Jen Knox's Blog

Do you pressure yourself to produce?

I’m ready to do something new as I let my new manuscript settle, but I’m not sure what, so I decided to remain open. I suppose I’ll wait. I’ll live. And I’ll rest.

I have to rest so that I’m ready. We all do.

Recently, I was trying to force myself to create. I like to write after I eat some evenings, and I generally eat the same salad weekdays. It’s a lovely, hearty salad with walnuts and dried apples.

A week ago, my husband went shopping and when he came home, he had purchased our regular items. I asked when they started offering a half-size version of my salad, and he said it was the same one, same price. Just smaller now. The ingredients are more expensive, and what was once a meal is now a snack.

While I can afford to buy additional food, the asymmetry of access to the basics—including nourishing food—is increasing. My salad was a reminder.

We’re human. Our bodies (and minds) are easily taken for granted when they are working perfectly, but we are just as capable of pain as we are equilibrium and pleasure. We are as capable of block and prolific output.

I was reminded of my own capacity for pain this past week as I navigated jaw strain that radiated outwards, causing incredible migraines. And while I still muddled through most of the things I’d signed up for, I was indeed muddling, and I did not write much.

Sometimes muddling is the best we can do. And it is during these times that we have to ask ourselves, how can we be OK with taking a break from the constant output?

If we can step back from pain and disappointment, block and confusion, with the same ability we often step back from pleasure and flow, we can see all the more acutely the ebb that is necessary to facilitate flow.

A little time to rest can change everything.

So if you’re writing, write. If you’re resting, rest. Savor the salad as long as its there, and know that every moment is at the precipice of another.

Prompt: Rest. Or write. Just be where you are.

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”
― David Lynch

Have you ever seen someone look up toward the sky, as though receiving an answer before speaking? If you watch old interviews with David Lynch, he did this.

Once, in an interview on creativity, Lynch said that if you have a yellow notepad and a pen on your lap for long enough, the words will arrive on the page. Ideas will come.

I offered a story this week that came to me this very way and that reminds me it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

You need to sit and write. Or stand and write, if the ergonomics work better. Just, please, so as not to break my heart, write your own words. Trust your messy, human self.

Like any work of expression, it’s easy to forget that the process is simplicity itself. The less we try to complicate things, the more it pours out. The more we talk, analyze, etc., the less it happens.

In other words, the notepad doesn’t need to be yellow or even a notepad.

Simple and clear often means the most honest and authentic creations.

When you need to find something or some way to release, simply look up, out, or down for a while, then allow what comes. Maybe meditate on dropping expectations.

Subscribe now

Prompt: Write every day this week, even if you’re not a writer, and do not set conditions on it. Write for a minute, an hour, or a few hours. No formulas, no overthinking, no editing (gasp!). Just look up or down or off into the distance and write.If you want to read my flash piece, check it out here. I removed the paywall.

Originally published in Literary Orphans and reprinted in The Best Small Fictions

© Jen Knox

You told me not to play with matches that summer, so I palmed a corner-store lighter instead. The flame reached for the tip of your blue Crayon, until you knocked the lighter from my hands. You wanted to color the sky, you said, and I wouldn’t ruin your chance.

I plodded behind, watching socks fall down the backs of your ankles. You explained that this is why we shouldn’t buy socks at Odd Lots, which was sometimes Big Lots, because kids knew. Feet knew. The store carried three coat styles, and mine was one. I liked the color for fall, a warm maroon. You tugged at the longer sleeve.

We were both coupled by winter, our hearts twisted like tree trunks. We ate cold shrimp in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment near downtown, watching Power Puff Girls and retelling jokes, adjusting bra straps and headbands, discussing jobs that allowed money of our own. We quantified everything those lottery days.

We were plump like prunes that spring, tired of snow. Grown. Perhaps this is why I chose to move somewhere warm. Heart still twisted, I navigated a state that you stitched atop a heart on a pillow that I hugged like a tiny person. I told you I had a numb thumb, not understanding the relentlessness of a southern sun. You said talking to plants gives them life, not because they hear you but because they feed on your breath. It doesn’t matter why a thing works, so long as it does.

I never told you that I kept the garden for you, a swell of life that you will never see. We never admitted such sentimental things. But it’s here now, your garden. It thrives for you beneath a sometimes-blue sky.

