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Posts by Miranda

Oct 16

17 Comments

Miranda: Getting my #%^&* together

It’s been a long time since I last posted a personal entry. Regular readers of this blog will know that I spent the last two months under an intense pile of client projects and had little bandwidth to do anything else. I have finally — and gratefully — emerged from under the mountain. I should now be able to get all of my work done on my two full workdays each week plus an hour or two of client e-mail and quick projects on the other three weekdays.

It’s time to take a little inventory and get back to my two main priorities: family life and finishing my nonfiction book.

The Current Condition

What’s my current landscape? We’ve settled into some kind of new routine and I’ve adapted to my preschooler’s pickup schedule. I have to leave every day at 11:30 to get him — but my husband takes him to school, so I don’t have to do both legs. The pickup takes 45 minutes in total, which does eat into my two workdays. But I try to use some of that car time for phone calls.

All five kids are in good places at the moment; no real issues or crises. That said, the 5-month-old doesn’t yet sleep more than three or four hours at a stretch during the night, which obviously means that I’m a little tired, but I’m usually able to just deal with it. I do have to pay some attention to my oldest son’s college application process and all that that involves. Toilet training with the 3.5-year-old is not going well at all (in fact we’ve regressed) but my husband and I are launching a new strategy this weekend (putting him back in underwear and then totally laying off the pressure, rather than keeping him in pull-ups and laying on the pressure), which we’ll commit to for a month. But nothing is going on beyond the usual parenting agenda. In fact, the household is in a pretty happy place right now. My husband and I are in a great place and we’ve had a nice long run without blended family conflict. In fact, there have been some very positive developments on the domestic front.

I’m also trying to up my fitness level — running at least twice a week and hoping to get back to my 4-6 mile runs three to four times a week before too long. I’m making progress. Yesterday I had a terrific run and really felt strong the whole time.

Our house is still on the market, but showings are infrequent and I’m able to keep my perspective. I no longer agonize over what will happen if we stay and how much I want to move; things are workable where we are and I will just make the best of it. At some point I realized that I have to get on with it and not wait for the house issue to be resolved; in this economy it could easily take us another year or longer to sell.

The only other significant time drain at the moment is the election. We’re an avidly political family and I  have to get my evening fix of political shows on cable. I often multitask with the laptop during this time, but I do look forward to enjoying other schedule options post-election.

So, not much to complain about. Guess I’ll have to rely on Cathy’s 24 ways to avoid your manuscript if I need an excuse to procrastinate. But of course, I don’t need any more excuses. It’s time to finish the book and get on with my stew pot of other creative projects.

The Plan

My nonfiction proposal is being shopped by an agent, but as I’ve said here before, if we have no takers I will self-publish. I can’t let the manuscript languish while waiting to sell it. If I end up selling the thing when it’s already near completion, and the editor wants to make substantive changes (as would be expected with a nonfiction ms), I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Time to commit to the work with a concrete roadmap.

On Monday I made some calculations. My manuscript is currently 53K words long. I estimate that I need another 40K-50K to finish. Seeing as I’m working from a fairly comprehensive outline, the writing comes quickly when I’m actually writing (or, I should say, quickly for me — compared to writing fiction). I can probably count on writing 1,000 words in four hours. I’ll round that up to five hours just to have some margin for the remaining research, etc. Now comes the sticky part.

If I spend five hours a week on my book, I will finish the first draft in a year. If I double that and eke out 2,000 words a week, I will finish by the end of April. That’s a little more appetizing, wouldn’t you say?

Where am I going to get 10 hours a week? At first glance it’s hard to see, but I know it’s really a matter of priorities. How is it that I can be so committed to keeping this blog going, for example, but not show the same level of commitment with my manuscript? Since we started the weekly creativity contest, I’ve never missed posting the Wednesday winner post, even though it sometimes takes well more than an hour of work the night prior or early that morning. Tomorrow I will post our 20th Breakfast interview — a weekly project that sometimes takes three hours of work or more. But I would never miss that deadline, even if I’m up until well past midnight staging the post.

As my cousin Charlotte rightly pointed out over coffee on Tuesday, the blog involves a lot of other people, and I hold myself accountable. That’s why I am able to stay up late at night preparing a post when it wouldn’t occur to me to spend those same hours on my manuscript. True, I can also rationalize the time investment with the knowledge that the content of this blog as well as the creative social network it provides are both intrinsic parts of my book. I have no intention of cutting back on the blog, but I need to keep my eyes on the real goal: finishing my book.

While 5 hours a week seems do-able, the year-off finish line is a real party killer. A 6-month timeframe is much cheerier, but I don’t know if I’m going to have 10 hours for writing every week. I spent some time going back and forth, trying to decide which way I should commit. Charlotte suggested starting with the 5 hours for a few weeks to see how it goes, which was a practical suggestion, but seemed to rub my Superwoman instincts the wrong way (yes, I should know better). But I agreed with Charlotte in that I didn’t want to set myself up for failure by setting the bar to high.

It occurred to me that my son’s Montessori school has a schedule arrangement that I really like. Instead of having a straight pickup time (say, noon) we have a pickup window: 11:45 to noon. I have 15 minutes within which I can arrive and not be late. Every day, I appreciate that I can vary my arrival time within those 15 minutes and still be right on time. Why not apply the same forgiving structure to my ms goal? This “range” makes sense to me and allows me some wiggle room within a demanding and unpredictable schedule.

So, I have now committed to writing 5 to 10 hours every week. If I only manage 5, I have still succeeded. If I make it to 10 or more, I am simply moving that much more quickly toward my goal. I will be tracking time and wordcount to monitor my progress; adjustments will be made as needed. Each Sunday I will map out where those hours are going to come from, and add them to my Outlook calendar as I would any other appointment.

There it is. I have a plan, and I’m sticking to it. Gotta go — I have 2 hours of manuscript time to complete today. 🙂

Oct 15

8 Comments

10/15 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

An interesting collection came in for this week’s contest prompt: “tears.” The winner is Cathy Coley, who noted: “Boy did i not want to write for this one. But close to tears from sleep deprivation…. ” Maybe that’s partly why her poem has such merit?

Tears
If I allow it, the full banks of my eyelids
would overflow, flood a room, then the house,
burst out the front door into the neighborhood,
and solve these past drought seasons.
Cars would float away to the sea
and the world would fill with my tears.
No more land in sight, we’d adapt,
grow gills and become one with the fishes,
swim free and never have to worry about the tears.
Who would see them in the watery world?

