Ev BogueThis is the second part in my two-part interview on Experience Telling with G.B.
If you haven't read the first part, please do: Telling from Your Tender Center (feat. G.B.)
In this second part of the interview we delve a little deeper. G.B. and I talk about the benefits of telling from real human experience.
Telling from Human Experience
Ev Bogue: So the antidote to writing about something that's still too tender/vulnerable, something that I haven't processed yet, is to sit or practice with it?
One way I do this is by free-writing around something until I'm clear on what I'm actually trying to tell from experience.
But how about this next question:
What if what I want to write about is something that I haven't experienced yet?
G.B., you occasionally write about spirituality on your blog and Letter. I feel very grounded when I read your writing.
Sometimes I find myself on other yoga/buddhist blogs and they are writing about how they are going to achieve enlightenment someday, or perhaps become energetically/vibrationally charged to fly off the planet or something like that.
Writing about wanting to float on higher planes doesn't seem to be bringing them any closer to hovering into the next dimension either.
How do you avoid writing about epic esoteric journeys in your writing about spirituality?
G.B.: Yes, I think the way to work with something is to sit with it.
That's my way of working with it. It's not about wanting it to go away, either. I sit right in the middle of it.
Sometimes I slow down at the end of a particularly challenging and/or fast day, and I'm just eating curry, and tears come. And I let them come, there's no need to be embarrassed about it. But sometimes I'm embarrassed about it, and then I know there's something alive in that. So, it's back to the cushion the next morning, like usual. You get to know yourself, your triggers and tendencies, when you just go sit, nothing special (as hundreds and thousands of meditation teachers have said before me).
I guess I haven't had enough epic esoteric journeys to write about. I've had an extraordinary life, but it's also extraordinarily ordinary. When I find myself wanting to cling to something "epic" I put it in its place: the past. If I'm wanting to share to boost my ego or make my life seem "epic-er" than it is, I look at that, too.
The question, then, is: in what way is what I'm writing serving others? If it's simply to serve my own sense of self, I can get that anywhere. I can just hang out in my inbox and press refresh if I want a lightweight hit of "I existness."
But, who wants that?
Ev Bogue: Exactly.
Sometimes I feel like my life should be epic-er, cooler, and vibrating faster than everyone else's too.
Then I write about my life being cool-er than everyone else's, and the writing falls flat with my audience.
When I try to make something any else other than what it actually was, my readers will catch me on it (if I don't catch myself on it first.)
Sometimes I want to fluff up my writing, I want to seem cooler or more of an expert at something than I am.
Basically: I want to bullshit my way through the work.
When I look at my life now, it's pretty mundane. I wake up, drink a Vega kale-spinach smoothie, chop up some red peppers and head to the coffee shop to write for a few hours. At night, I practice yoga to candle light in an empty room.
In-between the coffee and the yoga, I've probably almost been hit by cars three times or I almost forgot to eat lunch.
To me, this seems like nothing special. Anyone could live a life this way.
And yet writing about my normal human experience seems to connect best with my readers.
Is it in my best interest to write about my own experience, instead of pretending I'm having a better experience than I actually am?
How did you learn that writing about your normal human experience is more interesting to readers than positioning yourself as a guru or magical spiritual leader figure?
G.B.: Is it in my best interest to write about my own experience, instead of pretending I'm having a better experience than I actually am?
I think you already have your answer.
How did you learn that writing about your normal human experience is more interesting to readers than positioning yourself as a guru or magical spiritual leader figure?
I'm not sure whether it's more interesting or not! laugh It's funny, I never think about things like click-through rates and did they opt in or how long did they spend on the site? I see this work as ephemeral, passing, subject to end at any moment. I see this life in the same way. We get so grippy-grabby and want it fixed just so!
My friend S.J.B. said to me the other day that she likes that I'm live realigning myself rather than doing some launch thing. She gets to enjoy my site as it is today, knowing that graphic treatment or photo might be gone tomorrow. That's as it should be, right? Your work is in untethering. Untethering, as I see it, is willingness to update our mental model fast -- as quickly as possible. To keep our minds and bodies light and nimble.
There's also a fact I think social web services have woken us up to. Even the most celebrated humans among us are still comically, tragically, hysterically, human. You see this when a huge superstar gets drunk and says something outrageous and their PR person the next day says, "well, that was the real X."
That was the real X. Passing the mic, and you don't have to get drunk to do it, tell us about you. Show us the real X.