Hey, what’s up there?
It’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV,
the place to be to create a business and life
you love.
And I am so excited about today’s guest.
So if you’re a writer or you want to be,
this is the episode for you.
Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of
the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion,
Slow Motion, and five novels including Black
and White and Family History.
She’s appeared on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday
and in the New Yorker, Elle, the New York
Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times,
and This American Life, among others.
She’s taught in the writing programs at
Columbia, NYU, The New School, and Wesleyan
University, and is the cofounder of the Sirenland
Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.
Dani lives with her family in Litchfield County,
Connecticut.
Dani.
Marie!
Thank you so much for being here.
It’s such a pleasure and an honor.
Thrilled to be with you.
Well, we’ve wanted to do this for a while.
We’re finally doing it.
Take me back, because we’re both Jersey
girls.
I mean, you’ve written 9 books, you’ve
had this incredible career.
Did you always know that you wanted to be
a writer since you were little?
I always wrote and I always -- I was one of
those kids who read under the covers with
a flashlight.
But Jersey girl that I was, I love that we’re
sitting here, too.
Can you imagine to yourself when you were
like, you know, 7 years old in New Jersey?
I couldn't have.
I didn't grow up knowing writers.
I didn't grow up knowing -- I grew up loving
books, but the idea that there were people
who actually wrote them somehow eluded me.
And so it really wasn’t until I got to college
and I met for the first time working writers
who -- I went to Sarah Lawrence College, which
is in Westchester.
It’s a quick, you know, half hour train
ride from the city.
So there were working writers, like the writer
-- the Great American Short Story writer Grace
Paley was teaching there.
And I looked at Grace and I thought, “My
God.
This is a person who writes books, teaches,
has kids, you know, is a social activist.”
Classes used to be cancelled and there’d
be like a note on the door saying, “Class
is cancelled.
Grace is in jail.”
For, you know, for protesting.
And she was just this amazing person.
So it was role models like her where I began
to see that maybe it was possible.
Even though at first what I felt was this
may be possible for somebody, but I don't
know if it’s possible for me.
Even though you had always been writing.
Like, did you have a feeling were you in your
teens or late teens or perhaps in college?
When did you really know like this is my path,
or did that not happen until later?
It happened really because of a tragedy in
my family.
I was writing.
I constantly wrote short stories.
I wrote letters to people when I was a kid
that were often full of just like made up
things.
I secretly wondered whether I was maybe like
a little not okay in the head.
You know?
Because I was constantly inventing things.
But I was confusing imagination and reality
in a way that I think -- not confusing them,
but living in my imagination the way that
a lot of writers do.
So I was -- let’s see.
I was 23 years old, I had dropped out of college,
I hadn’t finished.
In fact, I didn't have a high school degree
either, because I left high school a year
early to go to college.
So my terminal degree at that moment was from
the 6th grade.
Wow.
Of my elementary school in Union, New Jersey.
So on paper this doesn't look very good for
an aspiring writer.
So I was 23 years old and my parents were
in a terrible car accident.
And my father was killed, and my mother was
very badly injured.
And in the wake of my father’s death -- and
I was an only child, so taking care of my
mother, nursing her back to health, grieving
my father, it was such a sort of do or die
moment for me.
I should also mention I had a -- like the
worst possible kind of married boyfriend,
you know, sociopath.
I mean, just like look up in the dictionary
like what you really ought not to do as a
young woman, and I was doing it.
And I broke up with the boyfriend and I went
back to college.
And when I went back to college, and I was
taking care of my mother who was in rehab
for about a year.
And when I want back to college, it was with
a story to tell.
I had this burning need to tell this story.
I wasn’t ready to, which is something that
we can get into, but I needed to.
And so I began writing as if my life depending
on it, which in many ways it really did.
And that’s how it started.
So I went back and I finished my senior year
in high school.
I mean, I’m sorry.
I finished my senior year in college.
And then they pretty much said to me, “Sweetheart,
you’re a writer.
