Barren World

This morning while writing a friend, I stumbled over my own thought. I had written, "The Western World is not friendly to the artistic type." True, it's not a new thought. But when such a thought comes to me from my writer's eye or ear, it is new for me.

It has not been been easy being that vague term, artistic type, in the USA. "Claire is in her own little world. She needs to make more friends. We'll send her to swimming classes. And, for God's sake, she must improve her handwriting." A conventional script is so dull. I love my recognizable squibbles; it is me.

In the third grade, for some truly unknown/remarkable reason, I wrote a play and my teacher allowed me to assign players for the parts and even have out of class time for rehersals. I boldly called students' parents to request this or that costume or prop. My mother was alarmed. Was my teacher really letting me do this. It made no sense. Why did I need the gold silk jacket my Aunt had sent her from Singapore. (It is really pretty remarkable this happened.) I should have been praised. A special tutor found. The family gotten together to applaud the advent of a creator in their midst.

Of course none of this happened. I was told to pay more attention to my studies.

In college I wrote plays; they were produced. My parents never had time to attend. After all, it was a night drive of 30 miles. Did no one see this birthing being aborted. Was there no one to say, Stop. She needs our help."

Instead my parents said how much they hoped I would reconsider and get my teacher's certificate. I did not; neither did I apply for graduate school and the promised Ph.D. sinicure job of high respectability.

I did not know who I was . I took writing classes/so many. In New York, Boston, Maine.
All were hot with ideas of how to write to publish. And I wasn't ready, felt again a failure, left out, out of step even with the people who seemed to be my peers.

I was the kind of woman who liked to touch polished wood. Who in MOMA would long to touch the Rodin sculpture marked DO NOT TOUCH.

In a sad wistfully lonley sort of way, I moved through my thirties. Picking up odd shaped stones, pretty colored glass, an interesting twig, and best of all a bird's feather, still white and clean/mysterious.

My husband said it was time to get myself together. We had people for dinner. And I made every effort to remember who was Secretary of State and what was going on in NY politics.

I watched writers like Anne Beattie publish young and move on to notable careers. Or Anne Tyler. I admired them. But my step was still off/still not on track. I was not ready. Maybe some artists do not need nuturance; I did.

This world had no class or tutor or place for me to go. So the journey was in darkness. Often in shame. I was one of the lucky ones, who did not, as Ginsberg said, "go down in madness."

I ran a lot. Scurrying from my true world to the real world where I worked, went to the theatre, read books, and travelled.

But in those times when I would draw apart to play with my pickings of the week, I would be most comfortable. Building transitory sculptures out of my rocks. Viewing the colored glass held up against the sun. Using my twigs to scratch words in the earth. Smiling at the music of those words. And my invisible characters.They were always with me. I scribbled down their words.And I told no one.Showed no one.

I walked in shame at my difference. My inability to be like other people. Why was I not Anne Tyler. And I never looked clear at my own face and valued that above all.

Perhaps some day the world will honor its artistic souls. Their ability to produce wild energy, passion, and a resounding generation of rebirth for the world. The world will applaud. We will be honored. Sea glass and twigs will find their place and young poets and dancers out of step, will find mentors to help them take that first riveting look in their own mirror.

So, be gentle when you see the woman kneeling to pick up her different shaped pebble. It is our future. Claire Holcomb

Why Write Regularly

Probably it cannot be said too often that regular writing is the route to better writing. Also, I think it is the route to a stronger connection with our gift/talent/strength, so that when the inevitable breaks come (sickness/family emergency/etc), we can get back into the groove without too much effort.

I was talking with a writing friend today who said she'd read a John Grisham quote saying he wrote every day; hungover, sick, depressed, you name it, he wrote no matter what. My response was, "Hell, I don't believe it." What about a gallbladder operation? Maybe he does, heaven knows, he is prolific and I enjoy his novels a lot, but seems unrealistic to me.

Somehow we have to find our regular writing pace that is able to embrace and withstand a day or a week when the gods just will not let us write. Grisham may write hungover, but with a bad migraine and trips to throw up, I am not up to writing. So there, Mr. Famous Writer.

I've found myself moving into another kind of habit. That is of starting my writing with a note to myself. This morning I found myself urging myself to be strong about this goal to write a novel because, I said, "This novel really needs to be written, and you're the one to do it." I don't know if this will remain a habit, but it's a gentle way to start.

