A wise and gifted writer friend recently reminded me of an exercise designed to provide new perspective on one’s life. I have used variations of this exercise in my workshops. I find it especially useful when a writer wants to attain some breathing space around a particular subject or some distance from a particularly challenging experience. It can also be useful in developing a fictional character. The following has been adapted from the book Cancer as a Turning Point. Part One: Imagine you are a child again, you at age ten or eleven, and you receive a special letter. This letter …
Author: Sarah Lovett
Free Writing Course
If you’ve been yearning to write that novel, memoir, poem or article, the first thing to know is that you’ve already begun. So much of the creative process has to do with what is unconscious—your mind is constantly generating ideas and images outside the realm of consciousness. You are incubating story seeds and growing stories when you dream, day or night, when you drive to work, when you stir the sauce for your kids’ favorite pasta or fold laundry, when you run the dogs or work on a jigsaw puzzle. Take is step by step in my free writing course, …
Take the Leap and Cherish Consciousness!
2008 is a leap year. By the Chinese calendar it is the very auspicious Year of the Rat. If you are committed to diving more deeply, wildly and joyfully into creative flow this year, here are several quotes that may inspire: “The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.” Max Eastman “”There is no perfect time to write. There’s only now.” Barbara Kingsolver “The death of fear is in doing what you fear to do.” Sequichie Comingdeer Wishing you an abundance of creative energy in 2008! Cheers, Sarah
CONNECTION THROUGH IMPERFECTION
Notes from my journal, spring 2007: I’m sitting at my desk, eye level with the window that overlooks our ash trees and the gnarled and knobby juniper, home to the bird feeder. Hot day in the high desert, azure sky, early enough so the fresh cotton clouds stretch thin in the distance. By afternoon, with any luck, they will hang over us darkly, bringing rain. Bird songs dance in my open window–songs of sparrows (the little beauties my three-year-old daughter has named Redheads), chatter jays, robins, doves, and a woodpecker dressed for show. This perfect day draws me to the …
THE 10-MINUTE-VENT
When it comes to encouraging and even enhancing flow in your creative writing process, the 10-Minute-Vent may become your most important tool. It’s the exercise I use to launch my writing days. Writer friends and clients who try it report immediate results: it is a powerful way to steer clear of self-sabotage, procrastination, the destructive inner critic, and creative block. All writers hear voices. We usually welcome those belonging to our characters and the narrators of our stories; but there are some we do not welcome, and, in fact, may fear. I call these internal voices my “cast of hundreds”, …
Making Creative Time
As a professional writer and writing and creativity coach I am constantly juggling time and space for writing and revising my own books with the work I do with other creatives. Add to the schedule parenting our almost-four-year-old; time with my husband when we actually get to play; time with friends; and time to get on the trail with the dogs. I am no longer juggling, I’m a one-woman circus: lion tamer, clown, trapeze artist, elephant girl, and barker rolled into one. This brings me to the importance of getting away-even when you don’t believe you can. 1) Make plans …
10 Things I know about writing (not in order of importance)
Continued with 6 -10 6) I know great things will happen if you write in the morning—or in the virtual morning. Morning is the time for fishermen, birders, bakers, and writers. Those few minutes before your normal wake-up time, are great for catching fresh ideas. That’s the time when you’re least likely to think logically and most likely to let yourself be wild and surprising. Begin while you’re still asleep and when you can hardly form a cohesive thought much less worry about writing well. Write lying down with eyes closed. If you’re really bold, try your keyboard before your …
10 Things I know about writing (not in order of importance)
Beginning with 1 – 5 1) I know that writing is in our blood. Follow the twisty, knotty line of our ancestry back through time, and sooner or later, you’ll reach the storyteller. This storytelling business is part of our human DNA. 2) I know that to be a good writer, you must be awake—really listening, observing, feeling, tasting life. Living life! This is a great gift. But sometimes you’ll curse it. Sometimes you’ll be willing to sell your soul for a few minutes of numbed-out oblivion. Take me to the Devil—just let me watch TV. Resist that impulse and …
Welcome!
This is it, my first day on the blog. As a writer, I’m always beginning–new stories, new drafts, new novels. Beginnings are exciting. They are filled with promise. At first glance, beginnings may seem to be free of the burden of commitment. Anything is possible, isn’t it? And yet, as a storyteller, a novelist, I know that each beginning contains the whisper of its ending–just as each ending circles back to its beginning. This is where I write about writing–beginning, ending, and everything in between–and books, and creativity, and one writer’s life. This blog is meant for writers, readers, those …