What I Write About

Magical Journeys, tearing down the system, and more!

As I move into the next season of my creativity, I’ve been straightening up the piles of papers that are my Substack writings. I’ve been perusing my own archives, reflecting on the kinds of things I write about, and the kinds of things I’m about to write. When I say I’m a writer, people ask me what I write about, and it’s tricky to define, because I write what I feel like, and that doesn’t always fit into a recognisable category. 

I write different kinds of personal essays. Or blogs. I don’t mind what you call them, but here’s how I see it divvied up. I invite you to join in. Make some writings of your own! 

I write blogs about my creative process.

This one, that you’re reading now, is a Process Blog: a peek behind the scenes at how I make things. What it’s like in my mind. How I make creative decisions. These are the blogs in which I reflect on what it’s like to be a writer, and how that has evolved over the years. See: Taking Up Space & Telling the Story and You Are Here to be Heard. Reflecting on my journey always spins into a pep talk for YOU, creative person. I am only an example, but I love an example. I love hearing about how artists work.  

I write DECLARATIONS of TRUTH.

These are the writings where I shout from the heart. I declare where I want to go. It’s like a screaming prayer to the universe, and anyone who will listen. Such as: I WANT TO BE LOUD. and the one where I list My Music Career Goals. You can write a declaration of your own! Dedicate a thousand words or so to WHAT YOU WANT. It can be contained to an area of your life. Or let it be all over the place. Let yourself run all over the place, be wild and free.

I write to tear down the system, in my Bromios Essays.

The Bromios Essays emerge when I have SOMETHING TO SAY that is beyond me. It comes from my personal experience but spirals out into a World Issue. These are the essays in which I take down the patriarchy, racism, transphobia, gender constructs. Bromios is my Dionysian epithet. Roaring, thundering Bromios, Earth-shaker, Loud-shouter! This is where I wrote about Why I Stopped Singing, how I’m Sick of Talking About My Divorce, and my Harry Potter Grief. Some of these had a paywall because I was hesitant to enter the arena of these touchy subjects, but I’m over it now lol, so I just took those paywalls off because now I want to be heard. I want you to read them. I want you to share them. I will accept payment on a donations basis, and am grateful for support. But what means more to me right now is that they are read. 

These are the essays that eat me up. It take so much energy not to write them, so I have to write them, and when I do, I am exhausted. But releasing a Bromios essay is like a long exhale. The words move through me, out of me, and are done. This is alchemy. I went on a Bromios rampage this spring, thinking ‘this is how I write now’ — energised by the power that pulses through me when I accept these assignments. But I cannot sustain it. I am slowing the shouting season. I won’t promise a pace, because I don’t know when or how I’ll be called next. I just know that it’s not ever going to be gone for good. 

I’m writing an Immigration Essay right now, is in this category. Starting to write it was like casting a spell circle. Editing it will complete the spell. It will end that chapter of my life: the last 14 years I have spent in the UK before receiving my British passport. It is a big deal. It is just an essay, but it is also more. I feel the weight of it, the energy required to close that chapter. 

In retrospect, the first ever blog post I wrote was a Bromios Essay. I was in high school, and it was about gay rights. I just organised my thoughts that were raging in head. I won’t pitch you on writing this kind of essay because it’s not for everyone. Calling on Bromios is not for the faint of heart. Because if you’re called, you already know. I’m not here to persuade you to speak out in this way; it’s immensely personal. But if you are compelled, I offer my mentorship. Maybe I’ll run a private writing circle one day: Calling on Bromios. Email me if interested :) 

I write to respond to art.

A smaller subset of the Bromios Essays are my Art Responses. Like Taking Time With the Tortured Poets Department and Witches Win Eurovision. I commentate on a Big Popular Art Thing. Everyone seems to be talking about it, but I don’t hear my views expressed in the mainstream. These are the essays in which I let myself state the obvious. What seems obvious to me is worth stating, because it is not obvious to everyone. 

Did you know that I started my writing career as a theatre critic? That’s what drew me to Edinburgh in the first place, as a writer at the fringe festival. I have a complicated relationship with arts criticism, because I want to engage with art, but focus less on assessing it. There is no ‘correct’ take on any piece of art. Let’s stop pretending there is. When we talk about art, let’s say what we actually mean. Let’s be more creative than the binaries of good/bad, I liked it/I didn’t like it. To do so is to dismantle our capitalist, patriarchal society of ‘value’: is this worth my time and money? (The answer will be different for each individual). Does engaging with this art align with where I want my attention right now? Will it challenge or agree with me? What am I in the mood for? What do I need? Will these ideas support how I wish to express myself, through art and life? Will it anger me into speaking up in opposition to it? This is valuable too. 

I will also add — every year I write for Fringe of Colour, who commission responses not reviews (You can read about their mission here). I am SO excited about my assignment this year, which I can’t talk about yet, but it is for live theatre, by a longtime favourite artist! For my personal practice, I keep a fringe journal, where I scribble some thoughts on each show I see, and collage in some scraps from the playbill or flyer. This helps me remember what I saw, how it made me feel, and what it made me think about. I also keep a reading journal, jotting down a paragraph or a page about what I’ve just read, watched, or listened to. I’d like to publish more of these, but the intent is to get my ideas down, not to polish up my take. Again, arts criticism can be tiring. It can feel like a debate, when I’d rather inspire conversation. I see myself honing this shift, this assertion, and making my own way. 

Do you keep a reading journal? How do you like to engage with art, in solitude or with others? 

I tell the tale of the the Magical Journeys I take. 

These are the most fun. 

Last week I wrote about my Magic Marker Chakra Check-in. I spent a year developing a chakra balancing practice, considering the cosmic connection of dress. I made it my own by adding an art project, scribbling the shapes of my chakras month by month. The final project looks so pretty and mystical!

I’ve also been chronicling my Astrology Photoshoots (From Aries to Capricorn). I wanted to get comfortable on camera again, after an outfit photo hiatus. I wanted to play blogger again, letting myself take up space on the street. It’s vulnerable to pose in public. It used to be a weird quirky thing fashion bloggers did. In the age of TikTok fatigue, it’s jarring to see so many people filming or photographing for CONTENT rather than CREATION. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I want to be a Real Artist! To be seen, though, is to be misunderstood. I have to trust. I make peace with the risk of being misunderstood. I keep doing what is true. I will be ok.

I’m realising as I write this that both the Chakra project and the Astrology Photoshoots have dress in common. Dress has been the root of my self-expression since I was a teenager*, and the subject of my undergraduate dissertation, so this is no surprise. The Chakra journey was an internal assessment, while the Astrology Photoshoots were about presentation. Both were fun ways to combine creativity and self-expression with spirituality — to feel even more connected to myself inside and out. 

*actually, since I was a child. When I was like, 4, I cut up a dress into a fringe skirt to ‘look like Pocahontas’. Successfully, I will add. And nobody got hurt. Except the dress. Which was improved. 

Finally, I write the Rollercoaster Diaries, a series recounting my year in rollercoasters, beginning at Six Flags New England . I also did this mini post, Why Not Now?, in which Xandra met Zadra. As a Theme Park Priestess, rollercoasters call me on journeys. On their hills, I practice somatic ritual, releasing my fears into the sky. They represent the peak of my dreams. They are pure fun, and I challenge myself to find the tale to tell in each visit, beyond counting creds (although I love counting creds; I have ridden 146 coasters currently, and you can friend me on Coaster Count). There is always a tale to tale. When I show up, the story presents itself to me.

Where is adventure calling you? I bet there’s a storyline to follow, beyond a checklist of things you do. 

-

And that’s a wrap! It’s been fun to delineate these categories in retrospect. A reverse-engineering of sorts.  For most of my years blogging, I would fret over The Editorial Calendar. What are my CATEGORIES?. I’d cook up new series to contain my content, to control my creative commitments. On Mondays I do this, on Wednesdays I do that. Such a format is freeing until it isn’t. What fun, how neat it is, to see that without trying, by just finding my way, piece by piece, I have created some cool Categories that I really, really like. 

X