What if the stories inside you could help heal your deepest wounds? In this episode, I host a renowned author Francesca Lia Block, who takes us through the magical connection between storytelling and healing.
With a blend of poetry, symbolism, and magic realism, Francesca shares how creative writing can be a powerful tool for processing emotions, healing, self-discovery, personal growth, and navigating personal experiences.
In this podcast episode, Francesca Lia Block shares:
- The body-mind connection in storytelling.
- The 12-question framework to combining craft and personal healing.
- The importance of community in the creative process.
- Balancing craft and raw expression: how to navigate allowing your authentic voice to emerge.
- Overcoming fear and vulnerability and finding the courage to share through writing.
- The healing power of fiction.
- Writing as a somatic practice: incorporating movement and body awareness.
- The evolutionary aspect of storytelling.
- Practical tips for aspiring writers.
- The importance of ongoing projects for maintaining momentum and emotional balance.
And so much more!
Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories, and poetry and has written screenplay adaptations of her work.
She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award, and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly.
Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese.
Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays, and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock, The Fairy Tale Review, and Rattle, among others. In addition to writing, Francesca edits the Lit Angels online journal on Substack and teaches fiction at various places, including UCLA Extension, Antioch University, and privately in Los Angeles, where she was born and raised.
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and The Radiance Program at www.freeyoursoma.com
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Hello to the Free Your Soma podcast listeners. I'm Aimee Takaya, and I am curious, have you ever felt like you have a story inside of you that needs to come out, whether it's a story from your own life, or maybe there are multiple stories that are waiting to be told and processed?
Today I'm going to be speaking with Francesca Lia Block. She is the author of the Dangerous Angels series, The Thorn Necklace and House of Hearts. And she is going to share with us some amazing, powerful strategies for healing through the creative writing process. So stay tuned.
Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your life. Soma, I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love.
A: Hi, Francesca, nice to see you today.
F: Hi Aimee, so happy to be here.
A: Yeah, I'm so thrilled to speak with you. I read the Dangerous Angels series and there's a novella also called Psyche and Address. I read those books when I was working at Barnes & Noble in my early 20s and they were just so inspiring to me.
I think many would prefer to it as kind of prose rather than a more traditional novel narrative style. I mean you can do that too, but those books particularly I found them very inspiring from a creative writing process because not many people might know this about me, but I spent a lot of my teenage years writing poetry.
And so I found that your books were this beautiful blending of poetry, symbolism, magic realism, and a narrative process. So I'm just like Twitter-pated to be talking to you today because I've been a big fan for a long time. So thank you for being on the show.
F: Thank you so much.
A: Yeah, yeah, awesome. You know, we're going to be exploring some really beautiful topics today for anybody out there who maybe has been writing or wants to write or maybe knows that there are stories that need to be told that are maybe living in their body, living in their subconscious mind, right? And you know, I'm curious for you, when did you first discover that writing was helping you to move memories and emotions?
F: First of all, I love how you say stories living in the body because I do believe that's where they originate and that when they're living there, they demand to be told in certain ways. So that's what my intention is with my students to really help them bring those out.
But in any case, for me, I had my parents were very encouraging of my writing, which I started to do from as early as I could hold a pen as I remember. And I also used to walk around in my backyard telling myself stories and twirling my hair around my finger, and sucking on my lip.
And when I would hit a block in the storytelling, I would force myself to go back to the beginning and start over. And it was interesting because I was moving a lot. And I think that's something I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot because it's not just taking an idea and putting it onto the page with your hand.
It's moving it through the body. So, in any case, it's really something I've done for as long as I can remember. And I was fortunate enough to have people supporting that, which is what I tried to do now for my students as best I can.
A: Wow. Yeah, I love that. So you were walking, you were moving, you even had like a specific way. Do you remember whether it was your right hand or your left hand that was twirling your hair?
F: It was probably my right hand. So my left hand could write it down if I had a piece of paper there. Oh, because your left hand and very right brain oriented. Yes.
A: Oh, fascinating. Cool. Yeah. So the twirling your hair biting on your lip. And then, if you had the idea, you would write it down with your left hand. And I'm just imagining like pacing around, moving around in the world, right? In this kind of, you know, dream-like state maybe.
