Category Archives: the cocaine lure of success

What am I avoiding? (learning to celebrate good things)

Kaspa writes: I’ve been sat at my desk for a little while now, flicking through browser tabs, wondering just how to start this blog post. (I have the Guardian ‘belief’ section open, our forum, my new article on elephant journal (‘Occupy your heart?‘), and others I’m not admitting to.)

Sometimes it’s best just to start with something and see where it leads. ‘Just starting with something‘ is a good principle in writing, and life. In my experience, wherever we begin, we eventually find something important to us. Sometimes we get there straightaway, and sometimes we have to meander through a few paragraphs first.

When I’m really meandering, I sometimes ask myself – what am I avoiding?

I have some resistance to doing well, to receiving praise, and to celebrating success. Back at the tail end of last year we had a small new year’s eve party and each of us there chose a theme word for 2011. I think we each chose a word that we had some ambivalence around – a desire for, and a resistance to….

Fiona chose faith. I chose success.

What I wanted to talk about in this blog post is how impressed I’ve been when I look back over the course material we created for our e-courses, and how happy I am with the way my new 30 day small stone writing experience on Mightybell turned out.

One way around this resistance to celebrating doing well is to remember, and be grateful to, all the people who have inspired and taught me along the way. To remember all those people on whose ideas our work draws. I love how the things we offer are grounded in a coherent philosophy, and if I’m honest I can’t take credit for any of these ideas:

the world is complex and mysterious
it changes
we’re not big fans of change
the world is full of joy and suffering
other people have real lives, separate from my own
I rely on other people, and on the world
I am not the centre of the world
there’s a lot to be grateful for
through mindful writing we can access these deeper truths about ourselves and the world

It’s really wonderful to see people using writing to get closer to the world, either through writing small stones, or some other form of writing, and it feels like a real privilege to be able to open the gate to that experience for people.

I’m grateful to all of you fellow writers and travelers too. I have been inspired by so many people I’ve encountered through WOWH, from people who have made big changes in their own lives, to people who have smiled at me from across the world.

If you want to take part in one of our November e-courses, we’re giving away some free places (click here). As well as the 30 day small stone experience (Fall in Love with the World in 30 days) which costs $10, there’s also a free seven day experince: Experience the world more deeply in 7 days (write small stones).

A deep bow to you all.

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen…

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I wrote the poem at the bottom of this post many years ago. I wanted to speak about the delicious juicy more-ish buzz I felt when this friend was reading my work. I wanted more!

It reminds me of my younger brother at the swimming pool when we were little. He’d say ‘look at me! look at me!’ over and over until my mum gave him her attention, and then he’d do some kind of somersault or trick before repeating the whole process five minutes later.

I’m learning that when I seek this kind of attention out, I’m onto a loser. It isn’t fair to ask people to tell you you’re wonderful on demand. Even when they do, I can never get enough of it anyway. Buddhists speak of ‘hungry ghosts’ with tiny mouths and huge bellies. I never get a belly-full.

When I busy myself with living, and let praise come to me, I enjoy every mouthful, but it doesn’t leave me craving more. It feels ‘extra’, like Raymond Carver’s gravy.

The trick is knowing what to do instead of seeking praise, or any other kind of compulsive behaviour, when our bellies feels empty.

Sit with the emptiness. Give ourselves something nourishing, like a hot bath or a goats cheese and tomato sandwich. Be kind to ourselves. Be kind to someone else. We already have everything we need.

All of us

Last night a friend read
my poems
for the first time
and praised several before
picking up her magazine again.
I wanted her to read
everything I
had ever written.

All of us whispering listen, listen, listen.

My name is Fiona, and I am an egogooglahohic

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It’s that good old cocaine lure of success again.

I’ve been struggling with my addictive egogoogling behaviour for a while, but over the past few weeks it has been getting ridiculous.

Putting my name in Google. Checking my blog counters. Going on Facebook. Checking the Amazon rankings of all my books. Looking on Goodreads to see who’s reading my books. Going on Facebook. Oh – a little bit of writing. Putting my name in Google again.

I think I hit my rock bottom. I’m going to give myself the gift of a whole month free of all of that stuff – no looking at my sales figures, no reading blogs, nothing. I’ll review the situation after that month is over. I’m scared and excited. If you see me on Facebook before July 13th, tell me to get out of there.

Anne Lamott describes this phenomena so well in Bird by Bird that I’ll leave you with her words. Have lovely weekends x

One more thing about publication: when this book of mine came out, the one that did pretty well, the one that necessitated the buying of a new dress, I found myself stoned on all the attention, and then lost and derailed, needing a new fix every couple of days and otherwise going into withdrawal. My insides became completely uninhabitable, as if I’d wandered into a penny arcade with lots of bells ringing and lights flashing and lots of junk food, and I’d been there too long. I wanted peace, peace and quiet, but at the same time I didn’t want to leave.

I was like one of the bad boys in “Pinocchio” who flock to the island of pleasure and grow donkey ears. I knew my soul was sick and that I needed spiritual advice, and I knew also that this advice shouldn’t be terrible sophisticated. So I went to see the pastor of my son’s preschool.

The pastor is about fifteen. We talked for a while. It turns out he just looks young. I said that I was all over the place, up and down, scattered, high, withdrawing, lost, and in the midst of it all trying to find some elusive sense of serenity.
“The world can’t give that serenity,” he said. “The world can’t give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts.”
“I hate that,” I said.
“I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can’t take it away.”

Correction to my ‘Year of Books’ – I got it all wrong

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I wrote a post last week about 2009 being my Year of Books. I was all excited about the tangible ‘fruits of my writing labour’ – holding my books in my hands, seeing them in the shops, good reviews, translation, prizes, making my first million…

And then I listened to Anne Lammot’s Word by Word on a long car journey (on my gorgeous red iShuffle, of course). The audiobook is based on her wonderful book on writing, Bird by Bird, and if you’re a writer and you haven’t read it yet then I implore you go to and buy it immediately.

She started her talk by reminding me what I already knew but had half-forgotten. That success in our writing career is like a big bowl of cocaine. That it gives you a rather lovely high, but that then you want more. Another piece of praise. More sales. Another glowing review. She reminds us that you will never. sell. enough. books.

I listened as if I was starving and someone was offering me a steaming bowl of thick lentil soup. It helped me to shift my attention away from ‘the world’ in 2009 and back to where it should be. The pleasures intrinsic to the process of writing. Paying attention. Finding what I need inside and not looking for it out there.

Don’t worry – I will be celebrating the landmarks along the way. That’s important too. But I also hope to maintain a modest daily writing practice, and I hope that this will keep me steady – whatever the world gives me (or, equally, doesn’t). I hope to remember not only that I will never sell enough books, but that it isn’t necessary for me to sell a single one. I’m already enough, and so are you.

Here’s to my Year of Writing. And to yours. Cheers.