Writing & the Creative Process, How and Why it Works

The above link will take you to an article on the Creativity Portal, written from a fiction writing perspective. But it’s food for thought - my thought, anyway.

I’m an analyst by trade - a test analyst, full of questions, and big on processes to get me to the answer. Having done that, encouraged that for twenty-odd years, it’s ingrained. Process is big for me.

I tried explaining that yesterday in a three hour interview with my social welfare assessor, as my family undergoes the “adoption process”. She wanted me to describe my personal strengths and weaknesses. Like many, I was quick off the mark towards weaknesses of those areas where I can be found to fall around. And ingrained with my previous career skills, it was a easy to suggest being an analyst as one of my strengths. She didn’t understand that strong focus, however, and you could see a dimness in her eyes as I tried to emphasise the strengths in that, sigh.

“Going back to my weaknesses, then…”, (why do they do that!?), “could I go into other weaknesses, please…”

“Erm, I worry too much?” I suggested tentatively.

“Oh yes, tell me about that”, she said, eyes sparkling with glee, pen poised over pad.

So we got into how I need to think over things that go wrong, how I need to think and stew and process things - “and then I come out of it, and everything is done!” I finished on what I thought was a very positive-spinning note - which she didn’t bother to write down, I noticed.

Key word - Process things. Process - it’s what makes me tick, it’s in my lifeblood. Analyse, think, process, end…

I would have thought it even more natural that I work this whole adoption process - but that appears to be a very different kettle of fish, and pretty much out of much of my control. But to order my world, I at least need to know that there is a common sense and order to things, even if I can’t work it out. I need the process.

Except, it seems - with something referred to as “The Creativity Process”.

Ah, how that grates against my very soul - to stick a “process” onto something that should be mucky and full of growth and weird and wonderful and completely out of control. Creativity, my soul cried - don’t try and control creativity, surely that will kill it.

After stewing for a minute or so over this term (see, I really do do this) I came to the realisation that - despite being a scholar of many how to write books lately - I had reverted back in thinking to how I successfully create in the scrapbooking or crafting dimension. The last time I bought or read an idea book on scrapbooking was well over a year ago.

For me, when creating a scrapbook layout, or mini-book or whatever, it’s about leaving it all to the mucky pool I think of as creativity. I even prefer to have a messy desk around me, to ensure there is no off-putting blank spaces. Processing a scrapbook layout, for me, just doesn’t work. It’s all about pure play, and little control other than that caused technically by memory or computer problems, materials available and external time commitments.

But for writing - although I believe in just getting in there and writing - which is to happen come the 1st of April for my novel in a month efforts, there is also a very considerable creative process. There are things to learn - and constantly learn - about characterisation, discovery, plotting, themes, sub-plots, layers of plot, dialogue, conflict, resolution, timelines, backstories, word-counts, oh - so much more.

The Writing Creativity Process also has the opposite, of course. It has the just-write (akin to Nike’s Just Do It, perhaps?) mandate, subscribed to by many, and not completely incompatible with the structured processes listed above. And it is as full of superstitions and mythicisms as any other creative endevour. In fact, there seem to be many writers out there who have symbols and artefacts they are reliant on for their writing, whether it be a desk, a lucky writing hat, or a quote or painting on the wall. Some can’t write unless enforced with double-strength coffee, or chocolate snacks, or perhaps even something harder still.

Those are things shared amongst creatives - I know of scrapbookers who must scrap with a plate of M&Ms on their desk. And others who have their photographs set out for days on end before they have planned the layout to surround them. Symbols, superstitions, tools, inspiration…somehow all seem part of a process I was unaware until now that I had welcomed into one part of my creative life.

 After all those swimming thoughts about a Creativity “Process” I read this actual article (link at top) to find the author suggests going with a much more free-form concept and really, to simply write from the unconcious, where the inner critic can not get to.

