Creativity
The drive to be creative.
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Letters
Gotta love letters — A. B. C.’s. Without ‘em, our civilization wouldn’t exist. Other languages – other letters: Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Chinese pictographs, Druidic runes, Egyptian hieroglyphs. Throughout history, in all cultures, somehow, someone has figured out a way to record our activities in a more permanent way than fickle memory allows. The alphabet used in many modern language groups is made up of 26 letters and has the most versatility, as it doesn’t rely on the principle of one symbol, one concept. Our alphabet, our letters, derive from Latin. The modern English alphabet consists of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The alphabet’s current form originated in about the 7th…
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Writers’ Generic Disclaimer
There’s something that every writer I’ve ever met has, at one time or another, said to their friend, writing buddy or critique group. It’s the dreaded Writers’ Generic Disclaimer, or what I like to call the WGD. The WGD goes something like this: “I had trouble with this piece. It still needs a lot of work.” Another common variant is: “It’s only a first draft,” or possibly, “It’s still pretty rough.” Occasionally you’ll hear: “Promise you’ll tell me if it’s no good, but please, be kind.” There are hundreds of variations on this theme. We all do it. But why? In the vast majority of cases, use…
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Creative Obsession
Everyone’s creative. In our own way, each one of us has a creative drive within us. For some, it manifests as painting, music or theatre. For others, the pursuit of science, city planning or auto mechanics. Even serial killers perfect their art, sometimes over years and dozens of iterations, each time trying to get it perfect. Who you callin’ obsessed? While the drive towards creativity is inherent in all of us, not everyone pursues it to the point of obsession. Those of us who do, often jump back and forth from one creative discipline to another, jacks of all trades, master of none, never really finishing things, and procrastinating…
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New Year’s Resolutions
Why do we want to start over and remake our lives every January 1st? Is it guilt for overindulging over the holidays? Is it disappointment that we haven’t achieved what we imagined to be our true potential? Or self-pity, shame, self-hatred, or doubt about our own self-worth? When did it start? Is it all the negative little voices in our heads that point out all our faults? Perhaps in the distant past, long before we were able to form a coherent thought, someone indicated that they didn’t approve of something we’d done – pooping in our diaper or making too much noise crying. Maybe as we grew…
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Preserving Our Legacy
With the recent availability of DNA kits used to research one’s ancestry, there’s been a resurgence of interest in finding out who our forebears were and where they came from. There are several companies that provide these kits with emphasis on different aspects of our history – some deal with the likelihood of our contracting particular medical conditions, while others focus on cultural migrations and the various parts of the world where our ancestors lived. This type of DNA research, while it doesn’t focus on specific individuals, has made researching our roots a good deal more accurate and provides a lot of information not previously available to us. The Old…
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Whose Story Are You Writing?
A common question that crops up when writing your memoir is: “What if my sister, my mother, my weird uncle, or whoever else I mention in my story, objects to something I’ve written?” Ask yourself two questions: 1. Is it my story to tell? 2. Is it relevant to my own life’s story that I do want to tell? If episodes of the story centre around someone else’s actions, the second question becomes the deciding factor. Problems arise when you include information that reveals things about other people – things they may not want others to know about. Perhaps your younger sister did something hilariously embarrassing as a six-year-old, but…
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Emotional Charge in Memoir
In every story, both fiction and non-fiction, all the best writing teachers tell us there has to be a main goal, an overarching question, a deep desire or an obsession. This powerful thread throughout the story keeps a reader engaged and committed to reaching the story’s end in order to find out what happens. It’s an accepted rule in creative writing. What About Memoir? What if you’re writing your life story in a series of isolated events – events which may have been important to you in some way but which don’t seem to adhere to a specific overall mystery to be revealed by the end of the book? What…
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The Whole Truth
I do love teaching workshops. There’s so much give and take and I always learn something new. It’s a joy to see the lightbulb go on for people when they’ve been struggling with a problem for a long time – when something I’ve said trips a switch in their head and suddenly, they get the whole truth. This afternoon, I started a new workshop class at a local seniors’ centre. You never know whether you’ll get a good group or even if anyone will show up, but today we had a nice number – enough for lots of discussion but not so many that we couldn’t all contribute. It’s My…
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Your Personality Type – Do You Know Who You Are?
Who are you? What motivates you? What stops you in your tracks? What’s your biggest fear? Your most pressing need? Your most debilitating pain or emotional wound? What lights you up, turns you on, gives you joy? Do you know your own psychology and personality type? The answers to these questions are the ones which form the basis of your beliefs, values, moral code and your personality. In memoir, it’s your personality that carries your story. Your life happens the way it does because of the decisions and choices you make, the way you see and interpret the world around you. The Value Of Introspection I believe that one of…
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Who Cares?
Why would anyone want to read my memoirs? Who am I to think my story is worth writing down? Who cares? And if nobody cares, why should I bother? What’s the point? There are two main questions here: 1. Who do I think I am? 2. And who am I writing it for, anyway? The first question indicates a lack of confidence or a sense of insecurity, possibly about your writing ability or the value of your life story. Questioning yourself and the value of your story happens because you don’t know the answer to the second question, ”Who is my audience”? Until you figure out that answer, there is…