How Play Helps Me Find My Groove

Hi folks, I've been pressured this week. I have a deadline looming. It's a few months off, but it mocks me from the distance. A ton of work is between me and that deadline. My creative self is just not happy being forced to perform. The writing is feeling very mechanical, and I've been feeling edgy. I can do the ton of work ahead, but I have to have an infusion of fun or this is going to be a dismal project.

As a professional writer, I don't have the luxury of waiting for a muse or finding the right mood. That said, without the muse or the mood, I struggle to get anything on the page that is infused with awesomeness. Without finding my groove, my work is painful and generally worthless and uninspired.  To find my groove, I have to give myself time to play, a lot of time to play, This week I started up a project that is really for the fun of it. It's a silly project that is self-indulgent, silly, and sarcastic. No one wants this project. It's just for me. I delight in it.

Allowing myself to do something that lights me up, whether anyone else cares or not, fuels me with energy. The project has one targeted audience and that is myself. I am always working on projects like this. I doodle. I bake, I crochet, I knit, I sew, I sing, I play my flute, pluck on my dulcimer, weed my flowerbeds, chase with the cats or let them chase me, joke with my kids, write silly bits. I play. There are reasons for this creative play. One, I must be able to finish things because it makes me feel jazzed. Two, I must be free to complete something for my own self, something that sends a sense of accomplishment into my soul. Three,  I get to call the flaws in my work character.

Play is like taking a tub of olive oil and tumping it on my head. It a lubricant that cuts down resistance. I jump into my work and slide forward with a rush of speed. I'm ungummed from the commercialization and commodifying of imagination. I find that sweet place of the song bird, croaking frog, or shimmering cicadas.  I find what heart tells me to do. The dreaded deadline no longer looms. It's just a date on a calendar that happen to coincide with the marvelous creative journey I'm on. This dear readers, is the GROOVE.

I hope you have some fun and find your groove this week!  I will be back with more musing next week.

Here is a doodle.

Here is a quote for your pocket.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator

The Indomitable Struggle for Meaning

Hi folks, This is a real ramble this week. I was out having breakfast at my favorite little breakfast stop yesterday. It was late morning and I was the only one in the place. I took some pages of my WIP, bought my obligatory cup of iced tea (this is Texas), and picked up the provided newspapers to sift through. I still like to read a newspaper one or two times a week. It brings back warm memories of growing up when my family shared the Sunday paper. 

One of the employees was reading from her phone. 

"Oh, I love Shel Silverstein," she exclaimed.  

Her fellow workers all chimed back similar love.  Immediately. 

"Which one are you reading?" one called.

The phone reader called out, "You have to hear this. Hug O'War."

She read it. Tables stopped being wiped. The kitchen grew silent. The manager put down his tablet.

When she finished, I heard murmured happy comments of how much they all loved Shel Silverstein and how they have treasured him their whole lives (18 to 25 years). They called out his book titles; Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree, and Falling Up! And when this conversation ended they launched into the The Giver by Lois Lowery. 

I felt like a very happy fly on the wall.This conversation brought me close to my life's mission -- I'm caught up in the indomitable struggle for meaning.  I know, I have a life mission. I'm fighting the sound and fury part of life. I'm kicking against entropy.

This hunger to share something of who we are and what we want feels like rocket fuel inside me. Unfortunately, failure is an option that I have run into again and again. You see, I really want to create a morning in a breakfast shop in the future where someone reads from her phone, shares my words, and heads nod in happy communing over these familiar words. I so want to contribute a verse. 

I keep searching for that spark of meaning that will light the fire of human souls. I call this an indomitable struggle because I will not quit. I will not, but I must be honest. I've been feeling like Moses looking over into a promised land this week, wondering if I'm just barred because I hit a rock in frustration to make water flow. I'm feeling like Apollo Thirteen astronauts who got  mighty close to the moon but their story became one of just getting home and the wonders of duct tape. The worst of it, I'm feeling like the member of a host of women whose quiet serviceable lives are lost amid the clamoring voices of the flashier members of our species. 

