The Power of Immersion
If you can dream it, you can learn to do it.
I really don’t know much about fashion, hairstyles, or makeup.1 When I was a teen in the 1970s, we wore our hair long, straight, and parted in the middle. I’ve pretty much stuck with that all of my life. I’ve read that most women do keep the hairstyles of their youths. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s true for me. Sure, I’ve experimented with color, and I’ve ventured out a few times—Stevie Nicks curls, the Dorothy Hamill wedge cut, and the Rachel—but I always come back to my 1970s roots (no pun intended), and that’s how I’m wearing my hair this morning, as I write this.2
When I was a freshman at Lemoore High School, a strict dress code meant girls weren’t allowed to wear jeans to school, or tank tops that might distract the boys. But outside of school, we girls were heady with our newfound freedom to wear blue jeans, saddleback pants, platform shoes, baby T-shirts, and tops that bared our shoulders and our midriffs. And when my family moved to Salinas, a more modern, big-city dress code meant I could wear all those things to school, too.3 Fashion, like hair, was easy in the 1970s.
As far as makeup is concerned, that was simple in the 1970s, too. Blue eyeshadow, blue Maybelline Great Lash mascara, sparkly blue nail polish—blue was all the rage. Bonne Bell Lip Smackers in all the fruit flavors. My favorite was strawberry. See? Simple. Add a little spritz of Love’s Baby Soft cologne and I was out the door.
When I was 20, my dad gave me one of his cars to drive, a little yellow Ford Maverick. One day, the engine blew on my way to work, stranding me on the side of the road. My dad was upset because I’d never changed the oil. But the truth was, I didn’t know you had to change the oil on a car. I didn’t even know a car had oil, never mind that it needed to be changed periodically, and I certainly didn’t know what would happen if you didn’t change it.4 I knew nothing about cars except for the fact that you could put a key into the ignition, turn the car on, and go wherever you wanted to go. Or to work.
My point is, I didn’t know a lot of things when I was young. I didn’t know how to style my hair—it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t a fashionista—I didn’t know how to layer or how to mix-and-match or how to accessorize. I didn’t know how to do a smoky eye. I didn’t know how to change the oil in a car. The list of things I didn’t know could go on forever.
As the world and fashion and my life changed, I was on my own. I had to take care of my own car, and I had to attempt to use a curling iron and hot rollers. It was stressful not knowing how to do some of the things I wanted to do. But I was watching the Academy Awards one night, and a fashion commentator was demonstrating how to do the popular “smoky eye” look. I followed his instructions, tried it with some success, and wondered what else I could learn to do. I started researching the best way to go about becoming more stylish, and I came across a concept that seems so simple, but that I hadn’t really considered. We aren’t born knowing most things. We have to be taught them. We have to learn them.
When kids reach the right age, parents begin to dole out chores like doing the dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, or mowing the law, often without taking the time to teach children how to properly do these tasks. At least in my generation they didn’t—we were expected to just know how to do certain basic tasks by power of osmosis. Being expected to know how to do something, but not knowing how to do it properly, and making a mess of it a lot of the time, wreaked havoc on my self-esteem. I grew up believing a lot of things about myself: I wasn’t mechanical, I wasn’t mathematically inclined, I didn’t have a green thumb, I wasn’t a good cook or a good artist or a good dancer.
But after my success with a smoky eye, I began to ask myself what other things I might be able to learn to do, if I studied them and practiced them. That year, I learned the power of immersion—I immersed myself in learning how to better do my makeup. I started watching the Style Channel and reading fashion magazines and actually learning how to do the little things I’d always thought other women were born knowing. For instance, I learned to sharpen my eye liner pencil before each use—I can’t believe what an incredible difference that one little trick makes.
That same year, when the toilet in my master bathroom started leaking from the base and I couldn’t afford a plumber, I went to the library and learned how to make the repair myself. This involved draining the toilet tank and bowl, completely disassembling the toilet and moving it out onto my back deck, replacing the ring seal with a new one, and reassembling the toilet. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d imagined it would be, not when I was patient and took it step by step. When I got frustrated or stuck, I remembered something I’d read in the opening chapter of M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled: “[A]nyone ... can solve any problem if we are willing to take the time.” I took a deep breath, slowed down, studied the problem, and worked my way through it.
