ZOOM ON ARCHETYPES / ZOOM SUR LES ARCHÈTYPES
A&I: The stories that you share in the book all have that common thread of change and being able to be open to life no matter how difficult their situations were.
MM: It really is everything. It’s just a willingness. It’s not that you have to know what to do, because when something unexpected happens, you don’t know what to do. But you need to be willing to be shown. You need to be willing to keep an open mind and to be shown the way forward, to imagine a way forward. You don’t have to have the whole picture or to be able to say, “A year from now I’ll be there.” You don’t know where you’ll be. Being willing to be in the unknown is where creativity comes from. Creativity comes from not knowing.
A&I: I like that.
MM: It’s true. As a writer, I know it’s true. Because very often, it’s those moments when I don’t know what’s happening that the great ideas come.
A&I: What inspired you to be a writer?
MM: I’ve always been a writer. I was born a writer. I’ve written since I was a little kid and I grew up in a house where there was a lot of loss, as I was saying before - my dad disappeared, it was kind of a crazy household. So writing was a refuge for me. I’ve been keeping a journal since I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and it’s been a place where I could tell the truth and figure things out. And a lot of writers are witnesses; we’re observers. As a kid, I felt like an outsider in my house who was watching all of this stuff unfold and wanting to record it. I felt like if I didn’t tell the stories, no one was ever going to tell them. And I loved these people and it was sad to me the things that were happening and I wanted it to count for something. And that’s what storytelling does; it is a way of creating meaning and of understanding what things mean. So for me, from a very early age, that was a necessity. It was a way that I survived, and then when I graduated from college I had to figure out a way to do this in my life, so I moved to New York and I became a journalist and an editor. I was in the magazine world for a while.
A&I: In addition to writing books now, do you also lead workshops?
MM: I do. I love this. This was only in the last 6 or 7 years that I’ve been teaching online and doing workshops. It takes up about half my time now. And I love working with people. I love sharing what I’ve learned over a couple of decades of not only about writing but also how to be a human being, with the principles we’re talking about – survival, telling the truth and what happens when your story changes. The workshops I do with people are all about self-inquiry, deep investigation and discovering this genius, this creative engine that we all have inside of us. It doesn’t have to be art. It can be making a garden; it can be working with children. It doesn’t matter what form the creativity takes, but helping people touch that source of creativity in themselves and how it changes them - how it brings them to life - I find extremely inspiring.
A&I: How can people tap into their own creative genius?
MM: A lot of people will tell you, “Oh, I’m not creative.” Those are the people I like the best because I get to knock on the door and say “Oh really?” And by the end of the weekend they’re sort of blown away, they’re fascinated with hummingbirds or they love taking photographs or whatever it is. So the first step is getting past the idea that some people have that they’re not creative. And
A&I : Les histoires que vous partagez dans votre livre ont toutes comme fil conducteur cette idée du changement, d’être capable de rester ouvert à la vie quelles que soient les difficultés rencontrées.
MM : C’est ce qui est au cœur de tout. Ce n’est qu’une question de volonté. Il ne s’agit pas de savoir quoi faire car quand quelque chose d’inattendu arrive, on ne sait pas quoi faire. Mais il faut avoir la volonté d’accepter ce qui vous arrive. La volonté de rester ouvert d’esprit et d’accepter de considérer un autre chemin, de l’imaginer. Vous n’avez pas besoin de tout vous représenter tout de suite, ou de vous dire « Dans un an je serai là. » vous ne savez pas où vous serez. Accepter d’être dans l’inconnu est à l’origine de la créativité. C’est être ignorant qui donne naissance à la créativité.
A&I : J’aime cette idée.
MM : C’est tout à fait ça. En tant qu’écrivain, je sais que c’est le cas. Parce que très souvent, c’est dans ces moments où je ne sais pas ce qui va se passer que j’ai de grandes idées.
A&I : Qu’est-ce qui vous a incité à devenir écrivain ?
MM : J’ai toujours voulu être écrivain. Je suis né écrivain. J’écris depuis tout petit et j’ai grandi dans une maison qui a subi de
AUTHORS & ARCHETYPES / AUTEURS & ARCHÉTYPES
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