Over there is the graduate writing program.
Just open that door.
They’ll know what to do with you.
You stay here.”
I mean, I don't know that that could happen
today, but that’s what happened then.
And so I stayed in my -- in that graduate
writing program, I wrote my first novel.
Wow.
And it was with this steely determination.
I had so much to prove.
I had so much to prove to myself.
I had so much to prove to my family.
I had screwed up so much.
I mean, one of the really amazing things about
life, I think, is that I could go from having
my terminal degree having been the 6th grade,
you know, elementary school in Union, New
Jersey to just a few years later when my first
novel was published being referred to as,
you know, like a wunderkind or a prodigy,
because at like 26 or 27 years old my first
novel was coming out.
So that just -- I think there's such a lesson
in that.
And was that a lot of pressure?
Like, after that first one came out and it's
like getting called a wunderkind, especially
at that age, how do you follow that up?
You know?
At least for me in my own kind of my DNA set.
Woah.
I would feel this tremendous amount of, you
know, that anxiety that comes.
Like, oh, now I really have to do it again.
Oh, yeah.
No, I think somebody at a cocktail party after
that first book had come out said to me, “You
know, everybody has one book in them.”
And that’s like classically the kind of
thing that I don't know why the nice things
that people say to us tend not to be what
stick.
You know, it’s always like that like little
jab or that thing that’s haunting.
Oh, it’s negativity bias.
It’s how our brains are wired.
It’s evolutionary.
Yeah.
But it sucks.
No, completely sucks.
And so the entire time I was writing my second
novel I had that stranger’s voice in my
head saying, “Everybody has one book in
them.
Everybody has one book.”
I think it’s true for a lot of writers,
and maybe other fields as well, that the second
act, the second book, the second thing, it’s
-- in terms of books, often second books,
second novels, are often the real -- sometimes
not as good as either the first or then books
that the writer will later write once they’ve
gotten over that sense of, you know, just
terror about being able to do it.
I remember when I turned my second book in
to my agent, actually handed it to her in
actual paper in a box, and I put it in her
lap.
And I said, “Well, the good news is I never
have to write a second novel again.”
That’s really how I felt.
I felt like I could begin to believe that
I could trust my imagination with that book,
because it was a story that I imagined.
It was a story that I invented.
Whereas the first novel was really a kind
of fictionalized version of what had happened
to me and my family.
Speaking of that, yeah.
Not to interrupt you, but this is something
I have been asked so many times, and we have
tens of thousands of B-Schoolers and usually
they’ll ask in the context of my About page
or if they’re telling their story on stage
or they’re out and about maybe giving a
talk somewhere.
And they’re wrestling with how much of my
story am I allowed to tell when it involves
my family, my loved ones?
And I think, you know, so much of your career
you have talked about these really intimate
subjects.
Your marriage, your son, your parents.
Some really difficult situations.
What do you say?
Because I know you also teach writing.
What do you say to your students, and od you
come across that a lot?
People wrestling with how much can I tell?
I don't want to violate someone’s trust.
How do I navigate this?
I think that that’s up there with the top
questions that people ask me and that they
struggle with.
Yeah.
I’m gonna quote a friend of mine, the writer
Andre Dubus III.
I was with him on a panel in Aspen a couple
of years ago, and somebody asked him that
exact question.
Because he wrote this memoir called Townie
about his very difficult childhood and his
brother was being sexually abused by a teacher
of his.
And the parents were nowhere to be found.
And Andre said -- and this person was asking
him, “How can you feel okay about that?
What right do you have to tell your brother’s
story?”
And Andre said, “When I would come home
to my empty house with no parents and I would
hear the sounds coming from the closed door
to my brother’s bedroom, what I heard on
my side of that closed door was my story to
tell.
And what was happening to him on his side
of that closed door is his story to tell.”
And I thought that was a beautiful evocation
of that, because we don't live in a vacuum.
We don't live, you know, our lives without
being touched and touching other people.
