In this episode, Maggie Smith explores how to nurture creativity in a noisy world. A lot of people think creativity is something you do with a paintbrush or a poem but Maggie challenges us to think differently about creativity. It isn’t about what you make, but how you live. She dives into what it really means to be creative, even when you’re overwhelmed, unsure, and not feeling particularly inspired. And we tackle a bigger question: How do we keep creating when the world is so loud and we’re so tired?
Key Takeaways:
- Insights on creativity and the challenges of staying inspired in a chaotic world.
- The role of intuition in the creative process and the significance of listening to one’s inner voice.
- Balancing the need to stay informed with personal well-being and mental health.
- The concept of hope in creativity and the idea of being a “possibilist.”
- Practical advice for overcoming creative blocks and finding inspiration.
- The value of feedback and community in the creative process.
- The relationship between restlessness and creativity, and how it can drive artistic growth.
- Embracing playfulness and curiosity in creative endeavors.
Maggie Smith is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and
prose, including YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL, GOOD BONES, GOLDENROD, KEEP MOVING, and MY THOUGHTS HAVE WINGS. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. Her new book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life
Connect with Maggie Smith: Website | Instagram
If you enjoyed this conversation with Maggie Smith, check out these other episodes:
The Lost Art of Living Creatively with Austin Kleon
Creativity as a Cure with Jacob Nordby
Writing for Healing with Maggie Smith (2021)
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 00:02:17 A lot of people think creativity is something you do with a paintbrush, or a poem, or a perfectly arranged Instagram grid. But what if creativity isn’t about what you make, but how you live? In this episode, I talk with Maggie Smith, poet, author, and champion of the messy, meaningful, creative life. We dig into what it really means to be creative, even when you’re overwhelmed, unsure, and not feeling particularly inspired. And we ask a bigger question how do we keep creating when the world is so loud and we’re so tired? This is one of those conversations that doesn’t just give you advice, it gives you permission. I’m Eric Zimmer. And this is the one you feed. Hi, Maggie. Welcome to the show.
Maggie Smith 00:03:02 It’s good to be back.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:04 It sure is. It’s nice to see you again. We’re here to discuss your latest book, which is called Dear Writer Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life. And we’re going to get into all of that in a moment.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:16 But we will start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, what? Which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Maggie Smith 00:03:54 I love that I’ve gotten to answer this question more than once, and I have to keep coming up with a different response for what it means to me. Eric, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about intuition, which is maybe like sort of a woo woo concept, but I’ve been thinking a lot more about it. And like the way that we can listen to that sort of voice inside ourselves that tells us what is true and good that we should be perhaps pursuing. And then there’s probably another little voice inside of ourselves that says, yeah, but this might be more lucrative, or this might be an easier path, or this would be less of a hassle. And so I’ve been thinking about those two wolves and a kind of intuitive sense these days, which is how do I tune into that inner voice inside me and ask it like, what is true and good that I should be pursuing right now? And what can I let fall away? Because as we get busier and as the news cycle gets more insane. Yeah, right. I mean, there are just so many little hooks in the world that are grabbing at us and competing for our time and attention. And so being able to kind of, I don’t know, tune in to that kinder, clearer frequency and just know what to do with oneself on a daily basis seems essential right now. So that’s what it kind of brings up in me at this particular time.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:22 Yeah, I think about that question of intuition a lot, and about the inner voices and knowing which ones you want to listen to and trust and follow and which ones you want to let go. And I think that in many ways, this path of becoming more in touch with who we are and living a better and more meaningful life is just primarily about hearing those things and sorting them out. And for me, sort of say the beginning. Like when I got sober as a as a beginning. Right? I couldn’t trust any of those interior voices. They were all bad wolves. Now, there’s a lot of good wolves in there, too, and I can trust it a whole lot more. But I do need to be a little bit more quiet. And I’ve been thinking about what you’re talking about, like just the clamor. Like, I’m a big fan of Substack. I know you’re on Substack, I love Substack, and even Substack feels so noisy to me now.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:23 There’s so many great writers I’m feeling in a way I’ve never felt before, like a full retreat from online anything, because it just seems to be in some way, ratcheting up something that I felt like I had some sort of grip on. I feel like now I’m back in the midst of the real struggle. Yeah, and I don’t do any social media even.
Maggie Smith 00:06:48 Well, then don’t add that to your repertoire, because that’s a whole other wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:53 Yes.
Maggie Smith 00:06:54 It’s a no. You’re right. It’s a whole pack. You’re right. I think we could talk for a long time about all of the sort of negative stuff that’s coming at us constantly that we’re having to weed through, because you have to pay attention to it and be informed in the world and not bury your head in the sand. But in order to sort of survive and thrive and make things and be useful to yourself and others, you can’t be completely consumed by the news cycle. But it’s not just that it’s even good stuff is overwhelming, right? Like if you wake up in the morning and you have 50 Substack notifications in your email of things that you really would like to read.
Maggie Smith 00:07:32 Yeah, and engage with, but you actually just don’t even have the bandwidth for the incoming. Good, worthwhile stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Like, how do we pare down? Because that seems really essential right now to just get to a place where, okay, here are the things that really matter to me? And how do I kind of like weed through the rest of that static, even if it’s good static?
Eric Zimmer 00:07:57 Yeah, yeah, I heard some writer, I don’t remember who it is who said, you know, it’s not a problem of like, trying to find the needle in the haystack anymore. It’s basically a haystack full of needles at this point. Right? And that is so true. Let’s jump to the book for a second, because in the book you have, I don’t know, you could tell me how many what do you call them? Capacities. You’ve got attention. Wonder what do you call those?
Maggie Smith 00:08:21 I don’t know, I think I call them elements of creativity. Or if I were coming up with a recipe for creativity, I think of them as, like the ingredients in the secret sauce.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:31 Great. Okay. So in the ingredients, one of them, I believe the last one is hope. Yeah. And I thought we could go there because you just referenced the news cycle. You referenced this idea of needing to be informed. And I’m struggling with this right now. I don’t think I’m alone. Right. Because I’m having a desire to tune out in a way I never have, because I feel so thoroughly overwhelmed and that overwhelming this leads to nothing. Whereas when I withdraw myself to a certain degree, then I can at least do what I feel like I can do in the world. And I’ve been questioning that statement of like, it’s good to be informed, you need to know what’s happening. And I’ve been wrestling with the idea of, is that true? Is it moral to be informed, or is there actually virtue in that? Or is there only virtue in what you do as a result of being informed? I’m struggling with this question personally right now.
