Making Room for More

This is the title of my presentation on creative writing in the life of a physician that I gave at the Examined Life Conference in Iowa City. It was scheduled for the last time slot on the last day, but in spite of that I had a great turnout - about twenty people, about as many as the room could hold comfortably.

I talked about some tricks that I learned from Sarah and from other creative writing courses. People appreciated the practical tips such as writing first thing in the morning, writing every day, handwriting the first draft, or using OmmWriter to transcribe. 

I mentioned different sources of prompts including Sarah's daily prompt, various books of prompts and the Writers' Digest website. We did two writing practices using Sarah's prompts. I was amazed that one of the participants wrote a poem!  I loved that! 

I told everybody who wants to be a writer to read Natalie Goldberg's book "Writing Down the Bones."

And afterwards people came to me to ask my advice about writing! 

Story is a State of Mind

I discovered Sarah Selecky's website last January, when a friend emailed me information about her Little Bird Contest. I signed up for the daily prompts and started writing in response to them. And I loved it.

In Sarah's prompts and semimonthly letters I discovered a kindred spirit. A much more talented, writerly, and accomplished, but a kindred spirit nevertheless. I love Sarah's sense of humour and of the ridiculous, her tenderness and love that shine through in her prompts. Her breathless enthusiasm for all things writerly and creative is infectious. Because of all that, last June, in the middle of an warm and linden-scented Amsterdam night I signed up for the Story is a State of Mind course (I was travelling at the time, but still doing her daily prompts ).

Story is a State of Mind is a self-administered online multimedia course that introduces the basics of the creative process as they pertain to writing the short story. Lessons include Freewriting, Character, Dialogue, Consciousness, and Influence to name a few. Stories by famous and accomplished writers are available as part of the course, so you will not have to buy a whole bunch of books (although you will want to after you read the selected ones; I did). There are exercises to get you going, to keep you going and to help you finish. By the end of the course - whether you take an intensive, hide-away-in-the-woods week, or seven leisurely months to finish - you will have a first draft of a brand new story. And it will be a completely new story, not something you have worked on, imagined or written before. Until SSM my stories were autobiographical and derivative; with SSM I wrote my first "real" story. Characters appeared to me and did things I never planned for them. Scenes and settings materialized and developed. I was creating.

You will love this course. I guarantee it.

You can sign up for Sarah's course at her website Story is a State of Mind.

Computer Woes.

A lot has happened in the past three months. The latest - I did buy a MacBook Pro. Two weeks ago my old Dell laptop was subject to a terrible blow [no details necessary] and I finally decided to switch over to a Mac.

I spend the next three days up and downloading programs and transferring files - the ones that were backed up. That was another blow - I had thought that all my writing files were in DropBox. Well, they were not. I am still reeling from that one. A presentation "Making Room for More" on creative writing that I was to present at the Examined Life Conference was also lost. For 24 hours I was in an abyss - ready to cancel the conference and an upcoming trip to Poland. Then I remembered that I had emailed the presentation to a friend a while back! I had to update it, but I did not have to start from scratch.

So, happier and with my new MacBook Pro I boarded the Dreamliner bound for Warsaw. The next day, I proudly pull out my new laptop to show my friends some photos - and the screen is white. No apple symbol, no frame, no toolbars. White. Turn off, turn on - same thing the next seven times I do it. This is not supposed to happen with Mac! That's why I bought it!

Panic. This time I did store the presentation properly on DropBox, so that was safe. I was going to update a few slides, but I just gave up. I sent the link to the conference assistant and that was that.
I now have a new laptop - exchanged without fuss at the Apple Store. Had to spend another full day getting it up to speed. Hope to god and all other powers that this is the end of this story.