Oct 28
Only two entries thus far for “dream,” this week’s creativity contest prompt. If you sent something in and didn’t receive an acknowledgement from me, it didn’t come through. Please post a comment here to let me know. And if you haven’t sent anything in yet, you have until 11:00 p.m. eastern time to do so! (Deadline extended by a few hours, just in case that helps.)
Oct 28
As a mother of twins, most days I feel like I’m living in a real life nature vs. nurture theory experiment. Will two children who popped out of the same womb three minutes apart, and who live in the same house with the same parents, and attend the same schools with the same teacher in the same classroom be basically the same child? I am here to give you a resounding “No way, Jose!”
Take a look at these graphs. This was a homework assignment in my girls’ math awareness series. I taught a class Monday night, and DH left these sitting out on the kitchen counter for me to see when I got home. Both girls followed the directions: color in one number 1 on the first row, color in two number 2’s on the second row, color in three number 3’s on the third row, etc. And both graphs are technically correct, yet look at how different they are. This was fascinating to me! And what fascinated me more was which graph belonged to which child. To date, Olivia has very much been a “color in the lines” kind of girl. All her drawings are typically very well thought out and organized; Sarah, on the other hand, has been a vertible Jackson Pollack. Looking at these then, I assumed that the organized picture was Livvie’s and the all over the board picture was Sarah’s. What that’s saying about the true meaning of assume? You got it. This time, the organized picture was Sarah’s and the all over the board picture was Olivia’s! I need a child psychologist to figure this one out.
Working in education, I hear so much about nature vs. nurture and how it affects not only our children’s success in the classroom, but moreover their success as creative, positive contributors to society as a whole. Through my visits to elementary school classrooms lately and my talks with those teachers, parent involvement is certainly crucial to children’s success; that’s the nurture part. Yet, though elementary, these simple math exercises seem to also point to the major differences nature sends us out into the world with. Interesting, don’t you think? I’m a certified Myers-Briggs and True Colors trainer, so I’m always fascinated by personality differences and how we all look at the world through different lenses, particularly for me when it comes to my twin girls. So what are your thoughts? What have you learned from your children’s differences in personalities? This should be an interesting lesson in creativity!
Oct 27
I wish I had a brain that could juggle two babies and two teenagers and a husband that wants to chat as soon as I sit down to check my e-mail. But I don’t. Not lately. Multitasking is holding one crying infant while making dinner, listening to the newest teenage angst about how I ruined yet another child, trying to make my way across the room with the 22 month old attached to my leg and then the phone rings? What? It’s my other teenager, wanting to come over for dinner, and she needs a ride.
I haven’t been very positive lately. If one more of my well-meaning relatives asks me if I’ve painted anything lately, or if I’m still writing (gave up that gig after baby #1), I think I’ll run screaming from the house. I don’t. I say something snappy about taking care of babies…that’s what I do. That’s all I do. I usually have to say it two or three times during the visit, reminding them that I still have the little ones. Are they blind? Are they deaf? Do they not see the little boy, the most adorable baby boy, scrunching up his tiny face in rage when I try to put him down for one second to pick up baby girl as she tries to launch herself from the sofa? Do they not hear the constant shrieking? I don’t get many visitors. Too bad too. I love it when someone holds the baby so I can run off for a potty break.
I can’t write. I can’t think. I always have my ears fine tuned for the sounds of baby wails, and my reflexes ready to grab another bottle as I’m trying to persuade my darling little girl that the potty seat is not a hat.
Kudos to those of us who can tune it out, but I need to get into that space, that zone, that meditative communing with my muse or I can’t hear her. Two minutes is not enough. I don’t know how to stop listening to the happenings in the house. I don’t know how to turn it off. When the babies are quiet, I fall into bed and sleep the blissful sleep of one who knows it’s short-lived. Usually one, if not both babies wake up every night. I’m tired and I’m frustrated and I’m angry, if the truth be told.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve become a traitor to my true self, to that artist and writer I was, I am, I will be. I look at myself in the mirror and think, Really? Is this all there is? What happened to the me that I was? And then the baby cries and it all fades into another day. Another day gone by.