I also was pleased to hear myself saying to my friend of the Grisham quote, "I need every bit of help I can get. Talking to you, my on-line group, all the help from Emily and her blog and etc., from myself......Anything." As I talked to her, I almost felt I was pleading my case. "I've been so badly damaged it's hard to believe I am really a writer and could really write a publishable novel, so I'm going to get all the help I can . Read books about novel writing that I once would have considered "beneath me."

I'm also getting ready to do a first for me thing. A short story that is almost finished, but needs extensive editing is going to be mailed as a gift to some good friends who like reading and writing as much as I do. I've even been playing with the idea of making a little cover that captures the tone of the story. This is indeed self-publishing on a mini-scale, but so what. It's a risk. And if it turns out to not be helpful, I won't do it again. I'll just do something different. Oh, I'm also going to look for some desperate small magazine/journal, scruffy and needful, and send my story there. Heck, it's been ages since I had a genuine rejection slip. This year I think I'd post it, label it No. One, and keep going.

From a writer feeling a welcome surge of self-confidence in her ability to keep on.
Claire Holcomb

Green eyed camera

This is being written to thank Emily for her last article on creativity.

For me I think it is critical to observe my history as a writer and nonwriter. The history that has included so much self-criticism, so much negativity, so much fear that my desire to write was silly, adolescent, really something to be hidden.

My father wanted to write . But he chose to "make a decent living." Late in life he began to write and wrote several novels. Oh, God, they were so bad. I can remember climbing up on a chair to pull one of his reams of paper down. I read a romantic scene and was embarassed. At l6 I could have written better romance. I felt so badly for him. But then, he turned and begin to write articles for adolescents using my name. He won the state Voice of Democracy; the American Medical Association Essay award, was published often in the Progressive Farmer section for adolescents , and on and on and on. I hated it. I raged about it. He said we needed the money.

It's probably something I can say only because he is deceased. That was a bad time for me/abortive in every sense. And surely that was not good for him.

My own writing he said was too personal, too emotional, too much like me. That is really the root I just realized. My writing was like me. And it was not acceptable.

I may still be struggling with that and not really aware of it.

I want so much to be my own camera. To tell how I see and experience and have learned about the world. It may not be anyone else's way, but it's where I've been. No one else was with
Steve in the shabby 34th street hotel. It wasn't a pretty scene in any way, but I was there. And I remember early in the morning waking to find myself facing a small brown mouse . We looked at each other. He ran. I felt disgust. Someone upstairs threw something down the airshaft.
That's part of my photographic memory.

There's much more. And often I despair of getting even a fraction of it ready to share- ready to say to myself - this is as good as I can do.

But, hell, I'm in the water. Kicking. Trying. Going through periods over and over of feeling I'm a fool for doing this. But this time not quitting, I think. Perhaps becuase I have tasted more of the support from people like you/like Emily who say, "Keep on trying." I need that terribly. And I also need to continue focussing on my need to mentor myself, mother myself, care about myself, have compassion for me, love me. This odd tall girl with frizzy hair and no eyebrows but wonderful eyes. Flat feet and pretty hands. A head full of dreams. A passion to be different, unique, to move away from the ordinary.

Can I be 66. It can't be true. The desk clock says 10 to ten. Time moves on. This route although sometimes estatic, enriching, can also be painful and sad. But where else would I be. Homeless without my need to write. Claire Holcomb

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The Muse?

Being honest with the work is the biggest risk of all...
Daring to delve down, laying yourself bare and and letting the truth of your being be your Muse.

Forged With Fire:Creativity and the Creative Spirit, Part 3

On Growing Up Creative

Part 1 is on September 6, Part 2 is on September 10

No exploration of creativity would be complete without some discussion of the creative process as a whole. Yet what I discovered in my interviewing was that people are afraid sometimes to look at the process objectively. They are afraid to dissect what they do; they fear that in examining their creativity, they will somehow jinx the process or take away the magic. In truth, nobody can take away your magic, for it is not for the taking, only for the giving up.

I myself have had an obsession to learn as much as I can about the creative process. This infatuation with the mechanics of the process comes, I believe, from a need to constantly reassure myself that I am indeed creative. This may sound odd, considering that I not only give workshops and talks on writing and creativity, have a website and this blog that you are now reading, but also I have seven works of fiction and a workbook on fiction writing published - and I live a good deal of my time in my imagination. However, as so often happens with creators, their products, their offspring, their creations do not seem to be part of them.

