If you’re a creative, teacher, trainer, or coach, should you write a book?
And if you do want to write a book, have you asked yourself why?
I’ve worked with many online writers who decided to write books--and when they start asking me their questions, I often respond with a question too.
“Why do you want to write a book?”
There is no right answer to that question--only your answer.
And, yes, you’re allowed to have many reasons for wanting to write a book—from being passionate about the subject, to wanting to share something with the world, to ‘just having a book in you.’
Today, I’m really excited to share an interview with María Ortega Garcia on the many reasons she wrote her book.
Sometimes, when the world seems like too much, I pull a heavy, fuzzy blanket over myself and disappear into a novel. This month, as the world spins, and wobbles, I’ve been reading The Paris Network--our creative community’s book of the month. I invite you to pick up this story (or another great book) and see what happens when you forget your surroundings, your time for a minute…
Suddenly you’re in France, World War II, the occupation. You pop into a bookshop. The owner writes “poetry prescriptions” to keep the townsfolk strong, runs a resistance book club with banned books. Poetry falls from the sky in airdrops. And it’s all based on true events: the banned books, the resistance publishers, the literature and poetry woven into the novel, like “Liberté” by Paul Eluard.
Under the story, there’s a truth that will, no doubt, resonate with you:
Sometimes, literature (or art) is more important than food.
Are you someone who works with words? Maybe you teach or translate, write copy in one or more languages?
Are deadlines something you’re familiar with? Do they add a certain rhythm to your days?
If so, you know that time to create, to express yourself, to work on your own projects is an issue.
And you’re probably intimately familiar with that feeling of working all day on a big writing, translating or teaching project…and the challenges that come with transitioning into your creative self at the end of a long day. Even if you love your work.
If that sounds like you. I think you’re going to really enjoy reading this interview with Sofia Polykreti. Sofia is an active and inspiring member of our Tip of the Iceberg Writing Community. She brightens our book chats with her insights, brings her energy to writing workshops and shares her unique work in our forum.
When is the last time you stopped to think about your body?
As a writer, a creative…a human.
At our Vagabond Voices Creative Community, our inspiration revolves around creative seasons. And…there’s a ‘season’ that is just about the body—remembering you have one and reconnecting to it.
So, whether the season is one where it feels like winter is melting all around you, or summer is going to sleep--whatever side of the globe you’re on, join me today for a celebration of your body. It’s healing, it’s good for your creativity (and good for your writing).
This year, as we enter the creative season of ‘the body’ I’ve got a blog post for you with ideas for tapping into your body for healing and creativity.
And I’ll have a few words of wisdom from a fantastic book I finally finished reading: The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain, and body in the transformation of trauma. by Bessel Van Der Kolk.
How is a book on healing trauma relevant to our writing and creativity?
Here is what I know:
So many of our artforms, our modes of creative expression actually help us heal.
They are a part of what helps us survive as individuals and cultures.
Even when the unthinkable happens. Or when it’s all around us.
They make us strong. They make us whole.
They bring us together--and they are our human tradition.
Celebrate these with me--whether you’ve experienced trauma or not.
Help keep these creative acts alive and share them with others.
For all of us.
Here are a few ways…
Have you been sleepless lately?
Me too.
There was a night last week when I woke up at 3 AM, and could not accept—anything.
It’s the kind of thing that will leave you asking the ceiling overhead, the rafters, the roof creaking in the wind, the sky:
Is it worth being angry at the world?
Does it help anything?
Does it put bread on the table?
Stop madmen in their tracks?
So many questions and one thing I know for sure:
This is what the first creative step looks like sometimes…
This month, I’m happy to share the writing, experience, and work of an author whose writing always touches me, Gosia Rokicka. She is a member of the Tip of the Iceberg creative community and you can find her beautiful story, “The Fern Flower,” in The Tip of the Iceberg Anthology
What can be better than diving into a book--holding an adventure of the written word in your hand?
What can take the place of traveling as you turn the pages?
Whether you visit incredible new places, walking strange streets, feeling the dust of the traveler on your shoes.
Or you find yourself returning home--in one way or another.
Or even find yourself traveling within…
What is more beautiful than the exciting and surprising stack of new books waiting for you?
Only one thing I can think of tops the delicious flavor of solitary hours spent in words...and worlds:
If there has ever been a time to write about our lives, maybe it’s today.
What curious peaks and crests we find ourselves sailing. Questions. Decisions. Restarts.
And if this is a time of turbulence, it is also one of creativity.
I’ve been through times in my life that left me searching and forced to recreate life from scratch in the past. During those times, I found myself in writing. I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t trying to add on some new self-care regimen.
I just had to write. I literally felt my body drawn back to the pen and paper. Maybe it was just the thing I did to keep from being lost at sea during times of personal crisis.
But now? There has never been a more important time to write.
