Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

The Fourth Annual Golden Coffee Cup begins tomorrow. Get your goals in. The wild rumpus is about to begin. :)

My halloween treat -- I was invited to a fun Halloween party. It was an interactive art project party. The idea was to create a collage in a silhouetted part of your body that expresses a time of change in your life. I chose the life changing event of getting glasses: the blur before glasses to the sharp-edged world after. We created our collages and then responded to the collages of others outside their filled in silhouettes. So much fun!

Anyway, I did this instead of a pumpkin this year. Here is a portion of my silhouette and collage response because my scanner is not big enough to even show half of it.



I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed. Steve Lacy

Golden Coffee Cup begins on Monday, Nov. 1.

Well, the first day for the Fourth Annual Golden Coffee Cup is coming and the goals have started to show up on the blog and in my inbox. Click that link above to learn the ins and outs of the GGC rules.

One more week, so I thought I would give you some goal making tips.

First, try breaking down your goal into a task list. If your goal does not break down into a managable task list, you probably need to revise your goal. Goals are intensely personal. Take some time and think about what you really, really want. Your goal must also be tied into your values. What do you believe in? And speaking of belief, you must belive you can achieve your goal. Also take some time and picture the end result of your goal. Finally to be successful it is paramount that you share your goal with some one.

Time to make those goals! This goal event already has rewards and a deadline built in. It also comes with daily reminders and encouragement. Consider subscribing to my blog if you wish the daily GCC posts to show up in your inbox. So here's the other news: you will have to work. Roll up your sleeves and get cracking.

At some point in time I was inspired by Laurie Halse Anderson and her novel SPEAK to draw the following doodle. I hope that you are inspired.



A good quote to keep you on task for the days ahead.

Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never - in nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
~ Winston Churchill

Fourth Annual Golden Coffee Cup is coming!

It's that time of year, folks. The 2009 Golden Coffee Cup held from Nov 1 to Nov 30 will be awarded for a month of goal setting and achievement. Win free coffee! Click the link to find out more.

Do you have the "write" stuff. :)



Want to be featured in the 2009 Annual Golden Coffee Cup? Send me (molly@mollyblaisdell.com) a digital picture that expresses your "High Five", a link to your blog, website or book, and up to three sentences of inspiration. This opportunity is open to children's writers and illustrators only. You do not need to be published. I will fit in as many as I can.

I'll leave you with a last thought. Spill some exhuberance into your work this week. The creative process should be a rush. Be equally unrestrained and elaborate as you you move forward this week. Do what ever it takes to set yourself free with great joy. Cut loose. Get out of that rut. Go home a different way. Ask yourself a new question. Go with the flow. See what happens. :)

The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Fourth Annual Golden Coffee Cup

ATTENTION, FOLKS, Boo, cut and paste. My email below was wrong! Sorry! Sorry! If you want to be featured in the Golden Coffee Cup use this email address: molly@mollyblaisdell.com. See the instructions below. Thank you!

It's that time of year, folks. The 2009 Golden Coffee Cup held from Nov 1 to Nov 30 will be awarded for a month of goal setting and achievement.

Win your very own Golden Coffee Cup.

Let's bring some excellence into that creation!!!!!
Here are the Motivational Coffee Cups. Feel the power pouring into you!



Want to be featured in the 2009 Annual Golden Coffee Cup? Send me (molly@mollyblaisdell.com) a digital picture that expresses your "High Five", a link to your blog, website or book, and up to three sentences of inspiration. This opportunity is open to children's writers and illustrators only. You do not need to be published. I will fit in as many as I can.

SO WHAT IS THE GOLDEN COFFEE CUP?
In honor of National Novel Writing Month, I have a little event on my blog for anyone one who needs an extra boost of motivation to get their current project rolling. If you don't know about Nanowrmo, National Novel Writing Month, this is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. This is a kamikaze approach to writing, it's about quantity and not quality.

The Golden Coffee Cup is a different kind of motivational thingy. This coveted award (an awesome picture of a coffee cup emailed to you that you may display it with pride) will be given to the successful November goal setters.

EXTRA, EXTRA INCENTIVE!!!!! Four lucky winners will receive a card good for a real paper cup of genuine coffee. Winners will need to send me(molly@mollyblaisdell.com)their address to receive their card.

This is my answer to that "interesting concept" (cough, cough) of requiring writers to churn out 50,000 incomprehensible words in one month. I do the judging and it is wholly subjective. You do not have to be my friend to win, really, honestly, cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye.

THE RULES:

1. Post your November creative goals on my by blog by Nov 1. I'll make sure they are all moved to the November 1st post. That is the deadline, folks.

2. Come back weekly for general cheering and wild ruckus, celebrating your successes. We'll do some holy snappin'. For extra motivation, celebrity guests will be on hand to offer high fives for your achievements!

3. If you reach your goal from Nov 23 to Nov 30, and post on blog, you will be recieve your Golden Coffee Cup picture. There is no verification process, I believe you. Send in your email address to molly.blaisdell@verizon.net and your Golden Coffee Cup picture will be emailed to you. Display it proudly as wallpaper, post it on your blog, print it out and tack it on your bulletin board for year-long motivation. Write a great post and you might win the real coffee!

GOAL GUIDELINES:

The Golden Coffee Cup is about making a goal and keeping it.
If you are a novel writer, you can write something new with a realistic word count goal, keeping your life in mind. Your goal might also be making your first novel submission (think Delacorte Contest) or a revision of a novel you've already written. You can do this!

If you are a picture book writer or artist, hey, picture books are harder to write than they look. I don't really care about the word count because if your project is over 500 words that might be a problem. Picture book artists tell stories too. You might be an artist making a dummy and a dummy is certainly as hard to create as a novel. This is about quality not quantity.


The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment. - Earl Nightingale

What is story?

I've got an idea rolling around in my head.

What is story? Yes, I have pat answers that just leap out of my head when I ask the question, but I think there is more to story than my pat answers. Story is certainly about what we want. It's about who we are. Stories also offer information about how to thrive where we dwell. Yes, stories have profound things to tell us about how we are going to get out bed tomorrow when a tsunami of grief has washed over us in the night. Stories help us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Stories have ancient rhythms, and they thrum within me. Who knows how many campfires men sat around before someone came up the with technology of writing to store stories on paper instead of in flawed earthen vessels? It's really true that stories don't need words. Meaningful stories can be told in the silences. Story is also a way to share our journeys of survival, our struggles with faith, our dances with hope.

I, for one, am hungry for stories. I love the rhythms in stories. I love the sense of joy and tragedy in stories. I love to meet interesting characters that somehow teach me something about myself. I love a satisfying ending. My inspiring advice for today is to step away from the words and just let a story play out in your heart. Feel the beginning, middle, and end. Let it all wash over you, through you. Then and only then try to capture the thing with your words.

Were you surprised?

Here is my doodle for the day. It's called "Shepherd".



There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou