the Inspirited Word Mary Lanham

As a rule of thumb on this podcast, I try to keep things generally positive, since most of us have enough negativity in our creative lives. This month, though, I’m inviting you to take a little trip with me to the realm of evaluation, judgment, and yes, even snark.
But let’s be clear: I don’t mean snark directed against yourself. I’m talking about letting yourself just really, really hate something you’ve read that somebody else wrote. And here’s why:
Sometimes, it’s easier to learn from work we don’t like than from work we do like. Sometimes we need to indulge in a really deep “no” to get to an even deeper “yes.”
Let’s get into how to distill wisdom from snark – without being too much of an asshole.
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(First things first: Thank you to thank Taylor Swift for releasing The Tortured Poets Department last month and thus making this episode kind of topical…)
We’re all way too familiar with the idea that emotional suffering or “madness” is the most powerful source of our creativity. It’s the cultural story that just won’t die. But today, I’m sharing a folklore-and-history-informed counter-narrative.
(Note that this is truly not even a lukewarm album take, Swifties do not come for me.)
In this narrative, it’s not madness we’re supposed to be seeking when we go out to the edge of ourselves in search of inspiration – it’s divine joy. The kind of joy that by its nature isn’t going to look or feel the way we’d expect it to, but that will bring us closer to our truest fates.
I think we have a duty to liberate our stories from the cult of the tortured artist. After all, we get to choose the lineages of our creative work. So if we don’t want to be the tortured poet… we don’t have to be.
Tune in to discover what the lineage of the inspired poet can offer us instead.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
Cauldron of Poesy translations
P. L. Henry, 1980Liam Breatnach, 1981Erynn Rowan Laurie (non-academic)
General historical references
H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2018/03/dead-mad-or-a-poet/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadair_Idris#Myths,_legends_and_popular_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Knockgrafton

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It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring persistence, writing endings is a technically difficult aspect of the craft, no matter what genre you’re writing.
But while getting to the end of a project is often excellent practice... I don’t think it’s actually always best to push through to the finish. Sometimes pushing through becomes a reinforcement of unhelpful craft habits, ways of approaching our stories that we’re ready to outgrow but don’t know how to yet.
How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?
I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Ever found yourself lying awake very late at night or very early in the morning wondering if you've missed your calling in life? I'm guessing most writers will be in the yes camp; we tend to be sensitive souls, primed by school and work and even religion to long for "the call" to a vocation of purpose and meaning.
I think our insomniac worries stem from a common cultural fallacy: ideas about having a calling are often conflated with having a career. And this reduction fundamentally confines our vision of what a vocation can be, who gets to have one, and what counts as valuable work.
But writing as a vocation follows an internal rubric of integrity, not an external one of success — which gives you the freedom to measure your creative life by its impact on your spirit, not by your job or your publishing credits.
Tune in to explore what makes vocation such a powerful idea for creatives, and how reclaiming it might shape your writing.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley

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You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:
Write every dayFinish as many projects as possibleNo exceptionsAnd maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely well-adjusted and reasonable guidance more times than you can count: Being a writer is awful. So if you’re able to walk away from your writing, you should—but if you’re too obsessed to quit, no matter how miserable you get, that’s how you know you’re the real deal.
That last nugget of wisdom scared me away from books on the writing life for years.
This month, I get honest about “failing” this classic (and ultimately unhelpful) advice. And I’m exploring how writing praxis can rescue your writing practice from becoming just a bunch of self-punishing rules spiraling inside a pit of despair.
Plus, I share the four key threads of much better guidance that I learned from finally binge-reading hundreds of pages of writing life advice from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and others.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin
“Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

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There’s a popular New Year meme about picking words to act as guideposts for the year. And in this first month of 2024, I’ve found myself reflecting on two sort of abstract terms I use to describe what I’m up to with this podcast: “visionary,” and “praxis.”
These terms are signifiers for the real core of what I’m grappling with here – the disconnect so many creatives experience between all the beautiful and transformative things we believe about creative craft in theory, and all the doubt and dismissiveness we often feel about our own work in reality.
Today I’m getting into what I’m actually saying when I say “visionary writers” or “visionary storytelling,” and why I think cultivating a visionary approach could free us from all of our creative hang-ups and blocks and neuroses, now and forever.
(I am clearly joking with that grandiose claim… but also, I’m kind of not?)
To kick off year two of the podcast, dive deep with me to discover what could be possible when we define true vision for ourselves and our stories.
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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.
https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle
Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/
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Episode links:
Walidah Imarisha
What is "Visionary Fiction"?: An Interview with Walidah Imarisha.
Books and other projects
Tyson Yunkaporta
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
For the Wild podcast: Tyson Yunkaporta on Inviolable Lore

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