You are Smart, Creative, Engaging!

I like reading short sentences, I like writing short sentences. I like phrases, I like captions. I like advice columns and Q&As. I like pull quotes. I love lists, horoscopes, Dos and Don’ts and recipes. I love personal ads, classifieds. All these items are like a to-go meal. Takeaway. Quick bites of copy you can skim, take note of, and keep moving.

I’ve been teaching my first workshop and I was struggling with overwhelm. AHH. Can I do this thing? Can I communicate effectively while hosting on Zoom?? (I’m bad at tech.)

So I decided: why not give myself a little Octavia Butler–style motivation.

I really think it worked. Since writing these little ditties, these quick bites of motivation, I’ve felt like — hey, yeah. I can do this. I sat up, stood a little straighter, stepped into being a teacher and a Zoom host all at once. The workshops have been running smoothly. I feel confident.

Most of us have seen Butler’s notes by now — the ones she penned in green, red, black, and blue.

They were private. She wrote them purely for herself, to stay focused and conquer the world she was up against. Writing science fiction as a Black woman in the 1980s, I can’t imagine, was or is easy. No one was going to hand her book deals. She had to write, fight, and be extremely disciplined, running on determination.

Now her private manifestos circulate the internet for the next gen. We still need the reminders — and there’s something else in it too, which is getting to see that it worked. She did in fact become a best-selling novelist. She won the MacArthur.

Even tho they’re familiar now (thanks, internet), they’re so powerful. I don’t mind seeing them over and over again.

If you want to learn more, listen here: Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into The Story on NPR’s Code Switch. And I really wish I’d been able to see the show of her notebooks at the Huntington Library, more here.

I used to do interviews (press) about personal ads(the company I built was inspired by), and I always talked about the importance of writing down exactly what you wanted. Only then is it possible for it to arrive in your life. The manifestation of the person you want to attract, find, connect with. Because it says: I know myself, I know what I want, and I’m actually taking action to get it — BY SITTING DOWN AND WRITING THIS PERSONAL AD.

This is my take on manifesting:

It works because you’re taking it seriously enough to do this one weird trick to bring it into your life. People who don’t truly want something are not going to do this. They’re not going to spend an afternoon flipping through magazines, cutting out words, arranging them on a board, pasting them down, hanging it on a wall. It’s not normal adult behavior.

The time and the seriousness you’re committing is WHY it’s going to happen for you. Because you’re not going to spend time gluing down words scissored out of old issues of Elle Decor and New York magazine like: “BEST SELLING” and “RELENTLESS” and “PEACEFULNESS” and “START MAKING STUFF DIFFERENT” unless you actually mean to do it.(these are actual phrases I glued down into my manifestation journal).

So: if you want something or you’re scared, overwhelmed –– start writing motivational notes. The people who do this are the people who get the thing. Not because the notes are magic — because writing them is what wanting it looks like when you’re serious. Be like Octavia and pen to paper what you want, then go out and make it happen. It will come!

I announced in the Notes feature I will not be writing for the next 2 weeks aka. the final 2 weeks of August! I implore you to do the same and just chill. Read, take notes, think about your next moves. Then write them down and make them happen! That’s what I’ll be doing while Popular is Closed For August.