IWSG Day and Exploring Creative Activities

 

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.  

And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! 

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the November 06th posting of the IWSG are Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard, Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose!

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

Remember, the question is optional!

November 06th Question: What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

What are creative activities? A random google search produced the following: dance, drawing, gardening, photography, bead jewellery, make simple puppets, DIY projects, craft, painting, music, roleplaying, collage, doodle art, mug painting, hand lettering, drama, puppetry, origami, art, coloring, journaling, scrapbooking, natural art, improvisation, calligraphy, knitting, crochet, Zentangle, cartooning, costume making, flower arranging, glassblowing, landscaping, nail art, pottery, sculpting, quilting, soap making, tattoo art, macramé, sketching… and I think that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Creative professionals seem to possess talent and inspiration that allows them to excel at more than one type of imaginative undertaking and many writers say that engaging in multiple creative activities helps their writing.

Here are some famous writers and their creative pursuits.
Rudyard Kipling was well-known for his oil paintings and watercolors.
Lewis Carroll was a talented photographer who may have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.
Emily Dickinson enjoyed baking treats for her family and friends and would even lower a basket of cakes from her window to neighborhood children in the street below.
Leo Tolstoy was also an avid chess player.

What are your creative activities? How do they inspire your writing?
Happy IWSG Day!

NYT Best-Selling Author, Ruth Harris and the Creative Habit

The Creative Habit

Since we’re all creative people here, I want to mention the best book I have ever read about creativity. It’s The Creative Habit by the noted choreographer, Twyla Tharp.

An elegant book physically, pleasing to the eye and the hand, The Creative Habit is generous, authoritative, intelligent and well written. Each page brims with advice, specific how-to’s, questionnaires and exercises about how to open your mind, overcome fear, deal with failure, defeat distraction, clarify your thinking, make your way through confusion. There is guidance about how to find solutions when you know something’s wrong but don’t even know quite what the problem is or how to define it.

Using an extremely wide-ranging set of examples ranging from Homer to Proust, from Ulysses S Grand to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Pope LeoX, from Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to Ansel Adams, Raymond Chandler, Mozart and Yogi Berra, TCH offers a detailed road map based on Ms. Tharp’s own journey to defining her own creative identity. Practical, down to earth and never flinching from the nitty-gritty, Ms. Tharp explains the importance of routine, ritual and setting goals, how to know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea, how to recognize ruts when you’re in one and she offers explicit guidelines about how to get out of them.

Her advice is useful for beginners—and also to more experienced creators. She candidly describes what, specifically, she did to make the transition from habits that served her well in the past to creating varying approaches that lead to exciting new break throughs.

You will find out about the value of “doing a verb” and about building a bridge to the next day, about the relationship between failure and success, the miracle of second chances and what to do when denial is no longer an option. It is hard for me to imagine any writer who won’t learn from or be inspired by a book that is part memoir, part manual, part how-to.

KISS AT KIHALI ... romantic suspense set in an African animal orphanage.
I wrote this book to help bring attention to the brutal poaching which is bringing rhinos and elephants to the brink of extinction and to the valiant men and women who are working to protect these vulnerable creatures.

Ruth Harris is a #1 Amazon and million-copy New York Times bestselling author and Romantic Times award winner for "best contemporary." Ruth writes about strong, savvy, witty women and her "emotional," "entertaining" books have been translated into 19 languages, sold in 30 countries, and were prominent selections of leading book clubs including the Literary Guild and the Book Of The Month Club. Reviewers have called Ruth’s books "brilliant," "steamy," "stylishly written," "richly plotted," "first-class entertainment" and "a sure thing."

Find Ruth - Blog, Twitter, Google+, and Anne R. Allen’s blog