A CREATIVE COMMUNITY FOR WRITERS:
We Get You Writing!
In a time of planetary distress and constant human fighting, we need creative solutions. We can remind ourselves that there are forces inside each of us that can be harnessed for our own empowerment and for the success and meaningful growth of our societies and planet. Creativity is what makes a bridge appear in a space over water. Creativity manifests in books so we can share ways to be human. Creativity harnesses energy. Makes light. Creates dance and screenplays and songs. Creativity is our human wealth, and many people are disassociated from it.
The Fifth Brain Collective offers a personal guide or collaborative space to cultivate creativity and develop artistic confidence. Check out our community membership for writers, one-on-one writing coaching with Frankie, online classes, live events, live workshops, and more!
WHAT IS A “FIFTH BRAIN,” ANYWAY?
The fifth brain is a metaphor for ease of accessing imagination, harnessing material, and trusting in each writer’s uniqueness. The fifth brain works in the unconscious, making connections.
When I came up with this metaphor, years ago teaching a creative writing class, I mentioned that a student might trust her fifth brain and was met with half a class of blank stares and half a class nodding and scribbling down a note. I stopped and offered a definition that I only barely understood at the time. I said that it seemed to me that a writer’s mind has several components, like a cow’s four-part ruminant stomach, each to do a separate part of the writing. (Regarding the biologically unsavory nature of this metaphor, I would note that food transforms into energy just as our brain’s intake of information transforms into the energy of ideas, similarly without thought.)
We exist in a constant sea of internal emotions, settings, relationships, memories, and associations. The most crucial part of the brain, the fifth brain, is the one that synthesizes all these streams of information. These streams make up your imagination, and it’s up to you to trust that your imagination is singular to you and that if you want to write, you have what you need to do so.
VALUES
IN FIFTH BRAIN COMMUNITY SPACES
THIS COLLECTIVE ACTIVELY:
Honors everyone’s fifth brain, individuality of thought and imagination, and reminds each other to trust our own thoughts, our intuitive light, our own personal patterns of work and ideas.
Listens with empathy, attention, and respect.
Offers generous, constructive feedback that takes intentions and the difficulties of creative work into consideration.
Respects the confidentiality of each writer’s ideas and texts.
Offers advice without ego or expectation. Everyone is free to choose or reject advice!
Considers taking chances and exploring different paths that are revealed in our alchemical discussions.
Encourages each other to be persistent and determined in each person’s right to be creative.
Shares new learnings and new questions freely.
Celebrates our diversity of identities, voices, genres, levels of experience.
Reminds each other to experiment, play, and enjoy the work.
ABOUT FRANKIE ROLLINS
Frankie Rollins is a creative dynamo and literary architect, building a world where words are wild, brave, and beautifully crafted. As the founder of Fifth Brain Collective, she’s not just teaching writing — she’s igniting it. Whether it’s leading immersive membership meetings, hosting experimental webinars, or mapping the path for a writer with a dream, she does it all with a mix of precision and creative innovation.
As a working writer, she knows the difficulties and joys of writing and the writing life intimately, but she never forgets that each writer’s path is singular. She’s the kind of mentor who turns overwhelm into momentum — and shows you the path to sustainability for your own particular writing life.
Frankie converses with writers with an unflagging radiant warmth. She knows that writers must access their personalities, knowledge banks, memories, lostness-and-foundness. They must know the obstacles and dreams within them to make their art, and Frankie has developed ways to help writers move authentically, confidently, and joyously into their work.
After earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, she embarked on a study of writers, the magic of their brains and the obstacles getting in their way. Frankie became a teaching artist in the schools and adjunct faculty for various colleges. She created her own tiny school of creative writing in New Jersey for nine years, and then served as creative writing faculty at Pima Community College in Tucson for thirteen years. After working with thousands of writers, Frankie wrote Do You Feel Like Writing? A Creative Guide to Artistic Confidence, to give writers permission to love their own writing in ways that are not just literary; but also transformative, spiritual, and communal.
“Frankie is the kind of teacher that changes everything.” — Workshop participant
“Possibly unique in a lifetime.” — Fifth Brain Collective member
Previously, Frankie published The Grief Manuscript, The Sin Eater & Other Stories, and a novella, “Doctor Porchiat's Dream”. The secret to Frankie's everlasting curiosity and sunshine is embedded in her commitment to writing anything she wants without quantifiable reason or expectation of external success. She writes because she loves to write, and it is the way she makes sense of the world. She knows that she needs no other reason.
Since launching the Fifth Brain Collective, Frankie has learned that her instincts and studies are correct. What people need to maintain a creative life are community conversation, a sense of self-worth for experimentation, evocative prompts and research, and the comfort of a community rooting for each person’s unique and personal success.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Frankie has published several other works of fiction. Check out more of her work below!
