For anyone who lived in New Mexico in 2001, you will remember the “Madonna in a Bikini” controversy. Artist Alma Lopez depicted the Virgen de Guadalupe as a real woman wearing a bikini of flowers.
Many Catholics were offended, and even the Catholic Church protested, claiming that Lopez had turned the Holy Mother into “a tart.” Reactions were violent and hostile. Lopez received threats, and the image was later censored.
You can read Lopez’s words about “the Controversy” and how she responded to it. Clearly, this event shaped Lopez as an artist — perhaps as a person.
Artists and writers take risks all the time. They mix sexuality and religious iconography. They divulge family secrets. They make political statements.
Natalie Goldberg, in her rules of Writing Practice (paraphrased in red Ravine), tells us to Go for the jugular. In her book Wild Mind – Living The Writer’s Life, she describes it this way:
If something scary comes up, go for it. That’s where the energy is. Otherwise, you’ll spend all your time writing around whatever makes you nervous. It will probably be abstract, bland writing because you’re avoiding the truth. Hemingway said, ‘Write hard and clear about what hurts’. Don’t avoid it. It has all the energy. Don’t worry, no one ever died of it. You might cry or laugh, but not die.
Going for the jugular is one of the ways writers take risks — your version of Madonna in a bikini.
When I was in my mid-20s, living in Granada, Spain, I drew the most outrageous pictures. I look at them today — more than 20 years later — and I know what I was trying to say.
I took so many risks then. Moved to Spain alone with $6,000 and no plans to return. Dropped out of the local university, which provided at least some structure in my life. Sat in a small, hot room and drew. Drank wine. Got depressed. Wrote every day, not even knowing that what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to write and make art.
Where is that person now? I want to hear from her.
I want you to hear from the bold person inside of you. Take a risk with your writing. Go for the jugular. Be controversial, if that’s what you have to be.
Set your timer for 15 minutes. At the top of your page, write this: I take a risk when I write about… Then go.
When you’re done, if you’ve only touched the surface of what it is that puts you out there, write about it again. And again and again.
Take a risk with your writing every day.
Penis Worship, unfinished pencil and color pencil drawing from ~1986,
Granada, Spain (updated recently with pen and ink), drawing
© 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Very interesting story about controversy in art and the artist’s experience living within it. It’s sad to think how quickly people can judge something they simply do not understand…and then use that judgement to take something away from those of us who would like to.
How terrifyingly boring life would be without risk.
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Stirring Writing Topic for this week. And ybonesy, the drawing is so dynamic, alive, full of color. It’s good that you are going back through your sketchbooks and being inspired again. I think that’s what Natalie tries to get us to do with our writing practice notebooks, too. Go back, find a line, a few lines that are alive and write from there.
This Writing Topic really makes you think. There is so much involved in taking risks with images, writing, art, particularly around the erotic. I remember the Robert Mapplethorpe controversies of the past, because I was in Media Arts (photography major) at MCAD. His Porfolio X series was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and there were those who wanted to censor it.
I was in art school when he died and they had a show, the Perfect Moment exhibit in 1990 (right after his death), at the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati. They were unsuccessfully sued for displaying his images of bodies, primarily about gay male culture.
We discussed censorship, the media, art and images a lot that year. Art school is a safe environment in which to try out ideas that push the limits. The rest of the world is not so kind. It’s really a risk to make controversial art and to get it out there.
Mapplethorpe became kind of a pivotal point in the discussion of providing government arts funding for controversial projects. But his images would be tame by today’s standards. And the same people, who are so bent against funding art that pushes the limits, don’t do anything about all the raunchy porn available out there. That’s a place where they could really make a difference. So many double standards.
Basically what I learned back then is that I am not for any kind of censorship in anyone’s personal art or writing – even controversial art images. Even if I don’t agree with them, like them, or subscribe to the same beliefs, I would not advocate censorship from public viewing. That’s what makes a democracy different than other forms of government.
All that was before the Internet, which throws to light a whole new set of problems around imagery. If you think about it, the Internet is mostly unregulated right now. I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before all that changes.
Lots of things generated in my mind from this post! If I relate it to my writing, it reminds me to not play it safe – especially in my Writing Practices (which will be mostly unseen by most, except the few in my writing groups). This can sometimes be hard when you are writing memoir and digging up your family’s past. Taking emotional risks is sometimes where the energy is. But it’s not the easiest to do. You’ve got to be willing to open up a whole can of worms inside your own heart and mind.
