19th February 2009
Wow, that was a bit of an unscheduled break, but I’m back! Back in time for My Creative Space. This week I am making a couple of rabbits – one I am going to put up for auction with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal, the other is for a trade I *still* owe for some of those fab vintage wall plaques. I have also been doing a little bit of writing, and still calling it a “learning experience”. 56,000 words is quite the learning experience.
Links I have been loving this week with regards to creativity:
* Elizabeth Gilbert talks about genius at the TED talks. LOVE this. Take the 20 minutes to enjoy it. (thanks Chelsea!)
* Writing and music, thoughts on writing by Haruki Murakami
* Daily Routines, “How writers, artists and other interesting people orgaize their days” (via don’t question me)
ALSO check out the latest issue of Frankie magazine for my contribution to the Meet Me At Mikes book – and get ready to buy your copy very soon for more such goodness (and much better resolution photos).
ALSO – I’m still loving Twitter. Please come and play along!
Stay tuned for bunny auction details. I hope to list her early next week.
5th February 2009
I’m playing along with kootoyoo again this week with a photograph of my creative space. When you combine the heat with the end of the school holidays, the first week back of school and the fact that Phil has been in California for 7 days, you can imagine my creative life has been a little stymied this week. I did manage to make some muffins from a new recipe. That was quite creative. And I have started writing again after a 10 day slump, thanks to rediscovering Anne Lamott’s wonderful book Bird by Bird
. That’s it on the floor beside my bed. Her chapter titled “Shitty first drafts” has definitely been a kick-starter for me this week. I am pushing through chapter ten at the moment and all the time I am writing I am thinking “This seriously stinks! How is it that it seemed so easy two weeks ago and now it just seems like I can’t write a word that doesn’t sound tired and cliched and … stinky?” But that’s all part of it, apparently, so I keep writing stinky prose and terrible dialogue. I am waiting for my characters to revolt and start doing amusing and alarming things again. At the moment they are slouching around at an exhibition opening sipping glasses of wine. Yuck. But I’m doing at least 20 minutes a day, regardless, and in this way I will get through this shitty first draft.
The other things you can see in my creative space are my notebook which contains some gems (gems I tells ya!) which will or won’t make it into this shitty first draft. There’s also a pile of books which a friend lent me so that I can research funny sex scenes, because I am having trouble with sex scenes (that’s in my book, thanks) and am “fading to black” rather than facing it. I can’t even read this research material let alone contemplate writing it. Call me a prude. And you can also see some Japanese craft books. I have got out all my Francophile Paumes titles because I have watched “Priceless
” twice in the last week and now want to be French.
22nd January 2009
Kirsty’s “On my desk” has evolved into “My Creative Space” for 2009.
Kirsty says; “Each Thursday I’m going to post an image of what’s in progress either on my desk, in my spot, on the sofa, desktop, at the kitchen table…whatever. If you’d like to play along & find some new blogs along the way then you just need to post & then pop into my creative space post for the day & paste your post URL into the auto link widget…”
I thought I might too.
This morning I was cooking a cake in my pjs ready to take out to morning tea at a mate’s, and Amelia came into the kitchen and said; “Huh? What are you doing in the kitchen?” – and I said “making a cake!” and she said, “Wow, every thing’s topsy turvy today – Lil’s playing with my tamagotchi, I’m not watching tv, you’re in the kitchen, cooking“… so you can see that obviously I have not been doing a lot in the kitchen lately, unless you count sitting at the kitchen table with my lap top. My creative space for the last 22 days has been in my head, on my laptop at the kitchen table amongst the crayons and the breakfast plates, and after the kids are asleep, curled up under the quilt banging out trash at a furious rate. It’s still all about the writing. Above you can see my work in progress. That’s my big folder of bits of paper and stuff which I actually never really look at, and that’s my lap top which I love to pieces, and on the screen you can see my novel’s outline, which I have just discovered needs a drastic rewrite. All the motivations aren’t working, my protagonist is a walking contradiction. And I thought this novel writing would be easy. Well, actually I never did think it would be easy – and now it’s living up to expectations.
Some useful things I found yesterday while I was in the dumps:
- Hack your way out of writers’ block at 43 folders
- How to write a novel in 100 days or less (which is not what I am trying to do but it has 100 interesting points about novel writing.)
Find more creative spaces at kootoyoo.
