Writing from The Heart

"Writing from The Heart" is a workshop on creative writing, creative drawing, and creative drama. There are three available versions of this workshop: one for beginners on the secondary, tertiary, and graduate levels, and another for practitioners. A third version of this workshop is designed as an outreach program to disadvantaged and underserved audiences such as the disabled, the poor and the marginalized, victims of human trafficking, battered women and abused children, drug rehabilitation center residents, child combatants, children in conflict with the law, prisoners, and gang leaders. This third version incorporates creativity and problem awareness, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, trauma therapy, and peacemaking.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Truth and truthfulness in creative writing begin by accepting your restrictions: a man cannot write from the point of view of a woman, a 36-year-old cannot write from the point of view of a 63-year-old, an urban dweller cannot write from the point of view of a farmer.

You cannot creatively write about a drug addict if you have never experienced drug addiction.

Any male creative writer cannot write truthfully about abortion because he will never know how it feels like to have one, not to mention how it feels like to menstruate.

If any writer attempts to go beyond these restrictions of truth and truthfulness, his/her work would not be creative writing--it would be journalism, which renders the writer a mere secondary source.

My personal method for transcending this is to regress myself to previous lifetimes in which I was any of the characters I am want to write about--previous lifetimes in which I was a serial killer, or a prostitute, or an obese woman, or an autistic child, for instance.