If I allow it, all the heartbreaking things would kill me.
But what use is feeling sorry for myself,
I have a job to do.
I have to raise good men in a childhood under war.
My second son raises the bar because every moment
amidst the peopled world is a struggle to cope
in a thousand streams of stimuli his mind can’t sort.
Everyday, I ask
how can I make the world bend to him?
How can I make him fit in this world
when he is clearly a puzzle piece from a different box.

The other day he told me,
I act mean so people won’t know I’m really nice.
What is more heartbreaking than that?
He’s already so separate from the world,
and forming a harder shell around his big loving heart.
My first son, a sensitive heart from early on is doing the same.

I have to raise a daughter protected against the odds.
I have to give her a sense of strength of self,
not just against the tide of what the world will thrust at her,
but truly her own vision:
Joan of Arc,
without the crazy and the pyre.

So what use are my tears, except to flood?
Maybe wash away the hard lines accruing on my face,
heave sobs to break apart the muscle tension from my temples
through my neck and shoulders?
Sounds like a needed welcome relief
and a completely selfish act,
if I allow it.

 

From Karen Winters: “I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to paint anything new for the prompt, so I’m using an older one from my archives. This painting was in the 2007 National Watercolor Society all member show and it is titled ‘As the Parade Passed By.’ I saw this older gentleman watching a parade, and his eyes were shiny, as though we was on the the verge of tears. I can only imagine what was going through his thoughts. The National Watercolor society member show is a national juried show and I was very happy that my painting was one of about 80 chosen out of the hundreds and hundreds of entries they receive. Although this painting is precious to me and not for sale I take a print of it to some of my shows as an example of the kind of watercolor portraiture I can do on commission. There is no white paint in this picture — the white in his hair is the white of the paper and you just paint around it (very carefully).”

 

 

From Betsy G., a prose piece. Betsy worked in a lightning round — she gave herself just one hour for the exercise:

She recognized the handwriting right off, could almost see the Bic pen in his hand scratching at the front of the envelope, forming the letters—all capitals, all the time, not with bold aggressive strokes but a light and graceful slant. It was a plain, white number 10 business envelope; he’d never written her using anything but that.

Finding his letter amid the bills and catalogs had of course surprised her and at first sent a thrill though her. A letter! Each day when she went collected her mail, she hoped to see her name hand scrawled on an envelope as she used to sometimes daily, now essentially never. But she could never fight her childish optimism that a letter would be waiting for her, a shiny red wagon on Christmas morning. But after she finished processing the idea that she’d received a letter at all and understood that the letter was from him, the thrill turned to chill.

And now it sat in front of her on the kitchen table, unopened, a padded package stuffed with white-lined notebook pages. It was surely multi-paged; she could tell by its bulk. She tried to ordain from its weight what it might say, if it was simply a history of all that had transpired since they’d last seen each other eight years ago, or if he might have retraced the circuitous map of his feelings and followed it to the reason why they had not arrived at the anticipated proposal but to his sudden withdrawal from her life at the realization that those feelings did not amount to love. She could still hear his voice that day, the gall that he would he utter the words: “I love you, I’m just not…” She’d had to stop him there to prevent him from completing the clichéd lover’s ending, to stop him from emblazing the full phrase, in his voice, in her head and forever be disgraced for embracing the trite kiss-off.

Or perhaps it was the letter she’d written for him over and over: what was I thinking, of course, what a fool, how could I have, and to you, my pearl. Perhaps he’d realized… That word—“realized”—the delusional verb that she’d finally let go of, and not as long ago as she would have wished; she never again wanted to think this word and of him.

The envelope and its mysteries on the kitchen table, next to the plate of corner bread crusts from her lunch and the glass with its wading pool of Diet Coke, beg her to take action. She is at odds with herself and sits a long time at her place at the table. There will be long-term ramifications, she knows, and probably regret that she will revisit obsessively, but a vision comes to her and starts to solidify. She begins to know—to realize—that she will bring that vision to life despite its obvious flaws.
She takes the letter from the table and presses it to her cheek, the moist blue of the ink on her warm skin. And then she watches her hands, as if they are someone else’s. They are hands on TV or in a movie and she watches with rapt interest as they tear the envelope in half, and half again, and again and again.

 

From Juliet Bell: “I don’t remember why my daughter was so upset in this picture. We were in the English Garden in Munich, Germany. I do recall that she was truly upset. This isn’t one of my favorite pictures.”

 

 

From me (Miranda): As an adult, I don’t always know how to process extreme conflict. On one occasion several years ago, I was overwhelmed by anxiety and emotional upset; totally adrift. To anchor myself, I drew the doodle below, making lines through vision blurred by tears. The notebook paper is 5″ x 8″ — and the lines are tiny. (For a better view, click on the image.) The exercise worked in that I got to a place of being able to function again, after the hour or two that I spent working at the page.

 

 

This week’s prompt: “Apples”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, a hint for colors, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, October 21. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Oct 13

Submissions: Carve Magazine

Carve Magazine — the well-respected online literary publication that offers the Raymond Carver Short Fiction Award — is looking for artwork and photography for issue covers and interiors. A great opportunity for visual artists. More info here.

You can also find out how to submit your fiction, read the current issue, or browse the archives.

Oct 10

9 Comments

Breakfast with Leslie

We’ve talked about cake for Breakfast before, but this week you’re really going to want a big slice — seeing as it’s being served by Leslie F. Miller: mother, writer, artist, blogger, and cake lover, among other creative pursuits. Have seconds. You won’t regret it.

Leslie Miller, ready for Stephen Colbert

Leslie F. Miller is ready for you, Stephen Colbert!

CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
LM: You’re supposed to be able to sum up every project in a sentence, so I used to tell people that I like breaking things and putting them back together in a random, yet tasteful, order. It covers artist, designer, and reconstructionist — with words and mosaic shards.

I do less with mosaics these days, but I’m still a writer, a graphic designer, and a photographer. I do all those things for pay when they pay and for fun when they don’t.

My husband and I moved in together in the early eighties, got married in 1994, and have been together for a total of 26 years. Our only daughter, Serena Joy Utah Miller, will become a ‘tween (eleven) in January. We have two dogs, Cleopatra (12) and Chance (5). We used to have snakes and, because of the snakes, mice. I’m glad they are gone.