I can look at my eight books and say I wrote them, and know I did, but once the writing, the flurry of creation and the long months or years of writing are over, I feel little connection to the books, the characters and their journeys. I know I wrote them because my name is on them, and I remember writing them, but remembering is not experiencing them. Once the book is complete, the organic process is over and can not be recaptured but must be found anew in another creation.

So, when I am not writing, I recall the experience illusively, as one might recall a dream, and I sometimes fear that I will never be creative again. The charge, the joy of creativity does not come from what was. Creativity must be experienced again and again, through art, through relationships, through innovations and inventions, through the challenging and the doing, through the risk-taking and the dark hours of the soul if it is to remain organic. Creativity may flourish in the light, but it is born in the dark, shadowy, moist, murky, juicy places of the unknown and the unknowing, of the unformed and the ill-formed, in the chaos where nothing is clear and everything is possible.

Picasso said that artists (and I will change that to creators) are "destroyers of nicely ordered systems." My interpretation is this: the first nicely ordered system a creator must destroy is her own: her profile, the face of survival that she shows to the world. For that face is an image that is reflected most often from the dictates of the mind, not the wishes, dreams and truths of the heart and soul.

Kathryn Hepburn said, "You cannot change the music of your soul." And those of us who can hear the music of our souls are lucky indeed. I believe that in a very real way finding the music of the soul is the prime mover of the creative journey, and to hear that music we must break down old barriers, the old ordered systems of our life that keep everything neat, tidy and acceptable. There is nothing neat and tidy about creativity. You have to be willing to not only get your hands dirty, but also to slug through the mud, to bushwhack through unexplored back country, to dive into the chaos, and walk, run, fly, or crawl through all those unknown, unseen magical places where the music of the soul can first be heard.

Most if not all of our nicely ordered systems, come from the expectations and the environments in which we grew up. If you are insecure about your creativity or creative potential, there's a good chance that creativity in general, and in particular the music of your own soul, were not valued highly in your home. Perhaps risk itself was not a high priority, and you were taught to take the safe path, the one already staked out, the one that has turned too much of America into one big generic shopping mall. But what if you start exploring the out of the way hidden stores where the secret treasures can be found? As Alan Alda said, "Originality is unexplored territory. You get there carrying a canoe. You can't take a taxi."

Growing up, I stayed lived my parent's values. My goal was called "Smart 800", shorthand for getting A's in school and 800 on the College Boards. Success in my family was measured one way, academically. I walked the straight and narrow like a dutiful daughter for so many years, believing that life's greatest success was marked by graduating from an Ivy League college.

Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong in that. It simply wasn't my way. And the ultimate result was that I pigeon holed my passions and put little worth in my creativity. Instead of hanging out with the "artsy" kids, I hung out with the "brains", always feeling less than, always competing, always yearning for something, but I didn't know what. There was no one who encouraged me to believe that my strength lay in my creativity, the intuitive, sensitive, imaginative part of my being that alternatively left my feelings raw and got me in trouble, the part that made me feel like a square peg in a round hole. I was so intent on being smart and fitting into my parents' image of me, I didn't have a clue as to what I was really feeling or wanting. I didn't have a clue that I was slowly dying inside. What I did know was that I was lonely, scared and angry. There I was, sweet, dutiful Emmy Hanlon, and I had a raging beast inside that wanted to tear out people's eyes out and claw out their heart and eat it for breakfast. I wanted someone to notice me! Me! I didn't have a clue that I wasn't noticing myself.

So, how did all that get me in trouble? Not in very big ways in terms of the world. I was too good to be a problem kid. But I wasn't taken seriously in the family because I was "flighty." When I was little, I couldn't sit for hours and listen to story books as my sister could. I was always forgetting what I was asked to do. "Send Emily to the store for a head of lettuce and she'll come home with a head of cabbage." Or, "Oh, Emily, you know, we found her in a garbage can on 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue." Family stories that everyone laughed at, and I laughed too, not knowing why. I laughed because if I questioned them, if I cried out, "Stop it! Don't make me an outcast because I'm different!" I was terrified that I wouldn't have any place to belong.

