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Posts tagged ‘Creativity’

Aug 11

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Writing advice from friends old and new

A few important reminders from writer Natalie Goldberg, artist and author of the uber-classic Writing Down the Bones. Like Julia Cameron, Goldberg asserts that writing is a basic element of connected existence for everyone, writers and non-writers alike.

Goldberg’s most recent book, An Old Friend from Far Away, was released in February. Old Friend is about writing personal memoir — exploring memories and connecting with the self in a way that opens doors for all who follow a creative path. I haven’t read the book yet, but Goldberg is certainly an “old friend” to many of us.

In this morning’s Boston Globe, novelist Allegra Goodman published the op-ed piece “So, you want to be a writer? Here’s how.” She advises against writing about yourself and advocates reading widely (of course) and finding a peaceful place to work (yeah, right).

And this is true for everyone, but especially for women: If you don’t value your own time, other people won’t either. Trust me, you can’t write a novel in stolen minutes outside your daughter’s tap class. Virginia Woolf declared that a woman needs a room of her own. Well, the room won’t help, if you don’t shut the door. Post a note. ‘Book in progress, please do not disturb unless you’re bleeding.’ Or these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which I have adapted for writing mothers: ‘. . . Beware! Beware! / Her flashing eyes, her floating hair! Weave a circle round her thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For she on honey-dew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.’

Unfortunately, the “don’t bother me unless you’re bleeding” routine really isn’t appropriate for mothers with children under the age of six, to my mind. What do you think?

Aug 7

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Cathy: My rose bushes

After all these years, I finally figured it out. My creativity works in cycles of gathering times and output times. Last couple of weeks was a wonderful output time. I made significant progress on my youth novel, I blogged, wrote an essay for the weekly contest, and more. My garden even produced a bunch of good eats. This week, I’m darned if I’ve written anything worth mentioning, my tomatoes are still green and the squash bugs have eaten my squash plants from the inside out, rendering the squash garden an ugly open squashy graveyard.

I feel like my rose bushes. Honestly, they look pretty spindly most of the time, but if I let them do their thing in their own time, I pull out of the driveway, down the side street, around the side of my house to a sudden bursting of big deep fuscia blooms, so fragrant I can smell them from the road. Or the vining trellis is covered in mini white blooms, like marshmallows or little gobs of snow in June. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing to say. At other times, the writing pours out so fast and furious, I can’t stop to keep myself from drowning in it. I am so excited and anxious during those few days that it can be overwhelming. Then it stops, just like the blooms fall off the bush.

But then, while the bush may look dead, and I may look like I’m doing nothing, I know those flowers are gathering nutrients from the roots. I know my writing is gathering momentum again. And right now, I think I just may write the next bit in a couple of days from now. I can’t force it, just like I can’t make my rose bushes be covered in blooms constantly, either. Right now, we’re both feeding from deep within.

Aug 5

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Kelly: Insomnia of a Creative Addict

"The Path To...."

"The Path to...."

Do you ever have so many creative ideas running through your brain that they keep you up at night? Thus is the insomnia of a creative addict, and it has descended upon me tonight. I’ve been laying in bed thinking about how I’d like to revamp my website, how I can rework current projects to use for other projects, how I can change up my product pictures, how I’d sure like to sew some fun little dresses for the girlies, and most importantly, how I can find the time to carry out all the new ideas I’ve been dreaming up…

Mixed media, photography, jewelry design, 2-D art, 3-D art, fiber and textile arts, what have you! At one time or another, I have tried or wanted to try every bit of it. Sometimes that drive to create is so strong that I truly wonder where I’m going with these little hands of mine. I read through the profiles and stories of the women here on Creative Construction and I wonder how you all manage to do it all without losing just a little bit of your sanity. Hmm…maybe that’s the key! You do have to lose a little bit of your sanity to do it all! I know many of my friends would agree I lost mine a long time ago.

At times, I’m envious of stay-at-home moms, whether they work from home as Mom or in another field on top of being Mom. I’d like to think I’d have a little more time to create if I were in your shoes, at least while the kids are in school, yet something tells me those of you in that situation might disagree! So maybe whether we work inside the home or out, we all face the same challenges, just in a different form?

So do you make a change? How do you make a change? How do you follow that path to your dreams? I’ve been thinking about it, just don’t know quite how to go about it. Sometimes it seems we get trapped in our own little situations and can’t figure out a way to get out. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Given the time, I think I could make a go of my creative endeavors full time, whatever form those creative endeavors may take, and knowing me, they would probably take quite a few different forms. Yet there is a mortgage to pay and kids to raise, so for now the idea of me quitting my day job scares the heebie-da-jeebies out of me (yes, that’s a technical term, heebie-da-jeebies), not to mention my DH; it just doesn’t seem to be a viable option.