Maggie Smith 00:09:30 That’s a really interesting question, because what good is the information if it doesn’t impact your behavior or the way you move through the world? I mean, knowing bad things are happening is one thing, but if you just know that the bad thing is happening and then you just go make yourself a sandwich, how is that useful?
Eric Zimmer 00:09:48 Or you just read more and more and more and more bad things that are happening, right? And you never get to good. I’ve been wanting to go back and read Candide because I don’t really remember all of it, but I do remember this core idea of like ten year garden. Yeah. And I’ve been feeling a deeper need to, like, tend my garden, I guess. Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say.
Maggie Smith 00:10:09 I do, but I also think part of that is that our garden is in our control. Yeah, or at least it’s more in our control. It’s not fully in our control. Right. But when the world feels like it’s complete chaos, which at least to me, it does.
Maggie Smith 00:10:21 Right now, the thing that I can do is take care of my family, make decisions for myself, donate my time and money to causes that matter to me, write my poems or essays or novels or whatever those things are. And so bringing it back to self is a way of feeling like you’re in control, in a world that feels like it’s completely out of control. And yet I think it is a sort of moral imperative to be informed, because even voting comes from that, right? Even protesting comes from that. If we all bury our heads in the sand because we’re all so overwhelmed and we’re not aware of the sort of machinations, then they continue. But it’s a balance. If I spend too much time in that world, I’ll stop making things because my nervous system will be so overwhelmed I won’t be able to. Right. Yeah. So, like, what is that balance between tending my garden, which is important and necessary, and that’s my work, but also not tending my garden as a way to escape the world.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:26 Yep. Yeah. It’s an ongoing balance. You say, though, in the book, if hope is imaginative, then pessimism is a failure of imagination. You still feel that? Talk to me about where you are with that today.
Maggie Smith 00:11:40 I still feel that way, even with things happening now. And honestly, we could copy paste that sentence into any time in history.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:48 Exactly.
Maggie Smith 00:11:49 Or the future? Exactly right. I mean, that’s like one of the questions that people ask of poets forever is like, how is poetry important in these harrowing times? And I’m like, well, in these harrowing times, I could also be copy pasted into any time in history. Like if ten years ago wasn’t harrowing for me, it’s because of my like, location or privilege.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:15 Precisely because the world is always harrowing to some people. Somewhere, always.
Maggie Smith 00:12:20 100% of the time.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:21 There’s this Buddhist story that I love about a woman who’s chased by a tiger, and she comes to an end of the cliff and she sees a sturdy vine, and she climbs partway down and it describes, she says, there’s tigers above, there’s tigers below.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:34 Mice come out and start, you know, gnawing at the vine. And I’m like, that’s life in perpetuity. Always.
Maggie Smith 00:12:42 Yeah. Tigers above, Tigers below. Yeah. That is. That’s the shorthand for that. So it’s no different now, really. I mean, does it feel a little different? Sure. But we’ve always lived through difficult times. We are going to live through difficult times, and we keep making art. Yeah. And if that’s not a hopeful endeavor, I don’t know what is. And yes, I can’t make things, nor can I parent. As a pessimist, I don’t know. I mean, it’s actually like irresponsible, I think, for me to be doing either of those things. Like, someone would have to take the keys from me. Yeah. If I say I’m driving the car like this, that’s not okay. So that doesn’t mean saying, don’t worry, guys, everything’s going to be fine. I’m sure this is all going to, like, the pendulum’s going to swing back and everything’s going to be cool.
Maggie Smith 00:13:34 And this is all going to be erased. No. Like some of the things that are happening, particularly in the United States now, we’ll be feeling the repercussions of this for centuries. Like, none of this is small time stuff, but that doesn’t mean we give up. Like, what’s the alternative? Right. I don’t get it.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:52 There was a book that was written, I don’t know how long ago now by a guy named Hans Rosling. It’s called fact fulness. And basically what he’s trying to do in the book is show that the world is getting better on a lot of measures, right? We’ve all heard this by now, right? Like childhood literacy, rising, worldwide, poverty following, you know, all these sort of things, but life expectancy.
Maggie Smith 00:14:11 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:12 The thing he says in that book, though, that I love, is he’s talking about optimism and pessimism, and he refuses to be considered either. He’s like, people call me an optimist because I show them all this progress.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:22 He said, I’m not an optimist. I’m a possibility. And I love that idea because that’s what you’re getting to with hope, being imaginative, being a possible list. You know, there’s a way that we can make things better. We don’t know how much better. We don’t know what the scope of that is, but we can’t. We do have that ability.
Maggie Smith 00:14:41 Yeah. And what is the point of the future if we think that it’s already written right? I mean, if we actually think we can do nothing to impact what happens in the next five minutes or in the next day or the next year. Yeah. I mean, we’re just playing with blocks. I mean, we have to believe that our actions and even our thoughts have an impact in the world. That feels hopeful to me. And I like the idea of being a possible list. Maybe I’ll I’ll use that from now on. I used to say I was a recovering pessimist. I don’t say that anymore because I actually feel like I’m.
Maggie Smith 00:15:16 I’m pretty optimistic. Yeah. But from like, a realistic standpoint. Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:22 So in the book you have these different ingredients. We talked about them, one of them being Hope. I want to talk for a minute about the role of creativity in the average person’s life. Right. This book is written. It’s got a lot about how to be a better writer in it. I was saying to you before we started, my book is due to the publisher in ten days. I wish I’d read this book like three months ago because I would have been like, oh, I can do that, and I should try this, and now you know. So now I’ve got all kinds of things because I’ve been a little bit like, well, the draft’s done. I’m not quite sure how to make it better. So as a book about writing, it’s outstanding in that. And I know that’s a big thing to you. Teaching writing, teaching craft. Some of our listeners are going to be writers.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:08 And so they’re hearing this, and I’m hoping they will go get the book because it’s great in that way. But I want to broaden creativity out from just people who would be considering themselves a writer or artist. Talk to me about the role of creativity in just life.
