Let's start with the One Command, using an example for writers: I don't know how my book gets written and into the world. I only know that it is so now and I am fulfilled. Michelle Wolff and Amy continue their conversation, with a specific focus on HOW Amy wrote Tiny Altars, and how you too can write your (vulnerable) stories—first for yourself and THEN for a wider audience.
Michelle Wolff teaches, podcasts, and coaches using story, humor, and some salty language. She holds a Master's degree in Education, has 25 years of experience working with people, and loves to help multi-passionate people stop procrastinating, focus up, and get stuff done. She’s been a therapist specializing in trauma, mental health, and addictions. She’s now an author, trauma-informed coach, Human Design Specialist, and the creator of Forest Reiki™ energy healing. She uses laser-sharp intuition, channeled information, and at times communications from those who’ve crossed over, to guide people from confusion to clarity and from resistance to inspired action.
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Amy Hallberg 0:01
So this is the second part of a conversation with Michelle Wolff. She and I sat down to record a podcast and we just kept talking. And so this is about what it takes to write a book and how do you do that? And specifically, how did I write about the challenges I went through in Tiny Altars in a way that people could understand them without my emotional ooze getting in the way.
You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith. I'm Amy Hallberg, story coach, book writing mentor, and author, and these are conversations with real life creatives, because if you want to be a real life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you. Welcome to Courageous Wordsmith.
I want us to go back to something you said about The One Command being like a prayer, and I think that is so true. And also, I grew up in churches where sometimes it was like, "Dear Lord, I am not worthy. Dear God, you are so much better than all of us. Dear God, we're just pieces of shit that you created down here." I mean, I grew up Christian, everybody knows this, but any church that tells me that I need to say that I am a piece of shit that God created, this piece of shit, ah ah, God didn't create me to be small and gravelly and graspy. So what I love about this is it's a prayer, but it's a creator, a creative spirit guide, help me to walk with you and to do my part, don't just carry me along. Like, don't just have pity on me. I'm not some pitiful thing. So I love that The One Command is not pitiful. It's not pathetic. It's not, "Oh, I don't know, and I'm so stupid." It's, "I don't know, but I don't need to know."
Michelle Wolff 2:00
There's a willingness, right? So, it requires awareness, which is the key to everything. And then it requires a little bit of surrender. If we're a personality that feels like they have to know everything, sometimes saying I don't know is challenging in and of itself. Sometimes people have to say, "I don't know how I let myself say 'I don't know,' I don't know how I let myself let go of the idea that I have to be the one to figure it out." And then (unclear) possibility to something outside of me, whether that's God or my dead grandma, or whatever, there's something- You have to be humble enough to say, "I really, I can't figure it out." Without the energy of, "Well, I'm so stupid. I'm such a piece of crap that I can't figure it out so let me just give up.
Amy Hallberg 2:54
Which, which can I just say leads us to the final piece of your program that I think is so so helpful. And I want you to understand, and you already know this, that I take example from you and learn a lot of things from you, as I stand as a leader too. That it's gathering other people to do it together, we're going to do this thing, and I'm not going to control how it comes up for you, put that in my business.
Michelle Wolff 3:18
Right.
Amy Hallberg 3:18
I'm not gonna let you talk about yourself badly. I'm not going to let you boohoo about it. I'm not going to let you do that. We're gonna show up and we're going to find at least one thing every single day to acknowledge went right.
Michelle Wolff 3:33
Yes, our brain is not geared like that. Our brain is concerned with finding what's wrong so we can stay alive. It's good. Our brain is like, "It doesn't matter. It's fine. It's already taken care of. Why should we focus on that? We should focus on this debt that's looming." You know, we create it like it's looming over us like the anvil in the Wile E. Coyote cartoon, it's about to fall on our head, you know? That's our responsibility, is to recognize, okay, I have a human brain. It functions like this. It absolutely hates change and decision making. So now what do I want to do with that? How do I want to navigate that? And it's not hard, right? The hard part is building in the accountability to remember and then do it when you don't want to do it. Because you're not gonna want to do it. I think there's this thing, and I know I was very deluded by thinking that one day I would want to write a book. Want to do it?