Artists and writers not only divulge family secrets, they divulge the secrets of our society. This has been true as long as the written word has existed. Even someone who looks as tame as Charles Dickens was controversial in his time because he wrote about class differences (something people did not want to look at at that time). James Baldwin broke open barriers, so did Harper Lee. People have tried to ban books forever. But because of our Constitution – they survive.
This Topic is inspiring because it gets me to think about some things I have not thought about in a while. In Writing Practice, I can write anything. It does not mean I want to publish it. But I can take the energy of that and direct it into my writing.
It’s good to read Lopez’s words about the Controversy in the link in this post. She became a target and paid a high price. But in the end, it seems like she found her own voice around it and stayed true to herself. I like how she ends it: “I am not the first Chicana to reinterpret the image with a feminist perspective, and I’m positive I won’t be the last.”
I should have just put all this in my Writing Practice!
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I’m glad you wrote it here, QM. It’s a great expansion on the topic. There are so many examples of writers and artists who’ve taken huge risks in their writing. Mapplethorpe, for sure. Baldwin was writing about topics so taboo in this country at that time that he had to exile himself to write about them.
Excellent point, QM, about writers not only divulging family secrets but also societal ones. I thought about Natalie Goldberg and her book The Great Failure. What a risk she took, and yet, she had to. You’ve written about Steve Almond (LINK), who through his political essays has laid his ass on the line.
For me, I feel like it’s easy to get comfortable. Life is sweet, we have our family, our dogs, lovely place to live. If all I do is write about my sweet little life, I’m going to bore myself to tears. And I don’t mean necessarily blog writing (which is tempered for a reason) but writing, period.
To use a phrase from your comment, I’ve been playing it safe. Time to shake it up.
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H, isn’t that the truth? What a dull world we’d live in.
QM, as an add-on to our back-and-forth, it would be great to hear from anyone who might be so inclined to add to this thread: What writers and artists do you admire for the risks they’ve taken through their work? There is so much legacy here. Who has inspired you in this particular way?
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Yes, Natalie took a big risk writing The Great Failure, exposing secrets at both the family and societal level. She paid a pretty high price for it, too. But I have heard her say, she had to write it. It was where her writing took her.
That’s a good idea to have our readers add to the Comment thread – other writers and artists who have inspired them because they took risks with their work. I hope we hear from others about inspirational people in their lives. Those are our mentors!
I can relate to what you are saying about your life. I feel pretty comfortable right now, too. That has not always been the case. But at the moment, I feel pretty happy in my life. I am not driven to write from a place of pain – but there is pain in the past. And there is healing. In order to write about the healing, I have to go back and revisit some of the pain.
I remember that scaring me when it came up in the Writing Intensive last year. It was one of the things I talked about in our one-on-one’s with Natalie. I shed a few tears over it, too. But I took the risk, revisited some places that were hard for me. The rewards far outweighed the risks.
It’s time to keep going. I have rested long enough. I need to start opening up the next layer of risk in my writing. For me. For my work. And trust it will take me where I need to go.
You did mention one other thing – about what we publish on the blog. We have a specific mission and vision for this blog and try to stay true to it. It doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes take risks with images or the written word. But, we try not to be exclusive of others. Or create polarities that force a wedge between us and our readers.
I personally don’t think everything that is personal belongs in such a public venue as a blog. But that is just my personal taste. And I tend to be a pretty private person. Can I be a private person and still take risks? I think so. But I suppose there are some who might not agree.
It’s good to think about blogging in terms of what is right for public consumption and what is not. I guess it depends on the purpose of the blog. And the individuals who are publishing it. I suppose some people are out for controversy, publicity, and hits to their blog. But somehow, you can always tell when someone’s writing is authentic, and when it’s not.
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Privacy and the “personal blog” (as opposed to the professional one) is an interesting topic. I’ve thought about it as compared to privacy and memoir. The most compelling memoir, in my opinion, are those that go very deep into personal pain and experience, taking on and often crossing the hairy edge of privacy.
