"I have as many more chances as I give myself"

writer & artist Carolee Bennett on the saving power of morning pages, running & strength training, learning not to fear discomfort, and using the energy that is uniquely yours to make your art

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.✨✨

Also: With the fires and their aftermath here in LA, here are a few links where you might find resources/donate: Los Angeles Mutual Aid has an incredibly helpful spreadsheet of resources and links for those in need; World Central Kitchen is providing meals to first responders and those displaced and affected by the fires; International Community Foundation is providing “front/second line farmworkers, day laborers, essential workers and families impacted by fires”; The LA Times has a good round-up of organizations here.

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Writer & artist Carolee Bennett joined my Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshop deep in the pandemic, and was a grounding force every week with her extraordinary imagination, self-deprecating humor, and radical honesty about the joys and challenges of making art. Carolee has a profound love for the process of writing and art-making, and you can feel it on the page. Her work takes wild leaps with ease and connects the inner world of the speaker with the larger external world—with its violence and losses— in ways that help me understand how I might live on this planet with more grace.

Carolee is an art-making phenom with both writing and visual art, and she also works hard to share her wisdom with others through writing brilliant prompts and essays that she shares generously on her website, Good Universe Next Door. I regularly use her prompts in my teaching and lean on her writing about the perils of measuring one’s worth by one’s publication record.

Read on to hear from Carolee—about walking through the door to your practice when you’re stuck, the power of morning pages, running & strength training, and figuring out how to use the energy that is uniquely yours to make your art. You’ll also find a prompt from Carolee that uses repetition and juxtaposition in compelling ways, and a whole lot of real-talk to meet you where you are right now and help you get going 📓💥

📸 Carolee Bennett

What is your writing practice like? Do you have any writing rituals?

My writing practice can be summarized by one word: “intermittent.” Or maybe “inconsistent.” I work in fits and starts. When I’m in the zone, I’m very passionate and disciplined. In these periods, my writing practice typically includes extended alone time, lots of reading, free writes and daily writing challenges over a pre-set number of days.

For free writes, which you’ll hear me mention a bazillion times, I use Natalie Goldberg’s “rules.” These include being specific and keeping your hand moving. For me, it’s always longhand with a Pilot Precise Rolling Ball V5 Extra Fine pen (black ink) in a journal with college-ruled pages.

What are your mindfulness practices? What do they bring into your life?

I have two types of mindfulness practice: brain dumps and mind erasers.

Let’s start with the brain dumps. As this interview publishes, I am approaching the 650-day mark for Morning Pages, a daily stream-of-consciousness practice I learned from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I’m very proud of that, and it’s changed my life. I never go back and read them, but I can tell when I’ve been repeating myself. As a result, I get tired of my own grievances and need to act. I credit Morning Pages with the courage to leave a job I had for over 13 years, the capacity to work through trauma with my therapist and the momentum to adopt a healthier lifestyle. I’m using them now to work through my disillusionment with publishing and my fears about painting.

These sketches by Carolee are blind contour drawings, where you look at the subject instead of your page to help you let go of precision & stay loose (i.e. PLAY!)

My other mindfulness practices turn my brain off entirely. I’m an incredibly anxious person and regularly work myself up into pacing, being hyper-alert and even having digestive issues. The traditional “be still” mindfulness practices don’t resolve the energetic impacts of this on my body, so I rely on strength training and running to clear all that shit out. I call them mind erasers because they’re so physically intense there’s no space for mental chatter. They force me to focus on my breath and on my body – What feels out of alignment? What feels tense? What adjustments can I make?

There’s also something a little “woo woo” about them. Strength training and running give me a safe way to be in my body and a chance to tap the wisdom of movement. Think of the octopus. The source of its intelligence and its survival is its physicality. There’s a cleverness to how it uses its body.

In free writes, we keep the hand moving not to execute thoughts but to get ahead of them. It’s not about the brain sending out signals and us recording them. It's about using our bodies to discover and know the world. Like the octopus, it's about sensation. It’s why I got an octopus tattoo the full length of my forearm and painted a 6’-by-6’ octopus mural on my garage.

As opposites, these tandem practices – the intellect vs. the physical – create a kind of balance. They don’t behave like meditation, but their pairing achieves something close to it. Morning Pages (and regular therapy) help me recognize and understand my own thoughts, and the vigorous exercise helps me let them go.