Although TAW calls it an inner critic, and for me - it is a male, definitely - I prefer, somehow, when thinking about writing, to call mine The Inner Editor. It just seems more process-orientated, don’t you think? More legitimate towards the external processes that wrap around that creative freedom found in just writing.  

Firstup, I’m still not sure what’s going on with The Artist’s Way online book club I’m in - it still seems a little eased at Week 6. Statistically, I should be on Week 8 today, but I’ll commence with Week 7 this week, on my own.

I had a shocking ephinany this morning - or over the weekend to be exact. Yesterday was Mothers Day here in the U.K., and it was a very pleasant day indeed. My entire family has been suffering from a bad case of the flu the last two weeks, with me being the last one to go down with it last week. The flu’s repercussions meant that any plans for Mother’s Day, including shopping for presents, was flung out the door for the last two precious weekends. Despite this, the day was pleasant and easy, and I spent a lot of it sitting on a sun-blessed sofa just reading a novel.

Perhaps it’s these thoughts towards motherhood that caused the ephiphany of late. I’ve been working at an afterschool Kid’s Club the last two weeks also - and although I thought it would be the children I might have problems with getting to grips with (I’m not that experienced, afterall) it has turned out to be the opposite. I’m more ill-at-ease with the actual adults there - they are very very cliquey, and being the newbie on the block, I’m finding it difficult to feel at peace with the newbie jobs I appear to be ordered around. I seem to be volunteering myself for all kinds of dirty jobs,or being volunteered while the rest chat about their past shared experiences etc.

My social worker for the adoption has also put a concern into my mind. She’s made it quite apparent she doesn’t think much of me working in the Kids Club, and there is a risk if any child should accuse me of anything. I appear to have jeoporadised everything I’ve lately been trying to accomplish, and I have had many doubts over the last few days as to whether that Kids Club is the best place for me to be.

Last week, although working on Wednesday afternoon I had a heavy cold, but one of the other staff members went home sick also, so I stayed on. As a new person, you have so much to prove, don’t you. And then I ended up being called to work on the Thursday also, as she was still sick. To do so meant trying to find emergency help with getting my daughter to and fro ballet that afternoon, and also meant she went without doing her reading homework with me which she was taking to school the next day.

And I felt that my choice had been incorrect - that the whole point of being home for my daughter was to allow me to take her to ballet, and ensure she gets adequate time and attention towards her homework . All mixed up.

Saturday morning I managed, out of my own sickness, to get to the supermarket with the family. But walking around the shop, I came across a specials stand, with Bailey’s Creme on discount. Now, I’m not a huge alcohol drinker - certainly not after pregnancy - I can’t seem to stomach much of a drink at all. It’s enough to ask me to drink a small glass of wine if we happen to be out for dinner (very rare moon, that one) and a good harsh brandy drop goes well for sore throats and chesty coughs, in the evening. All up, when questioned on surveys, I would be hard pushed to even admit to having one unit per fortnight, let alone per day.

But here I was, in front of a Bailey’s Creme display - and I’m sure we’ve got some parked away in a dark cupboard somewhere anyway - and I thought - “Yes, I could drink that during the day, couldn’t I?”

I was absolutely shocked by the vision in front of me, of a slowly inebriated stay at home mother, finally found secretly drinking by her husband, and with a alcoholism problem. I saw it, I saw that. And for the first time in my life I suddenly knew that I had the potential of becoming an alcholic secretly.

Where did that thought at all come from - to drink during the school days? And why? I’d never ever contemplated it before, but now, even as I write this, the thought tempts me. What the heck is going on?

Quickly I moved on from the Baileys and the supermarket shop went well, as did the rest of the weekend and my Mother’s Day. It was a hiccup, surely, some anomoly thrown down to me accidentally, and belonging to somebody else?

This morning being Monday, we followed our normal morning routine, shared with our daughter. We put on the morning newshour programme to catch up with the latest news and importantly - local weather and driving conditions. GMTV had on a family today. The interview was meant to be about a depressive mother, who is on prescription anti-depressants. It was obviously meant as a follow-up towards the shock news of one research study last week, suggesting anti-depressants like Prozac don’t work.

