Lit Lessons on Flight School

The Egoic Trap Running Your Hero's Life

Welcome into Flight School: Week 1: What your hero fights for [https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferlauck/p/is-your-hero-fighting-for-the-right?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] (and which level your story actually reaches)Week 2: Which plot you’re actually writing [https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferlauck/p/the-plot-your-story-is-actually-following?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] (not the one you wish you were)Week 3: The egoic trap you can’t see yet (but your writing will reveal) Over these three classes we had fifty people sign up. WOW. Unheard of. And yet, as you’ll see from the classes themselves, only four to six showed up in person each week. And those who did show up did a great job thinking together. In this last meeting, we had a great conversation that was raw and personal. I shared fresh material from a tiny book called Born Only Once by Conrad Baars, a Dutch psychiatrist who survived Buchenwald. I hope you get a lot out of this group with two novelists and two memoirists who covered the full terrain of story. The question that drove this entire class: What is the egoic trap your hero is caught in? And what will it take to set them free? The Setup: Marilyn Monroe and Hitler Marilyn Monroe: abandoned by her mother, raised in a house of horrors by mentally ill caregivers, never knew her father, beaten with religion. She had spunk, determination, a strong will. But she was the tragedy of the unaffirmed person attempting self-affirmation. Walking around saying “I’m okay, I’m okay” when she had never been shown her basic goodness. Adolf Hitler: raised by an authoritarian father (one shot, that’s it) and an indulgent mother (no limits, no boundaries). Average intelligence, failed entrance exams, years of poverty and unemployment. Emotionally deprived at the key formative years. Also had a strong will. Same foundational wound. Different manifestations. Both destroyed themselves in the end. The six egoic traps Konrad pulled from the text: * Amassing material possessions * Becoming a millionaire many times over * Success in studies, oppressive array of degrees and titles * Reaching the top of the ladder * Attaining fame (or associating with famous people) * Gaining power over others through authority, dictatorship, gangsterdom * Promiscuous behavior (there were actually seven) These are the compensations for feeling worthless, lonely, inferior. And after class, Konrad sent me this terrific chart: The Counter-Example: Pope John XXIII Considered unattractive by the standards of the world, yet anyone who met him walked away feeling their own goodness. Why? He was affirmed. And he carried these qualities: * Sensitive (not discouraged sensitivity, but awareness of what’s happening in every moment) * Open to the goodness of life * Calm, unhurried way of life * Unselfish and humble (the humility to be wrong, to say “I’m wrong and I’m okay with that”) * Moral self-restraint (meeting people where they’re at, not expecting them to be beyond that) I gave my daughter these qualities on a 3x5 card when she was struggling: Be yourself. Stop repressing emotions. Don’t hang on your fears. Be assertive. Don’t put people down to make yourself important. The Example That Landed: Cast Away Tom Hanks. Go-go-rush guy. Time is his God. Gets stranded on a desert island. Talks to a volleyball for years. Wants to take his own life because he can’t control anything (same egoic trap as Marilyn and Hitler: Control). But nature affirms him. Survival tests him. He comes back a quiet man. At the end, he’s at a crossroads. Literally. And it’s enough. He doesn’t need all the answers. He’s been freed from the egoic trap. Then We Worked on Real Stories * David (tragedy): “My hero longs for power. Gets it. Blows it. Betrays himself and everything else. Which prompts the rise of an antagonist who becomes the hero in the second book to defeat him.” Clear when it’s tragic. * Konrad (novel): “My midwife wants to write the first book about midwifery by a woman. Her husband says women don’t write books. So she becomes unaffirmed by her husband and pushes her daughter to become a doctor instead.” I gave him the Jung quote: “Children are driven unconsciously to fulfill everything that was left unfulfilled in the life of their parents.” Konrad: “I never thought of it that way till this piece. Crazy.” * Chrissy (memoir): “I’m befuddled.” Me: “It’s almost impossible when it’s about yourself. The lines will show you. Don’t worry.” * Sarah (memoir about adoption): “My trap was a desire to appear fine. Everything is fine. We were a successful adoptive family. We were fine. We were NOT fine.” * My own trap (from Blackbird): Blind loyalty to the point of self-sacrifice. So loyal to my mother and father that I created truly dangerous circumstances for myself. Why? Years later in therapy I discovered my father tortured me with cold showers if I didn’t take good care of my mother. I was three and four years old. That loyalty was a three-year-old’s interpretation, not a grown woman’s understanding. The Revelation A woman told me yesterday on a podcast: “I read your book so many times and it gives me courage to recontextualize my own experience. I felt like I was the only one.” My heart soared. Because that’s the job. We bring forth the human experience. Truth. Goodness. Or in David’s case, a cautionary tale about abject awfulness—but written in such a human way we go, “I