http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net Exploring the boundary between skill and inspiration Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:55:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_33" align="alignright" width="222" caption="Sky of mind, courtesy Wassily Kandinsky, "Sky Blue""][/caption] Is there really a boundary between skill and inspiration? Or do these components of writing intersect? What's your experience? http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2008/11/15/query/ Recently I went to a reading and discussion by my friend Joyce Zonana. Joyce is an Egyptian Jew, born in Cairo and brought to this country by her parents in 1951, at the age of 18 months. Though she grew up in Brooklyn, her parents resisted assimilation and kept their ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2010/01/03/memories-memoirs-meditation%e2%80%941/ A previous post described using reflection to plumb your own depths for inspiration. But what about just going to sleep and letting your unconscious do the work? I learned this trick from an author whose book I edited when I worked for a publisher. Carol (I’ll call her) was preceded by ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/11/12/let-your-unconscious-do-the-work/ At a meditation retreat recently I discovered that even when all sorts of events were going on in my body and mind—physical pain or tension, intrusive thoughts, uncomfortable emotions—I could inhabit a place of stillness, where I was aware of these things but unaffected by them. To get to that ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/09/07/writing-anxiety/ I’m still reverberating slightly after a meditation retreat last week. It resonated on several levels, but what’s relevant here is that I developed a better understanding of reflection. Based on the teacher’s instructions, it seemed that I’d actually been practicing reflection for a long time, before I ever started meditating. I ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/08/08/more-on-reflection/ The graphic just below is not a tag cloud but a WORD cloud, generated by a site called Wordle, which is just amazing. Paste in text (or give it the url of your blog, as I did) and it presents you with a randomly formatted cloud of words sized according ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/06/17/the-inside-of-my-head/ ... At least it always works for me. I generally freeze up when I’m afraid I don’t have the chops for whatever the job is: an article that requires synthesizing interviews about a topic I don’t feel totally in control of (especially if one of the people I spoke to ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/05/30/writer%e2%80%99s-block-foolproof-trick-for-breaking-through/ Have you noticed that when you’re deeply involved in something, you turn into a magnet for anything related to it? I once interviewed Kay Gardner, a musician and composer of healing music (sadly, she died in 2002), who told me that during a time when she was intensively exploring the physical ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/05/08/writer-as-flypaper/ My years as a manuscript editor taught me how to structure a book. Many authors are experts with great info to impart, but when they try to produce a book they end up with a shapeless mess. Book writing is a craft, a professional specialty, like making violins. For the past ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/04/05/structuring-a-book-working-a-jigsaw-puzzle/ I’ve always loved pens. I used to keep a journal, and aside from its value as an aid to reflection, the physical act of writing in it gave me pleasure. Many people are passionately attached to fountain pens; they’re particular about nibs, ink, and paper. But I love all pens, ... http://writingcraftandpractice.stephaniegolden.net/2009/03/22/writing-pleasure-part-2/