The mother featured had three boys at home - two teenagers, and an eight year old. She was so depressed, she claimed, that she couldn’t go out of the home. So she relied on her older mother and father to take the kids to school (never mind the fact that the teenagers should have been old enough to get themselves to school). Her husband who firstly said he worked long hours, and left early in the morning, then said he got home at 6 pm to find his wife often asleep on the sofa, and he would do all the evening chores. The kids were asked what they did in the situation, and said that they just helped her to the sofa when they found her in a state. The mother said something a little telling in that her depression came on more in the winter. Why her doctor  didn’t look into SAD syndrome is something I’m sure many are emailing GMTV as we speak.

What got me was that she didn’t appear to want to do anything about it. There was no guilt or even attempts to rectify things, other than stating she was now reliant on calling up her own parents all the time, to basically do her things - while she spent time on the sofa. This had been going on for years. The TV presenter asked her husband how he felt about it, considering he too must have bad days sometimes, and want to go home and just discuss it, or sit on the sofa. He replied that initially he had tried to do that, but now he had learnt that it was best to really make sure that it was all about his wife and getting her better slowly. He looked haunted and lost himself. He looked like he could easily have been the one crying on the sofa.

I don’t doubt the wife has depression at all, that’s not in dispute. Nor is the sheer impact of having someone suffer through depression like that. And in many ways I recognised parts of myself within this woman. How easier would my life be if I could just lie down and sleep on the sofa if so many other people were willing to help me out? Chronic depressives don’t get out of bed, can’t face the day. Yet she managed to get to the T.V. studios to discuss it. So she is making progress at least.  And perhaps there is hope now for that family.

She developed the depression a few years ago, once her youngest son went to school and she was faced with the few hours per day with herself.

I understand her feelings a little too scarily. I am a person who can suffer through some very low times, when I can’t explain the tears at all. I often put it down to the tides of some drastic hormones. Things that wouldn’t normally irk me at all can seem like the end of the world on some days, and despite recognising my emotions, no attempts at changing my thinking appear to work. I just need to swim out of it, and try to laugh off those tears, and knuckle in and do something, anything. If I don’t, you can very easily find me lying on that sofa, not wanting to cook dinner or speak with anyone. But something within me knows that it’s a transient thing, and will go away with time. I feel for that woman in that family, for she doesn’t appear to have found the movements, and has stuck with herself for quite some time.  

And that’s the similarity I see between us. Those hours during the school day are long, waiting for others to fill the silence. There are domestic duties to do, but many of us try to fill that silence with other work. I admitted my Bailey’s thoughts to my hubbie this morning, after that GMTV interview. He nodded, and seemed to understand - that’s why I scrapbook, he said. That’s why I blog, and write and create. To fill the days in a more productive way while I await the family to arrive home. 

It has become a little like that. As my life did alter last year, with leaving work, I now find the pattern of my weeks to have altered also. Weekends and evenings are spent solely with the family now. I used to use evenings and weekends to create, and browse and create some more. Now I don’t even boot up the computer on the weekends at all. My tempo has altered considerably, and I spend so much less time online, although more time on the computer doing things.  

I remember finding it odd in a discussion the other day with my Kid’s Club manager. She was considering other work during the lunchtime, but pointed out she wanted Mondays kept aside, as those were the days she went shopping. It seemed very very important to her that she used her Mondays like that. I couldn’t understand it at all, as supermarket shopping has always been a necessity, and not really something to look forward to. In the school playground that morning, I’d overheard two women discussing what they were doing that morning - one had the day off part-time work, and the other was going shopping - like it was some big announcement.

Whereas I considered shopping a chore to be shared quickly and efficiently with the rest of my family, many others were holding onto it like some good thing, and I couldn’t understand it. To discuss shopping like that? Like a hobby?

