Blog -Hop!

 

Blog-Hop!

My friend Shannon asked me to say a little something about my writing for a blog-hop, a sort of virtual “tag-you’re-it!” for those of us who write in these spaces…

1)    What am I working on/writing?

I just finished Week 12 in The Artist’s Way, the classic self-help course for creative recovery. I’ve attempted to complete this practical and spiritual DIY course a few times over the last fifteen years, but have never gotten past week five. As a whole, the practices in this book act like a roto-rooter to unclog your creative pipes of all the self-obsessive-caca that keeps you stuck, so that you can be filled with your own innate disco dance, or whatever rhythm your soul grooves to. Quite frankly, it’s been like voodoo magic. Miraculous. My juju is flowing. So, I’m working on allowing whatever wants to move through me to do so. I’m working on showing up to write every single day. I’m working on surrender mostly. Receptivity. Yielding. Part of what’s come forth is developing my transformative movement /writing workshops and retreats, really stepping up and into what feels like a very powerful calling. I’m taking two months off this summer to road trip to British Columbia. Away we will go in a tiny trailer ~  my boyfriend and our two dogs. Prior to TAW, these things seemed like unreachable pies-in-the-sky ~ things I wanted, but didn’t believe possible. I don’t assume to know where anything is leading, but I have been working on a memoir for several years and I may or may not be working on it this summer, depending on how the author of my story has written my lines. There’s more, but I do believe this is plenty-o-info for now.

2)    How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

I write personal narrative, my story/my voice. I write mostly first thoughts without much editing, and I’m not really sure if this is different, or good or bad, or if it even matters. My writing is a movement from a primal urge to express the many perspectives of my innards and my outtards.

 

3)    Why do I write what I do?

As a child I didn’t speak much. So many scary things were happening all the time. I just watched intently, studying people and situations like a mini-mad -scientist. I would mix scary things like fire, kidnapping, dead animals, and being alone with being Jewish and poor and having a mother who I knew was completely incompetent and dangerous, I’d then  come up with a story in my head that would keep me up at night sniffing the darkness for smoke or listening for Nazis carrying needles who would test my blood for “Jewish,” and then take me away to a concentration camp. Yielded from my heady ingredients were escape routes which only worked if I was ten-steps ahead of the catastrophe. I’m wired for disaster, I’ve already conjured the worst-case scenario and a way to safety. I am no longer holding my tongue, but still I study everything. Still I plan escape routes. I write what I do to unwind the mystery that is my mind. I write what I do so my head doesn’t explode. I write what I do because god told me to.

 

4) How does my writing process work?

I have no earthly idea, but getting up before the sun, coffee, quiet, space, Jesus candles, prayer, and staying put with whatever is showing up on the page when I want to flee helps. If I’m lucky, I might touch something beyond my silly-self. If I’m not, I still keep going. I thank Natalie Goldberg for waking me up to writing as a spiritual practice. For whatever that’s worth.

 

Now, hop on over to these blogs, written by three of my favorite humans:

 

Kevin S. Moul. Click on this link to go to his site and read his mind…

Kevin S. Moul is a widely published semi professional photographer who is also passionate about writing. He writes to achieve the same discovery with words that he captures with his camera.  Writing projects include memoir, character studies, and themes associated with his lifelong interest in urban and epic fantasy.

Canadian by birth Moul now lives in Southern Arizona and often wonders how he could live so far from the ocean.

His photographic ‘genre’ is restaurant food and beverage, portraits of authors, and travel and tourism landscape photography. His work can be seen regularly in Phoenix Arizona based magazines, and recently in the promotions of authors Natalie Goldberg, The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU, and publications of Erica Rivera.

He blogs and offers samples of his writing at www.kevinsmoul.com, a gallery of his photography work is currently being renovated to re-launch in July of 2013.

 

Robin Puro
Writes about food, travel, climbing and adventures with her dog, Pipi. Her voice is smooth like Vitamin D milk sipped in the morning on a patio during a cool, still day in Fall. Solid like the Earth, she always brings a reflective air to anything she writes.
Find her site here.

Writer, performer, Zen-ster, Gray Performs is on a mission to love Who We Are (in all of its incarnations) with such wild abandon that she inspires in you the courage and enthusiasm to do the same. She was once described by a producer as, “not an ordinary human being… She has the spunk of Punky Brewster, the mind of General Patton, and the awkward neuroticism of Woody Allen. She is lively, honest–full of piss and vinegar.” Read Gray’s blog at www.notkeepingscore.com.