Your Creative Intentions: The Monday Post ~ December 3, 2012
“At night, never go to bed without knowing what you’ll write tomorrow.”
~Ernest Hemingway
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!
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Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
Okay, it’s Monday again. Last week I cheated and wrote my goals as I was already in the midst of working on them. Here they are:
a bit late here, but this week my goals are:
1. begin a vision statement for the next year/ five years- begun
2. carving drawings of yoga poses into stamps- yes!
3. using the stamps to do some gelatin printing and- yes
4. see what happens- and yes, made about 8 prints, some better than others
5. write a blog post- yes
6. writing piece for writing group, “Scabious Dream”- in progress (970 words)
This week:
1. Continue to refine vision statement, begin to split it into 1 year and 5 year goals, get very clear on specifics
2. Frame – I really have to frame 2 pieces this week
3. I got rejected from a show that I applied to, which is okay because after all I just started making prints, but still… so the goal is to deal with rejection without internalizing and simply aim for the next goal, which brings me to
4. apply paint to paper, I’ve already drawn on the gessoed paper and it’s ready to start. I blew the dust off the old Tracer/Projector, which was fun, and got out my acrylic paint.
5. Consider joining the Concord Art Asscociation and enter a painting into the January exhibit.
6. Carve out some time on Wednesday to work on studio organization.
7. Edit and submit writing piece by Tuesday for the writer’s group
8. Begin designing a yoga workshop: ….just throw some wild ideas on paper and start working out some sequences.
Until next week, ta ta!
Nice, artem….here’s a simple way to reframe rejection. Rejection is actually an affirmation of the fact that you are a working artist. If you hadn’t actually done the work and followed through with a submission, you wouldn’t have been in a position to even have a chance at that show. So celebrate the work that you’re doing, re-immerse yourself in process, and move along to the next thing. Bravo!
And now for something completely different…my mother-in-law is visiting for a month (and requires care) AND my husband is unexpectedly unemployed. While the job loss isn’t good news — at all — the silver lining is that now he will be home all month to spend time with his mother and help out with the increased responsibilities. I may actually end up with a little MORE time at my disposal, rather than less, if I play my cards right (he’s now doing school dropoffs and pickups, for example). And of course, it’s holiday time, so fun to have Dad around.
Last week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling [yes but didn’t hit every day]
* Daily writing practice [yes but didn’t hit every day]
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group [yes]
* Yoga/walk/run x4 [x3]
* Reading [yes — but have to crank up my reading hours if I’m going to hit my 50-book target by the end of the year!]
This week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling
* Daily writing practice
* Revise this month’s submission and send to Thursday writer’s group [Tues]
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group [daily]
* Yoga/walk/run x3 [M/W/Sat]
* Reading
at night I have the most amazing ideas for my next blog post and my goals for the next days are so clear, but in the mornings……?
Daily Life, could you write those ideas down at night–and take a few moments to review them in the morning?
fantastic idea, may try this, thanks…
I love writing down my ideas right before bedtime. I’m a morning person … so getting my blogs posted 1st thing in the morning becomes that much easier 🙂