What We Can Learn from Visual Art about Writing a Book
What spontaneous art can show us about doing spontaneous writing (Part 1 of 2)
Welcome back to the Writing from the Deeper Self newsletter. This week, we’ll see how the right-brain’s province of visual art can inspire the left-brain province of language, so you can have a full-brained (and full-hearted) experience in writing the book of your heart.
I have steeped myself in art and music as well as writing over many years. And so I am fortunate to be able to dip into the wisdom and techniques of one art form and translate them, in some way, into another.
I often use the analogy of doing a painting to explain how it is possible to write a book out of sequence — perhaps Chapter 8 first (or pieces that later will show themselves to be part of Chapter 8), then Chapter 9, then Chapter 2, and finally Chapter 1. I even wrote a book about this “Right-Brained Alternative to Outlines” — An Organic Approach to Structuring Your Book — which you can find out about here.
And it’s not even that linear. Once you trust that you will later find a workable structure for your writing, you can simply follow what interests you, what has aliveness for you, as you write. Then, when you’ve brought forth enough material, you can back up and find out: “What have I written, here? What do these pieces have in common? What seems to be a unifying thread? And what else needs to be written in order to develop the theme that is emerging here?”
Out of that comes tentative structures — Part I, Part II, and so on — that can be tried on to see if they fit what organically wants to be written. There’s a mutual adjustment process that then happens. As something you’ve done settles into its right place, as it resonates with internal rightness, it offers you information about a fitting structure. And as the structure begins to settle in and feel right, it suggests further writing that will make of these pieces a whole.
So the art analogy goes like this:
Imagine you are doing a painting on canvas. Unlike writing, visual art is spatially simultaneous.
You don’t do it all at one fell swoop, but whatever you have done, you can see all at once. So let’s say you have, on your canvas, a green swath of color below, and a blue horizontal swath above. Let’s say this is a landscape, and those swaths of color are your beginnings of grass, trees, and sky.
Okay. Now, as you move closer into the painting, you pick up your brush, load it with perhaps a deeper green, and start making more detailed strokes to indicate blades of grass, more distinct leaves of trees. Now your canvas has a combination of rough color, and the beginnings of detail.
While there are all sorts of advised techniques on painting — a common one of which is to lay out the color and shape relationships throughout the canvas before you start in on the detail — let’s say that you are really drawn to delineate a tree on the left, even while the rest of the painting is in rough-color shape. And that you have a moment of pure absorption, putting in the trunk and the roots and the branches and the leaves of that tree.
And that when you’re done, you back up and — oh, it just vibrates!
Well, but there’s the rest of the canvas, still looking like barely a thought. What now?
Now, you allow the tree to inform the rest of what’s on the canvas. The shade of green in the branches — they could be repeated in the grasses, towards the front. And having done that, you may see a place for a hint of colored flowers among the grasses. So you pick up your brush, dab it with red, yellow, and other flower colors, and try your hand at that. Then you back up, get a sense of how it’s all coming together (or not). You try this, you try that. You paint the nuanced blue sky above, and perhaps catch a ray of the yellow you used in the flowers to undergird the sky, a nod to the sun trying to come forth.
And so on. What you do in one part of the painting influences and inspires what you do in the other parts. Some areas, you might end up scraping off or painting over (the writing equivalent is revision); but that’s all right, because there’s a wholeness that’s greater than the sum of the parts that you are seeking to find and make known.
This simultaneity — you might call it a property of the right brain, the holistic brain, or what I have called in my book Starting Your Book the “Artistic Brain” — allows you to move back and forth within your creative being without having to make judgments or even many (or any) commentaries on what you are doing. Because you can see the whole emerging as you paint, you hold it in your awareness even as you do the details.
With writing a book, too — although you cannot literally see everything at the same time, or even always hold the whole in your awareness (because sometimes you have no idea where you are going until you begin to come closer to it) — your Artistic Brain knows things, and trusts in things, that your usual linear mind does not.
This is a perfect segue into exploring the making of spontaneous art—being with what the moment gives you.
