“Signposts” in the Writing Life

One March, driving west for a skiing weekend, my husband and I found ourselves in an interesting situation. It was a cold, cloudy day, snow on the ground but the roads were clear, and we were doing fine. That is, until we crossed the Nebraska border into Wyoming. Then the wind began to blow. Fiercely, hard out of the north, and as it blew, it brought snow with it, scudding across our line of vision. The farther west we drove, the more the wind howled, the blowing snow creating a ground blizzard. Visibility extended only a short distance ahead. Luckily, the highway had roadside reflectors about a hundred yards apart, and we spent the rest of the trip, our hearts in our throats, driving past one reflector and waiting the few anxious seconds before the next one came into view.

Sometimes it can feel that way in our creative lives. We start out pursuing our dreams—committing to creative time, finding ways to deepen our abilities. And now and then putting ourselves and our work “out there” for scrutiny. But though we keep doing our jobs as artists, we’re not sure we’re getting anywhere.

That’s when we need to keep our eyes open for the “reflectors,” those little glimmers that provide hope, that let us know we’re still on the road to where we want to go. What are these reflectors? Signposts that tell us we’re on the right path? They can be something as simple as an appreciative nod from a mentor or fellow artist, or an invitation to display your photographs in a coffee shop. The occasional acceptance of your poem to a literary journal, or an encouraging note in a rejection letter.

Even better than these outward forms of acknowledgment are the times of inner knowing, arriving sometimes mysteriously. When a small voice inside whispers you’re getting better, you’re getting the hang of it. That aha moment when you realize you know what to do to make a particular chapter of your novel come alive. These are small moments in a long artistic life, but each is a sign of progress taking us to the next moment and then the next.

E. L. Doctorow said that “writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” That’s how we live our lives, our artistic lives as well. Driving blind, or nearly blind, depending on the occasional guidepost along the way.

For more ideas to help you along the creative path, see our book, The Fire Inside. We think you’ll be inspired!

Writing Exercise:

  1. Imagine you are planning to write a memoir.  Don’t panic, this is not the exercise, this is just “playing pretend,” imagining. So in outlining of your imaginary memoir, jot down certain facts of your life that will need to be write about.  I might include:
    –I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere
    –I grew up poor
    –I married Tom (or Mary Ann or whoever)
    –I fell in love with flowers
  2. Next, read the poem “Why I’m Here” by Jacqueline Berger.
  3. Now, select an item from your list and put the word “why” in front of it.  This will become the working title of the piece you write.  You will be digging deeper. For instance, the title of my poem might be “Why I Grew Up Poor.”
  4. Write, using the title as above, and beginning the body of your poem or essay with “Because,” and repeat as needed.

 

 

Take a Leap

The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Creative Life

Chapter Twelve: Just Do It

Take a Leap

Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.–Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

I remember…
The first time I took a leap I was young, about the same age as my fifth-grade granddaughter. So many years ago and I can still remember it, changes churning inside me, subtle, but tangible. It was as if unknown forces had taken camp inside my stomach—driving impulses, fiery urges that kept pushing up like hunger at the end of a long day. What was I longing for?

My school was hosting an art show and I did—no, I didn’t—want to participate. I was worried. Was I good enough? How could I compare to Robert, who could draw a real horse? Or the third grader who did pretty cross-stitch and embroidered a four-colored rainbow? But in art class, we’d been introduced to colored pencils, clay and paint, and a beautiful yearning took hold in me. I loved it, all of it, and decided to take the plunge. From that day forward, I formed a new identity, perceiving myself as someone more than the freckle-faced girl who rode a pony and collected rocks. And seeing my lopsided pinch pot in the art show, I felt a warm buzz course from my toes to my head.

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Listen to a Sample of our Audiobook!

The Fire Inside

The Fire Inside is now available as an audiobook, and you can listen to a sample by clicking on the arrow below. (We think our reader/narrator, Melissa Melottey, is great!) You may purchase through Apple itunes https://apple.co/3BprtCe or Audible https://adbl.co/3iDEPCq. Note that if you are new to Audible, there’s an option to listen free. Take a listen!

