"Begin again"
an interview with author, yoga instructor, and librarian, Erinn Batykefer
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of mindfulness and creative practice. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. If you know (or are) a writer, creative person, teacher, or practitioner with practices you’d like to share, just reply to this newsletter to be in touch with me. Subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews.✨✨
Erinn Batykefer is the kind of friend who will invite you to Abeille Voyant Tea Co. in Millvale, introduce you to the owner, share some new tea concoctions, then walk you into the library next door to check out some new books. Imagine someone who is an internal combustion engine of creativity, but with a sharp, self-deprecating edge and a lining of tenderness to her humor. That's Erinn.
Erinn is a brilliant writer with a deep love for the process of writing, the mystery of where ideas and images come from, and she’s able to harness both mystery and a sharp clarity on the page in what feels like alchemy. She also works as a yoga instructor and writes one of my favorite Substack newsletters, The Long Pause, which is about being creative, being stuck, and what to do about it.
Erinn was one of the first people I thought of interviewing for this series because she has deep love and expertise for both writing and mindfulness practices, and a lot of wisdom to share. I’m very excited to share Erinn’s writing, wisdom, and a killer Lynda Barry prompt with you all. This is a moment where you definitely want to keep scrolling…💥
What is your writing practice like? Do you have any writing rituals that help you?
Right now, I don’t really have a regular writing practice. There are reasons for this; for now, I’m going to tell you what my practice used to look like:
Get caught up in an idea or a project, mostly driven by an unending well of terror around worthiness.
Write every day, constantly, to prove something.
Write an entire book in a crazy short period of time, like a book of poems in a single summer, or a novel in 9 months.
During this time, be obsessed with the project AND unable to talk about it because it breaks your concentration and the myopic closeness of living in your imagination. Be so deep that everything that pulls you out even a fraction of an inch feels like an imposition or threat, including the necessity of grocery shopping, talking with other human beings, working a day job, having to pee, etc. Avoid those things.
Finish said book.
Languish till the next idea strikes, genuinely terrified that you will never write again. Get caught up in some kind of rabid fandom or niche interest because it has similar energy, even though it’s never quite enough.
Repeat.
Honestly, I miss it. I love how the world falls away with a really consuming project. I love the feeling of making something complete and whole start to finish. I love how the end result has a cohesion and an urgency that you cannot replicate in work that takes 10 years, during which your style or perspective might change and mature. I like the internal logic–flawed though it may be– of a book that doesn’t wait around dithering but says what’s happening right now.
It’s a really odd thing to be concerned with the immediacy of the result when the process of making it is so avoidant. It actively avoids being where you are. Writing like this is a wild combination of fight/flight/freeze/fawn, which makes it a particularly thorny coping mechanism, I think.
And I’m still making peace with the fact that I’m not making work–at all, but specifically like this. I grudgingly acknowledge that working like a wildfire is not exactly functional, even though I was great at it– and that my physical and mental health are hurdles I have to clear in order to get back to my projects. I can also see that a pace this grueling is not sustainable or even possible when your life involves kids in any meaningful way. I have a bonus kid; she’s only with us half the time, and you’d think that would make it half as challenging as it would be if I had birthed my own human who was in my house causing gleeful chaos 100% of the time, but you’d be wrong.
Right now, the conditions of my life make writing feel like collecting fragments; nothing is connected and nothing is satisfying. My life doesn’t have room for what my creative practice used to look like without compromising stuff that’s also important to me, but the alternatives just make me mad. Writing in fits and starts with a resigned “keep on trucking” attitude makes me mad. Giving in and saying “I can’t work like this; I am hitting pause until I can” also makes me mad.
And that’s the bind that led me to creating my Substack, The Long Pause, which is a newsletter about being creative, being stuck, and what to do about it. I figured I couldn’t be the only one feeling trapped1 in a Pause, and maybe we should talk about it. I’ve had some extraordinary conversations with artists and writers about periods when they weren’t making work, how they moved through those times, and what their work looked like on the other side. The persistent fantasy of constant creative production as a defining part of “being an artist” does a disservice to creative people everywhere. It sucks enough to want to make work while you are in a Pause of some kind. It sucks even worse when the prevailing image of an “artist” is one that’s mostly magical; it makes you feel like there’s something shameful or wrong about being Paused, when it’s a normal part of a creative life.
