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The Artist’s Way – Week 11
This week was all about autonomy and I found this week’s essays to be ones that touched me on a different level. There was loads about creativity and it’s basis in the topics of acceptance, success, the zen of sports and building your artist’s altar, all of which are infinitely important. I took a moment to really delve into these and found that I wanted to actually write out every one of these small essays and tape them everywhere and anywhere I could put them. Morning Pages: Less consistent with them this week, but I definitely did crave them and found that it was easy to get to the page,…
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ahhh The Great Gatsby, how I have avoided reading this book through all of my schooling, until now. Yup, I have gone eleven years of high school and university never having ever read the book. Sure, I watched the movie but never read the book. I just had heard from various friends that it was torture to get through and horrendous so I dragged my feet as I began to read it but soon I realised that it actually wasn’t as bad as many made it out to be. In fact, I liked it. Yup, you read that right. I liked the book. Even more so after hearing the lecture…
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The Seven Stages of Creativity
Creativity is a mystery that we all try to pinpoint. And I really started to unfold this mystery with a quote that I open up my computer to every morning when I power it up and that’s: You can’t use up Creativity. The more you use, the more you have – Maya Angelou I have the last two sentences of this quote set up as a wallpaper on my computer and I have to tell you, it took me hours to find it, so it seemed perfect to start this blog post off with a quote like that because it’s perfect in every way. I wholeheartedly believe that the more…
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The Artist’s Way – Week 10
This week was all about self-protection and I have to admit that it’s taken me a little bit to get through this one because I’ve been so swamped with my uni work but never to fear I’m back on track with it. The themes covered were dangers of the trails, workaholism (so guilty here), drought, fame and competition, which all definitely are factors when it comes to sabotaging creativity. Morning Pages: I was consistent on and off and I can feel when I don’t do them because I get a bit itchy with the need to actually get myself writing on the page, I’m taking this as a sign. Also…
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Blind Tiger by Rachel Vincent
Anyone that knows me that I will push Rachel’s books on you in anyway shape or form. I have most of them collected away (okay I am missing a few, but I’m working on it) and I was most excited when this amazing author decided that she wanted to put out more Shifter stories. Do you know how freaking excited I was? I literally did a chair dance and then a physical dance and then waited with baited breath for the announcement. But I think I was most excited by fact that she was going to self-publish the series and take full control over what happened in it the books…
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My Permission Slip
Two years ago Big Magic by Liz Gilbert came out. There was a huge ruckus online about it because every creative entrepreneur was reading it and raving about it. I mean it was everywhere and there’s a good reason as to why. I’m here today to talk about my big fat permission slip. Gilbert didn’t pioneer the rules that creatives should live by but she did speak up and give permission to creatives to have a job and still hustle. She let is know that while she was writing and selling books she didn’t quit until she was sure her income from her books was more than enough to cover…
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Three Years Too Long
You guys may have noticed that my blog was void a blog post on Tuesday. It was my dad’s three year death anniversary on Wednesday and I was hoping to find the words to sum up what I was feeling when the time came for it, but unfortunately, I haven’t. I have no more words for how it makes me feel. I’m past angry, I’m past maybe even sad. Sometimes I feel like I’m past the hurt, but then I remember that the man that always held my hand and helped me is gone. He no longer and tell me he told me so without the actual words having left…
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Making Time to Write
I get asked about how I make time to write a lot. In fact, let me list what I actually have going on in my life right now: I have two retail jobs (that’s 40+ hours a fortnight) I coach writers I edit I write stories I go to the gym I catch up with friends I sleep, eat, repeat I’m doing a masters degree Ok putting that out there doesn’t seem like much but when you factor in travel time, being an introvert who needs alone, while studying, reading for uni, writing for uni, writing for pleasure, editing for work, coaching for work, reading for pleasure, sleeping, having down…
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The Artist’s Way – Week 9
This week was all about finding a sense of compassion, which is probably the biggest and hardest week for me. Mostly because I am way too hard on myself and it bleeds into just about everything else I do. The topics that were covered this week were: fear, enthusiasm, creative u-turns, blasting through blocks. It’s probably a week of really digging in and trying to learn to be compassionate. I caught myself and found that I was most definitely harder on myself, more than I need to be. Morning Pages: I wasn’t actually consistent this time, because one of the tasks was to read morning pages. Hello freak out? It…
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The Florentine Bridge
I feel like I may be a bit of biased when it comes to this gorgeous book, mostly, because my friend, Vanessa Carnevale wrote it. It’s totally fine to toot the trumpet for your friend, isn’t it? I was lucky enough to get to work with Vanessa early last year and was with her on the tail end of her journey to get this amazing book signed with a publisher. She is an amazing and wonderful lady and I couldn’t be more proud of her, but that’s enough for the mush, let’s get into this amazing book. I have had the pleasure of being able to read some of Vanessa’s writing…