We often think about writing as a solo endeavor—something that can put you in a very lonely space. This week we’re going to explore why it doesn’t have to be that way.
In this episode, I am joined by Matt Trinetti, an entrepreneur, writer, and community builder who has worked hard to remove the loneliness from the writing process. We discuss how writing in community helps people show up for themselves and reveals to them their identity as writers. We even dive into how creative health is just as important as physical, mental, and financial health, a concept Matt promotes in Writers’ Hour, where writers gather each day online from around the world.
Matt is a writer, publisher, and cofounder of London Writers’ Salon and Writers’ Hour, a global community for people who write. Matt also writes “SEEKING with Matt Trinetti” on Substack, cohosts the London Writers’ Salon podcast, is cofounding editor of Writers’ Hour Magazine, and is currently working on a book and TV series at the intersection of creativity and place.
If you want to commit to a writing practice and make progress on projects, or even start and sustain a community-based business, you’ll want to listen to this episode!
Book recommendation:
- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
Get to know Matt:
- Website
- Instagram @mtrinetti
- Instagram @londonwriterssalon
- Writers’ Hour
Follow me on:
- Instagram @stacyennis
- Facebook @stacyenniscreative
- YouTube @stacyennisauthor
To submit a question, email hello@stacyennis.com or join my email list http://stacyennis.com/join and fill out the form on the page.
Why writing in community is essential for your creative health | Episode 277 Transcript
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
Stacy: Welcome, welcome. We often think about writing as being a solo endeavor, something that can feel really lonely. This week we’re going to explore why it doesn’t have to be that way. We’ll be talking about writing in community and communities of practice. We’re going to discuss why creativity is actually a vital aspect of health. And we’ll have this conversation with a wonderful guest that I’m so excited to introduce you to.
Stacy: Welcome to Beyond Better, a podcast that explores a simple but profound idea: we all deserve to live lives we love, and that includes our work lives too. I’m your host, Stacy Ennis, an author, book coach, speaker, and longtime location-independent entrepreneur living in Portugal with my family of four. Join me as I talk business, location independence, writing, publishing, and so much more, all focused on building a life that is beyond better.
Stacy: Matt Trinetti is a writer, publisher, and co-founder of London Writers’ Salon and Writers’ Hour, a global community for people who write. Matt also writes Seeking with Matt on Substack, co-hosts the London Writers’ Salon podcast, is co-founding editor of Writers’ Hour magazine, and is currently working on a book and TV series at the intersection of creativity and place. So welcome, Matt. I’m so excited to talk with you.
Matt: I’m so honored to be here, Stacy. It was cool to meet in person in Lisbon, and I’m just grateful to continue the conversation here.
Stacy: When I was getting ready to talk to you today, I thought, normally I have to do a deep dive and learn all about the person I’m going to talk with, but I didn’t have to today, because I already did that before you and I shared the stage in Lisbon and I got to know you there. So today feels like we’ve done the warm-ups and now we just get to have the conversation. With that said, I’d love for you to share a bit of your backstory with our listeners and viewers, because you’re firmly part of the writing community, and a leader in it now, but that’s not always been the case. Can you give us a bit of your background and what inspired you to found all of these cool things you’re running now?
Matt: I very much do not come from a writing background at all. I don’t know if I’ve publicly shared this, maybe in small circles, but I got kicked out of AP English in high school because I wasn’t reading the books or doing the work. My senior year I ended up getting admitted back in. I was a pretty good student otherwise, I was just better at math and science. So I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly good reader or writer, probably until my twenties.
Matt: I studied engineering at Georgia Tech, and my first job out of college was at IBM as a consultant, so very much in the analytical space. But I always had a proclivity for entrepreneurship and starting things. I started a lawn care business when I was 12 in Ohio, and a mulch business with my friends in high school. I tried a bunch of entrepreneurial things over the years.