Tree of Life

Tree of Life

CC: Tell us about your book, your photography, and other creative endeavors.
LM: I have always wanted to write a book. It shouldn’t have taken me so long, and I will probably go on regretting that it did. But the truth is that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. I never had trouble writing short, but writing long was a different beast. I committed by enrolling in an MFA program (Goucher College), where I knew I would have mentors to help me work on a book.

I chose to write about cake because I love it. Passion is what drives the best writing. I don’t care about Abraham Lincoln. I couldn’t devote three years to him without beginning to sound like Eyeore. But cake I could do. A short essay I’d written got enthusiastic applause at an open reading during my MFA residency, so I thought: What could be better than a whole book like this? We’ll see if I’m right. [Leslie’s book, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt, will be published in April 2009 by Simon & Schuster.]

As for the photography, I take pictures for similar reasons-to express passion and enthusiasm for a subject. Sometimes the pictures illustrate words or thoughts. Other times they inspire the words. And then there are the times that photography becomes science. I like to get in really close to things, especially bugs. I like the make the tiny big and the big tiny. I like to see the hairs on a fly.

Crow

Crow

CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
LM: My first blog post was June 11, 2004 at A Doggy’s Life. I used a blog called Essay This! to post assignments for the college writing courses I taught. Then I started a project blog when I made a mosaic crab for Baltimore City. Then I started a food blog as a homework assignment during my MFA. Then I started a cake blog for my cake stuff. Most of that is hidden now, and I concentrate on my current blog. It’s a little prettier, and the writing is stronger and more purposeful. I sort of had to do it for my editor — so that I’d have my own PR out there. And I didn’t want to be so random.

Writing, like playing music or soccer or acting in a play, requires practice. Journals are terrific places for writers to practice. But I actually dig the idea of practicing in front of an audience. My writings are dress rehearsals. I go through the brainstorming, rough draft, revision, and publication processes quickly, but I don’t skip a phase (unless the writing sucks, and then I just toss it and lament my wasted time). Journals usually stop at the spew! But editing and revising require practice, too.

I doubt I would do it now if no one commented. I did early on, but now — writers need affirmation. It’s not enough to know they read. I need them to say something. Otherwise I’m talking to myself. I recently gave a reading in a small space. Eighteen people came, and that was nice. But I would rather ham it up in front of 100. I’m much more self-conscious in front of two than I am in front of a big crowd.

cakelove

cakelove

CC: What goals do you have for your creative pursuits? What do you most hope to accomplish?
LM: I’ve written the book, so now, I guess, my next goal is to sit on Stephen Colbert’s lap and feed him cake. I’d also like to go on the Diane Rehm show. And though I am serious about those things, I guess I would also really like to finish the proposal for my next book and have it accepted. And I want to be a rock star, too. And get younger.

CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively? How would you define your “life’s work”?
LM: Well, I’m selfish. My life’s work is always going to be the work part. Because even though my daughter can be tough, she’s not really work. My job with her is to make sure she can talk to me about anything, to keep her from developing my bad eating habits, and to remind her to make her bed and finish her homework. Everything else is what she does, and it mostly just makes me proud. Every day.

Clones

Clones

CC: Where do you do your creative work?
LM: I work in my kitchen and sometimes, when it’s nice outside, on my deck. But the kitchen is the place. It has water, cake, coffee, beer, lunch, a phone, a TV, a stereo. We once joked that if I put a sofa in here, I would never have to leave.

I recently herniated my disk, so I have to alternate between sitting and standing. I can do that at the kitchen table, then the countertop.

CC: Do you have a schedule for your writing and other creative activities? How do you do it “all”?

Find Yourself

Find Yourself

LM: If I am a good girl, I write a page a day when working on a project, and I spend between nine and 2:30 writing. I do my best writing in the morning and my best research after lunch. The writing is of primary importance, though.

Of course, if a murder of crows gathers in the tree by my front window or seventeen monarch butterflies swarm the butterfly bush out back or a pair of flies mates on a chair on the porch, I break with camera.

I guess I do give the appearance that I do it all. I think it’s because I do everything fast. I eat fast, sleep fast, cook fast, drink fast, write fast. Yes, I have sex fast, too. (Not that you asked.)

I also schedule the leisure. At 4:00, it’s beer and guitar time. I practice guitar and drink a beer just about every day at 4:00.

Midlife Crisis

Midlife Crisis

CC: What do you struggle with most?
LM: So much of what I do requires sitting. I have to sit less. Probably the hardest part is that my work only happens when no one is home. I can do no writing without complete solitude! I can write with the television or stereo on, but I cannot have anyone in the house.

When you are writing SERIOUSLY, interruptions can destroy your work. A few years ago on Thanksgiving day, I wrote an essay. It was for fun, but I spent five hours writing, doing nothing else, with my family home and my mother-in-law visiting. I felt like I was being rude, but I knew it was something that had to get written. The next day, I spent another seven hours on it. My husband thought it was the biggest waste of time.

But that essay took honorable mention in an annual contest, was published in an online literary journal, and won a $1,000 grant. Not bad for 12 hours.

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
LM: Oh, the birds. The flowers. Sunrises and sets. Something my daughter says or my husband does. A kindness. Gosh, just waking up is an inspiration. If you told me to write about a banana, I could find something wonderful to tell you about it. Like the fact that my husband eats one every single day, along with an apple, and rarely gets sick. Or that laying banana slices on top of banana bread batter, then covering it all with cinnamon sugar before baking it, will make the most incredible — and gorgeous — banana bread you’ve ever eaten.

(Just don’t ask me to write a book about Lincoln.)

My Girl with Pearl Earring

My Girl with Pearl Earring

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?
LM: I have trouble reading those insanely popular blogs because I feel so far behind in their lives. And sometimes I just don’t get the attraction. I guess I also like more of a rapport between reader and writer — someone who appreciates my comment and might actually respond to it. I can’t help but respond to people who comment. I want to thank them all personally.

