Betsy: Productive turnabout

I’ve had a huge turnabout since I last posted (which was a while ago) that I am pretty excited about. I think one major trigger for this turnabout has been the writing Fridays I have been spending with Miranda. The other trigger is that I am not working as much, which is why I have time for “writing Fridays.”

I have always had a hard time writing for myself when my job is writing for others. It just doesn’t leave much writing brainspace, if you know what I mean. So I’m glad, in a way, I’ve been a bit short on work so I can focus on some personal writing projects, as I’ve been meaning to for the last several years when I’ve had to work full-time.

My current project definitely got its kickoff when Miranda and I got together for writing. While we do spend some time gabbing, for the most part we are both working intently. I like having a place to go and a “co-worker” in the room. It is a highly productive time.

In any case, I have written a ton and am really excited about getting my new blog off the ground. It is taking up pretty much every minute of my time (I don’t really have time to write this…PhotoShop calls…), but I look forward every day to doing the work, whether it’s writing, designing the page, or dealing with some of the technical issues.

And now, knocking water pipes call… (What is that about?)

Miranda: That finishing touch

As mentioned in an earlier post, I subscribe to the weekly newsletter of Canadian painter Robert Genn. While Genn writes about painting, his thoughts usually apply to any creative pursuit, including writing. This week’s newsletter is about art that is “overworked”–which relates to how to decide when something is “finished.” Genn’s newsletter is reprinted here in full, by permission.

Yesterday, Rich Woy of Ocala, Florida asked, “How do you know when a painting is overworked? Are there boundaries or clues? Is this judgment left to the artist or the critic?”

Thanks, Rich. Good question. Funnily, at dinner last night a subscriber happened to mention that I habitually overworked the word “overworked.” I had to explain myself.

For sure, it’s a term among artists. “Too many notes,” said the Emperor-composer Joseph II to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Similar thing comes up in painting. Too many strokes. Having said that, you have to know that tight photo-realism is not necessarily overworked. A close-up look at evolved realism can show understated brushwork and strokes in appropriate places. Overworked mainly applies to expressive, impressionist and broad-treatment works where freshness and surface quality are denied.

Overworking takes place when you lose control. As you fail in facility and freshness, you try to save the day with fiddle and fuss. The passage looks laboured.

Overworking happens when you’re overtired, distracted, suffering from desire deficit, and particularly when you’re not paying enough attention to reference material or personal creative vision. More crudely, it happens when you don’t know what you’re doing. The clue comes when you see you’ve gone too far. Work doesn’t look as good as it might. “A painting,” says Harley Brown, “is always finished before the artist thinks it is.”

While the general public may not be so sensitive to overworking, and sophisticated critics may be looking at other criteria, to the actively creative eye, overworking is easily spotted and often spoils the look of otherwise fine work. Artists have ruses, however. The bad areas can sometimes be obfuscated by nearby passages of bravura or other visual distractions, but smoke and mirrors doesn’t always hide the true measure of the artist. The main antidote is to scrape off and start over.

The overwork boundary often lies in the grey zone between the intuitive mode and controlled rendering. The fine art is in watching yourself in the act of intuiting. As Ted Smuskiewicz says, “You learn to leave your strokes alone.”

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Esoterica: The most powerful antidote to overworking is a habitual, timely pause. Work periods need to be laced with both brief and long ones. Lean back, stand back, walk around, move the work to another easel. In my much-celebrated case of Attention Deficit Disorder, long pauses are difficult, so I work on more than one at a time. As Quebec plein air painter Sylvio Gagnon says, “The best way to finish a painting is to start a new one.” In any case, you need to neutralize indecision. “When you’ve just done it, you’re not sure. But when you’ve sat with it for a couple of hours and you don’t want to do anything more to it, that’s a great feeling.” (Damien Hirst)

5/14 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

The winning entry for last week’s prompt, “a cup of coffee,” is a digital image submitted by Karen Poneris:

Congratulations, Karen! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate will be arriving shortly.

Contest update: The number of submissions has been lower than I’d hoped for–if you’re holding out for some reason, please lower the bar and participate–especially all you regular Creative Construction bloggers! Set the timer for 15 minutes and see what you can come up with.

I fielded a question from someone about the legitimacy of entering work that was created previously but happens to fit a given prompt. If you have something in your portfolio or filing cabinet that works for the contest prompt, by all means send it in. Simply the process of reviewing something you already created, thinking about it, perhaps tweaking it as needed–that’s all part of the creative process, so it’s legit.

