Writing Season

Fall is not about pumpkin spice.

Now that I have your attention . . .

For me, Fall signifies a prelude to my beloved Winter. Once Halloween passes, it’s a literal and figurative rush toward the holidays: choosing new side dishes for Thanksgiving; the madcap month of baking and watching Christmas movies (yes, even some Hallmark selections) in December. Then Winter Solstice kicks off the few precious weeks of my favorite season of hygge, that also includes my birthday.

A few years ago, I tapped into the idea of living more in tune with the seasons instead of the Roman calendar. I loved the idea of not disquieting my Winter with the manic energy of New Year’s resolutions, starting my new year in Spring’s time of rebirth, working diligently through Summer, and harvesting the fruits of my labor in Fall.

But even with that new rhythm (which was a vast improvement), something still felt off for me. Call it something as simple as temperature. 

Generally speaking, I don’t enjoy the heat of summer, especially where I live in the San Fernando Valley. When others are doing all sorts of outdoor activities, I’m comparatively inactive (except for walks on the beach when I can get there).

 When cooler temps arrive, I come alive. I resume my 5K walks again. I bundle up (yes, we can have chilly nights in Los Angeles) and write on my balcony with my outdoor lights twinkling over my head.

I’ve also realized that while I love to be cozy and drink hot tea and cocoa by the gallon, Winter is not a restful season for me in the way some might prescribe it to be.

Rather, the quietude makes Winter the absolute best time for me to write. So, this December I’ll be baking fewer cookies, but preparing them with a lot more joy, and re-watching only my favorite Christmas movies, so that come Winter Solstice, I’ll be ready to launch my Writing Season. When’s yours? I’d love to hear, and if I can help you find it, let’s talk!

Primal Creativity

What a concept!

The first time I heard this term, it shot straight to the core of my heart space like a shooting star. My fellow wild woman creative Sharla June spoke of it at a gathering of the women’s group I was part of as a state we return to when we’re able to shut out distractions and mental noise.

But there’s something deeper at work here . . .

Primal: essential; fundamental; original; basic and powerful; connected with the origins of life; characteristic of the earliest time in the existence of a person. In other words, something that has always been with us, that has always been part of us.

How thrilling and exciting then to realize that primal creativity is something that we’ve always had access to—it’s part of everyone.

And it’s exactly how writing makes me feel, when I’m engaged with my writing practice on its purest most authentic level—when I’m just letting it all flow from my heart and soul, not concerned in its primitive form about the outcome (because that’s what editing is for, and that’s another subject).

It’s a zone I drill down to, where I’m free to create whatever I want, to write the stories my heart needs to tell. I’m surrounded by light and color. It’s an atmosphere teeming with ideas and possibilities.

How do we access it? There are many ways to get out of our own way and become a conduit for creativity, a scribe for our soul. And it’s different for everyone.

What does it look like for you? How do you plug into it? How do you get there? I can help you answer those questions. Reach out today to see if we’d make a good team.

And check out my upcoming workshop for women and non-binary individuals this October! Magical Realism: Pathway to Primal Creativity. Click here to learn more and register.

I’m a writer of magical realism, a mentor to women writers of all ages, and a story magic archaeologist. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing, and I live in Los Angeles with my husband and our two Imp Muses (cats) Stanley and Sofia. Join my mailing list for a free touchstone session in support of your writing practice!

www.writeranne.net ⁎ anne@writeranne.net ⁎ Twitter @wildwriteranne ⁎ Facebook Wild Woman Writer

"A Poem Lovely As a Tree" - Part Two (the wounded writer series)

In Part 1 I shared how, at the very start of my creative journey as a writer, my grade school teacher all but accused me of plagiarizing a poem I wrote, and then confiscated it from me. 

This is Part Two of that story.

 At this point my sense of failure obscured the seed of rage that wouldn’t fully bloom until much later in my adulthood, when I finally began to realize my self-worth as an individual and a writer.

I of course reported the incident to my mother. While I hoped that she would march into Mrs. Bloom’s classroom the next morning and demand my poem back, my teacher never faced any consequences that ever knew of. But I waited patiently until the end of the school year.

Mrs. Bloom dealt her final blow on the last day of school. I waited until all the other kids had cleared out. The halls were empty. Classroom windows and doors were open so the air could circulate. A warm, early-June breeze whispered into the hallway and rustled the discarded papers that never made it into a book bag or the trash.

I walked to Mrs. Bloom’s classroom where she sat at her desk, preparing to start her own summer vacation. I approached her with much more trepidation that I had all those months ago, and she greeted me with all of the same ire and irritation she had before. I asked her to return my poem with a reminder of her promise to me. She said: “Oh, I don’t have it anymore.” I heard “Why are you bothering me, stupid girl! Why would I have kept your worthless poem?”

Did I implore Mrs. Bloom to look for it? Maybe. Did she? I wonder. It’s entirely possible that my wounded memory blotted these parts out.

