Writers at the Well

Join sculptor and poet Don Freas, author of In-Between: Creativity Set Free and Swallowing the World: New and Selected Poems, in a rich exploration of the relationship between meditation and creativity. Don describes how his practice of Liangong, a form of Qigong, deepens his somatic awareness in the studio and in life. He explains how his process of journaling, partly inspired by Robert A. Johnson’s book Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, has deepened self-inquiry, and thereby, self-compassion. Don lets us in on his decades-long conversation with an inner wisdom figure he calls Sophie, a voice who regularly encourages his intuition and questions him when he goes off track. He describes Sophie as “a voice from the long history of humanity, or of the universe.” Don shares insights gained from many sources, including spiritual teacher Byron Katie, physicist David Bohm, Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson, and Akashic Records teacher Linda Howe. Don takes us on a deep dive into the “material meditation” of making art. “When you look back,” he says, “your own accrued shape appears in the spaces between the things you’ve fashioned.”

Don holds an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College and lives in Olympia, Washington, where an upcoming exhibit of his sculpture will take place at Childhood’s End Art Gallery. Visit www.DonFreas.com to learn more and follow Don on instagram@donfreas and FaceBook@donfreas.

Audio Engineering by: https://www.audio-refined.com/
Music by Christopher Lloyd Clarke.

Join novelist, essayist, and canoe adventurer Mar’ce Merrell as she unpacks her spiritual and creative toolbox, sharing how she uses meditation to move through stuck places in life and on the page. Mar’ce describes the steppingstones of her journey from the moment her therapist first suggested meditation to a literal “breakthrough” experience at an MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) Retreat with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli at Mount Madonna Center. The breakthrough encouraged her to “show up for herself” in radical ways. She undertook an Outward Bound Woman of Courage Canoe trip, during which she wrote a prophetic letter to her future self. Mar’ce’s spiritual and creative explorations then took her to Greece, where she participated in a GoodWorld Journeys Writing Salon taught by George Saunders and Mary Karr—another life-changing experience. In the course of the interview, we discuss George Saunders’ story “Victory Lap,” and how the surrendering of old beliefs has been a through-line of Mar’ce’s journey. Finally, Mar’ce describes some of her extraordinary life-and-death moments in the canoe, how she learned to work with water and not against it, and how her life has unfolded in the gap between the impossible and the possible.

Mar’ce is the author of the novel Wicked Sweet, a Barnes & Noble Best Summer Read pick for Young Adults. Her stories and essays include: “Water Calls, Water Holds” (Embrace Your Divine Flow), “Architecture as Reconciliation” (Fold Magazine), and “Variations in a Living Thing” (Hags on Fire Magazine). She holds an MFA from Sierra Nevada College and lives in Ghost Lake, Canada, where she “writes to observe and record the natural world and the wilderness in our minds.” Mar’ce currently facilitates online creative writing circles or “Nests” whose participants hail from all over the world. Mar’ce is on Instagram. You can find out more about her work and her mentorship at www.marcemerrell.com.

Novelist, screenwriter, and founder of LA Writers’ Lab Alan Watt talks with host Tess Callahan about his creative process, meditation, and the meaning he finds in teaching. He discusses the writing of his award winning novel Diamond Dogs and his many popular books on writing. Watt asserts that the desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve. In both his writing and meditation practices, Watt is all about inquiry. In this interview, he encourages you to give yourself permission to write, to exorcise whatever within you wants to be freed, to assert your boundaries, and to release limiting beliefs about yourself and the world. A brilliant teacher, Alan talks about bringing a sense of trust and mutual respect into his online courses. “If you don’t love your students,” he says, “you shouldn’t be teaching.”

Alan Watt is an L.A. Times best-selling author, screenwriter, and consultant to Hollywood writers and producers. He has won awards for his novel Diamond Dogs and his feature film “Eddie, Kill the President.” His popular books on writing include The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, The 90-Day Screenplay, and The 90-Day Rewrite. Alan is the Founder and Creative Director of L.A. Writers’ Lab, where he teaches online workshops to writers throughout the world.

Friends, this episode is a departure from my usual offerings. I will return to meditations and occasional interviews after my mini book tour, but today I’m talking about my novel DAWNLAND, and what IT has to do with meditation, particularly the question: Do we sometimes meditate by accident? And if so, what’s happening there? Inadvertent meditation might seem like an oxymoron. We usually associate meditation with intention and focus. Even devotion. But I think there are moments when life meditates us. And the more we practice, the more we open ourselves for this to happen spontaneously. The characters in DAWNLAND don’t meditate in a traditional sense, but they each have their own way of connecting inwardly. I describe examples in case they resonate with you. This talk invites you to relax your grip on “solving” and “fixing,” to be radically open to the silences that emerge in your day, to notice when life meditates you. Savoring those moments, even for a breath, allows a sense of spaciousness to seep into your mind and your body, a spaciousness that allows the responses you need in any given moment to arise on its own. Thanks for listening!