In our latest episode we dive into the intricacies of the creative journey. This process is far from linear. As artists, we move through various stages, sometimes repeating or skipping others, based on our unique challenges and successes. Our focus for today is the stage of emulating and mirroring.

Have you ever been so profoundly moved by a book that you thought, “I want to write like that?” We all have authors whose work stirs something deep within us, igniting a desire to emulate their craft in our own unique way. This is not about copying but learning from mentors, building our skills and strengths. It’s about identifying aspects of others’ work that resonate with us, and then questioning, “How did they do that?” and “How can I do that in my way?”

Interestingly, while other art forms commonly practice emulating and mirroring, writers often shy away from this exercise. We explore this phenomena and much more. Tune in for an enriching conversation, and don’t forget to download our accompanying worksheet to support you on your creative quest. Let’s continue this journey together.

Resources

• Episode 18: The Creativity Quest
• Episode 19: Carrying Inner Disquiet
• Episode 20: Releasing

Ep. 22: The Creativity Quest: Emulating and Mirroring

Dave Hogan, Gina’s Pop
0:02
Welcome to Around the Writer’s Table, a podcast focusing on the crossroads of creativity, craft, and conscious living for writers of all ages and backgrounds. Your hosts are Gina, Melody, and KimBoo, three close friends and women of a certain age, who bring to the table their eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives on the trials, tribulations, and the joys of writing. So pull up a chair and get comfortable here around the writer’s table.

Melody, A Scout
0:43
Welcome back to Around the Writer’s Table. I’m Melody, A Scout. And I’m here with my two partners in crime, writing crime, editing crime, just basic crime.

KimBoo York
0:59
I plead the fifth.

Melody
1:01
That was KimBoo York, our resident genre novelist and former project manager who helps writers create holistic productivity in their creative lives. And Gina Hogan Edwards, who is–hey, Gina–passionate about supporting women in finding their voices on the page.

KimBoo
1:27
I think you could tell we’re, you know, audience, just love us because we are all, it’s been a week for all three of us. So we need the love to make it through this episode. We’re gonna, We’re trying hard for you.

Melody
1:41
Yep. So here we go. And this week’s episode is another chapter in the creativity cycle. This structure was created by Gina. It’s fascinating about the creative cycle process for any creative types, not just writers. But we’re talking about writers today. And today’s subject, phase, part of the cycle is going to be on Emulating and Mirroring, the muscle-building, beginner’s mind where we learn and absorb. And Gina, I would love for you to tell us more about this part of the creativity cycle.

Gina Hogan Edwards
2:27
Sure, thank you, Melody. So we’ve already talked about a couple of stages that I’ll just briefly touch on. And I also want to qualify the name that we have been applying to this process that we’re speaking about is the creativity cycle. And as we’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, we don’t go through this creative process in any sort of sequential fashion whatsoever. We often go through the stages, and we may repeat stages, we may skip over some stages, the different challenges and issues that we face in each stage will vary in intensity. And so this cycle that we talked about is not technically a cycle. So I’ve started referring to it as a creativity quest. And when we get to particular stages, as we discuss them, I will try to note each time if there is a tendency in a particular stage, to do what I call ‘looping,’ where we go back and we have to repeat another stage to get back to where we are now at a different level. Or if we might skip the next stage and move on because we’ve perhaps been at that stage before and we don’t need to repeat that one. And so that’s a convoluted way of me saying that this is not a linear process.

KimBoo
4:01
No, actually, I just gotta say, I gotta jump in there is, you told me you were changing it to the creativity quest. And I was, like, a genre, romance, fantasy author was like, “Yes, we’re going on a quest!”

Gina
4:16
That does feel, definitely feels more apropos. And you know, there are other models for this. There’s Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. There’s all different kinds of ways to describe this journey that we call the creative journey, whether you’re a writer or any kind of an artist. And it’s just a way for us to think about the different phases that we go through and the obstacles and also how to deal with the successes, whether they’re expected or not. So that’s what we’ve been focusing on and today’s stage is Emulating and Mirroring, which is the one that follows Releasing, which is what we talked about in episodes 20 and 21, right, ladies? 