You know, I'm curious, here's one too. When you're writing, is it similar to how you feel when you're reading where you get a lot of visual information kind of coming in, like you're kind of seeing these characters in your mind's eye?
F: Yes, I see the images and then feel as if I'm just translating them onto the page a lot of the time. And I've asked my students about a third of them, I would say, do it that way. Not everyone sees the images that they may create them as they write.
A little trick with that is to describe everything you see, whether or not you use it in the piece, to make sure that you really are seeing what you think you're seeing. Sometimes we miss things that we think we're seeing, and then they're not showing up in the writing itself. So anyway, I'm really going off in a tangent. But yes, I do see it as I'm working.
A: Awesome. Yeah, just kind of giving people this idea of how it is a physical experience, like to write something. Like obviously, we think, oh, writing, it's like my hand is going to move, my eyes are going to move, but it can actually be much more of a full embodied process, which is what we're kind of pointing to here.
F: Very much, very much. And that is how we've, I know we'll get to this, but the healing through writing is very important to me, as is the healing through movement and through the body because for me, that's where the real healing has happened and writing part of that because it is coming through the body.
A: Yeah, well, and this kind of segues into my next question for you, which is, you know, you went from writing prose and more fictional writing to leading people through this creative process of healing and I'm assuming that that comes from your own personal experience through this process, right?
With your book, The Thorn Necklace, can you kind of explain or describe who did you write that book for and where did that book come from inside of you?
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F: So I've been teaching for many years and I had a system that I developed with these 12 questions and I wanted to write a craft book, but at the same time, that didn't feel like it went deep enough so I combined it with memoir and my own experiences. And I matched each of the 12 questions that I used to teach with personal storytelling.
And then I thought of the Frida Kahlo painting where she's wearing the necklace of thorns and I thought that was the perfect metaphor for what I do and what I hope to help others do, which is take pain and the thorns, the pain that she suffered, right, and transform it into the beauty as she did with her incredible painting.
So that's where that came from. And I wrote it really for my students, for anyone who hasn't been able to take the class directly. And I think people who had read my fiction and wanted an insight into the person behind the fiction as well. So it came from a lot of things and it was very cathartic to write it because writing nonfiction is certainly different in that way since it is so immediate and raw and directly the experience, as opposed to fictionalizing which is great too.
A: Yeah, wow, I love that because I feel that it's an extension of being a teacher that you wrote this book because you're you're leading from your own personal life example and your own story, which is a powerful thing to do which is I'm sure something that you have, you know, as a teacher been called into to show up that way like in person for your students but to put that in a book so that more and more people have access to it. Did you feel at any point like vulnerable and sharing your memoir with others?
F: Yeah, so it's always a vulnerable process because my fiction comes from my personal life so much. However, more so with memoir because, as I said, there's no veil or scrim it's just the raw truth. At the same time, I have gotten over that fear because I have learned that by doing it, it's brought me so much; it's brought me catharsis, it's brought me perspective on my life, and it's connected me to all these wonderful people.
I mean, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now, right it's all because I took these personal experiences that might feel vulnerable and put them on a page and sent them out into the world it's like a message in a bottle, and then I get so much richness back.
So I encourage anyone who has that desire to do it, and just the caveat being do it with support because sometimes it brings up a lot of trauma when you're writing about trauma, it reenacts the trauma, so you want somebody wise to be guiding you with that.
And also, you want someone who can help you with the craft aspect because I find that when we utilize craft to strengthen the writing. We not only have a stronger piece to share with others, but we have a better perspective on our own pain, or I should say it helps the pain transform into something beautiful, something creative by using those craft elements like free to call her great talent as the painter right she took the pain but what transformed it was her craft, her ability to paint in that beautiful way.
A: Beautiful, yes, absolutely I think it speaks to it being a practice, and I love also what you said about, you know, having other people to support you, so other mentors and guides. You know, in the work that I do as a somatic educator, we're working with releasing things that are stored in our muscles in our body and clenching tension patterns right and, you know, that's a wonderful healing process.
