Inside the Rabbit Hole: Three June 26, 2016
Posted by Isobel Freer in Writing.Tags: Doubt, Editing
add a comment
The other thing with creative arts is the doubt that both feeds and depletes (and often completely sabotages) the work.
How does critical analysis of an artist’s work play in?
You hear the “no” that is so necessary in editing but even so, begin to wrestle a point of paralysis—two voices clamouring—one, “leave it in” and the other,”get rid of it,” and that against knowing that what you write is not what others are writing (or publishing), and in the long run that is likely good, but in the other…
How do you know that you are achieving what you demand of yourself…
How do you know that your work is critically viable???
©2005 Valerie Isobel Freer. Adapted from unpublished papers; email to private correspondent. Images ©2008 Isobel Freer.
Inside the Rabbit Hole: Two June 19, 2016
Posted by Isobel Freer in The Rabbit Hole, Writing.Tags: Voice, Writing
add a comment
The need to live in that other world makes for odd people, I know.
To be able to hear that voice requires living in that other world…
Not just visiting it here and there.
You’re never fully present in the day-world—that place where jobs and responsibilities and bills and people define the very deadness…
I know that both from the experience of working full-time while writing full-time as much as from having lost it all (voice, other world, heart) because of working full-time.
I know it is a place you have to go to—a self inside you that must be found.
And I know the cost of losing that self.
You have to find it again.
Or forget writing.
©2005 Valerie Isobel Freer. Adapted from unpublished papers; email to private correspondent. Images ©2008 Isobel Freer.
Inside the Rabbit Hole: One May 18, 2016
Posted by Isobel Freer in The Rabbit Hole, Writing.add a comment
[Editor’s note. For those of us who are still unpublished, and struggle with writing while working full-time, keeping heart and avoiding despair are very real issues.
Inside the Rabbit Hole is an occasional series of tiny posts that shine a light on someone who has been falling down the rabbit hole (a la Alice, long before she became a movie) for some very long while now.
Sometimes seeing that others go there, too, can brace, and give hope.]
Writing is like living in a self-induced (“deliberate”) psychosis. Most people don’t understand that.
You live the story you are writing. It stays there—the characters talking to you in odd moments—whether you are actively writing out what they say or at a day job…
It is why so many creative people work dead-end jobs.
You have to preserve the creative voice.
And the energy needed to hear it.
©2005 Valerie Isobel Freer. Unpublished papers; email to private correspondent.
commentary optional 