  • As a writer and a person, Jennifer König is the tops. I wish she’d update her blog more frequently, but she writes on Flickr, as do most of the people I read regularly.
  • My favorite must-read blog is by Your Neighborhood Librarian, who lives two blocks away, so she’s literally my neighborhood librarian. I adore Paula’s sense of humor, her insane mommy-ness, her technological savvy, and her pink hair.
  • You gotta love Cake Wrecks because, well, you just gotta.
  • My friend Barbara Benham is a superb writer, even if her Travel Sweeps is a weird idea for a blog. She tells you of all the travel contests you can enter (she’s always trying to Win Trips, the blog’s subtitle), and she does it with these fringe-ly related essays that are like little poems in their language economy and elegance.
  • Michael Kimball writes life stories on post cards. Mine will be one of them — maybe today. But they are so clever and sweet. I read him all the time.
  • (My cheap thrill (don’t tell anyone) is Fugly. Those ladies are hilarious writers. So sarcastic. They make me laugh.)
Strawberry Tongue

Strawberry Tongue

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
LM: I sure love a facial. I am trying to get them more than twice a year. But, honestly, some people see my whole life as an indulgence. I am self-employed, and my husband is a social studies teacher at a Catholic middle school, so we have no money. Still I work from home on miscellaneous freelance projects, and I have everything I could want or need. It is a good life, a cake life at times. I blog, write articles, take pictures, go for walks, and cook all day. Sometimes I have lunch with a friend.

CC: What are you reading right now?
LM: I just finished Dear Everybody, by Michael Kimball, and now I’m back to researching for a new book, so I am reading This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin, and Guitar: An American Life, by Tim Brookes.

Makeup

Makeup

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
LM: After the birth of my daughter, so much of my life had changed. I had stopped writing and singing. I had not written any poetry. And I also stopped sleeping. I saw therapists and psychiatrists to help get me back on track, but I struggled for about five years with medications that only worked sometimes. Then I met a therapist who told me I needed to write poetry or join a punk rock band. I learned the importance of meditation when I felt at my most harried. And I learned that being selfish with the time I needed to write was the best thing I could do for my family.

Now, maybe I err on the other side. Maybe I do too much me stuff.

Nah. 😉

CC: It’s been sweet, Leslie. Thank you. Keep us posted on your book release.

Oct 8

5 Comments

10/8 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Ah, the colors of autumn. The winner of this week’s contest is Karen Winters. Karen writes: “Coincidentally, this was the painting I was going to post today, so it’s good timing. It represents a small bridge over a stream not far from where I live. The California sycamores put on quite a show when the time is right.” A beautiful and dreamy painting, Karen! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate is on the way.

 

 

From Cathy Jennings: “Here is something for autumn. I made these with my son for his kindergarten class this week. They are gluten-free sugar cookie mix, with currants for eyes and fruit leather for the mouth….All the little monsters like them.” LOL — nice work, Cathy!

 

From Elizabeth Beck: “i just finished this painting this week….leaves are gone…birds have flown away…it is autumn…almost winter…almost spring again….”

 

From Cathy Coley, two poems selected from her archives:

 

No matter the sorrows, still
the yellow tree trembles.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September

Time does not slip from my fingers.
It runs roaring from the grip
Humanity places on everything.
We’ve wrestled the lion into the measured cage
Of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes,
Seconds on down to nanoseconds.

But time is no circus lion under the whip
To whom an open door is a forlorn vision of freedom;
Who lays swatting flies with his magnificent tail,
As his trainer waltzes through the creaking iron door,
Steak in hand.

Time is not contained by our definitions.
The Time/Space Continuum does not hold
Its butterflies in the net.

My small attempts to keep Time at bay:
My lists and schedules; I would rather be
forming yoga postures, swimming,
Sitting in the grass smelling starlight,
Running down the beach, sand curling
Between my toes in the shallows of the waves,
Making love, playing cards, talking of dreams,
Listening to friends’ woes, loving my children,
Laughing, laughing, and watching them grow
While wishing they’d hold this moment a little longer
Before losing another tooth or stretching the soft curve
Of their cheeks across a jawbone.

I feel like an ass
Baying against Time.
The moon looks down and shines a gaze
For me to consider her cycles around earth;
Her endless shift of seasons,
Her veils of tides.
The sun doesn’t care but to dry us up.
And the two pass this blue ball between them
In a game we can only imagine because its time is
Too big to consider from our few measured days.

And Time, stalwart, waits and watches
Us grow from buds to fall like leaves,
As we watch now the red and gold
Flip, float and curl in the wind
Toward a pile, wrap in and around:
The tail of a lion
With no flies to swat.

 

From me (Miranda): A photograph. No poem this week! Just the photo. I drive by this spot every Monday and had been wanting to shoot it for weeks. I was disappointed that this Monday was overcast, because I’d been looking forward to bright sun on red leaves, but I was thrilled with what I got instead.

 

 

This week’s prompt: “Tears”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, a hint for colors, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, October 14. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Oct 6

6 Comments

Onscreen: Who Does She Think She Is?

Wouldn’t it be affirming to see your experiences as a creative mother captured on film? Filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll, who won an Academy Award for the documentary Born Into Brothels, now addresses the issues well familiar to readers of this blog.

Who Does She Think She Is? explores the lives of five creative women, all professional artists and mothers. Boll is personally familiar with the challenges that creative mothers face: credibility, the juggling act, financial issues, marital stress. From the Director’s Statement:

At the age of 32, I had my first child. On becoming a mother, the buried part of myself — the emotional and curious, the creative — roared back to life. I wrote, then began painting again. Motherhood had returned me to my creative, expressive self.

Over the next 30 years, I painted and wrote but always in the spaces left over after my family’s needs. If I did the work it was with guilt. At the studio, I felt that I should have been reading to the children. At home with the boys, I often felt bored by the routine of feeding, cleaning, comforting, caring. [More here under “About the Film”.]

You’ll find lots of behind-the-scenes details at the film’s impressive website. Opens in theaters October 17, 2008. Until then, here’s a clip. I think this is one film that we all need to see.

Oct 3

5 Comments

Breakfast with Lindsey

This week we have Breakfast with Lindsey Cheney, crafter and homeschooling mother of three. Lindsey is a pro at doing 83 things at once — all with a little extra creative flair. Enjoy!

CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
LC: My name is Lindsey Cheney. I’ve been a wife to Sean for 8 years now and a mom to Gracie (5), Lily (almost 3), and Silas (14 months). I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for the past five years, and just began homeschooling my kindergartener this year. The same week I began homeschooling I also launched my new business blog, the pleated poppy, where I offer a number of handmade items. I cannot say I was smart in my timing! But staying at home with my kids allows for a lot of flexibility in our schedules and having two kids that nap allows for a little extra creative time.