And so I grew up and married young -- but I did marry a rebel and someone my parents wildly disapproved of. He was brilliant. I had to marry someone brilliant. But most importantly, he loved my writing. We shared literature and writing, and he had an assurance about himself. Nobody could shake his self-esteem. Which wasn't, of course, true, but it seemed that way to me when I was nineteen and twenty and scared of my own shadow. I wanted some of his boldness. I was desperate to taste the life of the rebel. And I loved that in addition to valuing my going to Barnard College and thinking I was smart, he also loved my flightiness and above all, that he loved my writing.

I see now that what he loved and still loves best is the creative part of me. He needed that for himself just as I needed his boldness. And so we got married as opposites often do, and didn't quite live happily ever after, but always, even through the bad times, we have that unspoken sharing of the soul. And sometimes I think still, in the quiet dark of night, as we cling to each other in sleep, even after the worst of arguments, I think that that sharing through the soul joins us and gets us through the hard times. It's a very secret sharing that is inexplicable, even to us.

I remember the day, sometime in the early seventies, we had two little children and were living in Brooklyn and didn't have a lot of money and Ned, my husband, came home with a Smith Corona electric typewriter for me. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. No more following the little portable Olivetti as it skidded across the kitchen table while I typed. And we sent the kids to nursery school -- my son wasn't even talking in sentences yet, he was, like his mother, a slow talker -- so I could have three mornings a week to write. Terrified, I wrote nothing that first year with my three mornings alone every week and my shining new Smith Corona electric typewriter.

I suspect, in reality, I did write during that first year when my children were in nursery school. I suspect I did because I was always writing even when I was struggling to get all A's. I don't remember writing because I still hadn't come to the point where I valued the writer in me. But she was there. Just as my father wrote after he taught school all day and tutored and then had a third job in a liquor store, I always wrote, because I had no choice. I wrote when I was little, I wrote when I was growing up, I wrote during those years when life swirled insanely about me and I felt as if I were caught helplessly in the currents. Always, writing was my lifeline. I literally envisioned it as one of those white lifesaver tubes they have on ferries and ocean liners. And the tube is thrown out to the cry of "Man overboard!" I was man overboard. I was drowning. I would have drowned, I do believe that, if the writer, the creator in me hadn't quietly and repeatedly lifted me up to the surface so I could get a big gulp of air.

This is only part of my story; there's more, there's always more and it's no more or less important than the other stories that will unfold in this series - no more important than your own struggle to claim your writer and creative soul within. I tell it because it is nice to tell one's story and because I have learned through my years of studying creativity, how to objectify my story. It has been helpful for me to look back and see the many paths I took to get where I am. For embracing one's creativity isn't like turning on a light switch. Bingo, one moment you're in the dark and the next you're in the light. Creativity is a lifelong journey that ceaselessly traverses kingdoms of light and kingdoms of dark. And destroying our nicely ordered systems doesn't just happen once. It happens again and again. For new systems replace old systems, and new challenges first threaten, then beckon.

The next part of this series is An Overview of the Creative Process…

Add Your Story on Growing Up Creative: If you write up a piece on your creative journey and would like to share it with others, click on "comments" then paste in your story!

Not for Writer's Only: Pass on the Series to Other Creative People: forward this blog to your creative friends.

© Emily Hanlon, 2005, May not be reprinted without permission.
Forged With Fire: Creativity and the Creative Spirit (SM) is a Service Mark of Emily Hanlon For reprint details and permission email:

emily@emilyhanlon.com

Two Anthologies Looking for Submissions... Proceeds to Katrina Relief.

This just in: Please be advised, I am posting this but do not know anything about the people or organizations who are running this...

Two anthologies are being prepared to be published in PDF format and in a print-on-demand paperback format (via Lulu.com). All proceeds from anthology sales will be donated to Hurricane Katrina relief funds.Southern Comfort - We are accepting stories for this anthology that are set in Southern states. Preference may be given to stories set in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and horror will all be considered. While a happily-ever-after ending is not required, we do ask writers to avoid tales that reek of despair.

Proceeds from this anthology will be donated to the American Red Cross Katrina Disaster Relief Fund.

Animal Magnetism - We are accepting stories for this anthology that feature an animal either as a main character or as a key element of the story. Werewolves and animal shapeshifters will be considered. Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and horror will all be considered. While a happily-ever-after ending is not required, we do ask writers to avoid tales that reek of despair.

