Radhika Mukherjee's Blog, page 11

Last Chance To Read ‘Broken Shadows’ For Free!

Hey there!

I’ve just uploaded my new book of short stories, Broken Shadows to Amazon! I am psyched!

And while we wait for the book to go live on Amazon and then other platforms, I am offering you a chance to read it, completely free!

The offer is valid this the end of day, today, 20th March 2016!

Just click here to get the book!

Here’s the full book cover:

Here’s the blurb:

Do you break out of the shadows or do you let the shadows break you?

That’s the central question explored in Broken Shadows.

Broken Shadows is a collection of 12 tiny, intense tales of isolation and discovery. Told in fluid, direct, ungendered, abstract prose, these stories are depictions of the self’s deepest, most painful, most vulnerable moments, along with its fledgling triumphs.

Told through the protagonist’s intensely personal, idiosyncratic (interior) monologue, the moments are arranged thematically. You read about the essentially solitary, shadowy essence of the self as it navigates pain, war, art, homelessness, addiction, betrayal, etc. along with the intransigence of its own nature.

Going beyond gender, beyond ethnicity, these snapshots of ephemeral moments are an exercise in understanding the universal through the specific.

It’s all about merging into a fleeting, shadowy moment and tracing how it turns on itself.

Immerse yourself in intensely executed, abstract written art!

And if you liked the book and wanted to post a review or spread the word, I would be totally over the moon!

Sounds good?

Here’s the reading application form link again!

Filed under: My Books Tagged: Art, Books, Creativity, reviews, Writing, writing fiction

Book Cover Reveal : Broken Shadows

Paparapaaa!

Presenting! The book cover for Broken Shadows (coming soon to an ebook store near you)!

These tiny, intense tales of isolation are sure to wring unexpected emotion from you. Which is exactly the sense we have tried to convey in the book cover, a depiction of the solitary self as it faces its shadows.

Will the shadows break our protagonists or will they break the shadows?

That’s the central question of Broken Shadows.

Here is the book cover:

What do you think?

Please let me know in the comments!

Stay connected with the release by subscribing to my Newsletter or add Broken Shadows on Goodreads.

Filed under: My Books, The Writer Chronicles Tagged: Art, book cover, Books, Creativity, Writing, writing fiction

Announcing My New Short Story Collection: Broken Shadows

Sometimes, healing comes only through brokenness.

That’s the main theme of my new collection of short fiction, Broken Shadows.

These are 12 short tales in Broken Shadows, linked in pairs, which explore how survival, destruction, depression, creativity, technology, etc. affects the core of the self. A picture emerges of the deepest self as it wages a battle for itself.

These are all journeys into exploring the essential ‘I’ as it navigates the world in fear, hurt, love and hope.

This is a follow up in terms of style and substance to my first collection, Our Particular Shadows, and two more books are planned in this series of Shadow Stories.

So Our Particular Shadows was Shadow Stories #1, while Broken Shadows is Shadow Stories #2.

For Broken Shadows, I selected carefully from all the stories I had written over the past six months and then arranged them just so. The stories flow from question to question and provide the echoes of an answer.

I am so looking forward to you reading them!

The release date is set tentatively for March 2016.

Would you like to read and review Broken Shadows?

This is for online reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

If yes, I can send across a free PDF copy of the manuscript to you via e-mail. And I’ll let you know when the book is live so you can post your reviews on the sites.

What you do say?

Yes?

Yes!

I knew it, you’re the coolest!

Just fill in the google form given in the link below and I’ll contact you in a jiffy:

Click Here!

See you on the other side! :)

 

Filed under: The Writer Chronicles Tagged: Books, Creativity, fiction, flash fiction, reviews, short stories, Writer, Writing, writing fiction

Vital Creativity Lessons from The Artist’s Way

The Artist’s Way: Essential Reading For Artists Seeking Creative Recovery!

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is the best and most helpful book on creativity and creative recovery that I have read. (And I’ve read quite a few in the last year, trying to recover what I lost along the way.)

As a bonus, The Artist’s Way is also a workbook, which helps you make the leap from blocked, wounded creative to one coming into their intrinsic power of being happily, gloriously creative.

I read about the phenomenon of this book many times, before I actually bought it. What made me buy it? Author Deborah Cooke described the two main tools of The Artist’s Way in a blog post and it seemed to make a weird sort of sense to me.

When Amazon finally delivered the book, I was feeling like I was a decent place creatively. And I was in such a hurry to show progress, that I read the introduction and the first two chapters and decided to only focus on the two main tools: the morning pages and maybe attempt a few artist dates.