Matt: Where writing entered the picture was five years into my job at IBM. It was a fine job and I was doing good work, but like many people in their mid-twenties, I began to ask, is this really what I want my life to be about? I had been going through the motions of life without checking in with myself: what is unique about me, and what do I want to do in the world, in both my life and my work? I was a little disheartened that I didn’t have answers.
Matt: The thing that really pushed me over the edge was that a friend was killed unexpectedly in a car accident. I was sitting in some uninspiring boardroom at Bank of America when I got the news. The second I heard about her passing, it was like, what are you doing with your life? Life is short. I didn’t really know what I wanted my life to be about, but I did know that I wasn’t living it. And I had an unrealized dream, which was to slowly travel for a long period of time. That’s all I had.
Matt: So I thought, life is short, I need to do this. The next week I booked a one-way ticket to Iceland, six months into the future. That gave me six months to figure out what to do about my job and my apartment, and to tell my parents. This was 2012, and it was maybe the first deliberate decision I’d ever made that wasn’t down a prescribed path.
Matt: How this ties to writing is that in the weeks leading up to it, I thought, I think I want to start a blog. This was 2012, when blogs were a thing, and I was following people like Tim Ferriss and Nomadic Matt. I wondered if there was something there for me. So I started writing while I was traveling, and that’s how I fell in love with the practice of writing, which started as a travel blog.
Matt: Pretty quickly I realized this was deeper than talking about places. I was excavating things about myself, and I was building a connection with the people reading my words. So, long way to say, I got into writing because I was trying to change my life. I came into it almost by mistake, but I really fell in love with the practice. And here I am years later, helping create spaces for more people to experience that and dedicate themselves to a writing life.
Stacy: I don’t know that I knew so much about your travel origin. I’ve seen in my own life, and in my friends’ and colleagues’ lives, that travel is such a life opener. You learn new things about yourself, you develop empathy, and your sensorial world is lit up because you’re in these new, unfamiliar spaces. So it’s really neat that that was such a big part of your journey into writing. I’d love to hear about going from writing as part of your practice to running a community of practice. Perhaps you can talk about what you do today and how you support writers.
Matt: Between starting my blog and taking a sabbatical from my job, and then starting the Salon in 2019, there are about seven years. In between, I ended up moving to London, because the founders of a startup called Escape the City were reading my blog. Escape the City helped people who were unfulfilled in their corporate work to escape and find more meaningful work: change careers, start a business, get into impact. Essentially, what I was seeking for myself, they were building an organization and a community for other people seeking.
Matt: Eventually I had lunch with the team, and they said, do you want to help us build a school here? They were seeing a lot of people who wanted to make change. They had a blog and were pointing to really cool opportunities on the internet, but they were also seeing a hunger for more gathering and connection. So I moved to London and helped them build a pop-up school in central London. We held events every week with escape stories: the lawyer turned author, the banker turned adventurer, the marketer turned entrepreneur. Eventually we started running programs, in career change and entrepreneurship, to help people actually make the change.
Matt: Through that process I was building a skill set as a community builder and facilitator. And on those programs, there would always be five to ten percent of people who, when we were exploring curiosities, said, I’m curious about writing. I always wondered, what if there was something like Escape the City, but for people who are curious about writing? I kept meeting enough of those people, and I had empathy for it, because I was once curious about writing.
Matt: Then I met someone at Escape the City who became a friend and eventually my co-founder, Parul, who was an editor at a big publishing house in London. She was also writing about demystifying the publishing industry, and she was meeting people who were curious about writing and wanted to get published. As an editor, she had empathy for them and could see how opaque that world was. We met randomly in a coworking space, and I pitched her my concept. I said, I’m meeting these people who are curious about writing, you have experience in the industry, do you want to host an event together next year?
Matt: So in January 2019 we hosted an event. I think it was called Make 2019 Your Year of Writing. We put it up on Eventbrite and found a venue, and Parul invited one of her editor and writer friends to be our guest. I invited everyone I’d ever met who was curious about writing and said, I’m building this event for you, and I’d love for you to join. We had about 30 people at that first event. We had a conversation with Neve, the author, about the writing practice, the career, and how to make it work. Then we did a little goal setting and a workshop on dreaming big about your writing life and putting it in motion. That was the very first spark of gathering people who wanted to write, January 2019. And then 2020…
Stacy: We all know what’s coming after that.
