The video is called advice to the young, but if you are in anyway creatively driven it’s a good listen.
Marina, says something that I’ve heard for writing as well. She says about performance art: “do what scares you.” As a writer we often hear “write what scares you”. I don’t think many peolpe would expect that to apply to romance as a genre but it does.
I don’t think I have really chosen anything yet that presses a lot of my buttons but I feel myself working towards that. Yet things still challange me as I write. I find that writing the conflict in the story can involve a lot of getting up and walking around and forcing myself back behind the keys and forging through the tension and getting it on the page. I can be known to leave a conflict and start a new story in the misplaced hope the tension will ease… it doesn’t, lol.
To write you are connected to your characters, and in a way you channel and translate their experiences into words. The biggest faux par as a writer is to under cut the depth of the character’s experience because it is too uncomfortable to wade through it with them as their biographer.
Thematically, I am attracted to stories and characters that reflect emotional and personal courage and exploring the release of old wounds through acts of deep intimacy. They are areas we can easily talk about academically and nod our heads at their importance when living a meaningful life. However, it would be interesting to see on reflection if that is how we have actually lived our life. We are not given many opportunities to demonstrate emotional courage and to undertake and embrace acts of deep intimacy. In reality we may only ever have a few occasions in our life that demand we step up right then and there and be in the moment with courage and vulnerability.
I find both of these areas very challenging. And have fail more than once. I have also succeeded.
I admire my characters willingness to undertake those acts. What it means that I write them I am not sure…..