Tell Me A Story, or Alice of the Flying Birds

Tell Me A Story, or Alice of the Flying Birds
Golden Fluid Acrylic and Prismacolor Watercolor Pencil on vintage Alice in Wonderland Page
11/27/09

I've been busy. Finishing my nanowrimo word count... woohoo! We have achieved 50k! But we are not done with the story, so I will try to continue my writing routines.

For the first time, I don't really feel all that burnt out by nanowrimo. I only wrote once a day for an hour or two or so. I didn't push to write all the time. I just tried to get it done in the morning when I first got up. It wasn't always possible, due to the other people in my life, but I tried and mostly succeeded. Good enough, since I reached my goal. Now I feel the urge to finish this story, and even to get it out there into the world.

Isn't that interesting?

Always before, I just wanted to put the nano book away and do something else.

Slow and steady wins the race, maybe?

The race being being a writer. One who writes consistently, not just one month out of the year.

It's funny, I didn't mean to go in this direction with this post. I was thinking it might be nice to do a thankful post, since I missed it on Thanksgiving, but to tell you the truth, my head is in my story. It is in writing.

Which is maybe why I picked the line "tell us a story" out of the text. Trust me, it's there, even if it is painted over.

So I'm going with the flow.

Tell me, what story is in you that wants to come out?

Melancholy Flying Girl, or Poor Lonely Alice Misses Her Dinah

Melancholy Flying Girl, or Poor Lonely Alice Misses Her Dinah

Golden Fluid Acrylic and Prismacolor Watercolor Pencil on vintage Alice in Wonderland page

11/24/09

Oh I was busy busy today. Frantic with stuffety stuff to do and too much coffee. I am only one writing session away from winning nanowrimo this year, although a week or two away from finishing the book, if I keep up with this pace. Thanksgiving is on Thursday along with the plans and cooking and cleaning and shopping that go along with it. I'm thinking about Christmas coming, and about New York.

When I finished my morning work and the girl settled into her nap and the afternoon slowly passed, I realized I had no post for today. And no painting, either.

I said to the boy, "shall I just pick a book page and go from there?"

I think the boy was watching Little Bear, so didn't do much answering, but my self thought it was a good idea. I opened my old Alice in Wonderland and this is the page I landed on. Poor Alice, lonely for her cat, the best cat in the world, whom no one in this strange land seems to understand. I guess it's hard to be on these journeys sometimes, as you are away from loved and familiar people, friends, and surroundings.

Oh well. There's no way but to go through these strange wonderlands, and see who you are when you come out the otherside.

Flying Girl Sings a Song, or Beautiful Beautiful

Flying Girl Sings a Song, or Beautiful Beautiful
Golden Fluid Acrylic and Pitt Artist Pen on vintage Alice in Wonderland book page
11/23/09

I have no answers right now.

I guess that's good enough.

We don't need answers all the time. Sometimes all we need is to pay attention to what's around us. We can get the answers together when the questions are presented.

Okay, I have lots of questions, but the time for answers hasn't quite happened yet.

In the mean time, here I am in this life. And this life, if you pay attention, is beautiful.

Beautiful, beautiful.


This Alice Flying Girl is based on the text that I all but covered up. There's a song. It is about Beautiful soup. Beautiful beautiful soup. I'm not that enamored of green soup, but I figure the soup of life is pretty beautiful, too. So that's where I went.

What is your beautiful soup made of?

Oh, and meanwhile on top of everything else in my messy life, I saw New Moon with my brother and Sister in law, tried out Beatles Rock Band on whatever that game station is, (it was fun, and I can't play drums), had icecream cones and watched my daughter be a ballerina, and my son be a CANONBALL!!!!!

I also spent this weekend setting up a guest post over at Magpie Girl's place. She's awesome. Check her out.

And I relisted and/or listed a bunch of new original paintings and prints that I've done over the past few months. Still have more to come. So if you want to check out what's available, pop on over to etsy. Maybe one of your blog favorites is up.

Flying Girl is Made of Nothing and That is Everything, or Alice Could See Enough

Flying Girl is Made of Nothing and That is Everything, or Alice Could See Enough
Acrylic and marker on vintage book page
11/20/09

Sometimes, everything in life is just too much.

Too much significance, too much importance, too much weight.

Sometimes it feels a lot better to just remember how much nothing it all is.

Sure, we can live up our word and try to do our best and keep the productivity up, you know, live the busy lives that we all live... but when that gets to be too heavy a burden and the overwhelm happens, maybe it's best to remember that we are all just what we are.

