On being a "real writer:" turning toward rest and away from ableism

Michelle Spencer joins Cave of the Heart and answers 5 questions on self-trust

In Cave of the Heart, we hear from people like Substack's No. 1 food writer Caroline Chambers, Jessica DeFino, “the woman the beauty industry fears the most” and emerging Substack talent who writes Letters from a Muslim Woman, Noha Beshir. Don’t miss the chance to chat in the comments every Monday with these and other amazing writers.

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Welcome to Cave of the Heart, an interview series where writers trust-fall into the depths of inner-knowing, creativity, and the craft of writing. Are you ready to get curious about the cultivation of self-trust, give a warm nod to our child selves, and celebrate inspiration in all forms? Come with us into the cave of the heart.

Michelle Spencer

hails from Melbourne, Australia. She is a writer, philosopher and sometime entrepreneur. At heart she is a magpie collector of unusual insights, people and other shiny delights. Her goals include coaxing wisdom from knowledge and experience and becoming more herself. In addition to her substack Armchair Rebel: chronic reflections inspired by life in the slow lane, she is nearing completion of the first draft of a memoir, The Geometry of Grief: Life lessons from the death trade.

Describe the setting where you’re answering these questions.

I’ve answered these questions in several settings. Most often the subdued bustle of early morning at my local inner city café, which is a happy place. On a summer morning I’m glad of the open windows (or air con), the coffee, the sense of anonymous belonging and community. Writing in this private public space lets me relax, knowing I can go deep but not so deep I risk ugly crying. Decades of social conditioning encourage me to channel that feeling into words on the page. I can see treetops and the sunshades fluttering over picnic tables on the roadside. Inside there is greenery and art to rest my eyes on. I’m finishing up from my sofa in my small apartment, looking over the rooftops to treetops and sky.

Childhood

Q: Were you a chatterbox as a child, or were you quiet or something else entirely? When you spoke up or expressed a preference, what sort of response did you get?

Here on the page, truth as I can. I was often a chatterbox, yet I recall a lot of being silent and observing too. There was a lot of mixed feedback. As a small child I was praised for being articulate and for my excellent diction. Mum prized speaking “nicely.” She had trained as a telephonist before becoming a nurse and knew sounding middle class was a route out of poverty. Not that she ever said that, exactly, just that you would get a better job if you spoke nicely. The frequent comments from high status adults (school principals, doctors and Rotarians) reinforced the message that I was “the right sort,” worthy of opportunities denied to my more vernacular peers. Around eight or nine, the charm of being a chatterbox wore off for most adults. 

“Were you vaccinated with a gramophone needle?” I heard this more than once from family and friends and from teachers. I was a lonely child, bullied at school and desperate for acceptance. I would get “carried away” in my stream of consciousness, asking questions, sharing observations and thoughts, always seeking some kind of true connection. The more aware I was of the need to self-monitor and shut up, the more anxiety led to overstimulation and that led to narrow focus. But I just couldn’t help myself. I talked to bridge awkward pauses in conversation, pauses that yawned like caverns to me. I would later realise these silences were only a few seconds long. It took me decades to recognise this behaviour as a sign of being an introvert in overwhelm – thanks, Elaine Aron and

Susan Cain

. Of course once I recognized this, it took me even longer to forgive myself for taking up too much room and for over-sharing.  

My preferences were seldom convenient to the rest of the family. (If I wasn’t being scolded for speaking too much, I was rebuked for always having my head in a book, for not joining in.) A relative once said, exasperated by my sensitivity, "Why do you always have to make everything so difficult?" That wrapped words around a feeling I often sensed, so those words haunted me for a long time. Since reading

Kate Manne

’s Down Girl and Entitled, I can see the words landed hard because they’re coded into a lot of the social messaging children get.

I’m probably a writer now because I was trying to understand myself, understand the world, and reconcile my observations with what I was told was happening.

Influences

Q: How do you recognize when someone or something is a positive influence on your writing process and self-trust? What changes inside you and on the page?