I’m going to, well, illustrate using illustrations by painter and watercolor teacher Barbara Nechis. Watercolor, of course, is a very evanescent medium, bringing you into the present moment precisely because it flows and changes so quickly. In fact, the water element, itself, is synonymous with fluidity, flow, and flexibility. You might keep this in mind when writing your book — that attuning to the water element in you can promote flexibility. (Not sure how to do this? Contact me and I’ll send you a simple how-to.)
In her book, Watercolor from the Heart, Nechis gives some beautiful examples from her own watercolor experiments, and discusses her process and her counsel. Here’s one such, from the section on “Inner Resources: The Creative Process”:
“I love to experiment. I am challenged by a new piece of paper. I can’t fail because I have no expectations and no preconceived plan. It is more difficult for me to be flexible when I expect a certain outcome.
“Blank paper lies before me. I begin. Initially my mind is a tabula rasa. No thoughts, only feelings. I pick up a brush. I wet all the paper, part of it, or work it dry. I place a stroke somewhere on my page and make a mark. I like it. I make another. What will happen if I extend this shape to the left? What if I bring it out on the other side? Now I remember that shape. It resembles the water at the base of a quarry. Oh! that light down the middle could be a waterfall. Yes, I like it. It is a bit surreal. This shape looks like a bird. Do I really want one? No, I’ll extend the shape to lose the bird. My color is uninteresting. I’ll add orange to my waterfall. Now some pink. How about a purple/black rock? Too dark. I’ll neutralize the area next to it for less contrast. Now some green moss. I need a softer edge.
“What else needs fixing? I don’t know. I’ll come back to it. I go through this process again and again, watching, adding, making changes, thinking.”
Nechis calls this painting “Genesis” and says of its creative process:
“Small flowers appear to spring from the large one. I made the flower centers with spurts of wet paint on wet paper, then let it dry. Next I added glazes for hard edges that would sharpen the image.”
Taking Advantage of Accidents
Nechis writes:
“‘Accidents prefer the prepared mind,’ it has been said.
“‘Luck happens,’ [photographer] Ansel Adams observed], ‘when preparation meets opportunity.’
“In a planned or subject-oriented painting, accidents are usually not desired because they must be incorporated into the subject matter to make them work. But in an experimental painting, it is difficult to discern what is an accident and what is not. I welcome most accidents, knowing that although they will make my job more difficult they will also give a special quality to each painting. The accidents are God’s gifts. The challenge is to use them well.”
The painting “Flower Power” was just such an “accident.” Nechis writes:
“The white shape near the left edge, describing the turn of a petal, was the result of an uneven wetting of the paper. An unwetted spot remained white, so I made use of it.”
Here, the artist takes off on a painting of poppies by Georgia O’Keefe, writing:
“While O’Keefe’s influence is evident in the poppy form, the rest of my painting departs from her florals, emphasizing numerous flowers and shapes.
“Leaving the cocoon of certainty can be painful for a time, but the rewards can also be great.”
This is just as true for writing a book!
If you knew, at the outset, every single thing you were going to do before you did it, you might have an engineering success, but not as likely an artistic one. The creative process needs to surprise us out of our usual ways of seeing things so that we can open up to inner treasures that we may not have realized were there. And while writing a book is, in so many ways, a different process from doing an experimental painting, we can learn from the playfulness and the open-mindedness of the painting process when writing a book. Maybe some “accident” we stumble upon will open the door to the view we were seeking all along.
In next week’s newsletter, I’ll balance the making of spontaneous art by introducing the subject of intentional, deliberated art, using illustrations from the sketches and final paintings of the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (who studied in France with Impressionist masters such as Degas). That will be a feast of images to help you comprehend the creative process more visually and viscerally.
Because if you haven’t already picked up on my lifelong passion for the creative process through my writings in these newsletters, on my website, and in my books on the creative process, you may find yourself getting into the flow of it now. This creative process — the journey from wish to actualization, from etheric possibility to manifestation in material form — is not only a divine fiat (“Let there be….”) but also an integral aspect of you. You are intrinsically a creator; and by this I mean much more than simply making something (though that’s certainly part of it). One can create from a disconnected place, or a “should,” or a “have-to,” and something does come out of it. But to create from the place of your true inner being – your deeper Self – is something else. You are not only present for the creating, you also are in conversation, even communion, with the Something Greater (but part of you) that goes by various names but always has a similar energy. You become an instrument through which beautiful and transforming music (art / writing / etc.) is played. What a blissful service and gift!