Just as much nothing as everything around us. Made of air. Made of water. Made of sky.

We're just living, like any other animal, like any other human, like the whole world.

Oh... I know. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Or does it make all the sense there is?

;)

Flying Girl Alices Off, or This Seemed Like A Good Oppotunity To Make Her Escape

Flying Girl Alices Off, or This Seemed Like A Good Opportunity to Make Her Escape
pencil, acrylic, marker on antique book page
11/19/09

I'm running out of time today, so this will be a short post. Just like this drawing was a momentary inspiration.

It might be time for Flying Girl to make a sudden departure from her usual habits. And Alice, well, she's been spending all that time in that rabbit hole, maybe she forgot to look up and find that new egress.

One good benefit of these creative routines that we get into is that our brain starts to get retrained to DO stuff. Instead of thinking about doing stuff, or wishing we could do stuff, or feeling like we can't do stuff, or blowing off the doing of stuff completely and spending our nights watching stupid tv and stuffing our faces with candy.... well instead of all that, we just start taking action. No matter the fear. No matter the uncertainty of the outcome. No matter the insecurities.

Painting every day or writing more than you think you can every day trains you to stop talking and start doing.

When you DO, it is remarkable how things start happening... and well, getting done.

Flying Girl Jumps Into The Night, or "Oh, You Foolish Alice. How Can You Learn Lessons In Here?"

Flying Girls Jumps into the Night, or "Oh, you foolish Alice. How can you learn lessons in here?"
pencil, ink and acrylic paint on vintage book page
11/18/09

I dug out my old Alice In Wonderland book that I started altering years ago and put away as other things took over. This page fell out of it.

I thought, boy, I like that quote from Alice talking to herself.

And I thought, you can't stay safe and protected and confined and still learn the lessons you need to learn.

In order to grow, you need to take risks. You need to not always be so safe. You need to go on adventures. You need to have your equilibrium knocked around a bit.

Yes? Maybe.

All I know is that I want something out of my life, and if I were to continue with the comfort and ease of my old patterns, I won't get it.

Ease is not how we find success, I don't think. Struggle is. Because struggle makes us stronger. Struggle teaches us new skills and makes us try new things, and take chances.

I keep hoping that I can have a couple of hours kid free to do my writing. I keep wishing that I could just write for more than ten minutes without interruption.

I never can, and I get frustrated and angry every time I have to take care of a tantrum or a potty accident or yet another snack or a little girl getting into the baby shampoo and doing a little hairsalon on the bathroom bench. Yes. Every single one of those happened while I was trying to get my word count done in my novel for the day.

But here's the thing I'm learning here. There is no perfect writing day for me. Not right now. Not in this place at this time. There is no perfection at all, and yet, I am still getting my words in. Almost every day, interruptions or not, tantrums, accidents, holy messes, my own upsets and anger and depressions... none of it has stopped me.

I keep going.

10 years ago, I would have thought it would be impossible to write at all in these circumstances. 15 years ago, with my carefully cultivated uninterrupted all morning long daily writing sessions in my study with my door closed and complete focus, I managed a regular 3 pages a day and never thought that I could do anything better than that. Now I look back on that in amazement. With that much time to myself, I feel like I could write 20 pages a day!

Something about my life right now, and all its interruptions and all it's responsibilities and upheavals, and all it's focus on being a mom and a caretaker it's made me some thing much stronger.

What? I don't know.

But it happened because I dove in, despite the mess of it all. Maybe because of the mess. Because I took my mess and created the life.


Don't let the mess stop you.

Flying Girl Full of Ideas or Life Comes As It Comes

Flying Girl Full of Ideas or Life Comes As It Comes
mixed media on vintage book page
11/17/09

I didn't realize I hadn't posted in so long. Time just skips along out of control, sometimes.

My brain gets all full of the things I have to do, should do, need to do, am afraid to do, want to do, don't get a choice in the matter of doing and all the things I haven't done, can't do, dropped the ball on, etcetera.

What can I say? I'm imperfect and I'm busy and I have ambitions that have nothing to do with my current reality.

For instance, I signed up for Art Everyday Month, even though I knew I was already doing Nanowrimo and raising two kids, one of whom doesn't nap anymore and dealing with extra projects and the daily living and maintenance and family things and AHH!

