Here are more links for using the Tarot for writing:
Tarot Spread to create characters
Tarot Exercise
Tarot By Arwen
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tarot - Flash Fiction Formula
Entry Transplanted from Writing Zazen
I’ve mentioned that I found Mark McElroy’s pdf Tarot for Creative Writers and I’ve been playing with writing stories using the Tarot. What I’ve come to realize is that it’s become so much fun for me that I’ve been rushing home from work to write a new story.
Back in the day, I used to rush home every single day from work anticipating sitting at the table in the living room (when I still lived with room mates) and pulling out my steno and writing like a fiend. I’ve moved so far away from that person for many years. It often felt like more of a fight to get organized and then the television somehow seeped into my time and I was vegging instead of creating. I’m happy to say that I’ve been keeping the television turned off and I’ve been playing with my writing.
That’s really the key for me, there has to be a certain amount of play. It’s that beginner’s mind and attitude when you know that you don’t know what you are doing and you believe that with daily practice things will improve.
I’ve been doing the Tarot short stories and I’ve been doing the poems where I pick five words out of a box and try to write a piece using all of those five words. Play! It’s great to have that focus to mold and sculpt the serious writing work like my novel but there still needs to be some play for me otherwise I start to avoid all the work I feel I need to do.
Here is the Flash Fiction Formula from Mark McElroy’s PDF Tarot for Creative Writers:
Card 1 - Who/When
Card 2 - What/Theme
Card 3 - Want/Need
Card 4 - Turning Point
Card 5 - End-Hint
Card 6 - Midpoint
Card 7 - Dark Hour
Card 8 - Learn Lesson
Card 9 - Rising Action
Card 10 - Climax
Card 11 - Reflection
I use this to get me to write and have fun writing. I have no plans on rereading the stories any time soon. Maybe in a year or so. I’ve got more than enough other writings to revise. This is purely for the fun of writing. And Thank Mark McElroy for giving me that again.
Hmm and I still allow myself the really good televison shows like Heroes… two more episodes.
Mark McElroy’s sites … Tarot Tools
Made by Mark
And google Mark McElroy Tarot for Creative Writers to find his PDF book!
EY
I’ve mentioned that I found Mark McElroy’s pdf Tarot for Creative Writers and I’ve been playing with writing stories using the Tarot. What I’ve come to realize is that it’s become so much fun for me that I’ve been rushing home from work to write a new story.
Back in the day, I used to rush home every single day from work anticipating sitting at the table in the living room (when I still lived with room mates) and pulling out my steno and writing like a fiend. I’ve moved so far away from that person for many years. It often felt like more of a fight to get organized and then the television somehow seeped into my time and I was vegging instead of creating. I’m happy to say that I’ve been keeping the television turned off and I’ve been playing with my writing.
That’s really the key for me, there has to be a certain amount of play. It’s that beginner’s mind and attitude when you know that you don’t know what you are doing and you believe that with daily practice things will improve.
I’ve been doing the Tarot short stories and I’ve been doing the poems where I pick five words out of a box and try to write a piece using all of those five words. Play! It’s great to have that focus to mold and sculpt the serious writing work like my novel but there still needs to be some play for me otherwise I start to avoid all the work I feel I need to do.
Here is the Flash Fiction Formula from Mark McElroy’s PDF Tarot for Creative Writers:
Card 1 - Who/When
Card 2 - What/Theme
Card 3 - Want/Need
Card 4 - Turning Point
Card 5 - End-Hint
Card 6 - Midpoint
Card 7 - Dark Hour
Card 8 - Learn Lesson
Card 9 - Rising Action
Card 10 - Climax
Card 11 - Reflection
I use this to get me to write and have fun writing. I have no plans on rereading the stories any time soon. Maybe in a year or so. I’ve got more than enough other writings to revise. This is purely for the fun of writing. And Thank Mark McElroy for giving me that again.
Hmm and I still allow myself the really good televison shows like Heroes… two more episodes.
Mark McElroy’s sites … Tarot Tools
Made by Mark
And google Mark McElroy Tarot for Creative Writers to find his PDF book!
EY
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Pain and Possibility
Saturday 10:09am 12July08
I've been working with Gabrielle Rico's book, 'Pain and Possibility.' I have had the book for ages and started it before but couldn't remember how to do the word sculptures nor the spirals. I remembered that I liked doing them though. Plus she covers clustering as she does in, 'Writing the Natural Way.'
