Block Head

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Work | 6 Comments

Christie Healey has an “arid condition” and she’s trying all sorts of ways to remedy the situation.

When I first started to write a lot of people recommended Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones. It’s a marvelous entry into writing that helps you free the writer within. Of late I think I have not only freed the writer within, but she wandered off and didn’t leave a note. The eternally effervescent Connie Stetson has described my arid condition as “blog clog.”

Now people say that writing is not easy and if it were everyone would be doing it. Well, as far as I can tell, everyone is doing it. Blogs abound, they spill out every time I check my email. People are writing about everything all the time, putting together interesting, funny and provocative collections of words. And I sit here struggling to find something to say. I set off down a story path and within a matter of 70 words or so, I become aware of an increasing pressure on my forehead. What is it? It’s the literary version of a dead end, up against a stonewall of the imagination, no way out, no thread to pick up, the string has run out. I go back to the start to see if I can find another path. Read more

Stepping Into the Light

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Courage, Group Posts | 1 Comment

“Stepping into the light” can mean so many things: spiritual illumination, truth telling, healing, even death. For me it means engaging in a magical process whereby you arrange your thoughts and feelings into that marvelous form called the story. Whether written down or spoken, we humans are all about our stories. The storyteller is an ancient character, an archetype in our psyches. For thousands of years storytellers have gathered, arranged and passed on our histories, nightmares, moral dilemmas and realities wrapped up in stories that find their familiars in the myths and legends of many cultures. Read more