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.
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Inspiration is in the details…
Dominating Details Earlier this week, I practiced the art of specificity and came up with some interesting pieces of description. Thanks to Julia Cameron, I was able to take everyday objects and meld them into something a little grander, a little more sublime. By applying specificity to Gary Hoffman’s “railroad ramble,” I captured a snapshot […]
Read more "Inspiration is in the details…"Writing Tool: School Lunches
What’s for lunch? Yesterday I talked about the tool of specificity. By looking closely at – and writing about – the details, we can often jumpstart the writing process and end up in a completely different place than where we started. The benefit of specificity is that takes out some of the mystery of the […]
Read more "Writing Tool: School Lunches"Take a closer look
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"The Expected and the Sublime
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"When the world is a monster, tame it with details.
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."Perfectionism and Shitty First Drafts
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"Let your character tell the story.
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."Constructed Realities
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 As Creative Fuel
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 […]
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