You can have this. You can do this. It is in you.
If you sense that you would benefit from the support of someone who —
Has over 30 years’ experience working in the book-publications field
Intimately knows the realm of the creative process (as a writer, artist, and musician)
Is a really good listener
Has a healing orientation, and
Has worked with many first-time authors whose books are now in print and spreading healing in the world —
I can help. Here are a few ways how:
1. For a simple, low-cost, low-key start, read my book Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending to What’s Inside You.
Unveil your Inner Author: Work with the book that's been guiding writers for over two decades. Are you staring at a blank page, unsure how to begin your book? What if the key to unlocking your writing lies not in rigid formulas, but within yourself?
Starting Your Book can be your personal compass for the writing journey. Find your authentic voice / Tap into your unique creativity / Overcome writer's block with ease / Develop a writing process that feels natural and inspiring. Through gentle guidance, practical exercises, and insightful suggestions, you'll learn to listen to your inner wisdom and craft a book that's genuinely yours.
Ready to embark on a writing adventure tailored just for you? Grab your copy of Starting Your Book today and take the first step towards the novel, memoir, non-fiction, or narrative nonfiction work you've dreamed of writing.
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2. Hate writing outlines but think there’s no other way to get a book written? Think again. The same kind of spatial process that visual artists use is available to you for putting a book together in the way it calls to you.
My book, An Organic Approach to Structuring Your Book: A Right-Brained Alternative to Outlines, shows you how to work with your own intuitive ways to end up with a book that reads as if it had been deliberately constructed from the outset – but you can do it much more fluidly and easily than that. Being creative is a power within you, and you can work with your own ways rather than some top-down how-to to evolve a structure that gives itself to you naturally and enjoyably!
Give yourself the gift of this book, and let your book grow naturally and tell you what it wants to be.
Print book: $25 / Ebook: $10.99
The Co-Writing Sanctuary: Coming in November, back by popular demand.
In 2022, I led a series of weekly meetings where writers and aspiring writers showed up and stayed in silence for an hour. And that was really the point — to be able to drop into the quiet inner place where all inspiration lives, and be able to write from there. Deep writing is about shifting consciousness from the regular mind and the “laundry” to-do’s of life into that illuminated, eternal place within you that seeks expression through you … as you. In this Sanctuary, participants get to ease into themselves through a healing introduction, then write for about 40 minutes in the privacy of their homes and souls. In the last series, the participants voiced their gratitude for having such a place to come and be with themselves in fertile quiet.
This series will begin in November, probably on Mondays at 9:30am Pacific Time each week. Can’t make that timing? No problem: you can sign up for the recordings and still have that as your sacred writing time. More details will follow as the logistics shape up. Stay tuned. (Always a good idea anyway!)
The Book-Writer’s Wellness Clinic. This “wellness clinic” for people writing books at whatever stage offers the opportunity to bring very specific concerns about their book-in-progress and get responses and guidance from me, similar to being in 1:1 consultation. Each time, a different writer will get to ask a question about the book-writing process, and everyone present will learn something valuable for themselves. This clinic is likely to begin around January. More details will follow as the logistics shape up.
Give Yourself the Gift of a 60-minute Gift Session with me.
Have a question about your writing process that you’d like to explore with me directly? Want to unearth what may be keeping you stuck and remove it so your writing can flow?
My Gift Sessions are actual Book-Development sessions (not just chats), where you get to experience all I’d give to a client about their project and their relationship to their creative self.
I offer this from the desire to be of service, not necessarily to bring in new clients. As someone who has studied Sufi Healing, I’m convinced that being able to bring your creative desires into manifestation is a supremely healing (even spiritual) act. And then, of course, you get to have a book in the world with your imprint on it.
If you would like to benefit from my gifts as a Book Developer so I can help bring forth your creative gifts, click the button below:
Encouraging your flowering ~ Naomi Rose
Book Developer & Creative Midwife / Creator, Writing from the Deeper Self / www.naomirose.net