Matt: Yeah. So that was London Writers’ Salon 1.0, and 2.0 was when COVID came. March 2020, we’re all stuck at home and the UK is going into lockdown. We started something that was just an experiment. We called it Writers’ Hour, and it’s still called Writers’ Hour. We emailed everyone who had been to an event with us over the last year, maybe 200 or 300 people, and said, we know times are uncertain, things are scary, come journal or write with us tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. We’ll open up a Zoom room, and for the next two weeks, Monday to Friday, we’ll host this session. Show up as you are, in your pajamas, messy hair, camera on or off. Just come and write with us.
Matt: We sent the email out the Sunday night before, and that Monday morning nine people showed up, which was about nine more than we thought. The next day, 15 people. The next day, 20. And within the first day, someone said, I got more writing done in this 50 minutes than I have in the last five months. Do you guys have a Patreon or something I can support? This was just a free Zoom, and we weren’t trying to charge for it. I said, no, but tomorrow we will. So the next day we opened up a Patreon. Come join for free, and if you get value out of this, you can support it.
Matt: After two weeks, we used that as a gauge: if we get ten people supporting it, we’ll do it for another two weeks. We did. Then, if we get 20 people supporting, we’ll do it for another month. Keep in mind this was March and April 2020, and we were wondering whether this would blow over in a few weeks or whether we were in it for the long haul. Eventually, in September 2020, we said, if we get 50 supporters, we’ll do it through the year.
Matt: Six years later, we now do this five times a day. We just introduced a new hour, I think, since you and I last talked. Up to a thousand writers every day come to write together in silence. What we realized is that even in the best of times, writing is a solitary act. And if it’s not a profession, no one is asking for your work, so you need to create structures and mechanisms to show up for yourself. We find that a simple hour that’s scheduled, reliable, facilitated, and communal helps people show up for themselves and reflects back to them their identity as writers, and that their goals are important and valid and not silly and necessary. That’s true for us as writers too.
Stacy: It’s a beautiful message. As a writer, I’m sure you know it’s so easy to get in your own head, have self-doubt, and be self-critical, and those can be huge roadblocks. So having that regularity matters. You used the term community of practice, which I mentioned in my opening. Perhaps you could define it for us, and how it differs from a community you might be part of where you gather but aren’t necessarily doing the work together. And beyond Writers’ Hour, which I hope everybody listening or watching will go check out, how could people build this in their own lives, maybe even in person?
Matt: I only came to learn the term community of practice a few years into doing what we were doing. I think maybe Seth Godin mentioned it.
Stacy: I love Seth. He’s a great person to snag it from.
Matt: Yeah, and I thought, this is what we’re doing. The difference is that a community is largely shaped around identity, and there’s a networking element to it. It’s many-to-many connection, usually around a shared identity. A community of practice takes that one step further: we’re also here to engage in a practice, because we have a shared goal and intention. So we do the work together.
Matt: That’s what Writers’ Hour is. We don’t gather just to reflect back our identity or to have a sense of belonging and connection, although that’s part of it. We gather to do the work, and by doing the work together we build connection as well. There’s an action the community does together, and for us it’s writing. But there are all sorts of communities of practice. Think of run clubs. You can gather and talk about running, or you can gather and actually run. There are all sorts of examples of this, and I think more and more are cropping up.
Matt: As for how to build one: to be an organizer, facilitator, or gatherer, it really helps if you have empathy for the practice you’re gathering around. It also helps if you have ambitions around it, because that encourages your empathy. But your own ambitions and practice actually become secondary to creating the conditions and holding space for the other people and their practice. Left on our own, we’re bad at holding space, not only for ourselves but for others. It takes a certain kind of person, or group of people, and it’s in a way a very selfless act. There’s obviously some selfishness, because you’re creating the conditions you need too, but it’s secondary.
