Guest Blogger Grant Faulkner: Since it’s National Novel Writing Month, I wanted to share my thoughts on the creative process that is at its core: writing with abandon. This is a reprint of an essay that originally appeared in Poets & Writers. A few years ago I grappled with a simple question I had never before bothered to ask myself: Did I decide on my writing process, or did it decide on me? Despite an adult lifetime of reading innumerable author interviews, biographies of artists, and essays on creativity, I realized I’d basically approached writing the same way for years. And I didn’t remember ever consciously choosing my process, let alone experimenting with it in any meaningful way. My approach formed itself around what I’ll call “ponderous preciousness.” I’d conceive of an idea for a story and then burrow into it deliberately. I’d write methodically, ploddingly, letting thoughts percolate, then marinate—refining…
Tag: creative writing
Childhood Stories . . . Prompt #745
Stories from our childhood can be rich material to write about. Let’s start with going back in time. See yourself at 6 years of age, five years, 4 years. See yourself at the kitchen table where you ate breakfast. Maybe swinging your legs because your feet couldn’t reach the floor. Listen. Hear the adult chatter. Maybe there was no ‘round the kitchen table time for you. Maybe it was a picnic table, or a dining room table. Perhaps there was no table. Maybe family time was in the family room, or the TV room, the den, or the rumpus room. Possibly there was no family time. Friends might have been significant in your child life. Maybe most of your childhood was spent outside. Take a deep breath in. Let it out. See the room or the place where you spent a lot of time as a child. Write about that…
Get past ego to connect
“I think American society alienates us from ourselves, and we have a great need to reconnect. Human beings yearn to connect and to tell our stories before we die. Sometimes we want to write, but when we get down to it, there’s resistance, because the ego gets scared.” — Natalie Goldberg in an interview with Genie Zeiger, “Keep The Hand Moving,” The Sun November 2003. Ideas on how to get past ego and Just Write The Inner Critic Tar Pit of Doom and Despair Is “Go Big or Go Home” Right for You? Rachel Macy Stafford: Live Love Now #amwriting #creativewriting #justwrite #freewrites
Dust to Dust
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Dust to Dust By Brenda Bellinger This post happens to fall on what would have been my mother’s 86th birthday if she were still with us. She passed away thirteen years ago, yet I often feel her presence. Recently, I was dusting a small antique genie lamp that belonged to her mother, my grandmother. Made of white china, its glaze bears the spiderwebbing of many tiny cracks. Miraculously, the hurricane glass and original brown paper shade, though faded, are both still intact. As I carefully pushed a corner of the dust cloth through the curled handle, I thought of all the times this had been done before. Both my mother and grandmother were fastidious housekeepers. Myself? Not so much. I wonder at what point this lamp will cease to hold its significance. A time will come when…
Innovative Technique for Creative Writing
Today’s guest blogger, Mary Mackey, is a gem in a treasure chest filled with innovative inspiration for writers. Mary shares her unique perspective on accessing creative writing. Your unconscious is packed with ideas, metaphors, visions, plots, dreams, colors, characters, emotions—in short, everything you need to write a great visionary novel. But how do you get to it? How do you step out of the social agreement we call “reality,” and dip into this incredibly rich resource? You could go to sleep and try to mine your dreams, but even if you dreamed an entire novel, the moment you woke up, you would forget most of it within seconds, because you hadn’t processed the ideas into your long-term memory. Worse yet, when you dream, you are not in control, so you can’t do specific things like talk to one of your characters or work out a specific plot problem. Granted, some…
Help Your Creativity Blossom
Guest Blogger Suzanne Murray shares why freewrites inspire writing: I have taught the creative writing process for more than twenty years, working in part with a technique known as “freewriting” where I encourage participants to “just let it rip”. We don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar or whether it is good. We suspend the censor and let our first thoughts spill out onto the page. People new to the class are always nervous about this kind of letting go. Since I write and share my own raw writing with the group, I was rather nervous when I first started teaching the classes but found that by maintaining a safe and sacred atmosphere of unconditional acceptance for whatever wanted to come forth it really calmed the fear for everyone. We learn quite early to fear making mistakes. We all have a well-developed censor that confines us within the limiting parameters of…
A Scar . . . Prompt #449
Write about a scar. Could be a scar you have. A scar you have seen. A scar on Mother Earth. Could be an emotional scar. Write about a scar from someone else’s point of view . . . someone who caused the accident, caused the scar, was bewitched or repelled by the scar. Or write from the point of view of the scar.
What games did you play? Prompt #32
Today’s prompt is from To Have Not, a fascinating memoir by Frances Lefkowitz. When us kids used to walk down 16th Street to the schoolyard or across Sanchez to the corner store, we’d keep a lookout for cool cars. When one drove by – a red mustang convertible, a tiny MG, a black Jag with the silver cat ready to pounce off the hood – whoever saw it first would point and say, “That’s my car!” We could play this game anywhere, my brothers and their buddies and I, shouting the words loud and fast to drown out anyone else who might be thinking about claiming the same car. You could even play it alone, whispering the three magic words while walking home from school or sitting in a window seat on the bus, leaning your drowsy head against the sun-warmed glass. Then the car would speed through traffic, carrying…
Memories – Prompt #29
Today’s prompt: Memories
Your best gift or your all-time favorite gift. — Prompt #28
You can use these prompts to write memoir, fiction, poetry, or to just write. It doesn’t matter what your genre is, you can use these prompts to develop the craft of writing. You can respond to the prompt from your personal experience or as a fictional character would respond. Here we go: There are tacky gifts, insulting gifts, selfish gifts the giver secretly wants, cheap gifts and re-gifted gifts. But some gifts are transcendent. Have you ever received such a perfect gift? One that amazed you with its imagination? Perhaps it was a gift that completely touched your heart, changed your life, opened a new world? Maybe it was a gift so dear you held onto it for a lifetime. What was it and why was it so special to you? Prompt: Your best gift or your all-time favorite gift.