I've really been enjoying these different takes on creativity. As someone who is still recovering from wholly leaning on structure and certainty (all of life, not just creatively) I find I'm being challenged in good ways and inspired to practice letting creatively flow and meander freely.
In fact, even just stepping into writing in itself has been a massive step into creativity! Very little idea of what I'm doing, no real timeline, no "guarantee it will be worth it in the end."
I've just finished re-reading Steph's Unbound to help get the rhythm-feel for memoir and transformation. So Maia your beat sheet couldn't have landed at a better time. And a million THANK YOUs for naming a structure that doesn't feel like a structure!
So glad this is helpful Hannah! I started working on it as an academic project for The Night School than used it myself for my memoir Letting Magic In.
I think one of the hardest things with writing is learning to enjoy the process and to treat it as an opportunity to build your craft. I tend to be product oriented. I stopped working with clay because, although I created interesting objects, I didn't know what to do with them.
It's easy to give up on an art form if you don't know what to do with the end product. And yet to master a skillset-- whether it by writing or pottery or computer coding-- we have to experiment and create things, things whose value is in their ability to teach us. It's tough for me to remember this as I am writing-- but I keep reminding myself!
This is great! Like the protagonist of my own life, I’m seated in a dark night of the soul. Grief is my initiation. My creativity has been stagnate one moment then fluttering with all of the processing needing to take some kind of form. Structure is essential because it gives us foundations and all the necessary supports. I love this piece b/c it resonates because it’s TRUE. And redirecting creation energy (yes, cooking! Bravo!) is a beautiful way to stoke creative fires without the neediness to create. It’s a kind of surrender for letting the magic in - in gentle, subtle ways. And, boom! A big idea emerges. Bravo, Maia!! Lovely to witness an unfolding! And grateful for the reminder to embrace structure! 💗
Interestingly, that’s how this mapping out of story structure began for me— looking for the structure of a journey we can use in our own lives…. And it works incredibly well for writing memoir and fiction, too…. Guess I’m only about the millionth person to figure that out.🤣
I've really been enjoying these different takes on creativity. As someone who is still recovering from wholly leaning on structure and certainty (all of life, not just creatively) I find I'm being challenged in good ways and inspired to practice letting creatively flow and meander freely.
In fact, even just stepping into writing in itself has been a massive step into creativity! Very little idea of what I'm doing, no real timeline, no "guarantee it will be worth it in the end."
I've just finished re-reading Steph's Unbound to help get the rhythm-feel for memoir and transformation. So Maia your beat sheet couldn't have landed at a better time. And a million THANK YOUs for naming a structure that doesn't feel like a structure!
So glad this is helpful Hannah! I started working on it as an academic project for The Night School than used it myself for my memoir Letting Magic In.
I think one of the hardest things with writing is learning to enjoy the process and to treat it as an opportunity to build your craft. I tend to be product oriented. I stopped working with clay because, although I created interesting objects, I didn't know what to do with them.
It's easy to give up on an art form if you don't know what to do with the end product. And yet to master a skillset-- whether it by writing or pottery or computer coding-- we have to experiment and create things, things whose value is in their ability to teach us. It's tough for me to remember this as I am writing-- but I keep reminding myself!
This is great! Like the protagonist of my own life, I’m seated in a dark night of the soul. Grief is my initiation. My creativity has been stagnate one moment then fluttering with all of the processing needing to take some kind of form. Structure is essential because it gives us foundations and all the necessary supports. I love this piece b/c it resonates because it’s TRUE. And redirecting creation energy (yes, cooking! Bravo!) is a beautiful way to stoke creative fires without the neediness to create. It’s a kind of surrender for letting the magic in - in gentle, subtle ways. And, boom! A big idea emerges. Bravo, Maia!! Lovely to witness an unfolding! And grateful for the reminder to embrace structure! 💗
Interestingly, that’s how this mapping out of story structure began for me— looking for the structure of a journey we can use in our own lives…. And it works incredibly well for writing memoir and fiction, too…. Guess I’m only about the millionth person to figure that out.🤣