Well, I signed up for AEDM but I haven't managed to do art every day. But I have managed to be creative everyday. I have been writing every day but one this month (Sunday was the day I skipped) and I have about 30k words and my novel is steaming along. Sometimes I think it's a mess, and sometimes I think it's great. But it's moving. So that's my goal. And sometimes I do some art with my kids and sometimes I cook some food.... like my chocolate cake with mocha cream cheese frosting that was a total whim.

So here is my drawing/painting mixed media piece of a Flying Girl. I like to think that those flowers are coming out of her, but maybe they are sometimes confusing her, or maybe sometimes she is flying in a cloud of flowers coming from all directions. Maybe they are overwhelming her a bit, the way I felt a little overwhelmed this weekend.

Maybe those flowers are all things at once. Maybe that's what life is like. Not a neat metaphor at all, but a crazy growing, shrinking, spinning focused whirl of living.

All I know is that I am moving forward, even within the chaos or the imperfect situations.

That's really all that's required, right? Just keep moving, even if it seems like we're going in circles.

Traveling Through The Winter

Traveling Through the Winter
Golden Fluid Acrylic on watercolor paper
8x10" image on 9x12" paper

Yesterday, I was browsing on line and saw a photograph in the background of some picture of a house. Shame on me, but I lost the image. All of a sudden, I was inspired to paint another traveling scene, and I scrabbled around in my room for my paints and papers, filled a jar with water and picked the biggest brush in my small brush collection (I've been painting small, so I have mostly detail brushes) and then I wooshed on a bright red wash for the underpainting and started adding layers.

The inspiration was the photo in the picture, a distant stand of bare trees, a white overcast sky. The original was green, though. A bright grass green, that as I painted never gelled. The white sky and the gray leafless trees made me think cold. And the painting that I was doing, as opposed to the reference photo, wanted to be white.

What can I say? This is how I paint often. Start with my idea, which often doesn't work and then listen to what the painting says it wants. That's why I don't do straight realism. Because the medium has it's own requests of me. The thing I am painting has its own life, outside of the thing I am representing.

That's how I paint. I pay attention to the paint. I listen to the painting. And if it says something different than the referenced subject, the painting gets what it wants.

This was kind of a fun painting.

Even if I had kids climbing all over me. Actually, I had kids collaborating. Telling me I needed more white, or I needed to add pink *right there*. Yes. The pink light streak, that was Ivy's idea. And she told me where. And she wasn't satisfied until it was done. I'd been planning maybe an orange or a yellowy white, more like my other traveling paintings, but in the end, I think my two year old was right. It needed pink. I don't only listen to my paint or my intuition, I listen to the kid, too.

As for the meaning of the painting... oh, Winter... that time of withdrawal, of silence, of sleep, of dark.

Winter reminds me that this too does indeed pass.

Just Some Flowers

Just Some Flowers I Drew For Me
Pitt Artist Pens, Golden Fluid Acrylic on Paper

Part of the process of being an artist, is losing it, and recovering it. At least for me.

Creativity is not a static thing, it is a fluid process.

Sometimes the process goes underground and it seems as if we don't have access to it.

But we are humans, and as humans, innately creative beings.

It shows up in different ways, painting or writing, maybe, or maybe cooking or gardening, or a way of dealing with complicated problems, or a way of relating in our social circles. I doubt there is anyway to put a limit on the uses of human creativity.

I suppose it is our ability to envision something different from what is already present in our reailty.

In that case, then we are being creative simply by following our urges to be creative when we feel we are not.

So here is my drawing for today. I am following my urge to paint. I am taking the steps to find my voice, find my painting from a place where I was not painting. (Yes, me too, who painted almost every day this last year, I go back to being a creative shlub.)

I don't feel like I have the brilliance or the inspiration or the calm or the energy to do what I used to do. I'm always so tired at night and so busy during the day and my brain is running off on so many fragmented thoughts that , I seem to never pick up my paintbrush.

But I committed to it. I committed to the page and I showed up. My paints were too much for me last night, so I took out my Pitt Artist Pens and drew some flowers while watching So You Think You Can Dance. I just drew something pretty. No meaning. No self criticism, just acceptance. A drawing, a little acrylic wash over that.

And that little step is yet another step on the road to my bigger goals.

Oh the up and down road of life.

The Lion Tamer and Her Love

The Lion Tamer and Her Love
Ink, Golden Fluid Acrylic, paper. 8.5x5"

Hey, I don't know what the answer is to taming my life.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that the key is love. Perhaps it is not ALL that is needed, but maybe it is the guiding principle.

