Alyssa B Colton Writing & Editing
  • Home
  • About
  • My Work
  • Authors & Creators
  • Businesses
  • Contact
  • Blog

In Your Own Bloom
Composing a Creative Life

  • 3 Quick Ways to Jump-Start Your Creativity NOW

  • Writers and artists don’t wait for inspiration: they call it in. Here are some things you can do to get (or keep) those creative juices flowing!  Ready? Set? Go! 

  • 1. 10-Minute Sprints. 

  • Anyone can find 10 minutes in the day. Set a timer and let go: freewrite, draw, move your body, write out ideas for a project. The only requirement is that it’s productive work on your creative project (this doesn't mean that it has to be work you end up including or are happy about - just produce). Research, reading, or viewing materials, while helpful, don’t count. Set a goal for one 10-minute sprint a day. 



  • 2. Go Random.

  • Open a book or magazine and without looking, randomly put your finger down on a picture or text. Now, without thinking too much about it, use this as a jumping off point for a creative work or think of some way to add it to an existing work; perhaps in dialogue or having your character look at it. 



  • 3. Turn It Upside-Down

  • Choose a project that feels stale or old. Find a new way in. This might mean changing the genre or medium (make a story into a play; make a painting into a sculpture). Shut up any voices that are telling you to “stay in your zone.” Or, it might mean rewriting the opening of your story from a different character’s perspective. When all else fails, go opposite. 



  • Another version of this exercise is to take a piece of work you admire and flip it around. Tell the story from a minor character’s point of view. Paint the garden from the viewpoint of a bug. See what happens when you set Shakespeare in the future on Mars. 









​

You Are Not the Poem (or Essay or Story): Detaching From Your Writing

1/17/2023

0 Comments

 
One of my favorite lessons from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones is the lesson of detachment. In one chapter called “We Are Not the Poem,” she says: “Don’t identify too strongly with your work.” 
One takeaway is that we can remember to check our egos when we are asking for feedback on our work.
I have been repeatedly impressed by the brave students I have seen who have written and shared their stories about themselves and their lives—difficult, hard, sad stories about depression, suicide, and loss— and eagerly awaited feedback.
They wanted to make their writings the best they could be. They recognized that these stories were important, and that sharing them was powerful, and that by checking their egos and hearing honest feedback, they could make their stories even better.
It almost seems paradoxical—how can you detach from something that you are investing so much energy into? In a way, it’s like a religion. You have to trust, and have faith. 
For some reason the image that comes to me is of a railway car being detached from an engine. Your ego is like an empty (or even full) cargo car. The engine drags it behind. It may slow it down. Perhaps the fuel you need is in it. Instead, detach the car from the engine.
Put the fuel in the engine. Make the engine the glorious best it can be.
Make sure everything is working and in place and that the engineer who is driving it is competent and alert and not swigging from a vodka bottle.
Once everything is in place, unhook that car from the engine and let it go. Let your writing out into the world and just watch what happens, as if you were merely someone waiting for it to pass by. 


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Site powered by Weebly. Managed by SiteGround
  • Home
  • About
  • My Work
  • Authors & Creators
  • Businesses
  • Contact
  • Blog