If you’re a creative, teacher, trainer, or coach, should you write a book?
And if you do want to write a book, have you asked yourself why?
I’ve worked with many online writers who decided to write books--and when they start asking me their questions, I often respond with a question too.
“Why do you want to write a book?”
There is no right answer to that question--only your answer.
And, yes, you’re allowed to have many reasons for wanting to write a book—from being passionate about the subject, to wanting to share something with the world, to ‘just having a book in you.’
Today, I’m really excited to share an interview with María Ortega Garcia on the many reasons she wrote her book.
Sometimes, when the world seems like too much, I pull a heavy, fuzzy blanket over myself and disappear into a novel. This month, as the world spins, and wobbles, I’ve been reading The Paris Network--our creative community’s book of the month. I invite you to pick up this story (or another great book) and see what happens when you forget your surroundings, your time for a minute…
Suddenly you’re in France, World War II, the occupation. You pop into a bookshop. The owner writes “poetry prescriptions” to keep the townsfolk strong, runs a resistance book club with banned books. Poetry falls from the sky in airdrops. And it’s all based on true events: the banned books, the resistance publishers, the literature and poetry woven into the novel, like “Liberté” by Paul Eluard.
Under the story, there’s a truth that will, no doubt, resonate with you:
Sometimes, literature (or art) is more important than food.
Are you someone who works with words? Maybe you teach or translate, write copy in one or more languages?
Are deadlines something you’re familiar with? Do they add a certain rhythm to your days?
If so, you know that time to create, to express yourself, to work on your own projects is an issue.
And you’re probably intimately familiar with that feeling of working all day on a big writing, translating or teaching project…and the challenges that come with transitioning into your creative self at the end of a long day. Even if you love your work.
If that sounds like you. I think you’re going to really enjoy reading this interview with Sofia Polykreti. Sofia is an active and inspiring member of our Tip of the Iceberg Writing Community. She brightens our book chats with her insights, brings her energy to writing workshops and shares her unique work in our forum.
When is the last time you stopped to think about your body?
As a writer, a creative…a human.
At our Vagabond Voices Creative Community, our inspiration revolves around creative seasons. And…there’s a ‘season’ that is just about the body—remembering you have one and reconnecting to it.
So, whether the season is one where it feels like winter is melting all around you, or summer is going to sleep--whatever side of the globe you’re on, join me today for a celebration of your body. It’s healing, it’s good for your creativity (and good for your writing).
This year, as we enter the creative season of ‘the body’ I’ve got a blog post for you with ideas for tapping into your body for healing and creativity.
And I’ll have a few words of wisdom from a fantastic book I finally finished reading: The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain, and body in the transformation of trauma. by Bessel Van Der Kolk.
How is a book on healing trauma relevant to our writing and creativity?
Here is what I know:
So many of our artforms, our modes of creative expression actually help us heal.
They are a part of what helps us survive as individuals and cultures.
Even when the unthinkable happens. Or when it’s all around us.
They make us strong. They make us whole.
They bring us together--and they are our human tradition.
Celebrate these with me--whether you’ve experienced trauma or not.
Help keep these creative acts alive and share them with others.
For all of us.
Here are a few ways…
Have you been sleepless lately?
Me too.
There was a night last week when I woke up at 3 AM, and could not accept—anything.
It’s the kind of thing that will leave you asking the ceiling overhead, the rafters, the roof creaking in the wind, the sky:
Is it worth being angry at the world?
Does it help anything?
Does it put bread on the table?
Stop madmen in their tracks?
So many questions and one thing I know for sure:
This is what the first creative step looks like sometimes…
The church, The bells chiming. The robin is singing
his sweet song. Me being here, sitting on the bench,
letting the sun tickle my cheeks and the wind play
with my hair. I am here, you are there. Everywhere.
by Mirka Smíšková
Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
Emma has lived her entire childhood and teen years in the same house. The old blue red house made out of woods and surrounded by a thin wire fence. The house was not big, but it was the perfect size to nestle her mom and her two younger brothers. Every morning, from Monday to Friday the three of them would walk for one hour on their way to school. It was a long walk and most of the time her brothers didn’t feel like going to school at all. She knew John and David loved to hear her stories, so on every walk of them to school she started telling them stories.