What is an important mantra or motto for you related to your writing and mindfulness practices? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it?

Most recently, these mottos are getting me through:

• “We have two lives. The second begins when we realize we only have one.” This is from Confucius, I think, but one of my sons introduced me to it. I don’t hear it as a directive to embrace every moment. I receive it as an invitation to live the life I want. And I want to live a creative life.

• “I have as many more chances as I give myself.” This last one is a gift from a recent Morning Pages entry. I was reflecting on my very first plen air painting outing, noting some of the “mistakes” I’d made and reminding myself I can try again. As an over-50 poet without a published collection, this idea of staying in the game really resonates.

What helps when you get stuck?

I don’t usually get stuck anymore with the mindfulness practices because they’re habitual now, but if I do, I lean into the idea of just showing up. I trust the momentum of putting myself in the right place. At my gym (and probably other gyms), they say the hardest thing is walking through the door. Once you’ve done that, the rest takes care of itself.

Carolee says, "Dress for the vibe you want LOL. By typical "beauty" standards, my curvy body doesn't belong in bright pink leggings—maybe that's why these are my favorite running tights. They tell my brain to shut its yap and do the thing...and they flip other people's judgements about me the bird."

For writing, I get stuck all the time. Here are two things that help:

• Free writes – I convince myself to attempt a few free writes to work out the rust and warm to the idea of writing. I usually achieve this through habit-stacking: doing a free write immediately following my Morning Pages, which I rarely miss.

• Artist dates – These are outings where I can delight in my surroundings and gather inspiration. I picked them up from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and they’re a source of energy that refreshes my interest in writing or painting.

Do you see your writing and mindfulness practices as connected? In what ways?

My mindfulness practices make writing possible. The brain dumps and the mind erasers dissipate chaotic energy and help me settle into a mindset that’s more conducive to writing. It’s counter-intuitive because they involve a time commitment, but I use them to create space, to dig myself out of the ways I’m known to bury myself.

Writing and mindfulness are also intimately connected for me in their ability to help me get lost. Both require and reward presence, and I love being completely absorbed. They’re both transformative in a trippy way. I enter a different space. I’m not the same person going in as I am coming out the other side. It’s alchemy. Pure magic.

A painting with a single brush and a 10-minute timer helped Carolee focus on energy & movement vs. obsession with detail/realism.

Are there any books / writers / teachers that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?

You can probably guess I recommend Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and anything by Natalie Goldberg. (In addition to teaching free writes, Goldberg is famous for dismissing perfectionism by granting us all permission to “write the worst shit in America.”) But my mindfulness practices have probably been the teachers that have been the most transformative by helping me with confidence. I know my mind, I know my body, and there’s nothing quite like being centered in that way. It’s a knowing that belongs to me, something I’ve earned.

How have writing and/or mindfulness practices helped you in your life?

Quite literally, they continue to save my ass.

Morning Pages build momentum for big and small changes that are life-giving and necessary.

Strength training and running show me the results of cheering myself on. It’s impossible to attempt a heavier weight or pick up the pace without three things: preparation/training, the belief that it’s possible and the knowledge that failure isn’t fatal.

Understanding this helps me replace judgement (“omg I suck,” for example) with perseverance: I have as many more chances as I give myself.

What advice would you give someone who is trying to start or restart a writing or mindfulness practice?

Expect turbulence. Mindfulness carries with it an expectation of peace, of ease, but even those who are skilled in meditation as a practice say the calm is an illusion. Mindfulness is a pretty bumpy ride, but you can learn to walk yourself through it. Go gently. You’re going to see some shit. You may even change your life.

You’re going to have to befriend yourself because you’re the only one who can accompany you on the mental and emotional journey to whatever calls you next.

A screenshot from a video of Carolee rowing a heavy sandbag at her gym (look at that concentration/focus!)

A Prompt from Carolee

Repetition is a great tool to use in your free writes. Natalie Goldberg says if you get stuck, you just repeat the most recent phrase until something new comes out. I build repetition into my free writes from the start.

Here’s how it works:

• Find a phrase that intrigues you.

• Open with it then finish in your own words.

• Repeat.