Has anyone ever believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself?

Those who want to go back to adolescence baffle me. I remember high school as a time of paying dues and feeling ill-at-ease in my body. This sacred time between childhood and adulthood felt like a chrysalis, the liquification, as I found myself disappointed by many of the patterns I saw in human behavior.

Meanwhile, I held a vague hope that this awkward time would lead to something better. And I attribute much of that hope to those who believed in me.

Chalk artist: David Zinn

My hope did not have much to do with my traditional education at the time. My friends, along with my strange creative brain, liked to dream. It dreamed that adulthood held the answers. So, I dropped out of school and dashed headlong into the working world. I went from part-time work to full-time work, and I began to settle into routines I’d been preparing for since I was fourteen.

Part of the reason I dropped out of high school was, quite frankly, the lack of belief around me. The high school I attended was generally disappointing to anyone who actually wanted to learn back then. There were perpetual plumbing issues in one of the bathrooms, which made the hallways smell stale, and most of the teachers seemed more insistent on keeping us “in line” than trusting we could retain much, let alone be interested in their material.

But, as always in life, there were a few exceptions. And it was said exceptions that often offered the most influence.

I can easily recall only two of my high school teachers’ names, and one of them was my English teacher, Dr. Macioci. This man taught. He taught us as though we were the most intelligent young people he’d ever met. He was passionate and funny and brilliant, but still … why did he choose to teach us, rather than the private school across town, or the university? Why the hardscrabble high schoolers with presumed discipline issues who navigated piss-scented halls? (Curiously enough, many of the fights and actual discipline issues happened in the classes taught by teachers who were most worried about them.)

Honestly, Dr. Macioci baffled me even then. He treated us as though we were capable. He called us out when we were wrong, but he expected us to find the right answer. And while I never imagined running into him again, he influenced me profoundly.

Recently, I had an old student/current friend over to my house for brunch with my mother. It was a lovely time because seeing my students grow and flourish is beautiful.

Shortly after this brunch, I checked the submission portal for Unleash. I don’t usually read the submissions for poetry, but it was Labor Day, and I decided to take the opportunity to see what had come in. I quickly fell in love with two poems. When I read the author’s bio, I couldn’t believe it. It was him. Dr. Macioci. I sent him a note promising that there was no preferential treatment and supposing he didn’t remember me.

He responded.

I’m getting lunch with my high school teacher soon. I plan to interview him and share that interview when we release his poems, but in the meantime, the synergistic joy of having an old student of mine over for eggs, then finding an old teacher—all of it in a single weekend—reminded me how connected we all are. More, it made me think of how influential we all are.

We impact each other with words, ideas, and emotions. But we also influence others simply by trusting them. It is a remarkable thing, to trust in another’s growth. Trusting in potential, after all, enables it.

This post doesn’t have much to do with writing on the surface, but I do think the greater conversations—those that happen in a way that becomes part of the undercurrent of our lives—are what matters most. They occur in the classroom, on the page, and in our work.

Don’t forget how much impact you can have simply by believing in another’s potential. Your belief just might lead to their belief in yet another. This is the kind of impact that we can't measure. It’s too big.

Our lit journal is scheduling through the end of the year, but if you’re curious, one of Dr. Macioci’s poems can be found here: Bombay Review.

We all know memes, trends, behaviors, and fears spread. Write/create something that reflects the ripple effect of offerings, love, friendship and *gasp* kindness.

This is an offering to paid subscribers only. Thank you. Genuinely. Your support feeds my ability to be here weekly for everyone. Day 2 will be posted here (without email notice) next week.

"Everyone …

Read more

As a writer (and person), are you spare and mysterious, or do you tell it all?

Exhausted after the first week back to school, I sit in my egg chair and listen to the sound of a fall breeze rustling the sugar maple in my yard. It’s a quiet enough afternoon that my pup’s ear bends toward a few loud bird chirps amidst the buzz of cicadas and distant sound of a lawnmower. All the things left unfinished from the workweek linger in my mind, and I try to recall the word for the process of starting new growth from a sample.

I soften my gaze, and the beauty of this moment dissolves the list of unfinished tasks and the need to remember the word that is on the tip of my tongue. All that can wait. Moments of overwhelm are often best met with surrender, but it’s not always as easy as sitting in an egg chair and welcoming a Midwestern fall.

