Hi, friends. So sorry to not be posting till late morning Central Time. I had a 9 AM meeting with my agent today, a meeting she held specifically with her authors who have books coming out in 2027 (that’s me!) to talk about the state of nonfiction publishing. I learned a lot and will be sharing soon for those of you who have your sights set on book publishing and would like to know more. I’ll keep you posted. But the meeting set my morning back. Doing these posts every day has been … a very healthy challenge! It’s teaching me a lot, and I’m grateful for your presence and grace.
Meanwhile, for those who don’t know, we just started Chapter Seven (Chapter Seven!) of our 100 Days of Making & Writing practice, Making from Relationship. It’s a good time to jump in, or jump back in! Today, we’re making and writing something from a the unexpected one. There’s a short intro essay, and a detailed invitation at the end of the post.
But before we make and write today, I want to remind everyone that we have a library of more than 1,000 posts here at Writing in the Dark, and they’re full of writing riches for you, any time you want or need them.
Five Foundational Exercises Including One for Paying Attention
Eleven Urgent & Possibly Helpful Things
Shimmers & Shards: A Practice of Paying Attention to Concrete Details
What Close Reading Really Is: A Practice of Attention
A Surprising Tool For Finding Your Story’s Aboutness
How to Actually Become A Better Writer (& the problem with “workshops”)
Okay, so now, Making from Relationship, and the unexpected one.
Just think for a moment about how much of our lives happen by chance, no matter how much we like to think we’re making our own choices. I’ve got a great big story unfolding in my own life right now, a story about the intersection of intention, attention, negative capability, and surprise. I’m literally living this story as we speak, and it feels deeply connected to our 100 Days of Making & Writing and how this practice is subtly and not so subtly shaping how I’m moving through my own life. I hope to write that up in the next few days. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, I recognize how healthy it is for us all to consider from time to time how much of our lives is or is not in our control. In some sense, we do, many of us, much of the time, at least more or less, choose where to live, where to work, with whom to spend our time. But when you look honestly at how much I just equivocated on all that, it raises the question of how large a role chance plays in all this? Maybe especially when it comes to our most important people.
This, in turn, raises the question of how open we are, and how attentive, to whatever may be arising for us in any given moment, especially things that are just outside the bounds our our pre-existing assumptions and expectations.
Nicholas Christakis studies social networks and argues that human beings are fundamentally shaped by connections we never sought and could never have predicted. Our lives, he says, are often changed by people we didn’t choose—friends of friends of friends, strangers at parties, people who randomly sit down next to us and then to our surprise expand what we think is possible.
As usual, I looked for some examples, and found a few good ones.
Like Helen Keller and Mark Twain, who met by chance at a party in New York City in 1895. Keller–deaf and blind since she was nineteen months old—was fourteen at the time, and Twain—the most famous writer in America and increasingly disillusioned with fame, was sixty. The became fast friends, corresponding for many years. Twain advocated fiercely for Keller, even helping her raise funds for her education, and described her as “the most remarkable person” he had ever met. She, in turn, described Twain as one of the great gifts of her life.
Then we have Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. Theirs was a relationship marked by jealousy, misunderstanding, and creative rivalry, but they kept turning back to each other anyway.
As Lit Hub noted:
Although their alliance was regularly knocked off course by jealousy or misunderstanding, these two ambitious women kept being drawn back to each other through mutual recognition of their shared literary talent.
Their friendship shaped the course of English literature, despite that neither of them would necessarily have chosen it in advance.
Finally, we’ve got Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. The famous friendship between these men first got sparked when Anderson wrote Wilson’s Edgar Allan Poe paper in exchange for the better bedroom in their University of Texas apartment. That trade set in motion an amazing creative connection that led to films like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Unexpected relationships always happen on their own terms and in ways we couldn’t have seen coming. And they often reveal their importance slowly, and only after the significance has become obvious to us through what it’s led to.
Importantly, though, the unexpected relationship does require the fertile soil of our own genuine openness. These relationships tend to flourish best and grow strongest when the arrive in our lives at moments when our usual categories have temporarily failed us and we are unusually available to the wider realm of possibility.
Here’s a short video and a few words about the riches you’ll find here (and it’s a place to introduce yourselves, as well). With this Curriculum Index, you can check out all the things we have going on in our incredible archive of essays and writing exercises for any mood.
Right now, we’re smack in the middle of our 100 Days of Making & Writing Practice, Day 54, Dreams! Remember, it doesn’t matter if you start on Day 1, Day 12, Day 20, or right now with Day 54. I call each ten-day section a chapter, and we are just ending chapter six—Making from Darkness—today (it started here with this introductory essay and invitation), but you can also explore the entire experience here in any order that suits your desire.
There is no right or wrong way to do this—every day is another chance to choose our own adventure. We’re just so, so glad you’re here!
Welcome, welcome!
Mark your calendars for our upcoming 100 Days of Making & Writing Community Zooms for us to come together, share snippets of the work, ask questions, and celebrate the creative synergy. I’ll send out Zoom links closer to the events—and you can always check the WITD calendar of events here, too, but, meanwhile, here are dates to mark:
Sept 3, 4 - 5 CDT
Sept 23, 10 - 11 CDT
Think of the relationships in your life that arrived in a way or at a time when you weren’t expecting them. Before you make anything, spend a few minutes
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