And it also is beneficial to have someone that you can go through things with as they're coming up as they're kind of coming to the surface, there's this excavation that's going on, so it sounds actually like there's some similarity there in terms of it being, you know, you're digging in and as a result of digging into your, your vulnerability into your story, there's going to be a reprocessing of stuff that was unconsciously being held.
F: Yes, and having someone there for me with attachment issues stemming from early childhood illness trauma, and my therapist calls annihilation anxiety which is the whole topic and the name of the book I'm working on now.
But I realized that what I need to go through this I've written books by myself for many years, but the way I can best process trauma is with someone there supporting me, whether it's a writing group whether it's a therapist, a friend, you know, and also whenever I do any kind of bodywork right having that I do it with my own movement my own exercise but having somebody there to help process it is just invaluable.
A: Yes, and I mean, just from what you said about, like, what did you call it annihilation, what was it annihilation anxiety? Okay, yeah, so this sounds like there was, you know, to me that almost like evokes like a really intense, almost like visceral abandonment.
Yeah, yeah. And, and in that, I can see how co-regulation with another person's nervous system that is safe and grounded would be really essential. You know, and that was the case for me too like I was so grateful in the beginning of my somatic journey to have, you know, someone else to hold that space for me because I probably would not have been able to like make it through some of those memories or some of those emotions and sensations by myself because I hadn't also, you know, had a times in my childhood where I missed that co regulation with a parent figure or caregiver that was like actually able to have the capacity to hold that space.
So I think what you're speaking to in terms of like, you know, having people to co regulate with you on this creative writing process makes complete sense to me as a as a somatic educator that would be an essential piece. Right.
F: Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that term co regulation. That's perfect description of it.
A: Yeah, yeah, nervous system to nervous systems. Totally. Yeah, so like, when somebody's writing, they could be writing a memoir but they could also be choosing to write in a more creative way like a creative process where they're maybe taking their life experiences and then fictionalizing them or exaggerating them or toying with them playing with them in a way as to help themselves move through an experience right or move through that story. Can you talk a little bit about like the value of that the value of fictionalizing or being creative with our memories and life experiences.
F: Yes, so sometimes by fictionalizing or using metaphor or symbol. We actually get more we get at the truth without fact but at the truth in a deeper way. I think that's why myth and fairy tale and magical realism are so important to me because in a way you can tell and even horror, frankly, you can tell the truth in a way that is so vivid and sensory and powerful and arch type that it can provide healing and another level.
So I very much love fiction for that. And what I encourage my students to do in terms of that is think about an image that haunts you that fascinates you. And then it's especially if it's one that you feel awkward about sharing or maybe a little embarrassed, and then go into why and discover the symbolic meaning of that for you which then can lead you to the thematic elements of a story that you want to tell for instance I love fairy tale imagery from the traditional fairy tales like the rose and the doll and the mirror and the, and the key.
Right, so I didn't know why I love those so much, but I just was drawn to them over time I realized it's the sacred feminine that's trying to come out for me so, and then there's a lot of healing that can come around that.
So I think fiction can be a really beautiful way, and then above all, what it does is it allows for that slight distance that then can allow you not to be re-traumatizing yourself again and again because you're thinking about what's important for the story and the characters and the craft piece so that ties back to what I said earlier about the importance of craft and the importance of thinking about how to get your story across in a way that connects to others effectively which also gives you a little comfortable distance from it.
A: Yeah, like a healthy detachment so that it's not as triggering or doesn't really strike you in the same way. That makes sense to me I think also like what you're describing about, you know, taking some aspect that is uncomfortable, you know, like a horrific image and then like letting that occur to a character rather than you image.
And that makes me think of like the way art therapy can be so beneficial because we're externalizing the painful thing and then we can actually look at it and see it differently when we're not immersed in it.
F: Yes, and that externalization of the emotions through image is the healing process it is how to take it out of the body. There's a book I love called The Midnight Disease about hypergraphia where people can't stop writing I know a lot of people joke I wish I had that, but someone like Joyce Carol Oates, you know, Stephen King, these people are obsessive writers, and what they the woman who wrote it had a trauma in her life she was a neurobiologist.
