Common Shapes

The Practice of Attention + Landscapes is Open for Enrollment

• Cody Cook-Parrott

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0:00 | 22:20

Welcome back to Common Shapes.

Dear Listener, this is the third installment of our 3-part mini-series exploring the ebbs and flows of creative work.

Today’s episode marks the return of Landscapes—a writing group for all genres. Registration is now open. Join us.

We also explore the writing process— moving from idea to draft to completion, and the structures that support that work. Cody shares how their new book, The Practice of Attention, came to life within the container of Landscapes, and reflects on the role of community in completing and celebrating a creative project.

In this episode:

  • The origin and evolution of The Practice of Attention
  • How Landscapes supported the writing and completion of the book
  • The role of structure, rhythm, and body doubling in sustaining creative work
  • The importance of celebrating milestones
  • Releasing work into the world without social media—and the quiet that follows
  • Community as both a creative and personal anchor

Invitations:

More From Cody:


Thank you for listening to this mini-series.


Thanks to Joi, Melissa Kaitlyn Carter, and Jess Herrera for their help making this episode.

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

SPEAKER_00

Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices and systems for creative work. Today it's also a podcast about writing, about writing books, about finishing books, about dreaming up new ideas. I'm your host, Cody Cook Parrot, and I'm so glad to welcome you back to episode three of our three-part mini-series on writing and the return of landscapes and inventing new projects and putting them out into the world. Which, speaking of, if you haven't already, I'd love it if you took a moment to download the free creative ideation portal, which is in the show notes, or you can find it on the podcast page of my website, CodyCookProrot.com. The Creative Ideation Portal is a three-day guide for visioning your projects, the containers of your practice, and putting them out into the world. Today I wanted to share a little bit about the process of writing and making the practice of attention, which is my new book that's out with St. Martin's Essentials and Sounds True. You can find it at thepracticofattention.com. You can ask your local library to carry it or your local bookstore. And I'd also love to hear how it's going. How is reading it going? How is doing the attention audit? How is it to digitally detox? How does it feel to integrate the different practices into your life? And ultimately, how does it feel to be more resourced so that you can be of service, which is really the point of the book? The idea for the book started in 2021. I had started to notice my Instagram addiction getting worse. I noticed other artists around me were also really starting to question their relationship to social media and the exhaustion it was bringing and the doom scrolling that was happening, and just ultimately feeling like it was fracturing attention beyond what was measurable. So it was sort of confusing. Like, is this helping my career? Is it not helping my career? Like clearly having a presence there and gaining a momentum or a following looks a certain way to publishers or agents or record labels, to galleries, whatever source of authority is going to grant you access to the space. So that was a big reason why I didn't leave for so long was that feeling like this showcases my talent or my progress in a way that I couldn't showcase somewhere else. And I'm still in the process of questioning that. I'm not necessarily here to say, like, yes, I've deleted my Instagram accounts and I do still have access to all the same things. And that's in part what today's episode is about. You know, I've written about this in my newsletter that if I had to do it again, I'm not sure I would hit the delete button, which is hard to say. I'm not one to always be regretful or remorseful. And, you know, I think it was a part of the experiment. What I know about myself is when I experiment, I have to experiment all the way. I had experimented with deactivating, and that didn't do the trick. And so I experimented with deleting. And, you know, I felt a lot of love and encouragement from landscapes during that time. My time in landscapes was spent really writing and editing the practice of attention. And I want to talk about that because I couldn't have done it without a group, and I couldn't have finished it without body doubling, which is its own art form in a sense. This giving and receiving witnessing of another person or a group of people, so that you may both benefit and complete work in the day. Having the encouragement and reflection and witnessing felt so important, but also just like having somewhere to clock into work two days a week. With self-employment, it's really hard to find that rhythm and that cadence that makes sense to our process and to our practices. And so being like, okay, every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. EST, I sit my butt down, I open the Zoom room, I greet the people, and we get to work. That really shaped the book and how the book was written. And my early morning practice was a huge part of the book. I have the novelist Molly Moynihan to thank for pushing me towards early morning hours, the 5 to 7 a.m. time frame, the before the sunrise time, the dawn. And I loved it so much, I invited other people to join me. So in landscapes, we would have early morning writers' retreats, and I'm sure I'll be bringing them back at some point. But for now, we'll be meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 to 1 EST. If that is calling to you, registration opens today. And our first meeting is this upcoming Tuesday, May 5th, and registration will stay open through mid-May. And then we'll go on a wait list. So if you're listening to this, depending on when in time and space, we might be open, we might be on a wait list, but I hope you'll join us. You can find out more at CodyCookParrot.com slash landscapes. Another thing I did that was really exciting was I threw myself a party when I finished the first draft manuscript of the book. A fellow writer had asked me, What are you going to do to celebrate finishing the first draft? And I kind of felt silly. I was like, well, it's only the first draft. There's so much more editing that needs to be done and other rounds of writing. This was February of last year. And, you know, they were just like, no, you need to celebrate. And so I threw a dinner party at my house and invited all my friends. And I had reconnected with Katie, my partner, and knew she was going to know some people at the party. And so I invited her over. And yeah, that's a beautiful part of our love story, is she pretty much walked in and it was game over for me. And I was like, okay, yes, I love her. We sat on the stools in my kitchen all night. If anyone tried to take my stool, I glared into their soul and made it clear they had to give me the stool back. But it was so fun. I had printed the whole manuscript out because to edit it, I knew I wanted to do that analog. So that's a big part of my process is I'll write the whole book on my computer, but I will edit it printed out analog with a highlighter and page flags and a pen. And so it was sweet. Like people were flipping through it and, you know, kind of getting to know the book and celebrating that I had finished this manuscript and have this accomplishment in front of me. And I'm so glad because I'm really learning