This was the first iteration.

I turned the morning pages into ‘anytime’ pages and just scribbled and scribbled. Going well over the 3 page limit on most days. My hair-trigger temper improved, fears quietened down; my writing became looser but flowed easier. I settled more deeply into the idea of being a creative being and writer.

The inevitable implosions followed. Julia does warn us that in the course of following The Artist’s Way, as you heal and course-correct, you can expect a few fireworks.

So, I picked up the book again: the second iteration.

This time, to read through and through. Julia’s words now made even more sense. What she describes in the book was exactly what had happened with me while doing the morning pages! This second time, I did a few of the exercises but mainly just read, absorbed her gentle wisdom, her permission to find that essential, creative me.

I continue to do the morning pages. However, I managed just about 3-4 artist’s dates in all this time – around four months or so.

In these four months I have filled four notebooks with my (almost) daily scribbles, exhausted countless pens, and emerged calmer, softer, stronger and more in tune with the voice inside that sings.

This is what I learned in my two-time immersion in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way:

Creative Recovery

If you have been discouraged as a child or have been forced to be ‘practical’ or have been unable to pursue your creativity for financial reasons or even out of deep insecurities; those impediments have left a wound on you. When creative people are not able to express their creativity, they hurt. And while you work on reversing the blocks and getting back to your core creativity, you need to realise that you are in creative recovery and need to be kind to yourself.

Be patient. You are forging a new you.

The path will resemble waves rather than an upward incline. And as mentioned above, might even bring with it a few squalls and tsunamis.

Creativity is Play

You have to allow yourself to play, to let what you are creating feel light as froth and as joyful as a blown bubble. Treating creativity as heavy-duty ‘work’ as found in an office, bound by productivity – might be fairly counter-productive.

I had a day when my writing for Rackety and the Beauty Spell felt like flying! I then proceeded to get totally shocked at myself, started to doubt the quality of the writing and promptly shut down for a few days. Though better now, I still need to get that soaring flight of fancy back.

No Uniform Day

There will be good days and bad days. Days when you will make art and days when you will need to rest and reflect. Don’t let the lack of ‘output’ impact you negatively as a creative being. Remember, you are in recovery, and need to be gentle with yourself.

Be a soothing presence within the maelstrom of the self.

Filling the Well

Nurturing the inner artist child or as Julia calls it, ‘filling the well’ is perhaps your most important responsibility, especially while in creative recovery. Immerse yourself in a rich array of nourishing inspiration – sights, sounds, smells, tastes. The more delicious the better! This in part is what the artist date is about.

My favorites are: taking flower-photography sun-walks, going to the movies, going to the bookstore and reading books. Traveling and taking a holiday are also great for recharging the well!

What are your favorites?

The Essential Morning Pages

The morning pages are a journaling tool. You write three pages of longhand in the morning, ideally before doing anything else. You write to clear your mind, to connect more deeply to yourself, and to discharge your silly, angry, irritated feelings into a safe space.

And let me tell you, the morning pages certainly worked for me! In a way that my earlier, more casual journaling had not. This is a more mindful practice.

I’ve been doing them for months and even when nothing else gets done, when I’m in a soggy, squelchy, muddy mood, I dive into the strong, lighted-up reassurance of the pages. Which are to me ‘anytime’ pages. I pour out all my froth and fury and clarify, clarify, clarify. It’s great therapy. And I get a mental tick-mark for getting them done too!

Morning Pages For Writers

For writers, having the pages to pour yourself into, is an amazing gift. Here is a place to just be you, in words. There is no need for style or artifice. No worries about publishable merit. There is no audience. You can just be. And be as narcissistic as you need to be. What a huge relief, right?

You get kudos for just filling pages, for messing around, for just being with words. It’s amazing and freeing and ultimately – healing.

Bad Art

Creative people like doing things well. They like creating things with beauty, impact and resonance. However, when you are in creative recovery or transitioning to a different sphere of the creative journey – that might not be possible. Such thinking might in fact, be harmful. What we need to get more comfortable with, counter-intuitively enough, is bad or blurry art. ‘Bad’ to our perfectionist eyes that is.

Give yourself permission to play in the mud, to make a glorious mess, before the masterpiece inevitably emerges.

Self-Care

You will need to work on yourself as much as you need to work on your art to effect a proper creative recovery. This is years of grime being washed away from the mirror of your creative spirit. Take the time to do it right.

Then it will shine! Then we have lift off!

