, not the wrong direction—however slow our progress may be.
Now, I know some people have fast passes to the top. And they do just fine. And we may look at that and think it’s not fair. And it’s not. But it’s also not our journey. It may never be our journey. We may never make it to the top—whatever the top may be (because it’s never a literal top, at least not for me. It’s more like, bestseller, awards, beloved by all…).
“What will you do if you never make a bestseller list?” my husband asks me. “Or you never win the Newbery award?” (That’s been my dream since I was 11 and I read every Newbery winner since the award was established. Someday I’ll write one of these books, I said to myself.)
He wasn’t done. “What if you never get any more well known than you are today?”
I cringe just writing those questions down. Because my first thought is, I’ll keep trying, then. And my second thought is, Will I?
If ten years pass and nothing changes, will I?
If twenty years pass and nothing changes, will I?
If thirty years…will I?
Go slow in the right direction…
But how slow are we talking about?
Preparation, I remind myself. It’s all preparation. And without preparation, we won’t last very long in the game. We may not be completely ready. We might be thrown into something completely unknown.
I’m not saying preparation can protect us from every unknown. Of course not. Life is hardly ever predictable. But preparation can help us plan for some unknowns. A second pair of shoes on race day, in case the first ones randomly split. An extra journal tucked into a travel bag because you just never know how this event will affect you, and journaling helps you decompress. An absorbing book to read while you’re sitting on a plane, because your anxiety really likes playing Worst Case Scenarios on planes, and usually your partner’s here to distract you but today you’re flying solo.
So I suppose the question could become: Do we want to be a blip on the timeline? Forgotten faster than we rose to the top? Here today, gone tomorrow? Or do we want to be around as long as we possibly can be?
Going slow in the right direction instead of fast in the wrong means we have a choice to make. Sure, the dream may be slow coming to us, but does that mean we should turn our backs on it? Do something else? Go in another direction that promises a faster return?
I’ve never loved doing anything as much as I enjoy writing. So my answer is no. I hold fast to the dream. And it may not ever come, but I know I’ve been walking in the right direction.
No regrets, no matter how slow. I’ll give it my best. I won’t throw away my shot (why, yes, I did just see Hamilton on the stage)!
I hope we can all say the same.
Have a glorious month of moving slow in the right direction.
Here are some of my favorite things to do while I’m going slow in the right direction (and waiting):
1. Study and learn
I’ve always loved learning, so one of my favorite things to do while in a waiting (or just a slow-moving period)—besides getting started on the next thing—is to study and learn. Sometimes that’s studying and learning more about writing, focusing on some of the places that feel more challenging for me so I can develop my skills. Sometimes it’s learning more about something I’m interested in—like environmentalism or feminism. I read everything I can get my hands on. For pleasure and for study.
2. Grow
Practicing consistently helps us use our skills both newly learned and ones we’ve cultivated for ages. Putting in the work is one of the best things we can do while we’re going slow in the right direction.
But you know what? So is resting. We grow both by practicing and by taking time off and resting. We take time off, and we grow. It’s biologically proven. Kids grow in their sleep. My body repairs itself from my long runs while I sleep. Our minds repair themselves with rest.
Do crafts. Take walks. Watch TV shows or unplug with a book. Do what makes you feel joyful and alive.
3. Invest in others
Going slow also allows us ample time to invest in others, whether that’s our own children or our partners or coworkers or people we barely know but who would love to be where we are. We can be generous with our time or our knowledge or our support. And giving back is yet another way to go slow in the right direction. Investing in the next generation will have profound impacts, and I want to be part of that. Don’t you?
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Part of collecting ideas includes not just searching outside yourself but also searching inside.
I suppose this could also be a step in the process of developing ideas.
We all have unique experiences and backgrounds that have shaped us into unique people. Why wouldn’t we delve into that history to pull out some ideas for stories and content? Writers are, after all, told to write what we know. So our lives and memories are a treasure trove of ideas.
Here’s how we can unlock and open up that treasure trove.
1. Start by remembering.
I acknowledge that some events in our pasts might be unexplored indefinitely (and intentionally) because they cause us pain and heartache. It’s okay to figuratively block those off until you’re ready to approach them—if ever you are.
But we also likely have all kinds of memories that aren’t painful—disappointing, maybe, or a little bit scary or really, really happy—whether those memories are things we did with other people, learning experiences, trips and vacations, big events like graduations and sports games and band concerts or competitions. Start with these. Think about the things you remember. Are there any memories that contain the seed of a story idea, something you could build a character around or a place you went once upon a time that would make a perfect setting for a murder mystery or a romantic meet cute or a creepy location for a horror scene?
Memories hold all kinds of potential for story ideas. I’d suggest making a list of the big ones and seeing if that opens up some of the smaller ones—and then mining them in turn for any kind of creative writing you might do.