For example, I recently chose this: It is spring again and no one knows my name (a line from Dorothea Lasky’s “Red Airplane”). Here’s an excerpt from my free write: It is spring again and no one has fed the dog his breakfast. It is spring again and no one licks their thumb to turn the page. No one pushes their chair back in. No one likes a tattle tale. It is spring again and no one is putting on pounds to get through winter. No one knows what to make for dinner. No one goes by that name anymore.

Is that a finished poem? Nope. Is it a draft? Also no. But it’s language I can use later, language I wouldn’t have if I was thinking about what to write instead of just writing.

(Did you notice the italicized text? I italicize or underline the borrowed phrase every time I write it. This tells me it belongs to someone else and prevents me from grabbing it when I harvest phrases from the free write.)

One of my favorite variations of this exercise is to pair it with scrolling on my phone or watching TV, distractions I sometimes use to write.

In this approach, I stray from the “keep your pen moving” directive of the traditional free write. Here’s what it looks like instead:

• Write down a phrase that intrigues you.

• Consume social media or TV until an unrelated image or idea grabs your attention.

• Put it in your own words as a response to the phrase you chose.

• Repeat.

This creates strange juxtapositions, and it’s delightful. For example, the last time I did this exercise, I was trying to personify disappointment and came up with A poet and her disappointment walk into a bar. Ugh. Cliché. So I wondered what else my disappointment could do. I scrolled Instagram where I saw pictures of farm stands, Halloween costumes and car dashboards. I added language to my free write for each one: My disappointment and I go to the farmer’s market. My disappointment and I dress up for trick or treating with big flannel shirts and weird hats just to hear people say we’re too old for this. My disappointment and I are stuck in traffic.

When you keep going and going, it gets weirder and weirder – making terrific fodder for your poems.

The view from Carolee’s very first plen air painting outing at an environmental education center near her house.

Don’t let discomfort stop you. It will keep resurfacing. Practice managing it. I’m still working on this one, but it helped me get out of my own way when I wanted to try plen air painting. If I waited to be comfortable with the idea, I’d never have done it. Let go of the expectation of comfort and use what you do have instead.

For example, I think my writing style benefits from my scattered, uneven energy. My blog posts are more like braided essays than articles. My poems jump and leap. They’re associative based on images and sounds. They aren’t serene: They’re agitated. Tension, it turns out, is a gift for poetry and many other kinds of writing and art, and I have it in abundance. It’s a natural resource I can learn to direct.

📸 Carolee Bennett

Carolee Bennett is a writer and artist living in Upstate New York, where – after a local poetry competition – she has fun saying she’s been the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern. Her work has received recognition from Sundress (Best of the Net 2018), the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize (semi-finalist) and the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize (finalist) and has been anthologized in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy alongside a line-up of highly celebrated poets, including former U.S. Poets Laureates. She has an MFA in poetry from Ashland University and works full-time as a writer in social media marketing. Her debut poetry manuscript, Make Her a Wolf, has garnered some lovely personal notes from editors and been named a finalist for the Press 53 Award for Poetry.

You can find Carolee on Instagram @carolee26 (poetry & other things she loves) + @gooduniversenextdoor (her art journey)

You can also follow her blog at Good Universe Next Door, where you'll find writing prompts, reading notes, resources for various poetry topics and styles (like prose poems and list poems, octopus poems or apocalypse poems).

For more from Carolee

Exactly 299,792,458 Meters Per Second

On the screen, shadows and bones. My son’s
right arm. Radius in two. Displaced. Separated.
In the ER bed, he curls around the misshapen
limb, his skeleton a tiny crescent. Someone’s
cranium is projected on the wall in another
room, glaring at us just like the full moon does.
Has it been a skull up above all along? And was
anyone cradling that child until he found his mother?
These questions haunt us, but there is within a secret
glow, exposed by x-ray like a telescope aimed down at
night sky. I don’t know where luminosity comes
from, but I’ve watched a brilliant mechanism
heal the body. Brightness fuses to brightness. Beams
reach for one another across the space between.

—in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy (anthology edited by James Crews; published by Storey Publishing) / previously published in Contrary and Sundress Best of the Net

• Listen to Carolee read her poem “Prettier When You Smile” at this link (Glass: A Journal of Poetry )

• Read Carolee’s flash fiction piece, “Opening Chapter” here at Lost Balloon

• Listen to her interview at Hudson Mohawk Magazine

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