know that guy.” Remember, this is a long-game art form: Your book could last fifty years. A hundred. I just celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary and nothing is more powerful than knowing I wrote something that asked the tough questions and pushed beyond what was comfortable in my era. All handouts and teaching materials below. We Have Room in the Live Bones of Storytelling When: Wednesday March 25 at 5 to 7 p.m. These three classes are a taste. Bones is the full meal deal. A direction-changing class that will inspire you to go the distance. If you’re a subscriber, you get 20% off. Check the footer of your last email. Handouts: ✍️Your Turn: What is the egoic trap YOUR hero is caught in? Don’t panic if you can’t answer yet. The writing will show you. It showed me ten years after I wrote Blackbird. It showed Patricia in this very class. It might show you on page 200 of your draft. But start asking the question now. Watch for it. The lines will reveal it. Drop your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for three weeks of this work. You showed up. You engaged. You’re on your way. Jennifer 🐦‍⬛ Blackbird's Flight School with Jennifer Lauck is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The Plot Your Story Is Actually Following

Hi and welcome back to Flight School: Class two of our series was so different from class one. We weren’t just learning framework now, we were applying it to real stories in real time. I opened with a review of Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots and asking them to think about: Which plot best fits what I’m writing? Don’t be fooled, these aren’t old-time templates, they’re living structures for what’s happening in contemporary literature and in your life right now. Case in point: James by Percival Everett. This new novel is trying to replace Huckleberry Finn as the foundation of American literature. And it’s a Voyage and Return plot. A close look at the template and it’s a story as old as time. Jim, now James, falls down the rabbit hole of what true slavery looks like when he runs away. The horror. The violence it forces him into. But in the final moment, he grabs his wife and daughter and brings them to freedom in Iowa. He escapes the rabbit hole shocked at himself, at what he’s become, and at this world. He saves his family, which is the redeeming moment, but he’s unable to embrace his identity. This is a Voyage and Return that doesn’t end with the hero transformed and whole. It ends with him fundamentally altered and unable to reconcile who he was with who he’s become. I wrote a whole post about that here. Check it out. [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/p/what-james-gets-right-about-plot?r=fjvlj] Plots are not formulaic. They’re archetypal. And nested within one another: The Quest contains Overcoming the Monster, Tragedy is Overcoming the Monster in reverse, Rebirth is comedy turned on itself. Then we worked on Patricia’s novel Patricia has been studying with me for four years. I know her story inside and out—the tests she’s been through, the companions she’s gathered along the way i.e.,: the “band of merry brothers” she finds in a pantry meeting I mention in the class. She thought her book was one thing. But as we talked, it revealed itself. Her novel might be a Quest. Why? It’s test after test after test. A long journey. Companions. Ordeals. “You have seen so much in my work that I had no idea,” Patricia said. “I just turn around all the time and go, what? what? You just see so much.” That’s the power of having someone who’s done the work, has cultivated great tools (like these about the heroic hero) and who asks the right questions. I’ve been an investigative reporter for years. I’m always going to say, “Wait a minute. Are you sure? Let’s dig a little deeper.” This is a long-game art form. Why this depth of work and these questions matter: Your book could last way beyond you. It could be literature on the shelf somebody picks up in fifty years. I know, I just celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first book. Nothing is more powerful than knowing I wrote something that asked the tough questions and pushed beyond the realm of what was comfortable in my era. All handouts and teaching materials are below. One more shot: Class 3 - From Ego to Other When? Saturday, March 21, 10am PST The truly heroic hero sheds ego and inward hungers for a greater good. Christ. Gandhi. King. What is the egoic trap your hero is caught in? What will it take to set them free? Or if writing tragedy, how can you deepen that trap? I’m bringing brand new teachings from Born Only Once by Conrad Baars—a concentration camp survivor who examines Marilyn Monroe, Hitler, and Pope John XXIII to understand what makes someone truly heroic versus tragically lost. P.S. Bones of Storytelling starts March 25 These three classes are a taste. Bones is the full meal. A direction-changing class that will inspire you to go the distance. If you’re a subscriber, you get 20% off. Check the footer of your last email from me. ✍🏻Your Turn: As you watch the recording, ask yourself: Which plot am I actually writing? Not which one I want to be writing—which one is my story naturally following? Drop your answer in the comments. Thanks for being with me. See you next Saturday. Jennifer 🐦‍⬛ PS, PS: This is a reader-supported site, if you are not a paid subscriber, or just feel moved, tip your writer. She’ll appreciate it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Is Your Hero Fighting for the Right Thing?