2. Consider the things that are most important to you.
Make a list of the things you care about. Family, maintaining healthy friendships, kids owning their power and remembering they’re magnificent. Environmentalism. Integrity and honesty. Writing. Running. Being fit in general. Music. Books. Gender equality. Equality in general. Climate change. Social justice. Homelessness. There are so many more things I care deeply about. I’m sure there are many things you care deeply about, too.
How can these places of deep care help you come up with story ideas? Well, they could be themes. Or characters who have expertise in one of your areas of interest (because it’s fun learning more about the things we care about!). Or they could frame a whole story.
I’ve written books about musicians, kid environmentalists, runners (lots of these), characters who are writers and journalists, books focused around media literacy and gender equality. When we care deeply about something, it’s worthwhile to put it in a story or composition—because the care comes through onto the page. And sometimes it’s contagious.
3. Collect your daily life in journals.
I know. Here I go again, talking about journaling. You might be tired of hearing me try to convince you to journal, but this is yet another reason to do it—you can get writing ideas from it!
When I was writing for Huff Post and Babble, I often used journal entries as a springboard for my humorous parenting essays—because those early parenting years I collected all kinds of funny, maddening, overwhelming, joyous moments in my journals. It made coming up with new essay ideas practically simple.
These days I’ve used my journal entries for essays, fiction, memoir, and even poetry ideas—in fact, when I find myself bereft of ideas, I’ll pick a journal at random from my shelf and start reading at the beginning or in the middle. Some seasons I’ve been so obsessed with quality of sleep that I’m developing a humorous character who stresses endlessly about sleep.
Give it a try. You might be surprised how many ideas follow just putting a pen to the page.
I hope these tips have been helpful for you; I’d love to know how you use yourself or your experiences to generate writing ideas.
Have a fantastic month of generating ideas and writing!
by Rachel Toalson | Books
Here are five things worth sharing this week:
1. Reading: I recently finished Freewater, by Amina Luqman-Dawson, a historical middle grade novel about a boy, his sister, and the free community they find after running away from Southerland Plantation, where they work as slaves. It was inspiring, illuminating, and important. The book, which is Amina Luqman-Dawson’s debut, won the Newbery Award for 2023. Highly recommended!
2. Reading: My kids read Ban This Book, by Alan Gratz, first and told me I just had to read it. Boy, was I glad I did. Though published in 2017, the book has real-world applications today. It explores book banning in an easy-to-understand way for readers ages 8-12, and it featured one of my favorite elements: kids owning their power. I’d say it’s a book for everyone. (Gratz, by the way, is best known for his historical middle grade novels, Refugee , Allies , and Projekt 1065 .)
3. Reading: I’m currently in the middle of the middle grade graphic novel Friends series, by Shannon Hale. So far I’ve read Best Friends and Friends Forever , and I have to say: they’re fantastic! They provide a real-life look at friendship dynamics among girls in middle school, and I really enjoyed their honesty. Hale captured the swinging emotions and the constant questions of middle school. I haven’t yet read the first of the trilogy, Real Friends , but if it’s anything like the later two, I’ll love it!
4. Watching: Everybody wants to live longer, right? Well, Chris Hemsworth (you may know him as Thor in all the Marvel movies) has a documentary series on Disney+ about how he’s working to do that: Limitless with Chris Hemsworth . He talks with experts and professionals and provides important information about how we can keep our bodies in working order for longer, examining things like stress, shock, fasting, strength, memory, and acceptance. I’ve watched every episode myself and rewatched every episode except the last one with my kids—so they’re armed with the same information I have. It’s an illuminating series that will leave you feeling inspired and determined.
5. Reading: “No surprise. Idiots make it into every company. They tend to interview well.” If you’re looking for a delightful adult fiction read, look no farther than Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry. Oh my goodness. This book had me laughing so hard. It features Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1960s— when women weren’t chemists or accepted as anything more than housewives. She becomes the unintentional star of America’s most popular cooking show. I could not get enough of Elizabeth Zott—and the good news is, she’ll be on the big screen soon, with a series produced by Apple TV. But make sure you read the book before you watch the series!
If you want to go deeper into some of these books, be sure to check out my YouTube show, On My Shelf.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtmdj4SXf2Csy5uu6WEyLDtYlvg9t1FqE
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
On my journey to becoming a novelist, I spent a large chunk of time writing humor essays on parenting for online publications like Huff Post, Yahoo Parenting, and Babble. I loved writing those essays and continued doing so even after Babble disappeared, Yahoo Parenting lost its appeal, and Huff Post morphed into something a little different.
Part of the reason my parenting experiences drew me to humor was that my day-to-day life as a mom of six young kids was ridiculous and overwhelming and sometimes I wasn’t sure I’d make it through the day—whatever “making it” even meant. I was so dangerously close to tears that I wrote my reality into something hilarious.
From the outside looking in, it was hilarious.
Those humor essays, I believe, saved me during that time in my life. They saved me from being completely overcome by the overwhelm. They saved me from curling up in my bed and staying there. They saved me from giving in to the undertow of postpartum depression and paranoia.