But that pity party won’t get me anywhere. I still have babies to take care of. And sometimes there is a little glimmer of hope…like e-mails reminding me that once I used to write a blog, and that things will get better. I suppose they will. I’m still trying to live in the moment, in the now, as Eckhart Tolle would say. But my now sure is full of dirty diapers.
But a positive, a piece of synchronicity at work in my very own life, a little reminder, a kiss from beyond:
My significant other has been working on various projects around the house…since we bought it. I’ve been waiting for the building in the backyard to become my studio for five years. So far it has housed an assortment of tools, old furniture and Christmas decorations. My paints are in there too, somewhere. But in my husband’s defense, he has been working on it, actually working on it for the last few weeks. Reframed a couple of walls, rehung some cabinets, and in the midst of it, he comes to me with an old piece of paper. “Look what I found in the studio,” he says. Studio, I think. That has never been nor will ever be my studio at the rate I’m going. But I take the folded slip of paper from his hand and see the date March 1994 scrawled across the top. Curious, I open it. And my heart beats a little faster as I read: “I am an artist and this was my studio. I hope it brings as much joy to the next person as it has brought to me over the years.” Signed by the artist herself. And I think, how funny, that building that we named “the studio” the first day we viewed the house, was always meant to contain art. Like it was taken out of my hands. It doesn’t have to become anything. It already is.
And inside I danced a little jig and smiled. It is mine. Given to me. Just like that. I’m going to frame that note and hang it on the wall for everyone to see, but mostly for me to see, to remind me of possibilities waiting.
Oct 27
I get it now. Or have I said this before?
I still need to go at my snail’s pace, but in keeping the pace steady, I am immersed. A little bit of writing in my manuscript most days is realistic with constant interruptions. Regularly communing with others at least online as well as scheduling virtual writing dates, keeps my mind set on the path. Also, it helps me to know that I’m not really sitting alone in the dark, even if I’m sitting alone in the room with wiggly baby on my lap, typing one handed.
My characters are coming back to life in a way I had long forgotten when I hit my first big bump that made me unintentionally set this gig aside years ago. Scenes I never intended are beginning to write themselves into the story while I sit back and go, “Hmm, so that’s why I wrote her in way back then.” or “Gee, THAT was unexpected!”
I’m finding that it’s going a lot like the way I cook. I follow the recipe or the rules of writing quite a bit, but when it comes down to it, there is quite a lot of improv, too. Like today, I baked a cake while measuring half-assed, dumped a boulder of sugar into the batter by accident, and the flour spilled over, too, which I didn’t really sift. Then I threw choc chips in just because I felt like it, and voila! An ugly, lopsided, yet delicious cake emerged from the oven. The boys, my audience, didn’t care what it looked like or how it got there. They just got off their respective busses, came in, and oo’ed that something smelled good, and promptly stuffed a piece in their mouths. One even said, “Chocolate chips? I’ll get a glass of milk to go with that!” So, it turned into a healthy snack, too.
In the writing today I ended up with three or more completely unexpected scenes: the bully did not punch the main character as I thought I’d be writing since day one, but kicked a kickball into the face of his friend, a girl, hard enough to stop the game and send her to the nurse. The nurse suddenly became the confidante of the three who get the brunt of the bullying. And the evildoer’s sidekick is turning his game face over to the good side sooner than I anticipated. Who knew? Certainly not I, and you’d think I had some control of the situation, seeing as I’m making it up as I go, right?
