Your Creative Intentions: The Monday Post ~ February 4, 2013
Now is the time to recommit to a regular creativity practice. Regularity — a daily practice, if possible — is one of the best ways to stay in touch with how you make meaning. Can a regular creative practice be part of your intentions for 2013?
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 leverages the motivation of an accountability group. Join us!
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Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
Last week:
1. Go to the Quill and Press for more plates-no
2. Finish the 5 year plan, begin breaking it up into one year segments-no
3. Make another one week calendar, I used plain white paper and 5 different color post-it notes for different areas of my life: yoga, art, home care, kid’s activities, gallery, etc. I ran out of colors and had to double up!- YES!
4. Concord Art Association Deadline: bring finished work Wednesday February 13th. The panels should arrive this week. So here’s the thing, work like crazy on the 2 new panels, and don’t worry about whether they’re good enough to submit. New work needs space to grow. But maybe they will be, just work on them anyway and have a back up plan, what do I submit if they don’t work out? Does it need to be framed? If so, order or scrounge up some frames. The panels won’t need framing since they’re cradled.- well, the panels arrived, but that’s as far as I got
5. Ellen’s great idea to draw an object everyday for the month. Today, Monday, pick an object for the remainder of January. There’s a great tea cup with a spoon and a teabag tag hanging out on my table right now. I had the idea that kitchen ware would go along with my theme of nourish this year, pots and pans, etc….- yes, partially, February object is a teapot, but I forgot yesterday!
6. Continue working on memoir, currently reading Mary Karr’s Liar’s Club as research. Head toward the goal of coming up with a title, list of chapters??- bought a binder and started printing out what I’ve got to look at the overall shape of it and get a better sense of the big picture
7. Post for the art blog, I could alternate posts, one week for yoga, one week for art. – posted to the yoga blog, “She who loves herbal tea”
8. Yoga: continue working on vinyasa sequences for classes. This week: Start a third sequence. Just start it. Personal practice goals: practice every day Monday through Friday and Sunday. Did not start the new sequence, but I did practice everyday except Saturday and found a new teacher in Belmont on Sunday morning who is awesome
9. Catch up on reading and commenting on the 5PM writing submissions from the last few weeks- behind here, but sent one person my comments
This week: It’s a big week for my daughter, she’s in a musical. When I look at what I pulled off last week and a birthday party too (although not at my house), it’s decent. A little prioritizing and tweaking and the artwork will happen more too.
1. Look into the Maud Morgan center for the arts. http://maudmorgan.com/events_news.htm
A little research, consider going to an opening??
2. Monday- printmaking class with Pam Lawson
3. Daily drawing: the teapot
4. One other art making session- at least 2 hours- Thursday. The CAA deadline is fast approaching. There’s a drawing prize too. Wednesday, February 13th. Oh dear, when I look at that, I realize that I probably need to cut out something else to make room for that. This is the part I’m not good at.
5. Blog Post for the art blog
6. Writing- edit and revise a section for Thursdays meeting
7. Gallery work- filing, Tarbell committee, ISS- Wednesday
8. Yoga- 2nd series Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, 1st series Thursday & Friday, ? Sunday? Can I get to a class?? Saturday off
9. the poor dog doesn’t get enough, truly, Mon, wed & Friday are my day to get him out. Try some longer walks or even running in the woods like I used to.
10. the poor 5 year plan, at the bottom of the list. I keep looking at the book with a guilty twinge. I know this kind of thinking will help me enormously, I’m not going to drop this from the list.
I will spend one hour per day on writing a fictional piece.
Awesome, cranky! Is that a set hour in the day, or do you have to fit it in around the edges?
I get up around 4am each morning. I call that my writing time. It’s time I spend on blogging, writing and just enjoying the peace and quiet with my coffee. So, I’ll just say that I’ll put the last hour of those 4 aside for my goal.
Yay for 4am writing practice! That’s my favorite!
Feeling like a million bucks today, thanks to a variation on my One Thing Only theme, which I’ll be sharing with you soon!
Daily writing practice streak: 54 days in a row of logging a minimum of 500 words daily in my WIP.
Last week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling [yes]
* Daily writing practice [yes]
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group [completed but still polishing — didn’t have time for my hard-copy, butt-in-chair review and subsequent edits, so decided to hold off on sending until this week]
* Prepare short story for submission to lit mag [yes]
* Write a blog post [just a re-post]
* Yoga x3 [x4]
* Reading [yes]
* Another installment of Project Life catch-up [yes]
* Work on month plan for February [yes]
This week’s creative/well-being intentions:
* Daily morning centering practice w/Morning Pages and intention journaling
* Daily writing practice
* Submit story to nonfiction group for Thursday’s meeting
* Read peer pieces
* Complete installment of short story for “5PM Friday” weekly accountability group [daily]
* Write a blog post [T]
* Yoga x3 [M/W/Sat]
* Reading [daily]
* Project Life [afternoons w/kids]
* Complete month plan for February
last week: rewrite (total revamp) sermon during designated tues morning writing time. tomorrow, CHECK didn’t need as much rewrite as i thought, a little more to go. back to query letter schedule and find time during rest of week, if possible, to look back into nano wrimo project and see what i can do with that. I crashed after last weekend’s travels with my son, his audition went well. i was happy to get naps.
this week: was going to jump back into the query letter thang, but i may have to ease into this week in general. our sweet puppy dog died suddenly over the weekend and i am still in shock and processing grief. i may just try to get back to paying attention to household things i let go of in writing and querying this week. you know, feel a little better by getting things into a better order. also have job interview on wed. wish me luck!
well, yesterday’s ^ looks bleak in creativity, but i did drag myself out to my partnered writing session, and wrote today. glad i forced myself to go, though i felt really braindead.
Today I found a few minutes to polish a little piece-in-progress. Thanks for the 1 thing each day idea … I’m tailoring that a bit by starting each day with a look at the schedule and a commitment to literally write in a bit of time to write.