Flying Girl Will Make It Through, or Believe

Flying Girl Will Make It Through, or Believe
11/8/08 AEDM #8
Golden Fluid Acrylics

Nanowrimo grand total 21,227 (3362 words yesterday)


Been thinking about change, lately. And how scary it can be to change. We are creatures of habit and we like to know how things work. Like my routine, for instance. I have created my routine around me so that I can keep track of my work, my life, my kids, my brain.

But perhaps it is good to shake things up a bit sometimes.

Yesterday, instead of putting the kids to bed right at noon, I let them play in their room. Now G always plays in his room, while Ivy sleeps in her crib, but yesterday, I brought up some of the playroom toys and put them in their room. The new set up gave the toys a new light, and they were fun again, after languishing in the corner. They played together, creating a choo choo train out of a play mat and who know what else they did, since they waved bye bye to me and shut the door whenever I came to check on them. Finally, we get to a place where they can entertain each other.

The same day, we decided to rearrange the house, moving the playroom to a smaller, enclosed porch, with more light and air. The boy loved it right away, seeming to feel a sense of ownership over "his" room. The girl needed some adjustment, feeling uncomfortable until she realized she could pull the little side table up to her little chair and eat or draw or whatever. Now they love it.

I have to say I feel a little disoriented. I may be more like Ivy in needing to adjust and find my way in the new situation, but at the same time, it feels like air has been let into even more areas of life. I know it will take me a few days to adjust, to rearrange my space, my day and my habits, but otherwise, I feel as if there is room now for some new paths. Wait until I fix it up and show you my new "office." I never would have shown you my previous one. This is my working station when the kids are awake, where I can research and plan and list, before I get to the real work when the kids go down. New play space, new work space.

Yes. More change. Life, not political slogan.

What does this have to do with my FG today? Maybe I'm wondering about the constraints of the FG project. I mean, how long will I continue? I enjoy FG, but day in and day out for almost two months now? I'm getting a little bit tired.

I don't really want to give up painting every day... but sometimes our routines benefit by being shaken up, just witness changing the playroom around. The kids have more independence in their new space and I feel as if there's a little less clutter in my head and it allowed my new work area. A place where I can still supervise the littles, but not be stuck into a little cluttered corner.

I have an idea for the FG project that I have been kicking around in my head for years. I've always been a little too frightened to start it, because it's a big project that is a bit demanding. But after doing FG all this time, I've begun to believe that I am actually fully capable of doing this new project. I don't know if it will all work out, but all of my FG pictures didn't work out, either. Some of them, though, I just adore and succeeded beyond my expectations. The project itself, the whole of it, succeeded beyond anything I thought would happen.

So that brings me back to today's FG. It's very simple. I did that on purpose. It's a return to the beginning of FG, silhouettes and horizon. But I added a word. "Believe." Because, really it's about faith. You have to have faith in yourself, so that you can move forward and reach your dreams. Even if you are frightened by the scope of a project, or by the unknown, or the possibility of failure, you have to believe that you can handle whatever comes your way.

All you warriors out there... are you listening to me?

You gots to believe in YOU.

PS Kate, I am going to respond to your wonderful award, but I have to find a time when I don't have writing and/or painting on my agenda, and this has been an upside down weekend.

PPS This is actually after the fact, but I have decided to post this entry to Inspire Me Thursday. It's an open topic, and I think this is the one that I would like to share with the Inspire Me community, because so many people are on their own warrior type creative adventure.

Flying Girl and the Winter Dawn, or Change

Flying Girl and the Winter Dawn, or Change
11/7/08 AEDM #7
Golden Fluid Acrylic

A new way to inspire a painting when I am exhausted and brain dead with a head empty of ideas:
Reach into my bag of paints and withdraw three bottles (two small and one large [which are my whites])

It is almost like pulling a word from a bucket of collected words. I used to do that when I taught High School English and when I led women's workshops. I would collect "juicy" words, concrete, specific words with lots of connotations, and whenever I needed a word prompt for a poem or a journal entry or even a story, I would reach in and pull out one or two or three.

