Every time I start a new writing project (WIP), I always create a mood music playlist in Spotify/YouTube to set the tone for that specific writing project. That way when I hear that playlist or specific songs from that playlist, I can immediately fall into the world of that specific project, no matter what I’ve been doing before then. The music playlist is my gateway into my story’s world…
Every time I start a new writing project (WIP), I always create a mood music playlist in Spotify/YouTube to set the tone for that specific writing project. That way when I hear that playlist or specific songs from that playlist, I can immediately fall into the world of that specific project, no matter what I’ve been doing before then. The music playlist is my gateway into my story’s world.
Every time I start a new writing project (WIP), I always create a mood music playlist in Spotify/YouTube to set the tone for that specific writing project. That way when I hear that playlist or specific songs from that playlist, I can immediately fall into the world of that specific project, no matter what I’ve been doing before then. The music playlist is my gateway into my story’s world…
Every time I start a new writing project (WIP), I always create a mood music playlist in Spotify/YouTube to set the tone for that specific writing project. That way when I hear that playlist or specific songs from that playlist, I can immediately fall into the world of that specific project, no matter what I’ve been doing before then. The music playlist is my gateway into my story’s world…
There are five things I do before beginning any new writing project.
Every time I start a new writing project (WIP), I always create a mood music playlist in Spotify/YouTube to set the tone for that specific writing project. That way when I hear that playlist or specific songs from that playlist, I can immediately fall into the world of that specific project, no matter what I’ve been doing before then. The music playlist is my gateway into my story’s world.
Tell me, Do you create playlists of inspirational/motivational music?
This is the Poem that was the first true seed for my new Secret Passion Project,
The imagery in this poem was so visceral to me that the images haunted both my waking and my sleeping hours. It was the first seed for this world that I have fallen in love with and occupies most of my imagination…
This birthday was a good one in so many ways. Things in my life are slowly on the upswing. For so long I’ve been caught in chaos but the chaos is starting to mist away as calm enters my life again.
Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been. | David Bowie
This year I decided to renew a teen dream and give it roots in my present. I have always loved classical music. I love music of all genres but it is in classical music that I find my soul smiling. My favourite instrument, the one that truly calls to my soul, has always been the violin. It’s haunting song always moves me, no matter the melody. Although I studied music in high school, I could not afford a violin so I studied piano and the recorder instead. But ever since then I have had an unfulfilled dream to have my own violin and to learn to play the violin.
Keep on reading!
The last two weeks were difficult for me and for those I love. Two deaths to commemorate. And another loss for someone I love. My soul felt clogged up by the mud of grief. I needed a reprieve, a solace, a nourishing…
So I went to an art exhibit that has currently been showing in Auckland.
The Body Laid Bare| Masterpieces from Tate [On view March 18 through July 16, 2017]
Encounter the human form—in all its complexity—in “The Body Laid Bare: Masterpieces from Tate,” Auckland Art Gallery’s major exhibition for 2017. Beautiful, sensual and at times provocative, more than 100 artworks from Tate, London, tell the story of the nude and trace artists’s captivation with the human body over the last two centuries. Journeying through time, from the classical, biblical and literary subjects of the 1800s to the body politics of contemporary art, “The Body Laid Bare” brings together masterpieces by renowned artists including JMW Turner, Auguste Rodin, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas and many more. At the heart of the show is Auguste Rodin’s marble sculpture The Kiss which—although celebrated worldwide—is travelling beyond Europe for the first time. Other renowned works include Picasso’s Nude woman in a red chair (1932) and Bonnard’s The bath (1925).
This was both an exquisite and confronting exhibit. There were pieces that were raw and erotic, pieces that were heart-breakingly beautiful, pieces that were confronting and pieces that simply awed me. But each piece had its own place in this one of a kind exhibit. I went for Rodin’s “The Kiss” but I was transported on a visual journey that filled the hollow parts of me. The exhibit was everything and nothing that I anticipated.
So let me share with you the three pieces that absolutely entranced me and for a moment filled the dark hollow spaces with a hopeful light.