And she just started writing all over everything she could find obsessively and then that when she healed, it turned into this book about how the brain can heal through the process of writing and one anecdote she told was how Holocaust survivors had the use of storytelling and massage were the two things that helped heal them.
So to me that was a light bulb went on it was like how do we just to your point externalize the pain into something in out in the world to share with others.
A: Yes, wow. Hyper what is it, hypergraphia.
F: Yeah, hypergraphia.
A: I think I actually had that as a teenager I've never known that term, but when I was a teenager, I was obsessively writing, like when you say writing on anything you can get your hands on, I was writing on the paper bags at Wendy's hamburgers on my break. I was writing all over napkins, and the sad thing is is I didn't really even like value it.
They would end up in the trash they would just end up like at the bottom of my backpack getting smushed by everything. You know, like, and I was so kind of like flippant about it, but it was because I was writing so much that it didn't even feel like anything it was just like oh well I'll write another one.
F: You know, very interesting and I think you would love this book. I gotta read it. Wonderful. Cool.
A: That's just super interesting. And then, you know, to that point, you know, as I feel like I healed and it was a lot of my early healing in my twenties was through yoga. So another movement, able to move things through and then now stepping into the somatic work which has taken me into another layer of that process right.
Like, I don't write like that anymore of like my I don't have that compulsion like I do write and when I write though it's more deliberate it's less like of a, like I just have to get this out, you know, kind of feeling.
F: I'm very much relate to that because the more I use dance movement, therapy, massage, acupuncture, etc, etc. You know, I realize how much of the work I have to do is in the is the body the writing was what saved my life for in my early life, for sure, but I need I need all of it now. I just need.
A: I can see how like, you know, when you do your workshops and you lead people through these processes. You know, you must include probably some kind of physical movement and body, you know, practice because I can see how that would help them get more intentional when it's time to write like they wouldn't have such a big like the pressure would get taken off by that process.
F: So I that is something that I have been trying to incorporate into my classes unfortunately a lot of the time now it's on zoom. And but I do have I'm starting some classes at the village well bookstore in my neighborhood where I'm adding in other teachers are coming in and a lot of meditation classes, and then I take this free form movement class and I want to bring in dance instructors to workshops that I'll do in retreats and things like that because I I think breathwork meditation movement are really important as part of this for sure.
For what I do now is I just try to energetically create a safe place in my classes, where and model the vulnerability to my students, so that over time, they can start to feel safe and go into that those deeper places.
It sometimes takes some people will want to go there sooner than others and I have to be really attuned to that pace. But I really believe that when we create these safe groups, and mice, I've been fortunate to have wonderful students again and again for many, many years, you know, that is how collectively we can support each other to feel safe in the body and it to share this material.
A: I think that's incredibly awesome that you are sharing vulnerability with your students about your own life experiences from a place of having moved through a lot of the stuff to because then they get to feel what that's like in their nervous system as they're sitting there listening to you, and they're feeling into, you know, the courage that it kind of takes to be the leader here and say like, you know, you can go through a difficult time and move through it.
That is, you know, even as you said, some people aren't ready to go there yet and some people are some people like they're like ready for it other people, you're exposing them to that, that energy that this is that whatever it is that they have inside that feels insurmountable, right, maybe isn't, and maybe can be processed and like moved through and then as you said earlier like like, like, like, transmuted into that beautiful creation, right.
That's wonderful, I think that's a, I would love to think that that's like, not every professor is doing that I think there's some some teachers that keep it very like they keep that line really strict of like oh I don't share any of my personal stuff with my students because it's not professional but I think what you're doing it's like super rad.
F: Thank you. What I have to do to start, if people come to me who are fans of my work already, I can leap right into that. If people come to me through UCLA Extension or maybe Antioch MFA, who don't know me and my work personally, I have to impress them with my craft and do that magic first so that they, that's how they feel safe. Right. You know, like I really know what I'm talking about. I've done this for over 30 years.
I don't even know how many years at this point. And these are my techniques and these are these 12 questions. It's almost like a little science. I had a woman say to me, what's the science of writing a novel early in my career?
And I said, oh, you know, it's intuitive. And this is, you can write about character, but then she did not like me. And that was very hard. I'm very codependent as a teacher.
