If you can and in all truthfulness. No love and light. No 9 steps to do this. How do you become noticed?
In what ways do you protect and peace on a daily basis?
What book do you gift to others most often? What is your favourite place you have ever travelled to?
The beginnings of a novel came through to me in the strangest way...I wrote it down, but now I'm afraid to 'go there'..how do I know if this wasn't just a one-off or something I really need to explore? I'm intimidated by the medium.
One non-fiction book that has had a great impact on you?
Telling a person you feel connected with but recently met, do you tell them or wait?
Do you ever feel alone - and how do you deal with that?
My question is about how you handle advice. Because I get ADVICE. I get too much advice! ..from many people who care a lot about me and have the best intentions at heart. And honestly, sometimes, my insecurity guides me to ask for a lot of advice, so I'm not putting it entirely on others. So how do you listen to advice from loved ones with thoughtfulness and respect while also finding your authentic feelings and truth when making your OWN decisions for your OWN life? (And not being led by other people's visions for their own lives).
Do you ever struggle to let go of your work? To give it over to others? Or has that just become part of the process now?
*for accessibility, I am making the first of these answers viewable to free subscribers
1. If you can and in all truthfulness. No love and light. No 9 steps to do this. How do you become noticed?
Love and light are intrinsic to my outlook, but I’ll do my best ;-) I was trying to ascertain what you meant by ‘noticed’ and wondered if you meant personally or publicly, by one or by many. Well, I think that my answer might be the same either way. Stay honest to your core, the most authentic part of you, and honour yourself by doing whatever you are moved to do without second-guessing it or worrying about the scale of the mountain. It might be art making, a love decision, daily devotion, or personal practice (I find that all of these intersect), but whatever it is will be uniquely yours. Employ your honesty and raw desire and fall into it as often as possible. Surround yourself with whatever amplifies your practice, and when I say surround yourself, I mean that. Embed it into your life. Nurture this part of you every single day. Spend time with it, even when you feel it isn’t working or no one else cares. Do it anyway. Other people’s opinions cannot be the reason for your work. Do it for the joy, the ups and downs, loneliness and all of its tricky, fearful parts. Finally, if you are so moved, begin to share. This answer might sound vague, but it is how I have approached all of my works. I am going to use the example of putting my poetry on Instagram. Nowadays, I can’t read an article about me without the title ‘Instagram Poet’ sprawled lazily across the piece's title. Do I write for the gram? Of course not. I’ve been writing poetry since I was six, and by the time I was ready to write ‘bone’ in 2014, Tumblr and IG were fairly popular mediums. It seemed logical to use these tools to share my writing. Some people would say that IG is where I got noticed, but it depends on who you ask. I have been performing my work in the UK/SA/USA for some time before that, but social media brought the numbers. Is that how I became noticed? Maybe.
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I thought about this again just now and wondered if you meant by an agent/publisher. The same thing applies, of course. Once you have something you are happy with, they will find you, or you will find them. My agent found me when she was looking for someone else. By then, I was well into touring the U.S while selling my own self-published copies of ‘bone,’ which she found and read. Be a train already moving; they’ll get on board, or they won’t. Either way, you’ll be noticed.
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