Happy New Year 2013!

How is the new year treating you? My wish for you is that it's getting off to a fabulous start!

I'm just coming up out of the deep hibernation of what I hope is the last big rewrite of my upcoming book. Let's just say, the holidays slid by in a blur of words, words, words. Even without the pressure of a writing project, it's easy for me to hibernate this time of year. As I look out my window right now, snow is starting to fall again. It's warmer today than it's been (it's all the way up to 15 degrees)! My cozy basement studio with its wall of windows is a pleasant place to hole up and create.

So, is the rewrite done, you ask? Uh, no. Not quite. But I'm so close I can taste it. And so absorbed and obsessed I am even dreaming about it. My morning journaling is now always about the story. More problem-solving happens in that journal than anywhere else. Even my massive story board (see below) takes a back seat to the journal.

It seemed like a good idea to take a little break this morning and open this blog back up after a year hiatus. Who knew a year could fly by like that?

The book is IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, a YA novel due out sometime soon from Macmillan/ Roaring Brook Press. My editor, Nancy Mercado, is coming back from a delightful hiatus of her own, and I'm looking forward to moving into the next stages of this project with her.

Here's what I do most days after the words have dried up. Lately I've been finding ways to incorporate some of my poems into my visual artwork. In this one, titled "Spring Morning," the poem is written in white and silver ink on the blue sky. There's nothing like dreaming of spring and new boots and gardening when the entire visible landscape is white and shades of grey.

SPRING MORNING (acrylic on stretched canvas 20X20")

What are you up to these early days of this first month of this new year? Are you finishing up a creative project you began in 2012 (or 2011 or 2010 or 2009 or . . .)? Are you starting something brand, spanking new? Whatever it is, I wish you all the best with it!

What is it and how is it going? Write and tell me about it. I want to know!

Woman At a Crossroads

Aren't we always? At a crossroads, on a journey, in the flow, at a threshold . . . and hopefully fully present in the right now. Something to aim for anyway. I think I'm "most present" when I'm doing artwork. There's something about standing at the table, letting the materials I'm using drive the decisions about what to do next that makes me feel very grounded and HERE.

Writing is different for me. What I love most about it is the way the characters and the story take over. I sit down to write for an hour and the next thing I know, three hours have passed and I haven't stretched or done my floor exercises, not to mention how I completely forgot about the laundry or the weeding that needed to be done TODAY. You know the feeling -- where time does that weird stretch and contract thing.

Time alters when I'm doing artwork, too. But it's a different experience. Like flying with your feet firmly planted on the ground (or in my case, the concrete floor covered with a too-thin for comfort carpet and -- by my paint table -- two "cow mats" -- yup, what cows stand on in the barn to be milked). Purchased at your local (if you have one) farm supply store, cow mats are about 1/10 of the cost of gel mats and you don't have to worry about spilling paint on them. They're so ugly they benefit from spilled paint. But they WORK.

Am I at a crossroads? I'm not at one of those huge, life-changing ones like friends who are moving or retiring or changing jobs. But still . . . I recently completed one of the young adult novels I've been working on ever since my first book (ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON, HarperCollins) came out. I sent it off to my fabulous agent and now it is out there "looking for love." I have two other YA novels and an adult murder mystery in process but I needed a break after finishing my Jumble story. That's when I'm so glad I have the artwork. Right now it's a series of mixed media collages called "Woman at a crossroads" -- they are on stretched canvas (using vintage maps, acrylic paint, graphite pencil, marker, wire, beads, ribbon, fabric, decorative paper, hand made paper). The one above (20X24") was a birthday gift to my friend of so many years I hesitate to put the number down. Let's just say, since we were 13! On the collage posted below (20X20"), the woman is attached so that she can be turned to face any direction on the compass. I have two others partly completed, not quite ready to be posted.

Of course, daily writing practice goes on regardless. To kick things up a notch, I decided to try drafting a poem a day at the end of my morning journaling. Inspiration: all the people who were doing that to celebrate Poetry Month. I'm a little slow on the uptake, so it took me until April 20th to get going! I'm happy to report that I have 37 drafts waiting to be worked on (yes, some days I wrote more than one). Seeing through the eyes of a poem is a great way to start the day, so my hope is to keep this as a part of my morning routine as long as I can.

Do any of you flip-flop back and forth between writing and visual artwork like I do? I'd love to hear from you about how that works for you and what challenges arise from doing both!

Time Travel in the New Year

Happy New Year!

This morning when I wrote down the date in my journal -- my goodness, January 16th! -- I felt as if I'd time-travelled. The move from New Year's Day to the middle of the longest month of winter happened in the blink of an eye. (Hey, not a bad way to move through January in Minnesota.)