Have you ever noticed that you can stop doing too much only to think you’re doing too little, and that your brain is equally busy either way?

Likewise, have you ever noticed that those (in life and writing alike) who chatter on endlessly and those who don’t say enough face a similar dilemma? Neither is heard.

Busyness simply is. It’s a distraction.

Photo by Ashlee Marie

I’m starting to return to my novel, and the scenes beg me for more detail. I’m not saying enough. Like in life, I do not enjoy over-explanations, so I try to spare my readers of them. I write spare when I draft (and when I revise for that matter), so this is always a tricky thing to know what to add.

I don’t want to add what might feel superfluous or imposing because that makes me close a book faster than anything. I want readers to engage, to use their imaginations and, with any luck, insert details I could never have dreamed of. This means I am doing my work to invite them to care enough to do so.

Writing a story based on something that actually happened makes this difficult. There’s so much research, so much I know, and I need to balance the historical with the imaginative.

But back to the egg chair and the slight bite in the air that summons fall. Back to the calm of letting go of the week.

The word I was searching for earlier is propagation, and it came to me as soon as I stopped searching. I think this is relevant here. This is what we do when we can pull off a good story. We take pieces of things, small observations and questions, and we nurture them on the page, but we also let go of our control over definitions.

We only want to define so much when offering the gift of story. Let the definition emerge.

Instead, the writer’s job is to create structure or pose a question, and we continue to add on, deepening the question and leading the reader along a path. We want it to be an exchange, not making the reader do too much work and, likewise, not blathering on to the point of removing the reader’s agency over the material.

Knowing what details to add and omit means a bit of self-awareness. These choice points help us to offer the reader the joy of experiencing a story, not simply reading one. And it’s funny how similar this is to the art of any conversation.

Revision prompt: Whether you’re writing a single scene or a longer work with multiple scenes, go through and identify the sensory details you’ve captured. Highlight them. Where do you repeat? (Hint: many, many writers repeat gestures or details about a character’s eyes) Where could you add something true to the story, but unexpected? Most importantly, where can you omit what you’ve added to create even more resonance? Oh, and where did you force details in? Go back through and take out anything repetitive or unnecessary.

Question: Where do you overexplain or not reveal enough? What is your pattern, and is it consistent throughout your work? What about life?

Exhausted after the first week back to school, I sit in my egg chair and listen to the sound of a fall breeze rustling the sugar maple in my yard. It’s a quiet enough afternoon that my pup’s ear bends toward a few loud bird chirps amidst the buzz of cicadas and distant sound of a lawnmower. All the things left unfinished from the workweek linger in my mind, and I try to recall the word for the process of starting new growth from a sample.

I soften my gaze, and the beauty of this moment dissolves the list of unfinished tasks and the need to remember the word that is on the tip of my tongue. All that can wait. Moments of overwhelm are often best met with surrender, but it’s not always as easy as sitting in an egg chair and welcoming a Midwestern fall.

Have you ever noticed that you can stop doing too much only to think you’re doing too little, and that your brain is equally busy either way?

Likewise, have you ever noticed that those (in life and writing alike) who chatter on endlessly and those who don’t say enough face a similar dilemma? Neither is heard.

Busyness simply is. It’s a distraction.

Photo by Ashlee Marie

I’m starting to return to my novel, and the scenes beg me for more detail. I’m not saying enough. Like in life, I do not enjoy over-explanations, so I try to spare my readers of them. I write spare when I draft (and when I revise for that matter), so this is always a tricky thing to know what to add.

I don’t want to add what might feel superfluous or imposing because that makes me close a book faster than anything. I want readers to engage, to use their imaginations and, with any luck, insert details I could never have dreamed of. This means I am doing my work to invite them to care enough to do so.

Writing a story based on something that actually happened makes this difficult. There’s so much research, so much I know, and I need to balance the historical with the imaginative.

But back to the egg chair and the slight bite in the air that summons fall. Back to the calm of letting go of the week.

The word I was searching for earlier is propagation, and it came to me as soon as I stopped searching. I think this is relevant here. This is what we do when we can pull off a good story. We take pieces of things, small observations and questions, and we nurture them on the page, but we also let go of our control over definitions.

We only want to define so much when offering the gift of story. Let the definition emerge.