Amy Hallberg 4:43
It's great once you get yourself to do it, but it's a lot of work. Oh, and I cannot wait to- There's a book that you've talked about that, the one about the dead people and stuff. Oh my gosh, I just want to read that so badly.
Michelle Wolff 4:55
Yes, and I've actually looked it up. I'm not sure that this is one I can do myself. Not because I don't think I can write it but because I, I don't know what to do with it. Like, I have a chunk of experiences and viewpoints, points of view about how we should be treating our dead and how we've gotten lost, which goes back to hunter gatherer tribes. Our dead guided us in the migrations, and we don't have that anymore because we didn't need it. And so it was easy to forget about it. But you've been on my mind that way.
Amy Hallberg 5:28
The reason this book got written is because people kept saying, "Okay, Amy. Come on, Amy. Come on, Amy." And it's people I trust, and it's people who want to, and it's people who, when my mother got a little bit scared, and was like, "Stop writing now," the friends are like, "The fuck you stop writing, you keep writing. You know, maybe your mother gets a smaller part in the book now," which my mom is grateful for that, right? But no, you keep showing up. And so I think the other part of it is, the hunter gatherers didn't live alone.
They did not, no.
Right? We help each other along the path, that's how that goes, you know, and so nobody does it alone. I certainly didn't and, and people show up, you know, so like, I had a friend from college that I always admired her writing, and we'd lost track at graduation and we reconnected in COVID. And one of the first things she said was, "I read your first book, can I help you with the second?" And I'm like, oh, my goodness. And then her life got busy and I was like, "Okay, well, bye, and thank you." And suddenly, this Lutheran pastor shows up that I know, and was like, "Hey, can I-" So like, I think it's just important to know that nobody does it alone.
Michelle Wolff 6:39
You get stuck. I think that's why I think of memoirs as somewhat more difficult. There's just emotion attached to it. And memory attached to it. And we know that our memory is, you know, two people have very different memories of the same event, we know that it's colored by our perceptions, and our personalities, and, and all those sorts of things. So I feel like that kind of book is even less likely to get written in isolation.
Amy Hallberg 7:10
Absolutely, and I can tell you this also, people who know me, people who have known me a really long time will tell you that I'm a very different person from having written these books. And the things that used to haunt me, they don't haunt me anymore. They don't. And that's the payoff. Like, like, did I go through some dark nights of souls? Of course. But I wouldn't go back there for anything. I'm so grateful for that person who did that for me, former Amy, you know?
Michelle Wolff 7:41
Yeah, that other Amy. One of the things that I liked about your book is this thread of shifting identity through, that I feel like is throughout, of what I've read so far. And that's the part that really struck me is, that's always happening, right? Whether it's me, or stages of, you know, like, becoming a grandmother, like, and becoming a grandmother almost nine years ago was different than becoming a grandmother this last September, it was a whole nother-
Amy Hallberg 8:17
Okay, not twins, for one thing.
Michelle Wolff 8:19
Right. And I was here.
Amy Hallberg 8:21
Twins is a whole nother game. But anyway, yeah. So you get to just enjoy this one little baby.
Michelle Wolff 8:25
Yeah, yeah. This is kind of a breeze. But I was- I didn't leave here when they were infants but that's part of what brought me here. And that required a changing of identity, to thinking of myself as this athletic mountain biker, hiker, and then I come to Georgia where you know, if you want to hike, you have to go at five in the morning, which I'm not going to do. Like, it was a whole- Everything's an identity shift. So when you're- Throughout that book, sometimes you say that, identity, you talk directly about it. But it's like throughout that whole book, there's this evaluation process of, who am I now? Okay, who am I now? All right, this happened, who am I now? And I don't think we talked enough about that. And I think that's a piece that's missing out of the big leap, is it talks about, yeah, there's this process, but it doesn't talk clearly and concretely enough about, how do you get through that?
Amy Hallberg 9:25
Right. You're leaping to something but what are you leaping to?
Michelle Wolff 9:29
And how do you actually literally navigate what you say to yourself when you don't want to?