One of my favorite books ever is Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Award winning, A WRINKLE IN TIME. I wish I'd read it when I was a kid (but of course it hadn't been written yet). Still, reading it in my late thirties was magical. How I wanted to be able to climb into that "wrinkle" and travel through time and space with Meg. And I loved Meg because she was so flawed (just like me), yet so lovable (just like . . . me?). I read the book over and over for a few years and then let it gather dust on the shelf. Recently I picked it up as I was clearing books for donation and sat down with it, and there was the magic all over again. A book written in the 1960s that was still so fresh and real and compelling in the 21st century that it could turn my 60-something self into a young teen again. If that isn't time travel what is?

I don't generally make New Year's resolutions, but this year I decided that my routine needed a little shaking up. The one piece of it that works for me (and has worked for me for many years) is my journal writing first thing every morning. So I asked myself -- couldn't I extend that writing time by clearing my morning slate of appointments, you know -- just in case? I'm happy to report that this is working and I am now making excellent progress on two of my young adult novels. Some mornings I go to the art table instead. Some mornings I end up doing both. But all mornings I'm doing something creative and those pesky appointments and tasks and errands can just wait until after lunch!

That's not time travel, but it does shift time in a way that puts my real work first. When I manage to do that, sometimes the whole day becomes one big creative project.

Images and Words, Words and Images

On evenings like the one in the photograph the winter sunset over the houses across the street knocks me senseless.  Deep reds and oranges, densely brilliant hues and tones contrasting with black silhouetted branches and snow on the rooftops.  This image is one of many midwestern images that kept showing up in words on paper and then later as pictures pulled from magazines and pasted down on journal pages during many years when the only snow I ever saw was a brief dusting in the foothills above the San Fernando Valley or on TV (and then this kind of orange sunset usually meant something was on fire).  My longing for four distinct seasons was what started my first notebooks devoted almost entirely to images (no way was I ready to call them art journals at that point -- they were my Dream Books, a place to turn my longings into visual affirmations).

These notebooks were in addition to the morning journaling practice I've had for over 30 years of madly scribbling, dumping anything and everything onto the page, usually while drinking two cups of coffee and often before speaking one word OUT LOUD. (Along the lines of Julia Cameron's "morning pages" from her wonderful book, THE ARTIST'S WAY, or Natalie Goldberg's freewrites from WRITING DOWN THE BONES, this is writing that clears my head and allows me to go on with my day. The writing serves primarily a meditative, prayerful, therapeutic purpose with an end-of-the-year "payoff" -- poems, story and art ideas, character sketches, and other creative jottings ready for me to develop or ignore.)

Once my Dream Book affirmations worked and we moved back to Minnesota, I let myself begin to explore the amazing world of art journaling.  I love the way the form marries words and images, how it obscures at the same time it illuminates.  It's a great way to play with different mediums and can take pretty much any shape, size or form.  I like to keep several going at once (because I'm impatient and hate to wait for paint and glue to dry) which allows me to work on different surfaces and with different materials.  Right now, for instance, I've got two altered book journals going, one index card -- using heavy watercolor paper and a vintage card file, and several fabric (art quilt) pages like the one on the right.   

For me this work/play is like making the poem or story visual, while keeping meaning veiled in mystery -- left to the observer to discover through their own response.

Writing Myself into the New Year

I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by notebooks -- my writing and art and life journals from 2008 -- and am in the middle right now of a process I do each year sometime between Christmas and the middle of January.  I go back through my writing notebooks of the past year, pulling out poem drafts, story ideas, character sketches, art ideas, notes about marketing, and drawings I want to save. As I work through the 20-25 notebooks, I'm also reading the year's story of my ups and downs -- as an artist and writer, of course, but mostly as a PERSON -- and thinking about the year in front of me.  

Now, I'm not big on resolutions. They go the way diets go for me.  Badly. Let's just say they stimulate a spirit of rebellion.  So, yeah, I'm thinking about the things I'd like to do differently. But what works better for me than making a resolution (or five or 20) is to look at how I want my day to go.  Do I want the balance to swing toward art or writing or both?  Do I want solitude?  To be inside or outside more? What keeps me from doing the creative work I love? What can I do (ya know -- TODAY) to change that?  In what ways do I want to share myself and my work with others? Where do family and friends fit in?  

Gradually, as I've taken this time at the end of one year and beginning of another to ask myself these questions, I've begun to experience each day as the gift that it is. Days that actually DO yield creative work -- like the 40 or so pretty rough poem drafts I pulled out of my journals today and the mixed media art quilt ("Mardi Gras Me-dusa") above, that this time last year was only a sketch or two in one of those notebooks.

So, here I am, answering a couple of this year's writing myself into the new year questions by starting another new notebook (of sorts) -- setting out to keep a blog! Hoping to connect with you here and wishing you a happy and creative new year!