I was teaching my sister to sing yesterday. Nothing fancy; just two girls with a beautiful song and an upright piano. As I walked her through how I produce sounds (and demonstrated examples), she told me three things: What I was saying doesn’t make sense (and is impossible to perform) She could understand what I…
Eye Contact
Two pairs of eyes glancing into each other, pupils glittering with a thrilling sort of intensity and connection. That instant is both audaciously invasive and extremely vulnerable. You may look away immediately and go on as if nothing has happened. Yet you feel as if you’ve been exposed temporarily, as though you’ve allowed them to…
The Tyranny of Potential
There exists for the creative three general modes of being: not having done, doing, and having done. The first stage, of course, is the first; this is where we often stay the longest, where we struggle most, and where the greatest graveyard of all that has ever entered the human consciousness lies. What has not…
The Creative Process
It’s an elusive thing, isn’t it, what we call the “creative process”. Sometimes it eludes us altogether, and we don’t create as we should, as much as we should, or create at all. A while ago I came across three simple points that, to me, lay out a fair starting point for any creative process.…
Brilliant Ideas
I’m not the only one who holds on to ideas I think are brilliant, waiting for the right moment or place to do something with them. I fear letting them go from the safety of my mind, thinking there’s always a better way to bring the idea to life, there’s going to be a better…
Write Stuck
Sometimes the words come easy. Sometimes they don’t. That’s not an excuse to stop writing. Athletes don’t just play when the sun is shining, when their body is in perfect condition, when they feel like playing, and when they’re at the top of their game. They play because they must. They play even when the…
Bookworms
People who love to read are sometimes called bookworms. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because they seem to burrow their way through mountains of books. Maybe it’s how reading is an intensely reclusive act, as if the reader is “underground” to the world around them. Maybe–but probably much less often–it’s a derogatory term aimed at…
Doubt
Doubt never leaves the persistent writer. Always the questions come and linger painfully, tauntingly. Sometimes for hours, weeks, years, a lifetime. They may suck the life out of one’s work, out of one’s existence, out of one’s joy and fulfilment in the act of creation. Am I doing what I’m supposed to? Is this any…
Contemplation
Somewhere amidst the hectic and heady digital world lies the calm and contemplative Analog Sea. An “offline publisher of printed books,” its one-page website has but a logo, a total of forty-one words, and two mailing addresses. No other information is offered—not social media links, no contact form, no email address. At a time when…
Vividness, Brevity, and Specificity
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ― Anton Chekhov There is a somewhat overused and underapplied (or as is often the case, misapplied) phrase in writing that speaks to vividness: “Show, don’t tell.” Simply telling the reader who did what how, when, why, and where…