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Updated: 6/11/24

Business Update:

A brand new offer is here! If you aren’t sure that you want ongoing support, but want a boost to get writing and a plan to help you stick it out when the going get’s tough, the Memoir Incubator was designed for you!

The Memoir Incubator includes 3 luxurious sessions over 90 days and a special bonus: the Holistic Writing Plan. The Holistic Writing Plan is built over the course of our sessions and delivered to you after our final meeting as a guidebook to help you sustain your writing practice throughout the first draft. Find out more right here.

Personal Postcard from Ash Wylder

L and I are finally back from our Midwest road trip. Was there humidity? Yes. Mosquitos? Plenty. Fireflies? Never enough. After six days at home, we’ve been busy nesting—cleaning out old closets, organizing bins, and spending hours pulling weeds in the overgrown garden.

Today, while walking Roxie (our neighbor’s burly brown dog), I realized. I often treat self-growth as if I’m heading toward a fixed point, even though I know “growth isn’t linear.” Some part of me still believes that one day, I’ll arrive at a place where I’ll “be” patient, understand the moods of my body, and have all the things a self-actualized person is supposed to have.

But when I think about growth, I realize I’m mostly thinking about all the tools I’ve collected along the way, like that summer when I was really into the Enneagram. While I still remember much about that personal development lens, most of my insights have faded. At first, I felt disappointed in myself. What was the point of learning all that if I wouldn’t carry it forever? Shouldn’t things last? What if I get into my 80s and suddenly need that knowledge?

But then it hit me—maybe I don’t need to carry every tool I’ve ever picked up. That backpack would be unbearably heavy and probably not very useful. I’d spend so much time digging through it that I might end up using the wrong tool anyway. Instead, I think I’m meant to carry only what’s helpful for me at this stage of my journey. Everything else? I can let it go. If I ever need it again, I can borrow it from a friend, pick it up at a second-hand bookstore, or find it along the road ahead. And if I’ve forgotten something important, I can always rely on a tool I’ve kept in my backpack—like asking for help—to relearn it.

In our capitalist society, we’re often chasing “the peak.” We don’t want to waste time; we want to learn something once and never forget it. We want to accumulate the best coffee machine, blender, and kitchen shears so we never have to make those purchasing decisions again. We stuff all that stuff in our backpack, but that’s not what the backpack is for. The backpack is there to make decisions—a thousand different ones—a little easier. It’s there to help us approach them with intentionality, kindness, and patience. And if our backpacks are filled with those qualities, who needs a fixed destination anyway?

Perhaps I don’t need to be the singular person in my head, all of the nouns accompanying that version of Ash. Instead, I need to give life more room to breathe and fill my backpack with patience, curiosity, and self-acceptance (and just one more pair of gardening gloves). It’s okay that I’ve forgotten and become a different person. It’s okay that we all do. That is what growth is, and nothing stays the same anyway, so why fight it?

Okay, enough rambling.

Be well,

Ash Wylder
(8/19/2024)

Previous Postcards

  • Today, I’ve had slightly too much coffee. By which I mean, I had a half-calf Americano. I’ve been giggly and hyper-productive and slightly (okay—very) hungry. It’s a back-office work day, which looks like networking calls and answering emails, client work edits, and continuing education.

    This season has been a busy one—I’ve traveled to San Antonio, visited the Oregon Coast twice, and gone to Bend for a weekend of ultimate frisbee. In the midst of these trips, I’ve celebrated my birthday, soaked in some hot springs, gone camping, planted a wild flower garden for the bees, and honored my cousin’s deathiversary. A jeweler turned friend helped me mark the year by designing and making an urn necklace with a stone from the shores of the White Salmon River. If you’ve lost a loved-one, I encourage you to find a way to honor them that speaks to you. This necklace brings me solace and I can finally feel the depression from my grief clearing. Summer is here—I can feel it.

    Upcoming trips include mountain biking in the Methow Valley, a roadtrip to the Midwest to visit family, and perhaps a visit to the Alvord Desert. It’s a busy life, but a good one. Every couple of months, one of my clients finishes a draft of their book. This month, my client S finished her rough draft! All of the chapters in roughly the best order with the most important scenes are all there in that messy, tangled manuscript. She is taking a short break with her children while they are on summer vacation and stacking her sessions so that, in the fall, she can hit the ground running with support.

