Coaching the Creative Process

  Creating art in any form requires showing up regularly at the dance floor, the easel, the musical instrument, the page. If we wait until inspiration strikes or an enlightening visit from our Muse, we’ll never finish our creative work.

Sometimes, we need friends and coaches to make sure that this happens.

Enter Alexa Mergen.

(photo by shamash, daily schedule by Alexa Mergen)

To help me reach my physical exercise or artistic goals, I’ve usually needed the structure of a class, a hired trainer, or the accountability of a friend.

What happens when you need a coach to help you complete a written piece for publication? Enter Alexa Mergen, creative coach, who is helping one of my friends in this Country Somewhere in Asia finish her novel. May 10-17 is in-house bootcamp where this gentle-but-tough coach will help keep her client focused on her goals via inspiration and colorful crayons to remind her of her commitment to write.

Creating art in any form requires showing up at the dance floor, the easel, the musical instrument and the page. If we wait until inspiration strikes or an enlightening visit from our Muse, we’ll never finish our creative work. As Nathalie Goldberg writes in "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within" (a great creative tool for all writers, for sure, and one that I use in my own writing classes), “show up at the page.”

Sometimes, we need friends and coaches to make sure that this happens.

Are there any of you out there who have benefited from a coach of any sort? I'd love to hear your stories.

Comments

[Legend of Y]

Have you read 'The Artists' Way' by Julia Cameron? I started reading it last week and it's just great. I'm hoping it pushes me to be more regular with my writing... ever since I left our group in Y, I've been sadly negligent!

[shamash]

Hi, Legend of Y.! You'd be interested to know that Alexa is coaching our very own Kayak Queen from our writing group. :-) I had lunch with them this week, which is where I snapped this photo.

I have read "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron at least three times over the past decade and have a copy here in "This City Somewhere in Asia."

However, you should be careful in doing the exercises. Once, after I did the 12 week course in "Creative Recovery", I quit my 10-year career and took off for a trip across America which landed me in Taos, NM (where I met Julia Cameron, who lives there!) and I've never been the same since! The next time I re-read it, I moved half way around the world to This Country Somewhere in Asia. So, you might prepare for a change, my friend!

I started re-reading the book again a few weeks ago, too, and I'm afraid of what might result!!!

[A bit if trivia: Did you know that Julia was once married to Martin (aka "Marti")Scorsese? A few years ago I had tea with their daughter, Domenica, who graduated from the public school at which I taught.]

Small world, yes???

[datta]

Hey, I've been thinking of buying that book for a long time, maybe I will now. Elaine's group has been grand though and my new son, Forrest, gets to come.
It's hard to imagine Julia C. and Martin S. together.

[Jeff Hess]

Shalom Shamash,

When I was writing my first (completed, but yet unpublished novel) I would read an essay each morning from Lawrence Block's two great books: Spider, Spin Me A Web and Telling Lies For Fun And Profit.

More than even my muse Calliope, Block keeps me going.

B'shalom,

Jeff

[shamash]

Datta- so glad to hear that the writing group is still going! And, I can't wait to meet little Forrest this summer!

Jeff- I will have to check out Block's books!