CC: Tell us about your creative endeavors-and what’s on the offing in your shop. What does “creativity” mean to you?
LC: Creativity has always been a way of life for me, for as long as I can remember. My mom encouraged me to be crafty from a young age, from sewing to painting to decorating to decoupage. It is a way of life for her that has always seemed natural, so I think I just picked up on it by osmosis! To me, being creative means looking at things from a fresh perspective, putting your own twist on something, looking at something and saying, “I can do that.”

Since I am a mom of three little ones, I generally only put up a small amount of items for sale at a time, so I can keep up with the demand. I’ve offered zippered pouches, notebook covers, headbands, hair clips, pushpins, and magnets. My most popular items are my posy pins. I just can’t seem to make enough of those!

CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
LC: My sweet friend Lisa Leonard [former Breakfast guest] started a blog a couple years ago, and I got sucked into the blogging world. I first started my personal blog, imperfect, as a way to connect with family and friends, but also to show some crafty endeavors that would hopefully inspire others as I had been inspired by the mass amounts of creative blogs out there. I definitely have an ebb and flow with blogging — sometimes it’s a week between posts, and other times I get to it daily. I’d love to have more consistency. What keeps me going is when I find another blog where someone has used an idea or tutorial of mine and made it their own. I love sharing and borrowing creative ideas!

CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
LC: So many ways! I have to be creative with my time first of all. Instead of working when I get some inspiration, I work when I have someone napping or playing happily. My projects tend to be smaller and quicker. I can’t leave too many projects sitting out, otherwise I may have some extra help from little hands.

CC: Where do you do your creative work?
LC: Part of my husband’s business involves creating storage. Last Christmas he gave me an incredible work station in the kids’ playroom. Before he had even finished building it, I had it filled up and still needed more space! I love having a work space where the kids are. I’m sure I’d love a studio of my own, but that’s really not an option for me to hide away for hours on end in a space away from my kids. Maybe in 10 years! For now, I love that I can sneak in a little time here and there when the kids are busy coloring or building block towers or “nursing” their babies. On bigger projects I tend to migrate toward the dining room table where I can really spread things out, but in general, I love my space where everything I need is within reach.

CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work? How do you manage to fit everything into your busy life?
LC: I try to get right to work as soon as the kids are napping, but I so often get pulled in other directions, like e-mail or laundry. As fun as creative work is, it’s still a discipline to set a specific time for working. One thing I love about what I do combined with homeschooling is that I can do them both at the same time. While my daughter is working on a project, I can guide her verbally and do my own busy work with my hands. I also stay up waaaay too late most nights, so I can get a couple hours of uninterrupted work in.

CC: What do you most hope to accomplish with your artwork?
LC: I hope that my work can bless others, that it can bring them a smile and maybe a compliment! But what I really hope is that from my children constantly being a part of my work, that they learn to be creative in their own ways, too.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
LC: I definitely struggle most with balance. Balancing my time, attention, and thoughts. I hope that someday being a wife, mother, friend, teacher, and crafter all fit in together and feel natural and not forced. And I hope that I can get to the point where I stop forgetting so much — I don’t know if that’s a result of having too much on my plate, or having three kids!

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
LC: Magazines (good ol’ Martha), catalogs (have you looked at PB Kids lately!?), and a ridiculous amount of incredible blogs.

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
LC: Chocolate. Definitely. Nuff said.

CC: What are you reading right now?
LC: Hmmm…reading? Do magazines count? Actually, I’m pretty notorious for starting books and not finishing them. So the books that are currently gathering dust on my bedside table are mostly homeschooling books: Homeschooling: The Early Years, When Children Love to Learn, A Thomas Jefferson Education, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, and The Creative Family.

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
LC: Give yourself some grace. Perfection is not going to happen, but life will. Squeeze in a little something here and there. Be creative with decorating, entertaining, photography, in places you already spend your time, just do it differently.

CC: Many thanks, Lindsey!

Oct 1

4 Comments

10/1 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Lots of great stuff for the weekly creativity contest prompt “the notebook.” Our winner is Brittany Vandeputte, who pulled a selection of snippets from her notebook and created a poem. Below, she shows us the snippets in the first list; after, the finished poem. It’s so satisfying to see snippets woven into a new life. (I know you have a collection of snippets too!) Brittany, your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been sent.

12:01 airlines
Tuesday groceries
summer electronics
fall appliances
winter exercise equipment

no stalking no amorous advances
revise well
write fast
read constantly
be open to suggestions
submit to the right people
be gentle with publishers

Rome really looked like it was being sacked.
Who was the woman supposed to be?
I don’t remember her character.

Eyes like Ireland after storm. Blue-green dotted with rocks.

Fix carseat
organize
install toilet lock
swif bathroom
work on porch
install baby gates

peaches
grapefruit

provolone or muenster

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Husband, Read Her Mind

12:01
Eyes like Ireland after storm. Blue-green dotted with rocks.
Who was the woman supposed to be?
Her character really looked like it was being sacked.

No amorous advances summer fall winter.

Remember groceries.

Peaches
Grapefruit
Provolone or muenster

Fix carseat
Organize
Install toilet lock
Swif bathroom
Work on porch
Install baby gates.

Be open to suggestions.
Be gentle.

 

From Aimee Dolich, a series of beautiful notebook pages. Aimee writes: “i loved your notebook prompt for this week, so i thought i’d join the fun. these pages are my contribution to a traveling journal project. we were permitted to write on any theme we chose, so i decided to write/draw a few bits about the history and the quirks of the crazy little college town that i live in. i’ve so enjoyed reading the creative construction blog. it’s wonderful to hear from other mothers that balance the delights and demands of creativity and parenting.” Thanks, Aimee! It’s wonderful to have you here. (Don’t miss Aimee’s full entry at the link above.)

 

From Lisa Worthington-Brown, a prose poem. (I love the immediacy, Lisa!)

The Notebook
A tattered red cover with a heavy crease along the spine. A coffee ring on the right hand corner from last Wednesday’s use as a coaster. Stray ink marks along the pages from the pen-twirling that signifies thinking. The outside is worn and faded. The casual observer might think that it is unimportant or uncared for. Flipping through the unlined pages one might assume that the writer was bored — with all of those doodles — and messy — with uneven lines of prose, incomplete (and sometimes incomprehensible) sentences, poor grammar and spelling, and even made up words. But to the writer the book is a treasure. A place where dreams exist and ideas are born. A place where anything is possible — or even likely. A place where the world makes sense — or the chaotic nature of it is celebrated. A place to live. A place to be. A home. A haven. Me.