Hi and welcome into Flight School: Fourteen writers signed up for this first class and all had one question to ponder: Who is your hero, and what do they want most? The answers came fast: A 19-year-old seeking to assuage existential guilt (Carrie). A 12-year-old girl navigating grief and secrets (Kristen). A medieval midwife fighting for equality in Islamic Spain. An anti-hero chasing unlimited knowledge and power (David). A memoir about survival. Then we asked the harder question: What’s pushing against them? Because here’s the truth: Your hero is only as compelling as the forces of antagonism working against them. Not just external obstacles but the layers that run deeper. * The innermost self (body, mind, emotions). * Personal relationships (family, friends, lovers). * The extra-personal world (society, institutions, environment). This is why writing a big project (novel or memoir) feels impossibly hard. You’re not just telling a story, you’re capturing the extraordinary complexity of being human. The four levels of value progression Most stories operate at level two: hero wants love, faces indifference. Hero wants freedom, faces restraint. It’s conflict, but it’s not enough to carry a whole book. Push to level three (love vs. hate, freedom vs. slavery) and you’ve got real stakes. Push to level four—the negation of the negation—and you’re writing stories that devastate: hatred masquerading as love, slavery perceived as freedom, self-deception instead of truth. Then one of the writers, David, asked about ambition which isn’t on McKee’s list. We worked through it together: ambition → hubris or laziness → indifference → vengeance. Conrad added: “He harmed himself to achieve his ambition. Or harmed those he loved.” That’s when we saw it—the tragic arc, the hero who throws away everything he believed in and joins the evil force. Now the writers were co-creating. The breakout rooms continued this and were where the real breakthroughs took place. Three writers—Chrissy, Carrie, Conrad—all discovered they were working with justice as their core value. “A lot of injustice in the world that we got to write about,” Chrissy said. We closed by looking at examples: Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Till They Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, the films Missing and Big. And I shared a Blackbird Lit Lesson breaking down C.S. Lewis’s value line [https://blackbirdstudiopdx.com/%f0%9f%8e%a7-lit-lesson-39-divine-rebellion-sacred-truth-the-theological-architecture-of-till-we-have-faces/] (truth/wisdom) and introduced the outlier plot “Rebellion Against the One”—for stories like 1984 and Brave New World where a solitary hero confronts an immense power and is crushed, forced to recognize the limits of their perception. All handouts, slides, and teaching materials are below. Do not miss the next class. Get your spot now. Class 2: Seven Heroic Journeys Save the Date: Saturday March 14, 10am PST We’ll map how heroes transform differently across the seven basic plots—and help you identify which journey your hero is actually on (versus the one they should be on). Class 3: From Ego to Other Save the Date: Saturday March 21, 10am PST Christ, Gandhi, King—what they have in common with Marilyn Monroe and Hitler. The egoic trap and what it takes to break free (or if writing tragedy, how to deepen it). Plus: Pope John XXIII through the eyes of a concentration camp survivor. Bones of Storytelling starts March 25 These three classes are the framework. Bones is where you build the complete structure. Ten weeks, live teaching, draft plan for your finished book. If you are subscriber, you get 20% off. Check the footer of your last email from me in your mail box. Handouts: 🤔 Your turn: As you watch the recording, work through your own value line. What’s your hero fighting for? Where does your story currently reach? Where could it go? Drop your answer in the comments. Let’s keep working the problem together. Thanks for being with me and I’ll see you all next week, Jennifer 🐦‍⬛ PS: This is a subscriber supported site, if you are not a paid subscriber, or just feel moved, tip your writer. She’ll appreciate it and continue with this great writer-to-writer service. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What's Your Image

Welcome to this speedy, but deep, masterclass on the core image that holds your entire story. You’ll be watching an excerpt from an advanced writing workshops at Blackbird, where I share a prologue titled Boxes that opens my new memoir Revert about my three-years in a self-imposed retreat on the wild coast of Oregon escaping not only Covid madness but a long madness of control long imposed on my life. The prologue, Boxes, is a moment at seventeen where I’m drawing boxes on notebook paper in a first attempt to both organize but also control my entire life. I’d lost both my parents by then and was living in a crowded split-level with my aunt, uncle, grandparents, and my niece DM. While Bonanza blared on the TV and life hummed around me, I tried to contain everything—money, school, college, housing, my car, my boyfriend Danny—into neat little boxes with to-do lists. The whole piece is