Matt: So first, if you’re looking to dedicate yourself to a practice, look for another community of practice out there and just join it. That’s the simplest way. But if you feel you have the temperament, the interest, and the appetite to hold space, then start to gather people. The important thing to know is that to do it really well, other people’s practice comes first.
Stacy: That really resonates with me right now, because I’m in the middle of preparing for a writers’ retreat that I’m hosting here in Portugal. It’s been really joyful, and I’ve loved it, but it is so much work. I can’t even articulate how much work goes into a week of people flying in from all over the world. What resonates most is that my book has been put aside for a little while as I build the space for other people. Which makes me curious about you, Matt, because you’re working on a book and a television show, you’re a very creative person, and you have a lot you want to create in the world. How are you holding your own space as you create space for others?
Matt: I’ll just say, not very well. And not to feel bad, because everyone who holds space, whether you’re a teacher or a coach, runs into this. I had to have a mental talk with myself: you’re choosing this path right now, which means you’re not choosing this other path. It’s going on the back burner and you’re doing it in the margins. And maybe everyone you’re trying to serve, who has a full-time job and a family, also has this living in the margins.
Matt: A lot of angst can happen when you haven’t squared that for yourself, when you’re trying to build this thing and facilitate, and also holding yourself to a high standard for the creative work. There’s cognitive dissonance, because it’s hard to do both. So I had to say to myself, this is what you’re doing right now, and do it with joy. I do find great joy in it, and it is a creative act. I’m probably more of a builder than a writer, if I’m honest. I do the practice of writing, though. I journal almost every day, giving myself 20 minutes to be with my thoughts and trust that the projects are percolating when I do that work.
Matt: One of the things I’m trying: about two months ago I started a podcast with Lindsay, who’s on the team and also my partner, but we don’t care if anyone listens to it. It’s meant to keep ourselves accountable to the work. We called it Creative Side Quests, and it was a five-week pop-up experiment. Every week we jumped on a call like this and shared how we did, what we did toward the work, and our goal for the next week. We had to create the accountability structure we’ve been creating for others, but with the audience totally removed. There’s no way to support it. It’s really just a form of public accountability.
Matt: And that worked. Over six weeks it took me from having the idea for this TV show to putting together a pitch deck, going to Montana, hiring a DP, and filming a pilot. So it really did help.
Stacy: Public accountability can be so powerful. I see a difference in aspiring authors who announce, yeah, I’m writing a book, and share as they go, and the ones who are more hesitant and don’t want to talk about it, where maybe even some of their friends don’t know they’re writing a book. The people who are public about it tend to complete their books, number one, and number two, they do it on a faster timeline, because they have all these people asking, how’s your book going? So it does create accountability.
Matt: It does. Sometimes it can be a double-edged sword, though, because I’ve been in the place where I did the big announcement and then didn’t follow through. That’s doubly painful, because not only did I not do what I told myself, I’m not doing what I told others. Much of being a creative person, a writer, anything in the world, is figuring out the beast that is you and what works for you accountability-wise. Have you heard of Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies?
Stacy: It’s been a long time, so please refresh my memory.
Matt: It’s been a long time for me too. Basically, she has a little quiz, and there are four accountability types: what is the main thing that drives you and works for you? One of them is the questioner. Questioners need to know deeply why something matters. It’s a mix of intrinsic and external accountability, but they need purpose. Then there’s another type, I forget what it’s called, who needs the public commitment, that other person there. Maybe we’re all a shade of each, but there’s one that’s your main accountability mechanism. So much of it is figuring out what works for you, trying things that don’t work, and when you find something that works, doubling down on it.
Stacy: It’s so interesting. As you were talking, I was filing my authors in different categories: yeah, he’s there, she’s there. We’re all so unique, and it’s not one thing that works for every single person. I’m going to have to look that up and refresh my memory on the four types.
