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Reading Rilke Again

Started by Shaye in Reflections on Life Jun 11. 0 Replies

If your a writer and you haven't read Rilke's, Letters to a Young Poet, do yourself a favor.  It lives by my bedside and travels everywhere I go, I am currently wearing out my fourth copy. –Rainier Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet) “Go into yourself.  Search for the reason that bids you write: find out whether it is spreading its roots into the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.  This above all--ask yourself in…Continue

CB Members' Award-Winning Books

Started by Roman Payne in Books We’re Reading Jun 11. 0 Replies

June 11th 2013 - Here are a couple CB members we're showing off today:  Bob van Laerhoven (Belgium) and Lee Case (USA)...CB Member Bob van Laerhoven's novel (written in Dutch) won the Hercule Poirot Prize for best suspense novel of the year.  He now has a literary agent in the USA and has recorded an English language MP3 to introduce CulturalBook members to his oeuvre:…Continue

How best to serialise?

Started by Danny Jorgensen in Publishing Jun 7. 0 Replies

I want ot serialise a story I'm working on, and I'm trying to  work out how best ot start publishing.The story that will consist of around 120 chapters (prob 4000-6000 words each), spaced five years apart for the body of the story. I should be able to start releasing them in a month or so.I was thinking of putting out the first few chapters for free, to get feedback and so on, and then publish them one at a time, every week or two, for about 15-30 cents each. Probably on Kobo, Kindle, and…Continue

Member Opportunities / ♪ by Lee Crase / ✎ by Pietros Maneos

Started by Roman Payne in Free Member Offers Jun 7. 0 Replies

Members, you are invited to share your...  ✎ Literary Quotes✎            and/or       ♪ Audio Files ♪Information Below ▼ But first...Please listen to this audio recording by CulturalBook member Lee Crase: Bleeding-History-Lee-Crase.m4aPlease read today's literary quote (DLQ) by CB member Pietros Maneos: www.dailyliteraryquote.comTo…Continue

Tags: pietros, maneos, crase, lee, literary

DISCUSSION: The Furious Poet and A Damned German Keyboard...

Started by Roman Payne in Music. Last reply by Chalice Divine Jun 7. 8 Replies

Scheiße !! It's the novelist's nightmare: the keyboard on my laptop broke almost 24 hours ago... it is a keyboard in English, as the novel I am writing is in English...  And since I live in Paris, I cannot find a keyboard English very easily.  So, in despair, I first bought an external keyboard French (a language I know fluently); but since French keyboards have the letters all in the wrong order.  But this proved clumsy to write on, so I then bought a keyboard in German (a language I do not…Continue

Tags: music, roman, payne, poet, furious

Colette Quote Today

Started by Shaye in Reflections on Life. Last reply by Curtiss Plaskon Jun 2. 1 Reply

This was an excellent “heads up” for me, just the reminder I needed!  But if I may be so presumptuous as to add: You must become a writer before you can become an author, and that means writing down all the “twaddle” as Katherine Mansfield called it.“I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” Katherine Mansfield Continue

Just Say No!

Started by Gatzby in CulturalBook the Website. Last reply by Terri Price Jun 1. 8 Replies

In my inbox (my reply follows)-Hello, CulturalBook members. In the past week we've acquired about a dozen new members whose profiles promote some kind of wellness product: colon cleanse, weight loss, wrinkle cream, and other similar products that have nothing to do with the theme of CulturalBook. Also, most of their profile photos vs. profile descriptions clearly show that somehow they have done an excellent job of changing genders.Should these "members" be deleted? Please let me know your…Continue

BOYTA 2012 AWARDS

Started by João Cerqueira in CulturalBook the Website May 31. 0 Replies

 NEW%20BOTYA%20sticker-Finalist%20gold.jpgMy novel The Tragedy of Fidel Castro is one of the BOTYA 2012 Finalists in Translations. The others are Dom Quixote, by Cervantes; The plain in flames by Juan Rulfo; and The world Eve left us by Boston Teran.…Continue

