What’s happening right now?

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)