Today, we are excited to feature Clennell Anthony, a paranormal romance and fantasy author. She is a founding member of the Writers’ Mastermind and has been the host of our Wednesday and Saturday write-ins.
Dark Brilliance is a book of short stories. Each story has its moment that shines, though there is a darkness that persists, light shines through the flame of somber sadness, tortured occurrences, and hope threads through that lifts the darkness and turns it to brilliance. The stories are grouped by the moment captured by the author. For example, “Endurance” focuses on the life of a home: the wars that were fought around it, the neglect it withstood, and how it waits for someone to come along and rebuild its grandeur. Dark Brilliance contains stories that exhibit moments of love, life, sensuality, power, hope, and fulfillment. Come join in the journey this book of short stories will take you on.
This year, we did The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron in the Writers’ Mastermind.
In the fourth part of the process, we worked on recovering our sense of integrity. Integrity means living according to your truth. Today, we talk about making changes in our lives that align with our innermost beliefs.
In this section, Julia Cameron goes into depth about the importance of morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of stream of consciousness writing before doing anything else. In them, we articulate feelings we weren’t aware we had. Anyone who’s journaled knows this.
Even in writing fiction, a writer discovers things about themselves they never knew. Desires, fantasies, dreams, rants, and even past trauma can bubble up through our characters.
It’s often when hard truths come to light that we avoid writing. We don’t want to be faced with the fact that we need to make hard changes.
Once we discover what we are not really “okay” about certain aspects of our lives, it’s up to us to then change them.
We must throw away the old relationships, possessions, ideas, and habits that are keeping us stuck.
Once you free yourself, you free your creativity.
You make room for the things that make you excited to be alive.
The end of the year is the perfect time to think about the changes we need to make.
What’s holding you back from being your freest, most creative self?
We are pleased to invite all fiction authors (published or unpublished) to our annual Author Year End Review for 2022.
Now that we’re about to close out 2022, it’s important to process all that happened (or didn’t happen) for us as writers this year.
We need to find out what worked and what didn’t, so that we can double down on the things that brought us results and eliminate whatever is draining our time, energy, and creativity.
Author Year-End Review
What worked for you? What didn’t?
What reasons do you have to celebrate?
What helped or hindered your creativity?
How close were you to your writing, publishing, and sales goals?
What daily habits and mindsets are holding you back?
If you want to make 2023 your best year ever as a writer, then the Author’s Year-End Review will help you 100%.
Growth is uncomfortable. It’s messy. It hurts. Sometimes it feels like everything is falling apart. We are losing grip on who we are. The ground is caving beneath us.
This is a good sign. Nothing is worse for creativity than being stagnant.
Growing pains mean that you are changing. Transformation means inspiration.
Be patient with yourself. Don’t try to run away.
Wait to see what happens and who you will become through your experience.
May the muses be with you,
—Christa
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There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
MARTHA GRAHAM
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