Creative Chaos: Its Call, Its Difficulty and Its Freedom.

A TeleSeminar from Emily Hanlon

Tuesday, April 22, 1 pm eastern time

Chaos is integral to the creative process.
Without chaos, nothing would be born.

This chaos has been called the great seething sea of the unconscious and it is the most difficult aspect of the creative process. It follows on the heels of the first spark of creativity, when everything is possible and nothing has taken form.

You try to give form to your idea, but the idea refuses to be tamed. Possibility and excitement turn into fear and overwhelming discouragement.

What happened to my great idea! Everything is falling apart. I'll never get it done... woe is me... I'm not really creative...

At this point, if you give into despair, you are in danger of aborting your creativity. For it is in the chaos that the spark of creativity is nurtured. In fact, you might even call the chaos the womb of creativity.

This TeleSeminar explores the irresistible call, difficulties and ultimate joy and freedom of creative chaos!

If you can't attend the TeleSeminar, you can listen online
or download the audio to your computer, CD or Ipod.

Cds are also available.

Tuesday, April 22, 1 pm eastern timeRegister: $20

"Nothing's either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

- William Shakespeare

So tell your Inner Critic to put that in his pipe and smoke it when next she tries to stop you from following the passion of your creativity!

Creativity is a labyrinthine journey that takes us deeper and deeper into our self. With every twist, turn and seeming two (three and four!) steps backward for every step forward, we learn more, let go more, fear, love, cry and dance for joy. Creativity is a journey into the dark and it must be. Why? Because as creators, we are manifesting the unmanifested.

Where is the unmanifested found?

Where are seeds found?
What gives birth to dawn?
From where does the butterfly emerge?
What is the warm, encompasing darkness that gives birth to every living thing?

The answers are all around us.

Creativity is BIG STUFF! Don't underestimate the power of the journey! And if you feel at times, and we all do, that you're not up to the task, think of this: if you don't risk the journey, you risk even more.

The Inner Critic and the Creative Unconscious

The Inner Critic is terrified of the creative unconscious because it is the home of feelings, emotions, images and it is chaotic and unexpected. The Inner Critic likes order and loves the status quo, which is antithetical to the creative unconscious. That's why if you "fall down the rabbit hole" the Inner Critic won't follow you! Free of the Inner Critic, you have the possibility of experiencing real creative freedom and passionate stories awaits you. Only then can the true dance begin!

Food for Thought

• You play tennis, even take lessons, does that mean you dream of playing at Wimbledon?
  
  
• You hike mountains, does that mean you have to have plans to climb Mt. Everest to have a great day?
  
  
• You love to cook, even may even take cooking lessons, does that mean you have to write a best selling cook book or become a chef in a ****Restuarant to have a deeply enjoyable meal?
  
  
• You take yoga classes several times a week, does that mean you have to be a world reknown yoga teacher to get all the benefits of yoga?
  
  
• So, ask yourself, why doesn't the same rule apply to your writing?
  
  Read Emily's article, Publish or Perish: It's Not Only for Academia
  
  
  All of 2007 TeleSeminars now 50% Off
  
  
  

On Living a Creative Life...

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.”

On Intuition

Intuition is a choice to look within and trust the unknown is not the enemy.

Creative Writing Is Not a Linear Process

Creativity is a subtle and magnificent dance between the rational and the intuitive, between the left and right parts of the brains, between technique and imagination. Both partners in this dance are absolutely necessary and are needed in equal proportion, which means that imagination is not more important than technique and visa versa. If you only live in the imagination, you will never get organized, you will never complete your story. However, if you start from the rational, linear, organizational part of the process, ( ie. Gotta have the perfect opening sentence and first paragraph… better yet, an outline…) you will never fall into the rich, passionate cosmic landscape of the imagination where anything is possible.

However, the main problem I have seen in my twenty-five years of teaching fiction writing is over-dependence on the rational part of the equation. People want to get the story written and get it out. (Whatever that means?) The want to leap frog the process, get the words down on the page and finish the story. This is to symptomatic of the goal oriented society that we live in, a society that is striving upwards toward success instead of embracing the deeper, more powerful and life changing journey of descent that takes us into the creative realm of the true self.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Albert Einstein

Five Ingredients to Creative Success

After years of working with and interviewing people on the creative journey, I have come up with 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
4. Comfortable with failure, do not see failure as failure and know how to get the job done
5. Different, weird and like it!

Passion and risk are the two major ingredients, they set the pot to boiling and get us moving. They are what ultimate allow us to There are so many examples of ways we short-cut this life changing process, but the one that comes to mind is the adage, “Write what you know.”