But blogging memoir (which, if you think about it, we tend to do in our personal posts) is different to me because of the medium. It’s not a book that someone purchases, reads, digests, puts away. It’s an always-out-there-accessible-to-every-single-person-who-has-internet-access-24/7 medium, on which I just can’t get into spilling all my guts.
But it has made me think more about risk-taking in writing and in different kinds of writing. I want to take risks on the blog, and so I have to figure out what’s the edge for this medium versus what’s the edge for a book. Of course, in writing practice, the edge never changes. That’s what’s so great about it.
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Well, seeing as it was you guys that actually gave me the impetus to start writing again, as well as to start blogging. I’d have to give you credit for a bit of inspiration there! (that may sounds slightly crawling but I do genuinely mean it – I’m loving blogging and this site had a lot to do with getting me started, so huge thanks due there!)
I’d say the whole idea of publishing writing practices is fairly daring, particularly on topics like taking risks – it’s surprising what your pen comes out with when you turn the censor off. And what you _want_ to write is mostly so much more interesting than what you feel you _should_ write! It’s odd, it feels more self-indulgent to write about what interests you, but it’s generally a lot more generous, IMHO.
QM, I like your distinction between writing which is being driven from a place of pain and writing about the pain. I think the first can get obsessive, but the second can be
really healing – hope you find it so when you decide to go there.
Anyway, great choice of topic – I can’t wait to see what people are willing to take the risk of sharing!
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ybonesy, really good points about the slowness and deliberateness of reading a book as opposed to reading a blog post or entry. Also, comments on blogs can be Googled and taken totally out of context to the original post. And a comment can take a post in a totally new direction, unintended by the writer of the post. It’s all good to think about in blogging versus writing books.
Also, memoir versus fiction. I, personally, think memoir and creative non-fiction writing is some of the bravest writing out there. Especially, as you mention, if people are willing to get into the meat of their history and cross a few lines (when the writing takes them there).
I think there are writers who choose fiction partly because of a fear of exposing themselves or hurting family members. That doesn’t mean they don’t also love fiction – but I have heard writers say they have written fiction, novels that are kind of autobiographical, in order not to expose the past, their family, or their own history.
But let’s face it, it’s the weird, stranger-than-life things that have happened to us that are the most compelling. And I think every memoir writer worth their weight in salt is going to have to explore the privacy issue and come to terms with it. You can write anything you want in writing practices, in your drafts – how much do you publish?
I’m listening to Anne Lamott talk about some of these very issues in a few tapes a friend loaned me, Word By Word (recorded over 10 years ago). In fiction, you can change all the details to hide who people are. She says they won’t recognize themselves (no one wants to see the negative in themselves).
But in memoir, hard choices need to be made. Lamott said she will never write about her mother while she (her mother) is still alive. This does not apply to all writers. But that’s one of her rules for writing her non-fiction, true-to-life writing. She said she wrote a chapter on her Aunt in one of her non-fiction books and her Aunt was furious. While Anne thought she was writing about how her Aunt inspired her.
One of the things I try to do is have the conversations with people around some of the hard topics that might come up (or are coming up) in the memoir writing. I’ve talked to my mom a couple of times already about the privacy issues because she has been a pivotal person in my life and often surfaces in my writing. They’ve been really good talks that have opened doors between us. She’s been totally supportive.
Hey, ybonesy, I have a question – did you think you were taking a risk publishing the images in this post? I think they are perfect in the context of this piece and the controversy around the artist you are talking about. But some might see them as taking a risk. I was curious about your thoughts on that.
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lirone, thank you for saying that. And for your thoughts on published versus private. I’ll look forward to a post if you decide to do one. I’m glad we have inspired you to write again!
And I’m thankful you got what I meant about writing driven from a place of pain, and writing about pain. I wasn’t sure if I was being clear. It’s true, the first can be self-indulgent (and perfect for private writing practices). I’ve done a lot of writing like that in my journals of the way past. But I personally sure don’t want all that to be published.
I want to read more about how going through pain has transformed someone or moved them to think differently about others, about their lives. I hope I am able to do that in my writing as well.
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Hey, QM, can you elaborate on the point lirone brings up about the distinction between writing which is being driven from a place of pain and writing about the pain. That seems like an important difference, and I’m not sure I understand fully what it is. So, if you get a chance in a comment to elaborate, I’d appreciate hearing what you have to say.
