Life Updates
Hello lovely humans,
Happy second week of February!
How is everyone feeling as we dive deeper into the year 2022?
I’m using the newsletter this week to give y’all some current project updates!
Want to listen instead of reading? Listen here: (10 min)
Novel Writing: I’m working on a novel called The Enchanted Elm, it is my book baby. The idea of her was first conceived in 2014 when I was living in the Fulbright house with my colleagues in South Africa. She started out as a simple seed of an idea and has now grown into a massive 6 part series that includes a cross of the following genres: folktales, magical realism, historical fiction, fictionalized memoir, and Afrofuturism. I currently commit to working on her 5x a week for about 20-40 min per session. 2 of those days I free write, the other days I focus on editing, research, and character/setting/plot development. When I first stopped teaching, I really thought I’d finish her in a year. A woman who used to work at my school said this in response to my sabbatical post and book writing intentions: “You’ll probably need a whole year off to decompress before you can even think about writing a book.” Whew, the accuracy!
Editor’s Group: I’ve been invited to join a weekly editing group here in Bali. Wow! It’s been incredibly amazing having this type of accountability. We meet on Wednesday mornings from about 10-1 pm. Everyone is meant to send 4 pages max to the group by Tuesday afternoon. I’ve been attending for about 6 weeks and I’ve yet to meet the deadline. I usually send mine in about an hour before we meet. My intention is to be on top of this by March. We usually meet at beautiful cafes around the Ubud area (we’re looking for 1-2 more members. If you’re in the Ubud area and are working on a consistent writing project, let me know). Each person takes turns reading their 4 pages and then receiving feedback on their piece. We can ask for specific types of feedback or we can leave it more open. I immediately asked for anything but grammar! Haha! One of the ladies gave me the gentlest piece of grammatical feedback: “Using past perfect distances you from the reader.” Light. Blub. Moment. OMG! I’ve been doing this my whole life. The big noticing for me and the thing I am still journaling about is “why have I been doing this my whole life?”. What is coming up right now is that even though I present as an extrovert, I share so much of myself, especially online and through written form, I struggle with being ‘seen’. Whew. I’ll come back to this later.
Navigating Being Seen
Brand Building: I have two brands that I’ve created. One is a personal brand and it will continue to shift and reshape itself as long as I do. Estyubuntu. I also have a creative writing community brand, Unlocking Creativity. I didn’t mean to start brands or businesses and 99% of the time I have zero idea what I am doing. I recently started partnering with a friend of mine who is building an ads management company and originally we agreed she’d help me with launching some ads for the membership community in Unlocking Creativity, but after getting to know the ins and outs of how my (self-diagnosed ADHD & Autistic) brain works, we have decided that she will actually help me with becoming more clear on what my personal brand is and how to create a brand strategy! One of the big insights she brought up about what’s she noticed: “you hide your offerings and services at the bottom of your newsletter.” And I’m paraphrasing this next bit, “you change your website and take it down so many times, it is hard for people to know how to work with you or what it is you do.” Oooh, there is that me not wanting to be seen thing again. Oof. More on this later.
Newsletter Fellowship: I’ve been pretty inconsistent with this form of sharing myself online. I share almost every day, things that happen in my life, through IG stories or the occasional fb/ig photo dump posts. I’ve gotten really far away from the blogging I did when I first moved abroad. This is interesting since I love reading long-form writing and I love doing it. A newsletter felt like such a good way to share what I’m doing with people who actually wanted to hear about it, you signed up for it! Haha! But because I realized I was building a brand/business, I started feeling conflicted about what I was sharing and how I was sharing. Being unfiltered is great and for me, it’s how I need to journal in order to get to the truth about things, but in our online world where cancel culture is a super real thing, and the narratives around what is ok to say and what isn’t is always changing, it became difficult for me to know what I even wanted to share. The business of writing was taking out the joy of sharing my writing. I recently found out about a fellowship for newsletters. A 12-month mentorship program with financial and tech support. The deadline is tomorrow and I’ve actually finished the proposal and I’m having it edited right now. I want to braid together my creative tiny fiction, with my personal narratives, and with the big topics and themes that have come up for me over the last few years of my life. Each one will be a braided essay ( a form of writing I learned about from one of the memoir writers I’m coaching). And I want financial support in this. I want to make an intimate impact with blended art forms that I love and get paid to do it! So, this feels big and scary. A vulnerable share. I hear all the time from people that you shouldn’t share big things with people before they happen because they will hurt your chances, wish you ill will, or maybe even apply for the thing you want and get it instead of you. All of those things can be true, but I am a huge believer in the power of prayer, manifestation, and in people opening doors for you, supporting you, and helping you to find your way when you let them know what you’re looking for. So, my ask for those of you reading is to send up a prayer or some good vibes that if this is for me, that I get it. And if it isn’t, then the right tools, people, and resources come my way to help me bring this idea to life in an aligned way! I’ll let you know how it goes. They’ll choose the 3 winners in March.
(Aug 2022 update- I did not win the fellowship, however, I am still working on developing the project idea)
Personal Development: since my time off, I have a lot of space and time for personal development. I’m always finding ways to do “the work”. My Bali bestie told me in December that it seemed like I was doing the work full time. She was right. I had quit working for someone else full time, but I began to fill my time with emotional & spiritual work and that too can be exhausting. So, I created an easeful structure for myself around what kind of work I am going to do this year and I put in time for breaks and integration. But I also know myself and strict structure is just not how I flow anymore (I learned this from doing the work haha!). I need room for spontaneity and to listen to my intuition. So, for every personal development, spiritual development, or program I sign up for or thing I work through, I need at least ½ a month to a full month off before I can sign up for something else. I’m in the time-off mode right now and I’m thinking that the next big bit of work will begin in March. I haven’t decided what it will be yet but I have a few things on my list that I’m considering including 75 Hard, getting a Certification in the Grief Recovery Method, and doing the Unblocked Inner Child work in Lacy Philip’s To Be Magnetic (TBM) program.
What I just finished doing in January: Unblocked Love TBM, Afrominimalist, & The Artist Way
This has been a big share this week. I’m deeply grateful for you choosing to spend time in my world for a bit this week. As always, I’d love to hear what insights come up for you. Did anything in particular resonate? What are your current projects? I’d love to know. See below for ways to work with me or with my creative writing community this month.
With Gratitude,
-Esty
Word of the Year
Use this free template in Canva to make your Word of the Year Card