This week’s prompt: “Little black dress.”
Use the prompt however you like. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by midnight on Tuesday, May 20. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Kate: Introducing Myself

Thank you, Miranda, for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful community of artist mothers. I’m a writer living and teaching in Minneapolis. I have two daughters, Stella, who is 4 ½, and Zoe, who is two months old. I’m still in the sleep-deprived early months with a new baby, and I’m getting very little writing done these days. (Someone told me that going from one to two children would be challenging, but I didn’t really believe it. I do now.)

I teach a class called Mother Words at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and I blog about teaching and motherhood literature (as well as my life as a mother) at Mother Words: Mothers Who Write. I’ve written a memoir called Ready for Air about Stella’s premature birth. It’s an account of the final weeks of my pregnancy, the “this-was-not-part-of-the-plan” first weeks of my daughter’s life in the hospital, and the isolated, post-NICU world we inhabited after we took her home. It’s a story about the dark side of pregnancy and motherhood—the fear, the irrationality, the psychic disruption—but it’s also about hope and resolve and writing, which ultimately is the thing that helps me heal and move on. The book is currently being “shopped around,” and I’m hopeful that it will find a home—soon.

Motherhood motivates me to write. I have so little time to actually write that when I do get an hour or two, I’m desperate to get words down, to claim that space for myself on the page. I look forward to being inspired by your wonderful work, lovely words, and stories of balancing motherhood and art.

Jenn: The Conference Call

I’ve been having my little elves work on my book while I took a break from viturally everything except my daughter these past few weeks. But many of my students are graduating, and now it’s back in my hand. I went to the American Association of Geographers (AAG) national convention last week, and both my assistant and my executive editors were there. It was great and encouraging to see them. They haven’t as it turns out, been making a bonfire with the first 10 chapters I sent them, they’re just very very busy. So I’ve put the thing down for a while until I hear from them. I just got an e-mail this AM from the assist. editor scheduling a conference call for Monday, which is perfect timing, as I’m really getting psyched up about the book again. I have the last 10 chapters and 3 appendicies done, in rough draft (ROUGH ROUGH), so the textbook is in it’s first iteration of being complete. I just have to get in and gloss it all up and add the figures and tables, then start sending another batch. My plan is to do 1 chapter a week over the summer, and aim for a complete book by the end of August. One year ahead of schedule, yay!

The sucky thing is that I just had to increase my daughter’s (HAD?) hours in daycare due to my summer class schedule, and I’m really regretting it. I’m a teacher, I should have the summers OFF to do NOTHING. And going through a divorce soon means I should look as shabby on paper, financially, as I can. But instead, I’ve signed up to teach 5 classes this summer, the money is too incredible to say no to. I’m wistfully thinking about a leisurely summer up in Maine, which I COULD have done. Which I SHOULD have done, living off my savings, and not paying collosal amounts of money to daycare, and since she’s switching to a new daycare in the fall, this is really the only time I could have taken the whole summer off and not have had to spend thousands “saving my space” for the fall. I blew it. I suck.

This month, the Atlantic Monthly’s back page vocabulary/pun feature was about what to call your ex. Very funny. Whatever you call them, mine has been coming around again, and things are going very well, though I will never trust him and never believe him, so I’m not really sure what I’m doing letting him in. I say I do it for my daughter, but I do it because I love him - in the way an addict loves a drug that’s killing her. All of the time I’ve spent with him and with our daughter, I could have had a break, which is what we all desperately need, isn’t it? Laying around doing nothing? Or I could have turned in 3 - 5 more chapters on my book.

Life is not perfect, but it’s pretty darned good right now. I’m so excited to be working on the book again, and teaching Natural Disasters this summer WILL help me to do a better job on the last chapters. It will be sad to see the project end, I’ve really enjoyed working on it. Do any of you have that sad, wistful feeling when your creative project is finished?

Christa: My life, my work

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on an article for one of the trade magazines I worked for before I had children. I don’t do much of this anymore. I learned early on that I could only write articles when I could be sure that sources would be patient with the possibility of hearing little voices in the background, and for the most part, I couldn’t be sure of that at all.

Last December, I did manage to write a strong article using two sources that had no problem hearing little voices. (It helped that my in-laws were available to watch the boys one of the days, and that my husband had a 10-day school vacation.) The experience was so good that I thought maybe I could write more articles. So when a friendly source emailed at the end of February to ask if I’d work with him again, I jumped at the chance.