Amy Hallberg 9:36
So this is a funny thing, Michelle. So you will be not at all surprised because I am ADHD and hummingbird and manifester and any- describe it any way you want but I'm all about more expansive expansive, expansive, expansive. Narrowing things down is not my greatest skill set. I'm working on that right now. Like, I'm, I'm editing things out of my house because I just want more spaciousness, that's what I'm working on now. But I wrote one big giant book. And everybody's like, "Well, it's really big." And it finally got to an editor who knew something and was like, "Well, you interwove two books." And she's like, she's like, "There's this story about Germany," which I didn't want to write at the time because we were starting to have some Nazis in America.
Michelle Wolff 10:23
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 10:24
Like, I don't, I don't really want to write about Germany because, you know, to go back to the Bible, since apparently, that's what I'm doing today, you know, like, judge people for a little poke in their eye, but there's like a log in your own or whatever. Like, I don't want to write about Germany. She's like, "And then there's your family story. And I don't know, your family story, that's not that interesting. You know, maybe your family wants to read- I think you should write about Germany. That's what people are gonna want to read about." I'm like, okay, so I had to like- And I'd interwoven it all so I had to, like, untangle it. And then I have this German story, then it got to a different editor, because I was like, "Oh, thank you very much and now we're done because you did not love my book." So I want an editor- I think that this is fair to say to people, your editor doesn't have to think that everything you write is perfect, but they should love your writing. And if they don't, that's useful information, thank you. And go on and move on to a new editor. The new editor was like, "Yeah, you've got some emotional scorekeeping going on here." And so she helped me to clean it out so that my first book was not all poor me, poor me, poor me. It was very authentic but she cleared out the- Not to mention I'd just gone through life coach, master coach training, and it was all about like, stop being a victim. And so like, we cleared out some of the emotional scorekeeping, right?
Michelle Wolff 11:36
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 11:37
Then what happened was, so like, I have the second book, okay. And it's the family stories that I edited out of the first book. This book is bigger, by the way. This is just, like, the leftovers from the first book, and now it's bigger than the first book. People started saying to me, you know, as opposed to when I first quit my job where people would be like, "How are you? What happened?" And you can read like, oh, you know, they felt bad for me and they're, you know, they're trying to be comforting, and they're like, "You're going to be an okay person, you're going to be okay." Like, you know, like, like, they're comforting me, like I was that badly wounded, right? Like, like, just, it's okay, little sweetie. And then at a certain point, they start asking me, "Well, how did you get from there to here?" They're like, "Wow, tell me about the teaching." And they started asking about things that they previously were, like, they didn't want me to talk about because I was this oozing wound. And so like, they didn't want me telling those stories because it was uncomfortable. And some people would, they would sit with me, but it was like, okay, Amy's just going to ooze for a while, right? It got to a point where people were like, "How did you get from there to here?" And I'm like, well, what is here even? I don't know. But apparently I'm not the walking wounded anymore because people are now- It was maybe scabbed over, like, I was starting to figure out. And so I just kept writing. And, and now we've edited this book and edited this book and I proof read it more times than I care to count, because I'm the best proofreader I know and I wanted it in Chicago style and I'm the one who's the expert in Chicago stuff. It's like, I don't need to read this book anymore. I don't need to write this book anymore. I did it. But so, as opposed to- I just was bleeding stories at the beginning of it.
Michelle Wolff 13:24
Right. It's so funny, because I was thinking about, okay, before we got on the line, I actually started to look back at the notes last night, and I was like, so the things that stand out about this book that I like are, this thread of identity shifting, because I don't think we talk about it enough. And that you, you show us the scar but not the wound. Have you heard that? Like, you write- The time to share is when you share the scar, the time to share is not when you're the oozing wound. And for a while there I think people really misinterpret- And she says people misinterpreted her work, Brene Brown, with this concept of vulnerability as vomiting your stuff all over. She's like, "That's not what I meant," but it was too late.
Amy Hallberg 14:12
How would she know? She was the forerunner, you know?
Michelle Wolff 14:15
Well, and she popped the cork that she didn't, she didn't know that she was popping the cork on people.