I am the most pedestrian creature to have a far flung dream. I'm off the beaten track, dwelling in the yawning wilderness of suburbia, You really don't hear much about the "Voice that Cried from Surburbia!" I live in a "little box" on a street of ticky-tacky houses. I'm a housewife and a mother. I think the government calls me unemployed. My everyday projects are a garage sale and going grocery shopping. I might mow the lawn.  

And yet I'm caught up in this indomitable struggle for meaning. Here I am, hoping to rattle the bones. You know, a weed will spring up in any crack in the concrete. I hope that you hold onto your struggle. I hope you find meaning on this journey of life. I hope that you share it. Bloom, even in that impossible place. I have a deep seated belief that "every little thing is going to shine."

Will be back next week with more musing. 

Here is a doodle.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love. Marc Chagall

For the Wallflowers and Those Picked Last

Hi, folks, this is a meandering post, but maybe I've said something that resonates.

Where do we fit? There is a day we all come to, at least I hope so. On this day we allow ourselves to be ourselves.  We embrace the fact that we are whatever we are-- animal, mineral, vegetable, you know whatever. We embrace our contradictions and our harmonies. This awareness began to grow in me when I wrote my Rembrandt book. Van Rijn's message was so clear. He was after capturing the shadow and light he perceived in the world. His self-portraits speak so much to me. He drew his face over and over, recording the ravages of time, the gifts of wisdom, and the emerging soul, His art stamped the idea of capturing the world as it is into my artistic vision.

I tend to be on the edges of the party of life. I like to find a corner and a good conversation, The rest of time I hang out by myself. In groups, I like to sit up front, in the back or along the edge. I'm only a mild introvert; this edge thing is something else.  I march to the beat of my own drum. It's not something I want to do. It something that I do whether I want to or not. I'm out of step with the times. Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes its unfortunate, but at the end of the day it is me. Rembrandt opened my eyes to just being what I am and being comfortable with that. 

One decision that I've made over last few years is to read what interests me. There are entire movements in the book world that just go right over my head. You know whatever shadows and lights draw me in, I go after them. I don't have to read the rest of it. It makes me a really eclectic reader. I'm good with that. I've given myself permission to skip books that I don't connect with , even if everyone loves that book. I also get to read whatever cheesy popular read that I want to. I have freedom. It's alright be out of step.If you are out of step with world, embrace it. Stylizing yourself to fit in just doesn't really bring out great art in my opinion. The space to be yourself will help you bloom. 

If you are a wallflower in the world or have been picked last more times than you can count, don't worry about it. Watch the world from your corner and do something amazing with the knowledge. Put that "picked last" into perspective. I mean, folks on the edges generally have big imaginations. I find that they have schemes percolating within. That's a good place to be. Stay away from the myth that you must find your place. It may not exist yet, and you may be carving it out. 

Will be back next week. 

Here is the doodle:

Here is a quote for your pocket: 

The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this. Mark Twain

Literary Aspirations with Sharknado Thrown In

Hi, folks,

A confession. I have literary aspirations but with some serious Sharknado thrown in. That moment in the movie where the guy slices open a shark with chainsaw, that never gets old for me.  I want to write something meaningful and uplifting, but you know with some geekiness in the mix. So I have a I-want-to-write-something-important complex, but I also want to create something so epic-geek-weird-that-it-creates-a-cult-following-lasting-for-generations. I know this is messed up. I'm good with that.  

It's time for me to write another book. Part of me want to cling to the myth that I can study the formulas and create a bestseller, but  I know the deeper truth -- I'm blowing on some dice and am about to throw them out on a table. I wish that so many decisions weren't a crap shoot. I wish life wasn't that way. But I am living on a molten ball of lava that is covered by a thin skin of rock material near a massive fusion reactor (the Sun). Life is fragile, unpredictable, and I have a mere heartbeat of time to share my thoughts with the universe. I have little control and have learned I must take my chances. These are my only days. 

So I started a new book this week. I have no idea if anyone will ever like it. I have my literary aspirations with my geek slant as usual. This time I'm adapting Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing into a down-home Texas mold. I'm making my choices. I will live with them. Life offers no guarantees.

I'm taking my chances. I hope that you take yours too, and if that includes some Sharknado, so be it!

I will be back next week with more.

Here is a doodle:

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves. Mahatmas Ghandi