    With my new offering, I’m able to offer support to people who aren’t ready to dive fully into support. The Memoir Incubator is three sessions used over 90 days with a bonus Holistic Writing Plan delivered at the end. My hope is that this will make writing that first draft accessible to more writers.

    Blame the caffeine for my rambling. Wherever you are reading this, I hope you are receiving support in the ways that you need it.

    Be well,

    -Ash Wylder
    (6/11/2024)

  • Whoa. Has it really been two months since my last postcard? Like most people, my holiday season was a mixture of confusion (what should I focus on in my work?) and bustling from one thing to the next (seeing family, tending to house plants, caring for my mental well-being). Honestly, I feel relieved to be on the other side of it, although I wonder what “the other side” really means. I think, partly, it means choosing my own sense of chaos and relation with the world outside of my home instead of feeling responsible for keeping up with so many people in group settings that leave me feeling exhausted. Yesterday, L and I returned home and, after a long shower and a quick snuggle, were in bed by 8:45 pm. My social battery is depleted, and while I love the friends we are scheduled to see tonight, I may cancel to give myself time to catch up.

    Each year, I block my call calendar from December 23rd to the second week of January. Two full weeks of no calls! Partly, I do this because I know I will need to “dry out” from the holiday bustlings. I also do this because I need unscheduled time to consider all of the aspects of my life, business, and dreams. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day and forget, for example, that I really want to plan a sabbatical with my sweetie to visit our families in the Midwest or spend more time dancing and laughing in the winter darkness.

    As you may know, 2023 was a year of deep grief for me and my family. While I don’t expect the arbitrary changing of the calendar year to dictate a deep personal change or reset, I have been leaning into the collective energy of hopeful new beginnings. I was surprised how much peace I felt in the first midnight moments of 2024. “I’m no longer in the year that the terrible things happened,” I thought. “It’s not the now anymore. Nothing is lighter, but I am stronger.”

    I don’t normally do New Years Resolutions because fuck forcing a bunch of springtime energy into the beginning of winter, but yesterday I found myself with two intentions:

    1 - do one thing at a time
    2 - practice patience

    Today, I’m adding a third: find joy like a hummingbird.

    Be well,

    -Ash Wylder
    (1/2/2024)

  • I love costumes. I love dressing silly and playing sports in tutus and gold leggings. I thoroughly enjoy board games in the early evening darkness with friends. Tis the season for colder mornings and longer nights, and I’m here for it.

    L & I have a couple of carved pumpkins out front. We carved them with friends and power tools, because, why not? And it was one thousand percent fun. As a wordsmith, not necessarily an accomplished visual artist, I loved the shortcut to getting my design out. I loved watching the pumpkin shavings dance through the room. (This is a messy endeavor. Be warned.)

    My paid newsletter, Driftwood Brine, is mid-launch right now, and I’m thoroughly enjoying digesting the maelstrom of advice given to writers and responding to it in kind with what I’ve found works for neurodivergent minds. As a writer, I’ve pushed against blogging partly because I am a painfully private person and don’t like the deadline of constant submission. The Professional Perspective Essays have been a wonderful outlet for pent-up creative energy (and some angst against the literary system). The first essay will be published for Driftwood Brine subscribers to read in mid-November.

    Well, I think that’s it for now. Drink some hot cocoa for me.

    Warmly,

    -Ash Wylder

  • Are we really already a week into October? Woof. I don’t have any clue how that happened. What I do know is that I am here with L in our home, my office is set up, and there is a giant structure that is beginning to look like a house in our backyard. And I’ve been writing a lot both with my clients and for myself. At the time of writing this, I have finished the first draft of a book and am beginning slowly to edit it. Of course, we writers love some procrastination, and I’m doing other writing instead of editing. I’m writing this. Tomorrow, I will meet with a writing group and get back to it.

    As is true for most, when the first draft was finished, I just had to put it down for a while and let things unravel. So here I am, unraveling and, in the absence of social media, letting you know that I am alive. Alive, and have space in my roster for another very special memoir project this year. Is it yours?

  • I’ve been taking my own advice lately and writing my heart out. L & I are doing well, despite the unexpected distance while I stay close to family during this season of grief. His dad is in town and the building project in our backyard is coming along with about as many delays and hiccups as I’ve come to expect from deeply meaningful writing projects. As all of us who live with neurodivergence and high sensitivity know, we can rest now or get sick later. I’ve been choosing to mountain bike with friends and nap a lot between one-on-one client sessions. The theme this month seems to be “difficult relationships with mothers” as more than one of the writers meeting with me inside of Submergence: A Memoir Writer’s Chamber tackle complicated, loving, impossible, devastating, and beautiful bonds with their mothers. Each sentence written is a group of words closer to memoir completion.