Maggie Smith 00:16:26 Yeah, it’s funny to me how many people think they’re not creative because they don’t make art, which I find sad. We’re all creative. Anyone who does a job doing anything, anytime you brainstorm something. Yeah. Anytime you try to solve a problem. Creative anytime. My son has soccer practice on one side of town and my daughter has work on the other side of town, it requires creativity. I’m not even being facetious. Like I think in our daily lives, every relationship we start or end, every time we change our minds about something, every conversation we have with someone that is unscripted, like this one, I don’t know what you’re going to offer me, and you don’t know what I’m going to offer you back. This is creative time that we’re spending together.
Maggie Smith 00:17:09 It’s something that I feel kind of evangelical about, frankly, that that like, we are all creative people. And even if you think you’re not, you’re just wrong, actually, and that it has something to offer all of us. And the other thing I would say is that even if you’re not making art, I hate this as a verb, but you’re consuming it, right? You’re engaging with it is perhaps warm or less capitalistic way to say it. Even if you’re not making art. You’re engaging with art. You’re listening to music. You are watching films or television. You have probably art in your home. And so what does it mean to you to be engaging with that piece of art on a daily basis? Perhaps? For me, I feel like we can’t engage with art, whether we’re making it or looking at it, listening to it without being different. On the other side of it. And so part of what we want as humans is to grow, which I think it is for me why I make art.
Maggie Smith 00:18:16 And part of why I listen to music as often as I do, and why I want to go see bands as often as I do, and why I want to see the movies that people say are making them cry or scream or whatever is because I know that on the other side of that record or concert experience or film, I will not be exactly the person I was before. Yep. And like, we can argue that that’s true of anything. Right. Like, you go on a hike. You’re not the same person after the hike. But I think there is something sort of built in to, like the DNA of art made by human beings. Which I have to say, because AI is making me crazy. But when a human being makes a piece of art and then we spend time with it, that’s the kind of creative connection that we’re making, and it transforms us and we exit that a little different on the other side. And I think we’re all kind of craving that, whether we’re consciously craving it or not.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:13 There is something you talk about in the book. It was under the element of vision that I wanted to talk about, because I found it kind of inspiring. And you talked about a way to get unstuck when it comes to a poem. And you say, when I pack my bag to go somewhere to do writing, I’m paraphrasing here. I always take a notebook with me and at least one book, and I begin my writing time by reading pen in hand, because I know what is likely to happen. A word or phrase, sentence or idea will open a door for me. And then you talk about just like making a list of words that you pull out of the text. How might you combine those words in unexpected ways? I just love this idea because it talks about how to actually go from reading something that feels inspiring in some way, but I don’t know how to engage with it differently, how to give it my own thing. And I just love this idea of just like writing out words or a sentence and then trying to follow a sentence.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:07 You talk about making something. I’d never heard of this before. A cento tell me what a cento is.
Maggie Smith 00:20:13 I joke that a cento is the laziest poem you can write. It’s actually not. But a cento requires no writing. That’s the secret of the cento. So it’s an Italian form. It’s a collage poem. So basically, a cento is a poem in which each line has been pulled from another writer. And so your job is basically assembling these lines to make a new hole. So if you find a line in a poem you love and it ends with a preposition, then you find a line and some other person’s poem that begins with a noun phrase and kind of makes a new weird, interesting sentence, and you build that way. And so it really is like cutting images and making a collage from someone else’s art.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:56 Yeah, I just think that’s such a approachable thing to do. Yeah. If I sit down to write a poem and I know I’m creative, I play guitar, I’m writing a book, even though it’s sort of a certain type of nonfiction book.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:07 But when I sit down to try and create, you know, with a capital C, I often just feel flummoxed. But the idea of this is a way in. Yeah, really. Like I was like, oh, that’s easy. I’ve tried to find other ways in, like my friend Chris and I, we did it religiously for a while, and now we don’t do it so often. But we would do a daily haiku together in the morning via text. I’d send the first line, he’d be responsible for the next.
Maggie Smith 00:21:31 I remember that you.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:32 Guys did that. Yeah. And then the next day he’d have to send the first line. And it was just like a way of creating that was easy in comparison to what it feels like for a lot of people when they stare at a blank page.
Maggie Smith 00:21:44 Eric, that’s what staring at a blank page feels like to me. If you told me, go write a poem right now, I couldn’t do it. And I’m a poet. Like, that’s not how it works.
Maggie Smith 00:21:55 I don’t create on demand. Like, it’s not something you can just order up. Like going through the drive thru at a fast food restaurant. I have to give myself starters to get myself going too. I mean, the other thing I do is go back to something I’ve already written that isn’t working, and I’ll just kind of like noodle around in an old draft. If I don’t have an idea for something new. Right. Like, that’s always a good way to get started, because you might end up in some direction you never expected. But if I have time to write, I have to give myself a way in. And often it’s with someone else’s work, right? Like pulling a line from a poem and using it as the epigraph at the top, and then maybe mimicking the sentence structure, or pulling a sentence from a novel or an essay and rewriting that sentence exactly syntactically, but using my own words. Yeah, but using the container of their sentence structure or. Yeah, I have done word banks before where I will read through, particularly a collection of poems, but like a science article would be really interesting for something like this to, you know, pulling vocabulary from something that you might not have in your repertoire and making a word bank list and then thinking, okay, how can I combine these words in unique ways to make images or metaphors or asunto like going to my bookshelf, pulling up a bunch of poems, and trying to cobble something together that way that I get to call mine, even though I’m using other people’s words.
