by Jamie Chavez | Nov 5, 2015 | Books You Might Like, Creativity
So many people are denied the deep gratification of poetry. Their educations have trained them to read for information. When I told my uncle that a book of my poems had been published, he said, “Poety is Greek to me.” He did not open the pristine white covers of my...
by Jamie Chavez | Aug 14, 2015 | Creativity
In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it. I ask you to do this by an apparently pointless process I call the morning pages. … Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness: “Oh, god, another...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 28, 2015 | Creativity, The Writing Craft
We’ve just been talking about voice (and I think I may have more to say about it, but that’s another blog for another day), but this morning I want to show you two articles from two authors who discuss how they each found their own narrative voice. Meg Rosoff starts...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 23, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers, Creativity
A few weeks ago I saw this on Twitter—“Inspiration is for amateurs. Real writers write.”—and (as we say in the South) it just about made me lose my religion. Meaning it made me so furious I ranted about it on Facebook. What in the world is this person talking about?...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 31, 2015 | Creativity, The Writing Craft
As you know, I’m in a period of reading and writing about creativity. How to get it, how to find it when you lose it, how to keep the momentum, and so on. On Thursday I talked about my creative process—in particular how waiting and distractions are important for...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 29, 2015 | Creativity, The Arts & Media
Several months ago I was listening to this NPR interview with Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist, married singer-songwriters who form the core of the folk band Over the Rhine, and I was caught by what Karin says about inspiration: Whenever I get to this spot where...