And I want them all to love me, you know, because I love them anyways. And I realized from this antagonist, which is what and quote marks around that, what antagonists do in writing is they help you to change. So what it helped me do is come up with a formula for people who needed a formula, which is those 12 questions, which is a loose formula that can be subject to a lot of interpretation.
It's not like screenplay beats for fiction, which I also use, but it's very it's free. And yet it has some structures. So I use that to kind of begin to open people up. And then I attach the more personal questions to those 12 questions.
For example, if I want you to write about what your character wants, I'll ask you what are you obsessed with? And then I'll have everyone, including myself, put that in the chat in very specific ways. And that then loosens everybody up and lets them know it's okay to go into those deeper places, but in kind of a light way to start.
A: Cool, yes. And I love, but as you described yourself earlier as like a very right brain kind of dominant person, I can see how the intuitive flowing like, oh, it's just like follow your the feeling. And then that's how it works. And someone who's more left brain dominant is gonna be like, that does not sound trustworthy to me at all.
That is not okay. I don't even know what you're talking about, right? So that challenge of how do you take like your creed, your intuitive process and then bring it into a structure through that antagonist or through that like challenge of someone not liking your way of doing things causes you to have to grow or expand your field of like what you, how you process and how you offer this up. That's super cool. I love the way you described that.
F: Oh, thank you. It's really fun. The other one, I wait till the very end of my class sequence which are usually 10 weeks. And I have them say, write down, if I were to die tomorrow, these are the things I believe about life and then they share them. And the bonding that happens is so beautiful. But the reason I do it is because often we leave that material out of our books or we have other material that we've written into our books that we did not realize we believed so deeply. And the process of writing the book is how you find that out or figure that out.
A: Interesting. Yeah, it sounds like it's its own adventure and journey because you're moving through these different aspects of yourself and your discovery. And it's a process of discovery. Absolutely, yes. And I had a question just a moment ago as you were describing this. Oh, so with these 12 questions, right in the book, maybe you can just walk us through like a little bit of each one so people get an idea of what this looks like.
F: So there's the gift and the flaw. Those are the first two. The gift is what makes the character special so that we connect to them to read the book. So what are we seeing actively that they're showing that a special about them? The flaw is the negative extreme of the gift which gives them room to grow in an arc and to change. The want motivates them through the entire book and helps us connect to them because we all want as humans we want.
And so that's how we'll connect to a character. The need is the opposite of the flaw. The arc takes us from the flaw to the need. The antagonist pushes the character along the arc from the flaw to the need. Then we talk about setting, the importance of how it provides conflict for the character, the style, the voice, which is an hour's worth of lecturing, but is just your natural voice that you present on the page, which can later be edited further.
And then three of the questions are more structurally based. The crisis, the climax and the resolution. So the crisis from the middle of the story until the big battle scene at the end, a series of scenes of escalating conflict, climax or finale, that big sort of battle scene and then the resolution.
And finally, the theme, which we've talked about, which is a reflection of the character's arc. So that is a very vast description of all of them, but that's the basis. And then they are all attached to more personal healing through writing questions.
A: Right, well, because even as you're describing this, I was like, my brain was sort of like, well, yeah, like what were my innate gifts as a child? Like for some reason, my brain went there to like, who was I? First person before like all this stuff ever happened and went down in the later years of my life, right? Like, what did I come into this world like innately?
Having and then what were like my biggest challenges? And so I can see how like you can take this formula and apply it to your own personal history and see how you have gone through an arc. Because everybody has throughout their life at some point gone through this character arc and grown and overcome something, whether or not they're paying attention, their day in day out life to like acknowledge and notice that, cause so many of us, we just get really myopic with like whatever the stressor is that's in front of us, right? Absolutely.
F: And then I also want to mention a book called Wired for Story by Lisa Cron that was very influential, which talks about the survival or evolutionary aspect of storytelling, which has to do with the idea that we were sitting around campfires, telling each other how we escaped a dinosaur. And that's what we're still doing today with our writing.