What I like about doing the word sculptures is that it brings back the fun and play of writing for me. I draw and fill out the word sculpture and write little pieces on the blank space of the page. It reminds me of when I was ten years old and decided that I was going to write instead of drawing since my brother was such a gifted artist and I didn't want my drawings to have to compete with his. When I was ten, I'd write a word or a topic and I would play at word associations and rhymes to create a piece. It was how my beginning writer's mind tackled doing it. That feeling as I was playing and once I'd completed something out of nothing was great because it came out of me like an emotion. It's good to be reminded of that.
And as I think of the term, pain and possibility, and I think of my ten year old self, I remember that it was a big time for me. I was giving up a passion I loved, drawing. Our family life was changing drastically with the addition of my mother's new boyfriend (who was to become my step dad) and his two daughters. I was at a new school and knew that I would change to another new school once we moved in with mom's boyfriend. We were going to leave the one apartment where my brother and I had our own bedrooms and we had neighbourhood friends that called on us to come out and play. There was always something new and dramatic that my brother and I had to adapt to without complaint. It was often a trying time that my mother reframed as an adventure and we wore the adventurers invisible clothes and I tried not to focus on the pain that came with all of our adventures.
Pain and Possibility (Interview with Gabrielle Rico)
EY
I've been working with Gabrielle Rico's book, 'Pain and Possibility.' I have had the book for ages and started it before but couldn't remember how to do the word sculptures nor the spirals. I remembered that I liked doing them though. Plus she covers clustering as she does in, 'Writing the Natural Way.'
What I like about doing the word sculptures is that it brings back the fun and play of writing for me. I draw and fill out the word sculpture and write little pieces on the blank space of the page. It reminds me of when I was ten years old and decided that I was going to write instead of drawing since my brother was such a gifted artist and I didn't want my drawings to have to compete with his. When I was ten, I'd write a word or a topic and I would play at word associations and rhymes to create a piece. It was how my beginning writer's mind tackled doing it. That feeling as I was playing and once I'd completed something out of nothing was great because it came out of me like an emotion. It's good to be reminded of that.
And as I think of the term, pain and possibility, and I think of my ten year old self, I remember that it was a big time for me. I was giving up a passion I loved, drawing. Our family life was changing drastically with the addition of my mother's new boyfriend (who was to become my step dad) and his two daughters. I was at a new school and knew that I would change to another new school once we moved in with mom's boyfriend. We were going to leave the one apartment where my brother and I had our own bedrooms and we had neighbourhood friends that called on us to come out and play. There was always something new and dramatic that my brother and I had to adapt to without complaint. It was often a trying time that my mother reframed as an adventure and we wore the adventurers invisible clothes and I tried not to focus on the pain that came with all of our adventures.
Pain and Possibility (Interview with Gabrielle Rico)
EY
Distractions
Saturday 8:52am 12July08
I've been busy with a little fun and a lotta distractions this past week. The Fringe Festival is on and again this year I bought the Buddy Pass which gets me into 14 shows. I've got seven more shows to see before the weekend is done. The Tour de France started last Saturday and has two more weeks to go. And as always there's 'So You Think You Can Dance' showing with a lot more really great black male dancers. Oh my Goodness, Debbie Allen's protege Will is something beautiful in looks and in dance. Totally brilliant. You can love him when he gets all proper in traditional dance and when he gets down n' dirty with hip hop. This week's lyrical performance where he was half naked... makes a woman shake her head with joy! Twitch made it through to the top 10, he didn't make it past Vegas last year because they put Hok through. I loved Hok. Twitch has been showing up every week, working his ass off. And there is sweet Joshua with that sweet smile. They've had great choreographers this year and even added a dynamic Bollywood routine. This may actually be the best season ever.
So once all those distractions end we move into the Olympics and I'm always happy when it's an Olympic year. Crying over people winning and whatnot! Yeah I'm a weird bird, I admit it. I spend more time crying during the Olympics it's crazy. One year one of my girlfriends would call me after the results of a competition to see if I was crying yet. I cry during the opening ceremonies, I cry during the closing ceremonies. I said it here, I cry during the Olympics!
I pulled out Gabrielle Rico's (of Writing the Natural Way fame) book, Pain and Possibility, out to read in the Fringe line ups and have been doing the word sculptures, spirals and of course what she's known for, clustering. It's a nice quick n' dirty way to get a little writing done. It's always amazing what comes up that is so unexpected.