that in this season of life to celebrate myself and celebrate when I've completed something. You know, it's pretty easy for me to start things, but completing things can be really tough. And so it's been a process to vision, to start, to complete, and again, just having landscapes as my buoy, my anchor, my community and my group was so meaningful throughout the process. And I actually felt some loneliness putting out the book without landscapes. I think that was something I noticed as I've been thinking about, you know, do I want to bring landscapes back? And if so, in what form? I really noticed a little bit of an emptiness around not getting to celebrate it with the group. And many members of landscapes reached out, pre-ordered the book, you know, said congratulations, and I felt it, but there's nothing like getting to like be with the group and hold the book up and say, look, look at what I did here in this room together. I'm looking forward to having that space back for everyone to celebrate their wins and when they have something that they've finished, whether it's a sales email or a text or a newsletter or a poetry chat book or a full-length novel or a proposal, whatever it is. I've mentioned this before, but it has been interesting putting the book out without social media and it feeling a bit quiet, and feeling like it's hard to get some of that feedback without a container for people to just tag you and say, Great job, or look where I saw your book, or I got your book in the mail today. That's so fast and so easy on social media. It takes extra effort to like email an author and tell them directly, or it might feel awkward or too personal. So it's not like I miss validation exactly. I think I'm just genuinely curious, like, who has the book and are they enjoying it? And how's it going out there? And so without that literal surveillance or tracking, I can't fully know. And in some ways, I think that's okay. And in other ways, I'm curious if that is a push to do some different marketing and try some things out to push the book more towards the people so that I am seeing some feedback. It was nice. The other day I had an interview come out on the show Stateside on Michigan Public Radio, which is Michigan's NPR station, and that was a little bit of like feedback of like, okay, it's it's landing with the public, with the people in different places. And I've had a few just amazing interviews. Amelia Ruby had me on off the grid for the third time, which was beautiful. And Tammy Simon of Sounds True had me on her podcast, and she's just an amazing, amazing interviewer. I definitely recommend listening to that. And yeah, it's been good. It's been it's been sweet and slow, I would say. And I'm okay with that. You know, I feel like a book becomes a part of your business ecosystem. And in some ways, that's why I organized the book study was to have a space that I could make another chunk of money from writing the book by hosting something with people. And it's been so beautiful so far. That has been a space of community and finding connection through sharing about attention and our attention and where it goes and how it lives in the world. And in this third episode of our mini-series, I just want to name, you know, Katie and I had a friend over for dinner last night, and we were just talking about burnout and tending to the self and how living in late-stage capitalism, living through the witnessing of war. We're continuing to witness, you know, both the United States and Israel's attacks on Gaza, on Iran. The Epstein files keep rolling out. Legislation on trans rights continues to prohibit trans people from living their most glorious, beautiful lives. Our community is deeply affected by these laws that are going into place in some states. I could list so many more things, but what I will say is now more than ever, I hope you find each other. And if that is in landscapes, beautiful. But it doesn't need to be in a place that I organize. I hope you go to your local library. I hope you get involved in local organizations. I hope that you find cool Discord communities to be a part of. I hope you find sport groups, whether it's cross-country skiing with friends or going to the park or hiking or walking or Pilates or slow movement outside with your body. I just really hope we find each other because it's kind of all we got. It's kind of all we can count on, really. I've been thinking a lot about repairing friendships lately and even ones that are perhaps many years gone, and also noticing the ones that are many years gone that are irreversible and are not meant to be mended. But I've been thinking about who do I want in my corner and who do I want by my side? And I want to keep making spaces where people can find each other. So that's why I created landscapes so that we could find each other and so that we could get our fucking writing done. Like let's write, okay. It is a writing group for people who want to write. So you don't have to necessarily believe that you are a writer. I might try to convince you. We'll get through that together later. But landscapes is a group for practicing the art of writing, the practice of writing. And I can't wait to see you there. Registration is open today, May 1st. It's open for the next few weeks. And then we go to a wait list. I'm so excited to see the people gather in Circle, which is our community hub space host. And I'm looking forward to seeing people introduce themselves and start to get to know each other. And then our first meeting is Tuesday, May 5th at 11 a.m. EST. Landscapes is sliding scale, $33 to $99. And our first guest workshop is with Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid on May 11th. That's a Monday at 11 a.m. EST. That will be recorded if you can't make it live. Our office hours once a month are also recorded if you can't make it live. Admin hours and our regular co-working groups are not recorded, but we look forward to seeing you there. I'm so excited for the month of May to just really dig in together, see what's possible with our work and our writing. I'm looking forward to Dr. Kate Henry and Stephanie Graham subbing for me for most of June and then getting back to it in July. We have amazing guest workshops planned for the next few months. And I just can't wait. Can you tell? I'm so excited. I'm so excited to see what other books I come up with. I mean, I just I love making books. I love self-publishing. I love being published. I love small presses, I love experimenting. Right now I'm finishing up my thesis for my MFA. The day that this episode comes out, I'll have turned it into my advisor. And I'm looking forward to finding a way to turn that into a book. So I can't wait to see what I come up with in landscapes and with what you come up in landscapes. I hope that you have a beautiful rest of your day. Thank you for tuning into this three-part mini-series about writing, about landscapes, about prompts, about the practice of attention, book writing, analog newsletter writing, writing together. I hope that you're taking care of yourself slowly and steadily. And thank you so much for listening to Common Shapes. I'd love to thank Jess Herrera for making our podcast art, Melissa Caitlin Carter for our music, and thanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in. Feel free to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or a star on Spotify. And if you can, we'd love it if you shared this podcast wherever you like to share things. Social media, your newsletter, text it to a friend. Anyway, helps the show grow and reach the people. Again, thank you so much for listening to Common Shapes.