And so in order for me, for example, my memoir
Slow Motion.
When I finally really was ready to write the
story of what had happened to me and my family
not in a fictionalized version, which was
what my first novel was, but as the true story
that it needed to be, my mother was still
living.
I worried that some of what I was writing
would hurt her.
I wrote it as if no one would ever read it,
even though I had a book contract.
And I told myself that I could change my mind,
which was not really true.
I mean, I’d spent the money.
I wasn’t gonna give the money back to my
publisher.
I -- but I had to feel like I could give myself
permission to write whatever I needed to write.
Because until -- the writing is a process
of discovery.
And until you discover what it is that the
story really is, what it is that you need
to put down on the page, you’re short changing
yourself because you don't even know what
it’s gonna be.
And you’re censoring yourself before you’ve
even begun.
That’s so interesting, because, you know,
you and I have talked, and we had coffee.
And I was telling you how I’m working on
my book now, which is gonna come out when
it comes out.
But I -- everything you’re saying right
now, I am so experiencing a level of internal
censorship and internal kind of paralyzation
like almost nothing I’ve ever experienced.
You know, I write and produce the show, our
straight to camera MarieTV’s, I do -- you
know, I do these crazy ass skits.
And we script that, because that’s how you
do comedy.
Some -- one of the ways that you do comedy.
So it’s like my reality is I write like
this when I have to crank out all of this
kind of content.
But there’s this whole other psychological
beast of what is the book?
And even though I know somewhat of it, it
does.
It feels like facing this huge uncertainty.
It’s like one of the most terrifying things
I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Yeah, because you’re now suddenly writing
a capital B book.
Yeah!
You know, and you’re capital W writing.
And the self consciousness kind of, you know,
the list of things that the inner sensor whispers
in the ear of anybody who’s setting out
to write is fairly endless.
And the thing is, also continues to morph.
Right?
It never -- I mean, if it didn't morph it
wouldn’t be an inner sensor.
If it just said the same thing every day,
“You’re stupid.
You’re stupid.
You’re stupid,” then you would get used
to it and you would recognize it and you would
think like shut up, inner sensor.
Instead one day it’s you’re stupid.
The next day it’s the world doesn't need
this.
The next day it’s what will my mother think?
The next day it’s somebody did this better.
The next day is, you know, what right do I
have?
And on and on and back, you know, through
the circle of this.
And I think one of the things that’s very
helpful, and I think one of the reasons why
writers and artists like to hang out with
each other from time to time is because it
helps to demystify that.
Because everybody goes through it, but because
also it’s a solitary process.
You don't write with a team.
You write alone in your room.
And so when you’re alone in the room, those
demons are what start to emerge, and you completely
lose sight of the fact that that is in fact
part of it.
It’s part of the process.
Yes.
Okay.
This is important.
I can hear my audience already circling back
to where we were before.
Because I know they’re like, “But wait!
What’s the answer?” even though we had
a quote.
In terms of writing about stories, again,
I'm asking this more for my audience because
I don't necessarily have that many things
to uncover in that realm.
With your mom, with your son, with your husband,
did you, and I know this is just your experience
and not necessarily what you’d prescribe,
but did you ask for permission?
To like, you know, let’s say you uncovered
a story and it's about your marriage.
And it involves your husband and you’re
like, wow.
Okay, I’ve given myself permission to get
this on the page.
But now we’re about to cross this chasm
between when I’m potentially going to my
publisher going, “We want to include this
in the book.”
Right.
It’s really been case by case.
Yeah.
In the case of my most recent book, Hourglass,
which is about my marriage, before I wrote
one word, I was actually away when I finally
realized.
And it was kind of with horror that I thought,
“This is actually the thing that I really
want to write about.
I want to write about what it is to walk alongside
another person over time.
And the way that I can do that is by writing
about my marriage.”
That’s -- as a memoirist, that’s -- I’ve
used my own life almost as a laboratory.
