Send us Fan Mail

About this episode: This week, I’m joined by Jeannine Ouellette, author of The Part that Burns and a writing instructor whose deepest passion is using writing to connect us with our humanity. She sees the craft of writing as so much more than the words on the page, and I couldn’t agree more. We talk about how writing is a practice that helps you show up more fully in your own life, and how you can do this by finding your writing voice, writing close to the lived experience, and exploring from a place of discomfort. And you won’t want to miss our conversation about our shared obsession with a particular punctuation mark that we are absolutely claiming regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Resources for this Episode:

• Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber
• Acetylene Torch Songs by Sue William Silverman
• Innocence & Experience: Voice in Creative Nonfiction by Sue William Silverman
• Finding Your Voice and Crafting Stories that Ignite the Soul with Sue William Silverman
• Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma
• “The Fourth State of Matter” by Jo Ann Beard
• Get Your Free Human Design Report
• Register for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc
• Ditch Your Inner Critic Now

Episode Highlights

• 00:00 The Question That Opens Everything
• 04:33 On Voice (and Finding Yours)
• 15:27 Writing as a Living Practice
• 29:33 The Quiet Work of Finding Joy Again
• 32:57 Craft as a Way of Being

Jeannine’s Bio: Jeannine Ouellette’s lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women’s Literature. Her other books include Mama Moon and The Good Caregiver with Robert Kane, M.D. Her essays and short fiction have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Masters Review and more. Her bestselling Substack, Writing in the Dark, explores writing as a metaphor for life and attention as a pathway to becoming. She teaches writing at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the University of Minnesota and her craft book, One Word at a Time: A Creative Practice for Transforming Your Writing and Your Life, is forthcoming from Penguin.

Connect with Jeannine:

• Substack: https://writinginthedark.substack.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeannine.ouellette.7
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msjeannineouellette/?hl=en

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your F

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn

Produced by Espresso Podcast Production