Your Creative Intentions: The Monday Post ~ October 29, 2012
“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” ~Jack London
This is the moment to deepen, or commit to, your regular creativity practice. Regularity — a daily practice, if at all possible — is one of the best ways to stay in touch with how you make meaning.
What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic intention or practice plan — and ink that time in your calendar. The scheduling part is important, because as you know, if you try to “fit it in” around the edges, it generally won’t happen. An intention as simple as “I will write for 20 minutes every morning after breakfast” or “I will sketch a new still life on Wednesday evening” is what it’s all about.
Share your intentions or goals 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. We use a broad brush in defining creativity, so don’t be shy. We also often include well-being practices that support creativity, such as exercise and journaling.
Putting your intentions on “paper” helps you get clear on what you want to do — and sharing those intentions with this community is a great way to leverage the motivation of an accountability group. Join us!
:::::::
If you’re an artist or writer with little ones, The Creative Mother’s Guide: Six Creative Practices for the Early Years is the essential survival guide written just for you. Concrete strategies for becoming more creative without adding stress and guilt. Filled with the wisdom of 13 insightful creative mothers; written by a certified creativity coach and mother of five. “Highly recommended.” ~Eric Maisel. 35 pages/$11.98. Available for download here.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
My intention is to blog daily and paint 4 times this week. Thanks for the encouragement!
How did it go, Michelle??
Hoping that we make it through Sandy unscathed — and sending well wishes to everyone in her path.
Last week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling [spotty journaling last week]
* Daily writing practice [yes]
* Editing sessions (separate from writing practice) [yes]
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group [yes]
* Blog post [no]
* Yoga/walk/run x3 [yes]
* Reading
This week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling
* Daily writing practice
* Editing sessions (separate from writing practice) [a few minutes daily]
* Complete and send two chapters for Thursday’s writers’ group [M]
* Read peer pieces for Thursday’s writers’ group [T/W]
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group
* Blog post [W]
* Yoga/walk/run x3 [M/W/Sat]
* Reading
made it through Sandy fine, mostly just got rained on. my family up north got a little more battered, now without power, but fine. still haven’t heard from a brother in Madison, Ct, but I will assume he and his are okay.
last week, I worked on a couple of chapters of edits, and ended up switching gears, wrote a silly cat poem that has potential as a children’s picture book.
this week: will try to set aside a few hours, likely thurs, to work on the manuscript some more.
How’d things pan out, Cathy? I gathered from fb that you had an exciting literary departure!
departure, indeed, i needed a creative juice injection. way behind in nano official wordcounts, but feeling much happier about writing in general. will get to edits at my next couple of writing group meets. thanks!