Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a Pacific Northwest essayist, poet, author, and I also run/host Silly Dog Studios–an art and writing studio and community workshop space–for a living. I’m also an occasional blogger, serious home canner, lazy gardener, Alzheimer’s care partner for mom Linda, and as a reader, I’m a mystery, fantasy, and science fiction enthusiast. I’ve written eight books of creative nonfiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction/poetry hybrids on the subjects of finding work you love that the world needs, turning empty and underused spaces into community spaces, remembering and being sustained by your artist self, noticing the deep-fierce gifts within caregiving, wooing the unshaken wonder at your core back out to play, and recognizing yourself as part of the playful elder community.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My new book is Unshaken Wonder: Becoming Playful Elders Together. It explores what it takes to become the kind of elder that we—and our world—need when all of the adults and elders around us, including our old selves, appear to be failing us.
It was inspired by the last U.S. presidential election. I knew that most people in my community and culture would be facing pain and heartbreak at new or deepening levels, and I know that when that happens, it’s all too easy to get sucked into round-the-clock anger and stuck in the exhaustion and fear that lead to hatred, withdrawal, and/or blindly lashing out. I also knew that the two books that I was about to publish weren’t strong enough, weren’t ME enough, to thrive in the new world we were about to enter, so I scrapped both books I was planning to publish and I started over. This is the book that I needed my culture to create to survive this time with my wonder and delight with the world intact. It really helps. I was up until 3 a.m. just last night reading it, to remember.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Hmm, unusual. I’d need to have a lot more writer friends than I do to know if I’m unusual.
I tend to think that my most unusual habit is that I listen to trees and hear their voices. I got the title and the original chapter order for my latest book by listening to the trees around our home and more than one of the essays and several of the poems came from listening to trees.
I have a home office that I write in most days that I can see hundreds of trees from as I type. When I’m feeling uninspired I write elsewhere: coffee shop, the park, the beach, on the ferry, etc. Although I’m an essayist, poet, author, and blogger by nature, I consider all writing I do part of my work. Tweets, Facebook statuses, newsletters, retreat and workshop invitations, emails, texts, etc. it all counts as part of my writing to me. And I put as much care and effort into every word I write, whether it’s a tweet or a book. This has proven useful over the years. For example, I once pulled a series of tweets and Facebook status updates into a book’s chapters. And I once wrote a “flash non-fiction” book in just four weeks, because I’d written so much to and about my community on Facebook, in interviews, and in emails that it was easy for us to pull it all together.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
For holding on to and expanding the wonder at our core, the names Madeline L’Engle and Ursula K LeGuin come to mind because I love them at every age. For finding joy in the mystery, I loved Agatha Christie when I was younger and I love Louise Penny now. Author Anne Lamott has influenced me tremendously as an adult and it’s not about her books, which are lovely, but about how real she is in person and on Twitter of all places.
For recognizing who I really am, literally every poet I’ve ever read. When I was young, that was E.E. Cummings, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickenson, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost. As an adult, I’m all in on the remarkable poets of color in this country, because they teach me round-the-clock, not just in their remarkable poetry, and now that I’m older and stronger, I recognize that I’m learning with every breath. So why not be with people who teach you with every breath they take? I love Danez Smith, Jericho Brown, and Christopher Soto right now. I love Rita Dove and Alice Walker always and always. Oh, and the poem Fannie Lou Hammer by Kamilah Aisha Moon is far and away the best poem I’ve read all year.
What are you working on now?
The new book just launched this month, so at the moment I’m working on making the new book, Unshaken Wonder: Becoming Playful Elders Together, more accessible to more people. The most fun think I’m doing right now is turning it into some affordable, simple email-based “classes” and also into an affordable retreat for other tired people who want to refill their own wells via writing, community, nature, and listening to ancestors.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
The best method is to rely on dozens of small things and experiencing the whole thing as one giant learning experience in humility, asking for help, and allowing yourself to be held by your world. I’m a fan of real human relationships, community support, friend and family help, and dozens of small book promoters. I love the folks behind BooksGoSocial and AskDavid. When organizations get too big, the human element seems to suffer and I get bored with interacting only with screens and computers.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I remember the day, about 7 years ago, that I said to my partner “I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to be an author. I don’t care if I have to give up everything–the house, the car, the furniture, everything–and live on the street and write in the dirt and gravel where only I and maybe God can read it, I’m going to be an author.”
When you can say your own version of these words and mean it, then you’re an author, and there’s literally nothing that you can do to get off track, or screw that up, so you can stop worrying about if it’s what you should be doing and exactly how you should be doing it. It’s not what you should do. It’s not how you do it. It’s not even the individual books that you create, really. This is who you ARE.
Once you know in your bones that this is who you are–that you’re an author–then life gets simpler. You can more easily let go of what you don’t need and receive what you do need. And you can accept that all the BS that comes with being an author (“So my eBook is competing with 40,000 new eBooks a month now?! FML.”) is the BS that you are here to carry. This is the part of the world you’re here to explore and expand and improve somehow. And you do that by being exactly who you really are. At that point, you can set down a whole lot of other BS that is NOT yours to carry.
You don’t have to make one single dime as an author to know that you’re an author. It’s when you’re not making any money at it yet, and still somehow managing to publish book after book, and you’re getting a little better at it each time, year after year, that most of us accept who we are. For the first time in 8 years, I topped selling 1,000 books in a single month this month. That doesn’t make me an author. Being an author is just who I am. I am a human who communicates best with the world via big chunks of time and words and books.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
The trees outside my window told me to write a book called Unshaken Wonder. I’d never been gifted a title like that and then had to write a book into honoring just two words before. That was just a ridiculously fun thing to get to be doing during one of the worst years of my life in many other respects.
What are you reading now?
Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith, The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny, No Time to Spare by Ursula K LeGuin. These Wilds Beyond Our Fences by my friend Bayo Akomolafe, and I’m re-reading The Well-Played Game by my dear friend Bernie DeKoven who passed away this spring. What an amazing world these humans are creating!
What’s next for you as a writer?
Hosting retreats, talks, and workshops here on Whidbey at Silly Dog Studios. Wah, talking to other people in person! Writing-wise, it’s too early to say. I just launched a big new book and I haven’t heard the title of the next one yet, because I don’t want to yet.
What is your favorite book of all time?
It’s a tie between Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
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