Instead, the writer’s job is to create structure or pose a question, and we continue to add on, deepening the question and leading the reader along a path. We want it to be an exchange, not making the reader do too much work and, likewise, not blathering on to the point of removing the reader’s agency over the material.

Knowing what details to add and omit means a bit of self-awareness. These choice points help us to offer the reader the joy of experiencing a story, not simply reading one. And it’s funny how similar this is to the art of any conversation.

Revision prompt: Whether you’re writing a single scene or a longer work with multiple scenes, go through and identify the sensory details you’ve captured. Highlight them. Where do you repeat? (Hint: many, many writers repeat gestures or details about a character’s eyes) Where could you add something true to the story, but unexpected? Most importantly, where can you omit what you’ve added to create even more resonance? Oh, and where did you force details in? Go back through and take out anything repetitive or unnecessary.

Question: Where do you overexplain or not reveal enough? What is your pattern, and is it consistent throughout your work? What about life?

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”― Vincent Van Gogh

If you feel unsure how to respond to the onslaught of injustice right now, you’re not alone. If you’re a writer/human who wonders whether your work matters or how to make it matter in an age of AI, you are not alone.

If you are simply at a loss about how to best contribute good work to the world, please take a few minutes to grab a notebook and pen. I promise, this will be worth your time.

I learned this exercise from a fellow teacher at Insight Timer, and I’ve since shared it with wayward writers, leadership students who are trying to figure out what they want to do in the world, and friends who are decent people at a loss.

Instructions: Draw a Venn diagram that’s large enough you can write in each section. Write what causes you the most heartache (it can feel difficult to pick one lately, but pick the one that really nags) on the left side and write what you consider your greatest gift on the right side (this could be empathy, cooking, writing, teaching, anything).

In the middle, where there is overlap … this is the work that is currently calling to you.

Share

Repeat this the next time you are outraged and do not know what to do. Repeat it for your next creative project. Repeat it to remember that you cannot do everything at once, and you do not have to. There is one thing you can offer. And the world needs you to do that right now.

If you do this exercise, I’d love to know what comes up for you in the comments below. Contrary to the illusion, there are more good people in the world than not. We just have to figure out a way to all do our part.

Wishing you all good things.

Who do you write for?

When I first started writing, it felt as though I’d just discovered a secret door that could lead anywhere. I can still taste the freedom of it. The incredible joy of exploring parts of my own mind alongside the world that confused me. Reexamining life on the page was pure privilege. And back then, the page always responded in kind.

When I first started publishing, it was different. It felt as though there were a hundred microphones and a billion writers. Now, fifteen years later, it feels like there are a billion microphones and (maybe as a result) most people have their headphones on.

This can feel discouraging, but I’m here to argue that it’s a gift. All of it.

It’s easy to forget that there is freedom in knowing that we can write when and where and if I want to. There is a knowing (sometimes forgotten) that we’re all writing for ourselves and those who resonate with our work when they happen to come across it. But we cannot control when and who we reach.

Ellen Harding Baker’s quiltDon’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. —Barbara Kingsolver

Jane Smiley kept a reminder above her desk that said, “Nobody asked you to write that novel.” And for her, it may or may not have been accurate, but I can guarantee it’s accurate for me and my fiction.

If I never write another book …. oh well. A few people would be mildly disappointed, then they’d forget their disappointment and move on. There are billions of other stories and other voices.

No one, and I mean not one person, is going to be destroyed if I never write another story or book. But this is not depressing, my friends, this is a reminder of our freedom!

There is nothing to lose and EVERYTHING to gain from writing while knowing that our work is an authentic offering, and therein lies its beauty. No, artists are not valued enough. Especially the brave ones. But perhaps this is because we can’t control the currency exchange with something as precious as art. Those who try often limit themselves and, in the long run, are forgotten. So if your aim is expression and the power that lives within it, keep going.

Consider the myriad people who persevered despite being “ahead of their time.” And consider how their work might’ve changed had they been seeking approval above all else. Consider those who gave up wanting recognition only to raise awareness. Consider those who were brave enough to explore honestly on the page when every marketing trend said to stay safe.

Ada Lovelace, who only lived to thirty-six, was the first to write a computer program in the early 1800s (despite Charles Babbage, a colleague, claiming his own name as the first). She loved her work, and her story bobbed to the surface as most truths do.

