the Inspirited Word

Mary Lanham

The Inspirited Word is the monthly podcast for writers ready to stop second-guessing their storytelling and ready to start breathing life, spirit, and deep magic back into their craft. We’ll explore ways to enliven the technical mechanics of our writing with the full visionary potential of our imaginations—so we can uncover our most potent, most necessary work. Join us as we rediscover the radical, transformative power in our stories... and actually get those powerful stories on the page.

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Top 10 the Inspirited Word Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best the Inspirited Word episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to the Inspirited Word for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite the Inspirited Word episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

22. Magical thinking for practical writers

the Inspirited Word

10/25/24 • 25 min

This month, sort of in honor of Halloween and sort of just because, I want to share and explore a single phrase about writing that has been inspiring me lately:

Your characters are your ancestors.

This idea unlocks all sorts of potential for me – but I admit that it also feels a little overly sentimental. Even for creatives, there can be disdain around ways of thinking about writing that feel precious instead of practical. There’s a sense that while of course art is magical in its way, your perspective on your own work better not be, or you risk being naïve and unserious.

And it’s not like there’s zero truth to that. When you get too precious about every word that hits the page, you can’t work through projects, and you can’t keep improving.

But magical thinking doesn’t necessarily have to lead to precious thinking – I’d actually say that in the creative life, you have to find ways to maintain a strong dose of it if you want to thrive.

And in that sense, magical thinking can be practical magic.

Tune in to unpack how a magical mindset can help even Very Serious Writers do deep and liberating creative work.

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16. When to let a story go

the Inspirited Word

04/26/24 • 30 min

It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring persistence, writing endings is a technically difficult aspect of the craft, no matter what genre you’re writing.

But while getting to the end of a project is often excellent practice... I don’t think it’s actually always best to push through to the finish. Sometimes pushing through becomes a reinforcement of unhelpful craft habits, ways of approaching our stories that we’re ready to outgrow but don’t know how to yet.

How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?

I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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9. Hearth and horizon: Finding creative center

the Inspirited Word

09/29/23 • 36 min

How do we find our creative center, and how do we actually stay in it while we’re working?

It’s pretty easy to feel centered when a story is first emerging. There’s usually that phase where stuff seems to be spontaneously welling up from somewhere inside us, somewhere private and inner and... well, centered.

The act of drafting, on the other hand, tends to feel like searching for something that’s missing. And if we’re too caught up in a perfectionist, idealized view of our story, we quickly get mired in the gap between that shining but vague initial imagining and the specific (unideal) words that are coming out on the page.

Having a center can imply staying in the same place, and being in control of it – but a true creative center is always also fundamentally a threshold. A place where if you know the right tricks, the sacred can be smuggled through the seams.

This month, join me as I explore what the mythological figure of the trickster can teach us about our creative centers (and about the power of the lucky accident in our storytelling).

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Homeric Hymn to Hestia

Nicholas Cross, "The Hearth as a Place of Refuge in Ancient Greece"

Jean Robert, "Hestia and Hermes: The Greek Imagination of Motion and Space"

Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece (for the ritual referenced in the episode, see Book 7.22)

Bethu Brigte (a medieval hagiography of Saint Brigid)

Cogitosus, Life of Saint Brigid the Virgin

Story Archeology podcast: The Search for Brigid

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8. When the wound becomes the work

the Inspirited Word

08/29/23 • 33 min

You’ve undoubtedly heard this bit of common wisdom at some point in your life: “You only grow when things are hard.”

Incarnations of this advice pop up in all sorts of contexts and snappy wordings (“No pain, no gain” or “Growth and comfort do not coexist” or, my personal Tony Robbins fav, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”).

This brand of wisdom has a kernel of truth. But when we apply it to our creative work, we can end up inadvertently nurturing another uncomfortable but weirdly beloved trope: the “suffering” or “tortured” artist.

This month, travel back from the edge of the comfort zone to discover the stories (and life) you might miss when the wound becomes the whole of the work.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Eva zu Beck: I Quit. (YouTube)

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11. Telling the story that breathes

the Inspirited Word

11/29/23 • 33 min

The typical ways writers study and practice storytelling often encourage us to conflate “paying attention” to our craft with catching errors or imperfections.

We try to pay our best, most granular attention to the words on the page, in order to bring them closer to some standard of excellence. And at certain points during revision, there’s not actually anything wrong with that.

But when this type of attention seeps into your full drafting process, it messes up your ability to pay attention in ways that aren’t critical or catastrophic or hypervigilant. You can lose the ability to really be present with the story – to find the language that breathes.

This month, I’m exploring ways to pay attention as we write that can take us deeper into presence and relationship with our stories. Ways to write as a living, breathing, imagining storyteller, and not as our own worst critic.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram

The Emerald podcast, Joshua Schrei

Ren+Spiritwork, Ren Zatopek

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10. Freedom with form (Or, story structure for optimists)

the Inspirited Word

10/27/23 • 37 min

When writers talk about story structure, we tend to conceptualize it in one of two ways:

As a set of almost mechanical instructions on how to put a story together “correctly”
As an organic, intuitive outgrowth of the themes, symbols, and artistic devices within the story

Both of these views on structure contain a bit of truth. But sticking too closely to either one can lead to sterile rigidity... or to endlessly drafting in beautiful circles with no final, functioning story in sight. (See also: being a “plotter” vs. a “pantser.”)