That’s the magic of humor for me.
I remember surviving a forty-day stomach plague with a newborn, a one-year-old, and a three-year-old and thinking, One day I’ll laugh about this. How can I laugh now? When I walked into my toddler twins’ bedroom to get them up from their supposed-to-be-sleeping nap and I found they’d painted the walls with what was in their diapers—for the second week in a row!!!—I thought, One day I’ll laugh about this; how can I laugh about it now? When one of my sons took a Sharpie to every shirt he owned while I was organizing his brother’s closet, I reminded myself that one day I would laugh about it—so how could I laugh about it now?
I still do this today.
Humor does something magical to the brain. I don’t have any scientific proof for you today (although it does exist), but I know what it’s done in my own life. It brightens a world-weary day. It strengthens resolve and fortitude in some unexplainable way. It lifts moods and grows hope.
It also eases conflict. One of the fastest ways to diffuse the tension in an argument is to introduce some humor. Marriage counselors suggest that couples use a code word—the funnier, the better—when they’re arguing and emotions are flying a little too hot. (My husband’s and my code word is “crapulous,” an old retired gem that means feeling sick after eating or drinking too much—which is also how you can feel in the middle of an argument.)
When my sons are locked in a disagreement about something outrageously important—like who got more strawberries on their plate for lunch—all someone has to do is fart to blast through the tension. (Juvenile, I know, but it’s effective!)
I don’t write as many humor essays as I used to, because my sons have opinions about whether or not they appear in those essays—even if I’m mostly making fun of myself. But I have started embracing more humor in my fiction.
I have no idea why I waited so long to do it. It’s so much fun.
My latest book, The First Magnificent Summer (which released Tuesday!), is one of those humorous books. It’s not all humorous. It has substance and a hard story at its core, because humor, in my opinion, is best utilized in a story that means something. The hard places are made more digestible with humor. And we remember them, because they make us feel so many different emotions—joy, sorrow, delight, dread, satisfaction.
The difficult emotions coexist with the easy and enjoyable ones. We remember stories that make us feel—especially when there’s laughter involved.
Laughter connects us. Some of my favorite experiences with my family include watching a movie together and hearing our voices joined in laughter. Telling stories that elicit collective laughter around our dinner table. Making each other collapse into giggles because of silly acts or outrageous reactions.
Humor has an important place in our lives. I often tell my children, “If I can teach you to laugh at yourself, you’ll be well prepared for what the world and universe have in store for you.”
There’s no sense in taking ourselves (or the world) so seriously all the time. That’s not to say the world shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. There’s a big difference between at all and all the time. Some things are so ridiculous and unexplainable that all we can do is laugh. Some experiences are so ridiculous and unexplainable all we can do is laugh in response to them.
The old adage “laughter is the best medicine”? It turns out laughter is a kind of medicine. It heals hearts and opens minds, too. It connects us and bolsters us. It can even make us brave.
We could do with a little more laughter in our world.
I hope you have a month filled with giggles, snorts, and laugh-until-you-cry moments.
Here are my best tips for finding more laughter in your life:
1. Embrace the silly.
Especially if you have kids in your life, embracing the silly can increase the laughter in your home. Sometimes it’s as simple as breaking out in a silly dance. Sometimes it’s changing the lyrics to a song to more hilarious alternatives. When my kids pick rhyming picture books for our reading time, my husband likes making up his own word that doesn’t rhyme the stanza but is a synonym for the rhyming word. We get so many laughs out of this I’ve written a rhyming picture book that doesn’t rhyme!
2. Consume funny things.
It could be funny movies or TV shows or it could be humorous books (shared humorous audiobooks are the best). Look for comedy shows in your area, or play funny board games with family and friends. I’ve laughed until I’ve cried playing games like Kids Against Maturity and Poetry for Neanderthals with my kids and husband. Read a joke book or write your own and share it with all the people in your home. Even if they’re Dad-joke quality, kids will still shake their heads and laugh. Even the 16-year-old.
3. Try to turn one experience a week into a funny story.
Whether you write it down or you just tell it to someone, pick an experience from the last week that was annoying or frustrating or maybe even disheartening or mortifying. Try spinning the story in a humorous way. Then challenge yourself to do it again next week. And the week after that. Make it a habit, and see how your outlook shifts.
4. Observe the world.
People (especially kids) are hilarious, and sometimes they aren’t even trying. I visited a school recently, and one of the first questions for the Q&A time was, “How much do you bench press.” Uh…what does that have to do with writing? Nothing! But he was a seventh grade kid who was curious. So I got to tell him that I haven’t bench pressed anything since I was in college, and back then I’d bench pressed 140 pounds before my arms gave out and the guy at the next bench press station had to save me from Death by Benchpress Fail. Wasn’t funny at the time. But it’s funny now (according to every seventh grader in the room—because they love stories that prove adults are fools).
Try your own observations and see what you end up with.