Inside myself I feel a balance point. The words come but I don't feel I am possessed or am involuntarily pouring out. No inner dam has burst, nor have I opened the sluice gates too wide. When I’m writing from a place of self trust, I’m not compelled to pour energy into an idea or an exchange or a relationship that feels parched at the end. (This dynamic seldom ends well.) It’s hard to work with writing that results from that. It’s hard to find a through line when I’m exhausted at the end of my writing. 

Some of us shouldn't “open a vein and bleed onto the page,” as the old advice goes. I prefer something more positive—like a pathology nurse (phlebotomist) who can extract a useful pint of blood with a minimum of discomfort and leave you intact and able to go on with your day. 

My wish for writers is for us to be able to trust ourselves enough to access our creative sparks, and to bring forth our golden eggs without doing ourselves damage in the process. I wonder who benefits from the idea that creativity has to hurt in order to be any good? Not creators, not appreciative consumers of creativity. Let’s be part of the resistance and create with joy and ease.

The more I trust myself, the more clearly I can see my own work. I may not recognise whether it's “good” or not, but I know when it's as “done” as possible. Kind of like a home cook: it's cooked so now is the time to serve it. I talked about this with my friend,

Michael Averill

on his podcast Write Songs You Love.

There's a basic acceptance there, a willingness to receive, maybe? It's seldom helpful to feel on borrowed time, especially with yourself. Even in a random stranger, where you exchange a few words, there's a sense of shared presence: you are present with each other just enough for the words to come. That sounds like community, doesn't it?

It isn't always easy to be in community with yourself. I've written most, and probably best, in some kind of creative community. Even when that community existed mostly in my head. For me, writing is easiest when it is generous. It feels uncomfortable to write for my own pleasure alone, like I should be doing something more “worthwhile” with my time and energy. It has taken a long time to trust that my writing is worthwhile to me, even when it doesn’t always please my inner perfectionist. My inner perfectionist has had to be wrestled or wheedled into silence to write any of this.

Creative Spark

Q: When you get an idea for a new essay or project, what does your first instinct look, sound or feel like?

I usually get a quickening of interest.

Elizabeth Gilbert

’s Big Magic was so helpful about following sparks of curiosity, rather than waiting for fascination to motivate me. Now I try to follow the little pinpricks of curiosity, little flickers like the sun glinting on something shiny in the grass. Nothing is ever wasted, whether it becomes a published piece or not.

Sometimes it’s a flicker of frustration, when it's almost a mild revulsion, a feeling of “Does anybody even want to think about that?” Earlier in my life I was scared off by that mild revulsion, but now it's almost a green flag. Oooh! You don't want to think about that? How interesting? Tell me more... I follow those carefully, gentle with myself.

I need a metaphorical glasshouse to nurture my tender ideas. I've killed plenty by trying to talk them into existence. Your partner or colleague or friend is not always going to be in a receptive frame of mind; that can trigger a false message of Oh I guess it's just me, then, which then shrinks into shame. Writing on Substack and in writing courses and groups has given me an audience who are open to taking a minute to listen and receive.

It has helped me to rest in an expectation of my writing being ignored — not enough that I forget the world might read, but enough that I wasn’t anticipating antipathy or trolling right out of the gate. There’s a dodgy bit of my ego that fears the whole world is ready to pounce on anything different to – therefore less-than – what is winning awards or going viral this month.

Writing Process

Q: What does your writing life look like today, and can you compare/contrast it to 10 years ago?

Today I actually write, rather than feeling tortured about not writing most of the time. While I agreed with advice like the Shitty First Draft (Anne Lamott), I was hampered by the idea of what a writing practice “should” be. My recovery was helped most by Gauri Yardi’s Creative Energy online masterclass (since redeveloped into Resolve).

