Cross-training and the IWSG

November! Who could have thought it would show up. I write this on the first so don't know how I'll be feeling on the morning of the sixth. I hope all is well and good in the world. It is another meeting of the IWSG - my favourite day of the month! So pour a cup of coffee, tea or scotch and let's have our meeting. 

Insecure Writer's Support Group

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

The awesome co-hosts for the November 6 posting of the IWSG are Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard , Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose!

The optional question for this month: - What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

Wowza! What a great question. I think of all the creative activities I get up to as a form of cross-training. I think I wrote a post on that many many years ago - I'll see if I can find it. My card says Writer & Artist on it. So I guess that means my main other outlet is my oil painting. I've just dived into to it big time in the last two years (although I've played with it forever) and am now starting to actually sell the odd painting. A friend of mine is an established painter who wants to be an author and as I'm an author who wants to be an established painter we have been working with each other. It is wonderful and one of the best things about it is seeing how we can find translatable practices in each. For instance if you are working on a novel and spend an inordinate amount of time on one section (usually the opening) your novel as a whole will be unbalanced. Likewise when painting you must move around the canvas, not just focusing on one aspect. In all artistic endeavors we try to find our voice or style, and must trust that it will emerge, like our signature it cannot be imposed. Something we can see clearly in one discipline will help us with another - we develop different muscles and all add up to being as authentic and free as possible. I'm quite excited as I will be taking a three-day painting workshop this month in a town a few hours away. I will stay there (in a motel probably) and be able to immerse myself fully in the world of painting. I'm hoping as well to get into a two week residence for playwrights in the spring. Nurturing the artist within is essential for my well being.

Besides the writing and painting I quilt, make dolls, direct plays, cook elaborate dishes, garden, and knit. In this time of intense social media I want to be a creator not a consumer. All of them speak to a part of me that adds up to the whole of me.

I think that I do not consider creativity as separate from my life as a whole. I think we were made to be makers all of us - whether it is the art of parenting, negotiating a truce, drawing a flower, or singing a song - we were born to express ourselves - to see beauty and delight and bring it to the attention of others.

Cross-training for Writers

the view from Power House, our home at Windhorse Farm

A couple of years ago I took oil painting classes. They really helped me with understanding how to build a novel. How? Because I did the same thing on my paintings that I did on my novels which was to concentrate on one area and neglect the rest until I had this perfectly polished tree that stood in stark contrast to the feebly executed  field around it. Or I got down my subject's eyes exactly right but the rest of their face and body wasn't right. My teacher (the ineffable Christopher Webb) taught me to work on all areas of the canvas each time I went to my easel. There were other things I learned too that helped with my writing - things like 'don't try tricks until you master the techniques' and 'paint what is actually there instead of what you think is there' but that first one was the most helpful for me.
Cross-training is a technique employed by many athletes. Football players take yoga and find it increases their concentration and balance. Wrestlers swim, basketball players run and so on. Sometimes you don't need to go too far afield to cross-train.
Monday and Tuesday I went to Windhorse Farm with a playwright and four actors. We took the playwright's play and she and I developed a way for the actors to work with it so that the playwright could see where the writing could use some work. It was intense, joyful and surprising in many ways. It got me to thinking about how one could do something similar with a novel.
Playwriting is a highly collaborative art form. The playwright begins with an idea and may write the entire play without any feedback but that's about it - once it is chosen to be produced the playwright better park her ego and prepare to see her play transformed. The directors have opinions, the actors want things a certain way, the producers, the stage-managers, the set designers - all of the creative team will have its way with the play. The best way that I know to work with this is whole-heartedly. Abandon your preciousness - don't even worry about killing your own darlings because others will be happy to do so!

the creative team goes for a walk in a blizzard!

That is one reason I decided to attend to fiction writing in the last few years. I loved the process but it is rather daunting from time to time. But...
on the other hand...
the energy that the four fabulous imaginative actors brought to the script was VERY good. They were willing to embody a process that the playwright and I had pretty much invented. We wouldn't even let them read the play until we'd worked for eight hours. We got them to improvise certain parts of the play and really start to understand their characters first. How might I do that with my novel? I'm not sure but I am going to put my mind to it.
Any ideas?
By the way - I'm definitely going to figure out a way to go to Windhorse Farm for a good long writer's retreat - fantastic place.