Date nights and the creative pause.
“Even the smallest amount of self-nurturance will have an immediate and beneficial impact on our writing,” advises Julia Cameron in The Right to Write.
Read more "Date nights and the creative pause."What is “The Daily Creative Writer?” It’s a blog and a twitter feed focusing on providing inspiration and structure to all writers, great and small. From time to time – when I’ve got a moment to spare – I’ll use this space to write a bit about the tools and lessons I’m using to increase my creative output. In this space, I’ll be discussing the books and websites and mentors that help me get to the page. At times, I’ll give you a peek into the projects I’m working on or some of my past creations – all with an eye towards inspiring you to hit the page.
The focus of The Daily Creative Writer is to provide the tools and the motivation necessary for the creative and professional writer. So many of us want to write – to make a living, to explore our creative side, or because we simply must put words on a page – but don’t know where or how to start. After trying (and trying, and trying again) to create a career and a life that revolves around the writing craft, I’ve discovered that while there are many avenues to success, in order to be a writer one must write….every day preferably.
In this blog, you’ll find tips and notes and recommendations. I’ll be discussing Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” and Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” and many other books, articles and authors. I’ll be sending out daily writing topics and writing excises via twitter (@DailyCreativeWr), and I’ll be writing write along side you all. My hope is that my process will motivate you, and that what’s helped me can also help you find a way to live a writer’s life.
So let’s get started – it’s really not that hard.
As Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed…”
So let’s tap that vein and let it flow.
“Even the smallest amount of self-nurturance will have an immediate and beneficial impact on our writing,” advises Julia Cameron in The Right to Write.
Read more "Date nights and the creative pause."A new goal for this week: look closer, dig deeper, find the details. When you’re not working on a big project (like a novel or a collection of poems), it can be difficult to get to the page and write something imaginative. But sometimes even the most prosaic of situations or items can contain […]
Read more "Take a closer look"Finding Transcendence in Sevilla By Elizabeth Cutright The church bells just chimed in the witching hour, and the buildings across the river are basking in the golden glow of sunset. It’ the eventide and I’m feeling melancholy – no quite sad, not quite lonely, just sort of poetically alone. But the night feel pregnant with […]
Read more "The Expected and the Sublime"The World Is Enough By Elizabeth Cutright Slipping through the Spanish countryside on one of Spain’s speedy and modern trains headed to Toledo, I was so happy that I’d looked sleep deprivation bravely in the face and said, “you will not defeat me!” At about 4am in the morning, it looked like I wasn’t going […]
Read more "When the world is a monster, tame it with details."Draft Dodging By Elizabeth Cutright Yesterday I wrote about the paralyzing power of perfectionism. And whether we like it or not, the most successful weapon against perfectionism is imperfection – we must face our fear of looking stupid or inept or untalented by just giving in to our weaknesses. In that way, we will uncover […]
Read more "Perfectionism and Shitty First Drafts"Contrasts and Comparisons By Elizabeth Cutright (Excerpted from East Junction, a novel in progress) It was the sort of exhaustion that takes over your entire body – wrapping you up in a gossamer web of steely threads. Gillian felt paralyzed, and she knew it had more to do with emotional exertions than anything overtly physical. […]
Read more "Let your character tell the story."The Garden By Elizabeth Cutright I’ve built myself a garden, and on the surface it’s quite beautiful (as you can plainly see) I think the ivy covers the wall quite nicely – don’t you? If you look closer you’ll see the flowers are made of paper (and you thought I had no skill) Nevertheless I […]
Read more "Constructed Realities"Drama – a renewable resource By Elizabeth Cutright “Keep the drama on the page.” Julia Cameron, The Right to Write “I refuse to engage in any drama except the drama that serves me and my purposes. I practice what I preach: if you dump drama into my life, I will put it and you onto […]
Read more "Drama As Creative Fuel"To Me, You Will Always Be (for CH, who lost Doc on 01/01/1999) By Elizabeth Cutright To me, you will always be… running after rocks, and chasing your own tail; that goofy smile across your face, pawing me in a muddy embrace. To me, you will always be… the one that was up for anything […]
Read more "In Remembrance"I’ve been feeling under the weather the last few days – finally succumbing to whatever flu virus is going around – and so I haven’t felt up to writing, let alone creating any new content. Of course I feel tremendous guilt about this. I committed to writing in this blog regularly – hopefully every day, […]
Read more "Overcoming Doubts and Doldrums"
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