Tags: Religion, Humor, Politics, Fiction, Translation

Prose/Poetry Blog Posts

Today's Quote

Posted by Herbert B. Fox on June 19, 2013 at 8:12am 0 Comments

Today's quote:
"The true Greek, is a god, not a cautious, precise, calculating being with the soul of an engineer."
is completely offensive to those of us who do have the soul of an engineer.
It makes absolutely no sense to repeat such stupidity.

tolerance

Posted by Jack Spratt on June 19, 2013 at 12:46am 0 Comments

The peace I know upon awakening within the cyclonic change, surfing rogue waves, somewhat akin to awakening before execution at dawn is: Attributable to my merciless engagement with vanity, my own.…

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pruning myself

Posted by Jack Spratt on June 16, 2013 at 5:26pm 0 Comments

Falling, mortally wounded by exhaustion, both physical and psychological, to sleep, I dream and in the dreams are dialogs. And this one was a massive endless conversation about love. In reference of which I now envision pruning…

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loom of dawn

Posted by Jack Spratt on June 15, 2013 at 2:51pm 0 Comments

Woven together on the loom of our time, we the many dissimilar threads, which in their turn are woven by birth and life’s experience form the fabric, or tapestry, of our collective history going forward. Making the bone yard of what…

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Having been a slave to an overly creative profession for the best part of a decade, I gradually stopped writing for pleasure, drawing for pleasure - I even stowed away my easel, all supplies, handy projects, book projects, and eventually, digital graphics all together. 

I can only sum up these actions as the result of succumbing to complete frustration that I couldn't seem to create anything that I was proud of.  Years of this, 'discomfort' in my own creative skin, ultimately killed an ever-present drive keep on creating.  

I am certain that I am not alone in this ailment. 

Exploring a professional 180, a cerebral manifest destiny, I am hopeful that all of this creativity is still within me, just hibernating like a six year winter. I wish for it to burst out of me - form of: inspiration! Beautiful, enchanting, boundless work!

And if not, and possible, I wish to relearn the art of creativity... so... is that possible? Or does it never leave us?

Tags: Block, Clock, Creative, Cretaive, Process, Reflections on Life, Writers

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Not obnoxious at all - insightful.  But it once came so naturally, like second skin... now a painstaking process... you are right though, that it was maybe never the natural way.  Perhaps the posed question is obnoxious in itself and can be answered by one word: "change."

I can relate to this !! :-)

My opinion is, you need to go to Paris to visit your brother Roman. Go to Tuscany and visit some wineries, and then take a sketchpad and go sit in a casino in Monte Carlo with a glass of scotch. It's what old Hem would do.

I sit in doorways on busy evenings in downtown Frederick, where revelers pass by. I write to myself, culling pieces of conversations, the 3 second snippets that only the eavesdropper can hear. Those morsels can be more meaningful than full conversations since I am left to fill in not only the context of what I've heard but also the nature of the relationship of the people.

I am neither drunk nor displaced yet to most passer-bys I don't exist. Occasionally only the most observant realizes that I am somewhat out of place; the street is not mine but rather I have stole it for awhile. A middle age professional rather than a street urchin who has stolen my doorway perch... why?

Personally I didn't write for nearly 15 years then suddenly a complete book was delivered to me-downloaded to my brain through sudden epiphany. Once the idea and concept clawed through my brain words flowed freely and unabated for the better part of a year. Then came the work of weaving plots details and correcting inaccuracies, even inspiration requires some toil.

But since that moment once the flood gates again opened I have been awash in words. They found me. Ideas abound as distractions and I sit like a cat at a window pawing at moths on the other side of the glass.

My suggestion… go on a spring night and huddle in a doorway where you won’t be recognized and jot the pieces of conversation that drop in your lap. Write your observations or even text them to a stranger such as myself. Watch how you become invisible to all but a few and relish the stream of humanity. Perhaps from there an image will float through a story will cause itself to be heard. But again there is no greater inspiration than new love or base betrayal, personal and crushing.

It never leaves us we leave it through, as you so well detailed, the oppressive responsibilties of life relationship and work. It lies awake waiting for our shadow to cross its threshold again.