Let’s face it—I’m still a simple person when it comes to style. Most of the time, you’ll find me in blue jeans and a T-shirt, Converse All-Star sneakers, straight hair, and the bare minimum when it comes to makeup—a freshly washed face, moisturizer, a little mascara, and lip gloss. But it’s empowering to know I can learn to do things, when I want to. We can learn to do anything—all it takes is a decision and then immersing ourselves in learning to do the thing.
In my own life, I’ve mostly applied the power of immersion to writing. If you want to learn how to be a better writer, you can. If you want to learn how to write better dialogue, you can. If you want to learn how to do something that you admire in another writer’s writing, you can. The answer lies in trusting your ability to learn and immersing yourself in studying whatever it is you want to learn. Instead of bemoaning the fact that you aren’t good at writing dialogue, you can decide to learn how to do it better. Decide what you want to learn, then immerse yourself in learning it.
I still keep it simple these days—I’ve accepted that being stylish or being a good cook or being a good gardener just aren’t all that important to me. But it’s nice to know I can pull off a smoky eye or a crock of homemade French onion soup when the occasion calls for it.
P.S. You can also choose not to learn to do something. I’ve never changed a car’s oil in my life, and I’m okay with that. I prefer to support small business and the local economy by taking my car to Reeves Auto Repair. It’s a win-win.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
—Pablo Picasso
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY APRIL 26TH
This Saturday, April 26th, is Independent Bookstore Day! This year, it’s even more important to go out and support local indie bookstores. For the second year in a row, Amazon has scheduled a multi-day book sale to competely overlap Independent Bookstore Day—it starts 3 days before IBD and continues for 3 days after IBD starts. This isn’t a coincidence. Amazon is slashing book prices by up to 80%—they’re willing to take a huge loss in an attempt to kill Independent Bookstore Day. It’s blatant greed and it’s so gross. I actually wonder whether indie bookstores may have the basis for a class action lawsuit against Amazon for unfair competition—under California Business and Professions Code Section 17030(c), it’s illegal to sell products at a loss “[w]here the effect is to divert trade from or otherwise injure competitors.”
AUTHOR NICHOLAS BELARDES AT CAL POLY SLO - MAY 1ST AT 6 P.M.
WRITING WHILE YOU WAIT - MAY 3RD AT 8 A.M.
Writing While You Wait: How publishing short pieces can help build an author platform and a loyal fan base before you get a book deal. Part of the SLO NightWriters Spring Half-Day Writing Workshop. For more info and to register, visit SLONightWriters.org.
GOLDEN QUILL WRITING CONTEST
The Golden Quill Writing Contest is now open for entries in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
CENTRAL COAST WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference, September 26th & 27th, in sunny San Luis Obispo, California!
“What I’ve learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true.”
—Richelle E. Goodrich
SOME THINGS FOR READERS
8 Books About Girls Growing Up on the Internet
(Andy Anderegg for Electric Literature)
Diary of a Spreadsheet: Landlords raise rents, evict, harass, all without hesitation. Were they finally feeling a consequence for their actions?
(Chelsea Kirk for n+1)
Suspended Falling: A Reading List on Walking
(Sam Firman for Longreads)
“Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”
—Eudora Welty
SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS
On Literary Journals: An essay with examples
(Paul Crenshaw for Establish the Habit)
What Happens When Someone in Real Life Feels Left Out on the Page
(Nikki Campo for The Brevity Blog)
Think of Your Reader as the Smartest Friend You Have
(Dinty W. Moore for The Brevity Blog)
Structural Mastery: Why the Classics Endure
(David Griffin Brown and Michelle Barker for Jane Friedman)
“A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.”
—Joyce Meyer
SOME THINGS TO MAKE YOU SMILE
Influencer Emily Dickinson’s Morning Routine
(Maggie Downs for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)
Dog as Joy Machine
(Pam Houston for Pam Houston)
Rejection Letters from an Editor Who Is Going Through Some Stuff
(Katie Burgess for Electric Literature)
Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
leannephillips.com
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I was going to call this a “confession,” but if you know me, you’ve already picked up on this.
Although, thanks to my friend Trey, my long, straight hair has a little more shape and style than it had in the 1970s.
I was stopped at a crosswalk at Cal Poly SLO last week when a girl crossed in front of me wearing her hair long, straight, and parted in the middle, and wearing bell-bottoms and a cropped tank. She was me 50 years ago! What goes around comes around.
My little sister Lisa blew up the engines of two of our dad’s cars, so I was not alone in my ignorance.