Above is a new Wordle of my work in progress. I find Wordle to not only be a fun waste of time, but a good editing tool. Now I can see how much of my most important and frequent words are drek which needs to be cut at some point when I begin to fine-tune it. But that’s later. First I just want to get the plot down from beginning to end. Page 60 and counting…
Oct 24
You may not be looking for a new best friend, but after you read this week’s Breakfast installment you’re going to want one — and you’re going to want her to be Liz Hum. She’s a writer, designer, mother, and the blogger behind My Other Car is a Tardis. Liz is smart, funny, and plain old nice. Plus she’s a FOL. (Friend of Lisa. As in Damian and Guidarini.) Eggs Benedict for everyone! (Just make mine with veggie ham, please.)
CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
LH: My name is Liz Hum and I will be 30 years old next month. I am the proud mama of (so far) two wild and brilliant daughters, ages 4 and 1 1/2, and wife of the best man that could ever have happened to me, my beloved Viking, with his long red beard that stretches nearly to his navel. (I’m married to that too — by now it is practically like having another family member.) I am a writer, photographer, filmmaker, editor, designer, painter…a jack of most arts, really. But, being a stay-at-home mom, I find so often that I am a master of none.
CC: Tell us about your creative endeavors.
LH: Right now, I have a side business, Lotus Pictures. I put together video slideshows, and documentaries and design books that center around personal tributes. I cut together demo reels and things like that. I also have done design work and invitations for weddings. I belong to the Algonquin Area Writer’s Group, serving as the Membership Coordinator, where I collaborate with the other members, like your own Lisa Damian, to think of new ways to keep our writers motivated and creative. I’m also supposed to be working on a novel and a children’s book, and I am if you consider surfing the net and beating myself up about wasting time “working.”
CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
LH: I started my blog for two reasons: One, being that I desperately needed to talk to someone. I used to work for a video production company in the city before I had my eldest and I missed talking to the diverse, intelligent, funny, and sometimes plain crazy people that came in and out of the office. They used to joke that I needed my own soapbox-inspired show, because I could often be heard saying, “Let me tell you about that…” to some hapless sap waiting in the reception area. Or to anyone else who happened to be passing time by my desk, be it the FedEx guy or a local celebrity. Reason number two is that I wanted to record some anecdotes of family history for my daughters. Every year, I create a yearbook where I print every blog post from that calendar year and intermingle them with family photos so that one day the girls can look back and laugh. This way, too, if I drop dead, I have shared my stories and my thoughts with my children who will one day be hungry for them. (Not to imply that I am not doing everything I can to prevent myself from dropping dead in the meantime.) Recording our history and having a sense of community with other bloggers keeps me going.
CC: I’ve found women who are most satisfied with their creative lives watch little or no television. You are an unapologetic fan of TV, and also seem to be highly productive. How do you avoid the brain-drain byproducts of TV that sap many tired mothers at the end of a long day?
LH: DVR, my dear Miranda. DVR! This fabulous invention allows you to record shows and watch them at your leisure, sans commercials. It is the only way to fly. No, but seriously, we save our TV viewing until after the tots go to bed. We don’t watch many brain-draining type shows, so Darin and I are always engaged. Most nights we end up laughing about something, discussing plot points or conjuring up wild fan fiction or hilarious crossovers. If one of us is motivated to create, we save our shows for another day or we just say to ourselves, “Meh. I don’t need to watch Real World verses Road Rules, anyway.” If Darin wants to watch a show that I am not interested in, I go to the computer to work on my writing…and surf the net instead and beat myself up about wasting time. THAT is what I have to work on avoiding…getting sucked into the brain-draining BS on the net.
CC: Where do you do your creative work?
LH: I have no personal space. My writing, editing, and book design work is done at our shared computer and my fine arts and crafts are done wherever I can keep them out of prying hands, usually the dining room table or a fold-out banquet table. My only true creative space is in my head.
CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work?
LH: Schedules: Do you mean those things that I keep making and having to crumple up and toss out the window because the kids aren’t cooperating, my husband got sick, and the laundry won’t wash itself?
CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
LH: I had to hone the ability to tune out a lot of noise. Before I had kids, I would crank up my stereo and dance around my apartment in my underwear while painting. I had long silent spaces to think coherent thoughts and write them down. Now, it’s like being constantly under assault, with the yapping and the squealing and the toys being thrown over the gate we have erected around the perimeter of the computer desk. I think in fragments and rarely have the time to write them down. So I put on my “tune out” helmet and now find I can Zen-out amidst chaos…most of the time.
CC: What do you struggle with most?
LH: Guilt. The guilt of not creating when I try to be a mom. The guilt of not being a mom when I’m trying to create. The guilt of feeling like a crappy artist when I try to rush through a creative project just to get it done. Not to mention the guilt I feel for not being able to be all things at once. Marketing makes it look easy to “have it all,” doesn’t it? We can wear our babies to the coffee shop after yoga class where we can bang out another chapter on our novel, take them to the park, whip up an optimally nutritious meal, teach our children some brilliant skill or new language and then have them delightfully fingerpaint on the floor next to us as we finish our own masterpiece? Did I mention we’re supposed to be cool and stylish at all times as well? I’m in awe of creative moms who can crochet a sweater while breastfeeding or create their crafts while rattling off their kid’s math problems, but I don’t know if I have fully forgiven myself for not being one of them.
CC: Where do you find inspiration?
LH: When I see women older than me actively involved in life. Anytime I see a mom with kids say she just finished her novel, or went back to school. It reminds me to slow down and take the toddler years slowly. Creative life is not over after kids. It just takes a backseat for awhile.
CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?
LH: Most of the blogs I keep up with are personal blogs of family and friends. I always check the Algonquin Area Writer’s Group, Damian Daily, (thanks again for the nod, hon!), and Bluestalking Reader (the latter two are Creative Construction participants and members and heads of the AAWG). For a laugh, and a little guilty pleasure, I check out What Would Tyler Durden Do too — he makes fun of celebrities. True or not — who cares. It’s often hilarious.
CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
LH: I always (by always, I mean once a week) buy a few bottles of 2-buck Chuck Shiraz and a chocolate truffle bar at Trader Joe’s.
CC: What are you reading right now?
LH: I am reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert to offset the emotional damage I sustained while reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My book club’s November selection is The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
LH: Give yourself a break. When you find you have free time, go for it! But you know what? If you don’t, don’t sweat it — you will. If you live in the present instead of fretting about all the projects and dinners you’re trying to juggle, you’ll start enjoying your time with your kids more and you’ll be able to recognize and utilize your pockets of free time. Sometimes you have to put your art on the back burner and take care of your kids while they need you. Baby & Toddlerhood is a temporary condition, mommas, remember that. They’ll all be in school soon, right? And we’ll have a few hours every day in which to get to know ourselves again. Eyes on the prize, ladies…eyes on the prize.
CC: Wonderful advice, Liz. Thank you.
Oct 23
Are you one of the many mothers who make the most of the evening hours after all the kids are in bed? Maximizing the later hours of the day may in fact be an excellent strategy, according to the results of a new research study. Forget the early bird; the most likely time of day for a creative breakthrough is 10:04 p.m. As reported by the UK’s Daily Mail:
Early to bed, early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy and wise.
So goes the old proverb, but research now suggests that if you want to be the wisest, you really need to stay up — well, until 10.04 pm at least.
This is supposedly the best time for a eureka moment, according to research. [A]round a quarter of us feel we formulate our most cunning plans when we are burning the midnight oil, the survey of 1,426 adults found.
By contrast, despite what many managers may believe, daytime in the office is not conducive to blue-sky thinking. The afternoon…is when an overwhelming 98% of those polled say they feel most ‘uninspired’.
The creativity drought just gets worse over the nine to five working day, hitting rock bottom at 4.33 pm.
When asked about methods they use to get their creative juices flowing, 44% said they took a shower.
Unfortunately for mankind, even when we do get a stroke of genius more than half of our ideas are lost forever.
