"A Writer's Struggle for Emotional Freedom"

A couple of years ago, I posted about a tactic I was using to help myself keep writing through a sticky place in my novel:

"...When I was feeling shocked by what I was writing, I read bits of an autobiography by a friend, Lucy Daniels, With a Woman's Voice: A Writer's Struggle for Emotional Freedom , which was startlingly personal and disclosing. I kept thinking: if she can do this, I can surely keep on spinning this fiction."

Tonight I'm going to the ceremony for Lucy to receive the Raleigh Arts Commission's Medal of Arts for 2008. Boldness rewarded!

I'm telling how I used her book for encouragement on a documentary about her career that they'll be showing. (Which I haven't seen yet, and I'm indeed curious.)

Again, the technique, which worked very well: About every 45 minutes or so, when my courage would be fading again, I'd stop work on my own book, and read a few pages of Lucy's, and think, "Well, if she can do this...."

You probably know of a book or piece of music or some such that has done or could do the same thing for you.





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