It could be about anything, an old tree spirit in the corner of the street or the family birds which song’s could be heard two blocks ahead from where they were. The two boys loved listening to Emma’s stories. They didn’t even get bothered when she told them about the young candy seller who was followed by an old spirit who used to live in a haunted house near their school for the fifth time that month. It didn’t matter how many times Emma would tell them so, they would always get scared about it.
However, Emma was not used to repeating the same story; she knew every corner of that school route had a new story worth telling. After a while she realized that those story moments were not only to encourage her little brothers to go to school anymore, they were a way to encourage herself too.
by Isabella Moimaz
Photo credit: Isabella Moimaz
The slosh of the waves
The murkiness of the water
The salt in the air
My footsteps echo as they hit the path
Alert and agile
Every stride takes me further out of myself
Every stride brings me closer to peace
The freedom of the run
The connection with nature
The silence of the noise
My cocoon throbs like a heartbeat
Keeping me warm
As I wrap my arms around myself
As I cross my own finishing line
by Karina Pearl Thorne
Photo credit: Karina Pearle Thorne
Karina is a teacher and writer from London. In her spare time she enjoys listening to music and dancing in front of the mirror, poetry readings and writing workshops. She loves to experiment, be creative and work with others. You can join her community, Share Your Story With Confidence, here.
Looking up from our garden as a kid the Ochil Hills dominated my view. The sun dipped down behind their western edge in summer, leaving a golden ribbon on the hilltops for the briefest of moments. Fighter jets disappeared behind them. “Where are they going?” I used to wonder. What could be behind those hills?
As I awake from my flashback to childhood, I decide to pierce the mysteries of the Ochils and Alva and test my memory. With Google maps. I retrace the confines of my childhood world. I move the cursor along Ochil road, advancing to the top of the cemetery. I’m on the edge of Alva: after, it’s just fields and hills. I look for the donkey we used to feed a carrot to. I can’t find Farrier’s, or the monkey bars I used to swing on. Have I taken a wrong turn somewhere?
I head back in the opposite direction, still flanked by the natural barrier of the hills on one side. A farm borders the western side of Alva, with its McMansion style house and quad bikes in the front garden. I never knew what they farmed, but they used to light a bonfire on November 5th.
Google offers me a pleasant surprise. The “back road” really is called “Back Road”. I had always thought it was a nickname, in opposition to the main road that runs parallel to it.
But Maps won’t let me see the details. Where are the paths up into the Ochils from Cochrane park? How can I see the playground equipment from the 90s?
When I zoom in too much, I can’t orient myself the way I want. When I zoom out, I can’t catch the details I’m trying to match up with the ones in my memory.
I zoom out completely to get a bird’s eye view of the Ochils. Better than a bird’s eye: a satellite's eye. Were the hills really an impenetrable fortress? From the air, they look like the sort of birthmark you’d go see a dermatologist about. An uneven blotch on Central Scotland. On the northern side of them is Gleneagles: a golf course was tucked behind these wild hills all that time.
Going East, I spot more details. Castle Campbell nestles in the posh end of the Ochils, near Dollar, where, at Dollar Academy, a private school, girls in pleated gym skirts played hockey on the pristine lawn. The University of Stirling sits at the western end. Continuing further east, you end up in Perthshire. I had no idea.
Swimming lessons in Dollar on Saturdays. Psychology playgroup at Stirling University before primary school. The view from our garden. The Ochils bordered, defined and determined my movements as a kid. 25 miles of mystery, unveiled and dissolved after a few minutes on Google Maps.
by Cara Leopold
Photo credit: Cara Leopold
Cara helps advanced English learners who love TV and cinema fall back in love with their favorite films and series by getting subtitle free.
Check out Cara’s website here: Leo Listening
After clearing the table
I noticed the sounds.
