Marijke McCandless is an award-winning author, mindfulness coach, and playfulness instigator who helps people come alive to the present moment. She is the author of Naked in the Now: Juicy Practices for Getting Present (Collective Ink, 2024) and another award-winning book, a memoir, More: Journey to Mystical Union Through the Sacred and the Profane. She was recently featured as a cover story in Formidable Woman US magazine. Creator of the Naked Writing method, she leads Write Now Mind, a global writing and awareness community featured by Arianna Huffington on Thrive Global as a life-changing habit. She is a sought-after workshop leader and speaker, most recently moderating a panel at the San Diego Writers Festival and teaching at the Las Vegas Writers Conference. She lives in Las Vegas, where you can find her writing, coaching, and climbing rocks.
Your book, Naked in the Now is an invitation to stop waiting for your life to slow down and start actually living it. Take us through your book.
Naked in the Now: Juicy Practices for Getting Present is an invitation to dip into presence right now, regardless of circumstances. It’s a collection of short, juicy, playful, sometimes irreverent practices for meeting your life exactly as it is, right now, instead of the polished, edited version we present to the world.
The title isn’t a gimmick — it’s the whole point. Getting “naked” means dropping the thoughts, tensions, and desires – along with our societal masks – that keep us from tuning into the vitality of being right now. It’s an invitation to engage in an inner striptease, shedding whatever we’ve layered on to seem okay, together, acceptable. Presence isn’t a discipline you white-knuckle your way into. It’s what’s left when you stop editing yourself. The book moves through practices that are sensory, embodied, and light-hearted because I think mindfulness has gotten a reputation for being a solemn and serious endeavor. I wanted to write something that reclaimed the messy joy and vitality of life right now, without having to improve ourselves first and then benefit—a place where we can befriend our thinking mind even as we realize it is not the whole of who we are.
Village Books describe your book as “The most beautiful, poetic, playful, and rebellious book I’ve ever read on mindfulness.” Tell us about your upcoming workshop on August 2.
That description, from a participant at my Village Books event last year, means the world to me, because a little “rebellious” is exactly what I’m going for. Mindfulness doesn’t have to be quiet and solemn — it can be alive, funny, even a little defiant. Another person described it as a cheeky book on mindfulness – I like that too.
August 2 will be my third year bringing practices from Naked in the Now to Village Books in Bellingham, and the second year I have offered my signature Naked Writing Workshop — no clothing removal required! Naked Writing is an invitation to allow words to flow without worrying about spelling or punctuation or whether you are being eloquent, and then to dare to share your unedited self with others in a safe, nurturing space. It’s become one of my favorite recurring public events. There’s something about Village Books and the Bellingham community that makes people willing to take real risks on the page. I’ve made lasting connections with writers I’ve met there, relationships that have carried on well past the hour we spent together. I’m genuinely stoked to be back.
What are some of the takeaways from your workshop?
The core of it is learning to write faster than your inner critic can object. Naked Writing uses timed, open-ended prompt-based freewriting — you keep your hand moving, get specific, let go of control, and don’t stop to think or edit. When you write that way, the censor in your head doesn’t get a vote, and what comes out is often more honest and more alive than anything you’d have produced trying to write “well.”
People leave having discovered that the thing they’d been editing out of themselves — the messy, unresolved, unphotogenic parts — was never actually a barrier to connecting with others. It’s usually the path to it. I’ve watched someone write about standing on a riverbed and unlocking a story about his mother’s deathbed he’d never told anyone, and a room goes quiet not because they knew his story but because they recognized their own grief in it. I’ve watched a woman start writing about sewing and discover, sixty-some years in, that she’d been sitting on a completely different story the whole time — one so raw and true it went on to win an international writing contest. That’s the takeaway: you don’t know what you’re carrying until you write fast enough to outrun the part of you that wants to keep it hidden.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naked-in-the-now-workshop-with-marijke-mccandless-tickets-1986916827718
As a Writing Coach, tell us about the Naked Writing method.
Naked Writing is a contemplative freewriting practice I’ve been teaching since 2019, rooted in the tradition Natalie Goldberg pioneered — the idea that writing practice and spiritual practice aren’t separate things. I’ve built it into a full method with four simple rules: keep your hand moving, be specific, lose control, don’t think. You write to a prompt for a few timed minutes — “Right now, I notice…” is usually where I start a session — and then you share, if you’re willing, without anyone critiquing or “fixing” what you wrote. I liken offering feedback to others to belaying a rock climber—we offer support and heartfelt encouragement.
What makes it work is that it removes the two things that usually block honest writing: time to overthink, and permission to stop. Most people arrive assuming they’ll write about something small and safe. Almost nobody leaves having done that. It’s as much an awareness practice as a writing practice. What words want to flow through you? When I listen to others, can I listen for what truly moves me and how I see myself in them, instead of judging the delivery? My job as a coach isn’t to teach craft in that room — it’s to hold a container safe enough that people are willing to let something true fall out of them.
Tell us about your fall program.
This fall, I’m continuing Write Now Mind, my free global writing community, which has been running since 2019 and is currently migrating to a new platform to keep peer feedback anonymous and accessible to everyone, at no or little cost. Alongside that, Write by the Sea continues weekly via Zoom, and Write by Red Rock meets monthly in Las Vegas. I love welcoming new writers! Write Now Mind is the most accessible place to start–no experience necessary, just a willingness to show up and write true.
What’s next?
I’m continuing to bring Naked Writing to new communities and new formats — the return to Village Books this August, ongoing sessions with Write Now Mind, Write by the Sea, and Write by Red Rock — and exploring ways to reach even wider audiences with this work, including some exciting speaking opportunities I’m developing right now. Stay tuned. In addition, I am offering some guided free juicy practices on Insight Timer (see, for example, A Waterfall of Golden Light – aka Kissing Yourself All Over) and hope to create an audiobook of Naked in the Now next year.