Writing From the White-Hot Center
- At January 30, 2023
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
8
Writing From the White-Hot Center
This last year I discovered a new writer that I love, the novelist, Lily King. In an essay in the back of one her novels, she tells about doing a reading at an Ivy League college in which, during the Q and A afterwards, she was asked “what factors determine your authorial distance from the narrator?” She responded that “I don’t think when I write. I am like a blind worm on the ground.” I love that! “A blind worm on the ground.”
She goes on to relate how she loves English literature classes and has been an English teacher herself. How she’s discussed and taken great interest in English-teachery things such as themes and yes, authorial distance. But that when she writes, she doesn’t use her “English teacher brain.” Not in the first draft of writing, “What you need,” she writes, “all you need, is your creative, sensual, wide-open brain.”
Read More»Goodreads Giveaway for The Fire Inside
- At September 19, 2022
- By Write in Community
- In Events
- 1
Are you feeling the need for a little inspiration? THE FIRE INSIDE: A COMPANION FOR THE CREATIVE LIFE by Lucy Adkins and Becky Breed may be just what you’re looking for. And right now, it is being featured on a Goodreads Giveaway.
Enter on Goodreads for your chance to win a free copy!
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
Blue Horses
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.
“Signposts” in the Writing Life
- At November 22, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 5
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:
- 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 - Next, read the poem “Why I’m Here” by Jacqueline Berger.
- 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.”
- Write, using the title as above, and beginning the body of your poem or essay with “Because,” and repeat as needed.
Listen to a Sample of our Audiobook!
- At October 18, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 8
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”
- At September 20, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 9
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 Fire Inside
- At May 17, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 4
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!
- At April 26, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 18
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!
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