Writing fiction is my great passion. Or at least, one of them. Long ago I gave up visual art so I could focus all my energy on being a novelist. In my mind it was necessary to choose. It was, I thought, the only way to master a craft and complete anything substantial. Pick your one true passion and focus on it for life. For almost two years now, I’ve been artistically monogamous with what… [Read More]
I’m a hummingbird! Unfocused? Way more alive.
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the shimmering violet beard of Costa’s Hummingbird. He’s brown, until he tilts his head in the sun to attract his mate, and surprise! A brilliant flash of purple. (I’d watched the new David Attenborough Life in Color before bed.) I had gone to bed with the question, what makes me feel alive? Through a swirl of images that night, I felt a profound insight… [Read More]
What stillness does for our writing.
Movement is a crucial part of wellness. It rightfully commands a lot of our attention in this sedentary culture. And yet, stillness may be equally crucial. After all, we find wellness in the oscillation between states. I love to quote Martha Beck on this: Play until you want to rest, then rest until you want to play. And rest is not just sleep. One of the deepest forms of rest is complete, intentional, mind-body stillness… [Read More]
Writing with your body.
We think of imagination as something that happens in the mind. And yet, you can’t enter a scene without a body. Think about it. When we write a scene, we transmit the experience that our characters have in their bodies, so that our readers can sense it in their bodies too. This is why body awareness and somatic practice are so integrating for writers. People who, if they’re anything like me, tend to be way… [Read More]
Sleep is a superpower.
And it’s inextricably linked to our creativity. That said, I don’t want us to think about sleep as this thing we must get right in order to be productive in our waking life. Changing that story has been transformational for me. And I have people to thank for that. Catherine Wright is a sleep coach and the founder of Recoop Care. Her work helps us find more pleasure and ease in sleep, in the most… [Read More]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 74
- Next Page »