When inspiration strikes, 58% of us fail to write the idea down immediately and forget it….Women were better than men at jotting down their best ideas for posterity.
A third of over-35s chose to scribble the thought on the back of their hand, perhaps having learnt from experience how forgetful they are. The findings echo an Italian study in 2006 that found those who stay up late have the most original ideas.
Night owls came up with the most creative thoughts — perhaps because they are more likely to be unconventional and bohemian than early birds — according to the research by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.
So, if you like to stay up late and squeeze in a bit of creative time, take a look at the clock when you hit your groove. It might just be 10:04. Oh, and if you have a great idea, write it down — preferrably on a piece of paper!
Oct 22
The best way to describe the “apples” entries for this week’s creativity contest? Try this: BUMPER CROP. Our winner is Jen Johnson, who submitted two poems. “It’s been such a joy to read the weekly entries!” Jen wrote. “I have the best of intentions about entering every week — well, most weeks anyway; as I mentioned in my [recent] comment, last week’s [‘tears’] just was too overwhelming to contemplate given where things were. Ah well. Anyway, I couldn’t resist the temptation to dust off two old poems to submit for this week’s ‘apples’ prompt. I’ve had a longtime fascination with the Eden story in all its manifestations, and over the years it has prompted many poems and scraps of writing. Here are two very different pieces.” (You can get to know Jen a little better over Breakfast.)
What Adam Never Knew
No one has blamed the gentle pull
of dappled light on ruddy skin
suspended; even one small apple
has attraction, sure as sin —
we reach for what we are denied.
How could I kiss him then, or speak
of what I knew? No. I was meek:
I made him bite from my own hands,
I cowered at his sharp demands,
and, knowing that I should, I cried.
He said to blame it on the snake;
I needed help before I’d take
such swollen fruit, he said. Of course
an explanation meant divorce,
or death, or worse. And so I lied.
As any woman knows, or should,
these little lies can change the world.
Would I explain now if I could?
The bitter salt of God’s own sex unfurled
with apple’s taste. I thought I’d died.
And so they blame me for a fall
that never fell. I cannot tell:
can’t speak of hunger’s throaty call,
can’t say that fruit seduced me well,
my belly full of God and pride.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Divination
Before she ate the apple,
she pinched the twiggy stem
between her grubby thumb
and two slender fingers.
It dangled from her hand
as if her arm were branch,
her body tree, bare feet
rooted to the ground.
Before she took a bite,
one hand cradled the fruit
while fingers held the stem,
twisting it around.
She said the alphabet,
a letter for each turn —
was Eve astonished to keep
twisting after “A”?
Click on any image in this blog post to view larger.
From Cathy Jennings, a brilliant digital image created in Adobe Illustrator:
From Brittany Vandeputte, an evocative prose piece with two photographs:
In Western North Carolina, where I was raised, fall meant apples. In October, the burgeoning red and yellow leaves stood like road signs, both marking our way and beckoning us to the orchard. My family has grown apples for as long as anyone can remember. First, a few trees were planted at the Homeplace when the land was settled in the 18th century. And then when the Homeplace was lost to a cunning in-law in a civil war poker match, the farm land became a commercial apple orchard.
We were fortunate that the apple growing relatives never forgot that we were kin. Every year, when the apples were ripe, my grandfather and I would climb into his bright red pickup truck and bump along the backroads to Edneyville and the cousins’ orchard. My grandfather had an open invitation to pick the apples there and some of my earliest memories are of him driving the bed of the truck under a pair of shady branches where I would sit while he procured me that first Golden Delicious of the season.
My grandfather was a simple man, and apples his connection to those he loved. You couldn’t visit without one being offered. Jesus had loaves and fishes, and my grandfather had Red and Yellow Delicious. They seemed to multiply in his care.