What are your mindfulness practices? Can you describe them and what they bring into your life?
I practice yoga.
I mentioned that physical and mental health factor into my writing life; here’s the deal: I live with complex trauma and the chronic illnesses that often come with it, and both can impact my functioning. I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago, and one of the most illuminating things I learned was that trauma disorders are considered “acquired neurodivergence.” My brain literally doesn’t function the way it used to– it’s been re-wired. Which means it shorts out in unexpected ways now, and I need to structure my life differently to support how it does function. Learning all this new wiring and experimenting to find what works to maintain my mental health is a huge, frustrating pain in the ass.
My connection to my body is the first thing to go when I’m dissociating or in a state of hypervigilance, and like lots of people who live with trauma, I struggle with sitting meditation. Yoga can be effective at guiding me back to myself because it’s a moving meditation. The focus on breath, alignment, and muscular engagement in a practice, along with the pace, is really effective at occupying your whole brain. Even if you manage to spend the first half of class ruminating, you will hit a really challenging sequence that requires you to let go of whatever else is stuck in your craw so that you can attend to your body.
I am truly grateful to the women who own Salt Power Yoga, where I’ve practiced for the last 8 years, for creating a safe place where you can show up a traumatized wreck of a human and still be okay. They’re extraordinarily good at holding space for the mess and seeing you through to the other side, one class at a time.
I did a teacher training with Salt in 2022 as a way to deepen my practice, and am now teaching twice a week while I finish up my 200 hour certification with Movement Wisdom. Yoga is a safe space for me, which is critical for the trauma work I do with my therapist.
What is an important mantra or motto for you related to your writing/creative/mindfulness practices? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post it note to help you remember it?
Begin again.
I write it at the top of the page almost every time I sit with my notebook. I started off as an art major in college before switching to writing and art history, and begin again was something that stuck with me from drawing classes, where gesture drawings were the spine of the practice– quick sketches to capture a body in motion, shifting light over a model or still life, etc. Gesture drawings are incredibly fast– 15 seconds to 2 minutes to get warmed up, to engage with the subject. And then the timer goes off and you switch seats, and you now have a different view for another quick sketch.
Begin again gives me permission to write pure drivel just to get it out, and then start over and get to the real meat of what I’m trying to say.
What helps you when you get stuck with your writing or mindfulness practices?
As someone who has been epically stuck for a long time, I think there are two distinct answers here.
The first is for times when you are small-s stuck. Maybe you’re between projects and you have the time and space you need, you’re healthy and safe, but you’re stuck right now and it’s not comfy or fun and you’re bummed.
In that case, I think it’s valuable to just try a bunch of stuff to see what works for you right now, wherever you are in your practice. Maybe working in a different medium or taking a class (artistic or mindful) would shake things up. Try a bunch of exercises without expecting anything from them. Read a genre you don’t usually go for. Get hooked on some TV show with lore (this is key). Try a different workout; walk home a different route. Spend your time differently if you want something different to emerge from it.
Right now, I’m enjoying learning how to paint abstracts on Arie. I also like to take different yoga classes online or at my studio.
The second is for the capital-S Stuck, where your stuckness stretches out into the white horizon no matter where you turn.
In this case, I’m going to wager that there is something Else that is very much in the way. Maybe you are struggling with illness, mental or physical. Maybe you are in a not-great relationship of some kind that needs some re-evaluation or boundaries. Maybe you aren’t taking care of yourself or you’re self-sabotaging. Maybe you are working too much at the day job trying to be good enough even though no one actually cares how above and beyond you are – there are so many ways to be capital-S Stuck. I’ve tried a bunch. But every single one requires you to decide what you need to let go, what you need to heal, in order to regain your practice. You can’t get out of this one without dealing with the something Else. No amount of writing exercises or tracking tools or perspective shifts is going to get you where you need to go.2
In both cases, I also recommend spending time alone. ALONE alone. Not, quietly on the couch with your partner and a book. Not grocery shopping with your headphones in. Like, “no one needs anything from you at all for hours on end” alone. You need to reduce the noise of being alive in the context of so many others and expectations and get back to just the being alive part.
