Take your writing (and your body) in new directions

THURSDAY NIGHTS, MARCH 3, 10, 17, 24 & 31, 7-9 PM !

Creative Flow: Yoga and Writing Workshop 

Consciousness meets craft in this course that uses ancient principles and practices to stimulate modern, creative writers of all genres.  Students will be guided through movement designed to develop focus, draw inspiration, stimulate imagination, and manifest creativity. Each session will include exercises on the mat and on the page. Participants will share their new work in a format that allows for supportive feedback.  This course is for every body — stiff or limber, young or old, beginners or experienced practitioners.

Santa Monica Yoga, 1640 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405. 5 SESSIONS. $150. $125 if purchased by Feb. 24. Space is limited to 12 participants. Sign-up early to ensure your spot!

Paypal msflambe@yahoo.com.

Tags: creative, creativity, MFA Creative Writing, workshop, Writer's Block, Writing, yoga

Go with the flow!

After seeing how yoga changed my creative life, I had an idea! Why not teach a combination yoga and creative writing class! So I recently completed 200 hour yoga teacher training at Santa Monica Yoga. The training included anatomy, alignment, philosophy, and practical teaching experience. And now I’m leading a workshop called Creative Flow, which is a combination yoga and writing experience. Here’s the course description:

Consciousness meets craft in this course that uses ancient principles and practices to stimulate modern, creative writers of all genres.  Students will be guided through movement designed to develop focus, draw inspiration, stimulate imagination, and manifest creativity. Each session will include exercises on the mat and on the page as we focus on aspects of writing (character, imagery, voice, pace and rhythm) and develop creative attributes (compassion, awareness, discrimination and discipline). Participants share their new work in a format that allows for supportive feedback.  This course is for every body — stiff or limber, young or old, beginners or experienced practitioners.

If you’re interested, let me know. The current class is full, but I’ll be starting a new one in the spring. I’ll notify you with the details, if you’d like.

Tags: 200 RYT, creative, creativity, memoir, Santa Monica Yoga, workshop, Writer's Block, Writing, yoga, yoga teacher training

An approach to creative success

I teach a workshop on the relationship between shame and writing. One of the primary texts I used in my research was John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You. While this book has been consulted by many self-helpers for recovery from shame, it also contains some  insights into our psyche that inform and liberate our creativity.

A healthy sense of shame (humility), Bradshaw says, is basically knowing that we don’t know it all. When we think that we know things, our creativity shuts down. Creativity takes curiosity, and curiosity takes courage — after all, who knows where the unknown will take us? However, the three C’s alone aren’t enough, says Bradshaw:

A person with humility shame is open to new discovery and learning….When a person with curiosity and interest has discipline available to him [or her], [s]he has the right formula for creativity. The world is full of people with good ideas and fantasies that never come to fruition because they don’t have disciplined limits.

If you’re having trouble finishing a project or getting it started, it may help to ask yourself where you need more push. Do you need more courage to ask the hard questions and inquire further? Or do you really need more discipline in your creative life?  Or perhaps, is it possible you’ve lost interest in the project because you know it so well that your curiosity has waned and you really need to explore those aspects that are still a mystery to you?

Tags: creativity, curiosity, discipline, Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw, workshop, Writing

What’s in silence

I was introduced to a lovely concept in yoga teacher training this weekend: We tend to think of ourselves as moving through the world…but what if the world moves through us?

It’s how I’ve been approaching some of my writing — as a moving meditation where I listen to the wisdom of the universe (or God) and just try to write down what comes. It seems like an ironic contradiction — that we should verbalize what comes to us in silence — doesn’t it?

Terry Wolverton, one of my mentors, shares her ideas on this subject in her blog Writers at Work (read the whole entry). She asks some interesting questions:

Where do we gather the wisdom, the depth that is so needed in our blathering culture if we are caught up in the same pressure to constantly blather?What if our measure were not how much did we produce but rather, what is the quality of our ideas? Not how many pages did you generate today but, instead, what is the most important thing you have to say and have you explored it fully before you said it?