And it went great, as I expected. He’s a great source. He’s fun to talk to (even a little flirtatious, which does wonders for my self-image even underneath the kid-crusts and unwashed hair). And he’s incredibly well-connected and helpful. This time around, in fact, he set me up with all the sources I needed. I didn’t even have to make first contact, and I didn’t have to wait on people. He forwarded my emails. He stayed on top of them.

Which turned out to be absolutely critical to my being on time. By the time my husband’s April school vacation rolled around, I realized I’d hardly started this article. (The source’s schedule was as much to blame as mine.) But he honored my request to wrap it up that week, while I had childcare, and so did his contacts. The weekend after I completed his and another interview (and got two emailed replies to my questions), Puck came down with a 103F fever, and I had a house showing two days before the article was due. One of my last interviews was done in the car while Hamlet stood outside, drenching my window with water from the hose.

Yet I got it done on time. And realized that in general, I cannot write any more articles until both children are in school.

Which is a damn shame. Along with the kick I get from being flirted with (not the first time this has happened with a source, though rare), I really do get a charge from writing articles on public safety, a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I recognized this today especially, when I woke up out of gas, moved through the day like frozen molasses (much to my older boy’s chagrin), and then–at the end of the day, my worst time–magically improved as I spoke to one of my editors on a different topic.

I need to work. I need to interact with adults on very specific topics–I need to feel competent as a human being before I can feel competent as a mother. And I need to create. Would that my sons were both happy to hang out on their own while I talk on the phone for an hour, but they aren’t. It will be at least another year before I can find that fulfillment. But at least now I know it isn’t completely dead.

5/7 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

The winning entry for last week’s prompt, “view from the window,” is an untitled poem submitted by Elizabeth Campbell:

I come late
to nature

I am not

a climber of mountains
a spelunker of caves
a diver of oceans

except within these walls,
where I weave webs that
keep me close to home

watching through windows
with wanting
the wind, the dark, the leaves
familiar and foreign, alive.

 

Congratulations, Elizabeth! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate will be arriving shortly. Don’t spend it all at once!

This week, I am also posting two other entries (both short prose pieces), one from a regular blog contributor (Jenn), and one from an occasional commenter (Juliet Bell). Click on “continue reading” below to read those entries.

This week’s prompt: “A cup of coffee.”
Use the prompt however you like. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by midnight on Tuesday, May 13. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Christa: Scare people for a good cause

Folks, my apologies for being quiet lately. I have honestly been so busy that I haven’t had time to think much about being creative, though I’ve spent plenty of time doing it. (Upshot: I still miss writing articles, but these kids at these ages make it nigh on impossible.) But this post isn’t about me. It’s about something far more important.

Shroud Publishing (where I am assistant editor) has a new anthology in the works. Proceeds from the sales of Northern Chill (tentative): 100 Terrifying New England Tales to Tell Around a Campfire will go to the American Cancer Society. Why? At the Shroud forum, an email from author Nate Kenyon discussed the impact of cancer on his life. His words have all the more impact as we approach Mother’s Day:

When I was eight years old, my mother was diagnosed with an advanced stage of ovarian cancer. A short time later, my father was killed in a freak automobile accident, leaving my mother alone to care for two young children and battle a terrifying disease, with no hope for a cure.

My mother never let anything destroy her remarkable spirit. When I was only 4, she and my father left a comfortable life in Seattle and drove to Maine with nothing but a Volkswagen full of their personal belongings. My father set up shop as a small-town lawyer while my mother, a former teacher, learned to build passive solar houses. Then she built our home, from the ground up, with her own two hands.

I tell you this to illustrate her incredible strength and determination. She lived another five years after my father’s death, four years longer than her doctors predicted, astonishing everyone. But even she could not beat this disease forever, and when I was thirteen, she passed away peacefully with her family at her side.

I cannot express how devastating this was to me. It has taken me many years to begin to face those days from an adult’s perspective. The simple fact is, an experience like this damages a child in ways that are permanent and life-changing.

My mother loved the arts, and always encouraged me to draw and write as much as possible. Her enthusiasm and support made me want to become a writer, which brings me to where I stand today. Bloodstone, my first published novel, was released this week in paperback by Leisure Books. It is (I hope) a fun, scary read full of ghosts and demons and possession and old, long-buried family secrets. But there are also many references to cancer in the novel. I didn’t do this intentionally, but it crept in from my subconscious all the same. I guess it was also an exorcism of sorts for me.