To your latest comment, I tend to plough ahead without necessarily letting anyone know that I’m writing about my family. My parents don’t do internet, and so recently my sister (who does read the blog) printed out something I wrote about Barack Obama and took it to my parents to read. Of course, in that post, I talked about a family event having to do with a cousin in my dad’s family who was a priest and died of AIDS. I’ve written about that story, fictionally (for all the reasons you bring up), but there I was writing about it — tangentially yet in a non-fiction post.
When I went to see my parents the weekend that my sister had taken them a print version of the post, I wondered what they might have to say about what I divulged. And you know what? They were simply proud of the writing.
Yet, there are topics that I refuse to write about. Never will, I don’t think. At least not for publication.
To your question about the image in this post — yes, I was nervous to post it, but not because it mixes sexual and religious imagery. It’s more because of the possible interpretation that the penis is something to be worshipped or venerated. With this drawing, I was saying the opposite. I was also dealing with my own identity and wanting to be more than someone who followed what I saw at that time to be societal expectation and rules around what is holy, what is greater than.
There’s another one that I didn’t finish that is a companion piece showing a naked woman lying down legs spread, a saint on a wall looking down at the woman. These were confessional pieces of a young woman — myself — a way of saying, “This is who I’m afraid I am.”
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p.s., my last comment crossed with yours. I do see what you mean. I still would love to hear more about your thoughts on this difference.
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Well, my WP on risk taking is here taking a risk I thought WordPress would give you an automatic pingback when I linked this post but it seems not. I wrote it before reading your comments above, so it’s interesting that it turned up some very similar issues about privacy and publicity!
QM – if I’ve understood what you’re saying about pain, the difference is about being overwhelmed by the pain versus experiencing it at a slight distance – a bit like the buddhist meditations that encourage you to be aware of the arising thoughts without 100% identifying yourself with them. The first forces you to write, the second allows you to write more reflectively, and if you choose, translate the personal into something that has a bit more universal relevance. Is that what you meant?
I like to think I’ve reached a similar stage in processing the pain of my now-no-longer-quite-so-recent breakup – to be able to write about what the pain has taught me rather than about the pain itself.
ybonesy – I liked the sound of the companion picture you mentioned. What struck me in reading your description was that, depending on how it was drawn, it could favour either sensuality or asceticism – it all depends on which you were viewing as more human/healthy/virtuous at the time of painting. I also really liked the energy of the picture on the post, though I think I understand it a bit better with your explanation.
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I am totally awestruck by both this commentary and the inspired and inspiring art. What power in both.
This is an issue I often struggle with. It is easy to sit back and write synthetically; authenticity comes with a price, often a high price. Not everyone can write strong memoir, nor does everyone want to, but I do admire writers who are willing to cross lines and allow their readers to connect on a deeper level, making meaning where perhaps meaning didn’t before exist.
But, admittedly, writing deeply is hard writing. When I had to make a decision about publishing on a painfully personal issue, I vacillated for weeks – did I want to publish ‘roses’ or did I want to publish the entire garden, manure and all. I finally decided no manure, no roses – I found it important was to publish both. No one wants only the manure, but they’re willing to muck through it, even embrace it, knowing that it is a part – and only a part – of the whole picture.
BTW, I do admire your blog. It has been a fascinating find for me. Thanks.
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Thanks, lirone. I read your post on Take A Risk — thanks for linking here. I absolutely love reading where our writing topics take different writers.
Your encouragement on the companion piece might push me to complete it. I don’t know. I do have a compulsion to finish the many unfinished pieces I have.
Thanks, barbara. Your garden analogy is a good one. I agree wholeheartedly about the challenges in choosing to publish manure and all. That’s always going to be there. But with writing practice, we can choose to never share it. So I guess what I’m thinking about doing is to go for it in my writing practice. Use it as a way of going deeper. I might tap into something that I’d be willing to publish. But maybe not. Maybe it will be too painful.
The irony is this — I might not publish on the blog what is I take a risk in writing.
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No irony, really. Publishing on a blog – it feels very personal. Amazing how we have transformed ourselves in this virtual world to make such strong connections on the faith of words.
But a book or magazine gives distance, at least when your name is an unknown. I write different material and share where I feel comfortable. I could never lay so much out on a blog – 24/7 and for anyone to google and take out of context? No. But I do feel there is a place for soul writing if your choice is to share.