I called my husband and I said, “I’m thinking
about this.
How do you feel about this?”
And my husband is also a writer, and he just
said go for it.
He completely gave me permission.
And during the course of writing that book,
part of my process is that I share work with
him every day.
I read aloud to him at night.
I’ve done that with novels, I’ve done
that with memoirs.
Over the course of 20 years, that’s what
I’ve done.
It was no different.
With Hourglass, I sat and read to him every
night.
And I really feel like he had veto power.
I completely felt like he had veto power.
If there was a sentence in there, a scene
in there, anything like that, and if he was
uncomfortable with it, I would’ve taken
it out.
That didn't happen.
In fact, there were times where he was encouraging
me to be harder on us and harder on him.
So I think that that really gave me a lot
of freedom and permission.
Okay, great.
That said…
That said…
People going, “Well, my husband,” or,
“My mom is not that person.”
Absolutely.
So my mom, and I want to say something about
my kid as well.
But my mom, with whom I had a very charged
and difficult relationship, I didn't ask her
permission.
When I was writing the story of my parents’
accident and sort of my recovery in a way,
I had to include elements of, you know, my
mother’s life in there.
I gave her a galley.
So I gave -- I didn't let her see a manuscript.
I gave her a galley, which is an early copy
where things can still be changed.
But not a manuscript, which just looks like
wet clay.
It’s like dig into this.
I really, I was worried -- and this was very
instructive, and I think it'll be very instructive
for your audience, because I was worried about
certain elements in that book hurting my mother.
Not one of those is what she registered.
It was the things that I never even considered.
I couldn’t have imagined that she would
care about.
Or that had nothing to do with anything that
was even -- I mean, I remember one of her
friends who read an early copy saying to me,
“You know, I think your mother is gonna
be very upset and disturbed to read about
everything that you were going through during
that time in your life.”
And I was like, “Nuh uh.
That’s not what that’s gonna be about.
What it’s gonna be about is the portrayal
of her.”
And, oh, also -- I can’t believe I was gonna
forget to say this.
I gave it to a writer friend of mine, a manuscript
of Slow Motion, for a mother read.
Before I turned it in to my publisher, certainly
before I gave it to my mother.
I gave it to a friend who was a mother of
a teenage daughter who I knew was gonna be
very sensitive to those issues and was gonna
be hard on me, was not gonna yes me or tell
me it was gonna be okay or it wasn’t hurtful
or whatever.
And there was things that she said I think
that this is -- this is gonna be really hard
for your mother.
And I took them out.
One of the things I would say about that kind
of writing is that cleverness -- the writer
showing off at someone else’s expense, the
pot shot, as I would refer to it, that’s
never okay.
I am always hardest on myself.
I begin with just really taking a very good,
hard look at, you know, my culpability, my
demons, my internal life, all of that.
And that doesn't mean I think it’s okay
to like rake anybody over the coals ever.
Right.
One of the ways I think a writer can know
whether -- because there’s what I would
refer to as the revenge memoir.
They’re never good.
Let’s just start with it doesn't make for
a good book.
But also, how does a writer know that that’s
what’s motivating her?
The writer knows because she’s sitting there
working on the book and thinking, “I can’t
wait for so-and-so to read this book.
Oh, this is gonna really stick it to them.
They’re really gonna see themselves for
who they really are.”
Those kinds of thoughts?
Those kinds of thoughts mean that a writer
has not reached that place of distance or
perspective or compassion or the ability to
be ironic that makes for a really good book.
So I think that’s always a really good question
to ask.
Because when it's coming from a place, like
as the Buddhists say, is it true and is it
useful?
Yes.
I use that in online groups all the time.
We kind of extend it out, but that’s -- those
are two good questions to ask before we open
our mouths or write things down for the world
to see.
Right, exactly.
Because that’s -- it’s there.
It’s there forever.
And we’re not here forever, but when you
write a book and you put it out in the world,
presumably it’s gonna be around for a long
time.
