One Hundred Day Creative Challenge Day 98: Wide-Open Spaces She looked at me with eyes that hadn’t seen a decent night’s sleep in months. Her hair, tied back in a scrunchy, revealed regrowth that pre-kids she wouldn’t have put up with. But, now she was a mum and priorities had changed. ‘I wish I […]
Sometimes we need to do something that’s counterintuitive. Sometimes we need to let go and jump. Jump into something new. Jump into risk and let go of everything that’s holding us back. To be truly creative, we must jump into our art despite fear. We must let go of what’s holding us back. We must […]
To create art, you need building materials. Not just physical materials like canvas, film, or banjos. First, you need an internal supply of building materials like vision, determination, and inspiration. Products of the soul. Michael Gungor I’m re-reading Stephen King’s book On Writing and what’s striking me as interesting is the way he writes about how […]
For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 93: Less is More One of the best writing classes I’ve been to was a business writing course. This may seem a strange choice of class for a writer of fiction to attend, but I’ve always struggled to write less. A 500 word limit in a uni assignment just about […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 92: Get Messy Why, when we know that there’s no such thing as perfect, do most of us spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to be everything to everyone? Is it that we really admire perfection? No – the truth is that we are actually drawn to […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 91: The Three C’s Number Three: Conversation This week I had four writers at my home for a two-day writing retreat. There was time to write, time to talk and time to eat and talk. The conversations were full of, ‘What do you think about…?’ ‘Wow! That’s a great idea. […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 90: The Three C’s Number Two: Community: At the point where you feel like your craft is never going to be good enough, that’s where community comes in. Community is what helps you not to give up. There’s nothing like being in a community of like-minded people who understand what […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 89: The Three C’s Number One: Craft The creative life requires the ‘Three C’s’ — Craft, Community and Conversation. Writing is a solitary pursuit. We sit and tap away on our laptops for hours—alone with our thoughts. We go off on amazing adventures and spend time with created characters—in isolation. […]
