Post by Steven Barnes on Sept 22, 2006 9:42:52 GMT -5
I was offered a three-book contract yesterday. I’ll be looking at the particulars over the weekend, and we’ll see.
It deals with a media tie-in, and piques my interest because I’ve never done this particular type of work before. Any time I have the chance to do something new, it gets me a bit excited.
That would mean that the next year would be BUSY, with screen and television work as well as books and NPR talks. And teaching the Path workshop, and studying Indonesian and Japanese martial arts, and raising my fascinating and rambunctious little boy Jason, and getting daughter Nicki into UC Irvine.
Life, she is busy. But that’s what you can expect along the Road of Trials. I’m trying to craft a career…and a life…that is elegant and congruent with my values, hopes and dreams. That means I have to try many many things, looking for open doors, for allies, for any hidden currents of talent and energy within my psyche.
Stay flexible. Follow the passion. It is so easy to feel burned out, and used up. I use meditation, journaling, heart-to-heart talks, intense exercise (specifically focused on the body/mind) and every other technique I can find to keep myself moving forward.
And this is where I am grateful to have found Lifewriting. After almost thirty years in the field, I feel that my model of writing is complete. Not that I have mastered it, or understand all of it, or having more things to learn than I have life left to learn it. No…my sense is that in examining the connection between plot, character, and poetics, I need not stray outside that triumvirate to grow to whatever level of excellence is possible for me.
This is the gift I want to offer you—a simple way to begin to hold the totality of written, fictional expression in your mind. Only when you have the whole of it can you begin to loose the engines of deep creativity. As long as you are struggling to understand the basics, to juggle plot and character and theme and subtext and yada yada yada…you are typing while looking at your fingers. The secret to entering YOUR highest creative state is to enter “flow” as you write, then to go into analytical computer mode during your re-write. To use both major ways of thinking. This is what Lifewriting offers…and why I talk to you about it every morning, first thing after I wake up.
It’s that important.
It deals with a media tie-in, and piques my interest because I’ve never done this particular type of work before. Any time I have the chance to do something new, it gets me a bit excited.
That would mean that the next year would be BUSY, with screen and television work as well as books and NPR talks. And teaching the Path workshop, and studying Indonesian and Japanese martial arts, and raising my fascinating and rambunctious little boy Jason, and getting daughter Nicki into UC Irvine.
Life, she is busy. But that’s what you can expect along the Road of Trials. I’m trying to craft a career…and a life…that is elegant and congruent with my values, hopes and dreams. That means I have to try many many things, looking for open doors, for allies, for any hidden currents of talent and energy within my psyche.
Stay flexible. Follow the passion. It is so easy to feel burned out, and used up. I use meditation, journaling, heart-to-heart talks, intense exercise (specifically focused on the body/mind) and every other technique I can find to keep myself moving forward.
And this is where I am grateful to have found Lifewriting. After almost thirty years in the field, I feel that my model of writing is complete. Not that I have mastered it, or understand all of it, or having more things to learn than I have life left to learn it. No…my sense is that in examining the connection between plot, character, and poetics, I need not stray outside that triumvirate to grow to whatever level of excellence is possible for me.
This is the gift I want to offer you—a simple way to begin to hold the totality of written, fictional expression in your mind. Only when you have the whole of it can you begin to loose the engines of deep creativity. As long as you are struggling to understand the basics, to juggle plot and character and theme and subtext and yada yada yada…you are typing while looking at your fingers. The secret to entering YOUR highest creative state is to enter “flow” as you write, then to go into analytical computer mode during your re-write. To use both major ways of thinking. This is what Lifewriting offers…and why I talk to you about it every morning, first thing after I wake up.
It’s that important.
