Monday, June 09, 2008

A Few Lovely Projects

My head is abuzz with all that I would like to do.

I have been focusing a lot on writing my novel... even when I am not writing my novel. Unfortunately, I am focusing a lot on NOT writing. (Really, we never learn.)

I thought it would be nice to spend some energy on some of the other projects that have been floating in and out of my mind the last few days. Maybe the writing down of the projects will make it come real. Maybe someone out there will be inspired and give it a whirl.

I would like to:

Collect smooth stones and paint them. Perhaps I will just paint them pretty colors. Maybe I will also paint pictures on them, or words. I'd then like to leave them around the garden, for certain garden gnomes to discover.

Build some fairy houses in the garden. I don't know how I would go about doing this, but I think part of the fun of this is to forage around out there and see what can be made to serve for the little fairies. Fairies are very creative that way.

Paint ten pages of my journal with watercolor. The start collecting pictures. Then collage the pictures onto the paper. Then layer over that with paint and crayons and ink and words and poetry and all sorts of wonderful bits and pieces and ideas and feelings. This is inspired by the way that Teesha Moore works. I'm a little stuck in the habit of art, and think that maybe taking her format and going with it will possible break something open for me.

Take some big paper out into the garden with the kids, give them some brushes and some paint and some crayons and just have fun with them.

Make some play-clay with the kids and let them, well... play.

Use the evenings when I am decompressing to organize, edit, upload and post my photos.

Get into doodling again. Always have a piece of paper and a pen in hand. I used to do this so often and really enjoyed it. My life has become non-paper related.

Write a poem every day that I am at work. There is often down time while one is waiting tables. I want to take advantage of that down time. And I want to get back into poetry, but I don't often have the reflection time to do so. Perhaps I could combine these two desires.

You know. I could keep going and think about all the many projects that I would like to take on, but I am not going to. I am going to keep it limited to what I can think about in one gulp.

There's something to be said for limits. They help us to choose which way to go. Having too many choices, sometimes, is as hard to deal with as having not enough.

3 comments:

  1. I love your list of 'to do's'. Some of my favorite things in the summer is to go hiking and wading through the stream near our house. When we were little we would collect stones and paint them...and make checkers games with the painted stones.

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  2. Your list looks like a lot of fun. It also looks like the avoidance list I have dancing around my head. We have to be careful not to let those fun things get in the way of dreams. Maybe they can be mini-rewards for a chapter or a backstory... hmmm... you're making me ponder...

    Thanks for visiting LIT!

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  3. Sugar, you are so right. The fun little projects could take over the scarier projects that I need to do for my own creativity and career, so I do need to watch it, but I still have to parent the littles, so maybe I could expand my creativity WITH them while I'm caring for them.

    Jessica, what you say is what I hope for my kids... that they have those favorite memories of nature and of art. Not so much cartoons.
    wg

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