 

From Cathy Jennings, a digital image created in Twisted Brush:

 

 

From Cathy Coley, a haiku and image pairing:


The notebook
We may disagree
what constitutes art at least
my son makes his own

 

 

From me (Miranda), an image and free-form poem:

An Unexpected Parallel

Notebooks are full of possibility
smelling faintly of hope and dreams.
A notebook in my hands reminds me of who I am.

Babies are full of possibility
smelling faintly of hope and dreams.
A baby in my hands reminds me of who I am.

No wonder I seem to collect them both.

 

 

This week’s prompt: “Autumn”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, a hint for colors, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, October 7. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Sep 26

5 Comments

Breakfast with Allison

This week’s Breakfast date introduces us to Allison Strine, the artist, blogger, and mother otherwise known as Elizabeth Beck‘s best friend. If you’ve ever doubted your creative path, read on. Prepare for an omelet of reinforcement and inspiration!

CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
AS: My name is Allison Strine. I’m a wife, a daughter, a sister, and a mommy, and mostly I’m one of the luckiest people on the face of this Earth. It’s a bit ironic, considering the fact that for first 30-odd (and they were odd) years of my life all I wanted was to be someone else, anyone else. I never thought of myself as having a single creative bone; instead I delivered pizzas, worked with horses, and later became a television editor.

CC: Tell us about your collages, jewelry, and what’s up in your Etsy shop.
AS: Okay, I totally stumbled onto being a “real” artist. I had spent several years being very involved in the scrapbooking and altered arts industry, focusing solely on doing work for publication. I really loved seeing my work in print, especially in highly regarded mags like Cloth Paper Scissors and Somerset Studio. After a while, I started feeling like I was losing myself, doing work that I thought editors might like, instead of listening to my art heart inside. So after a short art break, I whirled through a spurt of creating highly personal little figures that talked. Since they were part lady and part bird, I came up with the brilliant moniker of LadyBirds (I know, it’s shocking, but true). A friend mentioned Etsy as a possible outlet for me, and I started a little shop. It wasn’t easy to shush the “what-if-no-one-buys-them” naysayer inside of me, but I’m so glad I did! That was about two years ago, and now I’m proud as can be to be one of the top selling artists on Etsy. LadyBirds are also sold to almost 100 girly gift shops and galleries all across the country, and I’m lovin’ it!

LadyBirds were born from a desire to bring joy and some healing feelings to my little world, all on an artist’s canvas. First, I make a colorful, textured, layered background, the kind that you have to look at closely to see everything that is there. Kind of like me! Using patterned tissue papers, transparencies, specialty papers, paint, and whatever else I can get my hands on, the background comes to life. When that dries, it’s time for the next step.

I like to let each LadyBird evolve of her own volition. There are so many negative messages sent to women about our bodies, and it is important to me that they are made of all shapes, from massive silhouettes to pencil thin bodies, and their skin and feathers come in every color imaginable. The whole process is so random that I marvel every time a finished canvas looks right to my eye. I’ve been known to blindly reach for paint colors, thumb through odd catalogs, and play a game to see if I can use something from the mail of that day in each piece (thank you Pottery Barn). I am big on recycling, and this makes me feel better about all that junk mail!

Each piece is a tiny world of detail, colors, sizes, and shapes that emphasize inner beauty and individuality. When the LadyBird is finished, I look to see what she’s saying. I’m listening for that quirky, sometimes-irreverent, sometimes-touching, but upbeat message that most of us think — but never think to say about ourselves. I want to make art that sends a positive message to my daughter about what it means to be a girl, to help her to understand that she is much more than what others see on the outside.

CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
AS: When I finally called in a website designer, it was important to create a site that changes frequently, to keep the look fresh. So the home page of my website is actually my blog, and although I find myself showing the artwork that I’ve spend money on more than anything, it’s still fun!

CC: You came to art later in life than some. How did you discover your artist self?
AS: If you’d told me five years ago that I’d become an artist, and create collages that actually speak volumes to people, and sell my work to lots of women all over the world, well…you better believe I would have thought you were crazy! I’m learning so much about myself during this phase of my life; chiefly that I really do have my own voice, and that lots of people feel the same way I do, and that that I’m not the only one to go the whole day without putting on a bra!

CC: Where do you do your creative work?
AS: Ahh…I’ve taken over a huge hunk of our basement. One section is for my studio, with a couple of big tables, and bookshelves for supplies, and my new favorite thing — an idea board that takes up the whole wall. Love it love it love it! I also have a big “factory,” as my helper Lisa and I jokingly call it. It’s really a corner of the basement dedicated to storing LadyBird items like soldered pendants, prints, magnets, and greeting cards. There’s a soldering station set up for creating new LadyBirds, and of course a shipping section!

CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
CC: Start with the fact that I never thought of myself as creative, or an artist. But when my Olivia, age 11, turned about 2, I discovered pottery. Oooh, the feel of the clay, the challenge of trying to throw a pot, I fell in LOVE. I think I’ve figured out that I have a bit of an obsessive personality because I soon found myself with a potter’s wheel and enough clay to keep me and Olivia busy all day. After Ethan (now 8 years old) came along the clay went away to be replaced with crayons and Play-Doh for a couple of years. Now, I love that with my basement studio, there’s a place for my kids to comfortably paint, and draw, and do rub-ons, and bead, and do clay, and make a mess! If only I could train them to clean up after themselves. Actually, if only I could train ME to clean up after myself!

CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work? How do you manage to fit everything into your busy life?
AS: Considering that I’m writing this at 11:19 pm, when I’m *supposed* to be long asleep, you may not think I’m great at the big juggle. Heh… Most weekdays Lisa and her two dogs join me and my dog in the morning. After a visit with Lily the guinea pig, Lisa starts with creating items for shipping while I do the correspondence and Etsy work on the computer. That’s why it’s extra great for me to paint with Elizabeth — if I don’t force myself away from the computer, I can spend the whole day working with my images on the computer, and doing LadyBird business stuff.

CC: What do you most hope to accomplish with your artwork?
AS: It’s so funny — I feel like I’ve accomplished far more than I ever would have expected two years ago. On the one hand there’s no WAY that I’m satisfied, and realistically there’s only so much time and energy available for me to spend on LadyBirds. Part of me really wants to go after licensing my work, and part of me thinks I don’t want to spend the time doing even more business-ey non-art stuff. I really want to be featured in a national magazine, but at the same time I’m not submitting press releases. I don’t know — is it wrong to say that I’m just letting the winds sway me?