These days, it sometimes feels like we are all sharing a ride on these rough seas.
We are reinventing, recreating: You and I, the person sitting near you on the bus. The neighbor you cross paths with once in a while...
And like so many aspects of writing, maybe we begin because it helps us find meaning. Or because it lays something to rest. Or because it allows something to be reborn.
But then, on occasion, that writing that started as a furtive scribble in a journal somewhere turns into art:
The kids are (finally) asleep. The family, the healthy food, the shifting, migrating career, school, and simply staying sane. You’ve done the impossible. Again. It’s time to stop being a superhuman and have some me-time. And for those of us who live and breathe stories and adventures of the written word? For those of us who write, read and find refuge in our languages? Well, there are few things more soothing than getting lost in a book. Or in something you are writing.
Something small, something informal. Something just for you. It hardly matters. What matters is the way you feel when the world stops and it’s just you and your creation. And one of my favorite writing techniques is the incredibly simple (and yet so wonderful) one-line poem. Especially, one-line ‘found’ poems.
It’s funny, the things I know for certain? They never cease to surprise me anyway. Like reading novels and discussing them with people you trust...and who inspire you.
Earlier this week, I showed up to our writing chats, curled in layers of wool against the cold and armed with tea. It was like a small break from, well, everything else.
We met to talk about Mr. Pip. A beautiful book set during the civil war on Bouganville off the coast of Papua New Guinea. A book that sweeps you up with beauty and resilience in the face of catastrophe.
And that got us all talking about the way stories get us through.
In Mr. Pip, one of the main (and mysterious!) characters, Mr. Watts, reads Dicken’s Great Expectations to the school children as all the teachers have left the island. Ultimately, he draws the entire village into the story, to create something new a new tale that deviates perhaps from Great Expectations...possibly from the whole and exact truth of his own life.
“Do we forgive Mr. Pip for not being entirely honest?” I wanted to know in our book chats?
Do we forgive the author for telling us the story that we need to hear? For handing down the story that makes us strong rather than ‘just the facts?’
Here I sit, leafing through our (first!!) Anthology--the physical manifestation of our creative endeavors this year. A tiny, brave book that is made of inspiration, hopes, and dreams (that often seemed unrealistic), community…
This light and hopeful collection is, as its title implies, just the Tip of the Iceberg. The tiny part of all our conversations, connections, scribbling, and doodling that poked its head above the surface.
Maybe if there’s one thing I have to say to you as we wipe the slate clean and face the blank page of January 2021 it’s this:
Keep dreaming up your creative projects—even when you don’t know where you’ll find the time.
And do you know what amazes me? I’m (still) dreaming. And so are so many of you.
We have creative projects in mind. New books to write, new doodling or journaling habits to begin...or rekindle…
Pick up a book, smell the paper pages, feel them dampen in the steam of the bath or crisp in the air by the hot fire…but not for long. Soon you’ll feel the sand under your feet, the lull of waves from other shores. You’ll be off on someone else’s adventure. Sure, it’s an escape—but it’s an escape that reminds you what it’s like to be a human on this planet.
An escape that leaves you more compassionate, wiser…more resilient.
Readers who write and writers who read….I bring you our book club picks for the first part of 2021…
Do you ever feel guilty about taking time for yourself?
These days, what is a need anyway?
Maybe pausing and turning inward seems like the last thing on your list of priorities...alongside with making a trip to the spa...or taking a bubble bath. If you’re like me, in these past few months, the phrase self-care has started to sound like something for the privileged. The pampered.
But promise me you’ll never forget one thing:
When you find yourself and your words on the page, you are not practicing self-indulgence…
You are building resilience, one word, one phrase, one flight of fancy at a time.
Your Creativity Has Seasons.
Let me share something I learned when I was still a teenager-- about art, creative endeavors...life:
Beautiful things happen when you find a larger movement in a smaller pattern.
This is a lesson I learned thanks to a wise studio art teacher when I was 16. I was struggling with a project, where a pattern had to repeat itself...I had these suns, starbursts that were not so bad in themselves but I couldn’t get them to hang together.
What is all this doing here? I hate this project. Is what I thought but didn’t say.
Ms. M didn’t explain, or speak, or ramble on--she just grabbed the sunbursts I’d designed in her wrinkled and always slightly shaking hands. And she began to play with them, arranging my sunbursts on the page--this way, that way...until suddenly, a movement appeared. Then another.
It gave all those little pieces I’d created meaning. Direction. Flow.
If you want to really write and feel good about your creative process—rather than find yourself staring at a blank screen, I’ve got two pieces of advice for you:
Read (good, quality writing preferably in books and that YOU like).
Engage in creative reading exercises to keep you unstuck and keep your words flowing (like blackout poetry, collage poetry and ‘found’ poems).
It’s a chance to let your subconscious mind wander and travel, play with associations. This is great for your writing in any of your languages.