The guidelines are as follows:

Flash fiction (no more than 700 words) told in the FIRST person (to allow readers to re-tell the story) set in a New England location. The anthology will be separated into 4 sections (tentative titles):

• Haunts- Stories of ghosts, specters, and phantoms
• Beasts- Stories of monsters, critters, and wild animals
• Humans- Stories of eccentric people, serial killers, mad men
• Other Oddities- everything else

Format: Submit as a Word .doc or .rtf attachment. SUBJECT LINE MUST SAY: “SUBMISSION–NORTH–TITLE”

Contact: via http://www.shroudmagazine.com/info.html

Multiple submissions allowed and encouraged.

No reprints

No simultaneous subs

Payment: (.01 cent a word or you can donate your stories)

I donated mine, a story right at the 700-word mark about a sailor, a werewolf, and what happens when you let your loins make the decisions. Who wants to join me?

Online Inspiration: Creative Every Day

Periodically, we post reviews of online sources of inspiration: websites and blogs that encourage creativity and connect creative souls. If you’d like to suggest a favorite site for a future profile, please e-mail your pick to creativereality@live.com.

Some of you may have noticed the Creative Every Day icon in our sidebar. This site was created by Leah Piken Kolidas, an artist and blogger. Part of the site is dedicated to the Creative Every Day 2008 challenge, which encourages daily creativity regardless of media or creative outlet.  Leah writes:

“Here are the basics first! Creative Every Day 2008 is a new challenge I’ve started to help infuse my life and lives of others with daily creativity….Creativity is meant in the broadest sense, so it doesn’t have to be something art related. Your creative acts could be in cooking, taking pictures, knitting, doodling, writing, dancing, decorating, or making art in the form of collage, paint, or clay or whatever!”

Every time I visit this site, I am impressed by the wealth of what others are creating. I like Leah’s broad application of creativity, because it helps me to be more mindful of what creativity really means. All of those “other” creative outlets serve to bolster my “real” art, if I let the edges blur together. For me, blending creativity into the mundane parts of domesticity that I can’t escape (cooking, cleaning, driving, etc.) make me feel less like a drone and more like a creative person who lives in the moment, taking in the beauty even if it’s just lying quietly in a bowl of perfect tangerines.

Announcing the Creative Construction weekly creativity contest!

When it comes to keeping the creative self alive, some of us need a little extra help making sure that our creativity doesn’t slip into utter dormancy in the face of other demands. Even though we know that being creative is one of the best ways to stay happy and fulfilled, we often put that aside to take care of our endlessly needy and ungrateful family members our cherished loved ones whenever the two compete. Adding domesticity and, for most, work life into the mix often results in panic attacks and depression head-scratching.

For those of us who need it, here’s a new way to lower the bar a little bit while finding a bit of motivation to actually produce. Each week, a new prompt will be posted at this blog. Use the prompt however you like. If you’re a writer, create a short prose poem, a single line of text, a haiku, or even a short story or personal essay. Whatever you want. There is no minimum or maximum word count. If you’re a visual artist or designer, incorporate the prompt into your work as literally or figuratively as you like. Submit a doodle if that’s all you had time for. And feel free to cross the lines. Maybe you’re a writer, but you happened to get a photograph that works for the prompt. Mix it up.

To enter, send your work to creativereality@live.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of the e-mail. Artists and photographers should attach 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.)

Each week, the winner will be announced on Wednesday, and the winning entry will be posted along with the prompt for the following week. And, because it’s nice to actually win something when you win something, each week’s winner will receive a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com.

Winning entries will be selected by me and a rotating panel of judges. All judges have professional experience in publishing and developmental editing as well as the world of visual arts.

For this week, the prompt is: “View from the window.” Use it however you like. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by midnight on Tuesday, May 6. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. (Brief caveat: I’m due next week, so if the winner and new prompt aren’t posted on May 7, I’m at the hospital hut-hut-hooing. Will take care of the post ASAP.)

Questions? Post them as comments and I’ll respond. Good luck!

Brittany: Complications

The fates are conspiring against me. I am just not meant to be writing right now.

First it was the tactical assault by toddler on my computer. So then I get my laptop, all prepared to write up a storm, and I’m diagnosed with polyhydramnios. That’s a long name for a simple problem. My body is making too much amniotic fluid–on the order of about 2 liters when normal amounts are around half a liter. I’ve been to so many doctor’s appointments in the last couple of weeks that I’m fairly certain doctors hear ka-ching when I walk through the door. These appointments have determined that the excess fluid isn’t caused by any health issues on my part or the baby’s. So long as I stay pregnant, there is no risk to either of us. However, the weight on my uterus could result in my going into labor at any moment. And when I do go into labor, the moment my water breaks, I will have to be heavily monitored because I am at higher than normal risk now of placental abruption and umbilical cord prolapse.