I haven't been doing the amount of writing I want to but I'm still managing to fit some in with all my distractions. I have been writing my thousand words a day each night during the replay of the Tour de France. But as I think about that more I feel that I'm going to put less of a committed effort into blogging and more commitment into my novel writing. Well the blogging commitment fell by the wayside when I had the pain of last year anyway. Plus my writing blogs Writing2Live and Writing Zazen keep crashing my mac, so I haven't blogged on them in ages and ages. And this writing blog is a little forlorn...
I'll still be here of course and if you're subscribed through Feedblitz, then you'll always know when I have something new to say. But for now, I think it's time to move into an all consuming committment to writing my novels. I had a discussion with a work acquaintance on Thursday. Whenever he comes into the office he asks me what I'm eating. He is also into eating a lot of fruit and drinking fresh juices and the like. He was telling me about one of his coworkers who apparently is the voice of knowledge on anything to do with healthy eating. My acquaintance said, "I don't know how he finds the time to know all this stuff. He's got a wife and kids, he's an Engineer and he's smart!" We laughed about it and sequed into a discussion about finding time. I said that almost everyday of my life I wonder how women with kids get anything done. "If it were me," I said, "I'd be telling my 3 year old, 'cook your own dinner'." ha ha!
As an aside, my work acquaintance called me a geek! What the heck? We were talking about juicers and I admitted to having more than one, a magic bullit (which I killed) and a blender and he said in an amused voice, "You're such a geek." The nerve of some people's brats, as my mother used to say. I was so affected by that comment that I wrote a vignette about it in my notebook. I've never been 'such a geek' in all my life. ha ha! He stockpiles organic soap and I'm a geek?
But seriously, I'm really starting to see that I have to narrow my focus. I'm passionate about a lot of things and I can spin around jumping from one passion to the next in my special Pisces way, two fish swimming in the opposite direction at the same time. Hello!
The other inspiration that made me think about time, other than Geek Boy's comment ( *snicker* ) came from CJ Darlington's series Advice for Novelist’s . Sibella Giorello's advice is about sacrificing. Let's see where this gets me!
EY
I've been busy with a little fun and a lotta distractions this past week. The Fringe Festival is on and again this year I bought the Buddy Pass which gets me into 14 shows. I've got seven more shows to see before the weekend is done. The Tour de France started last Saturday and has two more weeks to go. And as always there's 'So You Think You Can Dance' showing with a lot more really great black male dancers. Oh my Goodness, Debbie Allen's protege Will is something beautiful in looks and in dance. Totally brilliant. You can love him when he gets all proper in traditional dance and when he gets down n' dirty with hip hop. This week's lyrical performance where he was half naked... makes a woman shake her head with joy! Twitch made it through to the top 10, he didn't make it past Vegas last year because they put Hok through. I loved Hok. Twitch has been showing up every week, working his ass off. And there is sweet Joshua with that sweet smile. They've had great choreographers this year and even added a dynamic Bollywood routine. This may actually be the best season ever.
So once all those distractions end we move into the Olympics and I'm always happy when it's an Olympic year. Crying over people winning and whatnot! Yeah I'm a weird bird, I admit it. I spend more time crying during the Olympics it's crazy. One year one of my girlfriends would call me after the results of a competition to see if I was crying yet. I cry during the opening ceremonies, I cry during the closing ceremonies. I said it here, I cry during the Olympics!
I pulled out Gabrielle Rico's (of Writing the Natural Way fame) book, Pain and Possibility, out to read in the Fringe line ups and have been doing the word sculptures, spirals and of course what she's known for, clustering. It's a nice quick n' dirty way to get a little writing done. It's always amazing what comes up that is so unexpected.
I haven't been doing the amount of writing I want to but I'm still managing to fit some in with all my distractions. I have been writing my thousand words a day each night during the replay of the Tour de France. But as I think about that more I feel that I'm going to put less of a committed effort into blogging and more commitment into my novel writing. Well the blogging commitment fell by the wayside when I had the pain of last year anyway. Plus my writing blogs Writing2Live and Writing Zazen keep crashing my mac, so I haven't blogged on them in ages and ages. And this writing blog is a little forlorn...
I'll still be here of course and if you're subscribed through Feedblitz, then you'll always know when I have something new to say. But for now, I think it's time to move into an all consuming committment to writing my novels. I had a discussion with a work acquaintance on Thursday. Whenever he comes into the office he asks me what I'm eating. He is also into eating a lot of fruit and drinking fresh juices and the like. He was telling me about one of his coworkers who apparently is the voice of knowledge on anything to do with healthy eating. My acquaintance said, "I don't know how he finds the time to know all this stuff. He's got a wife and kids, he's an Engineer and he's smart!" We laughed about it and sequed into a discussion about finding time. I said that almost everyday of my life I wonder how women with kids get anything done. "If it were me," I said, "I'd be telling my 3 year old, 'cook your own dinner'." ha ha!