Tags: inspiration, silence, Terry Wolverton, Writing

Saying “I do”

I used to keep a note taped above my desk that said, “Don’t confuse excitement (temporary) with passion (commitment).”

I am a real sucker for novelty, and I tend to get caught up in the whirlwind of excitement that surrounds new ideas and pursuits. I put the reminder on a 4×6 slip of paper in sharpie marker when I realized that I had a tendency to chuck the old for the new, essentially cheating on my true love for the sake of a fleeting thrill.

It was a lot like any other infidelity. I’d begin to miss the writing, and I’d sheepishly return to it, hoping I’d be able to pick up where I left off. But it wasn’t that easy to re-establish the connection. It’s as if the words held a grudge and wouldn’t talk to me for a while. I spent a lot of time in acts of creative contrition, making up for being unfaithful to and neglectful of my writing.

Once I learned to recognize these two types of interest in things, I was better able to make decisions about how I want to spend my time. Of course, I still have other interests besides writing. I have my relationships with people that I nurture, and I enjoy cooking, sailing, hiking and yoga. And some of these activities have even become a regular part of my life. But I made a commitment to my writing because I recognized that I was passionate about it in a way that I could neither explain nor deny. I had to start seeing myself and my writing as one.

Essentially, I married writing and kept the other activities as friends.

I took the note down a few months ago when I moved across the country. I don’t need it any more. Having the reminder there for all that time helped me internalize its message, though, and keep me faithful to the one I love best.

What defines a writer?

You may have heard this old joke about the man who’d done many good deeds in his life but was defined by one terrible one. He bemoans his fate to a bartender:

You see that church over there? I built it with my bare hands but do they call me O’Reilly the Church builder? No!

You see that school over there? I taught there for 30 years but do they call me O’Reilly the Educator? No!

But you *$!# one goat….

I appreciate how this joke applies to us as writers, and I’m not just talking  egregious writerly offenses such as that of James Frey who screwed the goat when he fictionalizing his “memoir” A Million Little Pieces. Chances are he’ll be remembered for that rather than any other literary accomplishment.

Let O’Reilly serve as a reminder that there are many accomplishments we should celebrate, even in the face of failure. Instead of just criticizing our lapses in discipline, let’s also admire our lifelong devotion to craft. Let’s congratulate ourselves for the volumes we’ve written even if they haven’t been published. Let’s find the beauty in our descriptions as well as the flaws in the plot.

The joke also teaches another lesson: O’Reilly’s identity gives us permission to claim our own. After all, he molested only one goat, but how many times have we written?  Still, unless we’re claiming a paycheck for our words, we hesitate to announce to the world, “I am a writer.”

But what is the page if not a goat where we have passionately relieved ourselves?  Gross, I know, but I think it’s apt.

Tags: accomplishments, focus, James Frey, jokes, memoir, Million Little Pieces, Writing

The “I” in “Writer”

True, there’s no “I” in “team,” but in “writer,” “I” is practically the focal point. In “writing,” well, “I” appears twice.

We are at the center of the creative process, pushing our stories and poems, our discourse and creativity, into the world. Which, of course, is all well and good when our writing is going well and we feel good about not only it, but about ourselves. But what about when we hit a wall and nothing comes? Or when what we produce is not so good at all?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, provides an answer to this in her talk for Ted. She discusses how she can move forward with what might possibly be her greatest success now behind her. Her ideas encourage us to move beyond an ego based responsibility for the creative works we author and into an appreciation of what we have contribute to a divine collaboration.

Perhaps we took too much of mysticism out when we demystified writing as a process?

Tags: collaboration, creativity, demystify, divine, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, muse, mysticism, Ted, Writing, writing process

Switching gears redux

Wouldn’t it be nice if our brains could automatically switch from the rational (in our everyday and professional lives) to the creative (in our writing lives) without any sputtering or stalling? It seems that the brain has more of a standard transmission than an automatic one. That means we need to actively participate in switching gears.