It has been more than twenty years since my last visit to the orchard. On Saturday, I felt its call once again. Instead of the orchard of my childhood, we visited a nearby farm that opens to the public every fall, drawing tourists with pumpkin patches, hayrides, and a corn maze. Picking apples was an afterthought.
But from the moment we stepped into the orchard, Sam’s expression changed. He has always loved apples, but he’d never seen them in such abundance. He was awestruck. And then I handed him that first freshly picked apple. As his face broadened into a smile, I marveled how something so small could be so important.
From Cathy Coley, a bushel and a peck!
Apples
It has been about a hundred years since I sketched, but listening to all the visual artists on the freeing quality their arts add to their lives, I began to miss doing so myself. So here is a sketch of my forlorn love. Not bad for an exercise in recalling the stickiness of pastels. I loved rush-layering the colors during baby c’s nap.
I have a complicated relationship with apples. As a kid, I wasn’t a great fan of them, but red delicious were always in the fruit bowl on my mother’s orange counter. Mealy, but pleasant, usually, and a very tough skin. Just don’t let them sit too long in the bowl. Yuck. As a college student in western Massachusetts, I began a tradition of annual apple-picking and pie-baking, MacIntoshes and other thin skinned varieties were the perfect complement to the plain homey crust and cinnamon, allspice, cloves, maple syrup, molasses and sometimes oatmeal fillings. Throw in a Granny Smith for extra snap in the flavor. I baked them for breakfast, made veggie chili with apples, put them in everything and crunched them like crazy until the bags from the orchards were gone. My kitchen scented the neighborhood.
After I moved from Boston out into the far suburbs northwest with kids, I found myself living in a valley known as Apple Country. Autumn, always a well anticipated season, became like Eden. The yellows and reds and oranges bloomed magical in the hilly wooded landscape. Turn a corner, and there’s an orchard. Sudden open green with craggy old trees bursting in ripe red and gold, so laden with apples the branches dragged to the ground. Perfect for bringing the boys apple picking. It was a favorite event mid-late October, and sometimes even in September for our family, with loads of picture taking and freshest apple crunching, right from the trees.
By my mid-late thirties, hiking through the orchard sent me coughing and blaming the probable use of pesticides for my discomfort. Then, one afternoon, as I sliced apples for a pie, I began coughing in earnest. That was the last pie I baked. Almost overnight, or so it seemed, every apple became a worse threat to me than the witch’s for Snow White. No kiss from my fiancé would rescue me from this throat closing sleep.
Jump ahead a few years to the present. We have moved from Apple Country to coastal Virginia, and I’ve chalked up apples as a strictly New England experience. Occasionally we buy bags of apples in the grocery, for the bowl on the kitchen counter, but I have to stay clear of them. I water down baby bottles of apple juice with my head turned far away, and don’t allow my boys within 4 feet of my face when they have a glass or have just had one. It’s very sad. My husband and mother-in-law are big pie fans. Come the pie baking rounds beginning at Thanksgiving, when the apple ones are in the oven, I am cloistered upstairs and all the downstairs windows are open and fans blasting a hurricane wind of apple, cinnamon, cloves and allspice out into the neighborhood. I really miss the wholesome apply bounty of this season. My wish is that someday soon, my fruit allergies go out the way they came in, and shut the door behind them.
From Bec Thomas, a photograph: “Here is my selection, I actually had time to send one in, yay me!” And yay for us, that we get to see Bec’s great photograph!
A beautiful poem from Jennie Johnston (not to be confused with Jen Johnson, above!): “I’m so glad that I have finally been able to enter. Apples just filled my mind for a few days and out came this poem.” Great to see you here, Jennie!