Amy Hallberg 14:21
Do you think- I'm, I'm so curious with people like that, like, she didn't know what she was getting into. She didn't mean to do it. She was the wayshower because that was her destiny, almost. Like, she had been given a task or agreed to, had an agreement to do this, she didn't know what she was doing with that.
Michelle Wolff 14:38
No, she had no idea where it was gonna go.
Amy Hallberg 14:40
She did not mean to be viral, right?
Michelle Wolff 14:43
She wouldn't have put herself through that. There are some people who are almost like emotional voyeurs. Like, they they want the vomiting, they like digging that- You know, they like falling into someone else's emotional pit. And that's fine, but it's hard to read that and then contemplate, oh, what does this remind me of? You know, I can read Tiny Altars, and I relate to a lot of it, with the Christianity and the German, even the dollhouse, like, the dollhouse experience, I really wanted and didn't get. So I got to live, like, vicariously through your dollhouse. Little things just- I still, I just- Show me a miniature of something and I will buy it.
Amy Hallberg 15:30
My precious little dollhouse.
Michelle Wolff 15:32
No, but now I need to go to Chicago.
Amy Hallberg 15:36
Have you been to the museum in Chicago where they have that giant Colleen Moore's giant dollhouse? It's the Museum of Art and industry. I mean, it's, it's 50 years later so I don't know what shape the dollhouse is in but it's quite- Back in the 70s when I saw it, it was quite the amazing. It's, like, rooms and rooms of this dollhouse, so-
Michelle Wolff 15:56
There was a woman I heard about on NPR that reconstructed crime scenes, like, inside of a half of a walnut. She like, recreated them so the police could still use them but they were in miniature, and I was like, I want to see a tiny crime scene.
Amy Hallberg 16:13
You know, I love doll houses now. Like, I don't want one, but I love it now. I think it's the thing of you can, anything can be a privilege and a joy, anything can be torture, right? It's do you choose it and do you get to choose how you interact with it?
Michelle Wolff 16:29
Yes
Amy Hallberg 16:30
You know?
Michelle Wolff 16:31
You did that.
Amy Hallberg 16:31
Even my teaching career. I loved teaching, it was one of the most creative things I ever did until people started coming on and being like, "Okay, well, you need to show the kids the PowerPoint and they need to fill in all the fucking little blanks." And oh, by the way, I get to use the F word on my own podcast, because my podcast, I can do whatever I want. But like, like, they have to, like, spit it into their mouth like the mama bird and they have to, like, take your regurgitated stuff. And like, like, ugh, I hate- Anything can be a torture and anything can be a joy, it's a matter of, how do you reconfigure it?
Michelle Wolff 17:03
Right. And you could have stayed stuck in the victimization energy, but you didn't. And there are things that supported moving through that, but that happens with money. Also, it happens with relationships because I think we're just geared, we're just geared that way. We are now, who knows how it was even 100 years ago. But we're geared toward- And our society supports passivity and feeling like a victim because you buy more products if you don't feel good.
Amy Hallberg 17:43
You feel that one.
Michelle Wolff 17:45
Super gross. Yeah. But I like that you moved through that so you can feel that, like, man, that sucks, but you don't get lost in it and we get to see what you did with it. So it's not- Some books are just, oh, I'm gonna vomit, and all the vomiting, and then that's that and we don't see the other side of it. But I think it's important to have those memoirs that give you enough to know that was really painful and really difficult, and also, this is what it became. So that we see the scar, we understand how you got the wound that then turned into the scar. And then after you add the scar, then what do you do after that?