No, not like a hobby - like an escape from the house. Like something that is appreciated by others, and is needed, something productive. There are other things like that which many housewifes are turning to also - things which are much less fortunate perhaps. We even have celebrities glamourising them on TV with adverts for the online bingo communities, enticing us to spend our spare cash on gambling games and chatrooms.

On Saturday, I made plans to close down this blog - just like that. Gone. I could write to myself via other means - even the morning pages if you will. The blog seemed less important in my life than some time ago. There is a sense of leaving it, and moving on with different aspects of my life. It wasn’t just a threat, it was a certainty that this time around, I would just close it and be done with it. Maybe I would open up a free one, or move onto some websites I own, and re-develop them as a writer’s site, maybe not. But I needed to see an end to the public digital scrapbooking side of me, to make way. I needed the blog to close.

After the ephiphany of this last weekend, and witnessing the GMTV interview which put everything in place for myself, I’ve decided to carry on with the blog for a little while longer anyway. Because it’s part of my own mundane days, and therefore part of my sanity - for the moment.  

So, maybe I’m not so depressed afterall, and I am certainly lucky in that I have long developed an outlet which is productive and interesting. I blog, I browse, I create, I write, and sometimes I even clean. I am. During those spare six hours per week day, I am. I am a worker, even if  not paid. I am a creator, even if it might be a little mundane sometimes. But mundane is much more definable now as being a necessity in all of this.

Erk, Creativity shouldn’t be mundane, right? That kind of goes against the whole inspirational, artistic thing - to suggest that creating can be mundane. You can’t see someone like Picaso or Einstein ever being mundane can you - you can’t see Einstein’s hectic hairstyle ever being flattened out? I can’t be right in that feeling that a lot of my hours are mundane, surely?

But even Picaso and Einstein spent many many thousands of hours being mundane in their creativity, being who they were, and doing things to occupy their hours - before and after those recognised inspirational flashes that the world was gifted with. My world is much smaller than that, but I feel it right now to suggest that many hours of it can feel quite mundane, even ineffective, certainly inconsequential to most.

Perhaps I can bear with the Kids Club for a few more weeks to enjoy at least, the different world I trample into on those days. Perhaps also I can create something in my mundane hours which will be all worth it.  But you know what - this whole 6 hours per day of mundane facing myself is truley a gift from somewhere. I have never felt quite so changeable and never discovered quite so much about myself as I am currently journeying through. And yes, that was a blatantly rubbish sentence which probably needs a rewrite - but I’ve got better things to do, like go sit in the sun before it goes away.

My movement into doing The Artist’s Way 12 week programme came about with the opening of an online forum to support some digital scrapbookers through it. Unfortunately, that forum has come to a halt recently. The forum has 26 registered users, but it must be fair to suggest that only 3 of us have been active on it over the last few weeks.

Proud of myself, I’m one of them, and have been active in layouts (mostly) and comments on the weeks’ work each time also. This shows my current state of mind and needs to process through this stuff, and is not a negativity towards those other 23 users who appear to have dropped out. 

Life / health / more pressing times or perhaps even the fact that TAW isn’t quite right for them at this moment in time. Who knows, but throughout my trolling of the internet to find other TAW groups and artists blogging about it, it became witnessable that TAW has a big drop-out rate. It also has a lot of people who get to about Week 4 or 5 and then stop, intending to pick up again later on. There are a few who do so, even a year later.

I imagine it must be a bit easier to maintain that momentum, if you work within a support group in real life - similar to a reading group. At least then, you can turn up with chocolate cake or something to make the trip worthwhile, and you may come out with real life friends out of it, too.

Week 6 for my own online TAW Book Club, was put on suspension last week, while others within it were given the chance to catchup. Unfortunately, nobody but the actual two people who were already caught up, have replied. I don’t know if we will plough on finally and officially into Week 6 and then Week 7 (which should have been this week) or not.

