& Pivot
First the Loop!
I’ve made another loop around the sun! No not my birthday… Yesterday marks 3 years of drawing again. though i have occasionally allowed myself to break the daily streak, i’ve got the groove now so i can return and feel assured that a day or two off will not derail me. i’m celebrating attending to a missing “peace” of my work that i needed to tie it all together.
i imagine a loop becomes a lasso, i’ve caught something, some wild part of myself i needed to know better befriend and honor.
Now the Pivot…
The workshops are on hold, i have decided to incorporate the content into a membership service, its a slightly looser structure than the descrete time frame of a workshop. i also imagine it will provide more support among other good things.
More on why in another post, for now i just want give you a sneak peak, it’s still very much in development, so you can’t sign up yet. (Feed back welcome, if you check it out and have thoughts…)
Since i profess to be about process, i decided to share it inclusive of the messy process of my writing and because i had hoped to have it complete ready to launch by yesterday. Its not, so why not share it as is?
If you take a look, you’ll see that the lower portion is still very long and redundant, i overwrite and have to edit a lot. It still needs to be cut more and its already maybe 5 times smaller than what it was at an earlier point…
I think that’s writing for most people…
it used to drive me crazy when i was working on my Masters and a colleague was doing his Phd. (we were both doing crisis family counseling at the time).
i labored over my writing unbelievably and he would read a few articles and then in a break between appointments or at his lunch hour, rapidly and concisely complete his papers. He was the same with case notes. What took me a seeming eternity, he appeared to naturally keep it simple.
It was a striking contrast for me and i later realized that his process was unusual and what i did (though i labor less now thanks to practice) is more typical to the process of writing.
A little more on my writing process here if you struggle with writing it might help, if not, skip to link to explore what’s next?
The two hardest parts of writing for me are one, when there is something important and specific, that i’m intent to express. Getting the raw material down committing to make it happen, that’s a layered challenge. It involves a process with where you’re headed, what you want in your life, bigger than just the writing of that particular piece. It’s personal even if it doesn’t seem like it. That makes it vulnerable to share and so potentially charged with fearful parts afraid of exposure and rejection.
Yes, the resistance shows up getting in the way of focus, fracturing your thoughts, making it harder to get them down.
The second hard part is to clear out the redundancy the overwriting, editing to get to the essence and that’s just a matter of siting in front of the work, reading, rereading, revising and taking breaks to refresh. Getting feedback from others you trust enough to share the raw material with. And/ or with practice, being strong enough to just share it and glean from whatever feedback comes, the parts that resonate as right for you.
Lest you think that’s all there is…isn’t it?
idea comes, get it down and then edit… well sometimes but then there’s the fun parts when you hit flow and it just comes together. or stream writing what i prefer to call automatic writing. That’s what keeps me going… the fun of those aspects.
What did i say about being long winded… Here’s the link again for the sneak peak.
i had planned to share some drawings from this weeks open mic, and i’ve run out of time today…
Until next time, i wonder…
What process could you share?
What could you celebrate along the way?
Thanks and have a great week!
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