Amy Hallberg 18:31
What's interesting is, I have two things I want to tell you, and I don't know which way to go. But I'll start with one. What's interesting is people who can see in real time. So I was fortunate I had colleagues, there were some people who could see in real time what was happening to me. A lot of people pretended not to see me, I write about that too, right? But I had a colleague, for example, who made a point to tell me, "The guy that we're working for is a bad person. Don't put your trust in him." And I didn't write this into the book because I tried to give him as little airtime as possible in the book, but she gave me a Mary Oliver poem. You know The Journey? Have you ever seen the, one day you knew that you just had to start walking, right? And she gave me this and she was like, "Read this poem." And it's things like that where, like, people, people who have been through things, people who have struggled through things, who understand that it's not all light without the shadow, that there is complexity, could look at me and go, "Here's something you need to see, and you need to take. You need to pay attention. You don't know what to do with it now but let it inform you." And, and I think the other thing is, this is other thing I wanted to say, when you're writing something, people need to know- Like, when I'm reading something that's like, a sad, sad, sad story, you know? Okay, but what am I, what am I meant to do with this? Because if all I meant to do is stew in it and sit there and feel bad and bad and bad and worse, and it's just, like, you know, there's no redemption, or even, there's no nothing else, there's just nothing, I don't want to read that. What I'm reading for and what people want to read- And people skip over this in their writing all the time, I had this bad thing, and then I got better, right? Well, wait, you missed a chunk there. Right? People want to know that it's gonna be okay, but they want you to show them, how can I re-envision this? How, how can I, you know, I still live in the same town that I grew up in. I didn't like growing up here all that well, it was not the easiest growing up thing, and somehow I live here because you can do that. You can take what you're born into, and go, okay, this configuration isn't working for me, but then how do I reconfigure it? And I learned that from other people, and that's my goal with this book is, okay, here's how I did it. And like you said, you're not gonna be Amy Hallberg, you are not Amy Hallberg, and thank goodness, because you are a wonderful Michelle Wolff. Right? But if you can look at it and go, huh, well, that's interesting, and then either, like, "I hate that, and I don't want to do that so I'm gonna do something different," or, "I love that for her. What does that look like for me?" It gives us possibilities.
Michelle Wolff 21:23
Right. If I read a book, and I don't have a question at some point while reading it, then it's not a good book to me. Like, I'm selfish that way. I want it to wake me up and think- And you're so right about this overnight success model, you know, of, "Oh, I went from sleeping in my car to six figure years and now just fall-" You know? No, that is another piece that we've lost from not being hunter gatherer societies, we don't get to see, you know, you don't get to see your neighbor's spouse trip and fall into alcoholism and then everybody figure out how to get this person back to where they can function and actually thrive without that, without checking in. We don't hear about people who- Like, marriages that have infidelity. We don't hear about, "What did you say? How did you make the decision to stay together?" And then, "What were those middle of the night talks about? And how much furniture got broken? And did you ever throw anything?" And then, "How much crying was done? And how-" You know, we hide all that.
Amy Hallberg 22:35
In fact, that's one of my biggest indictments of the many Christian churches,
Michelle Wolff 22:40
Oh yes.
Amy Hallberg 22:41
is this, if you have suicide, abortion, miscarriage, depression, joblessness, homelessness, divorce, you actually need to go pray to God for forgiveness for being a shitty person.
Michelle Wolff 22:53
Right.
Amy Hallberg 22:52
As opposed to, right, as opposed to, we're going to gather around you, and we're going to love you, not because God loves you anyway, even though you are flawed or whatever. But like, what can we do to be here for you for your addiction journey, without judging what that's gonna look like for you? You know?
Right. And what is searing your soul so badly that you have to knock yourself unconscious with alcohol just to get through? Like, what's burning in your belly, that hurts so bad, that that's happening?
Sometimes it's physical pain. Sometimes it's emotional pain. I mean, I guess that's the other thing I want to say about books that I like, versus things that just rub me the wrong way, is I like an author who respects my experience and respects their writing enough to trust me to interpret it how they're going to interpret it. I do not like writing where they're like, I need you to know XY and Z.
Michelle Wolff 23:51
Right.
Amy Hallberg 23:54
You know, "I had this experience, let me tell you all the stuff that happened." Probably very little self reflection in there, by the way. And then at the end, I'm going to list life lessons that I took from it, but I'm not even going to call them my life lessons, I'm going to tell you, "I need you to do X, Y, and Z." And that to me as a book, or an essay, or whatever it is, that person, too soon for publication.
Michelle Wolff 24:16
Right. Right.
