My writing intuition is pushing me towards writing about dancing and publishing old writings I had about the scene. I’m not sure why.
I’m overflowing with ideas suddenly.
I’m working on so many projects, it’s hard to fathom where the energy should be focused on, so I trust where the inspiration goes.
I take note of the ideas, I capture what comes. I trust.
And deliver what is ripe to be collected and proudly displayed.
Sensuality abounds.
A book is a place where a storyteller can safely let all their chaos, shadows, darkness be revealed in full, and with glee.
by Tania C.
I think most days you forget that with each action, reaction, decision, word, you make, take, utter, you are deciding who you are that day.
Most days you function in the automatic, being the same person you were yesterday and the same person people around you — based on the image you have created of yourself externally — expect you to be tomorrow.
In reality, every day, at every moment, you are deciding who you are to be. Every day I can decide, for example, if I will be a powerful storyteller, or if I’m a being amidst chaos at work.
Week after week, I’m choosing the storytelling path, and recently, I woke up inhabiting the same body, in the same bed I had gone to sleep, but with an idea so powerful, that it has been transforming my life since.
This idea is making my storytelling going verbal, oral I mean, like our forefathers. I have several projects cooking up, watch this space, (this is a keyword, more on that later) and I am preparing for it!
I wrote some truths today. Gut-wrenching truths, heart-to-knife truths. But in a good way.
Blood on the page is a good thing, turns into tint. It’s life, it’s emotion, courage, darkness exposed to light, even if it hurts, badly.
The life of an artist is made of intensity of emotions. Nothing is felt in half measured pints.
When you feel you are in a rink and people are throwing punches of invalidation, disregard and bias at you, suddenly, there is someone in your corner, seeing you as the international best seller writer that’s lurching within, you feel like Rocky, and suddenly you are punching back!
An interesting tool available to writers “in construction” is to create the cover of your next novel, as it is going to be when it is published, adding all the desired seals of approval. It may be prizes, academic accolades, “international best seller” labels, it may be a seal of “notable book”. The trick is look for the adult you want your child-book to be, and follow its example. For me it would be Big Magic meets Bride Stripped Bare.
I created the cover of my next book about metaphors for the writing process, a sort of memoir of how I came to be writing it, chose the real title and the font for my name, put the real logo of the publishing house I would like to publish it, and the seals of best seller I would like it to have. I had one copy of it with me at work and showed it to one friend, the one day I went to the office this week. I also created the first page of that book, that black and white one that comes with a space where the authors sign their autographs.
I then imagined myself signing books for people including all the people who are not really paying attenting to my messages at the moment, all the ones that are invalidating me.
This friend asked me to make a copy and sign it for her, those pages of a novel that doesn’t exist in physical form yet, it’s but 82 thousand messy words in a messy file. I did it, I signed it, as I would, with a dedication and love, but a bit worried that the copy didn’t come out perfect.
Later that night the importance of that moment hit me. I was in the shower and I saw myself giving my first autograph. It hit me so strongly that I bent down crying, it surprised me, the power, it was a punch to the gut, I had no idea it was even there. Gratefulness washed over me.
Part of me knows life isn’t certain, I could die in the next moment, part of me isn’t sure of anything, of any achievements, of any deserving, and another part knows the future, knows that it is just a matter of time, and a lot of persistence, and that I take with coffee, every morning.
I went deep, open heart surgery, opened the ribcage, wrenched up the organs and found, behind layers of civility and order and logic, over explaining, proving myself worth it, my overdoing of everything well done, my dissecting of all meanings and rage at anything that doesn’t make sense, behind all that I found a Feral Child.
Wild, raw, naked and barefooted, long, tangled hair, a child who runs with the wolves, fearless, unbidden by past or future, by civility or reason, unworried about consequences or niceties. Elemental, she roars.
She doesn’t care who sees or doesn’t see her value, she doesn’t care of other’s judgement, all she wants is to run in the forest and to swim in the river…
From her, the words coming forth are brutal, animalistic, and as powerful as a beast. Let her come…
It is easy to find the thread of inspiration when your life is a constant. When your eye hurts, your head hurts, every aspect of your life is in turmoil, threads are whisping all around, grasping at smoke in the blaze seems impossible. But I go into the idea within the idea and write about finding the idea of finding the idea inside the chaos…
How can you discipline water? Fluidity? Like trying to make water into a shape but without applying it to a rigid container? Making the inner creative mind to be disciplined is a bit like that.
