Today’s prompt is inspired by Hal Zina Bennett, Write From The Heart For some people, summer means sipping cool drinks. For others, summer might mean sitting around a campfire after a day of hiking, swimming, exploring. Summer might mean telling stories —tall tales or short ones— while lounging on a porch, a patio or a boat deck. There is a rhythm to summer, unlike any other time of year. Summer ’round the campfire brings out story tellers. The shaman storyteller of ancient times, embraces his own life experience, tells stories to the community that gathers in a circle around him, a fire blazing at its center. In the telling of what most deeply touched his life, the shaman helps others to see that they are not alone. And in the process both storyteller and listeners are healed. Imagine now, that you are sitting ’round a campfire, very comfortable with the…
Tag: Hal Zina Bennett
Essential Wound Prompt #194
Write From The Heart by Hal Zina Bennett is one of my all-time favorite books on writing. The following is an excerpt from Write From The Heart. “I am convinced that every essential wound, by its very nature, has the potential for opening each of us up to the full potential of our very soul. I do not mean to be Pollyannaish about it, either. It’s not a matter of the universe providing us with the challenges we supposedly need for our spiritual growth. I tend to believe in the universe’s ‘benign indifference,’ as Camus once put it, and that God is something like a courageous and loving parent who gives us all we can take in, then lets us go on to live our lives the best we know how. I think that must have been what Joseph Campbell was talking about, too . . . ‘the world is…
Write From The Heart by Hal Zina Bennett
Write From The Heart, Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity by Hal Zina Bennett is one of my all-time favorite books on writing. It’s a perfect title for Hal’s easy guidance that inspires deep writing. Hal welcomes and invites us on a relaxed journey to travel inward and discover ourselves through our writing in an unruffled manner. The opening paragraphs are much like the in-person Hal: gentle, quiet and encouraging. The “Writing Explorations” sections invite contemplative writing. The “Core Concepts” support calm and tender writing. This week, I’m going to settle into my reading corner and rediscover Hal’s gentle encouragement with my well-worn copy of Write From The Heart. Photo of my post-it noted copy of Write From The Heart.
Guest Blogger Hal Zina Bennett – Transforming Your Inner Critics
Guest Blogger Hal Zina Bennett writes about our inner critics. Most of us writers are plagued by inner critics, those still small voices that speak from within, asking unsettling questions such as: “What makes you think you’re a writer?” Or, “This is drivel.” Or, the classic, “Don’t leave your day job.” Everyone has these inner critics, though some of us find their voices louder or more cutting than others. In their most insidious form, we feel these inner critics as our own self-judgments, not truths that we must accept. The author Storm Jameson put it well: “There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.” We write a few lines or pages that upon our review are “just terrible.” Instead of just rewriting or editing them, we point to them as evidence that we really can’t write. It’s difficult to accept that these inner critics, who stop us in…