The Creative Identity

Try This

What you write is what reveals you best. -Arab proverb- Books have been written about blocked artists, most notably for me, Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. But as I have already said, deep down, I do not believe in block per se. I believe that block is an excuse, and a stupendous one at that, which continuously manages to throw spanners into the flux of our work. We all encounter so-and-so days and good days and write-off days and excellent days but our ability to power through all of them regardless is what sees us at the other end of the creative process. Today's exercise is about difficult times, when you've written and re-written and, eventually, your half-abandoned project is lingering in the sidelines while you kick yourself for being inapt, or blocked or unfocused or whatever you like to call yourself when you get despondent about your writing. Proceed as follows: Get the piece of writing that has been the bane of your writing life and start by re-reading it; Put it aside and write in your journal about your resistance. It doesn't matter what you write, so long as you make an effort to over-analyse it in great detail. Stay with it for 1,000 words or so; Now go back to the piece you need to re-write and give yourself ten minutes only to tackle it. Then put it away and forget about it until the next session when you will repeat all of these three steps again.... Read more →

Stephanella Meets Sarah Salway

Do you know those people who go around dismissing writers' sites and blogs, for the sterile page that publishers put up and update every fifteen years must surely suffice? When such people are publishers themselves I always wonder whether their nuts and bolts are screwed in the right places. If authors never bothered to maintain their online presence, I wouldn't know who Sarah Salway is. It was November and I was procrastinating like a maggot, happily surfing like an Australian dude in high summer. In the midst of my search for stationery porn, I had to stop for Letter Porn. I was soon hooked, especially as the posts about Christmas, which I love dearly, started coming thick and fast (here, here and here, list not exhaustive). Sarah's site is a great place to hang out not only if you like Crimbo, but also if you love success stories of the writing variety, tips about writing, info about competitions and lots of writing prompts which, as you know, I am myself a bit crazy about (the full list of Try This is here). In April, Getting The Picture came out. Publishers Weekly said: 'Salway (Tell Me Everything) refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks in this breezy epistolary novel set in a British retirement home. Not that the residents of Pilgrim House don't know plenty of old tricks already: Salway's appreciation of her characters is refreshingly non-patronizing—her oldsters have rich and naughty pasts, but live in the present, very... Read more →

And The Dog Goes To...

...Galia! Congratulations on winning the signed copy of Hound Dog! I will be in touch via email regarding the photo essay. Thanks to all who entered! Read more →

Writing Advice

Sometimes I wish there were a magical formula for writing, a recipe which, just like Nigella's chocolate cloud cake, always yields the same fail-proof result time after time after time. Whether you're new or old to writing though, you will know that there is no such thing as a writing silver bullet and that we all navigate the creative waters by doing our very best. Over the years I've received some excellent writing advice, some of which I would like to share today. Some will ring true to you, while some other may make you feel sceptical if not downright superior in that 'yeah, but I know better' manner. Either way, I urge you to give these few points a try because you never know what you find once you undertake a new learning path. Write what you know When I first heard this one, at school, I thought it was a stupid way to impose limitations on my writing by clipping the wings of my imagination. In truth, I obviously didn't know, nor understand, what it really meant. To write what you know means to use your self as a springboard for ideas and execution. Your creative identity is unique and your inspiration will never be the same as someone else's. I always start from what I know; it gives me ideas for these little articles, it brings new characters to mind, it helps me to start unafraid, it provides me with a bottom-less well of novelty, it removes... Read more →

Try This

Old friends, like wine, don't lose their flavour. -Yiddish proverb- Or... do they? I don't like to re-read what I write. My journal pages, the odd story written years ago, the earliest bits of my PhD, whatever I don't need to edit any longer, I never re-read. I've come to the conclusion that I am not keen because, upon re-discovering my writings, I either depress myself by the state of things at a given point in time (like so, 'I thought this was good then but now...'), or I depress myself by the state of things at this point in time (like so, 'Bloody hell, why cannot I always write like this?'). I guess they are one and the same really, for they both make me shake my head in disgust and reach for another Irish coffee. But writing is a form of growth and by its nature it is organic and changing. This mutability of our selves in relation to our writing is something that we should learn to capitalise on, for it is only by moving ahead that we can understand deeply our motivations for writing. Today the exercise isn't so much about writing but about the process of reading. I find this type of work hard, painful even, but I think that whatever understanding is worth having in life is worth working hard for. Find a piece you wrote some time ago, months or years, and that you had pretty much forgotten about. Read it once only... Read more →