This year I set out to write a ‘Blurt’ – what I now think of as a ‘Wild Write’ – every week. I wasn’t very precise about what I intended, just that I wanted to make the most of a few spare minutes by writing something new (most likely fiction) that I would commit to posting on my blog.
Why?
I was looking for a creative boost.
I needed to find a way to look afresh at my collection of stories and novella. I’d been working on them for quite a while and they had become just too familiar. I was hungry to get into new stories but wasn’t prepared to commit a lot of time to new material as my priority was to finish the collection.
I was nervous! Would I be able to write something quickly that could be made public? Was I crazy to go against the advice of people far more experienced than myself?
“Don’t waste time on a blog,” I’d read. “Focus on your ‘real’ writing.”
“Don’t post stories on your blog as they will then be considered published and no journal will accept them,” was another piece of advice.
But I decided to go ahead all the same.
With just over Continue reading
Do you read what artists in other disciplines are writing about?
I was stuck with my novella, not a bad stuck, just a point when I needed to stop, think, and realign characters and plot.
An ancient tribe struggles through this desert, leaning on their crooked staffs which have what look like a little leaf or bird at the top but are in fact tiny bells.
Why am I writing about story endings when the very thought makes me want to whimper and hide my head under my pillow?
Sorting through the boxes and folders of lesson plans, lectures and articles I wrote during my years of teaching creative movement and physical theater, I found my notes for a discussion on ‘creative thinking for creative movers’.
Are you letting some creativity myths stop you from getting down to the creative work you should be doing?
I have so many stories waiting to be finished. Every time one pops into my mind, I drop the story I’m working on and veer off and go search among my folders, then find yet another one that I’d forgotten about but which really should be completed. It’s so easy to be distracted.
Sometimes characters appear complete with full backstory. More often they don’t. Just as in real life, a writer has to hang around to see beyond first impressions.
Susi Lovell 