Maggie Smith 00:23:25 I think one of the most pernicious myths about creating anything is that it? Just like the muse visits you and it just comes through you and comes out fully formed. And it’s fast and easy. Yeah, I hope we’re like, doing a good enough job of dispelling that over time, but it’s usually incremental. It’s more of a trickle than a rush and it takes a lot of work.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:50 Yeah, I think that we do have these two sort of extreme ideas sometimes of art. One is, like you said, the muse just descends and something just comes out. The other is this extraordinarily laborious. You sit down at the same place at the same time and you just grind. Right. Like that is what’s been used to counter that other myth. And I think what you’re doing is you’re striking sort of a middle ground between those. I love this line. You can’t force a poem, but I think you can prepare for one. I think that’s a great line for poems and just for a whole lot of life in general.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:25 Right? There’s a lot of things in life you cannot force, but you can prepare, you can set the stage for you can influence.
Maggie Smith 00:24:32 Absolutely. Yeah. I do not consider my writing life a grind, but I also don’t sit down at the same time every day and stare at a page until something happens. I try to live my life and move through the day, and as things come to me, I’m like a little magpie looking for the shiny bits. So I collect them as I can and then eventually they accrue into something, if I’m lucky. But that’s that kind of like setting the table, right? Like if I haven’t set the table, there’s a less likely chance that the thing’s going to show up ready to go. And so preparing the table for me can look like a lot of different things, but it certainly doesn’t look like it doesn’t look like work. Yeah. In the way that we think. And it also doesn’t look like being struck by lightning and having something come through me.
Maggie Smith 00:25:20 It looks like getting an idea, writing it down, and then maybe coming back to it in a week when some other idea wants to Velcro itself to the side of that idea?
Eric Zimmer 00:25:29 Yep. You’re very realistic, though, in the book because you mentioned, like as a working writer, sometimes you’re on deadline, right? And you do you sit down and you just kind of. That’s how I felt with this book, right? It’s like I got the book deal, and I had a year and I was like, okay, you know, if I don’t want to end up in a mad rush at the end, which apparently always happens no matter what you do. It’s true. Just kind of made myself sort of write and follow a schedule, but in another creative endeavor for me, like guitar, it follows no shape like that, right? It’s far more able to be what it is. But I also do give myself I set the stage often enough by sitting down with the guitar.
Maggie Smith 00:26:10 Yeah.
Maggie Smith 00:26:10 Well, this is why I was saying I like to go away and kind of give myself retreats when I really have to write. Yeah. Whether I’m on deadline or not. There’s something for me about getting out of my home office, out of the place where my laundry and dishes need to be done, right out of the place where my kids are asking for a ride someplace. If I can get out of my daily life, sometimes that even just means going to a coffee shop for a few hours where I’m not reachable and I can’t do chores, frankly. But if I can go to a cabin in the woods for four days, something happens and it almost feels like turning on a faucet and things just happen. And it’s like, I think I’ve been doing that long enough. That sort of intuitively, my mind knows that when I get into that environment, it’s writing time. Yeah, it’s like if you have good sleep hygiene and you go to bed, if you’re doing it right, your body is like, oh, this is it’s sleep time, right? Like, this is what we do before sleep.
Maggie Smith 00:27:10 And now I’m prepared for it. I actually don’t think that that writing or making things is is that different. You can kind of give yourself cues. And for me, being among trees happens to be one of my mental cues for time to get some stuff done.
Eric Zimmer 00:27:51 We’ve talked about this before, I believe, when you were on the show, but we talked about this idea of seeing the world as a poet, and I mentioned why I love to read good poetry because I feel like it teaches me how to look differently than I normally look. You call it poets eyes and say that, you know, we all have them, particularly as children. But you also talk about how there’s both a loss and a gift in being a writer. Share more about that, because I resonate with that a lot.
Maggie Smith 00:28:23 Yeah. I mean, I think When you’re mining your lived experience for art. And maybe it’s not that different from a photographer who, whether they’re walking through the world with a camera or not, is framing things with their eyes.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:40 Or a musician. When I go see a band play, I’m watching what they’re doing with the chords, and I’m thinking about like, there’s a part of me that’s processing it as a fan, as a lover of it. But there’s a part of me that’s processing it as a musician, and it causes a little bit of a split.
Maggie Smith 00:28:55 Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think as a writer it’s funny, like, can I take a walk and have it just be a walk? Or is it a walk in which I’m also mining that walk for imagery, sensory detail, metaphor? And it’s sort of I mean, I say in the book, it’s sort of a loss and a gift. There’s a part of me that is always standing a little bit outside of the present moment because I’m grasping for language, a framework, a container, a way in. Like I’m looking for the door into the piece of writing about the thing that I’m experiencing in the moment. So it’s like when you hear people say, oh, I have like present tense nostalgia, you know, like I’m kind of like missing this moment as it’s happening because it’s so good.
Maggie Smith 00:29:44 I’m already sad about this beautiful experience because I know it’s going to end. I feel like there’s a kind of a bit of that where if I’m kind of meta processing. Yeah, as a writer, I’m not able to just fully surrender. Yeah, to the lived experience in the moment. And it sounds like you have that happen to.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:06 I do certainly with music, but in general, I think I have to work on it within myself that I don’t constantly think, as you’re saying, that every moment is supposed to produce something out of it.
Maggie Smith 00:30:22 That’s so important.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:23 Because then all of a sudden life becomes all about instrumentality, right? Like versus life. I just think, like you said, it’s a loss and a gift. And so for me, anything that’s that sort of double edged sword and lots of things in life are I just have to kind of pay attention to how I’m holding the sword a lot in order to not, you know, slice myself into a thousand pieces.
Maggie Smith 00:30:44 I think that’s really smart.
Maggie Smith 00:30:45 I love the way you put that. I remember my mom asking me once. I told her about some great day I’d had with the kids, like just at Hocking Hills or at the zoo, or just, you know, some just really joyful day and just spending the day together. And she said, oh, you should write about that. Probably because she was thinking, all of your poems are so melancholy, right? Like, that’s so uncomplicated and accessible. You should write about that. And I remember being on the phone with her and saying, I don’t need to write about it. I just enjoyed living it. So I know, I know the difference. Yeah, I can go to like, an amusement park with my kids, and I’m not like, what’s the roller coaster a metaphor for like, I know I’m able to pull myself out of that. It’s like a trap I can fall into, and I’m very susceptible. Like, my kid says something interesting and I’m like, ooh.
