Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Hey, that might be your Inner Writer calling you!

Seeing yourself as a creative person and a writer is not as easy matter. But you won't be able to truly accessing your writer's voice if you don't know that you are a writer, even if you've never completed or sold anything.

What follows are some powerful exercises that can help you, no matter how long you've been writing. It's especially useful when your Inner Critic gets aggressive.

Exercise 1:Say out loud and as loud as you need to: “I am a writer.”If that's easy, go to next step and look at yourself in the mirror and say with passion and delight, “I am a writer.”Repeat until you begin to feel calm with the words! This simple exercise can be very challenging but the payoff is huge!

"I am a writer."

Exercise 2:Create a ritual for yourself where you truly honor the writer within. This can be as simple as finding a quite place, lighting a candle and standing before it in a prayerful way. Hold your palms pressed together in front of your heart, bow your head, and say, "I honor the writer within." Or "I honor myself as a writer."

If you do this or any other ritual about being a writer, please write about it and I will post it to the blog.

Exercise 3:
The next time somebody asks, “Oh, and what do you do?” make sure you say, “I write” or “I am a writer.” This may seem impossibly hard at first. Your throat might become constricted and you might break out in a sweat, but go ahead and give it a try. The more you say it, the easier it gets. The more you say it, the more you believe it.

And if you're asked, "What are you writing?" consider this: Few people, even close friends, are truly interested in what you’re writing. Once you start telling them, chances are their eyes will soon glaze over. So when I'm asked what I'm writing about, unless I know the person is really interested, is this, "Oh, I never discuss my work in progress." That usually quiets them.
Then there's the most feared question if people know you are writer: "What have you had published? Anything I might know? (Hee, hee, hee...)"

First thing to not only remember but to completely embrace: you don’t have to be published to be a writer.

Second, if you're asked what you've had published and you're not published, tell them the truth. "Nope, I'm not published yet." Or "I'm not up to that point yet." Or "I find the publishing route counterproductive to my writing. You know how it is today, everything is the bottom line.

Simply doesn't work for me..." If you say such things matter-of-factly, without fear and shame, the conversation will most like move on to other subjects and you will feel good about standing forth for yourself as a writer. No apologies or defense needed.

Exercise 4:
Do you put limits on your imagination? Do you trust your intuition?
Vital to accessing your writer's voice is seeing the imagination as a rich source of story and character. I am amazed by the number of people who believe the lie that we can only write about what we have experienced. We are writers. We are creative. We have the key to the vast imaginal world that most people can access only in their dreams.

When I talk about the imagination, I’m talking about that which is outside your conscious reality. I’m talking about the unknown. I’m talking about the mystery of life. I’m talking about what you might be able to intuit but don’t yet have words for. I'm talking about falling down the rabbit hole...

As creative people we are gifted in so many ways, not the least of which is the cosmic universe of the unconscious. You couldn't explore it all in ten lifetimes!

Reclaim your creativity
Believe in the power of your imagination.
Trust your intuition and don't let the outer world define you!


If you would like to reprint Mirror, mirror on the wall... Hey, that might be your Inner Writer calling you!, you may, so long as you include this biographical information and let me know where you are posting. Please include the following information:
© 2007 Emily Hanlon is a writing and creativity coach as well as the author of seven books of fiction and a book on writing. Her websites are http://www.thefictionwritersjourney.com/ and http://www.creativesoulworks.com/. emily@emilyhanlon.com

Another Way of Looking At Point of View

Do you think your life is too dull, normal and ordinary to be the makings of a good story.
Not true!
Scratch any person and you will find a fascinating story.
One of the main problems with using our own life stories is that we get stuck in the so-called "Truth". What is truth when it comes to memory?
In fact, different people's view of the same situation makes fascinating story telling.

Here's an exercise:
Take an incident from your life, or make up an incident. It doesn't matter.
Give it juice by making it an argument or fight.
Write it first from one character's point of view.
Then when that is written, put the story aside and begin all over. But this time write the story from the other character's point of view. It will be totally different story and tell you a lot about motivation and the power of point of view.

This is a great exerciser and a big eye opener.
If you want to see a movie that uses this premise superbly, watch Kurawasa's masterpiece, Rashomon. It is an amazing movie in so many ways. If you think you don't understand the technique of point of view or want to see it in action, watch the movie.

On the Inner Critic

We make writing a lot harder than it is meant to be. Don’t get me wrong—writing is not a piece of cake. It is hard work, but it’s good hard work, like digging in the earth to make a garden. The problem for many of us is that our minds have convinced us that sitting down to write a story much less a book is at best painful, at worst impossible.

I believed this for many years –– and despite that I managed to get five novels, two picture books and one book on writing published. (Not to mention the books and stories that never got published.) I don’t believe in the pain theory of writing any more. Experience and age has convinced me of this: all our stories and novels are vibrant and complete somewhere in our creative unconscious. If we could side-step the Inner Critic who resides in the mind, we could sit down, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and the story would reveal itself in its glorious completeness in much the same way as Mozart’s symphonies did for him. I have read that Mozart sat down and wrote his symphonies with very little revision, if any at all. In other words, he gave himself over fully to the creative journey and fell headlong into its passion.

