Wonderful to hear from you Nina and your blog is so grounded and on the mark. So sorry about the challenges of the many loses. It's a journey to re-center and you are wisely giving yourself time to take it one-step-at-at-time. I've moved back to the East Coast. Come visit me in the DC area - Thriving AS would love to welcome you back.
I loved this so much! I can totally relate to sitting down to write and not knowing how to start. Or what to do when you hit a pause in thought. I'm going to try this next time! Just starting writing a new book yesterday! It's going to be a good year!
Museum alum here who loved Mother-Daughter Murder Night 🙋🏻♀️thank you for sharing your journey. Looking forward to seeing how it continues and to reading book #2!
Hi nina. This reminds me of the old museum 2.0 days! One of the reasons I can be a practicing musician is because it requires, well, practice. I rarely sit down to the piano or guitar with the intention, need, or desire to be "creative." That usually comes about 20 or 30 minutes into the session, when I have run through some technical exercises I am working on (not as dry as it sounds.). Once the body is physically prepared a bit more, then you are open to a deeper creative expression. More and more, I am a believer in continuously working on fundamentals, whether in music or my other practices. That is in part because "feeling creative" is not something that just happens to me in the course of a day. Its usually about practice, preparing the body and mind to be receptive and capable of expression. I am not sure there is anything analogous to working on fundamentals in writing.
On the other end of the spectrum, I am also spending a lot of time at the piano just freely improvising, starting with the germ of an idea and taking it, in real time, wherever it goes. This is the quickest and surest way into a flow state that I know. Again, I am not sure what the analogy would be for writing, but it is definitely part of my daily practice nowadays.
Both of these approaches work for me even during periods of difficulty, because they simply do not rely on my being creative, they are just playing.
I suspect they fill for me some of what you get on your outdoor/physically taxing adventures.
Hope our paths cross soon and that 2025 is better for all of us than I am afraid it will be.
Thnak you Nina for sharing this wonderful tip. I am so sorry for this hard lifetime 2024 personal period for you. I am sure you are re-emerging from this wiser and brighter. All my warm greetings to you from Zürich and my wishes for 2025 with a new extraordinary novel from you"!. My secret is a warm shower early in the morning and/or a "forest "shower in the afternoon. These are my tools to unblock my creative bottlenecks when I am stuck.
i haven't done any significant writing since publishing my textbook a couple of years ago. Instead, i've dived into a new hobby: acting. I needed a more social hobby.
I was in 8 tens @8 last year (not this year, unfortunately), and touring the retirement communities with NextStage Productions' Readers' Theater. I'll be auditioning for Cabrillo's Spring play.
Wonderful to hear from you Nina and your blog is so grounded and on the mark. So sorry about the challenges of the many loses. It's a journey to re-center and you are wisely giving yourself time to take it one-step-at-at-time. I've moved back to the East Coast. Come visit me in the DC area - Thriving AS would love to welcome you back.
Nina dear,
My work is mainly writing and three things help me focus:
- movement: exercising, walking and dancing.
- self care: as little as brushing my teeth to a bath.
- house music: no words music that makes my brain flow.
I love writing, and I enjoy being in that state of flow, where what I imagine becomes a tangible.
Big hugs
Nina Simon, I love every word that you write.
I loved this so much! I can totally relate to sitting down to write and not knowing how to start. Or what to do when you hit a pause in thought. I'm going to try this next time! Just starting writing a new book yesterday! It's going to be a good year!
Museum alum here who loved Mother-Daughter Murder Night 🙋🏻♀️thank you for sharing your journey. Looking forward to seeing how it continues and to reading book #2!
Hi nina. This reminds me of the old museum 2.0 days! One of the reasons I can be a practicing musician is because it requires, well, practice. I rarely sit down to the piano or guitar with the intention, need, or desire to be "creative." That usually comes about 20 or 30 minutes into the session, when I have run through some technical exercises I am working on (not as dry as it sounds.). Once the body is physically prepared a bit more, then you are open to a deeper creative expression. More and more, I am a believer in continuously working on fundamentals, whether in music or my other practices. That is in part because "feeling creative" is not something that just happens to me in the course of a day. Its usually about practice, preparing the body and mind to be receptive and capable of expression. I am not sure there is anything analogous to working on fundamentals in writing.
On the other end of the spectrum, I am also spending a lot of time at the piano just freely improvising, starting with the germ of an idea and taking it, in real time, wherever it goes. This is the quickest and surest way into a flow state that I know. Again, I am not sure what the analogy would be for writing, but it is definitely part of my daily practice nowadays.
Both of these approaches work for me even during periods of difficulty, because they simply do not rely on my being creative, they are just playing.
I suspect they fill for me some of what you get on your outdoor/physically taxing adventures.
Hope our paths cross soon and that 2025 is better for all of us than I am afraid it will be.
Thnak you Nina for sharing this wonderful tip. I am so sorry for this hard lifetime 2024 personal period for you. I am sure you are re-emerging from this wiser and brighter. All my warm greetings to you from Zürich and my wishes for 2025 with a new extraordinary novel from you"!. My secret is a warm shower early in the morning and/or a "forest "shower in the afternoon. These are my tools to unblock my creative bottlenecks when I am stuck.
Is that the Branciforte library in your photo?
i haven't done any significant writing since publishing my textbook a couple of years ago. Instead, i've dived into a new hobby: acting. I needed a more social hobby.
Yes, I love working in the B40 library... especially since the terrific remodel.
Acting sounds fun--are you doing community theater? Improv?
Both, though mainly taking classes (Cabrillo, UCSC summer school, Actors' Theatre).
I was in 8 tens @8 last year (not this year, unfortunately), and touring the retirement communities with NextStage Productions' Readers' Theater. I'll be auditioning for Cabrillo's Spring play.