Matt: I want to share one more type I remembered, which is the rebel, which is the most annoying type. If I tell myself what to do, or someone else tells me what to do, that works against me. So the rebel is hard.
Stacy: I have a 13-year-old, so that feels very resonant right now.
Stacy: Okay, so we mentioned earlier that we got to share a stage in Lisbon at Book 2.0, which was such a cool conference. It was my first time. We talked about a lot of things in that conversation on stage, and one thing that has really stuck with me, both when we were preparing and after, is the concept of creative health. You also sent me a ton of articles, studies, and science on this. So give our listeners and viewers a definition of creative health. I think that’s a great place to start. Then let’s talk about why it matters. We know about physical health, emotional health, and financial health. Why should we add creative health to that mix?
Matt: This probably isn’t the academic answer, and you’re maybe more of an expert on this concept now than I am. But the way I explain creative health is that, in the same way we’ve realized the value of time spent in physical activity and time and energy spent looking after our mental health, that extends to creative health. I think it was in the UK that the initial term and study came out. It started to view time spent in creative acts not as a luxury but as something that contributes to our overall well-being.
Matt: As with any form of health, it can be looked after, and potentially measured. I’m not sure how creative health can be measured at the moment, other than time spent in creative acts, perhaps. But it’s a growing movement, and a lot of different corners of academia are pointing to this concept. One is the neuroarts movement, and Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross are doing a lot of research around it. Different universities are starting to crop up with neuroarts programs, which is essentially a very similar concept: engaging in and practicing the arts is good for our well-being. Daisy Fancourt, whose book The Art Cure recently came out, has also been a big champion of this.
Matt: There’s a lot happening at this intersection, and I don’t know if everyone calls it creative health, but when I first learned the term, the connection to physical, mental, and financial health really clicked. And that’s what we’re doing at Writers’ Hour and the London Writers’ Salon. People who come and write with us might have a goal to be a published author or to finish a book. But increasingly I’m seeing people come who journal, or who are grandparents writing their family’s history for their grandchildren, or who just want to play with their imagination.
Matt: I feel it every time I journal or write something that isn’t transactional. Something bubbles up in me. There’s both a softening and an effervescence to it that feels very similar to going for a run, maybe less physical and more soulful and spiritual. So it’s a growing movement and we want to be part of it. And I think you’re part of this too, with the work you do.
Stacy: I think it’s more important than it has ever been in all of history. It just feels like such an important area to focus on. As we record this, by the time the episode comes out I will have already completed my annual dream week, which is happening next week. I unplug for the week. I spend a day on vision, I do my strategic planning, I think really high level. But part of that week is just having fun. I always go to a bookstore, I always try to do something artistic, and I always do something active, like stand-up paddleboarding. This year I’m hoping to join an art class. It’s been a while since I’ve painted, and I used to paint a lot when I was younger.
Stacy: It’s so easy to let those things go. You have so many other responsibilities, and we have these gadgets keeping our attention. As we move into this modern world and continue toward an unknown future, this is not a nice-to-have. I think it’s actually a need for every single person, to create this space and pursue creative health.
Matt: A hundred percent. And with AI being what it is right now, it’s forcing us to question what a human is, and not only what our value is, but what makes us uniquely us. We’re finding that AI is really good at taking in information and producing something, but humans have a unique place too. Even if it’s not about productivity, it’s about how it makes us feel. In the same way, we don’t need to move our bodies anymore, because we can drive everywhere, but we desperately need to move our bodies.
Stacy: Great analogy.
Matt: The parallel between physical and creative health is that we won’t necessarily need to create anything anymore, because something can do it much better and much quicker, but we’ll desperately need to create because it’s good for us. That’s why creative health makes sense. And we’re partnering with Drexel and Duke University on a study around creative aging. In the whole creative health conversation, they’re doing a study with some of our writers on the benefits of writing in community for creative health and creative aging.
