Hello, welcome to the Letters for Creatives newsletter. Take a look at some writing prompts, the archive and newsletter directory to find what you need now.

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This week challenge

To start fresh and get back to the routine of creating and writing next year, there would be a creative or writing challenge every other week. The first 5 challenges are going to be sent to you in the coming weeks in 2023. The remaining would be sent to paying subscribers for the rest of the year.

I would feature some of you in the letters. Just hit reply and send me what you are writing or creating with my challenge.

Challenge 4:

Magical realism with a twist

If you are an artist or creator and would like to be featured in either interview series, hit reply. Writers are also welcome as I have featured poets and fiction writers at the start of the series. If you have any suggestion who I should interview, let me know.

Masks, Identities, and the True Self

I have been feeling restricted when I feel the way people project their ideas of me. But I have been trying my best not to let them affect as much and embrace who I am. Not everyone would be your best friends or die-hard friends. Not everything will last forever, good or bad. So I am not going to take anything for granted or put myself into a dead-end mindset and think that something bad will last unbearably long.

It’s like if you limit your interests to one area, become a master, and become known as the master, you have much more leverage at that point to branch out and be desired to participate in other areas that interest you. We see this all the time with celebrities turned brand owners, famous actors turned musicians, successful businesspeople turned authors, and sports stars turned talk show hosts. It makes sense — when you have an audience that cares about what you do and say, you have leverage in other areas of life.

The reality is that playing a role is a helpful way to navigate the world. It allows us to show up in a way that others understand. We can agree that it’s much easier to show up and play a role in the world, but it takes real work to not attach to that role. To understand that none of these identities are actually us, they are just temporary.

If you’re up for it, I recommend making a list of all the masks you have to put on. Ask yourself if there are any that you’d like to not utilize anymore. And start to build a familiarity with yourself as you go about living in the outer world, going to work, hanging with friends, and practicing seeing what it feels like to consciously put on an identity and not feel like it’s defining you.

Erin also included some podcast and newsletter recommendations. Most of them are about business and mindfulness.

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Sandbox and sandcastle

What Dee suggests below is … Those of us who write fiction can always add, subtract or rebuild the story we are working on. It is even a must if we want a complete story without plot holes. However, it is a difficult to accomplish. When we start a new writing project, it means that we start the process all over again.

Character building, world building, story arc, plot, challenges that characters have to go through. First draft that we want to throw out of the window. Second draft where we fix the plot holes and other things that you can think of. Copy edit. Kind of like the process of having a baby and giving birth, except that the book is left on its own after the first year of publication. Then you repeat the process on your book 2, 3, 4 and so on.

I haven’t publish anything but only been featured in anthologies. So the above description have not been what you have experienced. If you want to share your process, hit the comments.

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