This morning we drove our youngest daughter to SFO to board a flight with fellow schoolmates headed for an eight-day stay in Japan.
Driving my SUV along the freeway to the airport, my husband in the passenger seat beside me, and our youngest in the back with her suitcase
Of Witty Aphorisms, “Shirley Temples,” and Yearning … Read More »
A client once described herself as her mother’s Barbie doll. “Some days, Mom liked Barbie. Other days she hated me.”
I always took special care of my Barbie dolls, all the dolls I received for Christmas and other occasions. I also knew
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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.
Art, The Muse and Beholding The Other… Read More »
Capture of the King in chess ends the game. And thus the role of each piece or character’s movements works towards the larger goals of protecting the King of the same color and capturing the King of the opponent.
The players move their characters and/or chess pieces towards accomplishing these two tasks.
In this way process of playing the game of chess resembles that of writing a book. While writers do not move our characters around the chessboard of our stories like the pieces of a chess game, each character of a novel or short story carries her or his own role, both in the narrative line and the structure of the plot.
Of Kings, Strategies and Tactics… Read More »
Climax follows a time a crisis.
As the story heads for resolution the protagonist must decide how she or he will evidence not only their survival and triumph of the great battle she or he has fought, but how they will manifest those that shift in consciousness, that change of heart, in a way that will allow the experience to remain alive within them.
Then, and only then, can she, or he truly know the victory over death whose roots lie in fear, doubt and disbelief.
So many times we sabotage ourselves into thinking that we less than what we are.
Likewise we ground our identity of who we are and our purpose in life on the erroneous belief that we do not matter, and that what we have to offer means little if anything.
This is often the case for writers and artists of many kinds.
Of Dimensions of Experience, Mystery and Feet of Practicality… Read More »
What a character hates or despises says much about what she or he loves, adores, and that for which she or he yearns. The adage, “You can’t hate what you don’t love,” is as true for our characters as it is for us. A protagonist who hates their mother or father, most likely yearns for