Are there any books / writers / teachers that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
Lynda Barry. I did my MFA and my MLIS at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, around the time Lynda Barry joined the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, where she works at the intersection of art and science to examine creativity, where ideas come from, and what gets in the way. I took an immersive 6-hour workshop with her and learned the techniques in her book, What It Is.
We filled *an entire composition notebook* in 6 hours, and I still don’t recognize what I wrote, coming back to it years later. It feels both familiar, compelling, and strange to me. Because Lynda’s technique deliberately circumvents the part of you brain that functions as the critic or editor, it allows the rest of your brain to unleash its uncensored weirdness on the page.
I can’t recommend her approach enough.
A prompt from Erinn
Whenever I need to do something– start a poem, get a scene drafted, even write a personal statement for a grant– I pull up this video from Lynda Barry and follow her instructions.
She has lots of videos, and most are for her her classes at UW, so they assume you know some things you may not. Don’t let that put you off.
Here’s what you’re going to do:
You name the thing you’re writing about– this is your image*
You do what seems like a weird guided meditation while you draw a spiral in your notebook
You write for 9 minutes
*Lynda uses “image” in a very particular way; you could replace it with “subject” or “scene” or “idea.”
The trick that’s not in the video is that you have to keep your hand moving. If you hit a wall, just write the alphabet till you can jump back into the flow (it will seem like it won’t happen, but it absolutely will).
Continuous writing for 9 minutes.
The other thing that’s not included here that I highly recommend: turning the page on what you wrote for at least 24 hours or more. Don’t look at it. When you return to it after 24 hours, you will be surprised.
If I have a half an hour to kill, I will do two rounds of this video, one with an image that I am working on, and one using an image that cropped up in writing the first round, to compound the strangeness.
The full process, including generating a word bag with tons of images that are specific to your internal world, can be found in What It Is, which is part comic memoir, and part how-to. It feels like reading a story, except it’s also teaching you how to unearth your own creativity. It’s super weird; you’re going to love it.
Erinn Batykefer earned her MFA in writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as her MLIS (she’s a librarian. That’s what that means). She is the author of several books, most recently EPITHALAMIA (Autumn House Press), and writes and podcasts at The Long Pause on Substack. She teaches yoga at Salt Power Yoga and lives in Pittsburgh with her partner and bonus kid.
Subscribe to Erinn’s Substack: The Long Pause
Find her on Instagram: @erinnbatykefer and Threads: @erinnbatykefer
Find Erinn’s books on Bookshop.org
Salt Power Yoga Instagram: @saltpoweryoga
Erinn and I are co-hosting a virtual Yoga & Writing workshop this Monday, Nov 18th from 3:30-5 pm PST!
The workshop is free but any donations participants make will go to The Center for Reproductive Rights and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Click HERE to register and/or simply to donate! 🧘🏽📓💥
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Be Where You Are is a newsletter about how to use writing and mindfulness to stop and live more fully where you are. If you have ideas to share for future newsletters, you can reply to this email. You can also find me on Instagram or Facebook or find more info at my website. Thank you for reading!⚡⚡
We could have a long talk about the writers who sustain prolific practices and have kids, and one example would be the white dude who just lets his wife do all the “shallow work” of parenting and running a household, and so I will just let Nancy Reddy call bullshit for me now; if you are meaningfully engaged with the quotidien work of existing in a family, being “productive” and sustaining a “practice” is fucking hard if not impossible.
If your something Else is feeling crushed under the jackboot of white supremacist patriarchy, I get it, and I encourage you to vote and organize in whatever way is accessible to you, and to make sure you REST in between doing what small things you can do to bend the arc of the universe toward justice. I’m making calls and donating money to causes that represent the freedoms and equity everyone deserves.
Loved getting to hear more from Erinn! She has such a sharp sense of intelligence and a contagious energy, even when she’s talking about being stuck. 💜
This is really helpful! I got to take a class with Lynda Barry here in Madison, WI years ago - and it was a bit frightening, honestly, to do the spiral-drawing/ timed writing exercise included here as a prompt! But Erinn is getting to the exact reason it felt so frightening - because it really does interrupt your internal critic! And that can feel vulnerable. Maybe I will try it again after this reminder. I so agree with Erinn's comments about being ALONE!! Thank you for this.