I’ve given up on the news – it makes me anxious, insane, and profoundly depressed. So I’ve turned to Netflix documentaries instead of CNN. And it’s paying off. Life lessons, inspiration, wisdom et al.

The first documentary I watched this week was Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella show, “Homecoming”.  Let’s face it, Beyoncé’s a force of nature – her voice, her dancing, her energy, even her hair, her total gorgeousness – all dazzling. But the inspiration of the film came from the clips of backstage and home videos. The work involved with all that gorgeousness. Beyoncé showing up after the birth of her twins, no make-up, pounds and pounds over her dancing weight, and going to work. Unglamorous, disciplined, ceaseless, endless, hard work. We’re so quick to think, yeah she’s a force of nature with all that talent – and she is – but it’s a good life lesson to see what it takes to hone that talent into dazzle. This is also true for thinking about the writers we admire. Reading books we love and envy, the writing that dazzles us – we don’t think of the days, months, years that writer sat alone in a room and worked.

The other documentary I watched was Brené Brown’s recent talk “The Call to Courage” – I was a little hesitant, thinking it might be self-helpy – but then I figured I could probably use a little self-help so I clicked it on. I’d never seen her in action before. And what blew me away, besides her wisdom and smarts, was her self-deprecating humor, (she’s very, very funny,) and her ability to tell stories, to put the pieces together, is brilliant. (Looking her up online I just found this terrific quote from her: “Stories are data with a soul.”) She talked about having the courage to be vulnerable, or as she puts it, signing up to have our asses kicked. And is this not a message for writers? Is there any other profession that is more vulnerable than writing? We’re putting down on paper the deepest, darkest, most revealing stuff of our life, the truth in all it’s messy, uncontrollable detail – either what really happened if we write memoir and essay, or if we write fiction, what’s in our imagination and what we think about. Brené Brown says we can have courage or comfort, but not both, not at the same time.

Think about where you are in your writing right now, or in your desire to start writing. Think about saying yes to the embarrassment of exposure, the uncomfortableness of mining the truth out of your story, the terror of failure – and just get to work.