Stacy: That is really cool. I would imagine there are connections to brain function and dementia. I never met her, but my great-grandma used to do math every morning. She would wake up and sit at her table and do math equations. I don’t know what kind of math she was doing, but that was her daily effort to maintain her brain, to stay clicked in and use it. I think it’s very similar. And actually, I think math is very creative. I’m not a math person, but when you hear a mathematician talk about math, it’s a creative endeavor. It’s beautiful. I think the act of writing and mathematical pursuits share a lot. Do you have any hypothesis, based on what you’ve seen?
Matt: Well, I think writing is thinking, and it feels good to think. And math, I’m guessing, is around problem solving, so it feels good to engage your brain in something. I’m not a neuroscientist, but my understanding is that they activate different parts of the brain. I do think the imaginal part of our brain is really important, and probably the part that is most neglected.
Matt: I worry, especially for younger people, although I do see there’s a whole anti-AI movement among younger people, which I think is a great counterbalance, that there’s super high consumption in society right now, whether that’s social media or video, and less creating, and less time playing outside, which activates the imaginal part of our brain. What I hope is that we can, as a society, help people engage with that part of the brain. I’m speaking as someone who didn’t feel I had a strong relationship with my imagination until recently, until I recognized that I do have a great imagination, I just didn’t have an avenue to use it.
Matt: I’m very optimistic. I think the stuff with AI will counterbalance, and humans will rise up to create the things we need in the world. And hopefully that’s what you and I are doing too.
Stacy: I tend to be on the same page, but it’s still such an unknown space. I think it’s natural to have moments of confusion or doubt. Every so often I find myself doing some self-talk, like, being human does matter, there is value that we bring. It’s a strange thought to have, to be questioning your inherent value, because for so long we’ve found meaning in different spaces. For some people that’s work, and for some people it’s creative pursuits. I think more people would really benefit from deeper creative connection.
Stacy: The points you’re making about writing in community, which is a very human experience of creative health, these are all acts of resistance we can take collectively to keep our humanity intact, our brains sharp, and our lives fulfilled. I just love all of the work you’re doing. I think it’s important now, and it’s going to be even more important as we continue forward.
Matt: Thank you. And I’m really encouraged and excited by what I’m seeing around the world. We talked about this in Lisbon: places like Reading Rhythms, communal reading gatherings, and Offline Club, where people gather in places like cathedrals in Amsterdam and around Europe and the world, check their phones at the door, and create something, whether it’s art, reading, or writing. I’m seeing more of these, and craft clubs too.
Matt: I took a painting class in my local area about six months ago, and it was the same thing you were probably feeling pulled toward. I thought, I haven’t painted since I was a kid, I don’t know why I’m feeling compelled toward this, but I just want to play. It was a great feeling. It felt very meditative, very similar to writing but in a different medium. I’m very bullish and optimistic that these will continue to thrive. Add the loneliness epidemic, and I think these two things together will solve a lot of our woes as a society: creation for creation’s sake, creative health, and gathering together in person to connect around these things. Communities of practice. These are all communities of creative practice, and I’m feeling very optimistic about them.
Stacy: In the writing retreat I’m preparing for, of course the core thing is time to write. That’s our main focus. But one of my goals is to create moments of play and creative exploration, and that can look so different. For example, we have a horse experience, because communing with animals opens up parts of ourselves. We have an art workshop. We have a musician coming so we can sit and experience the music. I want this opportunity for all of these amazing people. I know every person who’s coming, and they’re incredible humans. Many of them have hit crazy heights in their careers and are doing good things in the world. For them to step back from their everyday amazing lives and just play and connect with themselves and with other people is what I’m hoping for.
Stacy: It’s been interesting designing that. There’s also no alcohol at all at this retreat, and it’s healthy food, whole foods. It’s been really fun curating. It’s the retreat that I want for myself, and I’m creating it for this group, to your point earlier. I think, man, I wish this existed so I could go to it. I worked on it earlier this week and got done and just felt so excited. It was one of those moments where you think, I am doing something I should be doing. I feel like it’s pushing back and saying, no, people, this is humanity, this is connection, and getting to curate that. You get to see this on a daily basis in your Writers’ Hour. I think it must be so special to curate these regular spaces for people.