We're sharing our own experience. So others can also escape dinosaur, but the way we have to engage them is through craft. So she's saying these aspects of craft are not arbitrary. Like if a character is active and flawed and has a gift and has room to grow in an arc, we're immediately going to kind of connect to them. And then we'll, and if the writing is engaging in various ways, which, you know, my questions will help with that.
And her book will help with that. You know, it's a way to show or keep the reader's attention so that they can learn the lesson in air quotes of the story, which is harder and harder to do these days with all of our distractions, right? So craft becomes even more important, not just as some embellishment, but as a way to give your gift to the world through your deep story. That's, as you said earlier, living inside of you.
A: Yeah, so having that like the fine tuning and the sophistication of honing your craft or honing the presentation of this, you're saying it kind of goes far beyond just like it's sounding good or, you know, it's more about it actually being effective to give someone the full embodied message of what you're trying to bestow on them.
F: Yes, and everyone has to approach it at their own pace. Again, as an instructor, I try to intuit that. I give all of the craft material, and then I say, forget anything that makes you not want to write this story.
Because I don't care if it doesn't have any of these things that I'm looking for in your initial draft, if you can get that down on paper in a way that is meaningful to you. And then you have the ingredients to work with to tell the story. And I see in the eyes of my students, when I push a craft piece on them and they're not yet ready, I still give it to them. I said, it's in your toolbox now.
Go home and forget about it. You know, it's like, because that is my biggest message as a teacher, I will give you all this stuff to work with. But my biggest message is you need to get that story down. Or you wouldn't be here coming to me, spending your time, spending your money, giving your soul to this process if you didn't have a reason.
So anything that gets in the way of that, whether it's harsh words from somebody or harsh words from yourself, or something that's too prescriptive from a teacher who's well-meaning, anything that gets in that way needs to be eliminated in the initial stages if it is in the way. Interesting.
A: I think there's a few things that came to mind as you were saying that, because you're describing that you need to have the resources to be able to eventually move to the crafting stage. If you don't have the raw materials, you're gonna be limited when you get to that stage.
And so you really are asking people to take their time in that raw sort of elemental stage before they're trying to piece it all together in a pretty format. They need to have all the materials, they need the resources, the well of experience that's ready to come out. That makes sense. And I'm thinking of the classic kind of writing tool that so many people use of morning pages or just reform writing.
I had a wonderful, she doesn't call herself a business coach, it's more like a business magician, is kind of what she says. But like the way that when we type on a screen, we use more of our left brain. And when we write with our hand, she was saying we use more of our right brain. So we're gonna be less critical and judgmental. We're gonna do less editing of ourselves as we go when we write with our hand. Have you heard that before?
F: Well, I have heard that. And the way it applies for me is because I'm left-handed and right brain, if I write with my left hand, I am entirely, I'm all over the place. It's too loose and too free for one, a better word. When I type with both hands for me, it balances me out better. But I agree that, and that is part of morning pages, that for anyone who's blocked in that way and is too critical that doing the free handwriting is fantastic, left or right-handed.
A: Yeah, no, that makes sense to me because also using both hands, you're getting a little more balance in your brain, like you said. Yeah. Yeah, so I think, yeah, it probably is a very individual, like person by person, experimental thing to figure out what works for them or what's gonna help move that, right?
And so kind of coming back to this idea of, when we're telling these stories, right, that are maybe coming from our own life, whether we're choosing to fictionalize them and make them more creative or whether we're working on like a memoir or something like that, what would you say to someone who's feeling like afraid of being vulnerable or who's trying to come to a place where they feel courageous enough to share what they've written with other people when they're writing about such personal things?
F: So I think doing the morning pages or some kind of free-flowing exercise by yourself is a great way to start and then finding groups that are supportive because the way we do it, we have groups of maybe 10 at the most, sometimes it's 15, but it's very gentle, it's supportive.
There's something called the Liz Lerman critique method that she was, is sorry, she is a choreographer and she has a method that my students really like that is not overly critical and is great for those early stages.
So I recommend everyone look that up. But I think just having a supportive community is really helpful because eventually your books can go out into the big world and that doesn't always feel that safe as having that experience myself. So starting small and with people you trust, really, really important.