The World of the Imagination and “Making it So”

Making it So!

Make It So

Remember Jean Luc Picard, Starfleet Captain in Star Trek? When he and his officers hit upon a solution to get themselves out of a sticky situation—by going to warp speed, say, or activating the deflector shield to evade a hostile force—he instructed his crew to “make it so.” And it would be done. I love that. Determining a course of action and following through. Making it so.

Much of what we do in this life is based upon the decisions we make. Generally speaking, if we decide to pursue a particular dream, if we believe in it strongly enough and dedicate ourselves to shepherding it to fruition, that dream will come into being. Perhaps you want desperately to achieve a college education. What do you do? Study hard in high school, complete college applications and line up loans and scholarships. Or perhaps you want to write a novel. You go to work—preparing an outline, blocking out periods of time to write, and paragraph by paragraph, you write the book. You “make it so.”

Decision by decision, we create our lives—committing to relationships, buying condominiums, going on vacations to Hawaii or the mountains. We learn to play the guitar or the piano, create Japanese gardens or meditation gardens, convert basement rooms into art studios. Roadblocks appear, circumstances may necessitate we alter out plans somewhat, but when we act on our passions, we can create lives which are rich and full, lives full of meaning.

From time to time, however, we may find ourselves feeling a bit stale. Still, as Rousseau said, “The world of reality has its limits; the world of the imagination is boundless.” Maybe it’s time to stretch the imagination, look for ways to further complete our lives. One way we can do this is to set aside time to dream. Get your notebook, number from one to ten, and complete the following phrase: “If all the forces of the universe were with me and the odds were good that I would be successful, I would…”  How would you complete the phrase? Maybe you would:

  • complete a number of paintings and display them in a local art gallery
  • start a series of poems about your garden and the natural world
  • add a new sitting area to the first floor of the house.

Let your imagination go and jot down as many dreams as you can. Gloria Steinem said that “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” So let’s dream, and allow more possibility into our lives. And then, let’s make it so.

For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com.

Or follow this link to purchase our latest book, The Fire Inside.

The Sweet Smell of Remembering

The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Creative Life

Chapter Five: Wooing the Muse

The Smell of Remembering

“Already many of the memories of the previous two weeks had faded: the smell of that small hotel in St. Andrews; that mixture of bacon cooking for breakfast and the lavender-scented soap in the bathroom; the air from the sea drifting across the golf course; the aroma of coffee in the coffee bar in South Street.” —Alexander McCall Smith, Trains and Lovers

Ahh, the sweet smell of remembering? Have you ever encountered a scent that takes you back to a place or person? A whiff of Old Spice, for instance, and you are a little child sitting beside your grandfather at church. Or the sweet perfume of cinnamon and you’re back in Aunt Mary’s kitchen licking the bowl while her head is turned. Smell triggers memory. As children, we notice scents and associate them with certain people or experiences. Years later, when we encounter the scent again and the same associations are aroused, memories return.

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Exciting News for THE FIRE INSIDE

Since the release of The Fire Inside June 1, we continue to hear good things from readers and reviewers. Now, more wonderful news! We’ve just learned that it has been selected by e-book retailer Kobo as part of their Summer Reads eBook Sale. Follow this link to check it out!

In addition, The Fire Inside is now available as an audiobook.

Our greatest hope is that our book will serve as a source of encouragement and inspiration for our readers. That it will help them to uncover their hidden talents and enjoy lives of deeper meaning and fulfillment. We are grateful for these additional ways to share this message.

Happy Father’s Day!

William J. Knipe

The Fire Inside

Chapter Twelve: Moments of Truth

“My life is my message.” —Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma: Life of Gandhi

Although my father was a private person, his beliefs were evident in how he treated the earth, as if it were holy, and in the many ways he applied the wisdom of nature to his life. He didn’t just think about how he valued the planet, he lived out that basic precept in the activities of each day, his life exemplifying what he believed. Coming from the old school of farming, he recognized that all things mattered, that the world consisted of intricate, interwoven elements and he was a vital part of that design.