Matt: It is. I feel like my personality is that I thrive on novelty. I need new experiences. But what’s interesting about Writers’ Hour is that every time I host, and I host almost every day, or at least a few times a week, for the last six years, I still get a kick out of it. I think what I’ve realized about myself is that I like being of service, so there’s a feedback loop: creating something, being in the room, and seeing people’s gratitude and the progress they’re making. That’s fuel for me.
Matt: I also get to be in a room with people all over the world working on such a variety of interesting projects, from sci-fi novels to Substacks to poetry to writing their family story. So the part of me that likes novelty gets introduced to new people every day. It’s a great joy to hold that space. We now have a team of 15 or 20 hosts who host these sessions, so fortunately and unfortunately I don’t get to host all of those hours, but we have a great team holding space every day.
Stacy: Let me ask you the last question I always ask guests on the podcast. If you could recommend one book to our listeners and viewers, one that has profoundly impacted your life in some way, what would it be and why?
Matt: I always go back to Joseph Campbell, and it might be a lesser-known book of his. He’s famous for The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the hero’s journey concept, but there’s a book called The Power of Myth. It’s actually an interview he did with Bill Moyers for PBS, a series of five or six video interviews, that was transcribed into a book. It’s basically a summary of his work around myth. For those who don’t know, the concept of the hero’s journey, the monomyth, came from him. What he was saying is that although the myths and stories of most cultures around the world are different, they’re saying a single thing, which is about how to live a human life and how to bridge the spiritual world with the material world.
Matt: When I first read it in my late twenties, I was on my own hero’s journey of sorts, trying to figure out my place in the world and seeing it reflected back in this book. He would say you go into the forest where it’s darkest, and there is no path. And if you see a path, it’s not your path. That resonated very much with me, because while there were role models in the world, I felt compelled to go down a path I couldn’t yet see. It might rhyme with other people’s paths, but I was trying to bridge my own path where there wasn’t one. I found that book wonderful. It talks about spirituality, what it means to be a human in the world, and being of service. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but for me, I’ve reread it a number of times, and it always hits. So, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell.
Stacy: We’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. I haven’t read it myself, but I’m sold. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing all of the good work you’re doing. I’m sure we have listeners and viewers who are thinking, sign me up. Where can I join a Writers’ Hour? How can I learn more about the London Writers’ Salon? How can they do that?
Matt: If you want to join Writers’ Hour, you can go to writershour.com. We host five sessions a day: 8 a.m. London, 10 a.m. London, which is our new hour, 8 a.m. US East Coast, 8 a.m. Los Angeles on the US Pacific Coast, and 8 a.m. Melbourne, Australia. Across the day, hopefully there’s an hour or two that work for you, and you can join hundreds of other writers every day to write together and make progress on your writing.
Matt: In addition to Writers’ Hour, we have a membership at the London Writers’ Salon, which you can find at londonwriterssalon.com. We do weekly interviews, workshops, craft sessions, and chances to connect with other people working on similar things. We’re just trying to create the most encouraging and helpful community and space for people who write. If any of that resonates, we’d love to welcome you in.
Stacy: Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate your time and energy today.
Matt: Thank you, Stacy, for the invitation and for the great work that you do. Hopefully there’s more we can continue to do together with our communities.
Stacy: I just love all that you’re doing, and I’m sure we’ll have people at your next session. Thank you to you, our listeners and viewers, for being with us. I hope something shifted for you today, something inspired you, and that you’ll find a community of practice in your own life. Thank you as always to Margarida for her production of the podcast. She fixes my mess-ups and makes sure this gets out to you every single week. And if you’re still listening, you must have really loved this conversation, so please take a moment to follow along on whatever platform you’re on, and rate, review, or leave a comment so that I can reach more people with the message of living a life that is beyond better. I will be back with you before you know it.
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