Thursday night I was driving down to the church when I realized my fingers were freezing, my heart was beating, and my mind kept thinking of all the ways I was going to embarrass myself. I wasn’t headed to a solo performance with my clarinet. It was the rehearsal with the choir. The music I was playing for… Read more
creativity
“You know all those paintings your mother makes and then throws out?” My sister and I nodded as my dad said this. We knew. “Well, I pulled a few out of the garbage and stuck them up in the attic. Remember to get them out of there when I die so she doesn’t toss them.” I understand why… Read more
My biggest wonder this week was a winter walk to a nearby ravine. It was a cold and clear day with the sun hovering above the horizon like it does this time of year. Q and I often travel down this path to get ourselves out of the house and into whatever Vitamin D we… Read more
While looking up blog designs and doing my research, I checked out the site of an illustrator and writer I really admire. I have loved Debbie Ridpath Ohi ever since I discovered her work in an interview by Dan Blank last year. Debbie has a brilliant idea to but up a badge for wordcounts. She created a badge you can… Read more
Most of the books I’ve read about creativity encourage a daily walk. Apparently this is how many of the greats get (or got) their inspiration, and a recent Stanford study even found a strong correlation between walking and creativity. I usually prefer to run, pound the pavement, and fly along (granted a slow flight because of my rather… Read more
It wasn’t easy to get my mom to let me use her pictures and, looking at these, you might be surprised at the reason why. “They aren’t right,” she said. I could feel she meant they aren’t perfect. They aren’t the flawless beauty that she had in her imagination when she began the work. I… Read more
In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron insists that we need weekly artist dates alone to court our inner artist. I have done these, and they are marvelous for boosting creativity. But I have also taken my family and friends along on dates and gotten oodles of inspiration that way, too. At the beginning… Read more
This week a writer friend named Molly Blaisdell wrote a blog post on the importance of play to her writing work. Before I read her words, I had been stuck on what to post and, honestly, stuck on whether to write all together. I was even having Negative Nellie give it up thoughts. And those thoughts felt like an… Read more