Kafka’s laborious daily schedule never impeded his own belief in the power of storytelling and that his own stories to one day reach the masses (it didn’t happen in his lifetime, but it is his idea-driven work that is remembered, not his more marketable contemporaries).

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain was started in 1938 and accepted only to never be published in 1944. The book would finally be published in 1952.

Ellen Harding Baker dedicated almost a fourth of her life to the creation of a quilt that depicted our solar system; she didn’t do this for accolades but for education. She had a fascination and passion so rooted that its branches are still reaching us.

To value our own work and expression, offer stories as gifts, and carry on is to do the true and meaningful work. So carry on, enjoy the stars, and share them as you see fit. If no one cares, you have nothing to lose from being unapologetically yourself. Ironically, it is only in this way that we truly cut through.

This is the true power of the artist—to create and then drop the mic.

Prompt: Write a story or essay or poem that begins with a bound and focused energy and ends with letting go.Write well, friends!

an offering: meditation for releasing expectations

When I first started writing, it felt as though I’d just discovered a secret door that could lead anywhere. I can still taste the freedom of it. The incredible joy of exploring parts of my own mind alongside the world that confused me. Reexamining life on the page was pure privilege. And back then, the page always responded in kind.

When I first started publishing, it was different. It felt as though there were a hundred microphones and a billion writers. Now, fifteen years later, it feels like there are a billion microphones and (maybe as a result) most people have their headphones on.

This can feel discouraging, but I’m here to argue that it’s a gift. All of it.

It’s easy to forget that there is freedom in knowing that we can write when and where and if I want to. There is a knowing (sometimes forgotten) that we’re all writing for ourselves and those who resonate with our work when they happen to come across it. But we cannot control when and who we reach.

Ellen Harding Baker’s quiltDon’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. —Barbara Kingsolver

Jane Smiley kept a reminder above her desk that said, “Nobody asked you to write that novel.” And for her, it may or may not have been accurate, but I can guarantee it’s accurate for me and my fiction.

If I never write another book …. oh well. A few people would be mildly disappointed, then they’d forget their disappointment and move on. There are billions of other stories and other voices.

No one, and I mean not one person, is going to be destroyed if I never write another story or book. But this is not depressing, my friends, this is a reminder of our freedom!

There is nothing to lose and EVERYTHING to gain from writing while knowing that our work is an authentic offering, and therein lies its beauty. No, artists are not valued enough. Especially the brave ones. But perhaps this is because we can’t control the currency exchange with something as precious as art. Those who try often limit themselves and, in the long run, are forgotten. So if your aim is expression and the power that lives within it, keep going.

Consider the myriad people who persevered despite being “ahead of their time.” And consider how their work might’ve changed had they been seeking approval above all else. Consider those who gave up wanting recognition only to raise awareness. Consider those who were brave enough to explore honestly on the page when every marketing trend said to stay safe.

Ada Lovelace, who only lived to thirty-six, was the first to write a computer program in the early 1800s (despite Charles Babbage, a colleague, claiming his own name as the first). She loved her work, and her story bobbed to the surface as most truths do.

Kafka’s laborious daily schedule never impeded his own belief in the power of storytelling and that his own stories to one day reach the masses (it didn’t happen in his lifetime, but it is his idea-driven work that is remembered, not his more marketable contemporaries).

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain was started in 1938 and accepted only to never be published in 1944. The book would finally be published in 1952.

Ellen Harding Baker dedicated almost a fourth of her life to the creation of a quilt that depicted our solar system; she didn’t do this for accolades but for education. She had a fascination and passion so rooted that its branches are still reaching us.

To value our own work and expression, offer stories as gifts, and carry on is to do the true and meaningful work. So carry on, enjoy the stars, and share them as you see fit. If no one cares, you have nothing to lose from being unapologetically yourself. Ironically, it is only in this way that we truly cut through.

This is the true power of the artist—to create and then drop the mic.

Prompt: Write a story or essay or poem that begins with a bound and focused energy and ends with letting go.Write well, friends!

an offering: meditation for releasing expectations

Note: I’m hosting an ongoing Adult Writers’ Studio workshop in partnership with Thurber House, which begins in September and runs through November. If you’re interested, go here, click register, then scroll to the bottom. This will take place every other Wednesday evening on Zoom. I led the summer sessions, and they were beyond amazing.