unconscious – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Mothers, Daughters and a Nation Crying for Help…

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During the past year I have noticed an increasing number of Internet stories/articles reporting the murders and /or more often murder-suicides wherein a parent has killed the spouse and their children.

Men and fathers are usually the assailants for cases involving a murdered spouse.

Children are usually the victims when mothers commit homicide on members of their immediate families.  

The act of any parent or adult killing a child is horrendous.

And yet, as the mother of three daughters, I am most taken when a mother kills her daughter (s).

As a psychotherapist I a to ask, “What

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Of Revelation, Illusions and the Parallel Processes of Writing and Discovery…

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Revelation plays an important role in constructing and/or assembling the middle section of a novel.

Revelation also encompasses the uncovering of truth of what has always stood present, but remained hidden by strong held illusions and beliefs.

Stories and novels stand upon revelations, ones that sustain the cause-and-effect events that comprise, most particularly, the plot of a novel and that lead towards crisis and onto climax.

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Art, The Muse and Beholding The Other…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

The Muse then is that most terrified of all the virgins. She starts if she hears a sound, pales if you ask her questions, spins and vanishes if you disturb her dress. We might start off by paraphrasing Oscar Wilde’s poem, substituting the world “Art” for “Love.”
Art will fly if held too lightly.
Art will die if held too tightly.
Lightly, tightly, how do I know?
Whether I holding or letting Art go?”

–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity

Beckoning and befriending The Muse takes work and energy. The focus required to summon The Muse asks that we turn inward. Looking at one’s own self consolidates awareness of our motives, those conscious and unconscious, what drives us to move through and impress ourselves upon the world in a unique manner that distinguishes us and expresses our personality.

The impetus to create involves two simultaneous processes, one of bringing the formless into form, making something out of the rawness of nothing. And then there is transformation under which each artist goes when carving and crafting our creating.

The Muse oversees and directs these two aspects of making while being remade, molding while being reshaped.

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The Muse, Mystery and Grace…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.

We are speaking, of course, of The Muse.”

–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity

Many people imagine the life of a writer as one of awakening each morning to a flowing stream of words that pour onto our writing tablet or through our fingers and onto the computer string, our greatest challenge being that of writing or moving our fingers quick enough on the computer keys to catch the words.

There are times like that. But more often than not, we struggle to find those words that ideally give readers a smooth ride into the escape of our stories and novels.

A more honest way of describing what we do is to say that the smoother our sentences flow and the more intense a readers entrancement into at story, the more the writer toiled at kneading and carving that ease of journey presented in the magic carpet of our words.

But what of The Muse?

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Of Towers, Castles and the Battles Writers Wage…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The Rook, Tower or Castle in the game of chess speaks to boundaries.

Towers and Castles of the medieval era served not simply as homes, but also places of protection, that place to which rulers, those of their court, and the soldiers guarding them retreated and from which they waged battle.

The Tower provided a place from which the sentry or guardsmen could look out and view those coming to do battle or offend–those who sought to defeat the monarch and occupy her or his home.

Each time we set out to write a story or novel, we wage a war.

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Of Rooks, Guardians of the Threshold and Boundaries…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The chess piece or character known as The Rook, which is also called The Castle or as I like to say, The Tower can move as many spaces along a row or column on the chessboard.

The Rooks (each player has 2) combined with The Queen, form the major chess pieces. In this way they operate like Guardians of the Threshold preventing the opposing player’s pieces from gaining or capturing a player’s King.

Guardians of the Threshold in a novel hold the boundaries between the protagonist and her or his goal.

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Of Mantras, Writing, and Knowing When to Tell…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

Your story lives within you. Write with it rather than about it.

–Martha Alderson of Plotwhisperer for Writers and Readers

“Don’t talk your story out. Write it.” I heard that a lot during my participation in many writing workshops, but not so much like the almost broken mantra, “Show. Don’t tell,” regarding the development of scenes.

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