A: Right, getting that experience that it can be safe to share, that it can be that you can be received with support and love and openness, right? Even that, so that you have that as like a baseline for when you go do something like have it out there and the bookstore in your neighborhood and somebody doesn't like it, you're not gonna be as overwhelmed because you have this experience of like it being okay.
F: Community is so huge, I didn't always have it. It's something I've worked really hard to build but my motto now is life can be hard but you don't have to do it alone. That's very important in this case with the creative process, especially in this world that we're in today. When I started, good reads didn't exist, believe it or not.
So, so long ago. So nobody could just toss out a comment about you. So yeah, we need to be protected and we are protected by our community and that's really a beautiful thing.
A: Awesome, yeah. And then maybe at this point, you could share a little bit about your newest book that's coming out in paperback in December, House of Hearts is fiction, right? And but it's also been a very personal journey for you. Can you share a little bit about that book and your process with it?
F: Thank you so much. So I wrote, I've written, I published about 30 plus books. I've kind of lost track at this point but I had written a book that was a very dark book where a character dies in this book at the end. And I had a vision after I, the book had been out for quite a few years of that character, she dies in the desert. And I saw this other woman striding across the desert to the place where the first character died and kind of rescuing or avenging her in a way.
And I didn't know who that was. And then I started, so that came from my unconscious, right? Then I had also been working with a myth that was fascinated with but I couldn't find a way to work it into my fiction.
So I took those two things together, put them together and came up with House of Hearts, which is a young woman searching for her missing lover in the Salton Sea area, including Joshua Tree. And she becomes involved with the cult, sort of a self-help cult called House of Hearts and discovers the truth about him and also her own dark secrets of her past. So that book, I joke, but it's kind of true, kind of broke me.
Literally, I shattered my ankle, which still isn't fully recovered. Years ago, my relationship ended, the financial stuff, like there were so many things that kind of broke around that book. But in the end, I had this book that's really, really deeply important to me and has brought me a lot of wonderful things in my life, including relationships and insights and a screenplay.
We're gonna try to make an actual film. So it's been a really wonderful process, but it was an intense journey. But again, it had to be expressed.
It was just something that I needed to write and was fortunate enough to get out into the world. So, and we're having a big party for it on December 8th at Gold Diggers in Hollywood. So it should be really fun with DJs and DJs, and we're gonna just celebrate after all that. Great.
A: Wow. Yes. And I mean, all of that kind of, everything you mentioned sort of converging at this period of time around this book. Yeah, what an accomplishment when you finally get it done. What an accomplishment when it's finally published and out there and completed. What does it feel like to complete a book?
F: It always feels very, I feel happy and also a little sad kind of to be leaving those characters. But what the most important thing I think about the completion is to then be able to let it go and to move on to something else.
Because it is difficult to put that stuff out into the world and not know how it will be received. So finding your next project, even if it's in little ways, or what I've been doing, I've just been, I started an online journal called The Angels, which I would love by the way to do some kind of work with you on something somatically related.
I do guest editors, but in any case, I am trying to promote other people's work as much as I can from where I stand in the position I'm in by doing that. So I've been doing that a lot and I've been writing screenplays and I have started on another book kind of personal.
So it's been a little tricky, more memoir. But in any case, all these things to keep moving rather than be caught up in how will this be received you know, at a certain point.
A: Yeah, and letting those characters go like and dwelling on what has already been. Like I feel like when I've run a retreat because I have been running retreats, sometimes especially after a very successful retreat where everything went really well and the people who showed up were just like super magical and my collaborators were like so fun and I just had such a great time like even though it was a lot of work like I'm really tired afterwards.
I feel like happy, but then I also have experienced like a pretty dramatic dip where I'm actually kind of depressed for like two days because it's over and like those people and those situations and those characters and everything kind of building to that.
Like it's never gonna be, I'm never gonna go get to have that exact same way again. And so, you know, as you were speaking, I'm like, oh yeah, like plan the next one. What's my next offering?
What's my next invitation for people to gather? And so I kind of kind of look forward to something which I think they've studied that with like especially older people, the older we get. We really need to have those things to look forward to because there's a lot we were looking back on.
F: Absolutely true, so true, yeah.
A: Yeah, so tell us a little bit more about Lit Angels then since you mentioned it.
