You know how they say sitting is worse than smoking? In lockdown, I’ve spent the past months mostly sitting down. Sure, I sit in different ways and places: on the floor, in hard chairs, on the soft couch. I move around, but I don’t go out and about like I used to. I know my… [Read More]
How to get out of writing jail.
Many years ago, I was trying really, really hard to write my second book. My first book had taken me 10 years to write, and then, unexpectedly, it was accepted by a publisher and selected for a prestigious literary prize. This experience changed the course of my professional life and career. I worked really hard… [Read More]
Resource your state of wonder
Writing asks us to cultivate wonder. That state of mind that allows us to approach the unknown with curiosity and awe. In wonder, we become open, present, more susceptible to being astonished. I’ve been teaching about this all month, and today I want to affirm: Writers need to nourish our own curiosity. We can learn… [Read More]
Stop making sense.
The point of creative writing is to transmute the ineffable. We use words to communicate all the things we can’t put into words. Language makes it possible. And language can also lead us astray. (Particularly the English language, which is so good at fixing experiences into nouns and verbs, confident that it knows what it… [Read More]
How to write with wonder and tune into metaphor.
We are all interconnected. Made of the same universal fibres. Woven into the same fabric. Life mirrors itself in infinite directions. Energies. Colours. “Coincidences.” At all scales. This numinous web is the ultimate source of metaphor. When we tune into this source, we can more easily spot patterns, echoes, hidden meanings — the seemingly random… [Read More]