As an aside, my work acquaintance called me a geek! What the heck? We were talking about juicers and I admitted to having more than one, a magic bullit (which I killed) and a blender and he said in an amused voice, "You're such a geek." The nerve of some people's brats, as my mother used to say. I was so affected by that comment that I wrote a vignette about it in my notebook. I've never been 'such a geek' in all my life. ha ha! He stockpiles organic soap and I'm a geek?
But seriously, I'm really starting to see that I have to narrow my focus. I'm passionate about a lot of things and I can spin around jumping from one passion to the next in my special Pisces way, two fish swimming in the opposite direction at the same time. Hello!
The other inspiration that made me think about time, other than Geek Boy's comment ( *snicker* ) came from CJ Darlington's series Advice for Novelist’s . Sibella Giorello's advice is about sacrificing. Let's see where this gets me!
EY
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Quiet Times and Personal Meaning
entry from The EY Page
Tuesday 1July08 9:59am
Today’s podcast (Episode 4) from Dr. Eric Maisel is on Personal Meaning
His podcast is Purpose-Centred Life - A Plan for Authentic Living. His podcasts and others can be found at Personal Life Media
I've been kind of quiet. I seem to be in a big processing mode, processing all the energies and messages flying my way. It's all good. The messages make me think about commitment level and mine in particular.
It's funny how when I look, so many messages can come my way. This morning I watched my kitten Gatsby eyeing my baby girl Zelda. When Zelda gets worn out from Gatsby and all his energy and bites, she goes as high in the apartment as possible because little guy Gatsby can't jump all that well. He's still a little guy at 4 months old and having started his life almost dying twice. He still has breathing issues, he sounds like an asthmatic at times. But that doesn't really stop him.
Anyway, Zelda gets on top of my stacked storage bins that are stacked three high. It's taller than my shelving unit in my kitchen. It's the place she calls peace. It's one of the three places that he can't get at. "Ha ha," she waves down at him, "you can't get me!"
This morning I'm lying in bed taking my time with waking fully, enjoying the moment. It is a holiday after all. I watch Gatsby run in and out of the kitchen just pissed that he can't get at Zelda. He stops at the bins and stares them down. He runs back into the main room, turns and runs at the bins. His little paws clip into the lid of the first bin and he tries to scale up to the second lid. He doesn't quite make it and plops off. Doesn't the little shit keep trying? Doesn't he scale up to the third bin with his little feet clawing the third lid and I swear he was laughing at Zelda and screaming HI! HI!. ha ha.
He flings himself on to the kitchen table and jumps up to the top bin to harrass poor Miss Zelda.
My immediate thought was, "talk about using your individual way to succeed."
Zelda ran off feeling bitter, no doubt, and Gatsby chased after her. When she ditched him by jumping up into the bathroom window he turned on his heels and ran back into the kitchen. By this time I was in there prepping my fruits and smoothies and stuff. I turned to watch him scale all the bins, pull himself on top and lie down! I swear watching little dude is a daily lesson on perseverance. He rocks!
Eric Maisel's podcast on Personal Meaning didn't leave me with many notes. I wrote stuff like:
"You get to decide what meaning is in your Life."
"Make life mean exactly what you want it to mean."
"What does life mean? Whatever I decide it to mean."
"Commit, 'I intend to matter in my own meaningful way'"
Good notes but nothing to blog about. But it's funny that since the last couple of days of listening to that podcast, examples of meaning have been showing up. Like Gatsby.
And I caught a couple shows on Global this morning. You gotta love holiday mornings when the programmers don't know what to put on television and they end up putting on some stellar stuff, sometimes. I caught two episodes of a show about second chances in life. And it's Canadian! One episode was about a woman who has won a woman of distinction award, Kim Beauregard (I think). She was overweight, stagnant in her life, unhappily married. She found her individual way to success. She's run marathons then after an injury started body building, won strongest woman award, became a nurse, is a personal trainer/coach, dog walker. She went from no where to now here, as Wayne Dyer likes to say.
She made a brilliant comment, "Even when you're at the back of the pack, you're still a runner."
Ah Personal Meaning at it's finest.
