Caroline Allen
Tue, 10 Sep 2013 16:44:39 +0000 The two sisters at the window, acrylic on canvas, www.carolineallen.com How can I explain the path that has led me here, the journey that keeps bringing me back to the beginning? After 30 years of writing and coaching and teaching, more than a decade as an international newsroom journalist, and another decade plus as a writing coach, after writing two and a half novels, after…
Paste a Video URL As writers, we hold on too tightly to our favorite words or scenes or chapters. What if you had the courage to, as Faulkner writes, kill your darlings, to delete your favorite lines to better serve the story. I am a visual artist, as well as a writer, and in this video I have to destroy one painting in the hopes that the next one will be…
Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:57:44 +0000http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thCFoucrGNo Faulkner coined the phrase Kill Your Darlings about cutting much-loved scenes or paragraphs from your writing if it doesn't serve the overall story. This is one of the most difficult situations I come across when coaching writers. Here as a visual artist, I Kill the Darling -- my first painting of a horse -- in hopes that the second painting will turn out better, as…
Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:48:15 +0000 American writer Gertrude Stein held salons for famous artists during her years in Paris. Questions about identity, deep homesickness, a confusion of what and where home is, floating above a culture, profound shifts in your perception of yourself and culture, a growing global consciousness, a love for the world that's so deep it makes you ache -- all of these tumultuous emotions run through the…
Fri, 27 Sep 2013 17:13:40 +0000 Assisi, Italy, www.carolineallen.com I'm working on a series of four novels, EARTH, AIR, FIRE and WATER, two of which are expat novels (stories set in foreign countries). In EARTH, my protagonist is rooted to a farm in America. In AIR, she floats above the culture in the Orient. In FIRE, her ego is burned up, her life left in ashes in London. Finally, with…
Sat, 28 Sep 2013 22:13:51 +0000I had a dream. I was seated at the defendant's table in an old-fashioned courtroom. My attorney, a soft round woman, held my hand beneath the table. I could feel she believed in me. Jealousy was suing me. Jealousy was on the stand and was bright red, like the devil card in the Visconti Sforza tarot deck. He was enraged. He was telling his lawyer, who was…
Fri, 02 Aug 2013 19:54:08 +0000 Beauty of the Beast, click here to learn more: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artofstorytelling/beauty-of-the-beast I recently moved to Oregon, and for the first time since I was little I am around farm animals. The goat shed on the property was transformed into an art studio, and inside was a trap door that opened to a view of the goats and a llama. So, like any artist, I started painting…
Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:36:43 +0000 This Little Piggy, painting in progress, www.carolineallen.com I'm feeling called to write about an artistic healing I've been going through. I'd rather not share something so personal, but the universe is asking me to. I think the idea is that if you see what one artist/writer goes through, perhaps you'll be better able to understand your own process.I recently launched an art project called Beauty of the…
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 15:17:24 +0000Photo by Lisa Mehlin, www.mehlinconservation.com A good friend of mine in Massachusetts took this photo and posted it on Facebook. I've been thinking a lot about the white light glow coming from the flowers. I think she posted it a week ago, and the white light just keeps swirling around me. That white light to me is spirit caught in the act. It's not just in this…
Thu, 15 Aug 2013 20:34:24 +0000 What do the Arab Spring, recent protests in Turkey, Egypt and Brazil and the Occupy movement have to do with you as a writer? What significance do these revolutionary waves of protests across the globe have to the basics of storytelling in the world?Writ large on the world stage is the voice of change, the voice of authentic expression, voices that say no to a power…