That Abundant Feeling

A belief in abundance is essential. Call out to abundant inspiration, abundant opportunities and an abundant audience.

Make the pie bigger. There’s enough and more for everyone.

A Deeper Connect

You’ll get an urge to deepen your learning, especially knowledge of your craft, once you embark on this 12-week journey.

I got back my ability to read with stillness and absorption though this process.

Do It Your Way

You need not follow the book exactly to reap the benefits of The Artist’s Way. A DIY approach works very well too.

Look at me, I’ve done two laps and will soon go around for a third, when I feel in need of healing again.

The third iteration will be the one in which I plan to follow absolutely everything in the book. Each set of weekly exercises, the affirmations, the artist dates, etc. And all through I will continue with the morning-anytime pages.

Healing Has To Continue

Creative recovery, creative healing and making art are all part of an artist’s creative process. Once the blocks shift a bit, art evolves out of the pain, out of the recovery and out of the healing spirit. And it shines brightest from a recovered artist.

So our work is essentially to strive and to continue the healing process.

We are artists, we are stronger as well as more fragile than most, we need to take care of ourselves, always.

And then, as Neil Gaiman said: ‘Make good art!’

~~~*~~~

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Radhika’s Monthly Missives

 

(Image credits: Pixabay.)

(Image of The Artist’s Way book: Radhika Mukherjee)

 

 

 

Filed under: What I Learned Today Tagged: #longreads, Art, artists, burnout, creative writing, Creativity, inspiration, novel writing, Writer, Writers, Writing, Writing Advice, writing fiction

Celebrating Bloggers: 3 Amazing Posts of Mountains and Snow

Winter seems to be on its way out where I live. There is a little zing in the afternoon sun, the air is milder. One can almost taste the spring, lurking a little shy, in the wings of the weather. So I thought, why not pay homage to old man winter through a few amazing blog posts on snow and craggy mountains and the sheer delight of the cool mountain air!

1.

This post will make you fall in love with winter. A fairyland experience, this post.

A Love Letter to the Norwegian Winter

By Trini Lind

...

An Ideal Writing Afternoon

To sit, in the afternoons, in a secluded pavement cafe, beside a sleepy street, sip chocolate hot or cold, or even green tea and – write…

The sunlight will dapple welcomingly all around and fall slantwise on my lightly ruled notebook, lighting up the words written with my pilot pen.

Passersby ambling along will look at my rapt expression and smile – indulgently. They’ll nod to one another and say, ‘Writer at work!’

For I will be clad in artist’s clothes – long skirt, gypsy top and lots of ban...

Waiting [Flash Fiction]

The liminal space – the twilight vale where anything can happen…

Here lies good; here – the possibility of such horror…

And here I stand, hand on the mirror, asking my reflection to give me some answers. In this endless waiting, these seconds ticking past threaten to shatter me with their chiming.

What then, does one do? Just go about normal life? Not stop at all? Not ponder or pray? Is there anything to do but wait?

Seems like years of waiting, just waiting. Hideous waiting!

Time piled on ti...

Eavesdropping, Observing, Writing In Cafes

Words free-flowing in the real world, that I had only read before, ‘Workshopped’, ‘freelancer economy’, ‘you must give me your card…’ – a couple of solopreneurs meeting at the coffee shop I’m trying to work in.

The tiniest, cutest Korean mother-daughter duo waiting at the cash counter. (They ordered a fluffy pink icing donut.)

A few laptops, a ‘premium’ photographer and a few sets of friends on a girl’s afternoon out.

My back is not to the wall, as I prefer, but at least I’m seated at the e...

Wishes for 2016!

Happy New Year, dearfriends! :)

How special are you going to make 2016?

These are my 2016 wishes:

For The World:

Peace and empathy between each of us and all nations Forests and seas protected and marine, plant and animal life improved exponentially. A sense of joy pervading us all, as part of world culture.

For Writers:

May more and more people read, and read our books/stories/poems/articles! May traditional publishing value writers more and more. May self-publishing become an even strong...

The Gifts The Universe Has Given Me

At the end of this year, 2015 – a transformative year – in this season of gifts, I’d like to share with you, in the spirit of SONO GRATA (Italian for: I am grateful*), the gifts that permeate my life.

So, Universe: Hello. Namaste. I would like to thank you for:

My Ma

My Nikhil

Books and stories and their writers. Oh so many writers am I unbelievably grateful for! (Special shout out to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.)

Poetry

Music

This mind of mine

The ability to laugh and smile

The ability t...