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The Fire Inside

The Fire Inside

Chapter One: The Fire Inside

We all have deep within us a yearning, a passion, a desire to make and to do, to create something out of our hearts and imaginations that did not exist before. To bring forth something new upon the earth. It is innate in us, this intense wanting, and when we are engaged in the specific type of creativity we were meant to do—whether it be painting, writing, making music or designing a new way to educate our children—we experience what Martha Graham calls “a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening.” It’s what puts the spark in our eyes, the skip in our steps. It is the fire inside.

Do you know that fire? Sometimes it manifests itself as restlessness, a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling that there is something important you must do, you have to do, to be true to yourself. It is the little ache you feel when you read a story that is heartbreakingly true and think I want to do that, or when you see a painting that stuns you with its power, and your fingers itch to pick up a paintbrush.

Maybe it isn’t exactly clear what is burning inside, what you want and are put on earth to do. Or perhaps you know in your bones that you must write poetry, you must dance or die, you must create gardens of incredible beauty, but maybe you’re afraid that if you try you will fall flat on your face. You doubt yourself and your abilities.

This is the way we humans are, having an intense wanting on one hand, fear and doubt on the other. But let us accept as an essential truth that we are all creative, wildly creative, each and every one of us—that we have vast reserves of untapped talents and abilities—songs only we can write, sculptures waiting to be born from the unique spirit that is us; and when we accept that belief and act on it, oh, then! We wake each day with a new animation, a vibrancy and passion. We feel like children let out of a stuffy classroom into a blue-sky spring day, and we can’t wait to see what we can do with it.

The fire inside is the “something” that fascinates you, intrigues you, so that you go to sleep and wake up thinking about it. You want to study it from all its interesting angles and make it central to your life, keep working at it, falling short in your aspirations at times, but trying and trying again. And if you are not currently involved with something that brings with it such zeal, if you’ve kept your fire tamped down, unable to act on your passion for whatever reason, know that it is still there— the beginning of days filled with intense purpose and meaning, waiting for you.

You can take a closer look at (and pre-order) The Fire Inside here. For more about the writing and creative life, you can visit our home page.

“The Fire Inside” Creative Exercise:

Each of us was put on this earth with certain innate talents and abilities, things we were meant to do. Some of us can identify almost immediately what these might be, what is “calling” to us. For others of us, it may take a little time. The best way to do so is to follow the love trail.

What do you love?  What puts the shine in your eyes? (And there will be more than one thing.) Find some meditation time, some time alone, and consider what you love, what might be calling to you. Maybe it is spending time messing with watercolors, or taking pictures and arranging them in a scrapbook to tell a story. Maybe you love figuring out the plots in mystery novels. Jot these down in your notebook. Try this exercise several times a week, several times a month. You’ll begin to see patterns and themes and it may become clearer what you love to do.

 

Announcing…our Book Trailer!

Hello Friends,

As you may know, our new book, The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Creative Life will be released June 1. It is the second of our “Essential Writing and Creative Series,” and we are excited! To announce our book, we’ve ventured into new territory, and began working with an excellent designer to create our book trailer.  Check it out!

What Can Cranes Teach You?

“Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”—Mary Oliver

Photo by Jeanne Dill.

The cranes’ visit.
Last week, on a side road off Nebraska Interstate 80, I heard them first, the “music of an angelic avian chorus” as naturalist Paul A. Johnsgard describes the strains of the sandhill cranes. For more than a thousand years, five hundred thousand cranes have come to Nebraska and refuel in the harvested cornfields along the Platte River Valley consuming corn and other grains.

The cranes’ thin, pointed black bills move up and down like pistons and, while their heads blink red, they pick clean the harvested fields. When you see them from a distance—all those legs and elbows—they look like the moving parts of a great overheated threshing machine.

What can cranes teach you?

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