Maggie Smith 00:31:33 And I think they can see it happening. Like when I kind of leave the present moment and they can kind of see this like, oh, she’s an art mode right now. Mom just left the chat and the writer has entered the chat.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:46 Yeah, they probably also really like it too, though, because they feel like they’ve helped create something or they’ve said something interesting.
Maggie Smith 00:31:54 I hope so, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, I guess we’ll we’ll see. Like, who knows what one’s legacy will be with their children. But yeah, we’ll see.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:02 One of the other things that happens when it comes to creativity for people on any level is that you are able to see how you may not be, quote unquote, very good at it, right? And again, I don’t think this ever actually goes away for anyone. No, but you talk about being an amateur and I did not know this until I read it, that the root of amateur in Latin means to love. And that is so beautiful.
Maggie Smith 00:32:29 I’m a total word nerd, so my kids get really annoyed when they say something and I’m like, do you know the Latin root of that is this? And it means this. They hate it. But I look up words and I want to know their origins all the time, because it actually changes the way I think about the concept. So to know that the root of amateur is to love, I think we use that word as we either use it as a self-deprecating term, or we use it as a criticism of others if we’re being unkind, that’s amateurish, right? But if we think of it about it as like an amateur is not somebody who’s not good at something, which is, I think, how we use it a lot. But an amateur is someone who is doing something out of the love for the thing, rather than trying to professionalize. Perhaps the thing it actually speaks to what we were just talking about, like experiencing versus mining. Everything is material. I would like to be more of an amateur in that way.
Maggie Smith 00:33:27 I mean, courage to the root of courage is core, which if you think of Spanish Corazon, its heart. So it makes me think of bravery differently to think about courage in that way. We should all be brave. Amateurs.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:42 Yes. Yes. Right.
Maggie Smith 00:33:44 Just like boldly trying things. Failing a lot of the time. Picking ourselves back up because it’s fun to try. Not because we are expecting to get some guaranteed result from it.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:58 Before we dive back into the conversation. Let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You’re not alone in this. And I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self control. Things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control.Download the free guide now at one Eufy Net e-book and take the first step towards getting back on track.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:37 This is another one of those things that I have to wrestle with myself, which is not turning things I love into a job or or something that I have to get good at. Now I’ve gotten much better at this as I’ve aged, thankfully. Yeah, I just need to watch for that tendency. But it’s true. At the same time, that improving does feel good. Yeah, right. Like there’s something in it that feels good. So I’m trying to sort of do both those things. I’m like, all right, I don’t want to turn this into a chore. But yet I do know that I want to improve because that just feels good. And trying to hold all of that for me with the things that I do like with guitar, I firmly embrace amateur. I do because I love it. I don’t do it for any reason anymore except that I enjoy doing it. I have no, I have no expectation of anything coming out of it at all. You know, not getting the girl, not getting in a band, not getting paid, none of it.
Maggie Smith 00:35:53 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:35:53 I feel like after years of that, I was given the instrument back. In a way.
Maggie Smith 00:35:58 I love that, honestly. It’s when people ask about my work, I’m like, oh, I’m a poet, and I’d be doing it for free. I’m not anymore. But I would be. Yes, because it’s the thing I love to do. And sometimes I’m like, don’t tell anyone I would be doing this for free. But this is the thing I love to do. And even if nobody else wanted to read anything I was writing, I would still be doing it for myself. And yes, improving and working on my craft. I feel like I’m competing against myself. That’s all I’m doing. I’m competing against the writer I was yesterday. Not other writers. It’s just me. Be me. And for some reason, I find that really invigorating. And it makes me wonder if some of these people who were like, oh, I’m not creative.
Maggie Smith 00:36:45 And they sort of like, shake that off. Maybe they feel that way because they’re not professionals at something. Maybe it’s this sort of like, well, I’m just an amateur, like, oh yeah, I like, I play guitar, but I’m not, I’m not that good or yeah, like I can paint, but it’s just for me and I don’t really show it to anybody. Like it doesn’t count. It absolutely counts.
Eric Zimmer 00:37:07 Yeah. And I think a big part of it is just being like, it doesn’t matter if I’m good or not. That’s not the point of the thing. right? That’s not the measure, but that’s what most of us do. And it kind of goes back to what you were saying in the beginning. We’ve got these multiple voices inside of us, and one of those voices is just naturally, you should be good at this if you’re not good at it. Don’t do it. There’s a lot of places that comes from we don’t need to deconstruct all the various places it comes from, but I think it’s pretty deeply embedded in a lot of people.
Maggie Smith 00:37:38 I agree.
Eric Zimmer 00:37:38 But that willingness to just say doesn’t matter.
Maggie Smith 00:37:41 No, it doesn’t matter. I think part of what aging is helping me do is crave experience instead of perfection or even mastery. Like, I’m just so excited at my age to get to do new things that it matters less what the output is or the outcome. It’s just like, oh, I get to do that. Great. Like, I feel a lot more playful now than I did even about what I consider my work in air quotes 20 years ago, because the stakes don’t need to be that high. We can actually do things because we enjoy them and that they don’t need to be side hustles. They don’t need to be things that we’re doing for recognition. Maybe no one else even knows that we do them. I won’t even mention it because I have sworn myself to secrecy. But I started learning how to do something new this year, and like, three people know about it and I don’t want my kids don’t even know I’m learning in complete privacy and secrecy because it’s just for me.
Maggie Smith 00:38:48 And I want no one to ask me, oh, what are you going to do with that? Or are you going to do this with that? Or what’s your goal? It’s like when I started like running that people are like, are you going to do a half marathon? I’m like, no, I’m not doing this for any reason. And the fact that you have expectations for this makes me want to not tell anybody when I want to learn how to do something new. Like, it can just be because I crave a new experience.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:14 First off, now I’m dying to know.
Maggie Smith 00:39:15 But I’m not going to tell. I’m not going to tell you.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:20 I get it, I’m just letting you know.
Maggie Smith 00:39:22 I like that you’re curious.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:23 You’re trying to pique my curiosity. You did okay. I, like you, have found myself really in the last five years craving new experience. And I’m going to use that to segue to one of the elements or ingredients that you have in the book. Most of them you look at and you’re like, okay, that makes sense.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:42 Yes, play. That’s important. And I can see why. Vision and wonder and attention and tenacity. But one of them was restlessness.