Applying pressure has the opposite of the desired effect, the more pressure, the less ideas and the further you get from The Famously Creative Flow.
The way is digging the path in front of the water for it to stream through it. There is a commitment to the digging, to creating the path, to the process and the general direction, eventually, once you have created a good height difference and a worthwhile gap for the liquid to trickle into, it will come, it is inevitable. Yet, one must remember that it has its own laws of physics to follow, which may seem inscrutable to the digger, you can’t see the lay of the land where the water is coming from, or predict the weather patterns that will create the rain. But it will come, one way or another, if you keep digging.
You won’t be able to choose what comes, in which way, the amount of it, the quality, the purity… you are but creating the vessel. You can only keep digging, and believing and never stopping, because if you stop, the water pools.
This is the creative process way, inspiration is the water, and keeping at it, writing, painting, sculpting, singing, playing, is the digging of the path. We, creators, can get better and better in using the tools of the trade, the techniques, and dedicate more and more time; increasing the amount of captured inspiration and the flow of it more consistent, but in the end… we have to submit to what comes to us and not compare to anyone else, no processes are ever the same.
This is what I am doing. I have achieved, last September, something I’ve been working towards for a long time: I am working four days a week, at work, and writing (digging) one day a week, at home, plus parts of the weekend, and sometimes after hours…
It’s been six months that I’m taking a day a week for writing. Two writing days have never been the same. I spent most of today preparing the way, writing on clarity of what I’m doing, of my process, on research to support my created world, reading inspirational quotes for writers, and going to the toilet every ten minutes and then, it poured! Deep and meaningful facts and I needed to find out about this world I’m creating on paper, I mean, on virtual paper. Over 4,200 words without blinking. And until it came, there was only dry earth…
I’ll finish with one of the quotes I dug today:
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.” Barbara Kingsolver
Most Tuesdays, after work, I go to a Meetup in Sydney CBD for writers. It goes for two hours and we get together, sit down, and write.
A few people talk and exchange experiences once the clock reaches eight pm, on the dot. Others write until they have to go home. I write until I’m about to drop.
I cannot stop writing, it is usually one of my most productive writing moments of the week. I often get “in the zone” and produce high quality work, writing hard up to nine or ten.
Pumped by a guilty late-night-coffee — which will most certainly keep me awake or make me have an agitated, unrestful night — I think the sacrifice is worth it. Every time I debate, to coffee or not to coffee…
Tonight I have churned some great paragraphs and ticked many items of my to-do list for a specific project.
Trying to write, publish and promote your own books while working full time is a little bit like trying to give birth while driving a horse-cart with a spooked stallion must be. Creating life, giving birth to characters, while your attention is constantly demanded elsewhere…
The road doesn’t end though, so I keep bouncing, reins in hand, YEEHAW!
I was talking to my best friend the other day and we were wondering if the concept of snowball was for real. We remembered the snowballs you see in cartoons, rolling down getting bigger and bigger getting memento and engulfing bears, beavers and other characters.
When I decided to go skiing we decided I had to make an experiment and we laughed with the imagination of me releasing a small little ball at the top of the mountain and it growing taking many skiers before it got to the base of the mountain.
When I went to the top of the world I make good on our promised and released the ball. I made sure there was a structure on the way to stop the disaster from happening. I released a small one, the size of a tennis ball and it rolled surprisingly quickly, getting slightly bigger and rounder. But it got stopped by any imperfection on the snow surface. A ski trail, a slight depression was enough.
I think that if the balls were bigger, at least big enough to not be stopped by shallow creases on the snow, it would become a cartoon-like snowball. It was at least as large as a soccer ball…
That got me thinking about writing and the way you need to get to a certain body of work before your ball rolls without being stopped by any intersession. If you take the time to create your soccer ball, eventually, things will become easier, growing and rolling unimpeded.
You will still need to keep creating and offering the ball enough snow-words to amass and keep going.
One little ball won’t go very far, but a good sized amount of writing will get you somewhere with many surprises and new characters being picked up on the way.
writtenlife.me 