Our World in an Apple
My son, it is the time of apples
as you sleep, curled
rosy cheeks, round and full
the dishes sit in dissolving suds
leaves fall,
cold rain pounds the ground
and I think of you
how you have changed me
how you have opened every part
the nooks and crannies of my soul
how with this opening
I am fuller,
better
deeper
than before
inside apples are five pointed stars
your smile, your temper, your laughter, your hands and your eyes
yes I am open
I am susceptible
I am vulnerable
I care more
about everything
my maiden could be withdrawn
she could turn away
she could stay inside her dream
as mother I love in the raw
my heart pulsing in one of your hands
while in the other you hold our world
reflected on an apple
From Juliet Bell: “I’m busy making ornaments for the Christmas season. This apple is made from a watercolor I painted some time ago. Prints are mounted on both sides of Birch plywood, then cut out, and varnished. Only after I finished the ornament did I remember the prompt for this week.”
From me (Miranda), a painting. I had a nice, fat, gallery-wrapped canvas (gift from my mother) and knew I wanted to paint it lime green. Then I used an apple half as a stamp with several layers of acrylic paint. I needed some texture, so I used some green tissue paper to build up the apples. I’m pleased with the result, but especially the process. I had some ideas, but I really didn’t know where I was going — and that was just fine.
This week’s prompt: “Dream” [prompt provided by 17-year-old son]
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, October 28. 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 21
In case you hadn’t heard, November 2008 is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Not a month for celebrating the novel; rather, a month for actually writing one. From the NaNoWriMo website:
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.
In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.
What an amazing event. I don’t think I can pull this off (not this year, anyway) but I would really like to try a year or two down the line. I love the concept of simply encouraging output — given the deadline, there really isn’t time for editing or hesitating over the keyboard.
Here’s how to sign up. I see from her blog that Brittany has already committed. Anyone else? (Is this actually possible with young children at home?) Brittany, please keep us apprised of your progress!
Oct 20
If you were to drop dead right now, this very minute, and you had a moment of last consciousness to weigh your life in the balance, what would the verdict be? Would you feel that you had lived your life to the fullest; that you had accomplished something important, whatever that means to you?
I admit to an unhealthy fixation on mortality. I think about this kind of thing a lot. The topic came up recently with my cousin Charlotte (OK, so we covered almost everything in the domain of life and art within a few hours). Charlotte noted that I had just referred to death and dying about 30 times within 20 minutes. I’m not usually quite that bad, but I am frequently troubled by my fear of dying before I’ve completed a few important things on my list.
Charlotte was surprised to hear that I don’t think of my five children as “accomplishments.” But I don’t. They are really just these random people who I’m taking care of. I don’t take credit for having “good” kids — so much luck is involved; really I just try not to mess them up too much. Yes, being a mother, a good mother, is important to me, but it isn’t my life’s work. Sometimes I wish it were. Things would be a lot simpler. But while I try to apply creativity to motherhood as much as possible, my children do not feel like my “creations.”
When it comes to assessing life on a macro level, blogs like 37 Days only feed my obsessive nature. While the question “how would I spend my last month of life” is an important one, such a short timespan by necessity requires letting go of everything unimportant, immediately. For me, if I only had a month left to live, I would be entirely focused on my family and creating as many memories as possible — and creating reminders of my love for my children that would live beyond me. Would I worry about finishing my book? Probably not, although I think I would hand the project off to a trusted friend and ask her to finish it for me. I would probably write a good number of poems instead.
But since none of us can know exactly how much time we have left, we can only muddle through, trying to keep our perspective on what’s really important. While I might not work on my book if I only had a month left to live, I would work on the book if I knew had a year.
I hope that whenever the Big Mac Truck comes my way, I can go without regret. Of course there would be immeasurable sadness for leaving my family — but I would hope that I would be comforted by the feeling that I had done my best with the time that I had. That my children could rest contented in the knowledge that I loved them deeply. And that I had left something else behind — a book, perhaps? — that could touch the lives of strangers and help them make the most of their lives.
Maybe in our very last moments the only thing that matters is our relationships, and everything else becomes irrelevant. I wonder. How about you? What is the measure of a life well lived, and where does your creative mark fit into that assessment?