Maggie Smith 00:39:50 I knew that was the one you were going to say.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:52 Of course, it’s so strange because that is a word I have a negative connotation to. Yep. I think generally I had that and then in 12 step programs in the AA Big Book, there’s a line that actually says, you know, the alcoholic who’s not drinking but not in recovery will feel restless, irritable and discontent. And I was like, well, that pretty much sums up me when I just let myself kind of go, yeah. So I loved this idea of restlessness reframed in a positive way. Tell me about that.
Maggie Smith 00:40:25 I think I have this long list of words. And then as I was winnowing it down, I realized that of all of the ten ingredients, that was the one that was going to be the one that people would be like, wait, how is this? Yeah, an element of creativity, because that sounds incredibly problematic.
Maggie Smith 00:40:42 Like, why would anyone want that? But to me, it’s the opposite of first thought. Best thought is restlessness. It’s the feeling of when you’ve made something, you aren’t immediately satisfied with it. You have this sort of needling, slightly uncomfortable feeling. And that’s restlessness, right? Like that little bit of a sort of like itch you can’t scratch. Jittery feeling that, you know, there’s something else. The potential of that thing that you’ve just drafted or made or built or thought up, you have not realized it yet. I think of when you’re on the tube and they say, mind the gap. I think there’s the version of the thing that you’ve made, and then there’s the version of the thing you think it can eventually be in your mind. The shining example of where you think that thing could go. And there’s a gap between the thing you’ve built, right. The book you’re working on and the book you hope it will be when it’s done and published. The painting you’ve been toiling over and the painting you can see in your mind’s eye.
Maggie Smith 00:41:50 And you need to have a way to use your skills and techniques and imagination to narrow that gap as much as possible. I don’t think it ever closes, at least in my experience, it never closes. I have never made anything that I was like, well, that’s perfect. That’s the shining example that I thought it would be. But I have worked really hard to narrow the gap to a livable. Kind of step over a bowl. No one’s going to fall into that crevice down and just be like, lost forever. Space and restlessness. That kind of goading on of the self to do better. Try harder. Push yourself a little further. Take a bigger risk. Get weirder with something. That’s what helps you narrow that gap, I think, is not being complacent. It’s the opposite of complacency.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:49 And how do you work with that in a way that doesn’t turn into perfectionism, or constantly believing that what you do isn’t good? Again, we’ve been we’ve been talking about double edged swords, right? I feel like this could be another one.
Maggie Smith 00:43:06 Yeah, it can be. I think there’s less a risk of creating terrible things if you push yourself a little harder than if you think that your first draft is great. I mean, I think, yeah. You know, I tell my students all the time. Time never made anything worse. A lack of time definitely has. Like, I have rushed and done things that I know. If I had more time, it would have been a better. Fill in the blank, whatever that thing was, you know? And I think, can you overdo it? Can you over revise something? Yes, you absolutely can. Like it’s a balance. Yeah. I mean, I say all the time, if I had known my poem, Good Bones would go viral, I never would have finished it. Yeah, because it wouldn’t have ever, in my mind, been ready for millions of eyeballs. Yeah. And so, yes, part of this is like, it’s a very delicate dance. We have to know our potential, push ourselves as much as we can, have fun with it.
Maggie Smith 00:44:06 If it stops being fun, stop doing it. I mean, I believe that wholeheartedly. If I’m really pushing myself in a piece of writing and it stops being fun and interesting to me, I put it away. I don’t abandon it. I put it away. I like, give it a time out. Yeah. And I’ll come back to it later. But I think, you know, we have to be careful not to worry so much about making a thing perfect that we never actually get it out the door, because that’s that’s a problem, right? But also not just being so self-satisfied with our first attempt. Yeah. That we end up sending a bunch of half baked stuff into the world and then can’t figure out why it’s not doing the work and the world that we thought it might do. And I think there’s a lot of sort of growing in the art and maturing in the art. I don’t know that I knew this when I was 20. Right. But I think we find the balance between doing our best and also understanding that we’re just human beings.
Maggie Smith 00:45:08 Yep. And that if I gave the same materials to a different writer, they would come up with a totally different poem than the one that I had written, and maybe one I would even enjoy more than the one I had written, or that readers might enjoy more than the one I had written. But that’s not my poem. So it’s like a little bit like, well, I got to stay in my lane and and again, like, tend my own. Yeah. Garden. That’s my territory.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:02 I am right in the thorns of this because I’m in revising the book. Now. When listeners hear this, I’ll probably already have turned the book into the publisher, which again, is not the end, but it’s a big milestone. I’m ten days away from that, so I’m fully in revision, restlessness, and I already made one part of the book worse by my insistence that I’m going to improve it.
Maggie Smith 00:46:27 But how do you know that? I’m so curious.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:30 Well, because the two people that I let read it said I was trying to infuse a little more emotionality, and I think I infused a certain degree of melodrama instead.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:41 Got it. And so a couple people said, I’m not sure. And when I went back and looked at it, I was like, I think you’re probably right. However, what I will say is that I shouldn’t say I made it worse because I actually made it better. It was better than where it started. Yeah. So I was here, and then I shot way over here.
Maggie Smith 00:46:57 Past the target.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:58 Past the target.
Maggie Smith 00:46:59 We do this all.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:00 The time, and then I cut a few of those things out. And then. Then I had a better target. So I guess that statement was inaccurate because I did improve it well.
Maggie Smith 00:47:08 And you brought up something important to which is having outside counsel. Yeah. And I think, you know, the sort of myth of the artist who works alone is another thing. Right. I mean, I still send my poems to the same person I’ve been sending my poems to since I was 22 years old. And she sends her poems to me, and I don’t take every bit of advice she gives, and she doesn’t take every bit of advice that I give.