Amy Hallberg 24:17
If you're preaching at people about what you need them to know, then you don't know it for yourself enough yet. You need to get to a place where you can trust. I don't know what you're gonna make of my story. That's your business, you know?
Michelle Wolff 24:27
Yes, it's our job. What is that from the Bhaga-
Amy Hallberg 24:32
The Bhagavad Gita.
Michelle Wolff 24:33
Yes, thank you. Never get that out. But the biggest piece I ever took from that, and I got it from Steven Pressfield, because The Legend of Bagger Vance is the retelling of that story. If you've never watched that movie, watch it. It's so good when you think about it in those terms. But it's our job to do our best and bring the work out into the world, and that's the end of it. What other people take from it- I used to supervise to therapists and I had clients who were therapists or coaches, and I would say, "Tell me what you've told your last three clients, because that's what you need to hear." If you've said it two or three times in a timeframe, you're saying that because, well, there's the themes that run through the collective, right? All of a sudden all the coaches, all the TikTokers are all (unclear) the same thing. So, at the same time, so they're not even copying each other. But, so there's those things, but when we're shouting and trying to be heard, we're trying to be heard by ourselves, it's hard to learn because there's so much passion. Like, you're trying so hard to get in lessons for yourself that you're obnoxious. I am so guilty of that. The downfall of Facebook is I can shout on it.
Amy Hallberg 25:50
And then go back three days later and find your homework assignment in your own words.
Michelle Wolff 25:54
Or the (unclear) pops up and you're like, damn.
Amy Hallberg 25:58
Well, you know, it is interesting you mentioned the Bhagavad Gita. I meant to put this into my book, but it just didn't fit so I just didn't say it. But I ended up writing a lot about religion. I did not mean to, that was handed to me. Well, whenever it was, my niece graduated from Chicago the weekend that they opened up Chicago, like from COVID. And so like, she didn't get a graduation, so we went on a boat trip and, and her uncle, my brother's brother in law was like, "Can I tell you what I remember about you from when I met you at your brother's wedding?" He was like, "You were very Christian, and little bit prudish." So, I took one religion class in college, and I kind of wished I would have taken more. I wanted to join the Christian group, but those people were way too Christian. And I was like, okay, no, that's not for me. But I took one religion class, and the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching. We read other books, too. Afterwards, I sold those books back to the book weasel because I wasn't sure if, like, it would be okay if I could keep my good standing as a Christian to have those books in my possession.
Michelle Wolff 27:08
Right, you might have lost your ticket to heaven.
Amy Hallberg 27:11
And so, like, you know, as people are, you know, like, "I don't want to write about religion," but it's like, okay, but that's exactly what I do need to read about because I was that person. Like, I didn't marry the black guy, or date the black guy, or let it get that far enough along because my family would not have approved, that I know of, I didn't ask.
Michelle Wolff 27:31
Right.
Amy Hallberg 27:32
Right? So I was the purest. I was the one who was absolutely too pure and too perfect and too pristine.
Michelle Wolff 27:40
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 27:40
Therefore, I'm the person to write about that.
Michelle Wolff 27:42
Yes. And if you think about, I would say, the process of having to go from that to where you are now, is an extreme journey that most people don't have the strength for, and they don't have the courage for to keep showing up. Like we've said, different contexts throughout our conversation. You can't fail if you keep showing up.
Amy Hallberg 28:09
Right. You will get there.
Michelle Wolff 28:11
You will, and it will be messy and convoluted, and you'll think you're a lunatic, and other people might think you're a lunatic. And I know even in the much less dramatic or extreme shift from my own raising in Christianity, there were times I thought I was losing my mind. What if I, what if I am about to hand over my ticket to heaven? What if what I grew up with is true and I'm going to be in the fiery lake? You know, what if I'm wrong? You know, you'd have those moments, and some people have those moments, and they go backwards. The call to come forward, the call to do something different is so strong. I don't know what the difference is. And I hate to call it courage. It is courageous, but if we describe it as, it takes a lot of courage to keep showing up, then it almost sounds like we're saying the people who can't or don't keep showing up are chickenshit somehow, you know, like, they're the weak ones, they couldn't hang, you know? Because there's a season, there's a time, there's a place.