So I reached in to the bag and pulled out a zinc white, bone black, and then another zinc white. Gosh, i said to myself, I need another color! And I pulled out paynes gray. then I pulled out titanium white. Then I pulled out the very dark prussian blue hue, and I decided, well that's it, the universe wants me to paint in black and white today.

It didn't really turn out black and white.... I almost feel like I cheated by making it mostly blue toned. But it did guide my paintings.

I did the flying girl figure, and her dress flowed out behind her and all of a sudden it was the sky and I pictured her a kind of Snow Queen, but one bringing a new dawn and there was the painting.

Voila.

Inspiration can be fleeting, when you are looking for it, but sometimes if we stop chasing it and just allow our life/experiments/chance happenings to BE the inspiration, hey, it's right there in front of you after all.

Nanowrimo total wordcount: 17,915 (2320 yesterday)

Flying Girl and the Carnival, or Life

Flying Girl and the Carnival, or Life
11/6/08 AEDM #6
Golden Fluid Acrylics Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils

This Flying Girl flew in out of thin air. I did not have one single idea in my head when I sat down to sketch it out and I was so tired I did not even want to paint. But I persevered, falling back on my new routine of painting with the TV on, and she just appeared. I think the ferris wheel was the first distinguishing feature that appeared. Then I thought a pale teal sky might be nice and the orange came after that. I've been attracted to orange lately. Autumn thoughts, maybe.

Her outfit took some doing, too, going through many fashion incarnations before settling on this rather business like tweed skirt, orange vest and pale green blouse. And the funky heels were almost an accident.

I particularly like the outfit as a contrast to the carnival, because, despite the fun background, this isn't really a "fun" picture, at least not like yesterday's FG and Magic Cat. Interesting. First a Circus, then a Carnival. I didn't mean to walk along the midway on this one. I suppose tomorrow will be the Freakshow. Well, I make no promises.

This carnival, though, feels more to me like the ups and downs of life, the wheel of fortune turning, top to bottom to top again. I don't know why there are no people in this carnival, it just didn't feel right when I thought about adding them. Sometimes I plan a painting according to meaning, sometimes I just go with the flow and the meaning becomes apparent later.

I don't know if I am creating the meaning from what it "could" mean or if the meaning has appeared out of my subconscious to allow me to understand what is going on in there.

I tend to believe that it is more a message from my subconscious, from the universe, even. I don't know if you know this about me, but I also read tarot cards, and have for the last 20 years. Wow, time flies. To me, this is an extension of creating meaning out of the set archetypes of the tarot. Perhaps creating these FGs everyday is my own oracle. Some are more thought out than others, but they all come from something inside of me that I don't quite have complete dominion over.

Maybe someday, I will paint my own tarot deck. I have been mulling the idea over for the last fifteen years or so. I still haven't seen all these FGs put together without any other images or words in the way. I wonder what it would be like to pin them all up to the wall and just sit with the images of the journey.

Not sure I want to rip up my journal yet, but it might be a fun concept. I've really got to get my scanner and printer back, then I could just make prints of them all. Please don't let me go into that saga. Did I mention my life seems like a not so fun rollercoaster sometimes?

Oh yeah, nanowrimo word count: 15,595 (2357 words yesterday) I finished up my surprising and meaningful and confrontational and even brutal (heh, not so much, I think I could up the brutality just a tetch, as I tend to shy away from confrontation and brutality so it's probably very mild), and then babbled away in the next, nothing, toss off scene. I write to find my way in to the story, I have discovered. Most of my total words are that writing my way in. I wonder if I were to edit it, how many words are the meat of the story? But I will have to wait until December to try that exercise as I do not edit during nanowrimo and I delete nothing. I have, however, found myself going back over my work more than in other years.

Perhaps I am confident in my writing speed and ability to hit the wordcount, and even my ability to turn off the internal editor and my faith that I can get it all done. I am no longer running in fear of not being able to do it. That's a good development, I think. Now, I have actually crafted my pages a little, instead of just doing stream of consciousness. When I find a line/paragraph/scene that I should edit out, I simply hilight it all in red-- the color of STOP! And then move on to where I want to be.