The first time I read about Mozart composing without revision, I thought, sure, right. And if it’s true, well, we’re talking Mozart. For sure, that’s not me! Now, some twenty-odd years later, I no longer doubt that it is possible to sit down and write a book from beginning to end and have it come out whole. I would like to experience such a creative flow and know that what prevents me is me, my mind that says it’s impossible, “What, are you kidding? Writing is blood, sweat and tears. It’s revision after revision. It’s tearing your hair out. It’s giving up and picking up. It’s blah, blah, blah…”

Because that voice, the voice of my Inner Critic, still has sway over me, I have, like you, something of a difficult time opening to the creative flow. It’s getting easier—some of the time. And who knows? One day I might just manage to quiet the naysayer in me and write a book whole from beginning to end. For now, I’m happy that writing no longer seems like such a mountain to climb… and I can imagine the possibility of creative nirvana!

The Creative Process, How and Why It Works

A New TeleSeminar from Emily Hanlon on April 24 at 1 pm eastern time.

You get an idea for a story. It comes in the proverbial spark of inspiration! It's a great idea. Inspired, really. You feel kissed by the Muse and can't wait to sit down and write. But ...

No sooner do you begin than your great idea, the visions, the excitement — the very Muse herself — vanish.

Still, you press on. You struggle to find the right words, the perfect first sentence or intro paragraph, but this only makes things worse. Feeling frustrated and confused, lost in chaos, you succumb to the mean-spirited taunts of the Inner Critic. "Who were you kidding anyway? You're not a writer. Look how easily you give up!" the Inner Critic gleefully spits out the poisoned darts. "The idea was stupid to begin with. Inspiration, my foot..."

This is the point where most of us give up.

We shouldn't.

Even a cursory review of the creative process tells us why. This confusion or what has been called the "chaos" is a vital part of the creative process. It is the right brain or intuitive aspect of the process, when all things are possible and nothing makes "rational" sense. In fact, the rational part of your brain, the part that looks for reason and order, is better off taking a nap when chaos reigns!

Creativity can no more do without the "chaos" than the earth can do without the winds, the rains, the snow and the sun.

However, the chaos or intuitive, right brain exploration is only one half of the creative process. By its very nature, creativity moves towards definition and completion. The right and left parts of the brain work in unison. They are equal partners in the dance of creativity.

Understanding the Creative Process Can Alleviate Writer's Angst and Change Your Relationship to Your Self and Others

The Creative Process: How and Why It Works!
TeleSeminar and audio download: $20. Register

What Does Point of View Mean??

The point-of-view basically says to the reader. "Dear Reader, this is whose story I am telling. This is the person I want you to care most about. Because this is the person whose mind and heart you are going to get into."

Point of View: Becoming Your Character

Point-of-view is probably the most important technique we have as fiction writers, and this includes memoir writing. Everything in story comes from point-of-view. Unless you're writing a who-dun-it, fast moving, plot-driven story, the kind of book you read and put down and forget, but if you're writing a book of any depth, you're interested in the characters.

One of the most wonderful things somebody can say to me about one of my novels is that they loved it; they couldn't put it down; hey stayed up till 2 in the morning to read it and they hated saying goodbye to the characters when the story ended.

That means, I did my job. That means, I created three-dimensional, full-blooded energetic characters who had a life outside of me.

This is the basis of point-of-view: you want to become our characters. You don't want your characters to be you. The movement is always out of self into character. In a visual sense, you are stepping out of your own skin and into the body of your character. You're sseeing the world through your character's eyes. You're feeling what your character is feeling.

The creative process falls into two parts, the intuitive/divergent and the rational/ convergent. The intuitive/divergent is the first part of the process and follows the "spark," that wonderful, life-giving, fantastically fleeting moment of inspiration. The intuitive resides in the right side of the brain, the same place as dreams, emotions and feelings and has been called the chaos or the great seething sea of the unconscious. One of the great difficulties and joys of the creative process is that we must fall down the rabbit hole or dive into this great seething sea.

Creativity is Risky Business

Living a creative life demands faith in your inner world and the only way I know to take the plunge is to trust that order will emerge. It must. Order is as integral as chaos to the creative process, but the order will be new and often unexpected. Gertrude Stein put it this way, “You cannot go into the womb to form the child... What will be best in it (your creation) is what your really do not know now. If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.”
The process of gestation and birth is a perfect symbol for the creative process, whether it be the birth of a child, an animal, the emergence of a butterfly from the chrysalis or the flower from the seed buried under winter’s frozen earth. Birth is a continual marvel; it warms the heart, brings out the fierce instinct to protect and fills the mind with wonder. We need to hold our own creative ideas in similar awe. We need to give them the warm, safe place in which to germinate. We need to protect them in their newborn vulnerability, which is the same as protecting our deepest self. This is precisely what, I believe, makes the first steps of a creative endeavor so difficult. Too often we don’t trust our own deepest truth; it makes us feel too vulnerable or it seems incongruous with the person we think we are or must be. Our Inner Critics are all too quick to discard these newborns as silly, frivolous or worse, as boring and still worse, as downright stupid.

The poem below by Franz Kafka is a passionate refute to the Inner Critic.

You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
it has no choice,
it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

–– Franz Kafka

Imagine such faith in the creative process! Imagine being self-nurturing enough to give our stories and books, any of our creations, such time and patience, Yet, if we do, Kafka promises we will receive ecstasy that brings untold meaning to our life. Mere publication pales in relationship to such abundance.