The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Studio School in
Richmond is a jewel of creative buzz just waiting for you to discover, if you haven't
already.
I got to spend yesterday afternoon there with an eclectic
gathering of local authors and writers convened by Piper Nichole just to talk
about our stuff.
A
wonderful experience! Sort of a slo-mo creative flash mob that Piper organized
just because. It was a sunny and mild Saturday @RVA, and there was no more of an
agenda than that…just because – just because we can and just because we like it
like that.
There was a lot to
take away. The most important for me perhaps was a reaffirmation of one of my
basic rules of good writing: that it doesn’t happen until I sit down and start.
That sounds sort of dumb, doesn’t it. But it’s true. Often my best work happens
only after I have settled in to write. The physicality: sitting, using a pen,
hearing it scratch across paper, seeing words appear, feeling the mind search
in a way it may not during most of a day’s routine. Something gets lit up in that process.
When I first heard
an accomplished author say that she sat to write at a certain time each day
whether she felt like or not, I was puzzled. I thought you had to feel inspired
first…and then sit. Nope. It seems almost universal among writers I’ve learned
from. They sit and start…then it happens.
And how about that
pen and paper thing? I do that -- most of the time with a fountain pen. And my
computer’s word processor? Or my voice recognition software? I use them for
recording notes. Or writing press releases. Formula business writing. But the
creative stuff doesn’t work so well for me at a computer.
Except this time.
Just this once maybe. I wanted to get this blog out there. So it was like
working for the newspaper again. Click-clack, and here it is. There were only a
billion other things I wanted to tell you. But you don’t have all day, either,
do you.
