At Hedgebrook’s Writing Salon last Saturday, one woman who’s writing a
book spoke up at lunch and said she’d been so focusing her attention and
energy on tasks to complete her book that she’d sort of developed blinders
(my phrase, not hers). Her experience resonated for me as I’ve done the
same in the last year. She said that when asked in her morning workshop
to do an exercise outside her genre/field/topic, she had this internal
momentary response of “wait, I’m monogamous to my work. I don’t date
outside of it.” Once she realized the limits of this closed creativity
door, she could free herself to open it and walk through. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Alum Experiences’ Category
Stepping Outside Your Genre
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012Connecting My Newborn Daughter to a Place that Birthed Me as a Writer
Saturday, April 28th, 2012In 1980, at the age of 7, I moved to Seattle. Almost immediately, I started plotting my escape. This had to do with my inner landscape more than my outer one, but I only saw that in retrospect. I was an awkward kid who skipped grades and started university in my early teens. It was no surprise that I never fit in. After going to college on the East Coast, I returned to the Emerald City for medical school, but that did not improve my sense of belonging. I vowed to leave again for specialty training and did. But during my last year of med school, something changed the way I started feeling about my home town, and that was a 2-month residency at Hedgebrook. (more…)
Hedgebrook Downtown
Friday, April 6th, 2012By Nan Macy, Donna Miscolta, and Allison Green
On a recent rainy Saturday, eight Hedgebrook alumnae met around the farmhouse table and shared essays they were writing about visibility and invisibility, about motorcyles, about Louisa May Alcott, about rice. Actually, this farmhouse table was not on idyllic Whidbey Island, but in a conference room at Hedgebrook’s Pioneer Square office in Seattle. (more…)
Kony2012, Mike Daisey and the Politics of Art, Truth and Complexity
Monday, April 2nd, 2012I have a half-dozen or so of my short films on youtube and vimeo. The most “popular,” uploaded ten months ago, has been viewed 90,593 times.
The Kony2012 film, released last month, has over 84 million hits.
I spent much of the month venting in fury about the Kony2012 film/campaign and the Invisible Children organization that produced it. It oversimplified the very complex reality in Eastern and Central Africa. It offered misleading and highly sensationalized information. It proscribed militaristic policies that could potentially put thousands of civilians at severe risk. A white, male American was foregrounded as the story’s hero (along with his pre-school aged son) while the very real, very important work of reconstruction and peace-building that Ugandans themselves have been doing for years was entirely ignored. It suggested that Americans sharing videos on Facebook and purchasing bracelets was all it took to catch an indicted war criminal—and by doing so, they would also become heroes. It was self-serving and narcissistic. (more…)
What My Woodstove Has Taught Me About Writing
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012When you’re starting from a cold stove, lay the fire according to the principles that have lasted over the centuries, namely:
Clear the way for the new
It helps to start clean when you’re dealing with cold ashes rather than live embers. The knowledge that you’ve made fires in the past is comforting, but that doesn’t mean you have to lay new ideas on top of the cold residue of old ones. The memories of finished work, whether it was successful or not, just aren’t particularly helpful. That work is behind you, it has already served its purpose and you may be grateful to it but often the memory of that past writing keeps you from trying something new and challenging yourself, just as those dead ashes only muffle and obscure what you need to do right now, which is to start. Transcend your fear of the unknown. Let the past go. Shovel it out and clear it away before you begin. (more…)
