Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

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.