FREE WRITE
Nature and the Creative Environment:
"How Nature Affects the Environment in Which We Write"
“Nature and the Creative Environment: How Nature Affects the Environment in Which We Write” is a colorful PowerPoint presentation which describes how we can create warm and inviting living and working spaces that reduce stress, promote healing and inspire our creativity as writers, through the integration of nature elements into our environment.
This presentation illustrates the awe inspiring, unpredictable and beautiful aspects of nature, and demonstrates how incorporating nature elements, such as color, texture, light and art into our environment can inspire innovative ideas, expansive thinking and ultimately more successful writing.
Writers are given several opportunities to express themselves in writing about how nature inspires them, to assess the environments in which they write, and to choose the elements of nature that will create their own unique and uplifting writing environment.
JANIS LUEDKE BIO
One of the biggest influences on my life was the dramatic landscape that I experienced during the 19 years that I spent living in the Southwest. There I was awed by the expanse of the terrain, the ever-changing light, the colors of the earth, the mountains, the sky, and the overall texture of the natural environment.
As an interior designer, a profound appreciation for these elements led me to specialize in creating warm interior environments that reduce stress and promote healing, through the use of color, texture, light, nature and art, as well as environmentally friendly and toxin-free materials. Upon my return to the east coast, I was pleased to go to work for a design firm that had a similar sensibility, especially in the healthcare arena. I designed interiors for some of the major hospitals in Boston, including Brigham & Women’s, Mass. General Hospital, Beth Israel, and Harvard Vanguard. My motto was: “Healing the Planet Room by Room”
My newest creative endeavor has been a children's book, “The Hearts That Fell Out of the Sky”, featuring the Heart Heads, who are creatures with carrots for bodies and hearts for heads. They live very peacefully on their planet way out in the universe until one day they hear all this grumbling from Earth. They venture down here for a visit, and in the process, drop armloads of hearts on the Earthlings, and quite simply, teach us to live in our hearts. Writing in verse, illustrating and publishing have been a new and fun lesson for me, and a medium which I hope to explore more in the future.