The other episode was about a woman who was really successful selling cars, Ferrari's, Maserati's and the like, which she loved. She was one of the crew members for her husband who races cars. She was living a pretty good existence. She got back into painting while on maternity leave and realized that her soul had been crying out for it. She worked out a new schedule at work to enable her to have Fridays off to paint and by fluke showed a guy her paintings, who subsequently got on the phone and was able to bring her paintings to a showing in Chicago and sold them all!
In the episode she discusses the struggle of giving up a comfortable job with benefits to the uneasyness of being a painter.
The scary dream of the artist's life rebounds in my head on a daily basis. How do I matter in my own meaningful way?
EY
Tuesday 1July08 9:59am
Today’s podcast (Episode 4) from Dr. Eric Maisel is on Personal Meaning
His podcast is Purpose-Centred Life - A Plan for Authentic Living. His podcasts and others can be found at Personal Life Media
I've been kind of quiet. I seem to be in a big processing mode, processing all the energies and messages flying my way. It's all good. The messages make me think about commitment level and mine in particular.
It's funny how when I look, so many messages can come my way. This morning I watched my kitten Gatsby eyeing my baby girl Zelda. When Zelda gets worn out from Gatsby and all his energy and bites, she goes as high in the apartment as possible because little guy Gatsby can't jump all that well. He's still a little guy at 4 months old and having started his life almost dying twice. He still has breathing issues, he sounds like an asthmatic at times. But that doesn't really stop him.
Anyway, Zelda gets on top of my stacked storage bins that are stacked three high. It's taller than my shelving unit in my kitchen. It's the place she calls peace. It's one of the three places that he can't get at. "Ha ha," she waves down at him, "you can't get me!"
This morning I'm lying in bed taking my time with waking fully, enjoying the moment. It is a holiday after all. I watch Gatsby run in and out of the kitchen just pissed that he can't get at Zelda. He stops at the bins and stares them down. He runs back into the main room, turns and runs at the bins. His little paws clip into the lid of the first bin and he tries to scale up to the second lid. He doesn't quite make it and plops off. Doesn't the little shit keep trying? Doesn't he scale up to the third bin with his little feet clawing the third lid and I swear he was laughing at Zelda and screaming HI! HI!. ha ha.
He flings himself on to the kitchen table and jumps up to the top bin to harrass poor Miss Zelda.
My immediate thought was, "talk about using your individual way to succeed."
Zelda ran off feeling bitter, no doubt, and Gatsby chased after her. When she ditched him by jumping up into the bathroom window he turned on his heels and ran back into the kitchen. By this time I was in there prepping my fruits and smoothies and stuff. I turned to watch him scale all the bins, pull himself on top and lie down! I swear watching little dude is a daily lesson on perseverance. He rocks!
Eric Maisel's podcast on Personal Meaning didn't leave me with many notes. I wrote stuff like:
"You get to decide what meaning is in your Life."
"Make life mean exactly what you want it to mean."
"What does life mean? Whatever I decide it to mean."
"Commit, 'I intend to matter in my own meaningful way'"
Good notes but nothing to blog about. But it's funny that since the last couple of days of listening to that podcast, examples of meaning have been showing up. Like Gatsby.
And I caught a couple shows on Global this morning. You gotta love holiday mornings when the programmers don't know what to put on television and they end up putting on some stellar stuff, sometimes. I caught two episodes of a show about second chances in life. And it's Canadian! One episode was about a woman who has won a woman of distinction award, Kim Beauregard (I think). She was overweight, stagnant in her life, unhappily married. She found her individual way to success. She's run marathons then after an injury started body building, won strongest woman award, became a nurse, is a personal trainer/coach, dog walker. She went from no where to now here, as Wayne Dyer likes to say.
She made a brilliant comment, "Even when you're at the back of the pack, you're still a runner."
Ah Personal Meaning at it's finest.
The other episode was about a woman who was really successful selling cars, Ferrari's, Maserati's and the like, which she loved. She was one of the crew members for her husband who races cars. She was living a pretty good existence. She got back into painting while on maternity leave and realized that her soul had been crying out for it. She worked out a new schedule at work to enable her to have Fridays off to paint and by fluke showed a guy her paintings, who subsequently got on the phone and was able to bring her paintings to a showing in Chicago and sold them all!
In the episode she discusses the struggle of giving up a comfortable job with benefits to the uneasyness of being a painter.
The scary dream of the artist's life rebounds in my head on a daily basis. How do I matter in my own meaningful way?
EY
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