How do I stay in the present moment? Love it for what it is.
How do I get all this stuff done? Love the doing of it.
How do I stop stressing myself out over not being perfect? Love myself and all my flaws.
How do I get my daughter potty trained? Love the journey and make it satisfying.
How do I finish a novel in one month? Love the writing and love myself enough to take the time.

Well, as I think about it, maybe it isn't just about love... but maybe, if we think about what love means...maybe we can also expand it to mean respect, joy, acceptance, understanding, laughter, trust, friendship, kindness, attention.

In that case, yeah, maybe it is true, and not just trite.

Go at something from a place of love, even if it means tough love sometimes, and that is how we win through.

Even if it isn't, it'll make for a more love filled, life, won't it?

Flying Girl for a Reason, or I am Where I am

Flying Girl for a Reason, or I am Where I am
Golden Fluid Acrilyc and white ink on paper, 8.5x 5"

Sometimes I am all caught up in the whirl of life and wishes and dashed hopes and baby steps and laughter and exhaustion. It's quite a dance. And I don't know where it's going.

But I was reminded this weekend that life is what it is, regardless of how we might wish that it turned out differently, it just is. And it is for some reason. What is the reason? I have no idea, but I do know that as long as I am looking for the lesson, looking for what I can learn or how I can grow, then even my failures in life will end up being positives.

This is my philosophy in life. It's all a process.

Interesting that it would coincide with this painting that I don't really consider to be a success... but still has elements within it that I would like to try again or develop. I liked the idea of white ink or paint on a black background, and I liked the idea of accepting where we are in life, even if it looks a little dark. I don't know how well the two ideas came together, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there.

Another related thought is with my writing right now. Doing nanowrimo, I'm trying to write 1667-2k words per day. It has been very hit or miss. I am having more trouble hitting my wordcounts this year than any of the previous three years. I'm okay in the total, but day by day, I keep falling down.

So I've been thinking about this, about the writing process, about my own goals for myself which are often terribly difficult and often not very thoughtful of my life or my own well being. And about what happens to me when my goals are so large that I get overwhelmed and don't seem to be able to even start, let alone reach them.

I think both these topics come back to the necessity of existing where we are in the actual moment, without guilt or fear.

I am a full time stay at home mom without help. If I want to write a novel, I have to take advantage of the moments I have without reservation, but if my life/kids call me to be present for them, I have to let go of the writing and be there for my own life/kids without reservation. It is what it is. I have to learn to accept the interruptions, and accept my own imperfections. Even accept my frustrations as part of the process of writing as a stay at home mom without help.

No matter where you are in life, I think that accepting the reality of the present is key.

For me, it even comes down writing down all the things I have to or want to do, accepting them, naming them, recognizing their value or necessity, prioritizing them, and then taking action.

Huh. I think that's part of what they mean when they say "grounding." It's taking care of the present. The physicality. How things fit together or work. Paying attention to details, and helping things run smoothly. No wonder making To Do lists is always the first step in finding my way back to balance.

As someone who tends to live in her head... this is a pretty major realization for me.

How do you keep grounded?

Pear, or Enjoy the Little Things

Pear

pen and paper, 8x5

I don't have a quote from a truly "inspirational" source today... but I did go see Zombieland with my brother yesterday, and although I am zombie phobic (so why did I go see it? I don't know) I am going to take my inspiration from the main character's rules. One of which was

ENJOY THE LITTLE THINGS.

I figure if this rule is good for a world of zombie apocalypse, it will do for me in the years that my children are barely civilized savages who want to eat what they want when they want it and will scream and run ravening for me if they don't get it. Not too far off from zombies, right?

So here's my drawing of a snack. I'd already eaten the cheese and crackers and decided to draw the pear half through the eating of it.

Enjoy the little things.

Along with enjoying the little blessings, I think it's important to recognize the little accomplishments, the things that don't seem to get you closer to your big goals, but do in fact help your life to work.

I've never been good at this life maintenance stuff, living in my head and painting pictures and writing novels and enjoying life, but losing track of the daily stuff. The dishes in the sink. The bills. The people I should keep in contact with. Paperwork that I should pull together. Even a healthy diet.

It probably means I am not connected to my base chakra, or I am not grounded or perhaps I need a keeper. I don't know, but being the mom of little kids is really challenging my tendency to live in my head.

You just can't do it. They need too much daily care for me to live all in my head.

