Want to Consider Collaboration?
- At July 25, 2022
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
4
Ever think about collaborating with another writer or artist on a creative project? Wonder how it works? Bryan Collins, host of the “Become a Writer Today” Podcast recently interviewed Becky and me about our collaboration on our two books, Writing in Community and The Fire Inside. We had an intriguing conversation which provided an opportunity for us to think more about collaboration, how it worked successfully for us, and how a collaborative partner can help you to accomplish more–and better!
You may want to know:
How does the collaborative process work?
What are the advantages?
How do you find a collaborative partner?
You can listen to the interview (or view the transcript of it) here.
For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com.
Or follow this link to purchase our latest book, The Fire Inside.
Blue Horses: Saying the Unsayable
- At May 23, 2022
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
8
One Christmas I received as a gift the Mary Oliver book, Blue Horses, and was absolutely blown away by it. First of all because of Mary Oliver’s writing which I’ve admired for ages, and secondly, because of the book cover. This features a painting of four horses, their forms rounded and graceful, all looking to the left as if something interesting is there. A fox or a dog returning their gaze, perhaps, or a person. The horses are beautiful and blue, the background in shades of yellow, spangled with stars, as are the horses themselves, their heads and bodies starry. So whether the horses are of the earth or the heavens, we are not sure.
Franz Marc
The painting is by Franz Marc, an expressionist painter and part of the “Blue Riders” group of artists in Germany in the early 1900’s. Marc was talented and influential, but his career was cut short after serving in the army in World War I. In 1916, flying shrapnel struck him in the temple and he was killed instantly. He was just 36 years old.
The World of the Imagination and “Making it So”
- At September 20, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
9
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.
Why “Sense of Place” Matters: In Writing and in Life
- At March 22, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
12
Sense of Place in Writing
For as long as I can remember, I have felt a connection with the landscape, and believe that a sense of place matters a great deal—both in life and in writing. We live out our lives against a backdrop of mountains or deserts, the prairie, city streets, or the ocean, often in various combinations of these settings.
And this affects us. It has an important impact in developing our character–how we perceive the world, how we perceive ourselves. So it is that, coming from our particular backgrounds as we do, when we write, we do so out of that background--whether our story takes place on the plains of Nebraska in the 1950’s or the Russian steppes of Tolstoy’s time.
In addition, of course, writing with a strong sense of a story’s setting provides the potential for readers to experience a place they may not have been before. Reading Wuthering Heights, we find ourselves in the Yorkshire moors of the 1700’s. Melville lets us experience the “sweet mystery” of the sea, and its “gentle awful stirrings.” We, too, can offer this experience to our readers, whether we write of life in the small town we came from, or the rocky coast of Oregon which we’ve only read about.
Most importantly, a powerful sense of place makes our writing come alive. Our characters fall into and out of love, make terrible mistakes, suffer, and find joy again—in a particular place. This is enormously significant in good writing. Place helps to make our characters who they are, just as it makes us who we are.
Sense of Place for Me
I grew up in rural Nebraska, and lived on four different farms our family rented until buying our “home place” when I was fifteen. And I attended three different country schools. Going to school meant walking down gravel roads with my sister, the two of us walking a straight road from north to south, then from east to west, hills and fields stretching out endlessly on either side, the sky enormous above.
It meant living in a place with few trees and few people, walking past deserted farmhouses and wondering who might have once lived there. What does it mean to grow up in a place like this? To live out your life? Does the enormity of the landscape foster feelings of insignificance? Or does it do the opposite? And when you can look out over the sweep of prairie, able to see long distances, what does this do to your view of the world? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I believe it does have an effect, most likely in different ways for different people.
It might mean basking in the place you live, enchanted with its particularities and its delights. It might mean railing against them. Often it is a complicated combination of the two. Whatever it means for you, a sense of place is vitally important. Important to you and to your art.
“The sense of place is as essential to good and honest writing as a logical mind;” Eudora Welty wrote, “surely they are somewhat related. It is by knowing where you stand that you are able to judge where you are.”
–Lucy Adkins
Writing Exercise:
When we first meet and start to get to know other people, one of the first questions we ask is where are you from. Where are you from? Read the poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon.
Think about the landscape you are from—is it plains and big sky? A small town nearly hidden in a forest of oak and pine? Maybe you are from sidewalks and buildings that tower, maybe from sultry afternoons and leaf peepers crying at night.
Now consider what your parents did for a living. Maybe they are from Clorox and clothespins like George Ella Lyon’s people. Maybe from pocket protectors and lines of numbers without end. Think about the smells you smelled as a child, the food you ate. The fears that occupied your thoughts at night .
Now, write, beginning “I’m from….” And see where your writing goes.
For more information about the writing and creative life, and our book, Writing in Community, see thewritingandcreativelife.com
Recent Comments