Amy Hallberg 29:17
One of the worst things somebody told me one time was that I didn't know what somebody else's soul journey was. And I was like, fuck that, they're supposed to behave in this way. But it's true. I don't know what your journey is, you do. And you know, like, you may not know it on a conscious level, but you're here for something and it's not my job to tell you. It's only my job to reflect back to you what I see from my perspective. That's all I can do. That's all I can ever do.
Michelle Wolff 29:43
I think if I hadn't gone through social work and therapy- I started college as an art major. This was not the path I was going to pick. And then I shifted over to psychology and then ended up shifting over to social work. And honestly, I think if I hadn't gone that direction, I'd be a raging bitch. I mean, I kind of am my own raging bitch.
Amy Hallberg 30:06
Oh, but it's a wonderful bitchiness. Like, it's the difference between, just, unbridled bitchiness, and here's the direction I'm going with this, and I'm doing something.
Michelle Wolff 30:17
Yes.
Amy Hallberg 30:17
That's a difference.
Michelle Wolff 30:18
And I don't know if the rigidity comes- Because I can relate to the German part, right? Because my family and my grandfather are German and Hungarian and all of that rigidity, and there's an arrogance, and an, "I know what's right, and you don't," kind of attitude in my family. And, and a lot of my work has been like that, like, "No, you have to show up every day and if you don't, you're a loser, and you're not doing it right. And so you're never going to-" You know, I had a lot of humbling moments of, sometimes you just can't. And it's not about courage. It's so complex, there's no way to boil that down. But to go back to where you started with, you show up and a door opens and you cross that threshold, and the door behind you closes, and you start walking, and then another door opens, and you go that direction. And sometimes that's every day, showing up at eight o'clock like some writers do and sometimes that's showing up and not even being able to write. Just go sit at your desk for five minutes knowing you're not gonna write anything, but you want to at least keep that commitment to yourself that you'll show up at least that much. And sometimes it's not getting out of bed. We just don't know. Byron Katie helped me with that one.
Amy Hallberg 31:38
We just don't know. Oh, you can twist everything every which way you can turn, everything every which way. And if this one isn't working for you, if this commitment, or this agreement, or this thing isn't working with you, try something different. And surely enough, eventually you'll come on to something that works.
Michelle Wolff 31:57
Well, I think you have a unique offering. Not that you didn't before, but it's a unique offering of someone who has done writing, done publishing, done editing, and then taught, and then have to go through this whole- I love that series, The Expanse, and there's one character who's like, "You're in the churn and there's nothing you can do about it. You're being tossed around, you're in the churn, and all you can do is just stay alive."
Amy Hallberg 32:30
Just stay alive.
Michelle Wolff 32:31
You have all those skills now to give to someone who's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna write a book. I'm supposed to write a book." You can see and sense the book in their energy field, but you're able to now to have felt experience. Humbling experiences, painful experiences, with the tools and skills that then can guide someone. "Oh, I hear what you're saying, that you don't want to show up or you're trying to cancel our appointment and I'm not gonna let you."
Amy Hallberg 33:03
There's ways around that. There are ways around that.
Michelle Wolff 33:06
Structured creativity is different, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 33:11
Yeah. Yeah. As you said, it comes from having lived through the churn.
Michelle Wolff 33:16
Yes. Yeah. Lived to tell about it.
Amy Hallberg 33:20
And live to tell. I just want to thank you so much, Michelle. This has been great. It's been lovely to talk with you and just looking forward to more collaboration along the way.
Michelle Wolff 33:30
Absolutely. Appreciate it.
Amy Hallberg 33:33
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured Michelle Wolff. You can read about her and check out her links in the show notes. Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith, my editor is the talented Will Quie, and my producer is the wonderful Zoe Wood. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can help it thrive and grow. Please tell your friends and sign up for my email so that you'll hear about future episodes. And if you're feeling the call to write, join us in our free community for real life writers. You'll find these links right on this page. You can learn more about me and my books, and my work with book writers at amyhallberg.com. I am Amy Hallberg and until we meet again, travel safely.