This semester, I have designed a course examining creativity: what it is and how to develop it. Creativity and the artistic process are hard to define and difficult to study. However, within the context of this class, I will examine how other artists have nurtured their creative spirit and developed their artistic path. I hope to glean inspiration from them and implement some of their ideas and practices into my own writing routine. I will use this blog to report my experiences and maybe share a few practices or ideas that are helpful to other writers.

I have worked on a novel since 2005, and this story and its characters have always felt precious to me. I have also harbored an irrational belief that this is all I’ve got within me, that I have this one novel, this one story, and nothing more. Working on the MA in creative writing has shown me that there other ideas lurking within and that it has been, in many cases, my own fear and rigidity inhibiting me from taking creative risks and writing new stories. I am hoping to lose—or at least mitigate—this fear of not having something else to write about.

I’m excited to see what this semester brings and in what direction my writing journey will take.