Melody
Yes, ma’am. 

Gina
Got my numbers right here. Okay. And then in the episodes prior to that we talked about the first stage called Carrying Inner Disquiet. So you can go back to those and listen to them. And there are also worksheets for each one. So that brings us…

KimBoo
5:19
We’ll have direct links as part of the resources for the show notes for this episode to those episodes.

Gina
5:25
Excellent. So that brings us to the current stage, our topic for today, Emulating and Mirroring. So the way I think of this stage, you know how when you engage in whatever artistic endeavor it is that you’re wanting to do, and of course, we talk mostly about writers, so when you picked up a book that just really sucked you into the story or the words that the writer was using were just so impactful to you. And you’re like, “I want to write like that.” Have either of you ever had an instance like that?

KimBoo
6:10
Oh, oh, for sure. Actually, a recent one I had, and Gina, you know this because I came basically crying to you about it, was Victoria Goddard’s Hands of the Emperor, which is a very long fantasy novel, very, just amazing. And literally, I was in tears at the end of it. And I just threw it at Gina, and I’m like, “Tell me how she did it.” It’s fantastic. Just, yeah, I mean, if I could write like that. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah.

Gina
6:43
How about you? How about you, Melody?

Melody
6:44
Back in the day, I loved Anita Shreve and Sue Miller books. I thought their characters are always fascinating and the way that they described this inner journey that their characters went on, to me, just drew me in. Recently, I have been having some movie nostalgia, so I’ve been watching some older classic movies, and I rewatched Out of Africa, and it made me want to read the book. And so I am reading now Out of Africa in the way that Karen, I think it’s Blinken is her last name, writes these hugely descriptive paragraphs about the beauty of Africa and the landscape and the native peoples there and their love for the land and everything. It’s like, oh, boy, I would love, love, love love to be able to do that. That’s my goal. To do that.

Gina
7:56
So when we say that, you know, when we do recognize that someone is doing something in a way that we would like to somehow emulate, what we’re saying is that we may like the way that they develop their characters, we may like the way that they use unusual words to describe things. What I found when I’ve been talking about this creative cycle with folks is that when I get to the Emulating and Mirroring stage, just hearing those words ‘emulating’ and ‘mirroring,’ a lot of people go, “Ew, we can’t do that,” because they think what I’m talking about is basically copying somebody else’s work, which absolutely is not what this stage is about.

This stage is about us engaging with mentors, identifying what the things are that we may like in others’ work so that we can do what KimBoo referenced in Victoria Goddard’s work and go, “How did she do that? And then how can I claim that and do that in my own way.” And so this is a very, very much a learning stage. This is a stage in which we need to have beginner’s mind. We are building our skills and our strengths by looking to those people that we admire, by working with, if we’re lucky enough to have mentors who are actually present with us instead of simply people that we look up to, but this is not about copying. Now, what I will say, too, that I have noticed, other artistic endeavors besides writing are much better at doing this as a deliberate practice than writers are. So, for instance, dancers. They may duplicate the dance of another well respected, well-known dancer that they love. A pianist will play the works of Beethoven or Bach or whoever it is that they admire. Artists will deliberately practice styles of the classic artists so that they can hone their skills. But what I don’t see writers often doing, it does happen, but what I don’t often see them doing is reading a piece like Hemingway and then, as a deliberate practice, attempting to use the same kind of style or the same kind of voice that he does. And you can name any writer, I just happen to pull him out of my hat. But that’s an interesting observation from my point as a coach, that I see other types of creative people doing a deliberate practice of emulating their people that they admire in whatever field that they’re in. But writers don’t often do that. What do you guys think about that?

Melody
11:18
Well, I actually, as we were talking about it, I realized it wasn’t very intentional on my part, but when I was writing my nonfiction book Soul of the Seasons, I was doing exactly that because I had drawn on some of my favorite spiritual nonfiction writers, and I had incorporated some of their stuff into my early first drafts and, Gina, as my editor, you didn’t say that to me, but you made some suggestions on our first go round. And then handed it back to me to do with it what I will. And when I came back with the second, I don’t know, second or third round, I can’t remember which phase it was. 

