june 26

Local Love+Book Love

I’ve never pulled into the parking lot at the Hollins University campus without an accompanying sense of excitement and gratitude. The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum is there with the occasional workshop (I've enjoyed myself immensely at each one) and constant spectacular exhibits (Goodnight, Hush: Classic Children's Illustrations is there now), the theater where my hubby Kelly had a great time playing guitar in the play “Violet” is there and when Olivia was at Community School (we are back to being a home schooling family now) there were celebrations and plays on the grounds. I feel extremely blessed to live close to such a wealth of creative goodness.

Yesterday was the last day of the Children’s Literature Association event and it was an insightful, inspiring time. I did not get to attend the two previous days but wish I had.

At events like these, I take notes, jotting down anything and everything that triggers some sort of spark, snippets and wisdom that I think I may be able to pull from later to aid in a piece of writing or in a painting. I'm looking forward to looking those over this morning while nursing a cup of tea and see if any connections remain. But first, I have a few links to share with you lovelies.

A few things from yesterday stand out in my mind:

* Hearing Meg Medina read the opening of her book, “Milagros, The Girl From Away.” I am going to pick this one up as soon as I can. Magical realism=Love.

* Julia Mickenburg and Philip Nel’s lecture on radical children’s literature. You can get the entire book list on the blog. This is great as I think I missed a few in my notes, especially near the end when I thought my hand was going to fall off from all the frenzied scribbling. Ideas for home school lessons were foremost in my mind during this talk and the mommy/teacher in me was getting a healthy dose of motivation and ideas for group activities with friends. This lecture was also filmed and will eventually be available on the CHLA site.

* Thacher Hurd, son of Clement Hurd who was the illustrator for “Goodnight Moon,” and author/illustrator in his own right, was entertaining with his anecdotes about Margaret Wise Brown that left me wanting to know more about this beautiful genius who seemed to enchant all she encountered.

* Seeing up close the wonderful art of Ruth Sanderson and Ashley Wolff.

*The session on writing and illustrating fantasy: Charle Vess, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Amie Rose Rotruck –oh, the passion and excitement they have for what they do! That's always wonderful to see and to be around. Meeting Kathleen Foucart Walker, a local writer and friend of a dear friend.

*Chatting with Becky Mushko, another local writer. I purchased her new middle grade book, a paranormal tale titled “Stuck” and can’t wait to dive into it.

*Spending the day with another dear friend, definitely one of the highlights. Where would we all be without our friends? I used to have a quote painted on the panel in the hallway. I have since painted over it but recall the words well. “Friends are flowers in the garden of life.” So true, dontcha think?

In the art room:

* I’ve been gesso-ing panels and organizing, getting ready for an art show at the Oddfellas Cantina in Floyd. I'll have my art hanging there the months of September and October. Very excited about that!

* Fabric took over for a few days. Doing some mending and also making an eye pillow. I had to measure and pin---shew! SO not strengths of this impatient girl but I am proud of the end result. It’s weight felt good in my hand, filled with flax seeds and lavender, and smell was delicious.

What's Up Wednesday

Having grown tired of waiting for house elves to magically appear and tackle the dirty work, I decided last week to put on the rubber gloves myself and heed the spring cleaning call. I've been doing things like completely stripping my bedroom of everything I could move on my own. Only after giving everything a serious wipe-down could it reenter the space. Oh my, I'd forgotten how big dust bunnies could get! And I'd forgotten how wonderful a room feels after that sort of attention, when you lay back on crisp clean sheets and look around and there's not a single thing to do. Lovely!

It took a rainy sky and super-talented Jen Osborn's awesome Wednesday challenge (see her cute badge in the sidebar there to the right) to get me to the computer today. If I haven't been doing stuff purging then my head has been lost in ideas and paints. I am happy in that place but I lose crazy chunks of time there. An hour feels like a minute. Why is that? Does this happen to you?

The deal with Jen's challenge is to take a picture of your workspace on Wednesday and share what you've been up to. I love this idea!

Ok, here was my morning:

That, my friends, is a picture of the novel, the work in progress, of the last few years. Scary, huh? What you see are all of my handwritten pages: in notebooks, legal pads, whatever I could find at the moment words struck. There are also words on the computer. So...I am sorting the handwritten papers into folders labeled ACT 1, ACT 2 and ACT 3. I have a special folder for research and so on. I am hoping this will help things progress in the direction of a completed something to eventually share. I feel good about this. The story is tightening up and I am loving every minute of this project.

And a painting in process....it's about swans and what they do under the full moon when no one is watching. More on that soon.

Happy creating,

 

Sharing inspiration and a story called "Wicked Jenny"

*What's inspiring me these days:

l. Lingo from the 1920s

2. This video. The photography and the words, the voice, of Sarah Moon.

"I hope and I begin again...for a split second I see the sparkle of beauty passing by...and I am carried away and I can't stop finding it and losing it..." =love