I found the loss of momentum last week, while waiting for these others, difficult to deal with. Last week seemed much harder for me in many ways. I can say, hand on heart, that I managed to achieve nothing in the creativity side of things. Nothing - no writing, no playing with those new journal books and such which Melissa had kindly sent me. Last week was tough in other ways of course - life for me was getting in the way.

I commenced my part-time job working in the afterschool kids club, and for a while there, wondered what the heck I was doing with myself. I also failed my daughter miserably by not getting her to a birthday party afterschool one of those days. And finally, we had the second visit of our adoption case worker - and everytime she visits I end up wound up about the longetivity and intrusiveness of the thing. And the expectations laid on us to prepare our daughter - who has been awaiting this whole thing now for 18 months - for the upcoming potential arrival of a brother of unknown age, unknown routines and unknown timing of when that child might ever arrive. Yet somehow we must do all this.

Rant over on that one, but it became obvious to me when my weekend went wrong because my poor hubbie had a bad case of the flu, which affected all our family plans - it became obvious that the week, and weekend, were just - well, wrong a little.

I don’t find it a coincidence at all, that this happened at the same time my movement through The Artist’s Way was put onto hiatus - hopefully temporarily. If I’d done more work towards Week 6 perhaps, over that week, then perhaps my own mindset may have been slightly more positive to allow me the comfort into those situations of the week.

I remain doing the Daily Pages however - so far always in the morning. I consider these more beneficial from a writer’s side and from a healthy-mind side than perhaps they might be from my artistic / creative scrapbooking side. They may not offer up much from a prose side, but putting down my thoughts, diary-like, each morning seems to help me feel like I’ve achieved something - even if it’s simply a legacy higgle-piggledy document of my life. I tend, still, to be doing things like - “Last night I dreamt of….” and “Yesterday we did….” like some school-girl’s daily diary (under lock and key, I hope) but some sections also work quite cathetically with lots of rants and raves - certainly over the adoption thing, or little niggly things my hubbie or others in the school yard might do.

The pages don’t offer up solutions to any of this for me. There are no sudden epithanies or inspiration towards resolving my larger or even minor troubles of the day. Instead, it works by just putting it down. I might need to put it down for a few days on something like the adoption thing, before it’s out of my system and I am at ease with things. But I’ve noticed that the simple act of putting it all down, without census or editing, moves me into a more creative place, where I do achieve in plot planning, inspirational ideas and the like.

On the weekend, after that adoption visit on Friday morning, I didn’t do the Daily Pages at all. I often find that I don’t have the time alone to do so, when the entire family is around, and trying to make the most of our time together. I have learnt the repercussions of this from previous weekends of not doing them, but I still can not bring myself to force the point of having that time to do so. But this morning, the adoption thing was briefly discussed in my morning pages, and put into context with some further discussions my hubbie and I had, and other events during the weekend. The space this time around seemed to work. I feel slightly more capable of doing something productive today.

If we don’t officially start Week 7 (or even Week 6 from its hiatus last week) then I know that to maintain the momentum I personally need to process all of this, and move on creatively, then I will have to make the call to move on independently from the online group, and work on the book myself. I will make that decision around Thursday of this week.

The Artist’s Way talks all the time about Flow. Julia Cameron uses the term as a representative of that creative flow - often called God, or the Creator, which sits internally to much of the principles of the book.

This morning, in my own morning pages I spewed forth with some anger - centred on some stupidity around my hubbie’s behaviour (and involving our dog) and the upcoming childhood assessment we are going to be tortured through later this week, with another social welfare assessment for adoption.

Never mind the anger, because at the end of my morning pages I suddenly went into TAW terms - “I’ve lost my flow,” I said.

Then I realised that, of course, scrapbookers have another term for it - Mojo.

Other artists call it the muse - this one particularly appeals to me, when considering the beautiful greek muses (or even the later day ones, as contemplated within Jill Bodansky’s wonderful book, Nine Modern Day Muses (a book I’ve just promised myself I will go back to read again, once out of my 12 step TAW programme).