Guided by Gauri I recognised the benefit of the smallest steps being enough, that to pile on pressure just makes everything worse. One exercise was to sit at my desk for two minutes without actually writing. I had to do this for a few days to create a habit and to notice any discomfort – and there was discomfort. Even now, working on my book, I remind myself that a daily sentence is enough; it is a victory over inertia. 

Usually I write around 300-500 words, sometimes more, but even a sentence per day is progress. Gauri also gave me permission to resume after a missed day. I find streaks unmotivating because sooner or later I will break a streak due to my health. Now I know that how many times I “get back on the horse” is the streak that counts for me. Persistence with the givens, rather than trying to live up to a kind of ableist ideal of Real Writers.

Resources

Q: What’s one surprising or unlikely resource that you turn to again and again to bolster your writing life?

Sleep and rest. The work comes easier and is better with rest. I'm more resilient to the inevitable frustrations of trying to wrap words around vague inklings, to unpack assumptions, examine motivations, find brevity and clarity. I'm more present to myself, to others, and to the stories hidden in plain sight. The first time I stopped and took a nap, rather than pushing through like I “should,” was a revelation. It could just as easily be “stopped and did the dishes,” or “stopped and ate a meal.” I came back to my writing afterwards, and even if the writing was no easier, my capacity to regulate myself made all the difference.

It isn't always procrastination that pushes you to take a break, despite what your inner critic might whisper. With rest, my inner critic gets quieter and I recognise her voice for what it is, rather than mistaking it for some kind of Productivity Angel chivvying me on. Do our true friends ask us to break ourselves? Who benefits if we kill the goose laying eggs which might even turn out to be golden? Only those who want to benefit from goose meat.

If I start avoiding a piece of writing, that's a signpost, not a sign of failure or inadequacy. It says there's something here, or maybe nothing, but let's get more playful and less pressured and see if we can coax something out.

Part of sleeping / resting is owning my unwanted selves. I regularly do meditation where I go into my metaphorical basement and sit in the dark asking the selves hiding in that darkness to come home — they are welcome, they belong. Over the past year or so I’ve met a whole wacky gang of selves or personas. It's more important to be whole than to be nice. It’s hard to be good — if you can work out what good is and not just perform niceness—when you're not whole, not integrated.

A psychologist I saw did comment that my Internal Family System is more literal and vivid, maybe, than most people's. They put that down to a writer’s imagination. It sounds a bit woo as I write this, but really our various selves are a bunch of stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves.

When I began to make rest a priority, it was medically required. That tells me a lot about how much permission we need! I relate to Glennon Doyle who has talked on her podcast about how hard it was (still is) to sit on the sofa and do nothing without feeling bad about it, even for two minutes. Rest with guilt is not rest. I sometimes bookend my rest breaks with giving myself permission. I look in the mirror, stare into my own eyes and say: 

“The soft animal of your body is not a machine, and requires frequent rest, so now you are going to…”  

At the end of my rest, I will check in and ask myself if I feel a little more refreshed now? If I don’t feel refreshed, that’s information too. I shocked myself with how little I felt restful, at the start, and there are still days where that happens. I’m learning.

Rest isn’t just lying down, it can be activity that’s not about an outcome, but rather that’s about an experience. Rest might be a walk around the park, or around the block, not because I “need more exercise” but because I feel alive when I move through space outside. Rest might be a fifteen minute nap or a ninety minute nap. For others, rest might be stopping to play with your kid’s crayons or play dough for five or (gasp) even ten minutes. It might be eating a juicy orange, or calling a friend just to say hi. It might be half an hour at a local art gallery or yarn or fabric shop, just enjoying beauty. The more rest breaks I can thread through my day, the more alive I feel, the more capacity I have to create.

Join Michelle in the comments!

How does prioritizing rest into your life and writing practice land with you? 

Where do you think your conceptions about rest originate? What do you think it would take to make rest more of a priority?

Michelle emphasizes the importance of rest and sleep as surprising resources that bolster her writing life. How do you incorporate rest into your own creative process, and have you noticed a difference in your work or well-being as a result?