The Power of Vulnerability in Your Writing (Part 1)
When you’re feeling low, depressed, or blue, it’s hard to write. I know. I’ve been there.
Triggered by a lecture Michael Hauge gave at the RWA conference this year (2015) on “Identity and Essence,” I realized that lately I’ve been running from an unnamed fear and staying away from my writing, both my YA fantasy and my magical contemporary romance (new name for what kind of romance I write).
Deep down I’ve been afraid of showing my heart, my sad feelings, my rage and anger. So unladylike and unprofessional, my mind whispers.
But in conversation with my dear friend and fellow author and coach, Paula Chafee Scardamalia, and pulling tarot with her, I realized I’ve been afraid to feel my deep feelings and face them in my stories.
It’s not that I can’t feel them, it’s just that feeling them, and channeling them into my stories, will require that I feel them. You know what I mean?
I’ve always been someone who feels deeply, but learned at an early age to mask my feelings into either a facade of busyness or into one of stoic silence.
Now has come the time to incorporate my feelings into my work and not run away from my feelings and the creative work. Click to Tweet about this (you can edit before sending).
To do so, I need to create a safe space. I need to develop more conscious rituals and habits, so that I can feel what I feel and channel that into my fiction regularly. I want to do that with compassion toward myself and in full responsibility.
I have decided. My tool and habits will be free writing daily — one of my forms of meditation, and conscious get-into-the body-to-feel exercises, especially capoeira and other high intensity cardio.
What can you do to feel the full range of your emotions and then channel them into your fiction?
This article is part one in a three-part series, so that I can share with you my journey, tools, strategies, and habits I’m using and the results of my actions and my learnings.
As always, I’m happy to hear from you.
Best,
Beth
P.S. The people and their resources mentioned in this article:
- Michael Hauge’s Story Mastery — http://www.storymastery.com/
- Paula Chafee Scardamalia’s Weaving The Dream — http://www.weavingthedream.
com/
♥
ABOUT BETH BARANY
Award-winning novelist and creativity coach for writers, Beth Barany has been making up fantasy and adventure stories all her life. She writes magical tales of romance and adventure for women and girls to transport them to new worlds where anything is possible. She empowers novelists to write, publish, and market their genre novels.
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