Introducing Worm School
A summer course on wriggling through a creative life
Dear readers,
Well, it’s finally happened—I’ve finally reached the point where I absolutely have to finish my book project in the next few months, or else very bad things will happen (though let’s not dwell on what those things are). As a result, I need to make some decisions about this newsletter. The truth is, lately, writing it has been siphoning off some of the energy I should be applying to the book. I now see two options:
Take a summer-long newsletter sabbatical, in order to focus exclusively on finishing the book
Figure out a way for the newsletter to be an aid and support as I finish the book, to make this final writing push easier and more effective
I love the second option . . . but how would this actually work? I’ve been mulling it over for weeks. Finally, the other day, while I was eating a sandwich on the couch, it hit me: Worm School!
As you may recall, this newsletter borrows its title from a passage in Franz Kafka’s letters:
Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.
This is my philosophy of life? It’s definitely my approach to creative work: When the going gets tough, the best thing you can do is to just keep wriggling through. The worst thing you can do is to let yourself get paralyzed by indecision and turn away from the project, or tell yourself that it will be easier to do it later, when the conditions are better or you’re “in the right mood.”
As someone who has spent fifteen years researching writers’ and artists’ habits— distilling them into my two Daily Rituals books and the 140 installments of this newsletter—I know this. The issue is implementing what I know in a consistent way. The issue is making those subtle maneuvers a little less subtle and more of a concrete, actionable plan.
So Worm School is my attempt to systematically improve my own skills at wriggling through, and, I hope, to bring many of you along with me. It starts June 3rd and will work like this:
Over the summer, instead of the usual newsletter, I’ll be sending a series of Worm School lessons. These will be brief, actionable dispatches, with exercises you can try at home and prompts for further discussion in the comments.
Paid subscribers will get a new lesson every Monday. Free subscribers will get a lesson preview every other Monday—still a lot to chew on, but not the full wormy mouthful (sorry, gross).
I will be raising subscription prices to better account for what I believe will be the genuine value of this course. The current rate is $5/month or $30/year; anyone who subscribes by this Friday will lock in that rate forever. (This includes all current paid subscribers.) Next week, the rate goes up to $7/month or $50/year.
The course will last for at least eight weeks; then I will assess how it’s going and what should come next. One of the core tenets of Worm School is flexibility and I want to give myself some wiggle room (pun intended) to adjust as needed!
Who is Worm School for? It’s for anyone trying to build or maintain a serious creative practice—as a writer, a visual artist, a musician, a filmmaker, or another species of creative artist—and finding themselves stymied by all the obstacles that, inevitably, pile up in the way of this kind of work.
If you keep telling yourself that you’re going to write that story, finish that book proposal, commit to a regular studio practice, or realize another cherished creative goal—Worm School is for you! Or if you are making progress in your creative practice but you just want some more ideas and inspiration about how to keep it vital or make it a bit less effortful, Worm School is for you, too.
Thanks for reading! To be honest, I’ve been really conflicted about whether this is a good idea or a truly ridiculous one (maybe it’s both?), so I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions about Worm School in the comments section below.
If you’re into the idea and want to help it succeed, you can forward this email to a friend or share it on social media—those word-of-mouth recommendations make a huge difference. Or, if you know someone who’s a perfect candidate for Worm School, gift subscriptions are another amazing way to support this project.
I’ll be back with the first lesson on June 3rd. In the meantime, here’s a photo of Uno the dog wriggling his way into some belly rubs—our mascot for this summer?
I used to teach art workshops to Second graders in the local schools. For the first year or so my own artistic practice would go on hold for the 3-5 months I would be leading the workshops. I found the planning, prepping supplies, set-up, clean-up, etc. to be exhausting. But I loved the interaction with the young students. I decided, very much like you phrased this in your letter today, to reframe the workshops in a way where they would support and nourish my own art as I taught the kids how to draw, paint in watercolor, and make collages and mixed media drawings of something relevant to a unit they were studying. (Usually it was birds we focused on, but other units included camouflage, dinosaurs, water, and other topics. I emphasized drawing from life. In order to teach the students how to draw birds I found myself drawing birds in my journals. Without intending to, I realized I had a lot of illustration material for a book about birds. It took a few years to find the right format and eventually my own sketching led to the publication of The Robin Makes A Laughing Sound: a Birder's Observations. Working with the kids reenforced all I knew about art--make a beginning; work with what is on the page; keep going; you can turn your paper over and start again, but you only get one sheet of paper, so figure out a way to live with and work with your "mistakes," which often turned out to be happy accidents once you gave up the unattainable vision in your head and worked with what was in front of you. I also started bringing in work in progress--paintings I'd begun, but not finished. The kids would oooh and ahhh, but I would show them what I wasn't happy with and then I'd tell them to wait until next time I came to see how I'd altered the painting and dealt with my own "mistakes." It changed our relationship from expert-pupil to colleagues in this endeavor together. It empowered the kids and freed me, and it made me responsible for working on my own art between sessions. Win-Win. I think your Worm School plan has real promise. Best of luck.
This sounds wonderful. HOORAY.