This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of creative practice and mindfulness. 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 door to new possibilities. Subscribe for free below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
Today, I’m excited to share an interview with author, editor, and publisher, Licia Morelli. I’ve known Licia since we attended the same high school in Pittsburgh in the ‘90s. We played on the same soccer team, lived in baggy sweaters and Doc Martens, and listened to Blind Melon on our Sony Walkmans. Licia was a grade ahead of me, so I didn’t realize she loved to write, too. Many years later, we ran into each other’s work online, realized we were both writers, and started following each other’s work. Licia writes a weekly newsletter and community, The Margin Notes, “that helps you turn your life experience into clear, structured writing you can use.” I highly recommend that you check it out.
Licia’s best-selling children’s books, The Lemonade Hurricane and I Am Darn Tough, were two of my own kids’ most beloved picture books. Elena Brower says of The Lemonade Hurricane, “This short, understandable look at how we can all approach our sittings with clarity and simplicity is a perfect gift for kids everywhere. And any kids’ book that inspires me to sit myself down upon reading is priceless.” School Library Journal calls I Am Darn Tough: “A surprisingly poetic glimpse of the heart of the athlete, with a welcome, winning heroine.” Licia’s books distill complex emotions in ways that make mindfulness and resilience vibrant and accessible for young readers.
In this interview, Licia shares a ton of hard-earned wisdom from her own writing and meditation practices on the power of a somatic practice as a writer, getting through the door to the writing, and rebuilding a container for your creative work. So read on, friends.✨
What’s your biggest struggle and/or triumph with your writing/creative practices these days?
My biggest struggle right now is the entry point, getting the door open, every single day. You’d think after years and years as a professional writer, that would come easily by now, but it doesn’t.
For a long time, I had a practice: up at five AM, meditate, then write for forty-five minutes before starting my day. That worked for me at thirty-seven, and for many years after. But at forty-seven, it’s stopped working. I still get up, just not that early. I still meditate, but I don’t move as easily from that into the writing. So the struggle right now is getting past the settling of the soul, through that first door, to reach the writing itself.
I think it comes down to container. There’s been a lot of transition in my life lately, my oldest is leaving for college, I’m recently divorced, and the buildup to all of that has definitely interfered with my creative process for the last few years.
But I think I’m slowly finding my way back. And that’s the triumph: I’m letting myself rebuild the container, the same way I built one for my spiritual practice, and now for writing again. It just looks different. It’s more midmorning now, around ten AM, when I take a break from work, while the early hours have become time for meditation and reading. That’s something I always tell my students: reading is writing, and I think a lot of writers forget that. So I’ve essentially flipped what I used to do, reading and meditating now happen in the morning, and the writing happens midmorning, ten to eleven.
So it’s both struggle and triumph at once, the struggle of rebuilding and the triumph of learning a new identity as a writer. Who am I now? That’s the question I keep asking myself. Who am I as a writer, and how has that changed over the last decade? Because it has changed significantly, I’m slower, and I’m more intentional, especially about what I’m reading. The triumph is coming back to it in a new way. The struggle is building that container consistently, day in and day out.
What are the most important mindfulness/spiritual practices in your life?
I’m Buddhist and a graduate of Naropa University, the Buddhist college in Boulder, and I currently practice the somatic Vajrayana meditations taught by Reggie Ray who was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I do these meditations daily, and they matter so much because they let me consistently ground myself and come back to myself, day after day.
As someone who lives deeply inside her own head, having a somatic, body-based practice brings a lot of earth into a personal world where there really isn’t much. An astrologer once told me I have no earth in my chart, it’s all air and water, and honestly, it was such a crack-up, because I thought, well, that explains everything. I’m not grounded at all. These Buddhist practices have genuinely changed how I relate to myself, to my mind, to my body, and ultimately, to my writing.
Right now, I meditate thirty to forty minutes a day. What that time has given me is the ability to hold onto the creative material that comes to me. When I sit down to write, I can ground into my body, and then the more ethereal, ungrounded material finds me, but because I’m grounded, I’m able to catch it. I can grab hold of concepts and imagery in a way I couldn’t before.
But ultimately, the most important piece is simpler than that: these meditations have helped me find myself, and quiet myself, so I can move forward.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life?
I love this question, because right now I’m dancing between two of my favorite quotes.
The first is from Lao Tzu:
Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?
And the second is from Chogyam Trungpa:
Regard the arrival of chaos as very good news.
Currently, I have one foot in each of those. Some days it’s more chaos; some days it’s more patience. But these two have really been guideposts for the last three or four years of my life, given everything I’ve been through, all the changes, all the transitions.
As someone who has trouble waiting, Lao Tzu is helpful because he reminds me that when we sit still, the answers usually come on their own. And Trungpa helps as a reminder that when chaos hits, if we can regard it as good news, we understand that something on the other side of that shake-up is a seedling for a new existence, a new experience. If we can stay settled inside the chaos itself, we can let the chips fall and find out what comes next.
So those are the two I’m sitting with right now, because my life has been so much in transition, moving between them has been good for me. One reminds me to sit and wait. The other reminds me that all this chaos is a gift, so stay open to it.
Do you see your creative and mindfulness practices as connected? In what ways?
I absolutely see them as connected. When we find stillness and awareness in our day-to-day life, we’re able to grab hold of whatever the muse, whatever that creative, ethereal realm, is trying to hand us. If we can slow down enough for it to arrive, we start seeing things differently, and that awareness lets us deepen into the work in a way I don’t think would be possible otherwise.
I think one begets the other. Mindfulness practice helps the writing, and writing, in turn, clears the brain and helps the mindfulness practice. It’s a symbiotic relationship, both are talking to each other, both are keeping that doorway to the creative process open.
