State of the Writer Address

The Care and Feeding of the Girls in the Basement class is going very well. It's taken most of my "extra" writing time lately, so I haven't blogged much here or on julielayne. (Just in case you couldn't figure that out on your own).

Just a few notes...I won't share all my secrets...just a few you might find interesting.

I'm learning to howl. Heh. Actually, one of the books Barbara is using for the class is called Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD), and it's basically about understanding our creative spirit as women, and dealing with the things that try to destroy it. Lots of interesting stuff in there and much I recognize from my life in years past.

I've given my muses names and a home. There are a lot of them (like 24, no kidding!)and they live in Denver. I have asked my classmates to begin to call me Sybil. ;)

I'm gathering things to put in a special place that will help me to focus and remind me of my creativity and how and from where it flows.

I'm learning to be "mindful," and my family is learning vicariously through me. My husband even made television a destination instead of background noise several nights last week. It was cute.

I'm having fun thinking of and executing "Artist's dates," per one of the other texts (The Artist's Way/Julia Cameron). We do often forget to stop and smell the bars of soap. (Which I did for a long time in a store last week on my artist's date.)

This week, we're talking about Keeping the Drama on the Page. I have a hard time writing when there's a lot of drama going on in my life, so this will be a good one.

And...I've given myself permission to take a break from the second draft of the middle grade manuscript that was turning out not to be so much of a fun break from serious stuff after all. I have learned so much from its progress, but it is not the work of my heart, so I'm setting it aside for at least a time.

That is all for now.

Oh, well, yeah, and the fact that I've doubled my work in progress, which could be called LOTH...not short for Sloth. It wasn't that long to begin with, but hey, doubling is doubling! It makes a difference at the grocery store. It's going well.

In fact, everything's going well. This is the best January I've had in as many years as I can remember.