The Artist’s Date
Those of you who have read this column since it started will remember the Morning Pages. I hope you’ve found them useful and that you’re still writing them. Julia Cameron created the concept of the Morning Pages and wrote about them in her book, The Artist’s Way. In the same book she developed the idea of the Artist’s Date. An Artist’s Date is a period of two hours every week which you devote to stimulating your creativity by going somewhere.

The choice of venue is up to you, but try to think laterally and go to a place you’ve always wanted to go or somewhere you really love. If I’m in the UK, one of my favourite places is the Sage Music Centre in Gateshead. It’s a stunning building, high, curved, light and airy – absolutely beautiful. It never fails to lift my spirits and get me in the mood for writing.

Here in Veliko Turnovo, despite the majestic Tsarevets and the choice of historic buildings, I like to go to the Cafe Italia, order a double espresso, gaze out onto the park and start to write.

Seize the day, choose your place, take a notebook and immerse yourself in the experience. I bet you’ll have lots to write about when you return home.

A place to write
Last year The Times ran a series of articles in which authors described the places where they wrote. Some people liked to write facing a blank wall to avoid distraction, others couldn’t bear that and needed to face a window to be stimulated by nature or be connected to the outside world. When writer Joanna Briscoe, author of Sleep With Me, was a young girl she had fond thoughts of writing in a Parisian garret. But when she eventually got there she was too lonely so went home again! JK Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter series in a cafe in Edinburgh. She liked the noise of people coming and going. This winter I’ve enjoyed writing sitting beside the radiator with my laptop on the dining table, which is a bit tricky when it comes to dinner time! Today I’ve moved away from the heat for the first time for months, towards a window where I can catch as much of the late winter sun as possible. A writing space is very subjective. Where do you write? If you don’t have a special place perhaps now’s the time to create one.

Competitions
Why do we write? It’s a big question and I suspect there are several answers.
Some people write only for themselves, others write knowing that they want people to read their work and give feedback and others write specifically for an audience. We all wonder sometimes for whom are we doing this.

Bringing it home
I started writing four years ago after a bereavement. My early writing was very personal and I only shared it with my husband. By attending writing classes I learnt to write about what was in my heart without feeling too vulnerable. Then I began to share my writing with others. After that I started to think about sending my work off to competitions. There are still some pieces of writing I would find difficult to put in the public domain, so I don’t. You may have a collection of poems and stories by now which you want to contribute to publications or competitions. It’s a scary feeling the first time you do it, but why not go for it?

Short exercises
We can’t finish today without doing some writing work. Write down the following in a notebook every day for six days:

A simile
A metaphor
A quotation
An opening sentence from a novel

After six days you will have twenty four pieces of written stimulation. On the seventh day, choose the one you like best and use it in a description of your artist’s date. Ideally while you’re doing this you’ll be sitting in your very own writing spot.

Good luck! Take the plunge and enter the competition outlined below.

[www.kapka-kassabova.com]

The VT Writers’ Group
This group meets weekly at the Veliko Arts Centre, 36 Ivan Vazov Str, Veliko Turnovo.
For more information call Eileen Sutherland on 089/ 989 64 42