The Bee Writes… #amwriting diary 13.10.17

Yesterday, while cooking I was listening to a couple of TEDx-Talks about writing. One of which was Elizabeth Gilbert’s author of “Eat, Pray, Love” talk about “Your elusive creative genius”. She explains that in ancient Greece and Rome people did not believe that creativity came from within a person but that there was a being that gave a human that creative spark and let him or her create.

She also explains that she believes this is a much healthier approach to creativity for creative professionals because you can take a step aside from your creative process and your creations and just turn up for your job of creating. You can just do it and leave all the hopes and fears with that being.

Her approach is similar to Julia Cameron’s idea of the creative child, that needs to play to be able to be creative. In both cases you enable yourself to start the creative process with a “trigger” from something other than yourself.

A couple of years ago I took Julia Cameron’s idea up and wrote some posts about “Little Morgaine” my creative child and a couple of weeks ago she re-appeared in my life. Since then, when I start my creative process I see her in mind, take her hand and ask her to guide me along my creative journey.

Of course, this approach is not for everybody. Someone who only believes in scientific facts and who has no connection to other realms than this physical universe will think I am nuts. Never mind. I think they are nuts ;-). The simple truth is: We are all different. All our creative processes are unique to ourselves and we should be proud of them and cherish them no matter how they look like.

Since I do this I have become productive again. You see the changes on my blog of which I am rather proud. I love my blog again and feel it is truly my baby and it has a future. Admittedly, I experiment a lot as you might have seen at the subtitle of my blog which has changed a lot in the last couple of weeks.

However, that is not all that has entered my life. I am also experimenting with my newsletter. I have sent out two so far with a reminder of a couple of things that have happened on my blog and news on my writing. So far I have not figured out how I can add a file for all those who sign up. I would like to give away some poems or idea’s for good mental health or both. But I need to create this file first and then figure out how to get it attached to the sign-up process. Well, if you are curious how it looks like you can sign-up here:

And my goodness me I have done it again: I have committed to National Novel Writing Month! It is one way of finishing an unfinished project of mine which is called “Morsmart at the End of the Galaxy”. It was a sci-fi/fantasy series I used to do on one of my old blogs, however, stopped halfway through because ….. well, I don’t really know why. But I realised it is important to me so I take NaNo get a first draft finished. I have planned to publish it next year on the blog but we’ll see where it ends.

I have given myself a “NaNoWriMo preparation camp” which means I am writing 1600 words per day on my love story first draft. Two days in I have managed so far. However, I feel “so much writing so little time!” It is a lot that I would like to do but my day only has 24 hours and I am scared I am getting too excited, start too much and drop dead at the next turn of my mood towards depression.

I am not the only one though I suspect and those who have success are those who try until it works and start again when it didn’t. That keeps me going for now!

But what about you? How are you doing in general and writing-wise? Feel free, to share in the comments so we can give you some support. If you prefer to keep it to yourself then I suggest a cuppa of your favourite beverage and to have a look at Elizabeth Gilbert’s encouraging TEDx Talk: