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 collaborative space to cultivate creativity and develop artistic confidence with a community membership for writers, one-on-one writing coaching, 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
WHAT WE UPHOLD:
We honor everyone’s fifth brain (individuality of thought and imagination) and remind each other to trust our own thoughts, our intuitive light, our own personal patterns of work and ideas
We listen with empathy, attention, and respect
We offer generous, constructive feedback (that takes intentions and the difficulty of creating the work into consideration)
We respect the confidentiality of each writer’s ideas and texts
We offer advice without ego or expectation (Every writer is free to take or reject advice!)
We share new learnings or new questions freely
We celebrate the diversity of identities, voices, genres, and levels of experience
We remind each other to experiment, play, and enjoy the work
ABOUT FRANKIE ROLLINS
Frankie converses with seekers about creativity with an unflagging radiant warmth. She knows that creative people 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 them move authentically, confidently, and joyously into their work. In 2023, she started the Fifth Brain Collective so that she can teach people how to trust their own fifth brains, claim their time for creativity, and create a community of support.
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 examine the ingredients of their own experiences, understand their own habits, and learn the importance of sharing their perspective.
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.
The Fifth Brain Collective is a dream that she created with fellow writers, Sandra Shattuck and Eric Aldrich, joined now by many other creative beings. The Fifth Brain Collective emerged in 2023 and has since continued to develop into a multifaceted creative community for writers including a weekly membership program, online discussion space, online writing courses and live conversation-style events on cultivating artistic confidence, and much more.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Frankie has published several other works of fiction. Check out more of her work below!
