This month, my word is GALLANT. (Isn't it delicious? I feel like I raise my chin and square my shoulders just saying it. Try it out loud. Instant badassery).
This post is about how to have courage in the writer's seat.
We're not putting the cart before the horse and talking about courage on the page itself: that's Level Two. We're talking about the inner gallantry you need to:
Get to the writer's seat in the first place
Hold your seat when the going gets tough
Not attach your self worth to your performance in that chair
I'm going to break this word down for us a bit in this missive, and then we'll get deep into the tools that will help you channel your inner gallantry à la Virginia Hall of my upcoming feminist spy biography, Code Name Badass in the September Well Gathering (catch it on the archives if you’re reading this post after the fact).
Be sure to sign up for the September Well Gathering, where we'll be talking all things GALLANT. (And please feel free to share the registration link with friends and on social!). There will be a recording if you miss it.
Given what’s happening in the world today, I'll also be sharing one way you can help our Afghan sisters - keep an eye out for that. None of this work we do on ourselves and on the page is worth a damn if it's not helping others, right?
I was recently on the Yoke & Abundance podcast talking about Virginia Hall and what she overcame to become one of America's greatest spies, and how that inspired me in my own life, as a writer. I'm really proud of this conversation - we went deep into mindfulness, gallantry, what to do when you keep hearing the word NO. I hope you have a listen and get some good benefit from it.
I know that many of you feel - as I do - that writing is, first and foremost, a spiritual practice. It wakes us up. And then our words can help wake up others. In this episode, I talk about ways we can do that important work of awakening.
How To Channel GALLANTRY in the Writer’s Seat
showy in dress or bearing: SMART
This is me in Lyon, France, doing research for Code Name Badass. I had to dress the part of being gallant - my black sunglasses never fail to make me feel invincible - because inside I was feeling like an underprepared agent about to parachute into Nazi territory.
I was so in over my head with this book. And being in France wasn't the fab experience I'd hoped it would be, mostly because my imposter syndrome kicked in HARD. Here I was writing a feminist biography about a woman who had a notoriously awful French accent and prothetic limb and STILL got her ass over to France to fight fascism, and meanwhile I'm asking my husband - who speaks less French than me - to please do all the talking because French people intimidate me.
I was so ashamed of my fear of speaking, and frustrated that I was letting the imposter win: the one who told me I wasn't qualified to write this book, that I had no idea what I was doing, and - de la merde! - I was the worst thing of all: gauche.
So what did I do? I put on the outfit I felt most confident in, a red lip, my black sunglasses and I got my ass out of the apartment and into town. This was taken near the Lumière Brother's museum (the OG film makers) and while I was there my confidence was restored - I could read all the museum placards, even though they were in French.
Sometimes, you have to dress like a badass to feel like a badass.
So if you're struggling in the writer's seat, consider your environment:
Change out of your damn pajamas.
Get some funky writer glasses or clothes or tattoos - anything that makes you feel the part of a writer.
Have a writing space that takes itself seriously.
When people ask what you do, tell them you're a writer. Full stop. No qualifications. No, "But I'm not published." See how that feels.
2. a. splendid, stately
b. spirited, brave
c. nobly chivalrous and often self-sacrificing
The Zen Master (husband / Zach) took this photo of me at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon. We weren't even halfway through my research trip (with Le Chambon and Paris to go, not to mention archival research in England), but I'd seen so much: the traboules - secret passageways all throughout Lyon that the Resistance used; the place where the Butcher of Lyon tortured countless people - and was rallying his Gestapo to search for Virginia Hall; rendezvous points Virginia Hall had with other agents that were in full view of the public, including the hotel she stayed in right around the corner from what would become the Gestapo headquarters (#zerofucksgiven). I'd seen plaques all over the city that honored the fallen. I saw the train tracks that carried French Jews to Auschwitz.
Given that I was still terrified to order at a restaurant, I wasn't convinced I would have been as gallant as the French resistants and their foreign spy helpers if I'd been a Lyon resident in WWII. But I hoped I'd be, if the chips were really down, and not just the steak frites.
This is a picture of me thinking about all of that, gazing across the city, and hoping like hell I had some gallantry in me.