Through  9MDM I realise now it helps to put a personalisation onto the thing - with a person you can talk to it. With Julia Cameron’s concept - that of God, or Flow, or even with the cosmos or universe - well, I just can’t see myself talking or yelling at a big starry galaxy, not even having a good ol’ argument with God as I picture him/her.

Of course, you run the risk with personalising your flow/god/universe/muse in that you might waste time waiting around for him or her when she goes missing in action. Never wait for your muse - that’s something many writers and artists suggest (and a rule I must put into my Writer’s Manifesto - Never wait for your muse - if they’re late to the party, start without them).  

It makes for fun, though - combining TAW’s flow with a scrapbooker’s Mojo. 

Mojo Flow, or perhaps - Mojo Flo - I picture this particular character as a big fat woman, dressed in bright colours, wearing huge gold hoop earrings, and somehow being accessorised with fruit-based jewelery and headwear (yes, I know - stereotypical caribbean mama). Mojo Flo lives somewhere hot and humid like New Orleans - she’s very motherly (almost overbearingly so, believes in magic, and won’t take no sh&* from no-one, no-oh!

Mojo Flo or Flojo for short isn’t quite the muse I need, however. Mine needs to be a bit calmer, to complement my own volatile nature. Mine has to be like some kind of cosmic princess or goddess - all-seeing, very calm cool and collected. I don’t want my cosmic goddess to replace a higher power in creativity, or the higher concepts to do with The Artist’s Way - I just want to be able to occasionally have a bit of a chat with my muse, and hear voices back.

Am I insane? I’m now asking to hear voices - whether they come back in a meditation state - in my favourite place, or sitting in the sunshine day-dreaming, or perhaps on the morning pages / daily pages - I do not care.

I wonder if anyone else out there personalises their own flow or mojo to speak to them? And what do they look like? 

The Artist’s Way - hmmm, it seems that Julia Cameron’s TAW, published ten years back, has caused some controversy in some areas, particularly in the writing domain.

Here’s one writer, Scarlett Thomas, a published novelist, suggesting in the U.K. Woman’s Writing magazine, Mslexia that we -

Don’t bother with ‘morning pages.’ All that Dorothea Brande stuff – there is too much emphasis on writing about your childhood or using the most emotionally overwrought crap you can.

I thought to myself - who’s this Dorothea Brande woman, then?  A web search gave me the answer, and the controversy in some writer’s minds. Back in 2003, here’s a writer / blogger miffed by The Artist’s Way author calling the concept her own. In fact, Dorothea Brande, the author of a writing book, “Becoming a Writer” introduced the concept of morning pages some decades before Julia Cameron - in the 1930s.  As the blogger concerned points out, Julia does acknowledge Dorothea’s book in a later section of The Artist’s Way.

That blogger isn’t the only one suggesting that at least one of the concepts suggested within The Artist’s Way have been derived from elsewhere. I noticed myself that in Week 6 - the week I’m currently within, Julia Cameron proposes the usage of a corkboard of images for those primary desires of yours. The visual board (or put it up on a refrigerator) of dream images has been called many things over the decades - from visual dreamscapes, to simply a collection of images, dreamboards to Life Collages. Julia’s synchronicity message also struck me as straight out of The Celestine Chronicles, some books which I read a good ten years ago also, and which make some recommended reading elsewhere in books now talking about the concept of “Cosmic Ordering”.

Whomever first wrote of such concepts, I have little care for. The Artist’s Way is written for many types of creatives, and packages many concepts for those people - including writers. Or wannabe writers like me. But at least the Scarlett Thomas opinion to not do morning pages seems debated as it is, within the writer’s community itself.

Orna Ross, on the Font International blog, debates Scarlett’s opinions quite heftily. Regarding Morning Pages, Orna has this to say -

This leads her to dismiss a key creativity tool, in an even more clueless assertion than her anti-workshop diatribe: “Don’t bother with ‘morning pages’,” she says.  “All that Dorothea Brande stuff — there is too much emphasis on writing about your childhood or using the most emotionally overwrought crap you can.” 