And it becomes in some way a record of that
moment.
It doesn't become the whole story.
I mean, as someone who now has written multiple
memoirs, I can say that for sure.
A book is a record of what the writer knows
at that moment and what the writer can glean
from that moment and the wisdom that the writer
has at that moment.
Live another few years and -- I’ve always
thought it would be a great thing for a writer
to once every 10 years attempt to write the
same book.
Wow.
Because it wouldn’t be the same book.
It wouldn't be the same book.
I can see that from my own career and everything.
Sometimes I look back at my work and I’m
like, “Really, Marie?
Really?”
But that’s another subject.
Okay.
So you’ve shared something I love.
You said, “You have to believe in yourself
before the world believes in you as a writer.”
And then you and I had this epic coffee talk.
Which, by the way, everyone listening, if
you hear a little something in the background,
we’re in New York City and they all do construction
in New York City.
So don't worry about it.
But back to our epic coffee talk.
This distinction between confidence and courage,
we’ve gotta talk about this.
Because so many people feel like they need
to have this ultimate confidence in themselves
as a writer or as an artist before they do
anything meaningful.
Yeah.
I think the permission to refer yourself as
a writer before the world has gotten on board
is one of the most challenging things I think
for writers starting out.
I remember when I was a young writer writing
my first novel living in New York City, and
I would constantly be asked, “So, what do
you do?”
And I would say, “I’m a writer.”
“Oh, have I read anything you’ve written?”
“Well, not yet.”
And then a couple of years later, you know,
and I just dread that question.
And then a couple of years later I had this
first novel, it was coming out from Double
Day, and I was looking forward to that question.
Like, “Oh, what do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Have I read anything you’ve written?”
“Well, actually, I have a first novel that’s
just come out from Double Day.”
“Is it a bestseller?
Is it gonna be a movie?”
So one aspect of this is that like if, you
know, the goalposts continue to change and
change and change.
So the idea of ever waiting for the world
to grant you permission in some way is just
-- it’s a waste of energy and it’s a waste
of emotion and of time.
Because one of the things about setting down
words on the blank page is the world is never
waiting for whatever it is that you’re gonna
produce.
The world is not saying, “We need this book.
That doesn't happen.
So you -- so it requires this sense of urgency
about something that has to come from an internal
place.
But I think in terms of confidence and courage,
you know, we’re talking quite a bit about
like, you know, honesty on the page and fear
of betraying others or betraying trust or
all of that.
There is a kind of -- I think people mistake
confidence and this idea of what that’s
supposed to look like.
What that looks like on social media, what
that looks like on television, what that looks
like in our culture, with what it really takes
to do the work, which is courage.
It’s not the same thing.
Courage is facing your fear and doing it anyway.
Confidence can really be this kind of like
overrated mask for insecurity.
Yes.
I feel that all the time.
People will sometimes ask like, “How are
you so confident?”
I’m like, “I’m really not.
At all.”
Right.
I just keep showing up.
You’re able to navigate your own like -- yeah,
it’s scary.
Yeah.
Terrifying.
You just kinda go like, “Oh, that’s scary.”
And then almost the -- I’ve developed this
feeling of when -- with my work when I know,
like when I started Hourglass.
It’s like this scares the living daylights
out of me.
This must be a good idea.
You know, or my memoir Devotion.
Same thing.
I mean, I saw the word Devotion kind of appear
in my vision almost in neon when I was in
the middle of my yoga practice one day, and
I literally like saw it and I out loud said,
“Oh, shit.”
I was like, “This is not what I want to
be doing.
I do not want to write a spiritual memoir.
I don't even like reading spiritual memoirs.
What is this?
This is scary.”
And then all of those same like who me, why
me, I’m not a guru, I’m not a -- what
do I know about this, I’m just a seeker
who wants to live in the questions.
You know, why is anybody gonna care about
this?
So there has to be a way of overriding that.
Like overriding it every single day.
Yes.
