Weekly Writing Wreck

It has all begun to blur together.

One story, two stories, five stories, oh my! But I never thought that was the problem I was going to have. Writing 2,000 words of fiction a week is easier than I thought (especially in comparison to the 8 - 15,000 words of non-fiction I write) and there are many weeks when I exceeded that and then some. So what is making it feel like the same boring old stuff again?

I haven't stopped writing but for the past couple of weeks its been a challenge to come up with anything to write about. Even editing old stuff doesn't seem to work. It could be a phase I will get over (hopefully soon :-( ) so I can go back to being 'normal'.

I'll just be a writing wreck until that happens...ouch!

Illustration Friday: Impossibility?

I have a memory of loving purple skies. I don't know why (among all the colours available to me) I liked purple most of all. It might have been an act of self-expression or perhaps something else - like maybe I'd lost all the other colours and the only thing I had left was brown, orange and purple. And if I was going to have a brown tree with orange flowers it didn't really leave me a choice.

But the thing I liked most about it is that nothing was ever impossible. So in a bid to recaptrue that memory I did a picture I used to like when I was a child. It was oddly more difficult to remember it and do it 'right' but I loved the idea of a purple sky which automatically came with a green sun, a polka dotted cat and a zebra striped house.

It maybe a natural impossibility but I guess it goes to show there are no limits to the creative mind. Whatever I can envision, I can create. It makes life seem so much richer. Not only can we pull from the great storehouse of what is already there and already beautiful to behold but we can take it a little further and make it our own.

That's why I will always love my art - even when it is a little strange to look at. So hurray for yellow trees and checked roofs and the chance to do some things a little differently.

Illustration Friday: Fleeting

Have you ever tried to hold water in your hands? For a while it looks like you can...and then the moment passes and it's easier to understand why someone somewhere thought of glasses.

Illustration Friday: Talisman

Love (c) 2009 Nahellenia

one little rose, three little words
a chance to show what we can
wide as the ocean: free as the birds
this is a lover's talisman

Symbols of love are never more important than when they are applied in a timely fashion. I have never found anything that speaks to the magic and miracle of falling and love (and staying that way) than the rose. It is talisman to those who use it - imbuing them with the power to say things they might otherwise not, do things they might otherwise falter at.

I think that is why we have roses, beautifully scented, wonderful to behold and yet with just the right number of thorns to remind you that love can also sting.

Drawing Hand

The means, the method and the magic.

I love the pencil. I think it is both a means and the magic behind a creative endeavour. I did this drawing several years ago while working with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Edwards, 1992). It's about as far as I got but I think this was a good effort.

I thought of posting the drawing for IF (and heralding the pencil as a talisman of great power) but I feel it isn't enough and because it isn't current it inspires a sense of laziness I do not want to encourage. So I'm still working on that post but figured I'd share this one anyway.