June 22, 2010
Conscious Creative Writing Part. 2
| Conscious, create, creative, emotional intelligence, expression, imagination, meditative, muse, New Thought, writing |
Even though I had been writing for my own pleasure for years, I felt that I made more progress when I found a book about writing from the right side of the brain. I now know that there’s more to it than that, but it was quite helpful for me. This article is not meant to be the definitive word on this subject, but I share just a morsel.
I started with an exercise to brainstorm in a free associative style. I then grouped the words or phrases together. Allowing myself to go the next step of plucking a group and playing with it in sentences and paragraphs, was an easy one since the sluice gate had been opened. At this point I usually wrote poetry, which was easier for me to bridge with free association. My poems often became songs. The music writing style actually evolved from the previous process.
When the writing didn’t become a poem, it often became an article which stills stands as one of my primary styles. I find that once I know what my subject is, it’s usually easy to write about it. For example, if a magazine was running a theme of mothers I could quickly find that in myself, since I’m a mother. If it was living in community, been there done that. If it was a subject I had not lived, I might have read about it or observed someone else doing so.
There is also a method that I developed, although I’m sure it’s not original. One night I woke up having had a strange and remarkable dream. It was about a tiger on a pyramid. I decided to use the free associative method to see if I could dredge something up. When I did, I wrote a poem about it. Because of this I was able to recognize the situation when it appeared in my life. It was precognitive!
I’m not going to pretend that writing has always been easy for me. I go long periods without doing it and I don’t depend on it for my living. I’ve often felt the sense that I would start to really write when I am in my older years. I haven’t wanted to write if I have nothing terribly useful to say, although I’ve filled notebooks with many processes I’ve used to grow. Teaching writing to students has at times felt like the best use of the gift, although I never know…