I wrote about my own troubles getting the creativity in gear on my other blog today and I thought I’d share it here: Switching gears.

What do you do switch gears?

Tags: blog, creative, motivation, workshop, Writer's Block, Writing

Principles & Laws (& curly blond hair)

Newton has laws & curly blond hair

Today, I’m on a roll. The momentum of my writing life proves Sir Isaac Newton right again (he came up with the bit about a body in motion staying in motion). Yup, Marya Summers the law abiding citizen here, doing what I can to uphold the laws of physics.

While still on the subject of science, I’d like to acknowledge that part of what got the old ball(point) rolling is the spirituality I find within my creativity. Julia Cameron’s “Basic Principles,” which I believed before I ever found them in The Artist’s Way, aptly expresses my own ideas on creativity. (Thanks, Julia, for doing the work of setting these out).

Basic Principles

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure, creative energy.

2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including ourselves.

3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.

4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.

5. Creativity is G-d’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to G-d.

6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.

7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to G-d: good orderly direction.

8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but power changes to be expected.

9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.

10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.

Cameron has principles & curly blond hair

Principle #8 brings me back to Newton. His law states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless the body is compelled to change. It’s good to remember for those moments when we’re giving things a push but nothing’s really moving. Maybe the friction that’s slowed things up is that the writing (or the writer!) is undergoing a new development.

There you have it: science and spirituality united in the writing life…and two philosophers united by hairstyles.

Tags: creative, Isaac Newton, Julia Cameron, motivation, Physics, spirituality, The Artist's Way, Writer's Block, Writing

The movie of your life

You know that movie you’ve watched over and over? Turns out, you can learn a lot about yourself and your own life story from your favorite film. And you can apply these lessons as you write memoirs and personal essays.

Who's your daddy?

My friend and colleague Ramona Gonzales gave a lecture at Antioch University Los Angeles this morning on this very subject (so I’m stealing all these ideas from her): “Darth Vader is My Father: Using Elements of Modern Myth in Personal Narrative.”

The premise of her lecture (which loses something without the Darth Vader mask as a visual aid) was this:

Myth and folklore were storytelling methods used by tribal elders to impart life lessons to their tribes. In modern times pop culture has taken the place of tribal elders in continuing our biological imperative of narrative.

She had us examine our favorite films and deconstruct them to see in what ways they paralleled the stories we create of our own life events. Since I’ve probably watched Legally Blonde about three dozen times — more than any other movie, which I can only partially blame on Ted Turner’s cable stations which play it regularly — I had come to class ready with it deconstructed.

Although Elle Woods and I are leagues apart in many ways — she’s a tan, rich, spa-loving, mani-pedicured, tirelessly positive dog lover from the West Coast and I am a pale, modest-incomed, self-cleansing, unadorned and rigorously pragmatic cat person from the East Coast — her story still speaks to me.

Whoever said movies are not the new tribal elders was seriously deranged

All specifics aside, when you look at the story, you realize it’s the story of a girl who follows her heart and is better for it in the end, not because she gets the guy she wants, but because in her commitment to doing so, she learns and changes.

As in the mythic structure (departure, initiation, return), she leaves the West Coast, is initiated into her law school experience (her lesson about self) on the East Coast, and uses what she learns to help her tribe (other girlie-girl, spa creatures).

Ramona’s lecture got me thinking about how this applied to my own narrative of self: I’m definitely a girl who follows her heart and brings its lessons back to share with others in my writing.

The lecture drew on Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers and Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. Also, it referenced The New York Times essay “This is Your Life (and How you Tell It)” which includes fascinating research on how the life stories we tell ourselves shape our personalities and vice-versa.

So what about you? What are your favorite films? What do they reflect about the story you tell yourself about your own life?

Tags: Antioch University Los Angeles, Christopher Vogler, creative, Darth Vader, dream, films, Joseph Campbell, Legally Blonde, love, memoir, MFA Creative Writing, motivation, personal essay, Ramona Gonzales, The Power of Myth, The Writer's Journey, Writing