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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

May 28

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Creativity begets creativity: How to build your creative muscles

In my 20s I was busy working and raising a family. I had no time for anything else, much less any creative endeavors. But one day I realized that part of me was missing—my creative self. I knew I needed to do something to fulfill that emptiness within but I didn’t know how to start.

Literally, the next day I was browsing in a book store and a book fell off the shelf and landed on my foot! Make Your Creative Dreams Real by SARK became my inspiration for designing my creative life. I don’t think I even finished the book, but I read enough to make a list of creative projects I wanted to pursue. I chose one—writing—and thus began my creative journey.

What I’ve learned over the years is that creativity begets creativity. Practicing creativity in any form exercises and strengths our creative muscles. Think of your imagination as a muscle for a moment.

When I had ankle surgery and couldn’t walk on my right leg for three months, I was amazed at how quickly I lost muscle tone. When I measured my calf muscles in both legs, my right leg was one inch smaller! Your imagination is like this—if you don’t use it, you lose it. And when you do exercise it, you gain momentum over time. Read more

Mar 15

How to use the six basic human needs to make your characters come to life, part 1

The key to writing strong, believable characters is to really know and understand your characters as if they’re living, breathing human beings.

You want to know your character’s background, what makes them tick, what has happened to them to make them who they are today, what they dream about for the future, and more.

You need to know all this even if it’s not in your story. I keep separate journals for each of my main characters so I can write about them and write from their point of view.

One tool that has helped me delve deeper into my characters’ motivations comes from human needs psychology which has defined six basic human needs.

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins has written a great article on these needs, “Tony Robbins: 6 Basic Needs that Make us Tick.” The six needs are: Read more

Jan 27

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Find your flow with writing prompts — part 2

As mentioned in part one of this post, writing prompts can help get us into the flow of our writing. Poetry prompts are easy. Pretty much anything can be a poetry prompt. But what if you’re working on a longer project like an essay, short story, or novel? Learning to develop your own prompts for a specific project can be a powerful tool in your writing practice.

The more we practice developing prompts and writing from them, the better writers and storytellers we will become.

Think about the word practice for a minute. Practice is defined as to do something habitually and also as to pursue a profession such as law. But, really, anything can be a practice.

I’m currently doing a 30-day yoga challenge courtesy of “Yoga with Adrienne” on YouTube. I don’t have a naturally flexible body, so I have to modify many of the poses. This is one of the things I love about yoga—it’s flexibility to fit any body type. It’s called a “yoga practice” for a reason. I love saying the words “yoga practice” because they remind me that I don’t have to be perfect. In order to get better at anything, we have to practice it. Read more

Jan 13

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Find your flow with writing prompts—part 1

I love to write and I especially love to write poetry, but I also go through long periods where I don’t write. I get busy with work and life. Or roadblocks appear that zap my time and energy and leave me with little creative mojo. 2018 was one of those years. It was a rough year. One thing after another ate up my physical and emotional energy and left me with no extra creative juice.

I didn’t write a single poem from February until the end of November. I was beginning to wonder if I even remembered how to write a poem. I started a few times, but the poems felt forced and contrived.

Then I happened upon a book my friend and writing partner gave me several years ago. “The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop,” by Diane Lockward is an incredible book with poetry prompts, essays, and articles on the craft of poetry and much more. What I love about the book is that it gives you a poem, dissects the poem, and gives you a writing prompt. After the writing prompt, you get two more sample poems based on the prompt. Since then, Diane has published “The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop.”  Read more

Nov 26

Using your grief and other emotions to deepen your characters

It’s difficult to write about deep painful emotions, even in our characters, unless we’ve experienced them. And, even then, it’s not an easy task.

Strong emotions can be overwhelming. Sometimes we numb ourselves or run away in order to avoid our feelings. I used to do that until I realized on some level that the emotions would fester inside me until I actually did the work of processing my feelings and healing myself. The advantage of doing this when you’re a writer is that you can use what you learn about your emotions to deepen your characters. I wrote about this earlier in “Draw on personal pain to write believable characters.”

But I want to delve deeper into this subject today because I’m working on a scene in my novel where I’m trying to understand the complicated grief my antagonist has about his sister’s death and how it motivates him to do bad things.

Grief is one of the most complicated emotions because it can have shades of guilt, shame, anger, and other feelings mixed in. Read more

May 22

Add a new dimension to your writing with humor

Let’s face it. This world can be difficult and confusing at times. Writing or doing any art or creative endeavor (even cooking or taking photographs while out walking) can help us figure out the difficult things.

I’ve written before about how writing poetry is like working a puzzle for me. That’s true on another level as well—not just finding the perfect word for a line but also as a way to puzzle out my world.

As a result, some of my poetry can delve into heavier subjects–illness, death, grief, etc.–which is why I love using humor in my writing. A bit of humor can not only serve to give the reader a reprieve, but it can deepen an emotion I want my reader to feel or an insight I want them to have. Humor can also take your reader on a journey they didn’t expect.

Below is an example of using humor in my poem “The Art of Flow” from my poetry book The Dragon & The Dragonfly (I’ve underlined the humorous bits): Read more

May 19

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Spark your divine genius to create art

What if your creativity came from a place greater than you—a source of inspiration that never let you down?

Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that art was born out of a divine conduit—or genius. People weren’t geniuses but tapped a divine spirit to create their art.

In Plato’s time, the concept of creativity didn’t exist. Instead, Greeks saw art as a form of discovery through a muse that mediated inspiration from the Gods—a benevolent guiding spirit linked to the divine.

The idea of a muse may be why some artists think they can’t create until they’re inspired.

Don’t wait for your muse to appear. Call it out.

Something magical happens when we put an intention out into the world to create. Dorothea Brande knew this when she said, “Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.” Read more

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