The buzzing of
Mosquitoes
The low drone
Of bees , wasps and hornets.
Other quieter creatures
Went about their business.
The bats came out .
I blew the candles dead
And sensed the can ,
The beer was still cool.
Something tickled
In my throat.
I swallowed it all.
by Simon Stafford
Photo credit: Simon Stafford
Silence pervaded bitterly, except for the hissing sound of the tall palm tree stretching out from the double glazed window in her bedroom. The steady wind played with its swaying fronds tapping them right and left, and up and down. They surrendered to its smooth blows, embracing those instances of natural bonding, an amalgamation of movement and sound, composing the symphony of a shadowy, yet, warm fall morning. She could decipher a twittering echo of birds here and there merging with the rise and fall in the rhythm of the bulky multi-layered palm tree, oscillating in the grayish cloudy reflection of the sky. From time to time, a clear sound of cracking twigs played on to add additional tempo to a crowning ambiance. High pitched as it was, it echoed her own breakdown.
by Mongia El Abed
Mongia lives in Tunis, Tunisia and is a teacher, mother, and an aspiring writer. In her free time, she loves listening to music, singing, reading books and, most of all, writing.
Photo credit: Mongia El Abed
No one has told him
about the Indian summer
and he got all confused
When he realized
his mistake
it was already
too late
So now
he is standing here
leafless
but in blossom
Unbecoming, unashamed
wearing his eccentric pink jewels
on his naked body
Why am I trembling
Why is the world
so beautiful
Why is beauty
so harsh
by Veronika Palovska
Veronika is a writer, designer, and teacher. She helps independent online teachers and coaches build outstanding brands at doyouspeakfreedom.com.
Photo by Cameron Ahlvers on Unsplash
If you write long enough or live long enough, you’ll meet a story that won’t let you go. I’ve met a few of my own. And in conversations with other writers, I’ve heard this murmured again and again: there are stories that nag at us, tug us with a near gravitational pull. Stories that won’t let us ignore them. Sometimes we welcome them and begin the process of scribbling them down like there was nothing else we could imagine doing.
And there are those other stories too.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far about rewriting those stories—and my life.
On creative play and having a personal renaissance.
Imagine yourself indulging in one of your favorite creative pursuits, losing track of time. I think you know what I mean. If life has had you on high speed lately, you may have to think back a bit. So give yourself a little space to remember the last time you lost yourself in what you were doing and just be in that moment.
What are you doing? Noodling around with a poem? Doodling? Coloring? Are you wrist deep in clay?
You know the way you feel--the beautiful focus where nothing else exists and you are ‘in’ your creative process? Or maybe you ‘are’ your creative process. Where you sort of ‘become’ what you’re doing? Where work and play seem to merge and everything else drops away?
The stillness of being sucked in by a creative pursuit is the reason my living room is held hostage by the ‘art table.’
When you set out to change your writing, sometimes you rewrite your life.
In your quest to be a better writer, do you ever find yourself haunted by scenes in books you’ve read? I’m thinking of a chapter entitled “Heaven” from the novel All the Light We Cannot See. Read it and you find yourself lying in wildflowers during wartime to contemplate heaven, experiencing the way a blind girl ‘knows’ bees.
To sweep your reader off the page and into the story like Anthony Doerr, you need a simple kind of magic that any of us could possess--if only. You need to be able to observe and capture the details that hold us to the story--and to life itself.
That’s where I get stuck. The time I spend in my head leads me astray. I worry and plan. I have goals, the personal, the professional, the immediate. Sometimes the sum of my existence is a race to school in the morning: noses wiped, teeth brushed, catastrophe and mud puddles averted.
We all have our ‘to-do’ lists to juggle, fears that quicken the pulse and goals that deserve our intensity. That’s just life, whirling around us. But if you don’t pay attention? You’ll find yourself down the rabbit hole--in a dark, tight place. Worry, preoccupation, and the fast life can contract your imagination and powers of observation down to something like a pinprick. Believe me, I’ve tested it for you.