I have been dreaming of wolves for the last year or so. My dreams are always vivid. I also have many lucid dreams; dreams where I can control the dream and even where I can re-enter a dream days after having it. All of my stories have come from dreams. Vivid dreams that wake me up at 4am in the morning scrambling for pen and paper to write down what I see in my dream world. But lately there have been two dreams that I keep on having…
One is a dream of wolves and the other is a stirring in my imagination, new scenes in a new story in a new series…
The wolf dream is a favourite and one that I love to return to. I have always believed that if I have a spirit animal, as the native Americans talk about, it is the Wolf. There is something about wolves that call to my soul. So it does not surprise me that for the last year I have been dreaming of wolves. I have been at the crossroads of death and life, grief and joy these last 400 days. Dreaming of the wolves symbolises change, a wandering and roaming both literally and figuratively, a need for freedom and a longing for my pack. I am searching. I am hunting. I am roaming. But I am roaming in the spirit of the Wolf. I am feeling more certain than I have been in a very long time of where I want to be, who I want to be, what I want to write.
One of my favourite writing friends, Julie Christine Johnson, just published an evocative post “Atmospheric River” on her blog. (Aside* Do yourself a favour and visit Julie’s blog. It will lift your spirits and inspire you.) I had never heard of the term “Atmospheric River” before but it just zings with me now. Julie speaks of awakening from a winter of the soul, one which I know well and so much of what she shares in this post echoes what I am feeling right now.
A couple of days ago I celebrated a birthday. In many ways it was a difficult Birthday because it was my first without one of my oldest friends, someone who is a part of my soul. But also because of A and how much she treasured life, even as it slipped out of her fingers like the broken silken threads of spiderwebs, I also was determined to truly appreciate the day. It ended up being both a terrible and beautiful day, much like life itself. Terrible in that someone, in a six degrees of separation way, was buried on my birthday morning. Beautiful in that a precious new human, the first longed-for son of one of my soul-friends, was born on the evening of my birthday. A burial in the morning and a birth in the evening on my birthday. An ending in the morning and a beginning in the evening of my birthday. This paradox of tragedy/beauty and death/birth made me think of the life of a star.
The Winter of discontent is over and Summer-Spiration has officially begun…at least in my corner of the world.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a Winter person. Winter constipates and depresses me mentally, emotionally and creatively. I need the warmth and vibrancy that summer brings to feel truly in tune. This winter has definitely been a winter of discontent and hibernation. On Sunday morning our clocks changed to Daylights Savings and my Creativity Savings kicked into high gear.
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
A few weeks ago I shared a post about this discontent and my creative constipation. I am usually not one to whine, complain or moan. Quite the opposite I tend to always forge through and look for the sunshine behind the cloud. But this winter things fell in on top of me and I swallowed my pride and told you all about it. You see it wasn’t that my well had run dry or the ideas had abandoned me. Rather I curled up in a fetal ball and hid from the dreck, muck & mire of my real life. As soon as I posted this messy confession, I was twisted into a contradiction cook-sister. *another analogy would be pretzel* One part of me felt “damn Kim you scraped off your protective tough outer layer and let them see the fragile messy parts.”… But once the comments and the emails started rolling in from all who read the post, there was a cathartic healing; that feeling that I was not alone in my discontent. These were some of the comments/responses that helped me uncurl myself from that fetal position to a sitting position…
I read this post and felt a deep recognition: I could have written this…I’ve been so stuck this year, and every time I un-stick… bam: another storm to weather, another day to survive. It is making me realize I need other sources of stability beyond just my writing. Putting so much pressure on my writing to be The One Thing that Makes Sense and Always Helps is putting too much strain on my creativity. As much as this year has been difficult, it is one that is teaching me how to Be. It will be worth it – for both of us…
I feel like not writing is a form of self abuse…
Well said, darlin’. It’s been that kind of year for me, too, and I’m only just starting to get out from under it. Write on…
I have been here, Kim. I have been shut up behind the dam. The put it bluntly, it f-ing sucks. You pound and pound and pound and yet nothing will come out. Nothing did for me, anyway, until I took the advice of a friend and started writing a journal about writing. It helped a lot. Perhaps give it a try. It is where I found my honesty with myself when it came to dealing with the stuff that was preventing me from actually getting my work done. Sometimes I still do it, though I am no longer dammed. I hope you find the fissure through which to burst…
Write whatever you need to. They don’t have to see the light of day but may help you, both in getting through the difficult time and getting back in touch with the writer in you
Honey, I’m with you. I make you look perfectly normal. If writers struggle to get past the “why isn’t this sounding like I’d envisioned it” stage, it’s because they’re still amateur. When a writer hits this point, however–like you and me–it’s a show that we’ve hit another level of knowledge between life and writing. Because dealing with difficult emotional memories in life is the coloured picture, and writing it into a fictional story is the black sheet with little peepholes the writer carves out so the reader can glimpse into what’s being told…
When your dam breaks, I’m sure beauty will spring forth. If a little on the dark side…
The fact is, writer’s block is not funny.
