The Creativity Cycle
read, write, submit, promote… why, again?
Image description: Middle-aged lady in tasteful swimsuit partially covered in dried clay (both the lady and the swimsuit).
Sometimes process feels like a slog through the mud. And for what?
Although, recently, I did slog through mud.
It started as curiosity. What if…I walked barefoot through a muddy arroyo? Squished deep red sludge through my toes? Layered black clay on my skin? What if I rolled around and made mud angels?
It looked like this.
It felt like connection.
It was a unique event for me (even as a child I was disinclined to touch the outside world). But when I put it into words, I create a bridge to a universal sensory experience: the suctiony schlock! sound of mud clinging to the soles of my feet as I marched through. The tight pull on my skin as the clay dried. The weight of wet earth in my hair.
A part of that feeling is recreated when I select the words, arrange them in a specific order and those the words are read or spoken. The seeds of empathy are planted. This is why we are moved to write, why we toggle back and forth to find the perfect words, and why we put our art out into the world.
My friend Toni Mirosevich is in the beginning stages of promoting her seventh book, Spell Heaven, which is coming out next year from Counterpoint Press. We exchange self-promotion tips. Put your website in your signature! Share your news with your alumni networks! Proudly toot that horn!
Why is it so hard?
I used to encourage my writer friends to share their work on the grounds that, because it was good, it deserved to be seen by others. And while that’s certainly the case with writers like Toni (this essay is one of my favorites), lately I have been thinking that there is something else. A cosmic link between artist and art-lover. As artists, we stock the pond with our metaphorical fish. It’s not our job to decide who should read our work or who will benefit. It’s just our job to make it available. (If that sounds very Julia Cameron of me, it’s because I’m cruising through The Artist’s Way again). The audience that is thirsting for your work will find it.
Case in point: this video sat in my inbox for a week before I sat down and read the newsletter from another writer friend, Maria Ramos-Chertok. The video is a seven-minute documentary made by Maria’s high school-aged son on the topic of missing and murdered indigenous women (#MMIWG). Watching it, which coincided with another video sent by the director of East Oakland’s GIRL Project nudged me back to my research on human trafficking and sex-trafficked youth.
But there was something more. There was the documentary backstory (which you can read here), which chronicles Maria’s involvement, along with her son’s decision to make the documentary as part of his group project for school. The seeds of inspiration sown and grown and coming full circle as I watch and reflect.
Which reminds me… I wrote something! About the Nutcracker! (Big surprise.) And it got published in this anthology for National Flash Fiction Day, which is Saturday, June 26, 2021.
The numbers for “A Night at the Nutcracker”:
18 submissions
8 rejections
1 acceptance
1 video reading (which you might be able to view here after June 26.)