Never squeeze your mind. Just relax, keep still, and wait for ideas to flow.

Never squeeze your heart. Love is either there or not there. It comes, it goes.

The mind and the heart are like tributaries with a higher source. They have seasons. Sometimes the sun blazes, sometimes it rains.

Many thanks to Meeko Marasigan for the design and execution of the new banner for this blog!

Write not to be famous but to touch the lives, minds, and hearts of people in the farthest parts of the world.

In-Depth Writing Exercise 6: Gender Change

The reason we are able to write from the multiple points of view of men, women, children, the aged, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the advantaged, and persons of different races, religions, and lifestyles is that we have been all of those in previous lifetimes. Creative writing is a state in which, by drawing from the Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious, a writer is capable of extreme memory recall and able to draw from experiences beyond his/her childhood and further back in time.

During the creative writing process, a writer is "possessed" by a particular character not because he/she is actually "possessed" by an alien spirit but because that character and its personality already comprise a facet in the writer's subconscious--because he/she has already been that character in the past.

Do this exercise for two hours when you are completely alone and nothing can possibly disturb you, whether physically or electronically.

Focus on a real or fictional character of the opposite sex and, in your mind, allow that character to gradually take over you. The best way to do this is to step into the bathroom as that person would and take a shower, allowing the water to shape your body as that character's body. Just feel it. Go through the movements that character would while taking a bath.

You need not dress up as a transvestite after that. Simply walk around the room--either wrapped in a towel or naked--and look around you through the eyes of that character. Contemplate issues your character would contemplate. Note that, at this point, you are taking your identification with that character from the level of physicality to the level of your mind and your heart.

Move about the room as that character would. Speak out aloud as that character would.

Now sit down and write something--anything--keeping that character's mindset and heartset within you, in order to immediately apply the exercise to creative writing. If you can't think of anything to write, here are a few suggestions:

--a love letter
--a day in the life of your character
--your character's favorite things
--your character's history (The easiest way is to begin with "My name is X. I am Y years old. I am a Z..."
--a brief curriculum vitae.

After everything, don't forget to go back to yourself and ground yourself!

No one can tell you to write or to not write.

No one but yourself.

Principal Discipline

We love to write, but we prevent ourselves from writing.

All too often we have exciting ideas for short stories, novels, and plays. Yet, we subconsciously command ourselves, "I'll start this:"

--"when I'm good and ready"

--"when I'm in a completely relaxed state"

--"after all the chores are done"

--"after I get myself a new desktop"

--"as soon as I am able to help my brother overcome his problem"

--"as soon as the weather clears and I am able to repair the house"

and so on.

Discipline yourself to write two hours each day, as schoolchildren study two hours each day, NO MATTER WHAT. Choose a time when you are able to drop everything. Just write--with or without an objective in mind.

Even when I am not working on a painting, for example, I sketch two hours, whether on a professional grade pad and with an art pencil or on the backs of discarded receipts with a salvaged pencil stub.  

Don't wait for the circumstances to get right. Just write.

Everything is a book that is waiting to be read: a face, a palm, a spread of cards, a piece of jewelry, an antique, a potted plant, a grove of trees, the sky, a crack in the floor, and more, for Nature is the most prolific storyteller of all.