I’ve been trying to make the switch to teaching full time, which would give me much more time, yet with the changes and new programs being added at our college, that just might require a doctorate degree before too long. I’ve given quite a bit of thought to that whole going back to school thing, and I’ve realized that if I went back to school, it wouldn’t be to earn a doctorate in English or Higher Education. You know what I’d love to pursue instead? A master’s degree in Art Therapy. A good friend of mine and I have long had an idea in our heads about a program combining art therapy, music therapy and pet therapy. She’s a counselor, collage artist, and dog lover; I’m an I’ll-try-everything-once artist, musician and dog lover with a strong public relations background. Just dreaming here, but haven’t big things come from little dreams?

What are your dreams, and what are you doing to reach them? Tell me your secret dreams, and maybe you’ll give me a kick in the pants to chase mine. Or maybe you’re already living your dream. How’d you get there? Do tell! Inspire the rest of us! In the meantime I’m going to try to get some sleep…while I think about designing a new journal cover…and that cute little polka-dotted peasant dress…and that mixed media piece featuring Isabelle…and, oh yes, I guess I do need to get some new jewelry designs made since I have four major shows coming up this fall…and…oh, what the heck! Who needs sleep, right!? I’ll just hop in my Magic Bus and go get some Red Bull…

Jul 31

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Get creative and save the planet, too

The website 350.org is gathering momentum in the fight against global warming:

Many think of 350.org not as a campaign, but as a global collaborative art project to promote knowledge of the number 350. So let your creativity run wild by making your own art, crafts, and more to spread the word about 350 wherever you go. So far people are making 350.org t-shirts, quilts, paintings, and more – show us what you can come up with to get the word out in your community! Just be sure to share your creations with the rest of the 350 community by uploading a photo of it on our website and tagging it ‘art’. Below are a few resources and opportunities to plug into the project artistically.

350.org has teamed up with Craftster.org and other crafting organizations to sponsor a couple of exciting contests. Together we’re asking people to create quilts, t-shirts, hats, needlepoint designs, finger puppets, or whatever you can think of that helps spread the number 350 in their community. The submission period will be during the month of August, when participants will be able to enter their creations in the t-shirt design competition or the general craft competition – so get started early! Visit the contest website for more details.

Be free, create, and save the world. Who could be better equipped for the job of superhero than a bunch of creative mothers?

Jul 29

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Reinventing creativity: Keri Smith update

explorerIf you read my previous post on Keri Smith, you already know I’m a huge fan. (Cathy is, too.) Recently, Keri posted a lengthy entry on her blog entitled “truthful things about being an artist and a mother” — the second time that she’s delved into the topic, and this time much more in depth. Keri is new to motherhood, and obviously her experience will evolve as her child grows, but I wonder what everyone here thinks about Keri’s perspective. Does it resonate? Keri feels intensely — and I only wish I’d been as passionate back when I had my first child. I can certainly relate to this point, however (and it echoes with what Kelly wrote this week):

“…i get into the most trouble when I am clinging to ‘needing’ to get something done in the time frame that I want it to be done. It is a difficult shift to realize that you no longer call the shots. If I attempt to control how and when, I end up very frustrated. Even knowing this fact I still fight it constantly.”

For most creative mothers, the experience comes down to this mantra, I think:

“and i believe one of the best gifts I can give to him is to allow my own creativity to flourish. Not necessarily in the all encompassing way that it did before. now I have to shrink things down a bit to fit it into the time I have. But it is still a huge part of me and I am excited to share it more with him as he grows.”

Keri also annouced last week that she’s publishing a new book, How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Art Life Museum and posted a fascinating preview. The idea of mapping your creativity into the floorplan of a museum is totally genius. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Explorer, which will be released in October. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one — and I’ll blog on its arrival in the fall. I can only imagine that Keri’s work will, over time, more concretely address the issues that creative mothers face. Fingers crossed.

Jul 22

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Kelly: When Life and Art Meet Frustration

[Editor’s note: The post below was written last Tuesday, but due to an admin error it’s only getting published today. Apologies, Kelly!]

Funny thing just happened. It’s been one of those days. My secretary doesn’t really know it’s been one of those days, yet she just created and sent me this picture. Why has it been one of those days? It’s been one of those days because I yelled at my girls this morning. I rarely even raise my voice at my girls, yet I actually yelled at them this morning, out of sheer frustration I guess. Put me in the Worst Mama Ever category today. So far I’m not doing very well on the “savor the week with my girls” goal I put on the Monday page.

