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2 weeks ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
This past week, I stumbled on Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem, “Be Drunk,” in my Instagram stream, and the poem was not only a welcome antidote to my spiraling list of worries but a reminder that we always have a bigger life available to us—we just need to be drunk!Not drunk on alcohol (or not necessarily). Drunk on the page. Drunk in our imaginations. Drunk in our hopes. Drunk in our love. Drunk in our faith. Drunk in our grace. Drunk in whatever makes our heart beat.
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3 weeks ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
If you’ve read this newsletter or listened to my podcast, you’ll know I grew up in a small town in Iowa, I sometimes write about small towns, and I have a complicated relationship with my hometown—or a fascination might be a better way to put it, an endless fascination. I often say that growing up in a small town is the best habitat for a budding writer—because a small town is a fish bowl full of drama.
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1 month ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
Dear Readers,Thanks so much for your response to last week’s “creative meditation” on fermentation and art and your encouragement to post other “essayettes” on the creative life. Today, I want to reflect on the fullness of emptiness—a subject of long fascination for me. I think most people tend to fill their lives with things, activities, goals, to-do lists, doomscrolling, whatever it might be—and we so rarely seek or trust the empty or silent moments of our lives.
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1 month ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
In this country we thrive on inspirational productivity maxims, sayings like “Inspiration is perspiration” or “90% of success is showing up” or “Writing is all about putting your butt in the chair.” All true, and I’ve said them many times, but I’m going to counter those maxims today and urge you to practice one of the most noble human proclivities: playing hooky.
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2 months ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
Dear Readers,I’m writing to you from rain-soaked Eugene today, where I gave a keynote speech at the fabulous Wordcrafters’ conference. It’s part of a Northwest book tour that started in charming Jacksonville, and now goes to Bend and then Portland. I wasn’t able to write this newsletter ahead of time, so I thought I’d put together a grab bag of creative inspiration today—inspired by one of my favorite artists, Joseph Cornell.
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2 months ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
The most common regret people have on their deathbed is that they wish they had lived a life more true to themselves. I can’t imagine how painful that must be: To have lived this long life and not quite lived it as yourself, to not have accepted yourself, to not have expressed yourself. One definition of life: we become expert at beating ourselves up. Many of us regularly lash ourselves with self-recriminations, and we learn early on that it’s better—or safer—to hide parts of ourselves.
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2 months ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner |Meg Pokrass
As a writing teacher, I often give students a prompt to spark a story and focus their imaginations. As a writer, though, I rarely write to prompts. I feel like I have enough story ideas already swirling about in my head. That said, in the random times I have written to prompts, I’ve experienced the creative joy of … randomness. I’m always surprised by how a prompt can take me out of my head to new terrain in a somewhat effortless way.
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2 months ago | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
I was recently interviewed on a podcast, My Rejection Story, where I … talked about my rejection story—and how writers need to develop a “rejection mindset” because to be a writer is to be rejected, I always say. In fact, who we are as writers—who we are as people—depends on how we respond to rejection. Here are two things to think about when it comes to rejection:Rejection is painful—physically painful: rejection triggers the same pain pathways in the brain as physical injury.
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Jan 26, 2025 | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
This past week has been traumatic for many. I know I felt that I’d lost a good part of the world I knew, and I fear the world that is replacing it. I didn’t write a word. Coincidentally, a writer wrote to me to thank me for a piece I wrote over a year ago, Writing and trauma, and how it especially resonated for her now that many of us are going through a collective trauma.
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Jan 19, 2025 | 
grantfaulkner.substack.com | Grant Faulkner
We all live with ghosts. Ghosts of the dead, but also the ghosts of the living: lost family members, lost lovers, lost friends, lost homes. I suppose we lose a sense of belonging in the world with each loss. We’re a little less secure in the world, a little more adrift. It would be an interesting exercise to sit down and write down everything you’ve lost, large and small. To start a catalogue of loss. I might actually do that.