Which brings me right to something else you
said that was brilliant.
So you shared the gift is useless if the writer
doesn't have the muscles of persistence, patience,
and the ability to withstand the indignities
and rejection inherent in the life of any
artist.
Gifts are nothing without endurability.
I love that I said that.
I love that you said it too.
I really believe it.
Yeah.
It’s the truth.
Yeah.
Tell me more.
I have had very talented students who are
not writing anymore.
Because they got scared, they gave up, and
they didn't -- that feeling of, you know,
in my book that I’m still writing there’s
a line somewhere in there that I often read
when I give readings, which is “Every day
a new indignity.”
And I want to have t-shirts made.
Every day a new indignity.
Like, if you do not want to experience the
indignities of just what it is to make something
out of nothing, put yourself out there, you
know, be an artist in the world.
I mean, I was actually just this morning reading
to my husband some comment that appeared on
my Facebook page of -- from an anthology that
was written in -- that I had an essay in in
1998 of someone saying, “You know, I didn't
much like the essay, that essay of yours in
that anthology.
In fact, I didn't really like any of them.
They were all puerile and silly and, you know,
and there was really only one I liked, and
that was this other writer’s.
I’d be happy to send it to you if you'd
like.”
I was like -- and it rolls right -- it actually
genuinely rolls right off of me.
But I -- and I was reading it mostly because
it was like wow.
Like, what is the mindset of someone who thinks
that maybe I -- now you’ve insulted me and
maybe I would like to see the essay that you
preferred?
But that’s like, if you don't have the stomach
for that.
Or I’ve had spectacular reviews and I’ve
had eviscerating reviews.
I’ve given readings to thousands of people,
and I gave one memorable reading where it
was in San Francisco where there were five
people in the audience, and two of them were
my cousins.
That’s what was really unfortunate.
You know, there was one homeless guy in the
front row, the bookstore manager, one other
person, and my cousins, who I’m sure were
sitting there thinking, “She makes a living
out of this?”
But so the feeling of sitting down, getting
up every day, and saying, you know, time to
make the donuts.
I love that.
It’s like #timetomakethedonuts.
#timetomakethedonuts because it’s, you know,
a local high school once wanted to send an
intern to sort of observe me.
You know, like a high school intern.
And I was like what are you gonna -- you’re
gonna observe a lady in a bathrobe with her
hair on end.
You know, I hate it when the UPS truck shows
up because it’s like I don't -- like I don't
want to be seen.
Like I’m just there in my isolation doing
my best every day to chip away at this vision
that I have for something or this idea that
I have.
And that is -- that requires a kind of -- I
mean, it requires courage, but it also requires
that kind of endurance.
Yes.
And it leads right into this idea of productive
despair.
And this is, I think, a really interesting
topic.
Because there’s some folks that I’ve encountered
in the world, and they’ll talk to me about
the process of creation.
You have to find a way, you know, to make
it enjoyable.
And I agree to that to an extent.
There’s some things that, yes, you can kind
of generate joy, you can bring a sense of
presence, you can really be there and be open.
But there’s a lot of times when it’s like
-- it’s miserable.
And I love that you shared, you know, “I
tell students all the time, there’s this
kind of despair we feel as writers and artists
that is not only useful, but necessary.”
What do you mean by that?
Well, I mean, to start with, there’s this
misunderstanding of the idea of inspiration.
Right?
I’m only gonna waltz over to my desk and
sit down when I am in a highly inspired state.
And the words are gonna fly from my fingertips
and I’m gonna sit there, you know, laughing
and crying at my own creation.
And I’m only going to write when I’m in
that state of inspiration.
I can tell you that if I only wrote over these
last 25 years that I’ve been writing books,
if I only wrote when I was inspired, I wouldn't
have 9 books.
I might have like one very slim chapbook to
my name.
Because inspiration, the feeling -- I mean,
inspiration is a real thing.
But the feeling of having it is kind of a
myth.