Gina
Or fourth, or fifth, who knows? 

Melody
It could have been revision 2,761. You came back with a really amazing note that I think I printed out somewhere where you said I had come into my own voice. And that I had cut away the excess. That was not exactly your words, but it was like, “You got it, you’re on it. Keep going.” So that was really good to hear. And like a lot of stuff in my life, it was nothing intentional. It was like, “Oh, I did that.” That was cool. But I can see the importance of that. 

Gina
13:05
That is a perfect illustration of, if we do allow ourselves to do this–you can call it whatever you want, deliberate mimicking, writing practice, whatever–of those that we admire, after a while, we do come into our own voice because we will know intuitively what aspects of that feel right for us to internalize and to incorporate into our own writing. And actually, this stage, if you stay in it too long, after a while, it gets really dissatisfying. It’s easy to get stuck in that rut, especially if you’re not purposefully pursuing trying to find your own voice. It’s easy to get stuck in Emulating and Mirroring. But if you want to really lean into who you are as a writer, after a while this stage is going to feel really dissatisfying.

Melody
14:16
So tell me more about what getting stuck in this phase might look like.

KimBoo
Can I answer that? 

Gina
14:26
Yes, please.

KimBoo
14:29
Because I did.

Melody
14:31
I was going to say sounds like a voice of experience.

KimBoo
14:34
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was trying to hone my creative writing style, and so I was reading a lot of not straight-out comedic writing, but what I’m thinking of, what happened is, what happened is that I read a lot of Mark Twain. And I started as I was writing and was writing, I kept studying his work and reading more and reading short stories and reading his novels, and just delighting in the wordplay. And then I was writing some blog posts. And I didn’t even think of it, but one of my friends was reading one of my blog posts and was like, “Wow, man, that could have been written by Mark Twain.” And I was like, “Oh, shit”. Because I was, I was, it wasn’t emulating and mirroring in the sense of learning from his skill set. It was emulating and mirroring as in ‘copying.’ And I then had to reverse course, and purposely not read his work, and really try to hone in on my own voice, because I just, the fact that my friend said that to me, just out of the blue, like, wow, yeah, I really did it to myself there.

Gina
16:00
Yeah, I think that’s a perfect example. And being aware of doing it as a purposeful act is one thing, but when it becomes sort of an accident, that is, that was coincidental in timing. You had just been reading Mark Twain. Your friend didn’t know you had been reading Mark Twain, but then…

KimBoo
16:25
Not that I’m aware of. Yeah, no.

Gina
16:29
And then when she noted it, obviously, there is some correlation between the two things. And that is actually a reason why a lot of writers will not read in the genre that they write in while they are in the process of writing their next piece. And I have to be very careful with that. Because I’ve noticed that in myself is, you know, I love Southern fiction. So if I read something like Wylie Cash or Ron Rash while I am in the process of writing, I can find myself sort of using the same kind of tone that they use. And it may not necessarily be right for the book that I’m writing. Now, again, if it’s a deliberate practice, and I’m trying to see how that does feel. 

And there’s so many things that you can emulate. There’s voice, there’s style, there’s the way somebody characterizes, there’s structure, especially when it comes to nonfiction, looking at the structure of someone’s nonfiction book, and maybe, somehow mirroring that but tailoring it to whatever your specific content is. So this is a really, it’s kind of a little bit of a sticky stage in a way, because some people do feel weird about purposefully mimicking other writers. But I highly advocate it when it’s done as an intentional practice, not to copy but to just give ourselves the freedom to explore different ways of doing things so that we can figure out what our own way is.

KimBoo
18:18
I think for me, that’s the difference that we’re talking about is I was studying Mark Twain to try to figure out the beats of the comedy. A lot of his comedy writing is very dry. It’s not very obvious. But then at the point where I was internalizing it so much, I was subconsciously copying him, which was not on purpose. So I think you really got into both the benefit of study, which has served me well over the years, but on the flip side, being aware of what you’re doing and purposely putting the brakes on copying for lack of a better word.