When the words elude me, I start to feel desperate. I have a harder time dealing with the crap in my real life because there is no escape. The absent words haunt me, and wound me. I feel this vague sense of constant irritation, an emptiness where words used to be.
Right now, I’m making myself write. Every day. Even if it’s only one word. It seems to be helping, though I may be 90 by the time this ms gets finished…
Just get up everyday and keep going. You will prevail over this. Go for a long walk and just keep being you. We all sadly have something that tries to beat us down. Keep going please…
You are fighting your demons, but you are also dancing with them. This takes the greatest courage of all…
I loved your quote : “Life should not be about surviving. It should be about LIVING.” I’ve been avoiding an essay I started about a childhood trauma and you have inspired me to get back to it.
Thank you so much for sharing your struggle…
Wow! Talk about “Knowing it, Feeling it, Living it.” These comments were my inspiration that uncurled me into a sitting position again. That post was written a month ago. That was the first step into a sitting position. September was all about uncurling myself from a sitting position into a standing position. Now I stand here in the “standing position” and I am ready to put one foot in front of the other into a walking position. Because life is now about “not, not getting knocked down or not, not getting knocked back, but it is about getting knocked down or knocked back and standing up again. Once you start moving, walking forward you start taking a step to dancing with your dreams, your goals, your aims, your aspirations, your joys.
So to each and every person who inspired me to uncurl myself into that sitting position…
So this Summer is all about getting from that “Standing” position to the “Walking Forward” position. I am really excited about what I have in store writing-wise.
Life should not be about surviving. It should be about LIVING and that means the dark shades are as important to colour in as the light shades are. Perhaps the darkest shades are the ones we need the most because if there is no dark there need be no light. I am ready to un-dam those waters and let the dark words out so the spark of a match will lead me back to my creativity and back to my place of sanity: writing. I have to remind myself that even the rubbish words are still words. As scary as it is, it is time to un-dam the words. Otherwise I may as well just give up now. I am too stubborn to give up yet.
I’ll leave you with my new favourite motivation song…
Pink says it best > “Where there is desire
There is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame
Someone’s bound to get burned
But just because it burns
Doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
What gets You up to Try-Try-Try?
What do you desire enough to take a Risk of getting burned?
This last weekend I had the rare pleasure of attending an art exhibition of the Modern Masters “Degas to Dali” that called my city a temporary home on loan from The National Galleries of Scotland. With 79 works by over 60 Modern Masters from Renoir to Monet, Degas to Dali, Picasso to Warhol and Van Gogh to Matisse it was a feast for the creative senses.
You are probably wondering what an art exhibition of The Modern Masters has to do with writing and Wrestling the Muse. Everything. Writing is just another form of art. Where the great Masters of the art world used exquisite brushstrokes to create pictures and stir the senses, writers use ink blotches and words to create worlds that a reader can step into. Writing, Painting, Sculpture, Music are all forms of Art. If you are a writer, you are a creator of worlds and an artist of words.
What struck me during my tour of the exhibition was how alike a painter wrestling with his creation is to a writer wrestling with his. We both have a very specific vision of the completed work but at times the journey to get to that point of writing The End or framing that completed canvas is fraught with struggle. There was a room where the quotes of these great Modern Masters had been displayed on a wall. These are some of the quotes that stood out to me. These same quotes could directly be used for us writers.
- I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. – Pablo Picasso
- I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in
paintinga story! – Pablo Picasso- If there were only one truth, you couldn’t
paintwrite a hundredcanvasesstories on the same theme. – Pablo Picasso- Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. – Pablo Picasso
- It took me four years to
paintwrite like Raphael (insert a Master of Literature here), but a lifetime topaintwrite like a child. – Pablo Picasso- Action is the foundational key to all success. – Pablo Picasso
- An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought. – Pablo Picasso
- Are we to
paintwrite what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it? – Pablo Picasso- Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. – Pablo Picasso
- Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. – Pablo Picaso
- Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. – Pablo Picasso
- Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.– Pablo Picasso
PaintingWriting is a blind man’s profession. Hepaintswrites not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.- Pablo Picasso- The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. – Pablo Picasso
- The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is,the less there is. – Pablo Picasso