full of details: the cheap laminate desk my dad gave me, the ponderosa pines outside my boyfriend’s house across the street, my niece hopping around outside my door calling,“I’m a bunny. Look at me.” Key teaching moment: After I read the prologue, I explain that I was using it as a prologue because that image of boxes was the singular image that contained my entire life as a woman trying to organize everything into manageable boxes, while fate knocking them over and scattering me and my stuff everywhere. How I know this is a core image? It’s from testing the flow of the following chapters. Does the image fix, can I keep hauling it forward, repurposing and recycling, progressing and escalating. And 13,000 words in the answer is yet. It’s perfect. It’s it. This singular image delivered me a core truth and now I ride the wave of a draft that’s pretty much writing itself. The key image in Blackbird: Yes, there was a similiar thing that happening in my first memoir that we’ve been talking about here on Flight School [https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferlauck/p/blackbird-a-memoir-going-the-distance?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] for the last couple weeks. That image: A house. Open the book and go part by part, and you’ll see the depth of description around each house young Jenny lives in. While I didn’t write a prologue for Blackbird, I did write this opening line: The only house I’ll ever call home was the one on Mary Street. This is also called The Attack Sentence, [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/p/consecution-and-the-attack-sentence?r=fjvlj] as taught by Gordon Lish and is part of consecution. At the time I wrote Blackbird, which is now enjoying it’s 25th Anniversary, that line delivered what I needed. The key image: House. And while writing, it was perfect. Jenny would be moving a dozen times and once would find herself near homeless. Prologue or Attack Sentence? It’s really up to you. Decide what works best but first, start looking for yourself. * Find the one image that defines your whole life * Make it concrete and visual, not abstract * See if it naturally recurs through your writing * Write scenes about your image instead of explaining it My students start finding their images right here in class—the medical caduceus, the hole in the soul, the pack of dogs. It’s pretty magical when it clicks. ✍️ Your Turn: Like the writers in the teaching, have you starting thinking about an image? What’s popping up. Comment in the chat and let’s see if we can suss this out. Thanks for being with me, Jennifer 🐦‍⬛ PS: I’m gearing up for three mini-master teachings, live, titled The Heroic Hero. Interested? Here’s a sneaky first shot at signing up and locking in your spot. More coming soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Blackbird. A Memoir: Going the Distance or Not?

…you are giving us a unique perspective in class by studying Blackbird. I wonder how many NYT best-selling authors would be so honest about perceived flaws in their work and in so doing give us baby writers some practical knowledge from your experience. Thanks. ~ Richard Peeples, SII Welcome: In this post, I tease back the outer wrappings of my first book and share where I got things right and where I missed the mark. Yes, Blackbird did well. 500,000+ in sales. Oprah. International publication in 20+ countries and languages (I personally love the Japanese edition most). But success doesn’t make me, or my work, immune to closer examination. In fact, I miss out on serious growth by not looking closer. As Jane Smiley writes in 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel: “All books have problems.” True. True. There are pros and there are cons in all creative writing, but to believe that even the most successful Pulitzer Prize Winner doesn’t have issues is missing a huge growth opportunity. This is demonstrated here on Flight School again and again with closer examination of works from Anthony Doerr [https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferlauck/p/the-untaught-secret-to-stories-that?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true] and Percival Everett [https://open.substack.com/pub/jenniferlauck/p/what-james-gets-right-about-plot?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web], to name a few. Check them out, and see how I lean into the classic tools literary discernment: Value. Structure. Plot. Go to this link [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/p/blackbirds-flight-school-index?r=fjvlj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true] for foundational teachings on all of these or simply get started with Bones. It’s a class that will change your writing life. The video on this post is a discussion among SII writers (a long term workshop) which asks the question: Did this book go the distance or not? Value. Structure. Plot. In the study of a memoir or a novel, the first step is focusing on the primary character or the protagonist. In Blackbird, it is “Jenny” age 6-11, and I’ve laid the forward moving story on the W chart I use in class. It’s not the only structure tool but it works when we are getting