Oct 17
You’ve seen her at this blog before before: artist, mother, and blogger Carmen Torbus. Sit down for this week’s installment of Breakfast and enjoy getting to know the lovely and talented Carmen!
CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
CT: My name is Carmen Torbus. If I had to describe myself in one word, it would be “dreamer.” I currently wear many hats. I’m wife to my wonderful husband of 9 years, Dan. I’m mom to my little monkeys, Morgan (6) and Colin (5). I work fulltime as an admin/personal assistant in West Palm Beach and I’m a college student, studying to become a licensed clinical social worker. My passion is in development… I’m an artist. I’m finally comfortable saying that sentence.
CC: Tell us about your creative work and what’s on the offing in your Etsy shop.
CT: My art is continually evolving. I love learning new techniques and ways to incorporate them into art. My artwork is often a collage of texture, quotes, words, paper, fabric, and lots of paint. The focal point in my art lately has been girls with a whimsy, folksy, funkiness to them.
I’m embarrassed to say that my Etsy shop is a little bare right now. There are currently two paintings listed. One of them, “Personal Growth” [at left] is one of my very favorite paintings. It represents my growing, evolving heart.
CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
CT: I picked up a copy of Artful Blogging at the book store one day and started flipping through it. I was mesmerized by the artwork of Bridgette Gurzon-Mills. Her artwork on her blog, Contemplating the Moon, drew me in and when I got home, I jumped online and started reading. Her blog lead me to other blogs and I was hooked. I knew I just had to find a way to become a part of this amazing community.
I’ve never considered myself much of a writer, but my blog gives me a place to document what I’m up to, share with my family and friends as well as serve as a journal that I can go back to and see how far I’ve come.
The inspiration I get from bloggers across the globe keeps me going along with the connections I’ve made with some of them. The comments, e-mails, and thoughtfulness are truly amazing.
CC: Where do you do your creative work?
CT: Right now, I work in the corner of our master bedroom in the condo we’re renting. We just bought a house though and when we move I’ll finally have my own room to serve as my studio. I’m so excited to have my own creative space.
CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work?
CT: I don’t have a schedule for being creative. I fit it in whenever I can. My life is so full with work, kiddo activities, support groups I attend, and school, that it makes scheduling time for art difficult. I do most of my painting late at night or on the weekends.
CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
CT: That’s an interesting question. When my kids were born, I stopped being creative and I didn’t even realize it. It wasn’t until that day that I picked up that issue of Artful Blogging that I realized how long it had been since I had painted.
What I find really amazing is how much my creativity affects my kids. They want to do whatever I’m doing. My daughter is a very talented little artist. She is so creative and I get a lot of inspiration from her.
CC: What do you struggle with most?
CT: Probably believing in myself and thinking my work is “good enough.” I think that’s probably a common theme with artists. Developing a style all my own is a struggle as well, but it’s coming. I just have to remind myself to slow down and be patient with myself.
CC: Where do you find inspiration?
CT: Oh gosh, everywhere. I live in paradise. South Florida is just beautiful. I sit at my desk at work and literally stare out at the ocean. It is incredible. I’m truly blessed.
I also get a great deal of inspiration from other artists that blog. Especially the ones that share themselves and their journeys openly. The raw emotion that can be felt by looking at someone’s work and reading their truths inspires me like nothing else.
CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?
CT: Only 5? That’s tough!
CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
CT: It’s a tossup between art supplies, books, chocolate *wipes drool from chin* and big ole Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks.
CC: What are you reading right now?
CT: A book by Dr. Brené Brown called I Thought it Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame.
CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
CT: Just do it. Get the supplies and sit down and do it. Don’t worry so much about all the “stuff” on the to-do list. Get your fingers messy in paint, dump that old box of pictures out on the table and get to it, dig out the tools and beads and make that jewelry. If it makes your heart sing, don’t put it off. You deserve it.
CC: Thank you, Carmen!
Oct 16
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.
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.
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
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.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 