For instance, yesterday, I lost my whole day of creativity because I had to get some old paperwork of Ivy's straightened out. It took up my writing time and I only ended up writing 777 words all day. The rest of the day it was taking care of the kids and making dinner and cleaning up and just making it through with the lack of sleep that was slightly more than normal as I'd woken up early for the paper work gauntlet. I even kept my movie date with my brother, because, you know? maintaining relationships is also part of this life upkeep.

BUT I decided to accept that the maintenance and paperwork all was part of life and was in fact productive although it didn't seem to get me closer to my goals.

I didn't even write in my novel after I came home from the movies. I watched a DVRed Office episode to get the zombies out of my head and went to sleep early.

This morning, I woke up, not even all that early, and wrote 3000 pages while the kids were watching Dora and the Crystal Palace (thankyou Nick Jr). I made yesterdays wordcount and today's in an hour and a half.

Maybe this will help me remember that life doesn't have to be rigid in its expectations. We can go with the flow, sometimes not being perfectly on top of everything, and in the end, as long as we stay focus on the goal, be just fine.

Flying Girl in the Gentle Landscape, or To Yourself Be Kind

Flying Girl in the Gentle Landscape, or To Yourself Be Kind
Golden Fluid Acrylic on Paper, 5x8"
November 3, 2009


I've been pretty lame with painting lately. Just trying to figure things out and organize my seemingly unorganizable life. Oh, yeah, and write a novel. And care for two little kids.

I've recently decided that, as a stay at home mom with no help, it's kind of impossible to think that I can create a career from scratch that is moving full speed ahead while I am at home taking care of the kids.

I can manage to find some corners to take care of writing or painting or blogging or etsy or freelancing or social networking or photography or all the other things I want to do, but, and I emphasize the but, here, BUT I can not do them all and I especially cannot do them all full time.

I am a full time stay at home mom, so I need to make peace with the fact that I can'tbe a go getter, or at least, not a get up and go getter. Just a little go getter, or perhaps a stop and go getter.

I still want to do all those things, and perhaps I can find ways to shuffle them into my life in smaller bites than my druthers.

One of the things I'd like to be doing is Art Everyday Month. But I haven't been painting. I lost my work space in my recent temporary move, and I've really been feeling the loss. I didn't realize I had a great spot to work until it was gone. I didn't think my corner in the play room or my WIP bag on the sofa was ideal, but it was just what I needed. Go figure.

I don't know if I will manage to paint everyday. My life seems so chaotic at times and I don't always have the presence of mind, or maybe I'm just making other choices, I don't know. But one of the ideas I thought might help me to take part in AEDM is to search out words of inspiration and turn them into paintings.

Goodness knows, I need inspiration right now. So what if I follow what I need, and spend some time with the words by painting them? Sometimes I find painting or writing about my paintings centers me. It's so much better to focus on those inspirational or empowering words than it is to focus on my personal worries and all the things I have to do and all the things I haven't done to my liking.

I guess in a way, painting and writing are my spiritual practice. Painting is like meditating. Writing helps me understand things. Writing about my painting brings me back into that space and reminds me of the things I want to focus on.

So I'm going to try and paint more inspirational Flying Girls... or botanicals... or landscapes... or fashion illustrations... I don't know. I'm not limiting myself to topic this time. I'm just going to follow the words.

It make sense in National Novel Writing Month. Especially while I am writng a novel. By the way....

wordcount: 7598

My Life: The Teacher, and Some Goals So I Can Keep Moving

Chapter 15: The Teacher

When I did this chapter, back in 2003, I was only a few months out of teaching. I'd quit teaching to follow my art. I could easily have made this chapter about being an actual teacher, which I had loved, mostly.

But I didn't.

No, this chapter became about the ups and downs of life. The shadows and the light. The rollercoaster. The ferris wheel. The ups and downs. The carnival. The wheel of fate.

This chapter became about Life being The Teacher.

How do we learn?? Truly? By living life and taking the lumps and learning the lessons of our mistakes and clawing our way back up when we are down and understanding the heights are only temporary, only just another part of the whirling, twirling ride of life.

In all honestly, I am probably in a low spot in life. It contracts and I draw back, open up smaller doors to let in the light needed.

There's something to say for contracting, making your goals smaller, letting things go. There's something to say for reassessing what is really important and what you really want your life to be about.

So here I am, on the wheel at it's bottom... but, you know, I do have faith that it will be going up soon. I mean, maybe it's stalled out a little, but I have faith, any minute, it could start rising. Or maybe it already has, and I don't notice because the movement is so slow and I am only seeing the lack of altitude.

