Writing as Longing
How writing binds self to creation remains a mystery. I write to find out.
Art Making
Internet Mind
Back before the Internet, when my two sources of interruption were the mailman and the telephone, my computer functioned like a typewriter or notebook, singular in its purpose. I like to imagine that I could focus, settling down into a project, losing myself in creation and emerging hours later, but the truth is I grasped …
The Tabula Rasa
The fact that the artistic process includes emptiness says something important, I think, about creation itself. Emptiness is part of becoming.
Your Stories are Wiser Than You Are
That spark of inspiration in my writing that then is reflected in my reader’s eyes? I didn’t generate it; I just created a form to hold it.
You, Sounding Through Me
A spark of life or inspiration sounds through us into our creations and sounds through our creations into other living, breathing creations who are also sparks of life and sources of inspiration.
Faith & Writing
One of the hardest things about creative writing, as far as I’m concerned, is the pervasive sense of getting nowhere. Sure, I might have a productive morning and crank out a few thousand words, but tomorrow I’ll cut half of them, and even if I don’t I’ll likely wait years before those words see the …
Bowing to What Is
If we’re willing to be changed and if we’re willing to make change, we come alive. Why? Because life is change.
Shouting to the Heavens
Dillard is more radical than I supposed—radical, that is, in the original sense of “forming the root.” She understands creativity to work at a metaphysical level, transforming the basic stuff of the universe.
Practice, Practice, Practice
What Emily and I want for Gwyn is all that practice teaches: How with every new piece we’re a beginner, how repetition builds skill, how persistence pays off, how talent amounts to nothing without hard work, how to foster a work ethic, how to make mistakes and keep going, how over time and effort what seems impossible becomes possible. How any discipline (music, science, language, faith) opens into ever greater possibilities the deeper we go. How real transformation only happens with practice. How practice becomes the whole point.
Adding to the Universe’s Order
What I find remarkable about Wallace’s story is how he saw creative potential within a relationship comprised of rejections.