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
AS: I think inspiration is everywhere, from artists whose work I admire to the colors of the blouses in Chico’s catalogs. But really, the best inspiration is my art pal Elizabeth. She and I paint together at least once a week, and I recommend that kind of inspiration to everyone who’s pursuing a future as an artist. We bounce ideas off of each other, we push each other, and we motivate each other to keep creating and growing in our art.

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
AS: What an oddly difficult question! I actually feel like my whole business-ey life is my indulgence. If it weren’t for an incredibly loving and undemanding husband (“the house looks fine, honey, we don’t need to have the laundry folded”), and relatively low-maintenance children I would never be able to spend my days in LadyBirdLand!

CC: What are you reading right now?
AS: I’m all over the place with my books this week. Okay, here’s what’s on my night stand right now. I just finished the autobiography of Gordon Ramsay, a tough guy chef who knows how to work as hard as necessary to get what he wants — I admire that ethic. I’ve also got a book about the last Russian tsar — for some reason the story of Nicholas and Alexandra has always enthralled. There’s a Magic Tree House kids book, and for me, the childhood classic Wind in the Willows.

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
AS: Find that time, girls! The laundry doesn’t have to be perfect, and you are worth it! Make yourself happy with art!

CC: Thank you, Allison!

Sep 25

1 Comment

Inspiration: A Year of Mornings

The photo blog 3191 is a daily pairing of photos taken by two friends, MAV and Steph, who live 3,191 miles apart — one in Portland, OR, and the other in Portland, ME. (Read my previous blog post about this treasure trove). The friends have just published their first book, A Year of Mornings. I received my copy this week and it’s beautiful.

Cathy recently noted that she can pick up just about any book and flip to a random page to find exactly what she needs to read at that moment — and I think this book serves that purpose beautifully. Bravo.

Sep 24

14 Comments

9/24 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Smell something tasty? Have a peek at what came in for this week’s creativity contest prompt, “dinnertime.” Clearly, not necessarily everyone’s favorite time of day! Our winner is Cathy Jennings. Cathy writes: “Something different from me this time. I don’t consider myself a writer by any means but ‘dinner time’ was something I needed to write about.” Cathy wins for her highly readable personal essay — and for pushing into less comfortable territory (writing). Congratulations Cathy! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate is on its way.

Ian around a year old at the table expressing some frustration.

Ian around a year old at the table expressing some frustration.

Dinner Time

Like most people I never really thought about dinner time until I was hungry. As long as I liked it, it didn’t really matter what dinner was — pancakes, burgers, soup, whatever. It was all good. When I was pregnant the only problem was that I wanted more dinner. But that wasn’t so unusual. Enter Ian, my first and only child.

Dinner time was and is completely different for him. And now mine is, too. Ian spent most of his infancy screaming and projectile vomiting. Ian has acid reflux, food allergies, anemia and asthma (because the rest of the list is not enough). When Ian’s diet needed my attention, I naturally starting thinking more deeply about food. Dinner time became a lot more complicated.

Ian takes medication for the reflux, supplements for the anemia, and has a special diet for the allergies. On top of these challenges that would make anyone iffy about eating, he is 5. An age that is still very close to the picky preschool preferences about food. Can it get any more challenging?

I see my job as getting him to eat and to stay healthy. How do you feed a restricted fuss pot? What foods aggravate reflux? Are they the same foods for everyone? How do you make bread without wheat? What can he drink if he can’t have cow’s milk? Why is corn in everything? What foods are high in iron? What foods combined with iron make it more absorbable? Will certain foods and supplements interfere with the medications? What do we do about constipation? Are there animal crackers for my kid? What about candy? How do we handle social situations with food? Do we need to see a feeding therapist or is what he is doing normal?

My head swims with questions like these all the time. I am pretty sure there is a part of my brain that processes this stuff without my being aware of it. I have been educating myself in nutrition; become a pest at the pediatrician’s and pediatric gastroenterologist’s offices, and thankfully they don’t seem to mind. I joined an awesome message board for parents of kids with food allergies. I read books about food and the food industry. I have a knowledge of food that unnerves my family…..they don’t want to know what “modified food starch” or “natural flavors” can be. As a Christian, I get oddly excited about the Jewish holiday Passover because many of the Kosher for Passover foods are safe for my son. I go down the Kosher for Passover aisle at the store and fill my cart with candies, marshmallows, juice boxes, applesauce and fruit cups, and junky looking cereals. Our Jewish pediatrician thinks I am funny and laughs about this. She won’t think it’s so funny when I scoop up stuff she was looking for at the grocery store. Passover foods are only available once a year. Those are my marshmallows!

What to serve for dinner is always on my mind. I make a weekly menu with notes about snacks, things to make from scratch or buy at the health food store, Trader Joe’s, the regular grocery store or the farmer’s market.

I have a really big cook book collection. It was bad before I needed to buy books about gluten free baking and allergy cooking. Now it’s really out of hand. The Amazon bucks I have won here have funded my cookbook habit. I have cookbooks on general cooking, Italian, Mexican, Julia, Jacques,  Marcella Hazan, Rachel Ray. Then we move into vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, cupcakes and the list goes on. There is also a loose stack of recipes from wonderful moms on the allergy board in similar situations. Those are pretty much no-fail recipes.

Dinner time has a lot of thought behind it.

Most of the time I try to make a meal that we all can eat. Wheat/gluten, soy, corn and dairy free. Did I mention that my husband has problems with tree nuts? We avoid those, too. And it has to be reflux friendly (I’m a refluxer, too)….so no obvious tomatoes or firey foods. There is still a lot you can eat avoiding those things but throw in the 5-year-old fusspot factor and the choices drop. Ian’s favorites are burgers, roasted chicken, baked potatoes, homemade fries, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, homemade chicken nuggets, gluten-free pizza with rice cheese and the reliable hot dog. He also likes pasta with olive oil and nutritional yeast. When  Ian is on a vegetable strike, I try to sneak pureed veggies into his burgers. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t. There are nights when we all eat different things because I am pmsing and I HAVE to have mac&cheese, or General Tso’s chicken with pork fried rice and an egg roll. And my husband has to have his pizza while Ian is happy to go on with a burger and fries. I really hope he wants to try some other things soon so we can broaden the family menu.