No, disappointment doesn’t even begin to cover it. This experience was a triple threat to my confidence and sense of self-worth: first Mrs. Bloom questioned my integrity by doubting that I had penned the poem; then she committed theft by confiscating my poem; and in the end she further betrayed my trust in her by carelessly tossing it and failing to return it to me as promised.

I’m not without empathy, which has actually been an important part of the healing of this wound. Because whatever creative wound that thwarted Mrs. Bloom’s desire to become a poet is what embittered her and motivated her destructiveness. 

As for my mother, God only knows how hard it must have been for a single, divorced woman to raise and care for me, much less wage war on my behalf over a poem. 

I chose to keep writing. Not long after I lost my poem to Mrs. Bloom (I was unsuccessful at recreating it beyond the first two lines), I wrote my first book in the third grade. My first three books, actually, and my mom was a great help and support—she typed the pages of one, sewed the binding for all three, and took me shopping for colored contact paper for the covers. I won a Young Author’s award for the first one, and I still have them on my bookshelf.

I also chose to write through every creative wound I endured in the years since then, and there have been many. But each one holds a hidden gem; each creative wound has shown me a new facet of my worth and strength, and each has served to confirm who I am and what I do.

Are your creative wounds holding you back in your writing practice? Let's talk.

I’m a writer of magical realism, a mentor to women writers of all ages, and a story magic archaeologist. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing, and I live in Los Angeles with my husband and our two Imp Muses (cats) Stanley and Sofia. Join my mailing list and receive eligibility for a free touchstone call in support of your writing practice.

www.writeranne.net ⁎ anne@writeranne.net ⁎ Twitter @wildwriteranne ⁎ Facebook Wild Woman Writer

"A Poem Lovely As a Tree", Part 1 (the wounded writer series)

A poem lovely as a tree . . .

I trusted my grade-school teacher implicitly and completely. Didn’t we all?

Mrs. Bloom was not the breath of spring that her name implies. She was a hard woman, sculpted by the sharp edges of her rules and regulations. It was difficult to find joy in her classroom, as still as we were made to sit in our seats and as straight as we had to line up at the chalkboard to recite whatever poem she had assigned us to memorize. Will I ever be grateful that one such assignment was Trees by A.A. Milne? Not exactly. I’ll never forget those first lines, though: “I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree.”

Yet it was with huge joy that I approached her at the end of class one day, clutching a poem that I’d labored over in the days before. I can still feel the smile on my face when I approached her, and Mrs. Bloom’s clear displeasure at seeing me standing next to her desk didn’t dampen my excitement. 

I don’t remember her verbal acknowledgement, or her inquiry as to what it was I wanted from her, only that she stood, and that I told her in the messy way of a young person that I’d written a poem, and that I wanted to show it to her.

She took it from me, and I know I kept grinning with innocent hope much the way Ralph did in A Christmas Story, as he waited for his teacher to read his essay about what he wanted for Christmas that year.

If you’re one of the handful of people on the planet who hasn’t seen that movie, I’ll try not to spoil that scene too much by saying that Ralphie’s teacher missed the point. It was never about what Ralphie wanted for Christmas, or dare I add, how well it was written. At that age, it was about his sense of accomplishment, how he communicated his ultimate Christmas wish.

Not only did Miss Shields miss the point, so did Mrs. Bloom—wildly and destructively. She looked up from the paper she held with my poem neatly written on it. I’m sure I met her cynical gaze with the eager anticipation I still felt.

My poem was simple, and painfully full of rhyme, as are the early attempts at poetry of many kids. From what little I remember, it probably wasn’t very good (I mean, the first two lines were “Her name is Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth is her name”)—but again, not the point.

“Well,” Mrs. Bloom began (and I held onto a shred of hope for a moment longer not that she would say that it was a good poem, but that she would validate the effort), “it’s pretty good—if you wrote it.”

I can think of so many ways to describe how I felt in that moment. Like someone had dragged the needle across a vinyl record of my favorite song. Like I’d just wiped out at the roller rink knees first, and the kid next to me skated over the fingers of the hand I’d used to break my fall. Some would say I’m being too dramatic (“why not just say you were disappointed?”) Because for a creative person, especially at that age, it’s not just disappointing—it’s soul withering. . . dream crushing. You get the idea.

“I’ll just hang onto this for now,” Mrs. Bloom continued. “You can have it back at the end of the school year.”

Find out what happens next in Part 2.

In the meantime, are your creative wounds holding you back in your writing practice? Let's talk.

I’m a writer of magical realism, a mentor to women writers of all ages, and a story magic archaeologist. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing, and I live in Los Angeles with my husband and our two Imp Muses (cats) Stanley and Sofia. Join my mailing list and you will be eligible for a free touchstone session in support of your writing life.

www.writeranne.net ⁎ anne@writeranne.net ⁎ Twitter @wildwriteranne ⁎ Facebook Wild Woman Writer