And I have many days sat down and thought,
“I’ve got nothing today.
I have nothing, I’m tired, my brain isn’t
working right, I’m not feeling it.”
Those are often the days that the best work
gets done.
And then I’ve had days where I’m just
like, “This is awesome.”
It goes back to confidence.
Very often for me when I’ve had that feeling
of like this is it, this is it.
I have this big idea.
I’m gonna tell you all about this big idea
I have.
That is often when I’m like sort of sinking
or writing myself right into a corner.
Because that kind of, you know, blustering
confidence kind of ideas that are kind of,
you know, that are out there, that are intellectually
driven rather than really coming from -- you
know, there’s this great Yiddish word, the
kishka.
It's like the guts.
Like the inside place.
That’s where the best work comes from.
And so productive despair has to do with -- when
I wrote that fairly recently, I had just put
aside 200 pages.
I put it to the side.
Same book, wrong attempt.
Horrifying.
But it was what had to happen.
I mean, I -- it’s very difficult to read
your own work clearly.
And I think that’s one of the things for
anybody who writes, it’s a huge challenge.
And that’s why we have to have readers.
We have to have people who have our backs.
But that feeling that I had when I reread
those 200 pages after some time away, they
had grown cold, you know, they had become
something that I could see clearly.
Because I had been on book tour for Hourglass,
so I had two months of not looking at them
at all.
When I came back to look at them, my heart
just thudded and I thought, “This isn’t
-- this is not the way into this book.”
And I said to my husband that night, “I
am in a state of despair, but I know it’s
productive despair.”
It was a better feeling to be confidently
working forward in those pages, but they weren’t
gonna lead to a good book.
The productive despair was that place where
you get almost -- and the image I always have
is it’s like if you’re a deep sea diver.
You’re almost at the bottom of the ocean
floor, and then when you hit that place you
can push up from there.
But you have to go there.
It’s the penultimate place.
The productive despair isn’t the place where
it’s -- where you’re right before that
take no prisoners, I am gonna hurl myself
at the page, I don't care what anybody thinks,
inner sensor go away.
You know, and it’s that kind of -- it’s
almost a recklessness, a creative recklessness,
that is a very good and very important feeling
to get to because it cuts through all of the
noise.
I love it.
So let’s go into process a little bit.
You know, you’re a mom, you’re a wife,
you have a life outside of your work.
What are some of the things you do to set
the boundaries for that sacred time to put
words down on the page?
Like has it morphed over the years?
What’s it look like now?
Yeah.
It certainly has morphed, and partly it’s
morphed because of motherhood.
So my son is 18 now.
And he pretty well takes care of himself.
But for all the years that he was a little
kid, I had been used to rolling out of bed
and getting to work.
Just cup of coffee, silent apartment, silent
house.
Just, I mean, I -- it was such a luxury I
didn't even understand what a luxury it was.
And then when my son, Jacob, was born, I understood
instantly a couple of things.
And one was that he came first.
Two, and this actually goes back to something
we were talking about earlier about when he
was born I looked at him and I thought, “You
did not ask to be born to a mother who is
a writer.
And I have to respect your privacy always.”
And I think I really have.
I never wanted him to be 30 years old and
turning to me and saying, “I wish you hadn’t
written that.”
That was my kind of…
Litmus test?
That was my litmus test for myself.
But so, you know, he’s a baby, he’s in
nursery school, he’s in kindergarten all
the way through elementary school.
I drove him to school every day.
I made him breakfast every day.
I packed his lunch every day.
And I didn't wanna do it with divided attention.
And so I had to learn how to actually compartmentalize
my work in a way that I never had before.
I had to be able to say I can re-enter this
dreamy state after he is safely ensconced
in the classroom.
I can go back home and I can start my day
over.
And that was a huge lesson for me.
And something that I would often say to him
was he was a kid is, you know, just if something
happened, something was difficult, there was
a little tiff or whatever, you can start your
day over any time during the course of the
day.
