Goal, Motivation, Conflict (Tarot Spread for Writers)

Okay, look guys, a workshop is not enough! Buy the Artists Way, and the Vein of Gold books, do the morning pages every single morning faithfully, and the walks, and the artist dates, and your block will not only budge, it will be blasted to hell. Especially if we can do some of this together!

Mmm, I dunno..... Been doing the morning pages for a couple of months now (and everything else), and I haven't written *anything* apart from those 3 pages in that period.
I'm not ready to give up hope yet, but so far I'm not impressed with the actual results.

Red Emma, I really hope the treatments you are getting will help you!

I'm having various treatments myself that are having great effect; unfortunately, great effect in my case only amounts to me being able to sleep some nights, get up in the morning, and basically take care of myself fysically. Important, I know, but I Want More!!

Oh well. It changes. Good things as well as bad things.
I'll just hang in there.

Fortunately, I'm a pretty stubborn person!

Haven't visited the site for a couple days, but being a writer with physical problems and life tumbling around me (good stuff, though scary - Tower card to the max), I thought i would join in the discussion here.

Try the book Writing Down the Bones. It has helped me alot and gets the creative juices going.

Maybe we could start an ongoing thread about writing because so many of us are writers who struggle with blocks and things like physical problems..... whud ya think?

PS: You may also be interested in an inspiring thread in Spirituality about dealing with illness/disabilities.... I'll post the thread when i return......

Hedera said:

Mmm, I dunno..... Been doing the morning pages for a couple of months now (and everything else), and I haven't written *anything* apart from those 3 pages in that period.
I'm not ready to give up hope yet, but so far I'm not impressed with the actual results.

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Okay, well, do you manage to get pen to paper as you are rolling out of bed? to catch the first impure stream so to speak? And do you just let it pour out? Without judging?

Here it is. It is titled "Living with Illness" and was started by Moongold.

Hope you find it helpful! :

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13751

Firemaiden:

Okay, well, do you manage to get pen to paper as you are rolling out of bed? to catch the first impure stream so to speak? And do you just let it pour out? Without judging?

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Yes. In fact, I usually do the morning pages while still *in* my bed. It's not always legible, but I don't care.
Yes; just pouring, no judging.

I'm curious: have you done them? What kind of creative block did you have? If doing them helped you with something, could you tell me more about how?
When I read the book, I find myself constantly agreeing and getting excited and convinced it will help.
But so far, it just hasn't helped.



I think my creative 'source' is quite content with me writing those pages, there's just no 'push' for anything more to come out, no new brilliant (they always look brilliant in the first throes of creativity, anyway... ) ideas popping into my head during the rest of the day.

Also, usually, I get my best ideas while writing. That can be quite frustrating, I sometimes spend more time jotting down ideas for other stories than working on the story I'm actually working on, but that's just the way my creative vein seems (or seemed) to flow.

I never get any ideas for anything during the morning pages, nothing at all. It's just all me writing about me, similar to what I write in my journal only a lot less structured and gramatically correct, and some dreams that I remember. No Poppings.


It's interesting that when I do a tarot throw, I can *feel* the same parts of my brain getting engaged that participate in writing, along with the bits that I use for reading books, watching films etc. To me, reading tarot cards seems to be a combined process of taking things in and creating something with that.

Hedera,

Well, I did them for about a year, maybe two. (I need to do them again). The block I had was more like a life block. When I did the morning pages, I found them most helpful as a sort of a dialogue: I asked them questions and let them answer. It got me focussed on my goals, and little miracles started to happen. Singing jobs began to come my way, I began to get very creative about how to sing better, and how to change my life. This eventually led me to moving to Germany, to do singing auditions, etc. and here I am.

(Unfortunately, it doesn't all end there, I found ways to throw up more blocks, which I am now trying to work through in many different ways.)

The little exercises and Artist Dates did more perhaps to get me writing however, as they opened me up to things beyond my own mind. (eventually led me to the Tarot!) Strange new images, thoughts and passions began to pour into me, and I followed them:

I did silly things like make cakes with six different colors of frosting, dye easter eggs when it wasn't easter, experiment with painting, drawing etc. I went through a period of painting dozens of little fishes, neon tetras which even now can find their way into the vacuum cleaner, another period of making dozens of paper roses, (glow in the dark white paper roses, anyone?) a period of making little diaramas of cows and cherry trees in tiny boxes, a period of trying to learn to knit!

One day the need to write took over me like an ocean. I couldn't stop the flow. I would begin writing about midnight every night, write all night, into the next morning, sleep a bit, get up and write some more. Sometimes the words decided to come up in rhyme, the rhymes I called the "voice of the serpent" because they were very sardonic.

It was all very amazing to me. I have always written, am glib with words, but this glibness is usually just air, so it is easy to lose interest.