Yes cubed.

Someone hinted on a glass of wine as a starter but I propose some incidental sketches or news for perusal. We are destined to write and on what suject and what sentences also. May not be a creative writing this, but I invoked energy to scribble these words from what I would have over looked some times if I were preposterous. Being a foriegner I have some laxity in expressions. Thank You.

Stephanie, of course it is possible. When Hemingway asked Gertrude Stein how he could become a great writer she said, write for ten years, every day. While I do not believe that everyone can be creative, you sound like you were, once. I suspect that you cannot return to that person in time but you certainly can reinvent yourself. I kept a journal from 1964-1986, then put it away and have returned to writing in the last 5 years. Do not worry about being comfortable in your skin, living  tends to make that difficult, just work at creating something. P.S. With the exception of some pieces from my Journals, I destroyed all 60 volumes because they meant nothing to me when I finally returned to them. They reflected my past which, unlike Proust, I was not interested in remembering.

my reply is selfish, graphic. I put it as a blog post so as not to dirty your discussion. I would like to say I'm sorry for the ugly post (damn light keeps blinking off,on) but really. thank you---for finally putting some of this to paper.

Black ink on white paper becomes so very real.

and maybe i can put this chapter to bed.

Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves or try too hard to direct the creative process in a direction that is wrong for us, we think it should be one way, sort of like a limiting belief that if it doesn't come out a certain way as we imagine it should, we have failed. But there are no mistakes or failures in life, or art, just learning opportunities.

When I feel uninspired or feel my muse has abandoned me, I take up journaling or something even less formal and write out whatever comes into my mind, as if I'm talking to my self, as in train of thought. I don't edit, I have no direction or goal, I just sit and type away at the computer whatever it is that needs to come out and don't even read what I write, I just keep "talking" or typing out my thoughts, whatever direction they take and in time a theme or subject starts to emerge. Whether I've been in a poetry mode, non-fiction memoir mode or story mode. It develops a life of its own at times and I get lost and can write for hours in a fever even, nonsense, gibberish, brilliant thoughts, whatever. And then later I can go back and and see what was really inside of me, pick out the little gems and jewels of phrases, content, themes that will inspire me afterward to work on something. Either then or later. But it comes from the unconscious where your authentic self resides. You give yourself total freedom and ignore your internal editor because this writing doesn't matter. No one will see this but you, for you are only writing for yourself to find yourself. This is what works best for me. The same process can be used for painting as I also paint.

My circumstances, as relayed previously, are what stopped the physical writing process. I got rid of my beloved typewriter, which I regret today.  I did not stop writing per se, at night to put myself to sleep I would (still do) write and re-write in my head. Design new stories, characters, plots; I'd even think about target audiences and graphics.  So the creativity is still there.  But I wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with me that I found my reality in books all those previous years?  A lit. professor would say that books aren't real, just made up stories, but I beg to differ. That is the crux of my problem; not the tragic circumstance but my total involvement with the written word. Books are safer, they are old friends revisited, they are excitement. Vicarious.  Hmmmm? Gotta work on that a little more.

I once had a "creative" job copywriting for a high-powered ad agency. The guy who hired me asked the most intelligent question I've ever been asked in an interview: "What do you do when you're stuck?" After a few moments  of thought, i answered impulsively but honetly: "I work on something else creative. That gets the creative juices flowing and i can get back to the assignment that had me stick."

It's never failed. If I can't write, I make a collage. If I can't do either, I take photos. Or whatever.

Hope it helps.

mym

That is so wonderful; a tragedy that you would probably be called ADD.  But I have found that those who can switch gears, especially creatively, are better able to handle Life.  We mislabel them many times.  Many years ago when I was a  single working mom I would joke and say, " I go to work too  relieve the stress of 4 kids and go home to relieve the stress of my boss."  My particular creative flow seems to be of 'loose associations' or rambling thought patterns. (Labeled on a Psychiatrist intake form.) I can see you in my  mind, one creative hole dries up and another erupts. Just oozing the stuff like Yellowstone.  Thanks for reminding me of the different wells I have to draw from.

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