And I’m sure this is not the end of the journey with and about food. But to end this on a happy note, Ian was just weighed and measured at the pediatrician’s and he has grown an inch and gained 3 pounds in the last three months. All this research is helping.

 

From Charlotte, a poem. Charlotte writes: “Well, yesterday I was feeling proud of myself, remembering that my appointment would take me near the British Library, and taking my laptop with me in search of a nice concentrated atmosphere in which to work on the radio play. After 2 hours I was getting absolutely nowhere, not least because everyone around me was chatting, talking on the phone, discussing forthcoming exams… apparently those ‘Silence please’ notices in libraries are a thing of my long-lost childhood. To cap it all, at 6pm a string quartet started up in the atrium, which was charming if somewhat inappropriate. I find it very difficult to work with noise at the best of times, and I really do need silence to ‘hear’ the play in my head, especially as it’s radio. So instead I decided to write whatever came out in response to your competition prompt while my brain was not really able to focus — and also not able to edit/gatekeep! I don’t usually allow less-than-perfect, which of course explains why I have hardly written anything in years. Anyway, this (with a little tinkering) was what emerged and I’m going to send it now before I spend days picking at individual words…”

dinnertime

trays on our knees around the goggle-box
(dining room’s Sundays only, “it’s too dark in there”)
Grampa likes the Two Ronnies
Granny’s not so keen
but i don’t get the half of it
pushing peas around the plate, i’ll eat fish fingers, salmon too
any other fish a no-no
(“what is this, Granny?” “salmon. eat it.”)
Grampa’s delighted roar – slaps his knee
(“hear that one, Babs?”), repeats the joke
Granny, one raised eyebrow, feebly smiles
double entendre is really not her thing.
she has a sense of humour, though.
“you liked the fish?”
“yes, salmon.” never saw her smile so wide.
“silly girl. that’s not salmon. salmon’s pink.”
she’d always told me every fish was salmon
and i would eat it.
programme over, time for bed
tray to the kitchen and then straight upstairs
to other stories, other gentle lies
never the blatant gunfire of the news.

 

From Elizabeth Beck, a cinquain and a photo. Elizabeth writes: “I should write this out and frame it in my kitchen ….. it is frequently my truth ….. if you go to this photo on flickr you can scroll your mouse over it and read about what’s what on that mess of a table…..”

dinner
is not ready
nor is it even close
spent the day in the studio
painting

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem. Cathy writes: “i hate to even enter this.  i was not inspired.  we tend to suffer through dinner on a nightly basis.  who wants to revisit that?  but i tried to have fun with it anyway.”

Dinnertime

This one is yelling or humming or mom,mom, moming.
That one in arms fussying, how can cook?
Oldest one groaning about helping or about what’s served,
I am NOT eating that again.

This one has diabetic, calorie-counting diet,
lactose intolerant, and food allergies,
That one has lactose intolerance, and only likes what he likes.
I am vegetarian with other food allergies.
Soy is not an option for the lactose people, either.
They are the meat eaters.
This is just the adults.
Oldest is just plain picky,
Middle screams about it, but will grudgingly eat.
Baby is attached to my breast,
Pulling the plate or placemat off the table,
And kicking me.

I am breaking up a fight between the older two.
I am pleading for insults to stop, the screaming, too.
Now I’m yelling, too,
But just to be heard in the din I’m trying to stop.
Mother-in-law is generally suffering through the noise in silence,
But today’s anxiety meds are wearing off and we can see it on her face.
Honey is groaning about the noise. I’m telling middle child to be quiet,
have another bite, not the bread,
the chicken, tofu dog, or pasta fagioli,
Put down that bread.
eat a carrot, a bite of kale, have another green pepper slice.

Take your dishes to the sink,
Take your dishes to the sink.
I said, take your dishes to the sink.
Can I please have a tropical vacation?

 

From Bec Thomas, a photograph. (Ed. note: maybe this is the solution to difficult family dinners?)

 

From Erin Coppin, a poem (welcome to Creative Construction, Erin!). Erin writes: “Here is my very quick response to the prompt this week. I kept the bar low, like you asked!”

Dinnertime

I can sense your mood turning as I frantically prepare.
The whining starts to etch itself on my eardrums.
Malingerers refuse to wash their hands.
After seven mintutes you want to get down –
Half a plate mashed, half a plate waiting.
So, it begins. ‘Three more mouthfuls of this and two of that.
That wasn’t a mouthful. No, come on…’

When I am done I just want to hide.
Is this how I want our mealtimes to be?
Is this ‘manners’ I’m teaching you?
Or the beginnings of an eating disorder?
‘The child seeks attention through refusal of food.’
Why do I put us through it?
Because although it doesn’t feel like it works this way
It doesn’t work any other way either, as far as I can see.

How can I lift the mood at the table?
I just sit there exhausted from getting you into your chair
Without actual soil on your hands.
I’m already dreading the long job of tidying up.
I don’t want to lift the mood. This is familiar, this is what mealtimes always felt like.
My dad made us all sit in silence some nights, not speaking.
Hey, at least I let you eat with your hands.
At least I don’t make you clear your plate.
At least you can speak and play and sometimes we enjoy it.
Let’s see how we get on tomorrow.
Maybe we will have a picnic after all.

 

From me (Miranda), a haiku and image pairing. While I was trying to get a few good photographs, my family grew impatient to eat. My husband decided that my still life needed a little help from him (see  below). I realized that he’d totally encapsulated what dinnertime is like at our house — and that creating a “still life” at my house during dinnertime was a pretty silly idea. Our dinners are punctuated by colorful conversation (politics, personal issues, bodily functions — you name it) and an array of sometimes-clashing personalities.

Dinner Chez Nous
Irreverent and
loud, nothing is off limits
and laughter is balm

 

 

This week’s prompt: “The notebook”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, September 30. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Sep 23

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Online Inspiration: Your creative foundation

From the blog Art Slam, a great post full of inspiring ideas:

If you want to sustain your creative life, you have to lay down a firm foundation. You ever notice how easily you make excuses for why you can not be creative? You know the ones; you are too busy, you have to take care of the family, this is silly, you are not creative, blah, blah, blah… Well, dismiss them. Making time to feed your creative side is important. We all need a little time to play, relax and return to center. By using the following tips, you will be well on your way to establishing your creative life.

Read it here.

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