I am enjoying the permission to write something that won't go into the final. Enjoying the permission to write crap, to write shallow characters and pointless description, because I know it is just drawing the REAL story out of my subconscious.

There's that subconscious again. She's busy lately.

Flying Girl and Magic Cat go for a Ride, or Circus

Flying Girl and Magic Cat go for a Ride, or Circus
11/5/08 AEDM #5
Golden Fluid Acrylic

nanowrimo total word count 13,238 daily w/c 3128

Flying Girl is looking for magic. Or maybe she has found it. It isn't about wizards and witches. It isn't in having lots of money or luxury. It isn't in having someone tell you that you're magic. It isn't in ceremony or old stories. It isn't in following the rules and following along the old ways of doing things.

Where did I find it?

I swept up stars today, with the cheerios.

My little girl stole my work steno pad so that she could lay on the floor and scribble her own work.

A giant palmetto bug joined the party on the boys potty training sticker chart, along with the scary halloween spider and monster stickers.

The cat learned how much fun pipe cleaners were and the kids learned how much fun cats are when they are having fun.

Every time I turned my attention to the television or internet, the world was involved in active HOPE, not disaster.

I managed to write over 3 thousand words, paint a new FG, make a meat loaf and take care of my beloved mess makers all in the same day.

The kids decorated the cat with unwinding spirals of pipe cleaners, thinking this was how cats played.

I realized how much my creative process is involved in NOT creating, but collecting the random firings of inspiration, busying myself with life while ideas turn over in my head, snack on chocolate, organize supplies, check email, sweep the cheerios, make meat loaf, listen to kids not going down for nap, overcome frustration, remember to breathe deeply, feed myself , give a baby a doll, write down notes, listen to tears, ideas, questions, requests.

Children's stories serve to soothe and calm my overexcited adult brain.

The possibilities of a toy circular are endlessly fascinating to a three year old.

Following a twinkle of a plot possibility opens up the story into something that gets realer and realer than what I had been planning and leads to excitement in me. I can't wait to write again today.

Colors, when they find the right association pop in your brain like sweet/tart candies.

So, although my day was not frustration free (like with how the boy refused to nap and ended his refusal with a screaming fit before he fell asleep, which woke up the girl who then could not get back to sleep, all during my writing time) I allowed the magic of the day into my routine.

I hope to do so more often. I hope to see the magic and to allow it to exist, instead of just ignoring it and letting it disintegrate into dust, just like those dang cheerios.

Flying Girl Draws Close and Looks in the Window, or Vacancy

Flying Girl Draws Close and Looks in the Window, or Vacancy
11/4/08
Golden Fluid Acrylic

This is a departure. A close up of Flying Girl. How odd. I don't know why she came so close, instead of staying in her usual horizontal landscape distance. I had been thinking about Illustration Friday and their prompt of Vacant, in fact I even drew a sketch of a landscape FG, but it was off and I turned the page and imagined the reflection of a window in her eyes and then she was there.

Maybe also it was different because I was watching the election results at the same time and my nervous energy was a strange state.

Maybe this really is a different world we are about to enter.

Maybe there are open spaces for those of us who couldn't quite find the way in before.

Maybe it will be a more welcoming world from now on.

Maybe this is the beginning of being able to see a country where some of us can now feel more at home.

There is, finally, room at this inn for all of us.

Nanowrimo Day 4, updates and info

I've been frustrated on the nanowrimo site because the author search is down, so I can't locate anyone to buddy up. Silly me. I should have checked out the forums to solve the problem. This is the advice that the moderator, "Lousy Writer 13" gave:

The Author Search mechanism is temporarily disabled while we work out the site performance issues. It will be back.

In the meantime, if you know the username for the person you want to add, you can search with google and find their profile, using the following search term:

site:nanowrimo.org username

Where you replace username with the actual name you're looking for. So, if I were looking for the original poster on this thread, I'd search:

site:nanowrimo.org Ahshera

One of the first links will usually be a link to the profile and then you can click the "add as buddy" link on their profile page.