Gina
18:56
Yeah, yeah. getting so close to whatever that voice or tone is that somebody goes, “Oh, that’s Mark Twain. No, no.

KimBoo
19:05
No, that was not the plan.

Gina
19:09
So you guys both mentioned a couple of writers that at some point, when you wre reading their work, you went, “Oh, I want to write like that.” Have you got any more examples of that in your life?

Melody
19:21
Well, I don’t know. I like a lot of different genres. It took me a while, and writing nonfiction is definitely different in style and tone than writing fiction. Because with fiction, at least for me, I’m working with the characters and their personalities and what their own tone would be. When I read I’m not one of those who say I’ll never read… I do have a tendency to be chameleon-like, it’s an adaptive quality. I learned early in life for survival reasons. So I can, you know, when I get down south here, I can talk like y’all. And then when I’m up north, I have that, them there northerners talk. So I am aware of that in myself, but for me to be true to my story and my characters and the material. And nonfiction, I think, is a challenge. And with the nonfiction work, when I wrote Soul of the Seasons, I had to present the material, because it’s based on Five Element Medicine and has a certain structure to it, but I also wanted to have my own tone, and cadence where I developed that during the book, which felt like a good place. That felt authentic to me, when I got to that place.

KimBoo
21:10
For me, it’s like a long list of authors over a lifetime, right. But I think if I had to pick one that stood out the most that I returned to a lot, it would be CJ Cherryh, who is a science fiction and fantasy author. And I have loved the way she humanizes her characters. She writes a lot of space operas, and it would be very easy, and certainly I’ve read a lot of science fiction and fantasy where the point is the plot, right? It’s like, oh, the wizard has to get the artifact and take it… whatever. But with her work that I always admired and go back to when I’m re-reading it is that it is truly driven around these interesting characters and whether they had to go on a quest or not, you’d still want to read about them, because they’re just, they’re very interesting people and even in the the epic space operas that she’s done over the years, she’s managed to keep that kind of closeness to the humanity of her characters, even when they’re aliens, even when they’re just weirdos that you don’t really understand too much, you understand that they have a world and they have a psychology that’s theirs, even if we don’t understand it, and she’s really good at that. So yeah, that’s definitely one author I’ve come back to, over and over again, over the years.

Gina
22:38
Yeah, I figured you guys would probably have several different authors.

Melody
22:46
I gave you a lovely answer last time, but it really didn’t answer your question, I just realized. And the couple of actual authors, instead of my writing style, would be for nonfiction spiritual writing, Caroline Myss, which I have followed for years and years. She has the ability to be very direct, and hone on in deep spiritual truths. Her writing is very lean and intense, and very deep. And also Anne Lamott. I love the way she writes, I love the way she brings humor into what she’s trying to teach us, and also someone who brings out deep spiritual truths with humor and precision.

Gina
23:37
Each of you identified qualities, which I think is important. When we look to those that we admire, and we can identify particular characteristics about their writing, then, using those characteristics to practice and play around with in our own writing, that it feels much less like we’re copying work, but more like learning. And it’s important that we frame this stage as a learning stage. If you’ve looked at the graphic image of this cycle that we posted with one of the first episodes when we talked about it, and we’ll post it again, with this episode, the first five stages of the cycle are mostly inner work. And the second five stages are mostly outer work. And again, we don’t travel these linearly, but just recognizing that Emulating and Mirroring is very much about learning about being willing to explore being willing to absorb the possibilities of what is out there for us in the writing world that we may want to internalize and incorporate into our own writing.

KimBoo
24:56
You know, it’s interesting, because when you mentioned earlier about how artists and dancers emulate other performers or other artists, and I’m thinking of artists who copy the old masters to understand, they’re not doing it for the product, right? They’re doing it to understand how the oil paint laid on and the layers and the shapes and the colors and how to mix the colors. And they’re very aware that they’re doing that. And it’s really insightful that I think that you really nailed the fact that writers really, we aren’t really taught that. Nobody ever said, “Okay, now write something like Hemingway. Write something like Mark Twain. Write something like Anne Lamott.” And these days, we can go to ChatGPT and have them write like Anne Lamott—that’s not very ethical, but you can I mean, if you want an example of that kind of writing, right. But for us, as artists, ourselves, no matter whether we’re writing genre fiction or the great American novel, understanding the techniques that these, for lack of a better term, masters, our masters have used. Yeah, I really do think that’s missing. I mean, I haven’t taken—oop, I hit my microphone. Sorry—I have not taken any high-level creative writing courses. So I don’t know. Is that something that’s done in creative writing programs?

