“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
In my decades of corresponding with various other authors whether professional or not, one thing has always stood out to me: there comes a period when we notice each other taking a time out from social media and everything to just “go under” for the sake of our stories. It’s an expected time and more of a norm than people want to admit in public. There are people who can manage the happy balance of being chronically online while also creating fiction but for many of us, that balance can only be achieved through re-aligning our energies and our focus by periodically “going into the woods”. And that also requires being fully present in the moment: to live, to experience, and to soak in details that will make their way into our fiction. This is the other kind of work all artistry requires regardless of medium. An internal life but also an external life as our senses absorb the nutrients of existence to create new works.
What does it mean by saying you have to allow stories to “happen to you”? I don’t know what that might mean for you; you tell me. For me, story-making has always been organic. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creating whether in one form or another. And it requires paying more attention to things and to making new memories whenever I can because memories create new colours and textures for me to use in my stories. This is why one of the first things I say in every semester that I teach creative writing is this: go out and live your lives. Make your memories and do something outside of your comfort zone. Because that is where the most interesting stories happen.
In a sense, in my long slow recovery from the pandemic and my disablement in 2022 I’ve been returning to that person who tries to regularly have (small, manageable and disability-accomodating) adventures and to be more brave. My storyworlds and my dreams have been flourishing because of it and that is something far more precious to me than an additional book sale that usually gives me a profit of between USD0.98-USD3.99 (if I’m very lucky) per unit. Living in the moment and allowing my subconscious to bloom again? Priceless. And very very necessary.
This time away from social media has been such a boon to me. But I also know that at some point this honeymoon must end; I need to do the work of putting my works and myself out there. That narrative of who we are as authors sometimes sell our books and our works as much as those works themselves. This is especially true in this age we live in when so much of our lives are required to be on display. I blame influencer culture for this sense of entitlement others have regarding our personal time and spaces. It’s why I don’t foresee ever having a public instagram. It is why even when I return I’m not going to be posting much about my personal everyday life again. Those things have become acutely commodified in the current climate we live in. I go to public-facing accounts and just reading comments and the sheer entitled behaviour on display often makes my blood boil. In the end, it’s nobody’s business where we go, what we buy, what we eat and what we accomplish on a daily basis.
Personally for me, I’ve reached the stage where the strength and quality of the works I put out matter to me more than the reach of those works. If I’m never going to be fabulously wealthy from my writings, why not opt for peace of mind instead? The state of the publishing industry both traditional and indie-supporting in 2026 has become increasingly fraught. This requires thinking about progress and visibility in different ways. I’m all for not embracing grind culture in my creative life. I’ve more than enough of that in my day job as an academic. Sure, my online “presence” or whatever it is will suffer a bit this year because I’ve gone “underground”, but at the end of the day I am writing and making music; I am preserving the time/energy I need to produce the works that have people reading me.
I mention “influencer culture” but in the past few months with all of the hell breaking loose in the world, we’ve also noticed a decline in that. More people are opting out of that claptrap and are returning to a more analog existence. As for me, I’ve been online journalling since 1998 and blogging since blogging was a thing. So I’m quite comfortable with just posting these small letters to readers. I’m not sure what the coming months will herald for me, but for now as Kate Bush would say, “I put this moment here”.
And I breathe.
Till the next blog post,
xx
Anita
ps: the quote for this post comes from Kate Bush’s “Jig of Life“.