    Summer months seem to go one of two ways for highly sensitive memoir writers – they either use it as an excuse to take breaks from the bright sun and fast activity of summer, or they put it down and don’t touch it until life settles a bit in the fall. I tend to spend my mornings and evenings outside and my afternoons working with clients, on my own writing project, and napping. As for grief, well – it’s only been three months. Right now, there isn’t much else to say.

    If you’re working on a memoir or personal essay project and want some individual support, I encourage you to book now during Summer Pricing. (If you purchase now, you’ll be grandfathered into that price model even when my rates go up again.)

    Let’s breathe life into your story,

    -Ash Wylder

  • These past couple of months have been full of love and grief as I navigate the sudden loss of a close family member. This note is simply to say, “I’m still here. I’m still working. I am still accepting new clients. Things look a little different, but the heart of this work is still the same. Write your heart out.”

    Drink lots of water. Take many breaks. Be gentle with yourself.

    Warmly,

    -Ash Wylder(6/9/2023)

  • Just like that, I’m in my last week of living at the cottage. This weekend L & I are going to paint and prepare. Next weekend, I’ll unload my bits, bobs, plants, and prayers into a space that will be ours. I’ve been more social than usual, connecting with friends and wandering familiar places with pre-nostalgic longing. I believe that the Gorge will always, in some ways at least, be my soul’s home.

    On my birthday last month, L & I planted a wildflower garden and showed an old friend a favorite hike where Mt Hood and Mt Adams are both visible when the clouds are high. Birds have been busily flying overhead with bits of twigs building homes in nearby trees. Soon, the balsamroot will turn the hills yellow.

    L & I have an agreement that I can’t have more houseplants than there are cards in a deck, so I’ve been giving pathos away as gifts and trading African violets for low-light alternatives. Do you have any favorites? I would love to know– email ash@storybreathschool.com subject line plants.

    How are you doing? Are you writing? Getting words on the page? Next time I send a virtual postcard, I’ll be in a new home. Once we’re settled in, perhaps I’ll include a photo.

    With love,

    -Ash Wylder

  • Spring is springing!

    I’m reading “What Works” by Tara McMullin with a group of entrepreneurs, and it’s shifting the way I think and structure goal setting in every area of my life including how I motivate and finish projects with my Deep Sea Writing Clients.

    Sunrise subverted grey skies for an entire 15 minutes of orange and pink promises. I wrote poetry and prose and filled the dishwasher. Spread across the floor, my novel pages caught light.

    These “Personal Postcards” are my way of telling the world that The Storybreath School is alive and breathing in the absence of social media. They are ways of telling people what has been up in my life, so let me give you a three-month update.

    - As those of you on my newsletter Driftwood Brine know, I lost someone I loved dearly in late January. - In May, I will be moving to the city. I love cleaning away the debris and the bittersweet farewells. - This month, I’ll celebrate my birthday in some sweet and quiet way–probably a long hike and planting a wildflower garden for whoever comes to the cottage next. - My novel is coming along page by page, as well as a couple of my clients. One is working on a chapbook of poetry, another a fiction novel, and another has submitted 15 pieces of poetry, personal essay, and fiction for publication. We can all feel the renewed energy of this season. Do you?

    With love,

    -Ash Wylder

  • This time of year feels particularly juicy for me–there is something in the water that lights up the magic inside, and all I want to do is write. As my personal projects are forming a delicious mist around my days, I’m excited to see the same thing happening for many clients and friends. I’ve started referring to the acute phase of the pandemic as the cocoon. We thought that was the entire transformation, but it was consumption, disintegration, and reorganization. And now, we’re digging out after this huge shift, standing in the wind and flapping our... What are these? Are these wings? Big things are being released, big things are percolating, and we are learning to fly in our new bodies. How we will learn to live in the world with these unique gifts is entirely up to us. They have been hard-earned; if you’re still waiting on yours, they’re coming. Don’t be afraid to pivot. It’s all part of the magical chaos of this world.

    Wherever you are, I wish you some rejuvenating slowness to joyfully practice using your new wings.

    -Ash Wylder
    (12/27/2022)