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Yes, you’re right. I love this phrase “soul writing.”
It’s interesting how the blog can cultivate a sense that it’s just you and me and a few others having this conversation, sharing writing, establishing community. Yet, it is a false sense of security. So you do have to be sure that what you’re revealing is something you can live with revealing so widely and with little recourse to ever take back.
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lirone & ybonesy, I’m just getting back to this post to respond to the piece I said about pain. I think lirone hit on what I was getting at in her comment, too.
Sometimes deeply personal writing seems like confessional writing (a lot of journal writing is like that.) That kind of writing (including my own) seems to spring from deep inside pain – people are either *in* a great deal of pain, or carrying deep pain and anger (maybe even their parents’ pain) from the past. It can permeate writing, coloring emotions and opinions, until the pain is transformed in some way.
I’ll just speak from my own experience – writing from the middle of personal loss, pain, anger, is good for my soul. Very cathartic (and I have a lot of old journals to prove it!). But I think it can make for some boring writing. After a while, I get completely bored with the pain, sick of myself. I want to transform it, transmute it, do something with it other than write the same things over and over again. I don’t want to get stuck there.
I had to get over my resistance and fear of how much it was going to hurt to feel that pain, stop blaming others, and use all the tools in my arsenal to facilitate my own healing. Like lirone said in Comment 12 (quite elegantly), there is something wise about eventually stepping a bit outside, and looking at yourself through other people’s eyes. And to stop identifying with pain from the past. Hard though!
Healing for me happened over many years, and not without great effort, work, honesty, willingness to feel what is unpleasant, and help from others along the way (like mentors and my therapist!). I revisit places, still write about the pain to explain part of where I come from. But it’s what I’ve learned about the pain, the healing, transforming part, that is compelling to me.
This is just me, but when I read a good book, I want to see that the characters have been changed in some way by what they’ve been through. That’s what keeps me turning the page. It’s almost not the pain or the healing that matter most to me – it’s the process between.
Who knows if anything I just said, made any sense! But it is helping me get clearer. I’m glad you asked the question. This is all the analytical stuff. Hopefully, the details will shine in the book!
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barbara, it’s good to hear from other writers who struggle with some of these things. It’s not easy to talk about or explain. And sometimes as writers, we all make the choice not to make something public.
Most know that ybonesy and I publish this blog together. But maybe what people don’t know is that we never read each other’s posts before they go live. Each time one of us hits “Publish,” it’s a complete surprise to the other what will appear at the top of red Ravine. (This is not true for our Guests’ posts. We usually work jointly on those.)
It keeps the blog exciting for both of us, as we never know what we’ll be talking about the next day!
But in publishing the personal together, we have to have a lot of faith and trust in each other. And that includes supporting each other when we take risks in our posts. We also have meetings where we talk about how something we posted did or didn’t fly, if we’re on track with our mission and vision, all of those things. It really helps to keep things clear.
There are times though, when one of us will write something and not know if we should make it public. Most times these are personal Writing Practices that bare more than we might want to see online. Or might expose people close to us, and reveal too much that should remain private. We do run those by each other once in a while. I’m glad we have that opportunity.
Like ybonesy says, there can be a sense of security in blogging, that it’s just the two us, our loyal readers, our commenters. But it’s a false sense of security. You have to be willing to stand by what you choose to publish out on the Internet. There can be fallout.
Though blogging is very different from publishing a book, it’s teaching both of us about coming up against those lines as we each go about writing our own books. (I don’t know about you ybonesy, but I could make a long, long list of everything we’ve learned having this blog together!)
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The list would be long ; – ). Hey, in fact, we got a good start on something like it for our last couple of meetings.
Thanks for elaborating on the difference between the raw pain and transformed pain. I’m not sure if that’s a good way to describe it, but it’s an easy shorthand for me.
So much of my early writing — journaling — was all about the pain I was feeling. Just pain of being a confused, sometimes broken-hearted, lost 20-something woman. I’ll look through those journals to see if there’s anything there to inform my writing today, and I don’t see anything. Even insofar as helping jog my memory on details — it’s not there. That writing is almost completely lacking in details, in fact. It’s all emotion, and why this and why that, questions and feelings. But no details in the feelings, no “I’m sitting on my green sofa wondering…” A friend once wrote about throwing out her old journals and notebooks. I’m not sure why I hang on to mine.