As a great many writers who have reason to be indebted to them know, Morning Pages is the term used by Julia Cameron in her bestselling, The Artist’s Way, to describe the simple technique of writing three pages of whatever thoughts come to your head, freely and without self-consciousness, first thing each day. 

At Font, we use the term “F-R-E-E-Writing” to describe the similar method we endorse (see further details on our F-R-E-E-Writing Page at www.ornaross.com).  The emphasis is a little different to Cameron’s; we stress the need to write as fast as possible and take writing students through some other simple instructions around the process (F is for Fast, R is for Raw and E-E is for Exact-but-Easy).

Having had the privilege of working with hundreds of writers who between them have created thousands of amazing poems and stories, I can say that I have yet to see a single one who practiced F-R-E-E-Writing failing to improve and grow — often very dramatically.

Orna also debates another Scarlett Thomas opinion - to not attend any  writing workshops. Scarlett says this on the Mslexia interview  -

“Don’t go to workshops.  The workshop is the death of writing.  No one should attend a writing workshop ever.”

“I can guarantee you that Tolstoy or Shakespeare never went to a writing workshop.”

This is an interesting opinion, and one which had my attention - because I’ve just enrolled onto an online writing course, at sufficient cost to myself. The idea didn’t sit well with me, however - although I am unaware if many of my idol authors actually ever pursued a writing course or workshop, or just started to write really. Maybe Scarlett somehow had a point, I thought…until…

Danuta Kean is a Freelance Journalist, who interviewed Scarlett Thomas on her blog and for the Mslexia Magazine. The online magazine excerpt (link above) only suggests the bullet point rules proposed by Scarlett, found within the Author’s Method - or how to write - section online. Danuta Kean has published the full interview, and it includes much more about Scarlett Thomas, and the challenges and criticisms she has faced in her writing career so far.

I was taken aback, however, when reading the following sentence found on Danuta’s interview -

Writing has been an escape since childhood for the 35-year-old, who lectures in creative writing at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

So here was a published novelist suggesting that we should never attend a writing workshop, and she’s a lecturer of creative writing. Huh?  Not only that, but the interview and Mslexia have targetted it for people like me, wondering what is the best way to start and learn about writing.

Despite the contradiction in terms, when reading further of Scarlett’s history, she sounds so much like me that I got a sense of Dejevu, especially when reading of her first attempts at writing a book (at the age of six) and her feelings of not belonging when looking at childhood photographs. Many of Scarlett’s past and indeed her passionate nature appeal and speak to me. 

Should I write morning pages or not - the answer is towards a question I didn’t know existed in the writing world. Many writers do do them, but many others do not. Should I? Well, I’m doing them, and seeing the profit in doing so - but then I’m also seeking creative inspiration in other pursuits and not just writing. Morning Pages, or Daily Pages - are good for me, if only as a journal of the latest events and thoughts, or as a sometimes dream diary. I haven’t seen anything truly inspirational come from them as yet - not even a poem, which I’m loathe to attempt because I don’t enjoy poetry (egads, that’s an admission for a wannabe writer!).  

But of other points, I am in total harmony with Scarlett’s pronouncements - she’s all about the plotting. And so shall I be, as I will be about character and theme also.

In my pursuit of some of this information I happened upon another blog, called amusingly, Listen to Your Broccoli, by another writer.  That writer’s Creative Crises Manifesto and Emergency Action Plan came up in my searching because of their mention of Julia Cameron’s morning pages. In the blog entry the writer admits she sometimes stopped facing herself (in the morning pages). Although this touched me, it was the actual Manifesto which intrigued me. Was I, too, ready and prepared enough to commence making a Writing Creative’s Manifesto? I know that it might well mature with time, and further readings (including The Artist Way work) but there seemed enough principles around in my head to allow me to give it a start.

My next blog entry is exactly that.