So how do we channel that intentionality and desire for gallantry in the writer's seat?
Do the inner work: the mindfulness for writers work, shadow work, the clarity work, the work of assembling tools in the war against self-doubt, comparison, and the inner critic.
Learn what your process is and make it work for you, rather than trying on some other writer's process. If you'd like help with that, click here to learn more about my You Have A Process mentorship.
If you missed the August Second Sunday Gathering in The Well, click below for your Be-Do-Feel-Have formula PDF. This instant download will give you a process for rewiring your mental pathways in the direction of gallantry. This stuff has already transformed my life in a big way. Subscribe below to get your download (and so much more!):
3. courteously and elaborately attentive especially to ladies
After Lyon, we went to Le Chambon, a tiny village with a huge heart. During WWII, they sheltered thousands of Jews and the whole town was named Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Center. Many people lost or risked their lives to protect their fellow humans. This is where Virginia Hall set up shop for her second mission in France. I'd come to take pictures of her drop sites and safe houses.
Then we got into a car accident. While I'm sure we weren't the first Americans to get in trouble on these roads (especially during D-Day) I felt like a dumbass - not at all gallant like the spy with a wooden leg who'd bicycled through past these same fields to catch ammunition out of the sky.
Luckily, everyone was okay, but our Citroën was totalled. So there we were, standing on a deserted country road in the Haute Loire, trying to get a tow truck (in French, naturally) on a Sunday evening.
I shouldn't have been worried: this was Le Chambon we're talking about.
Within an hour, a wonderful couple showed up, got us sorted, and brought us back to our Air B & B. All love, no attitude. Just concern and care. And THEN the wife half of the couple who owned our Air B & B got a sitter for her little baby and drove us around the next day so I could visit the sites I needed to, and THEN she drove us for two hours to Le Puy to get a new rental car. Oh yeah, and she, her husband, and their baby stayed at their friend's house, sleeping on couches, so we could have their house for an extra day.
So what does it look like to have a sister's back in the writer's seat? To be "courteous and elaborately attentive, especially to ladies"?
Cultivating self regard. See that picture of me above? That was after the accident. I leaned on my mindfulness (my #1 tool as a person and a writer), tapping into the deep knowledge that all things are impermanent, including plans and cars. And then I slept. Self care. How are you being unkind to yourself in the writer's seat? Are you pushing when you need to slow down? Are you not listening to your body? Do you have an ergonomic set up? Gallantry towards yourself is the most important courtesy you can extend. It's when you care for yourself that you can best care for others. (Put your oxygen mask on first).
Community. Writing is not a lone wolf activity. We need to be gallant toward one another, be it as a CP, doing the kind of work I do with all of you in The Well, donating to fund opportunities for women and girls who have less privilege to gain access to the writer's seat and be healthy and safe.
One way to do this? Support the Greek NGO I work for that serves mostly Afghan women and girl refugees in the Mavrovouni refugee camp in Greece, formerly Moria before it burned down. I'm in charge of our new storytelling initiative, The Calliope Fund, to end gender-based violence by getting creativity materials into the hands of women and kids when they come to the center so that they have the tools to tell their own stories. We're also trying to set up shop in the camp itself, and extend the fund beyond Greece. More on all of this soon, but in the meantime....
Please email me if you'd like to donate bulk materials for art supplies, would like to arrange a sizeable donation, want to run a fundraiser for the Calliope Fund on your own or through your business, or would like to volunteer.
Gallantry In Action
Above is Virginia Hall, long before she ever became a badass spy.* The hunting accident that caused her to have her left leg amputated below the knee had yet to happen. But look at her direct gaze, that stance. She always knew she was gallant, didn't she?
That self belief in her ability and worth is what carried her through literally shooting herself in her own foot, being told "no" by everyone from the President of the United States to CIA big-wigs.
The work we do now on ourselves is how we can have that same belief in our own gallantry so that when the going gets tough in the writer's seat, we're up for the task.
Mission accomplished.
Don't forget that quote above from Toni Morrison: "I've always known I was gallant." Here's to cultivating that deep inner feeling of your own gallantry, and then letting it find expression in the writer's seat.
*Hall photo courtesy Lorna Catling