Maggie Smith 00:47:32 But I think it’s another sort of important thing is that we don’t live in a vacuum, we don’t create in a vacuum. And so inviting other people in as we’re comfortable to our process, like those trusted people, we can just like, hey, would you take a look at this and tell me, like, am I way off base? Or do you understand? Or do you have questions? Or are you curious about things? Or are there other things you would like to know if you have people who you can do that with? I think that’s what a gift.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:59 Yeah. I always read the acknowledgements in books, and the reason I read them is because it does shatter that myth of the individual artist, for sure. You just read. I mean, sometimes I end up being like, how do people have this many great people in their life? And then I end up feeling bad about myself. Exactly. I couldn’t get anybody to read this damn thing. But seriously, you just realized, like, even a book, that at least parts of it are a solitary endeavor.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:29 You’re by yourself. Writing is ultimately a collaborative process. And I think that’s beautiful to see. And that’s why I do it, because it reminds me of that. And it reminds me that what I sit down and come up with, because I can look at it objectively and be like, this is not yet good. Yeah. I don’t think that’s being hard on myself. I think that’s just objective, and I don’t quite yet know how to make it better, but I can get other people involved who can help me with that. And one of yours is about connection. And so this is one way of thinking about connection. The other people in our communities that can support us. But you talk about connecting in some other ways, some other aspects of connection. You want to talk about that for a second?
Maggie Smith 00:49:14 Well, I mean, speaking of the solitary artists, I don’t think any of us create alone, do we? I mean, everything that you have written in your book is because of experiences you have had, conversations you have had with other people, other books you’ve read, teachers and mentors who have guided you.
Maggie Smith 00:49:33 And the same for me. It’s like when I sit down to write, even if I’m writing about my own experience, literally by myself, I’m not. Yes, because I’m having a conversation with me five years ago. I’m having a conversation with me as a child. I’m having a conversation with the books that I read that kind of paved the way, or gave me permission to structure my book in this way, or to tell this kind of vulnerable story. I have my mentors and my teachers sitting on my shoulders whispering like, no, don’t say it like that. Say it like this in my ear. And if I’m lucky, I have other people to bounce things off of. So I think whenever we’re making things, even if those things aren’t art, even if those things are relationships or opportunities or whatever it is in our lives, none of that is happening in a disconnected way. I know you enough to know you absolutely agree with that.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:30 Yeah, yeah, I think it’s great to remember it though.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:34 Yeah. And consciously call it to mind because even as you were just describing that, it made sitting down in front of the page and working on it feel less lonely. Yes, it’s absolutely true. You know, none of us in anything we do are not infinitely woven into the fabric of everything that is right. That’s just the way things are. And it’s comforting to remember that. I also love how you talk about a different type of connection, which is that in creation you are connecting things. Yeah, you’re building bridges, you’re creating metaphors, but it’s a connective process.
Maggie Smith 00:51:11 Yeah. Especially for people who are like, oh gosh, metaphor. Like I think other than line breaks, that’s the part of poetry that makes people uncomfortable. They’re like, oh, how am I supposed to know how to build a metaphor? That seems like such an odd thing to do. First of all, it’s so baked into our language. We’re doing it all the time. If you’re giving a talk in front of an office full of people, and you think of a sea of faces, that’s a metaphor.
Maggie Smith 00:51:35 So we’re doing it constantly. But I’m always telling students, like, pretty much writing anything that has to do with building bridges or making connections. It’s a two step process, and it’s incredibly basic. And breaking it down like this, I think, takes some of the fear out of it. It’s a sensory experience. Be comparison. That’s all it is. Like if you could boil down, like, the magic of metaphor in a poem to that. That’s what it is. You go outside and you look at a sycamore, and you notice that the bark of the side of a sycamore tree looks like little blobs of different colors. You know, it’s kind of mottled a little green and a little white and a little gray. So you’re making a visual connection and you describe it for yourself, and then you make the leap to a simple question, which is, what does that remind me of? That’s it. What does that remind me of? For me, it reminds me of a paint by number painting where every one is green and every two is gray, and every three is ivory, and every four is yellow.
Maggie Smith 00:52:32 And so I have a poem that describes sycamore bark as paint by number bark. It’s not rocket science. It’s looking at something, describing it, and then taking it. The extra step to ask yourself, what does that remind me of? Like what does that look like sound like? Oh, that bird’s making a weird noise. What does that remind me of? Oh, it sounds like someone striking the key of a manual typewriter. Oh. There’s that. So it’s not the muse coming down in a lightning strike. It’s noticing things which we all have the capacity to do. Noticing things, having a sensory experience in the world. And then just asking yourself the question, how can I connect this to a prior experience or another image or another sound? And then just tying those little two things together. And maybe that makes it seem a little less. I don’t know. Tricky or academic?
Eric Zimmer 00:53:28 I want to explore that, but my brain just got stuck on something, so let’s just clear it out.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:32 And this is a total only for me question. You and I both love sycamore trees. We’ve discussed this in the past, and you told me one time on a walk that it’s not only sycamore trees I’m seeing, it’s something else that is like a sycamore. And every time I see a sycamore, this question comes in my mind, like, what was that other tree? So I have to know now can just please solve my problem.
Maggie Smith 00:53:57 It’s called a London plane.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:59 A London plane? I knew it had something to do with Europe.
Maggie Smith 00:54:02 They’re cousins. I think they have slightly different seed pods, but their bark looks the same. One is typically found in parks and forest. One is typically found along city streets. If you call it a sycamore, it’s a London plane. Probably no one’s going to call you out.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:18 I get it, it’s just been eating at me for like a year and a half now.
Speaker 4 00:54:23 I love that, I love that that I’ve been doing. I’ve been living rent free.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:28 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, so we were talking about connection, metaphor. You also another connection that you talk about making in the book. And I thought this was another beautiful one and you sort of said it, but you’re having a conversation with your own mind. That’s a type of connection to write a connection to ourselves. And that’s one of the great things, I think, that art can help us do both other people’s art and our own is make that internal connection to ourselves.
Maggie Smith 00:54:56 Oh, totally. I mean, again, when I’m writing, I’m usually technically alone, but I don’t feel alone. I feel like I’m kind of catching up with an old friend. And that old friend is me. And if I haven’t had quality time with myself in a while, I can find my way to that person by picking up a pen and sitting down with a piece of paper, because I know she’s there, kind of waiting for me to have my hangout session with her. So, yeah, I mean, I, I don’t feel alone when I’m writing.