Meanwhile, my OBGYN says “try to stick to bedrest as much as possible.” With a 20 month old? Yeah, right.

I don’t think my OBGYN meant to be ironic, but “as much as possible” has been my mantra ever since getting pregnant with my first son. I try to write “as much as possible,” and spend time with my son “as much as possible,” be available as a wife “as much as possible,” go to the gym “as much as possible,” clean the house “as much as possible,” take time for myself “as much as possible,” see my friends “as much as possible.”  

There’s not a lot of “much” going on around here and a whole lot less “possible”.

During the snippets of the day when I do get to rest, I wonder about this. Obviously, I’m missing something–something other mothers have overcome. How do you make the most of “as much as possible”?

 

Kerry: Long time gone, catching up

It has been a while. Really. A long time. But now it’s time to get real again. Had my baby boy. 9 lbs. 6 oz. (same as Babygirl 15 months ago) The birth was traumatic and painful, but I’ll save that for another day. When they (the doctors) said the baby might get too big and get stuck in the birth canal, they weren’t kidding. Next time I’ll pay better attention. There won’t be a next time of course. Hubby’s getting snipped. But baby is beautiful and healthy and I seem to be recovering nicely, so all is well in the land of chaos.

I tried to pretend I didn’t have to write, didn’t have to be creative. I’ve put off painting for so long now, isn’t it easier to just let it go? Not really. I paint in my night time dreams, when I sleep long enough to have one. And I thought I could hide the fact that I sabotage myself and any free time I have. Now I’ll just be the “man” and own up to it. I did not just say that. Do men really own up to anything?

And I wanted to come across as the happy housewife (gag) with a remarkable relationship and children who love me. Ha! And ha again. I have learned, once again, how much my fourteen year old hates me this month, and how my relationship is held together by the frayed threads of a tattered past, and how my seventeen year old aspires to be a high school dropout, living with her illegal alien boyfriend in some ghetto apartment, and how my little angel Babygirl can throw tantrums with the best of the two year olds, refusing to speak in words, expressing herself only in screams.

So my last post was a rant against my significant other, against my life, against everything. I simply wanted to run away. I deleted the post the next day. I figured I should heed that old advice “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I haven’t had anything nice to say for quite some time. I felt I could not trust my fingers, trust my mind, so I stayed silent. But I’m back. Even if it is merely to write a few words about my day, about the never-ending chaos that is my life. I used to embrace the chaos, smile, laugh a little and get on with it. Has three years in pregnancy and post pregnancy made me so bitter? Or is it my outstanding relationship and darling, loving, helpful children?

And a side note: the experiment in meditation: can I meditate while breastfeeding? No. I can however fall asleep quickly and awaken with drool on my chin, only to burp the little one, switch sides and do it all again.

This weekend we are having a birthday BBQ for my disgruntled teen who turns fifteen. We bought her a trampoline so our house would be “cool” enough to invite her friends to. We have spent $480 and the past two weekends taking her to a driver’s ed class so she can get her permit next week. Oh boy. We bought her a queen bed to replace her twin so she could feel grown up. All in the name of love? Sure. I figured we should spend some time and money on her so she didn’t feel left out when the new baby came. Avoid that jealousy thing. I failed.

Babies are a handful. Babygirl gives her new brother kisses by head butting him. Babyboy has his own issues, like not gaining enough weight, not having enough bowel movements, and spitting up too much. We take him back to the pediatrician every week to get weighed. I’m supplementing the breastfeeding with formula. I never seem to make enough, or something. But breastfeeding is so good for the little ones, I hate to give it up entirely.

Babygirl takes naps in her crib now. A positive, which leaves me a little time alone…to breastfeed and bottle feed the new baby. But, like now, Babygirl has been going to bed earlier, all by herself in her crib, and the little man sleeps, so I have a minute.

I have to wonder if art will again become more important than a nice hot bath? I know I can’t hide forever. I get e-mails from artist friends and the guilt builds up inside of me. It seems like a spend so much of my day hanging on the edge, waiting for that next something to smack me upside the head. Embrace the chaos, embrace the chaos. I’ll just keep telling myself that as I dream of cute young men, margaritas and the beach on the coast of Mexico.