Also, if you see (or send) a NaNoMail to the person, or see their names here in the forums, you can click on their names in these places and get to their profiles as well, then use the "add as buddy" link.

I hope this helps.

It's a little cumbersome, but nano is famous for being full of bugs and completely overwhelmed in the first few days of November. If you are desperate to find your folks, try this method.

On another note, I achieved my nap time writing and am now at 10110 words. I am doing roughly 25oo words a day. In years past, I did 5000 words a day, or so for the first weekish, and then when the adrenaline and anxiety wore off, I slacked. Last year, I pretty much stopped writing half way through November, but had already reached the word goal.

I really am looking to find a happy medium between writing like a demon possessed and not writing at all. I mean, I got a good word count today, but have done no household tasks, neither sweeping the cheerios nor making the meat loaf.

I have however finished creating my charts. I always do this by hand. I like the way it feels when I fill in my word count with hilighters. I like seeing a graph, and I like holding it in my hand. I know I could do it on the computer, but where is the fun in that?

I also started a glossary in my notebook. You see, I am creating a world, so I need to keep track of the beasties and flowers I create. And I want to use the same "rules" to create different flora and fauna. It's not the land of the weird and freaky, it's just a different kind of normal that only seems weird until you understand the rules of creation.

It's kind of fun, imagining new plants. I just created a tree that has pear shaped luminescent globes hanging from it's black branches. Don't worry, I will be using it to further the story, as a sight seeing trip to witness these trees at sundown will be part of the plot to kidnap the MC.

If you would like to buddy up, I am rosymamacita over on nanowrimo. Or hey, I could just link to my homepage. Just write a note to tell me of the name I would know you under, or that you're a reader of my blog, otherwise, I will get even more confuzzled.

OH. PS. It's backup yer novel day or whatever the such they named it on nano. Always a good reminder. Send your novel to your email, at least. It can't hurt to have that on file. Unless you've lost a novel in progress, you don't know how devastating it can be. I have. Trust me.

Flying Girl and the Long and Winding Road Home, or Solstice

Flying Girl and the Long and Winding Road Home, or Solstice
11/3/08
Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils, Golden Fluid Acrylic
AEDM # 3

nanowrimo wordcount so far? 7474 (I haven't gotten to write yet today, because S went back to work, and I lost my baby watcher during the morning hours. So writing is for nap time, which will probably be the regular time as the month continues. But I am posting while the kids watch Word Wold on PBS, so that I can clear up my nap time for Nano. We'll see if this works for productivity.)

I like this Flying Girl. And she was quick to paint, too. Probably because I did the undersketch during the day when I was inspired by Jess Gonacha's post. I drew the background in watercolor pencils and then, when it was time to sit down that night to paint, I went over the drawing with a translucent white acrylic and it blended and faded the color without covering it. Most of that background is just sheer white over the white page. And I enjoyed painting the FG in her red coat and plaid skirt and braids. The little red house was a no brainer, because one really needs a place to go on a snowy night like this one.

The scarf, however, took on a life of it's own, twisting and turning as I painted, without plan. That, perhaps influenced the title. It is true that our paths to our hearts' desire are often full of detours and delays that we never expected when we first set out on the journey.

And the solstice? Well, perhaps I've been influenced by the ending of Daylight Savings time (or is it the beginning, I always get that confused)? As the days get shorter and shorter and the night gets longer, I was thinking of the darkest day of the year. The longest night. The Winter Solstice.

But the good thing about the darkest night of the year is that every night after that gets shorter and shorter as the sun returns. Perhaps this is about my personal journey. Perhaps this is about the journey of my country.

If you're an American on this most American of all days, get out and VOTE! :)

We could use some sun in these here parts.

Flying Girl and the Brainwaves, or Fashion Pattern

Flying Girl and the Brainwaves, or Fashion Pattern
11/2/08
Golden Fluid Acrylics and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen
AEDM #2

nanowrimo count 5124 words. (2594-11/2/08)

Such a busy day visiting grandma and other family things. It's amazing how living your life can get in the way of your routine. Without my routine, I get kind of confused. Or maybe it's a cold on the horizon, or daylight savings or the fallout from Halloween and a small vacation.