Maggie Smith 00:55:30 I feel like I’m having a conversation with my mind on paper. I feel like I’m having a conversation that is contextualized by all of the other art that I have engaged with. That is like kind of informing what I’m making. I feel the other people who have informed the way that I do things With me. I mean, the way that I describe it is writing for me is like coming home to myself. That’s the best way that I can describe it in like the quickest shorthand. If I’m feeling stressed, if I feel just like a little self estranged. Yeah, that’s like a weird way to say it, but you know what I mean?
Eric Zimmer 00:56:09 It’s a beautiful turn of phrase, I get it.
Maggie Smith 00:56:12 Yeah. When I’m feeling a little self estranged, or maybe the circumstances of my life feel very busy and hectic and there’s a lot of clamor, and I can’t kind of find that person I know is there. Writing brings me home to the sort of core me of me. Yeah. And even if I’m working really hard and I’m frustrated and it’s not coming out the way that I want, it’s still a really pleasurable experience for me because it is that kind of homecoming.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:47 That’s beautiful, and a wise person might end on that really high note.
Maggie Smith 00:56:51 But but I am not.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:52 But I am not. because, well, I think this is going to take it to a higher note, but I could be wrong because.
Maggie Smith 00:56:59 No, pressure.
Eric Zimmer 00:57:00 You share. Not on you. you share a word. Apparently, we both love Sycamores and London Plains and several musical acts, but we both also love the word shenanigans. Oh, I’ve never met another shenanigan lover. Well, Chris is. We both love that word. Why is that a great word? And what about shenanigans do you love?
Maggie Smith 00:57:22 Okay, I love that you and Chris both love shenanigans. And knowing you both, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, just, frankly, that makes a lot of sense. I have no idea. Like why I love that word so much. That’s probably why I like the word bamboozled. Like, there are some words that are just like they feel good in the mouth, they’re texturally interesting.
Maggie Smith 00:57:44 And there’s a kind of playfulness to the word itself. Like it’s almost like onomatopoeia. Like shenanigan. Sounds like what it is. Yes. Doesn’t it sound like a little mischievous trouble? But like. But fun. Mischievous trouble?
Eric Zimmer 00:57:59 Yes.
Maggie Smith 00:58:00 Like it sounds like what it is like. Like buzz for a bee. Shenanigans. I don’t know, maybe it’s like growing up in a family that was, you know, mostly Irish and and full of shenanigans. But, yeah, I just love that word. But, I mean, Eric, I love words.
Eric Zimmer 00:58:17 So before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that’s exactly why I created the Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them if you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at oneyoufeed/ebook. Let’s make those shifts happen. Starting today, oneyoufeed.net/ebook.
Eric Zimmer 00:58:51 Yes, it’s a great word, but talk to me about why this is important. In what we’ve been discussing, both the creative life and life in general.
Maggie Smith 00:59:13 Yeah. Play. Right? I mean, just loosening your white knuckled grip on what you’re doing. I know a lot of people who love to read, and I know a lot of people who love to write. And even some of those people are scared of poems. And I think it’s because they seem like, oh, I don’t know if I’m like, I don’t understand what’s going on in there. It feels like a riddle. It feels like something I have to solve. I don’t know what the author quote unquote really means. Like there’s like a trapdoor under the poem and the meaning is hidden, but I don’t have the code. And I think approaching Writing and particularly poetry, with more of a sense of fun and play and sort of creative mischief.
Maggie Smith 00:59:54 It helps make the act more fun, but I think from the outside, I think it helps readers engage with the work in a different way. Like, if you come to a poem, the way you come to a song. Wouldn’t that be better? Yeah. Like when we’re listening to the records we love or seeing a band that we love. You’re not thinking, oh, what is that deep sea diver song? I mean, what does that song mean? What you’re thinking is like, oh my gosh, I love that. Or those I love the words or I love the melody, or that reminds me of writing in the car with the windows down when I was 16 and x, Y, and Z. I mean, we’re able to kind of let it wash over us, and we have an experience that is emotional and intuitive and like visceral, bodily, and has nothing to do with being tested on what it means or having to explicate it. Right? Like, yeah, we can have all kinds of shenanigans with songs, but I would advocate that we should be engaging with particularly poetry, because I think that’s the genre that has the image problem.
Maggie Smith 01:01:07 I think we should be engaging with poetry at the same level that we’re engaging with music, which is letting it wash over us, having a sensory experience, asking ourselves what it makes us remember. Think about what to do, who you might want to share it with, and know that you don’t have to get it. Yeah, you don’t have to know what it means. I don’t even know what some of my poems quote unquote, mean. I wrote them. I know what they’re grappling with. I know what their concerns are. No, I could not summarize them for you in CliffsNotes style. And nor is that required. So why can’t we just, you know, have some shenanigans when it comes to poetry? That’s my infomercial, Eric.
Eric Zimmer 01:01:53 It’s a good infomercial. You talk about coming to the page, to the canvas, to the stage, to the studio. I would say to life with trickster energy and a sense of daring. And again, back to where I started. I wish I had read this book a while ago, because that is a great frame to come to. Something that I’m working on like this. Right. It’s a it’s a there’s a mindset to it. It’s why I love the word shenanigans, because it does give me just that sort of trickster energy and a sense of daring.
Maggie Smith 01:02:22 You’re wrestling with something alive, but it’s not your adversary. Yeah, it’s not an adversarial relationship. You and the thing that you’re making, you are co-creating this thing with this idea. And so it’s like a beautiful wrestling with this other thing. Yeah. And it should feel good. And if it doesn’t feel good, something’s wrong. Yeah, I think that. And and hard work can feel good. I don’t mean it should feel easy. That’s not at all what I mean. Yes, it doesn’t necessarily have to feel easy, but it should feel invigorating.
Eric Zimmer 01:02:55 Yeah, well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. Thank you. Maggie, I love talking with you on the show, and I’m happy that you were able to come back and much success with the new book.
Maggie Smith 01:03:03 Thank you so much.
Eric Zimmer 01:03:05 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
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