What caused me to lose it? I guess a combination of things really. Since my DH is working 12-16 hour days all week on a major plant project shutdown, I’m essentially a single Mom this week, a single Mom with a very demanding full-time job outside the home, a flourishing part-time business inside the home, and twin girls who will be five in three weeks. How do single Moms do it? And today is Tuesday, Water Play Day. Water Play Day requires that I goop up my girls with sunblock and swimsuit before we even leave the house, plus pack them a towel and extra change of clothes for the day. Oh, and don’t forget the money for shaved ice, Mom! Add to that the rest of the “must gather for the day” things that take place every morning and the long list of tasks awaiting me once I got to the office, and I was truly frazzled. Yet here I am talking to you.

That’s where the frustration must come out. As creative mothers, don’t we all have very lengthy to-do lists? Yet I keep adding things to my list, don’t you? The things that I want to do and the things that I must do sometimes completely crowd out the things that I absolutely must remember. What are those? Those are the reminders to stay sane. Those are the reminders to breathe and count to ten before I snap at my girls. Those are the reminders that my girls did not create my to-do lists. They did not commit me to participating in a Fat Book swap, they did not force me to procrastinate terribly on completing my calendar at work, they did not ask me to take the online Blackboard course, they did not ask for a dog for their birthday so they’d have to help take care of her, they did not even ask to play at Water Play Day. They simply asked me to love them. And I hope that those are also the reminders that it’s okay to screw up every once in a while…no, scratch that…it’s impossible not to screw up every once in a while because I am who I am. First and foremost, a living, breathing, emotional, creative creature who feels smothered when I can’t find that time for myself to create yet feel guilty when I spend time away from my children and family. So maybe Life and Art meet Frustration when we realize we simply can’t do all the things we want to do and be all the things others need us to be. So we must accept. I must accept. Accept things as they are and, just maybe, as they were meant to be.

So I go back to that list and try to remember why there is so much on it. I committed to the Fat Book swap because I want my girls to learn to take chances on new things like I do. I’ve procrastinated on my calendar because I’d rather go through the pictures we took on our family vacation. I’m taking the Blackboard class because I’d love to shift over to faculty full time to have more time with my family. We bought the girls a dog for their birthday last year so they could grow to love animals as much as we do while learning to take care of another creature. And about that Water Play Day? I selected that school for my girls for the growth it would provide them…emotionally, socially, spiritually and mentally. While I suppose there is a little selfishness in all that we do, maybe we all need to learn how to recognize the gifts we give our children by doing everything that we do. I’ll work on that. How about you? I think I’ll go look through those pictures again now….

Jul 21

Online Inspiration: Creative Mom Podcast

Last week I happened across the Creative Mom Podcast:

“The Creative Mom Podcast started in June of 2006. The goal of the weekly show is to provide a creative talk show filled with good creative discussion and inspiring music for creative moms (and non-moms and artists and creatives of all types) to listen to for a feeling of community, understanding, and inspiration. The format for the show is fairly organic and changes often, but staples of the show include creative projects with kids, artist notes from the week in review, journaling ideas and suggestions, book reviews, blog mentions, weekly prompts, and, sometimes, creative non-fiction essays.”

Episode #104 includes a review of Danny Gregory‘s Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be the Artist You Truly Are, one of my favorite books. The podcast’s music selections may or may not be to your taste, but you might enjoy listening to a few episodes while you’re cooking dinner, folding laundry, or commuting.

Amy Cowen, the creator of the Creative Mom Podcast, also has a blog, Threaded Thoughts:

“At Threaded Thoughts, I’m tracking, tracing, mapping, and recording the many overlapping, intersecting, often-gossamer strands of motherhood and creativity that define me. From black and white to Technicolor, from lace weight to bulky, from watercolor to pen and ink, I’m following a path with no clear map other than an internal compass and the ever-changing lens of personal vision.”

Enjoy and create!

Jul 17

6 Comments

Cathy: Art is play

I know that Keri Smith’s Wreck this Journal has already been recommended on this site, but I feel compelled to endorse it as well. What a fantastic reminder that art is not perfection, as museums and literary and music critics would like us to think. I have a lifetime struggle with the idea that what I’m working on has to be perfect. This is probably my greatest obstacle to completing my myriad larger projects.