started: Value Based on the setup in the first few chapters, the core value (loyalty) can be seen in Jenny’s motivation. Double checking myself, I pull up the Principle’s of Antagonism [https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n7r9r2qms5dmmvd0ugehh/Principle-s-of-Antagonism.pdf?rlkey=l5bv5001c3gbau8z1quzln8rc&dl=0]from Bones of Storytelling. If loyalty is the core value it will drive the story through split allegiance, betrayal, and self-betrayal. And it does: We start with loyalty to the sick and dying mother, and when the mother dies, loyalty continues through protection of objects left behind (jewelry and a photo album). When the step-mother enters, Jenny goes into split allegiance, giving her loyalty now to her father via a rationalization that he is well-intended but lost, even blind, by grief. Then comes the father’s profound betrayal of Jenny when he sends her to a summer camp and leaves her there after she tries telling him about abuse she’s experiencing. Because this betrayal cannot be born by the child, she tips into self-betrayal after the father dies by telling herself the story of his being a “good man” despite how he’s left her (and her brother) at the mercy of the step-mother after his death. The stepmother tried to break through this blind loyalty and tells Jenny “Your father was not a saint,” but again, Jenny continues her path of destructive loyalty. Blackbird ends with Jenny “betraying” herself in the final scene when, on a Greyhound bus and shipped to an unknown future, she fantasizes her dead father rescues her—something he didn’t do when alive and with ample opportunity to do so. Why then, would he rescue her in this fantasy? This is the last, brutal tell. She cannot, will not, face the truth about her situation for doing so would likely shatter her more than events have already done. Structure Now I have the core value, I can study the structure of the book I wrote and in doing so, spot the core issue which is that overall, the story drags. Translation: It’s slow. Why? What went wrong? Based on the value, the answer is easy now. The inciting incident—the mother’s death needed to happen by pg. 100, but instead I get there at pg. 173 (28 pgs. from the mid-point). The mid-point (the father’s death) should happen at pg. 200 but is pushed down to pg. 287. It is then on pg. 321 that the stepmother ditches Jenny in the commune but it should have happened between pgs. 200-250. Interestingly, the climax (Jenny witnessing the birth scene) comes “right on time” on pg. 370 when she lifts above her own “loyalty fog” and the stories she’s telling herself to experience the profound grace of ultimate truth which is that—despite her personal sorrows (and she has many) everyone is interconnected by this powerful love that she feels in the room at that moment new life enters the world before her. Plot Now we have value and structure, what is the plot of Blackbird? This becomes the litmus test of going the distance. If it hits the basic plot structure (below), I have my plot. I feel confident Blackbird is Voyage and Return—Jenny falling down the rabbit hole when the family moves from Nevada to California and emerging “shocked,” like Peter Rabbit. Let’s double check. Corresponding to the above chart, the story lays out in this way: * The death of the mother is the launch, directionless, for Jenny and it is violent and shocking. * Life with step mother is puzzling and unfamiliar and yes, identity starts to disappear when she’s abused at the summer camp, continues at the death of father. * In Northern Ca. she faces worse and worse situations with collective abuse and rejection * Left to fend for herself in Central L.A, she gets sick, hears voices, things getting worse and worse Birth of babies awakens her, then rescued by aunt and uncle and sent back to family in Nevada. She’s circling back to the idea of father as rescuer and then grandfather confirms it. In sum, Blackbird did “go the distance” in two categories. Value and plot. Where it dropped short was structure. That’s two out of three and so, I’ll give it a C+ or a B-. Where it excels, without doubt, is in the application of scene (here’s that conversation) and voice. These two elements, as the video conversation shows, helped the reader overlook the structural challenge and stay connected to Jenny and the overall story. So, in the end, not bad. ✍️Your Turn: Are you able to name the core value and track how it manifests (in your scenes) in the contrary, contradictory and negation of negation line? If you cannot, what’s keeping you from getting there at this time? Answer in the comments below. Let’s talk. Thank you for being with me and if you’ve made it this far, consider how these kinds of depth teachings might serve your own work. This entire project, here on Flight School, is to spark your deepest hunger for solid, smart, accessible teachings that help you take your own creative writing project the distance. I’m ever on the hunt for earnest writers. If you are one of them, let’s talk. ~ Jennifer, 🐦‍⬛ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe [https://jenniferlauck.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]