Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

IF: Pretend

“Every autumn she tried to focus on the past,
and sometimes she would even pretend she could change it.” 

For Illustration Friday: Pretend

Pen & Ink  

NaNoWriMo - Over Halfway!

I’ve been so busy writing on this weird little novel of mine that I haven’t done much of anything else. But tonight I hit my word goal for the day before I was completely exhausted so I thought I’d try a little blogging. This experience has been so intense, very much a roller coaster.  Friday night I put the kids to bed early and threw a party for myself in the front room. As they say in Mexico, or at least in the part I knew, “Fui muy muy happy.” I then wrote and wrote and wrote, almost catching up all the words I had missed writing when we went to Chattanooga last weekend. But on Saturday I didn’t feel so great (no tan happy el día después, bleh) and I decided that everything I’d written was complete drivel and I should just throw in the towel. I don’t know how many times I repeated the mantra of “quantity not quality” but I managed to re- convince myself that I would rather write a bad novel than no novel at all, or worse half a bad novel. So I muddled through and then last night the words flowed easily and I even thought they sounded good. It’s funny, I was more excited about the re-reading and editing process that will start in December when I thought everything I was writing sounded stupid. Now that there are parts that I think may be good I am much more nervous about getting to the point of actually reading them. I feel the same way about my morning pages. The next task I have to do in The Artist’s Way is to start going back and reading what I’ve been writing in my little books since September 1. Yikes.

IF: Wise

“The wise man built his house upon the rock

The wise man built his house upon the rock

The wise man built his house upon the rock

And the rain came tumbling down”

For Illustration Friday: Wise 
Pen & Ink & Digital 

Yes we did!

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. 

- Martin Luther King Jr.,

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 11, 1964.

This was the quote in a daily emails I get from sojo.net yesterday. I think they picked it perfectly. Because of where I live and who I work and worship with I haven’t been able to be as openly giddy about the election results as I would like to be. But this weekend I’ll be seeing all my family as we gather to celebrate my Grandfather’s 83rd birthday and as long as my step-father or sister-in-law aren’t close by I’m ready to do some full out celebrating for the change we are going to get.   

IF: Vacant

“She knew she felt vacant. She knew she was missing something.
But she was still a long way off from figuring out what it was.”

For Illustration Friday: Vacant
Pen, highlighter, and white-out on scanned, enlarged and printed church bulletin doodle

First Day of NaNoWriMo

Well, today is November 1 and I started writing my first novel. That is so weird to type, but I suppose it really is true. I wrote  2767 words today spread out over almost 6 hours. It was probably less than 3 hours actual writing time though. This house is full of distractions, and I had one complete “painting the wagon wheel” moment. An old friend who one of the characters in my novel-to-be is partially based on used to love to sit on top of her refrigerator. I suppose it was pulling up memories of her that caused me to at one point stop writing and go into the kitchen, climb on a chair and scrub the top of the fridge till it shined. I’m great at painting wagon wheels. I can’t remember if I’ve ever blogged about them though. It’s an illustration from one of Eknath Easwaran’s books. He tells of how rather than actually fix a wagon, or use it to haul things or do any other sort of labor a man might instead spend his whole day painting beautiful and intricate decorations on his wagon’s wheels. So in India  postponing essential tasks with trivial ones is painting the wagon wheels. I love the expression and use it to describe my own fruitless activities often.

Well, my family has been patient with my extended time on the computer today so I better not push it. I’m going to try and post my word count one more time and then I’m putting this machine to sleep and focusing on my little ones, and well the big one too.

Happy Halloween

I could probably write paragraph after paragraph about what it might mean that my doodling looks like this today. However I’ll save it for another post and let this just be a Halloween greeting. Happy Halloween!

IF: Repair

“I am ready and willing to make the effort, but I’m not sure if my tools
are sufficient for the magnitude of the repairs that need to be made.”

For Illustration Friday: Repair

Mixed Media: Pen & Ink with Digital Collage

And now for something completely different…

So, I have been trying to do this Artists’ Way thing to make myself into a “real” visual artist. I’m on the 8th week and last night I completely surprised myself. When asked to finish the sentence, “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be..” I did not write painter, artist, illustrator, or anything relating to the visual artist. I wrote that I wanted to be an author. This really got my own attention. When the next question was to the effect of “what are you going to do about it?” I had nothing. I’ve been thinking about it all day. So then this evening I was doing a little surfing and I came across National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I’m not a writer. I write my morning pages and occasionally blog but I don’t think I’ve even attempted a short story since I was in college. But I’m going to do this anyway. I am going to completely let myself off the hook when it comes to my visual art. I won’t worry about Illustration Friday and I may even put away my easel and unfinished masks and such. I’ll keep on with my morning pages and trying to do artist’s dates and I can use the tasks as my way of procrastinating just as I do now for my visual art. Even if I fail to reach the word count I will be be done with wondering if I have it in me to be a writer. And since it’s all about quantity and speed I don’t actually have to even worry about it being any good. It will be all about the discipline I’ve been lacking with my visual art. I’m so excited. Wish me luck.

IF: Late

“It is late. Someone needs to pluck me up and put me to bed.”

For Illustration Friday: Late