What can I focus on right now? Well, what I can do right now.

In fact, I am going to write out my goals for November.

1. Write 50k (or more) words in my Urban Fantasy novel for nanowrimo. (I am at 3256 on day 2 1/2)

2. Get back to drawing/painting every day, again. (I think I found a way in. I think I'm going to paint/draw works that are inspired by quotes. I'm looking for inspiration, looking for hope, looking for focus, and wise words from the world's philosophers, writers, artists will help me, I think.)

3. Try to maintain my shop a little better. I've been slacking due to life being uncooperative, but I think I can get some more stuff in there, if I focus.

4. Finish my chapter on Intuitive Painting and Journaling

Hey. I'm going to limit my goals to three. My daily living and my childcare issues are separate. And they take a lot of my time and energy. Although, come to think of it, I am going to add some personal goals to my professional/creative goals above. So...

5. Potty train the girl. I think she's getting close. She never used to pee on the potty but now she is complaining about the diaper. If I can get her to WANT to use the diaper, then I've gotten somewhere.

6. Take care of myself. Make sure I have time to relax. Get enough sleep. Eat right. Take my vitamins.

So there it is. Small goals. Or big ones, but only a few of them.

I think in order to fit those things in, I have to have a schedule.

It might go something like this.

7-8 wake up. Set kids up with Dora and breakfast and write in silence for one to two hours. Get basic minimum word count.

9-10ish play with kids, snacks. Online.

around 11:30 lunch for kids and blog.

12noon to 1: maybe some drawing, reading while kids play outside or watch tv (tv is my babysitter. it may be bad mothering, but it's the only way I get time to work)

1: girl naps. boy watches a movie and/or plays quietly. Write chapter. Or perhaps this is where I get the shop updated. Perhaps I alternate days for this. One day on the chapter, one day on the shop. Or perhaps there's time there for getting writing done.

4pm: girl wakes up, I make dinner.

5pm dinner.

6pm playing, relaxing, reading, whatever

7-8 bedtime.

8pm primetime tv for me. but IF THERE'S NOTHING ON I should just write. After my shows, write.

11pm. Bedtime. I don't know if I can do this, but maybe. I've been having some trouble sleeping, so lets see.

Well, I'm going to work on this goal list and on this schedule. If I alternate days and stick to the schedule instead of goofing off, I should be able to manage something.

Be Do Have

Williamsburg, Brooklyn: A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
An Altered Book, mixed media, 2003

Chapter 13: The Thinker

I have a history of thinking too much. Of getting wrapped up in my thinking and not taking action.

I've been working on it for years, now.


I like this chapter. The white on black. The simplicity.

Be. Do. Am. It says. There's another saying. Be. Do. Have. The concept is that in order to achieve your dreams, you have to Be them first. Whatever you want to have in your life, you have to Be it. You want happiness? Be happy. You want abundance. Be abundant. You want to be a writer? Be a writer.

First the transformation happens in the head. The thoughts. Then you take steps. You do the things that come out of the happiness, abundance, writerliness. You play or offer thanks for what you have or, well, write.

Then after you embody the dream (Be) and after you take action on the dream (Do) then you finally get the results you wanted. You will have the happy life. You will have the wealth. You will have the three book deal with the major publishing company.

Sometimes, we get confused and think we have to HAVE the things before we can live the life we want. Have the perfect job, or the finished novel that's already inside our heads, or life perfect and serene which will bring happiness. But no, we don't reach our dreams by having stuff. We reach our dreams by accepting them inside ourselves and then moving forward from that secure place.

This month I am living into my dream of BEing a writer, by making room for it in my life. I am writing, 2000 words a day if things go my way, word by word, every session I can step away from the madness of a 2 and 4 year old. And maybe, when this draft is done, and I have the solid manuscript in my hand, then I can go on to the next step of this dream of mine.

Believing that I have what it takes to be a novelist. Being a novelist. Researching the agents, sending out queries, taking steps out into the world. Then, then after Being the novelist, and Doing what the novelist needs to do, I will have the publishing contract, and the books in the stores. Yes.

Honestly, that's always where I've been stopped before.

I've never really believed that I deserved it. I stall out. I get scared. I self sabotage.

In truth, I don't see how any of us can reach our dreams if we don't exist in them first. Be Do Have.

Oh, and a little luck never hurt anyone, either.

nanowrimo total: 3444 words. Day 1 1/2