Gina
26:22
I’ve never encountered any.

KimBoo
Interesting. 

Gina
But your analogy with the painters, I think, is actually the perfect one, because the ways that they’re taught to, in a way, reverse engineer a painting. How did that artist use color? How did they use that particular stroke to accomplish that look. When we think about that in terms of writing, it’s like, how did that writer come up with such an incredible visual image of that setting? And again, reverse engineering it to see how we might be able to do that ourselves, using our own voice. And, in writing, we’re told over and over and over again, find your own voice, find your own voice, find your own voice. And the only way to do that is with practice, is with writing the words, with getting the words on the page. And the more and the more and the more and the more of it you do, the closer you get to finding your own voice. And I think that playing with the work of the masters in this way can be, actually, a fun way of us finding our own voice.

Melody
27:38
Absolutely. And I do remember that point in the process when writing Soul of the Seasons where I could see, it was like I was looking at the work through different eyes. And I could see those portions that did not ring true to me, even though they may have been well written. And so that discovery was really very helpful to me. It made it much easier going forward to have some clarity, because if somebody just asked me before this, what is your voice? I wouldn’t have had a clue. I don’t know. I just write. I don’t know that stuff. 

Gina
28:28
So I think unless you all have anything to add or have any questions for me, I think that pretty much wraps up the Emulating and Mirroring stage. That will take us well, let’s see, we’ll have a worksheet that we’ll put on our website, which is  AroundTheWritersTable.com, along with the graphic of the entire process so you’ll know where this fits in. And so, for our next episode, we’re still going to continue to talk about Emulating and Mirroring but within the framework of Melody’s book  Soul of the Seasons, and how it relates to that process. You want to tell us a little bit about that. Melody?

Melody
29:11
Yes, I am excited. I’ve actually been making notes as we’re talking because all these little ideas are popping up about the correlation about this part of the creativity cycle, creativity quest, and how it relates to the season of Spring [ep. 4]. And I would recommend you go back. We’ve had several podcasts in the past about the season of Spring [ep. 17] and how that works into the writing process. So I recommend you go back on our podcast site and take a look at those and I’m really excited about delving into this, because this is a season where we often as writers, I found, get stuck. 

Gina
30:01
Yeah. And that’s not something we want to do, right?

KimBoo
Keep moving

Melody
30:05
Not on purpose. So thank you for joining us and sharing your precious time with us today. I really appreciate that. And if you want to know more, if you want to find our worksheets, please go to our website AroundTheWritersTable.com. And check out not only this podcast but all our previous podcasts. You’ll find the worksheets there. Be sure to leave a comment or give us a review. We love you. Keep coming back and join us on the flip side for our next one. Thank you.

KimBoo
30:48
Bye bye.

Gina
30:50
Thank you.

Dave
30:54
Thanks for joining us around the writer’s table. Please feel free to suggest a topic or a guest by emailing info@aroundthewriterstable.com. Music provided with gracious permission by Langtry. A link to their music is on our homepage at AroundTheWritersTable.com. Everyone here around the writer’s table wishes you joy in your writing and everyday grace in your living. Take care, until next time.

Copyright / Terms & Conditions

Around the Writer's Table and its co-hosts, Gina Hogan Edwards, Melody, A Scout, and Kimboo York own the copyright to all content and transcripts of the Around the Writer's Table podcast, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity. ​​You ​are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles​, such as ​​The New York Times, ​Miami Herald, etc.; in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., ​​Medium); and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. No one is authorized to use the Around the Writer's Table logo, or any portion of the transcripts or other content in and of the podcast to promote themselves.