Ah, I suppose it doesn't matter, really. Life is not about routines and organization, although it can help move it forward. The more we grasp onto keeping our routines and rules straight and fast, the more we have to struggle with the elastic and organic nature of life. Just like riding the waves... if you fight the rise and fall, you become overwhelmed, but if you go with it, it takes you where you want to go. Not that I know how to surf, but I like the metaphor.

I wonder if my thoughts on the waves of life and the sometimes intense chaos of living have something to do with the FG painting. It wasn't my intent, really. I saw a picture in an old shelter magazine with a printed chair against a zig zag background, and I liked the way it looked, so I thought I'd try it. This wasn't a deep meaning painting, just an experiment.

It's not my favorite, but I do think it's interesting the way you can find meaning in randomness. Hm. Meaning in randomness. Order in chaos. Creation from living.

Hmm.

And how is your busy month of November gearing up?

Flying Girl in the Story or Blue Fairy

Flying Girl in the Story or Blue Fairy
11/1/08
Golden Fluid Acrylics

Flying Girl is back!

Of course, I happen to be so confused right now it isn't funny. I have so many things going on and have just finished up so many things that I feel as if my feet are too big and I am trying to navigate a tiny footpath through the brambles... perhaps that is the vines that FG is flying over. My story is part of it. I am trying to write my way in. I do have 3965 words, so I am ahead of myself in word count, but my brain seems sort of brambly. How do I organize all the ideas and words into a story?

I find I am looking more into shaping my story, this nano, than in just getting the word count. Perhaps this is the benefit from working on revision for the last year or so. I am still just writing off of the tips of my fingers, but I find myself going back, looking at what I have already done, inserting scenes and so on. Still no deleting. Deleting does not forward the Nano project, but I realize from the outside that my words written here will not necessarily be in the final book.

I have been taking some time to myself today, to try to get some of this work done. Demanding, even. Just little bits, but they add up. Hopefully, when this weekend of familial obligations is done, I can go back to my routine and will feel a little more orderly. Perhaps all this work will seem to take on a shape instead of just a wild untamed mess.

Just like the novel.

Just like life.

The End of The Big Draw, the Beginning of Nanowrimo

Happy Halloween
October 31, 2008
TBD #31

The kids and a friend off on their first trick or treat. G was a ghost, and Ivy was a kitten, as was their buddy. They went to the most amazingest awesomest trick or treat event I have ever seen in my life. Nothing will top it, I'm pretty sure. This neighborhood was Halloween Central and they blocked off some streets for the festivities.And this was just one block, before the sun went down. It was crazy. People had whole scenes set up. Let's just say that they really enjoyed their first Trick or Treat.

TBD #30
Halloween Village "all aboard!"

We rode on a choo choo train on a track around Lakes Park in Florida. It was a beautiful park, but they had also set up these little villages and tunnels and spooky things. It was probably scarier at night, but it was fine the way it was for us.
TBD #29
Sand Town

Kids on the beach. Making sand buildings out of buckets and plastic cups. Ivy was afraid of the sand for some reason, and it got colder as we sat, but still fun.
TBD 28

A drawing of the painting in my hotel room.
#27
Hand Again.

These are the last of my drawings. I have written 2,123 words this morning in my new novel. I like the voice and the tense, but I have to figure out how to balance dialog and action and description. As usual, I use too much exposition. I am working it out, though.

I am really behind here on the blog, though. It has to be expected, taking on so many projects and then taking a break between them.

It remains to be seen how I will be able to manage the whole thing. I do want to sign up for the nablopomo... but when I tried last time, I had some trouble... and you know I am on such a tight schedule that if something takes extra work and time, it might get tossed. I'm still working on it thought, so let's see.

Anyway, thanks for all your well wishes on my break taking. I think it was a good thing, and I did it without any guilt. It remains to be seen if it serves to keep the productivity going as was my intention.

I'm going to try to get back to the Flying Girls, but Halloween, and all it's activity, was a bad day to get it done. I have a couple of ideas rattling around in my head.

See you tomorrow, maybe FG will pop up and surprise us with something new.