Writing as Longing
How writing binds self to creation remains a mystery. I write to find out.
Writing as Sacred Journey
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 …
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.
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.
Adding to the “Sum of the Universe’s Order”
In our product-driven, results-oriented culture, we like to think creative work gains worth by its impact on an audience. Liz’s story illustrates that who we become for having done the creative work is an equally important “product” with significant “results.”
Prying Open The Crack
If I never notice what’s happening, I can’t choose my response. I’m reactive. But if I first stop and observe, I can be deliberate about what’s next. I’m coming to think that inside this crack lurks the greatest arena of human freedom.