It can be hard to do, and it's easier to just
be -- but, you know, people have complicated
lives.
I’ve had so many students who have full
time jobs, are getting up at 4 o’clock in
the morning to write a book.
I’ve had students with a number of kids
who learned how to write really late at night
when the house was finally quiet and the house
was theirs.
So it’s doable.
It’s possible.
But what it really involves is making the
time sacred, whatever that time is, however
that’s possible.
And whether that takes rituals.
I mean, I have a friend who lights a candle,
I have a friend who burns incense.
I need my special mug.
And there’s writers are nothing if not superstitious
kind of ritual, routine-based people.
If I were out of cappuccino, I would have
to drive all the way to, you know, the supermarket
to get my special brand of cappuccino, because
I wouldn't be able to write without -- I mean,
both the caffeine but also just that feeling
of just this is -- I’m set up.
I’m setting up.
Because I don't have an office and I don't
have an assistant.
You know, there aren’t the parameters of
this is what my -- this is the way my day
is gonna be shaped for me.
I have to shape my day.
Yeah, I love that.
So for anyone watching right now that perhaps
maybe they’re writing sporadically or maybe
they feel like they want to start getting
back to the page, putting out a book, putting
out an essay, starting to write a blog.
If they want to do some type of creative writing
exercise, what’s a good prompt that you
would give them to get started?
Well, my favorite prompt is based on a book
that was published a long ago by a writer
named Joe Brainard, and the title is I Remember.
The title of the book is I Remember.
And in the book, every single sentence begins
with the phrase “I remember.”
And then drop down another sentence, “I
remember.”
And then another sentence, “I remember.”
And when I give that exercise at retreats,
I look out from where I’m sitting at a sea
of people, and not one of them hesitates.
Those are extremely evocative words.
I mean, try not to finish a sentence that
begins with “I remember.”
And so what I suggest to people to do is to
just begin -- have a special notebook, begin
with the words “I remember” and write
a sentence.
Drop down a line, begin with -- not trying
to connect memories.
If you think about the way memory works, it
doesn't work in a narrative line.
It doesn't connect.
We don't tell ourselves stories in our heads.
We have these disparate memories that don't
connect.
And when we allow them to be associative and
to bounce one off the next, it creates all
sorts of interesting material.
People almost invariably find memories that
they didn't know that they had, or they make
connections that they didn't know they had.
So it’s a good springing off point.
I love it.
Anything else that you’d want to end with
for someone who is a writer, wanting to be
a writer, or embarking on some type of creative
life?
I would say going back to both of us being
Jersey girls, when I was that sort of, you
know, lonely only child growing up in New
Jersey, really when I think of just what I
could imagine for myself, I -- my dreams were
so small.
And I feel so fortunate that I stumbled along
until I began to find the people who could
really help me.
My teachers, my mentors, I would say notice.
Notice who’s around you.
Notice who can help you.
One of my favorite passages from a sabbath
prayer is the days pass and the years vanish,
and we walk sightless among miracles.
So don't be sightless.
To be an artist is to witness the world around
you.
Open your ears, open your eyes.
Notice the gifts around you, notice the people
who might be able to mentor you in some way
or help you in some way.
And believe that if you write with great specificity
your own story, or out of great specificity
your own imagination, that that’s what’s
gonna connect.
Beautiful.
I’m noticing the gift that’s in front
of me right now.
Dani Shapiro, I adore you.
Thank you so much for taking the time to be
on our show.
Oh, thanks so much, Marie.
Now Dani and I would love to hear from you.
So we talked about a lot of beautiful things
in this conversation, but I’m curious, what’s
the one insight that meant the most to you?
And, most importantly, how can you turn that
insight into action for your creative life?
Leave a comment below and let us know.
Now, as always, we have the best conversations
over at the magical land of MarieForleo.com,
so head on over there and leave a comment
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Courage is facing your fear and doing it anyway.
Confidence can really be this kind of like
overrated mask for insecurity.