Upon reading Miranda’s blog entry, the Cecil Vortex interview, and going to Keri’s blogs, I received a wonderful kick in the head, and promptly ordered the book from Amazon.com. The excitement ran through me like electricity when I opened the mailbox to find a neat cardboard box. I ripped it open, flipped through the book, reading this page then that randomly, and began following instructions. Each page may advertise itself as a place for destruction, but really they are invitations to play. And really, isn’t that what all art is? It shouldn’t feel like going to the office.

And that is what happened for me at some point in working on my youth novel. In the beginning, I was all excited, the ideas were popping, I sang and made silly sounds while typing. As I approached page 40, something of the play part went out and I found myself trying to make plot lines work. I asked how am I going to get from here…to there. I knew where I wanted it to go, but not how to get there and something in the writing process died — the creative part. So I shelved it without really meaning to and without ever letting it go in the back of my mind. Then life hit with the proverbial load of poo. Oh, it was all good, and troubling, and hard and fun, but it was a lot of distraction from the writing. Then I felt it was a chore to get back to it.

Well, now, with Wreck in hand, and back in a playful spirit of my own, not for baby or big boys, I am excited again about writing what ultimately is, I hope, going to be a fun book for 9-12 year olds to read. I have relocated a couple of versions of the manuscript with notes and outlines, and the USB version, too. I’m ready to sing, dance my fingers on the keyboard, make leaps and bounds, and play with the writing. Wish me luck and joy! And don’t be afraid to play and let your art/work be imperfect, too. Color outside the lines and see what comes of it.

Jul 14

MacGyver Challenge: Clothes hangers

If you really want to stretch your creative powers into uncharted territory, consider ReadyMade magazine’s MacGyver Challenge. The idea is to turn something old and unwanted into something new and possibly useful, as in the MacGyver Luggage Challenge. For the new contest:

Hangers, no matter how dutifully we purge them, tend to multiply. Drawn to the dark corners of our closets (their favorite breeding ground), all sorts of species rapidly accumulate: gussied-up wire varieties clad in cardboard tubes and paper, molded plastic types in a rainbow of hues, wood-and-metal hybrids adorned with clips and hooks. Then they lurk, huddled at the end of the hanging bar in a tangled assemblage of triangular frames. Pending the future development of magical stasis-field closets, the influx will surely continue. What else can we do with them? The starchiest solution (made from any type of clothes hanger—the “no wire hangers, ever!” rule does not apply) wins a subscription and a ReadyMade T-shirt. {Deadline: July 21, 2008}

It turns out that some creatives — O Magazine included — are already using old pants hangers to display photographs.

Contest submission details here. I’m curious to see the results!

Jul 10

4 Comments

Alana: The Original Women Writers

I’ve been feeling a little daunted of late. Giving up my high flying career to look after my girls seems to have morphed into a full-time child-rearing job, combined with a (very) part-time writing career, swamped by the domestic drudgery of housekeeper, cook, cleaner and general slave to everyone else’s wishes.

As I fight a losing battle for some time to call my own (having long given up on a room of my own, a desk of my own, a moment of my own), I’m afraid writing has taken the biggest hit. As I lie under the duvet desperately grasping another ten minutes of rest I console myself that I’m not leaping out of bed earlier than my sleeping angels to write, by the fact that I’m a (now pregnant with my third) hectic mother of two under three and exhaustion has won the day. I pat myself on the back for getting through the day without causing anyone any actual physical harm, and meeting my magazine deadlines. I shrug my shoulders at the long list of writing I should / could / would be doing if only I had the time / childcare / energy – my blog (once daily, then weekly, now sporadic), other blogs, my diary, my novel.

But now I must confess to being shamed. I’m reading a book called Can Any Mother Help Me, about a group of women in the 1930’s who were stressed and bored and isolated from marriage and motherhood. In those days you gave up your job when you married and raising a handful of kids by yourself was the norm. One day a lonely woman wrote an ad in The Nursery Times asking if any other mother could help her. She was desperately lonely and isolated, and needed creative interaction. She got so many replies from so many women around the country they decided to set up their own secret magazine. They all took anonymous names and wrote articles about their lives. Taking them through their child-rearing years, through the second world war, through marriage breakdowns and life’s highs and lows, these women found solace in their writing and their friendships. The magazine – called CCC (Co-Operative Correspondence Club) – lasted for over 55 years.

Their lives where often harsh, and many had been educated but forced to become nothing more than domestic drudges after marriage. They endured bringing up their children alone and in austere circumstances during the war and they fought their own battles to find identity, creativity, and achievement. They were brave, funny, witty, enduring, strong and smart. They worked much longer and much harder than I do, and they still found time to write. For 55 years these women literally wrote the story of their lives, weaving a weapon against boredom, domestic drudgery, marriage and motherhood. Life gave them something to write about, and their writing gave their life meaning.