Proceeds from this anthology will be donated to Noah’s Wish.

More details about the anthologies are available here: http://www.indigorage.com/anthologies/submission-guidelines/

Please direct any questions regarding the anthologies via email to mailto:fsfh.anthology@gmail.comPlease feel free to share this anthology information with friends, family, or other online communities.

To: Writers and Artists, Aiding Hurricane-victim Students

Dear Friends,

Brett Lott, the editor of The Southern Review has sent out an urgent appeal, asking us to assist the 2800 displaced New Orleans college students that his university, LSU, has suddenly absorbed.


He's made this easy and persuasive. His letter below gives details. Here's Brett's letter:


To the Community of Writers, Readers, Teachers, Students, Editors and Anyone Else Within the Sound of This Email--Bret Lott here, editor of The Southern Review on the campus of LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I am writing to you and to everyone you can forward this email to with an opportunity to help victims of the hurricane. Forgive this rather long email, but it is important to the welfare of many hurricane evacuees in our area --please read this all the way through.

No doubt you know the sorrow and hardship that has been visited on residents of our state because of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding causedby the breach of the levee in New Orleans. No doubt you know as well of the thousands of displaced persons who have lost everything because of the evacuation of that city.As a result of so many New Orleans area universities and colleges closing down for who knows how long, LSU has taken on almost 2800 new students who were displaced by losing their homes and their schools; in addition, many students who were already enrolled at LSU have also suffered great losses. These students have experienced hardships that few of us will ever know: they have lost their homes, their personal belongings, their books, their food -- everything, including, for many, the college or university at which they were enrolled.

To help meet their needs -- and these are IMMEDIATE and GENUINE needs -- the LSU Foundation has set up Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund.Strangely and beautifully and sadly enough, the latest issue of The Southern Review -- mailed to subscribers just week before last, right as the hurricane was making way for the Gulf Coast -- has turned out to be a very special issue for the artwork on the cover and that featured inside. The artist, Billy Solitario, lives near GULFPORT (and I trust you have seen the pictures of the devastation there); as of this writing, we have not been able to contact him.

The paintings themselves are of the Gulf Coast --one of them is even titled "Spiral Cloud over Levee," another one titled "Storm Over the Mississippi"; still others in the portfolio are of barrierislands on the Gulf Coast -- places that don't even exist anymore. The artwork was selected about a year ago, and the synchronicity of this is a little too much to think about -- the issue, which went out just two weeks ago, celebrates a coastland that is, suddenly, gone. Also, and again the synchronicity of this is too much to behold, the lead poems in this issue are by Peter Cooley, poet at now-closed Tulane University; we have heard that he is safe in Houston at the time of this writing.

Here is where the community of folks to whom this email is addressed can help (and please read the following instructions CAREFULLY as they are being written this way so as to allow all of us to help each other legally!).

1 -- YOU SEND THE SOUTHERN REVIEW A CHECK FOR $8 (EIGHT DOLLARS) MADE OUT TO "LSU FOUNDATION," AND WRITE ON THE MEMO LINE "HURRICANE STUDENT RELIEF FUND."

MAIL THAT CHECK TO:THE SOUTHERN REVIEWOLD PRESIDENT'S HOUSELSUBATON ROUGE LA 70803PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND MAILING ADDRESS WHEN SENDING THE CHECK.

Or CALL THE SOUTHERN REVIEW AT 225-578-5108 or 225-578-5041 AND GIVE US YOUR VISA NUMBER AND NAME AND ADDRESS

2 -- I SEND YOU A FREE COPY OF THIS ISSUE OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW.Please note that these two actions -- your donation, our sending you a free copy -- are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE (does anyone out there recognize yet the legal hoops I am having to jump through in order simply to help students in dire need of help? Sheesh!). Please note as well that it just so happens that the cover price for an issue of The Southern Review is $8 (eight dollars), BUT YOU ARE FREE TO DONATE AS MUCH AS YOU WISH.

Order as many as you want -- use them as gifts with the good knowledge that because of your generosity help is going to students in need; use them in your classes as a means to help your students rally to the aid of their comrades here at LSU; give them to anyone and everyone you know. And please forward this email to as many people as you know so that they might also be able to contribute to a worthy fund, and to enjoy the issue itself.