Ultimately, though, we made this dichotomy up. And if we shift our understanding of what role structure plays in storytelling, maybe we can make something up that works better, both for us and for our writing.

This month, I’m sharing my own working theory of how structure can lead to more creative freedom – and how that new freedom might break our deepest blocks around what makes a good story.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison

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14. Practice vs praxis (Or, getting the real work done)

the Inspirited Word

02/29/24 • 35 min

You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:

Write every day
Finish as many projects as possible
No exceptions

And maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely well-adjusted and reasonable guidance more times than you can count: Being a writer is awful. So if you’re able to walk away from your writing, you should—but if you’re too obsessed to quit, no matter how miserable you get, that’s how you know you’re the real deal.

That last nugget of wisdom scared me away from books on the writing life for years.

This month, I get honest about “failing” this classic (and ultimately unhelpful) advice. And I’m exploring how writing praxis can rescue your writing practice from becoming just a bunch of self-punishing rules spiraling inside a pit of despair.

Plus, I share the four key threads of much better guidance that I learned from finally binge-reading hundreds of pages of writing life advice from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and others.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin

“Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

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13. So... what is visionary storytelling, anyway?

the Inspirited Word

01/29/24 • 33 min

There’s a popular New Year meme about picking words to act as guideposts for the year. And in this first month of 2024, I’ve found myself reflecting on two sort of abstract terms I use to describe what I’m up to with this podcast: “visionary,” and “praxis.”

These terms are signifiers for the real core of what I’m grappling with here – the disconnect so many creatives experience between all the beautiful and transformative things we believe about creative craft in theory, and all the doubt and dismissiveness we often feel about our own work in reality.

Today I’m getting into what I’m actually saying when I say “visionary writers” or “visionary storytelling,” and why I think cultivating a visionary approach could free us from all of our creative hang-ups and blocks and neuroses, now and forever.

(I am clearly joking with that grandiose claim... but also, I’m kind of not?)

To kick off year two of the podcast, dive deep with me to discover what could be possible when we define true vision for ourselves and our stories.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

Walidah Imarisha

What is "Visionary Fiction"?: An Interview with Walidah Imarisha.

Books and other projects

Tyson Yunkaporta

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

For the Wild podcast: Tyson Yunkaporta on Inviolable Lore

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1. Your stories are alive

the Inspirited Word

01/27/23 • 27 min

Do you have a list of beloved books that changed your life... but can't finish one of your own stories to save your life?

In the first episode of the Inspirited Word, Mary has some core questions for all visionary writers feeling disconnected, disenchanted, or dissatisfied with their stories and their creative practice:

If we can encounter stories in ways that are surprising, personal, and ever-evolving, ways that exert tangible change and transformation in the world—can’t stories be described as alive?
When was the last time you encountered one of your own stories this way as you were writing it?
What might be possible if you did?

Tune in to discover how reframing storytelling as a living relationship can revitalize and re-enchant your creative practice (and help you get unstuck so you can write your most powerful and necessary stories). Plus, a glimpse of the road ahead for the Inspirited Word pod.

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, hit subscribe and visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

5. You're not a genius...

the Inspirited Word

05/26/23 • 30 min

... and that's okay.

If somebody were to ask you outright if you think you’re a creative genius, you’d probably be pretty comfortable saying no (and meaning it). You’re also probably not going to rationally think that this means you shouldn’t be creating anything.

And yet, most of us still have this feeling that our ideas and our work need to be "special," by which we mean "entirely unique yet universally brilliant."

This cultural narrative of genius is really not the most conducive to actually creating stuff, though. It’s part of what makes each story idea or writing session or first draft feel like a verdict on our value and significance as people. And it’s part of what makes us feel like we’re proving something with our writing instead of creating something.

This month, tune in to deconstruct the contemporary concept of genius and reframe it with a much, much older one—to see what might happen if we stop trying to be geniuses and start doing genius work instead.

(Plus, Mary shares some initial thoughts on last week’s SCOTUS decision against The Andy Warhol Foundation, and how genius intersects with legal issues around fair use. You know, just fun, chill summer vibes.)

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If you’re dreaming of a sustainable writing practice filled with more life, spirit, and deep magic, visit the link below to join the newsletter circle. You’ll get monthly inspiration and supportive, inspirited practices delivered right to your inbox.

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

Andrea Barrett

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, Elizabeth Winkler

Your Elusive Creative Genius (TED Talk), Elizabeth Gilbert

AWF v. Goldsmith (Pt. 1): Misapprehensions, Clarifications, and a Truth Bomb, Katherine de Vos Devine

Classical Roman religion