3. Kara Walker's silhouettes

4. These words from SARK on how to be an artist: (gonna print it and do each one by one!)

STAY LOOSE. LEARN TO WATCH SNAILS. PLANT IMPOSSIBLE GARDENS. INVITE SOMEONE DANGEROUS TO TEA. MAKE LITTLE SIGNS THAT SAY “YES” AND
PASTE THEM ALL OVER YOUR HOUSE. MAKE FRIENDS WITH FREEDOM AND UNCERTAINTY. LOOK FORWARD TO DREAMS. CRY DURING MOVIES. SWING AS HIGH AS YOU CAN ON A SWINGSET BY MOONLIGHT. CULTIVATE MOODS. REFUSE TO BE RESPONSIBLE. DO IT FOR LOVE. TAKE LOTS OF NAPS. GIVE MONEY AWAY. BELIEVE IN MAGIC. LAUGH A LOT. CELEBRATE EVERY GORGEOUS MOMENT. TAKE MOONBATHS. HAVE WILD IMAGININGS TRANSFORMATIVE DREAMS AND
PERFECT CALM DRAW ON THE WALLS. READ EVERYDAY. IMAGINE YOURSELF MAGIC. GIGGLE WITH CHILDREN. LISTEN TO OLD PEOPLE. OPEN UP. DIVE IN. BE FREE. BLESS YOURSELF. DRIVE AWAY FEAR. ENTERTAIN YOUR INNER CHILD. YOU ARE INNOCENT. BUILD A FORT WITH BLANKETS. GET WET. HUG TREES. WRITE LOVE LETTERS. (SARK)

5. Cooking. Trying out new recipes. Somehow in the looking up of rice recipes, I stumbled across the site freerice.com, which aids the World Hunger Programme. I donated rice and learned a few new words in the process. (Level 57 kicked my booty---did you know that orthoepy = pronunciation?

*What I've been up to:

1. There are three paintings in various stages on the table which is why you are getting pics of rice play and not paint and paper. :)

2. Over the weekend I put the finishing touches on a short story titled "Wicked Jenny." I'd written the first draft months ago, then put it away. Not because I thought it was finished, I knew it still needed work in places, but I'd gotten too wrapped up in the story to see it clearly. Last Wednesday, I pulled the pages back out again, thinking I would rework them and read the story at the writer's group that night. Turns out I didn't share it but I made the group a promise that night and that promise was that I would finish "Wicked Jenny" and have it to share at next meeting. I thought about the main character, Sela, on the drive home that night, asking myself some questions regarding her motivation. I found myself thinking about fairy tales and what it takes to be a heroine. Also at the forefront of my mind was Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk video, the part where she speaks about poet, Ruth Stone, who must capture her poem/ idea before it goes away. *SIGH* And I knew I had to finish Sela's story before it left me and went and found some other willing soul to write it.

First I made myself rewrite the parts I was unhappy with. I wrote them with pencil and paper, not looking at the original writing, and I gave myself permission to say anything and to be as free as I wanted and to stray as far from the original writing as possible. It turned out that was exactly the thing I needed to really capture the voice of Sela. I worked on the story until 2 am Friday night and then until 3am Saturday. I got lost in 1924 and spent hours on single paragraphs. On Sunday morning, I proclaimed it done and my hubby and Olivia took me out for a celebratory lunch. They are good to me that way.

And then yesterday, before that evil inner critic could get a word in, I submitted it (gulp!) for consideration to a short story anthology. "Wicked Jenny" needs a home. If she doesn't find one out in the world then I will let her home be here and share it on the blog. I haven't worked on art to go with this story but maybe that will be next after I finish the above mentioned pieces.

Happy creating!!!!

 

kissing the button peddler

Oh, how I LOVE found poems! I love the surprise and the serendipitious connecting of words into phrases that my hand and brain wouldn't have done with just pen and paper. This one was shared with my writing group last night and I couldn't resist sharing it here as well. Blessings,

serendipity

Serendipity: discovery of something fortunate: the accidental discovery of something pleasant, valuable, or useful

It was a day this summer when I was feeling blue, unsure of myself, my inner critic being more of a chatterbox than ever. I was at a local coffeeshop, Olivia was at dance camp. This particular coffeeshop is my favorite place to write outside my home. (No, wait, I take that back, it ties with Mill Mtn. Coffee downtown. That place has good mojo too.) Words flow easy there so I was surprised to run up against such a different experience from the usual. At first I tried to ignore this loud-mouthed, nasty beastie and kept writing though after two hours the pencil wasn't much more than dead weight in my hand. I was working on a scene in TPS (a fiction novel I've been playing with for a while now), the scene where my MC (main character) hears the love interest play the fiddle for the first time. It's at a funeral, it's an important scene, and I wasn't capturing even a fraction of the feeling I needed. I told myself to keep going, cause you can fix bad, but you can't fix blank, right? But the more I wrote, the more discouraged I became. Now, that's not a typical reaction for me, I tend to stay fairly upbeat, but in that moment it was all there was. "Wow, this scene really stinks" snowballed into "wow, this entire project really stinks." Packing up my pencil and legal pad, I wondered if perhaps I shouldn't put the writing away for a while, a long while.

I was in the parking lot, beside my car, fumbling for the keys when I happened to look down and spot something shiny at my feet. Being the magpie that I am, I investigated. A necklace. And not just any necklace. A silver fiddle and bow. I went numb, my entire body frozen into one big goosebump, no more surprised than if a chunk of sky had fallen at my feet. Like the double rainbow guy, I wanted to shout, "What does this mean?"

Could it be coincidence? I really haven't tried to explain it to myself. That would take the magic away and I like this magic; this feeling of being watched over, guided. I read the serendipitous finding of the necklace as a sign to keep writing and since then, I've been writing every chance I can, which explains the long blog absenses.

Has something like this happened to you? I'd love to hear about it.

Blessings,