I also think writing is something that makes almost all of us feel insecure or stuck at times. Having a practice is what helps us refine our center, come back to ourselves, remember why we’re doing this, remember that we’ve done it before and can do it again — and then walk back through the door.
So I think both are essential for those reasons. But honestly, I’d guess most writers have some version of a mindfulness practice, even if they’d never call it that — I think we come by it naturally. We live so much in our heads, and we’re constantly trying to get what’s in there down onto the page. We have to find a way in. And I think mindfulness really is the only way.
What advice would you give someone who is trying to start or restart a creative or mindfulness/spiritual practice?
My best piece of advice is: understand your rhythms, understand your container. Are you a morning person? A binge writer? A night person? Where does your container naturally exist, and how can you build something around that?
If you’re starting or restarting, remind yourself of what actually works for you. Say mornings are your best, that’s when you concentrate, when you do your best work. Then, straight out of bed, meditate or go for a walk or a run, come back, and sit down at the desk right after. Don’t shower first. Don’t break the chain. Same with meditation, you finish, you stand up, you sit down at the desk. You don’t shower, you don’t get your coffee, hopefully you’ve already had that before you meditated. Whatever lets you move from one thing to the next seamlessly, without giving your mind room to escape, that’s what helps you build the rhythm.
Or maybe you’re a night person. Maybe you have kids, you put them to bed, and now you have two hours. That’s your window, do your mindfulness practice or your exercise, get still, and then write.
The other piece is figuring out how much you can actually do in one sitting, and how much you want to do in one sitting. Some of my students say, “I like to binge-write, four hours, once a week.” Great. But you still need some kind of daily practice to keep the container alive during the rest of the week. So if you’re a binge writer, maybe your daily practice becomes: do your mindfulness practice or your workout, and then spend half an hour reading, just to keep shoring up language for when you sit down Wednesday for your four-hour session.
You’re looking at what your container is, and building it around what you actually know about yourself. That’s what sets you up for success — because if you’re a binge writer and you force yourself to write every single day, it’s not going to work. You have to go with your own rhythms and your own capacity.
So for people who need longer chunks: build in the sitting, the reading, the shorter practices on the other days, and then really go for it on your big writing day. And for people who need short spurts: take an hour, do your mindfulness or your movement, write for forty-five minutes, and then put the pen down and go about your day. That’s enough. That counts.
A Prompt from Licia ✨
A writing prompt I love giving my students and clients: go back through whatever you’re working on, an essay, anything, and get curious.
Find one line where you think, what else do I need to say about this? What else does this need? Then set a timer for ten minutes and just write more about that one line, what it means, what’s underneath it.
You’d be surprised what arises. It’s already your own material, so it’s giving you a built-in prompt, but the deepening is significant, it’ll take you in directions you didn’t expect, directions you actually needed to go, just by getting curious about what you’re already curious about in your own writing.
Licia Morelli is a Maine-based author, editor, and publisher. She’s written two best-selling children’s books, The Lemonade Hurricane: A Story of Mindfulness and Meditation and I Am Darn Tough (Tilbury House Publishers), together selling over 40,000 copies and earning a Maine Literary Award, a Gelett Burgess Honor, and recognition from Kirkus Reviews and the Children’s Book Council. Her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, Bustle, and elephant journal, among others. She’s also served as Editor-in-Chief for Farnsworth Museum Art Magazine and Maine Women Magazine.
Subscribe to Licia’s newsletter, The Margin Notes! 💥
It’s a weekly newsletter “that helps you turn your life experience into clear, structured writing you can use.” I highly recommend Licia’s newsletter and free writing community.
Get a copy of Licia’s books for the kids in your life (and you!) at the following links:
I Am Darn Tough (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020).
The Lemonade Hurricane (Tilbury House Publishers, 2015).
Your turn: Do you have any other questions or thoughts to share with Licia?
✨Register for a free generative writing workshop with Catherine Pierce & me! ✨
This Tues, July 28th from 6-7:30 pm EST on Zoom: Join poet and teacher Catherine Pierce and me for a Generative Writing Workshop on Attention, Noticing, and Tuning In!
🌱Katie’s Summer of Attention crew and our Practice of Attention Book Club have been reflecting so far this summer about attention and habits and creative practice, and this is a time to come together in community and write/make art inspired by these attention experiments! 🌱
No matter where you are with your writing now–whether you’re a seasoned writer, an occasional dabbler, or have never been to a writing workshop before–you’ll leave our time together with a few “starts” or drafts, and that electric feeling of connecting with others around art. 💥 Bring your notebooks and something to write with, and, perhaps, your notes about your attention experiments so far this summer!
(No pressure on that though; just come as you are!)
Catching up with Beginner’s Mind Alums ✨
Catherine LaSota is running her incredible Be Your Own Daddy retreat in a one-day format on July 31st and I highly recommend it!
I’m just going to keep sharing Nancy Reddy’s awesome Summer School series conversations until you go watch them: here’s the latest from Nancy and Erica Stern!
In Case You Missed It ✨
Before you go, will you take a moment to hit the heart button or leave a quick comment about what strikes you here? Or, send it to a friend that you think would love what Licia shared! ✨
✨Be Where You Are is a newsletter for anyone who hears the humming underneath it all and wants to create spacious time on this planet right now.✨ To reply to this newsletter, just hit reply. I’d love to hear from you! You can also find me on Instagram/Facebook/Bluesky or find more info at my website.
I appreciate what she says about paying attention to what time of day and rhythms works best for your writing in this season of life. It may be different than 1, 5, or 10 years ago, and it's helpful to be flexible with ourselves about it.