This writing was different, it was like blood. I called it my "virgin blood revenge" -- it came from a very deep and strange place within.

Anyhow I think that writing and thinking and experiencing are the same thing. Unblocking writing energy is like unblocking life energy, and vice versa.

Let me know if any of this resonates.

P.S. Now that I think of it, it was the writing excercises in her second book, the Vein of Gold that eventually stimulated the need to write.

can't tell y'all how much i need this thread. i would love it if we did start a writers' group to help each other. if we do, we need to move this discussion to a site other than tarot spreads. perhaps chat?

i've had a writer's block for around 20 years. i could write but what i wrote was dry and uninspired. not the kind of writing that set me on fire like got me into writing. what helped me break out what a creative writing class and an instructor who was interested in me as a writer and willing to go the extra mile to help me. i've wrote some wonderful pieces while i was in the class but since classes ended, i've dried up again. i can journal but it's uninspired and unimaginative. there's something about the excitement of working with others and seeing what you write thru their eyes. so i've signed up for an online poetry class.

if you are a visual person(as i imagine most tarot readers are)using the soul cards is helpful in stimulating the imagination. the only problem is that they are very abstract and you will have to work to add sensory details that will cause your writing to throb in to being. i think using tarot as a visual stimulus would be helpful, too. the deck that pops into my mind as perfect for this exercise is the ananda.

involvement in art also helps my writing. something about the thrill of paint mixing together and hitting wood or canvas just really shifts my brain waves from left to right brain. this brings me to another thing i've realized. good creative writing requires a shift to the more creative side of the brain-the right brain. most ppl are left brain dominant-evidenced by most ppl's hand of preference is the right hand. try using betty edward's book-drawing on the right side of the brain. i can literally feel the shift when it takes place. the right brain world isn't logical sequential. it's spatial. it sees the forest not the trees.

experiment with journaling with your left hand. ask a question using your right hand and answer it with your left. i've had some great break throughs with this method.

truthsayer said:

something about the thrill of paint mixing together and hitting wood or canvas just really shifts my brain waves from left to right brain.

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Wow! Exactly, truthsayer. Perhaps that is why I need to write after midnight -- to let the left brain go to sleep!

I totally agree with you about art: all of the little whims I mentioned above had to do with color, mixing paints, picking colored tissue for flowers, playing with colored wool -- all colors and textures, and doing stufff with the hands.

Paradoxically for writing, it is almost a handicap to be a very verbal, left brain person -- it is the same kind of contradiction which makes very outgoing "hammy" people bad actors, and very painfully shy people extraordinarily powerful and convincing ones.

It is the deeper stream of feelings and experiential memory that need to be tapped.

(I know this because I am the excessively verbal ham who has to struggle to find the deeper connection between words and flesh)

There is a sense in which writing resembles method acting and its visualization work. A method actor works with the five senses to make the scene as experientially (and emotionally) real as possible-- feel the snow under your feet, smell the pine trees, feel the pinecones prickle, hear the crows caw, experience the fresh cold on your face, see the clumps of snow flailing off the tree branches hear the flutter of a blue jay disturbed...

Writing can be the same, only what you experience goes onto the page instead of being projected to a live audience.

firemaiden said:

There is a sense in which writing resembles method acting and its visualization work. A method actor works with the five senses to make the scene as experientially (and emotionally) real as possible-- feel the snow under your feet, smell the pine trees, feel the pinecones prickle, hear the crows caw, experience the fresh cold on your face, see the clumps of snow flailing off the tree branches hear the flutter of a blue jay disturbed...

Writing can be the same, only what you experience goes onto the page instead of being projected to a live audience.

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you know it's interesting that you say that, firemaiden b/c my writing instructor said basically the same thing=the connection b/t acting and writing when i was explaining to him how i connect art to writing. before i got into art, my writing was too abstract. when i learned the necessity to make viewers use their 5 senses to engage in my art that's when i figured out how to do the same thing in writing.

it's like i heard it when others told me my writing was too abstract but i didn't have a clue how to connect the senses to make my writing real. art somehow showed me how and told me how to connect the dots so to speak. there are few things feel as great as when i'm flying free in my right brain creating. i took up learning art 15 years ago. i never felt naturally able to draw or paint but i practiced and practiced until now i can to a certain degree. i've never given up on my art like i basically did on writing. even though writing came to me like a natural gift as a child, it eventually felt as much as enemy as a friend. i just don't have such high expectations of my art. i simply do what comes to mind and if it's good, it's good and if it's not-who cares? i tend to be too much a perfectionist in my writing which can totally kill inspiration. i'm learning how to turn my inner critic off to writing and have the same attitude towards it as i do my art.

we've really got to start this writers' group... i can feel my right brain opening up!