F: So it's been over two, it'll be two years, I guess, that we've been doing it once a month. It's now on Substack. Occasionally I have guest editors come in. It's poetry, prose and fiction and nonfiction.
There's art, visual art. And I really, at this point, I'm doing it entirely all by myself, which is insane. And but except I have these wonderful guest editors that come in for the other ones here and there.
And I'm just, and then I have readings at the Village Well bookstore. And yeah, you can find it on Substack under my name at Lit Angels. And it's just been a really exciting thing to be able to share other people's work with the world. So I love that and yeah, I love you to check it out.
A: I will definitely check it out, thank you. Wonderful, so kind of as we're closing here in our conversation, right? What do you think that someone who's not quite ready to say like, I'm a writer, right? Like maybe they feel there's a story in their body, but they don't know like where to begin with that. What would be some of the first steps for them? I mean, maybe morning pages, but beyond that, like where would they go and look for the next step in sharing their story?
F: So for me, I have classes that I offer that are just for those people that are based on the 12 questions. And I know there are other classes like that all over, kind of beginning writing classes. The Thornecklis is a nice way sort of to try it without having to take a class.
And other craft books too, Lisa Kron's book, for example, that I mentioned, Wired for Story. I think finding your own little group of people who feel the same way, even if none of them are professional and you don't have an actual teacher involved, just kind of getting together and sharing.
And using the Liz Lerman technique is great because it doesn't scare anyone off. It's really supportive and positive and smart. So there's that. But I do think, you know, having some community and some guidance, even if it's a book, which certainly for me, books have been that in my life. They've been the guides.
So whatever you do to kind of, in an external way, get support to do this. Because I believe if you feel a story living in your body, that is something you must have, but that's all you have to have. You don't even have to know what the story is. You just can't have this feeling. Like there's something I need to express.
And I think it's a story. If you have that, everything else can be learned, taught, you know, developed. So anyone with that, you know, and I look in the eyes of people and I can see it. I just, I know it's there.
It's like, I've seen it enough times. And I think it's, you have to honor it. It's a very important feeling in your body to honor that storytelling need. Because it's for your healing.
You know, it's really powerful. And it's for other people's healing ultimately. Even if you need to think about that in the process early on, but it happens because when you do that for yourself, it will touch other people. And I've seen that with my own work. And it's one of the best things in my life, frankly.
A: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was personally touched by your work in my early twenties and I'm excited to read House of Hearts. I'm definitely going to check that out. And some of the other books that you've mentioned, you know, so if people want to connect with you or learn more about what you're up to and follow you, where would they find you? You mentioned Lit Angels on Substack. Where else could they find you?
F: So my website, francescalibloch.com, and then also my Instagram and my sub-stack are where I'm the most active, for sure. Wonderful.
A: Yeah. Oh, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you and share, you know, what you're up to. And I think there's a lot of innovation that I am picking up on here in terms of creative writing process and healing and actually, you know, moving, transmuting those stuck stories, those stuck energies into art. I think what you're up to is really amazing.
F: Oh, thank you, Amy. I feel the same about you. I really appreciate this opportunity. This is one of my favorite topics, for sure. And I feel like I've learned a lot from hearing you talk about it as well.
A: Beautiful. Any last words of encouragement or wisdom for our listeners?
F: Oh, I think listen to that. If that story is asking to be written, find a way to put it out in the world for you and for others and just do that with love and support around you and from within.
A: Yeah, I like that. Find a way.
F: And there are a lot of people that want to help in this. I think we're evolving as a culture into understanding this, the importance of this, even the term somatic, which I never even heard growing up and didn't even understand what that was. And so I feel that there's a lot of understanding about the healing aspects of the creative and that we can take advantage of to support us in this journey.
A: Fantastic. Yes, I agree. The language with which to talk about and explain the inethible and these, it needs sensational experiences that we're having. Now we have much, much more of a rich language, you know, and that scientific background to be able to present and share in a way that I think really is landing with people.
F: That's wonderful. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
A: Yeah, thank you too. We'll talk again soon.
F: Take care.
A: Hey there, friend. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram. At AimeeTakaya and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back, and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.
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