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| A Study of Confusion and Creativity
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| | | Welcome to all who have joined us from the Daniel David Wallace's Find Your Readers summit. (Thank you for voting my talk one of the top three of the event!)
More on an upcoming book marketing event in a moment...
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| I’ve recently started making a study of confusion.
You know, the place I seem to go to, like, all the time.
This territory of confusion is murky, grey, like the fog that swoops in every night here in the San Francisco Bay Area and blankets us in its dampness.
I like the fog, very much.
But confusion not so much.
Yet I decided to get curious about this state I live in on a regular basis.
Instead of cowering in fear, I decided to engage, get curious, and request the impossible: an audience with Confusion.
My heart beat wildly in my chest, demanding escape, demanding to be anywhere but here.
I took a deep breath and said, “Hello?” Tentative and mouse-like, but at least I was trying, dammit, to reach out a hand of friendship.
At first nothing. Just that cold, oppressive silence of indifference and disdain. (As if confusion were a French film, content in its obscure meaning and happy to remain. {No offense French films. You have your place.})
Then confusion did something. Hard to tell what in all that grey murkiness.
It felt like a wave, or maybe a murmur of acknowledgment that I was there.
That little movement encouraged me. I listened harder. Maybe confusion was saying something in a language I couldn’t hear or even if I was hearing it, that I couldn’t understand.
What I heard underneath the buzz of fear in my ears was a little girl wishing very much to belong and afraid that if she said the “wrong” thing she’d be kicked out of the group.
This I understood. She was me. A younger version of me, who had experienced being shamed for not knowing.
The adult me knows some things abut not knowing. A lot of things.
Not knowing. It's the experience of standing at the precipice of the Grand Canyon of the imagination and asking myself questions about my characters, my story, my purpose as a writer, my goal with this story, and ALL the many, many, many questions I ask myself as I plan, write, and edit a novel.
This territory of creative inquiry, this call and response, I know and completely trust.
I sigh, release the tension in my shoulders, in my belly, sit back in my seat.
“Hi Confusion, you old friend,” my adult self says. I put an arm around my child self. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get to know the state on not knowing really well as you step into being a fiction writer.”
She looks up at me with hope and longing. “Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
I step back out of the state of confusion and see something new.
The grey all-consuming fogginess of confusion has now become the massive battleship clouds over the Grand Canyon. A vista spreads out in front of me — a canyon, red rock mesas beyond that, a city in the mist beyond that.
I am now longer drowned in confusion, but embrace it as part of the not knowing process of creativity.
Confusion, my old friend. I see you in a new light. Thank you for your presence in my life. For without experiencing the state of not knowing, I wouldn’t be able to reach and stretch and find new vistas to explore.
Now I turn to face you, my intrepid writing compatriots, readers of Creativity Sparks.
If you experience confusion or overwhelm or some other state that stops you in your tracks, I invite you to explore it for yourself.
Be curious. Be an explorer of your own creative process. Be an adventurer.
Questions to ask this state, as if it were a person and could respond — as if you were interviewing a character in your story. Only in this case, it’s a character in yourself.
- What are you experiencing?
Engage with it, as if you were seated across from it and having a coffee.
What did you discover? What did you uncover?
Hit reply and let me know.
If you’re curious about working with me 1-1 on your creative process so you can get writing or get writing again, I invite you to write me to schedule a session. |
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Have a happy and creative week!
All my best,
Beth |
| | | BOOK MARKETING HUDDLE
We will meet again in August: Tuesday, August 24, 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern.
Do you have a specific question you'd like me to address during the Huddle? You can submit it here.
♥
60-Day Novel... Coming in October! We’re getting ready behind the scenes to launch our 60-day novel course, in time for NaNoWriMo.
Our course starts Oct. 1, so you can plan your novel with us. Then write together during National over Writing month in November, with hands-on support.
Great for writers who have always wanted to write a novel, and for writers stuck in the middle and would like to reach The End this year!
Stay tuned for more details!
♣
CREATIVE WRITING In person: October 2021
Ithra Center, Al Dhahran, Saudi Arabia |
| | | I was thrilled to be interviewed by Emma Dhesi on how to plan your novel like a pro on her podcast, "Turning Readers Into Writers."
Go here to listen:
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| | | Top Posts on the Writer's Fun Zone Blog
Want to Write for Writer's Fun Zone? Check out our guidelines here: |
| | | | You have been reading the Creativity Sparks Newsletter!
Now in its 15th year, this newsletter is a service of my coaching and consulting business, helping genre fiction writers write, market, and publish their books through courses, coaching & consulting, NLP sessions, a 12-month group program, and books to the delight of their readers.
You may share this content intact and with no changes with this attribution:
c. 2006-2021 Beth Barany, Creativity Coach for Writers, www.BethBarany.com
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| ABOUT BETH BARANY
Beth Barany is creativity coach for writers, a teacher, workshop facilitator, and speaker, who helps fiction writers experience clarity, so that they can write and polish their novels, and proudly publish them to the delight of their readers.
Owner of the Barany School of Fiction, an online training hub, Beth takes great interest in how humans learn, create, and grow, and includes all her students’ life experiences, including the ancestors, into the moment.
Want a course to help you prepare to write your novel? Discover the comprehensive Plan Your Novel course here, I teach alongside with award-winning, bestselling thriller author, Ezra Barany.
She's also an award-winning novelist and writes magical tales of romance, adventure, and mystery to empower women and girls to be the heroes in their own lives.
Uncover her Henrietta series here (YA Fantasy) and her Touchstone series here (Fantasy/Paranormal Romance). And her new Sci-fi Mystery here.
beth@bethbarany.com
Barany School of Fiction
Writer's Fun Zone blog
Photo Credit: by c. 2018 Ezra Barany
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