It’s 5.30 a.m. and I’m writing. And it feels wonderful. Thank you Creative Construction – a little modern CCC.

Jul 8

3 Comments

Cathy: Writer’s Stone Soup

Last week was a challenging one creatively since we had house guests, a big 4th party, lots of extraneous appointments, lots of back pain to heal and lots of sleep deprivation to go along with it all – thanks to baby C’s night nursing. After a recent burst of creativity, it was a bit of a let down for me, but I am aware that my creativity has a tendency to cycle like that. I think one of my major challenges in creativity is the fact that even if I try to schedule or plot myself or my writing, it ain’t gonna happen that way. My best laid plans often go to waste. The best response for me in that event, is to take a deep breath, exhale, and not give myself another reason to live in the land of stress and guilt. Sometimes, the worst thing I can do is sit down and “try” to write.

However, I still felt creative, because I stayed in touch with writing by – you guessed it – reading. When I don’t read on a regular basis, something besides all the articles on autism, aspergers, etc. every week, my brain starts to atrophy. I get really grumpy, too, and that’s bad for everyone around me. I think if I stay in touch with imagination by reading fiction or poetry, I can hear the voices in the back of my head rise to the surface. Instead of just picking up the cereal box in the cabinet, I am narrating the beginning of something that may never hit the page, but at least I’m having fun thinking, “As she removed the cereal box from the cupboard, she looked again at his body where it lay on the kitchen floor. Waiting for the police to arrive, she poured the corn flakes into the bowl then read the ingredients list slowly before looking once again, at the growing blossom of red around his head.”

Now, to be honest, most of these thoughts never make it to paper. If they do, I edit and re-edit and scribble it out and try it again, half a dozen times. These thoughts do not rise to the surface to make it even this far, unless I am enthralled in someone else’s writing. Right now, I am re-reading for the several-ith time Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which Lisa Damian would recommend right along with me, I’m sure. Anyway, because I am so excited by his writing, I find myself almost in competition with it. Now, I rarely write thrillers of any kind, but I love his language so much, that the thriller aspect of this book leaks out of my head as I entertain myself by swimming in the collective writer’s soup from which we all drink. If we just realize it and know that about each other and ourselves, even when it feels a little plagiaristic, I think we might all end up writing a little better or a little more often. If I can have fun wandering in my head in between moments of engaged writing, it leads me down better paths toward doing so in the moments when I am hit with inspiration like a truck and actually write.

Jul 7

3 Comments

Kelly: Happy to be here!

Hello everyone! First off, let me say thanks to Miranda for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful blog. I’ve read through many entries and surfed your blogs, and this is truly an amazing, inspiring, delightful, creative group of women. So who am I? I’m a mom foremost, yet that’s a title I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to say. I guess I knew I always wanted to be a mom, but when I met my DH (“darling” or “damn” husband, depending on the day 🙂 ), he told me fairly early on that his chances of giving me a child were pretty slim; of course, he waited until he already had me hooked to tell me that. I was 26 at the time, and that biological clock hadn’t really started ticking too quickly yet; we married three years later. And by the grace of God, eight years, several attempts at IVF and a miscarriage later, we welcomed our beautiful red-headed twin girls, Sarah and Olivia, in 2005.

As far as creativity, I welcome and attempt just about all kinds. With a bachelor’s degree in Communications and a master’s degree in English, I’ve held a variety of professional positions that have utilized my writing and public relations skills: assistant sports information director at Florida State University, account executive for a travel and tourism related public relations firm, and as an adjunct college English instructor; I’ve been teaching college English off and on for nearly 20 years now. For the past 14 years, I’ve served as the Director of Student Life and Leadership Development for a very large community college here in Florida, a position that really doesn’t utilize my writing skills much but does require a lot of creativity in time management, planning and marketing. My blog has been a way for me to exercise those writing bones a bit more. Art wise, my creative passions include artisan jewelry and handbag design, photography, and mixed media collage, something I just started dabbling in this year. My primary art “business” is my jewelry, which you can see here.

Lastly, I get quite a few comments on that silly avatar of mine [which you’ll find under comments], so I guess I’ll explain. My girls did my hair that day and wanted me to take a picture (you can see the large version and a couple others from that day here.) I’ve always felt that if you can’t laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at anyone else, and we try to laugh a lot around the little happy shack we call home. My family and I live by this saying, coined by my DH: “Life is far too important to be taken too seriously.” I look forward to sharing my life with you all while I learn more about each of you!

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