Writing from The Heart: Two Apparently Conflicting Approaches

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.

Monday, January 6, 2025

Two Apparently Conflicting Approaches

1) Train yourself to write under difficult, even adverse, conditions: while sitting as a passenger in a vehicle during heavy traffic, while seated on a park bench surrounded by young people having fun, while in the midst of partygoers, while music you don't like is blaring from a sound system, and so on. Gone should be the idyllic days of the writer needing to check into a hotel in order to finish writing his manuscript.

Write through hell, and back.

You will find that the tension creted by being in unpleasant, even harrowing, situations will function like fuel to a blazing fire.

2) Allow yourself to snack and drink while solving crossword puzzles, while composing a casual note, or while doodling, but deprive yourself of these when working on serious writing.

You will find that ingesting food and drink functions as a sensory distraction that prevents ideas from flowing.