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Yeah, I recently went through a box of my journals. It was the same thing – recovering from broken hearts, trying to make sense out of things that make no sense when you are 20! Mostly trying to sort out emotions.
I’ll tell you, I didn’t find much detail there either. But what I did find was passion. And I had also written some about the past, some hard things I had gone through, lots about relationships. I keep my old journals because I don’t want to forget that passion and quest to understand.
I also found some old sketches and photographs I had pasted into them. They will probably not be the meat of a memoir – but I feel they will inform it in ways I don’t know yet (until I can lay everything out in front of me).
I’m hanging on to mine a while longer!
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This is an awesome writing topic. I will try to do it myself tomorrow. I’m in a bit of a hurry this evening, so I haven’t read all of the comments in details… but to follow a bit on the theme, I personally find writing about something that is likely to garner lasting judgment or labelling more difficult that choosing to write about something deeply personal. The idea that someone will label me, and I’ll find it difficult to break out again, is daunting… and it seems to happen all the time. I’ll talk about sexuality, and there I am, labelled as someone who thinks about nothing but sex. I’ll write about being unhappy one day, and suddenly I’m depressed. To me, that’s the biggest risk about writing a personal journal type of blog.
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Yes, I see what you mean. I, too, am especially resistent to being placed into a box. I’m not sure why I react so strongly when people label me or analyze me, but I always have.
I love one of the agreements from The Four Agreements — Don’t make assumptions. It’s good to keep that in mind when reading a writer’s words. Perhaps those thoughts, that melancholy or excitement are a reflection of today, yesterday, 20 years ago. Who knows?
I write creative non-fiction. QM, too. So, we’re not generally writing about stuff that isn’t true. But not so with other writers. In fact, in our online writing group, we don’t assume whatever we’re reading is truth or fiction. It just is what it is.
But blogging does invite, in some ways, writing about wherever it is one’s head is at the moment. And the problem with that is, one’s head tends to be one place one moment, another place another moment.
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[…] red Ravine has prompts for free writes on their blog from time to time, and I thought I’d try this one, and see what came out. After I read it, I thought I’d delete it, or bury it in the blog, but […]
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[…] -related to post, WRITING TOPIC – TAKE A RISK […]
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yb, you lived in Spain? I didn’t know that. Of course, there’s a million things about you I don’t know. But this is one fact I find tremendously cool. If you’re going to drink wine, draw, and write, and even get depressed, it might as well be in Spain.
Your drawing is wild! You did take a risk with it. The closest I’ve ever gotten to penis worship is sticking a garden hose in my bathing suit, pretending to pee standing up.
This is a writing practice I must do. I just wrote a poem, and I know for sure after reading this post that I hid away from the real poem, which was cynical and judgemental, so I was afraid to write it. Better get to it, huh? You just never know what will come out when you’re afraid.
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Yes, Christine. I know you lived there, too. I’d love to know more about your experience. Did you live in Madrid? I was in Granada. I lived there in 1986-87. Went back 12 years later on a trip with my father and sisters. I was pregnant with Em; she’s 8-going-on-9, so it’s time to go back again.
Really great insight about having written the poem and then realizing you left out what you really wanted to say. Cynicism and judgment are emotions/tones I often try to take out of my writing, YET they are just as much a part of my emotional/tonal vocabulary as optimism/openness. It’s all us. Taking a risk is about allowing ourselves to be all of ourselves, not just a politically correct and/or optimistic and/or super-human version of ourselves.
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[…] -related to post, WRITING TOPIC – TAKE A RISK […]
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[…] passage is a 10-minute free-write I just completed, based on the writing topic presented on red Ravine. Read ybonsey’s free-write […]
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[…] do you walk the talk? Is it by going to writing retreats, taking risks with your art or writing, writing in a group, submitting your work? Or is it as simple as showing up to the page, on the […]
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[…] is another 15minute writing practice on the theme “Taking a risk” from Red Ravine. The first one I did was here – but I felt I wanted to write about a topic that actually felt risky […]
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[…] a 15 minute writing practice on a subject suggested by Red Ravine – this week’s topic being taking risks in writing – an interesting choice of subject! I’ve done a little minor editing – mostly clarifying some […]
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