Monday Post ~ January 17, 2011
Your Creativity in Action
What would you like to accomplish creatively this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.
Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.
It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
It’s been a busy week. I’m now on Etsy. Though my shop is quite small(mud of the ages), at least it’s up and complete.
Also have my website going. his is still a bear, as I navigate the whole wordpress.org thing. Again, not yet smooth as I want it, but up. I’m a learn as you go type person, so it will never be thoroughly complete.
Biggest event of the week. I ran a clay workshop, making bowls, to be used at a fundraiser dinner for haiti. 15 people came together with this common goal. In one afternoon, we accomplished almost 70 bowls. Exceedingly impressive, as these are not potters, just regular folk with a passion for helping our brothers and sisters who are suffering.
These are the kinds of events that leave a healing footprint. It was an honor to be able to serve their needs.
Wow — what a wonderful thing to do, Alexsondra. Hats off to you!
Last week I wrote: “This week I am going to draft a short nonfiction piece that I plan to submit to a literary publication next week. I’d like to have a strong draft in hand by Friday of this week so that I can sit on it for a little while and then have time to review and revise prior to my deadline.”
Outcome: I worked on my piece in several stints, although did not get it into a final draft. That will have to happen today and tomorrow, leaving me basically no time to get some distance from it before revising. No matter, I’m still going to make my deadline. In addition to this piece, I also spent some time on my nonfiction book — quite jazzed about that.
This week: Complete my nonfiction essay, revise, and submit on Wednesday. After that, more work on the book. My husband will be doing a bit of traveling this week, so I’ll have some “extra” evening time to work in addition to whatever I can squeeze in during the day.
writing retreat was excellent, though completely reoriented what i am doing to my manuscript. massive starting over to straighten out a few things based upon the generous critique i received the first night . then i got walloped with a stomach bug, so lost a day of writing, then anohter day when i came home. trying to get back to it. will blog with photos today…
as for one thing great that came out of the retreat, one of the writers and i, very local to each other, figured out at least one day a week to commit to leaving our houses together and going to a specific quiet place she knows about for about 5 hours on tues mornings that we don’t meet with our writing group which meets 2 tues a month). i ran it by grandma, and she agreed to pick up toots from preschool on those days.
we might even decide to add some thursdays as we both want to get our current works out to agents/pubs this spring.
congrats on opening your etsy shop, alexsondra! i’m keeping up with my mix it up monday. have a fun little book i created that i need to photograph and get posted today. didn’t get the special order done since my one special component i need to complete it hasn’t arrived yet. holiday weekend tripped me up. now have another special i need to get done on top of that one.
did update my etsy shop with lots of new pieces i needed get up there and first week of spring term is done and went rather smoothly, much thanks to the colder than average weather.
…so for this week…i hope to get my two special orders done…and i guess i forgot to mention i am taking an online painting class from my friend Wyanne (called Paint Free, very fun so far, though I am definitely NOT a painter!), so I’ hope to keep up with that. she posts a new short assignment on Wedesdays and a longer assignment on Fridays. Done with my Wednesday assignment from last week, and I hope to get to my Friday assignment today since the girls and i are home from school today for MLK day.
A friend and I are in the seed stages of writing a series of kids yoga workbooks. This week my goal is to have 5 illustrations to her for review. I know! This is crazy that I am on the illustration side of this one. S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G
Hello everyone and good luck with all your plans. I read this blog all the time but don’t comment. I had a blog before (http://www.freelancemam.blogspot.com/) My goals are two tiny things this week but if achieved, I’ll be happy.
– My computer crashed recently. My goal is to find my 60,000 word manuscript of a book somewhere. Possibly on another computer stuck in the attic, in an email account or on a USB covered in crumbs under the stairs. I will keep repeating, ‘I will find it’ as I search.
On the bus to work I am reading Annie Proulx short stories for inspiration and noting down how she describes her characters so well, with a view to learning how to do it better. I might steal the odd idea and re-shape it beyond recognition. No one needs to know.
That’s me.