But finally, please note that NOT A SINGLE PENNY WILL COME EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE TO THE COFFERS OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW; THIS IS SOLELY AN EFFORT TO GET MONEY TO STUDENTS IN NEED AND TO CELEBRATE THROUGH THE PAGES OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW THE BEAUTY OF A COAST THAT HAS LARGELY BEEN LOST.I know that to many out there this may sound like some sort of mercenary effort to advertise our journal and somehow to make money through the loss of others. Indeed, we will in fact be losing money in all this. But you have my word -- Bret Lott -- that we will in no way profit from these mutually exclusive actions.

I know the outpouring will be a great one, and please know that we here at The Southern Review are prepared to handle the deluge of good will you are already sending our way.

Thank you for reading all the way through this email, and thank you as well for what you have already done for the hurricane relief efforts.

Sincerely, and with thanks to all --Bret Lott
Editor and Director
The Southern Review

A Writing Retreat for Women in Costa Rica!

Writing, Creativity and Ritual:
A Writing Retreat for Women
Led by Emily Hanlon
In the Rain Forest of Costa Rica

September 24 - October 6, 2006

Writing is a visceral experience born of a deep longing for authenticity that carries us inward to a self we often do not consciously know. As creative women, we hunger for this self that dances to a song the outer world cannot hear much less understand.

Writing is the song of the soul and this is the experience that we explore in Costa Rica. The retreat is the place for the passionate journey of writing and creativity to take flight! The weave of writing, creativity and ritual makes this writing retreat different from any other!

"I am amazed at the power of a one week retreat to change my relationship to my writing. I feel now I can do it. I feel that Emily's guidance and the support of the group has had an effect on my will. I was inspired by Emily's courageous spirit and her generosity in sharing her creative quest. I feel I can go on with my writing and that it will be of some value to others. The retreat has opened up my imagination..."

~ Julie Dapper

Samasati Retreat Center is an ideal setting for a gathering of women passionate about their writing and eager to connect with others of like mind and heart. Called by one writer who has been to Samasati “as close to heaven as you can get,” Samasati is situated on 250 acres of virgin tropical forest overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Here we will open doorways to new stories, characters, techniques and a deeper creativity.

The Samasati Retreat Center is in a primary and secondary rain forest that is natural habitat to hundreds of species of birds, butterflies and wildlife; at an elevation of 650 feet, the climate is delightfully cool even on hot days. The retreat includes days to explore the rain forest, walk the magnificent beaches and swim in the Carribean waters. There are yoga classes, bird watching, river and sea kayaking, scuba diving, coral reefs, horseback riding on the beach, hiking at Samasati Biological Reserve, Dolphin Connections, as well as Indian Reserves and National Parks and a Wildlife Refuge.

Explore the retreat at: www.awritersretreat.com or email emily@emilyhanlon.com

Forged With Fire: Creativity and the Creative Spirit, Part 2

Ingredients of Creative Success:
The Magic Five

There are five ingredients to creative success, and if you become master of these, your creative spirit will take flight, it will nurture and free you.

Successful creators are:

1. Passionate about their work

2. Risk takers

3. Technical experts at their craft and know how to get the job done

4. Comfortable with failure, do not see failure as failure.

5. Different, weird and like it!

We will explore these five as the series continues...

© Emily Hanlon, 2005, This series or any part therein may not be reprinted without permission. Forged With Fire: Creativity and the Creative Spirit is a Service Mark (SM) of Emily Hanlon

Life of One Writer

Keeping on, keeping on.
I just went back and read Emily's blog till I got to my first blog, and, lo and behold, I read my own blog twice thinking I needed to be reminded of that (the idea of loving me and my writer self since that part of me has never been adequately loved/parented).
For me, maybe not for all, being a writer requires a daily commitment, because for so long the writing self was pushed down. Brutally by my father. With amusement by my mother. And then most insidiously, unconsciously, by myself.
So, it's labor to keep this writer out of intensive care where she lies in a coma.
During my coaching session with Emily today, I said how much more powerful I felt when my writing was going well...or even not particularily well, but going.
I've been without computer for almost a month and I am terribly rusty,irritable, and insecure about jumping back in. I need the regularity of frequent writing.
The result of our coaching session was my decision to devote my coming weeks to writing about rage. I thought I was but Emily was hearing something much "nicer." I think I have to work hard on not being so damn nice.
I'm working on a piece about experiencing physical pain and there is nothing nice about that unless you're trying to be (as sometimes I still do) a Southern Lady. Ugh. How really repulsive an idea. I want to be wild, free, furious and able to write about it.
This one writer needs to write a bit, then get a big bowl of cherry jello waiting for her, and delve into a book I'm immensely enjoying.
Thank you for letting me blog. Claire

An interesting new website....

I encourage you to visit this website. Lot's of interesting writing and information

www.kitaab.org "Website dedicated to celebrating Asian writing in English."

Forged With Fire: Creativity and the Creative Spirit, a New Series

From Emily Hanlon and The Fiction Writer's Journey.

Part 1
The Creative Process: A Call to Adventure!


Creativity is forged in the fire of the unconscious and the unfathomable depths of the unknown where nothing is predetermined and everything is possible. Its presence is often heralded by the seductive "spark" of an idea or image that brings with it feelings of flight and the godlike brilliance. And yet, for the tens, hundreds, thousands of ideas that burst up out of our unconscious, very few if any get carried to fruition. No sooner does the spark rev us up with the feeling that we can do anything, than we find a 101 reasons to cast away the idea, worse yet, stomp it into the dust bin of possibilities that might have been our lives. Clearly, not all our sparks are worth the time and effort it would take to carry them out; not all are even viable -- but the problem for many of us is that we indiscriminately throw out the baby with the bath water. For our creations are truly our babies, born of us, male and female, as surely as our flesh and blood children.

There are some who do not discard these newborns of the unconscious. There are some who have a reverence for these sparks and embrace the risk and the passion it takes to see even one of them through to fruition. These are the creators and innovators – the brave warriors of creativity as I like to call them –and they are everywhere in society, some known, far more unknown. They can be found among people who work under the dubious roof of a shelter for the homeless as well as under the lights of the Broadway stage. They are writers, artists, scientists, inventors, gardeners, businesspeople, and just folks who go through their days and carry on their pursuits and relationships with an energy that comes from living one's life the way one wants. Their appearance may be nondescript or they may, at the age of sixty or seventy wear long, graying pony tail or braids; they may wear wild, bright colors and loads of make-up or they may never get out of jeans and sneakers. Although diversity is the calling card of creators, there are more similarities than can ever meet the eye. The similarities are not, for the most part, tangible, yet they are powerfully shared.

How do I know this? Because I have been exploring creativity and the creative process most of my adult life. I not only write fiction but I teach fiction writing and guide others on the creative journey. As a teacher, I see my role as dual pronged: one is to teach technique; the other, and the far more challenging and exciting part, is to help unleash a student's creativity. Creativity cannot be taught. Creativity is experiential. As a teacher and creativity coach, I see myself as blood sister to the white rabbit, and my task is to lead my students down the rabbit hole to their own personal Wonderland, which I see as a metaphor for the cosmic landscape of the creative unconscious. (To explore this concept of Wonderland and the creative unconscious, see my book, The Art of Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying.) But unlike the white rabbit, I can't tumble down with nary a backwards glance because most of my students won't follow.

Falling down the rabbit hole is too scary. Which is another way of saying the creative journey is scary. And it is! Creativity demands time in the dark, psychic mud of the unconscious. Creativity requires risk and passion and a belief in the power of the unknown. Chaos is integral to the process. For in the chaos, the new, unexpected order lies, waiting to be revealed in all its magnificence. This is a difficult terrain to travel alone.

I didn’t. I had several guides along the way, and I understand their importance in my success. Which is why I see myself as a more than a writing coach. I perceive myself as a guide, leading other writers into their home in the creative unconscious. I believe in this passionately, for I believe exploring, owning and delighting in this realm is the birthright of every creative writer. But if this is true, then why is it so difficult? Why do so many of us hold on to the edge of the rabbit hole for dear life? Even when we begin to slide, we hold on (metaphorically!) until our knees and fingertips are raw and bleeding – and the amazing part is that when we finally fall, when the doorways to our creative unconscious open, we wonder why we feared the journey.

This series explores creativity and the creativie spirit through my eyes and the eyes of others who dared to fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Come back often and join us!

© Emily Hanlon, 2005, May not be reprinted without permission.
Forged With Fire: Creativity and the Creative Spirit SM is a Service Mark of Emily Hanlon