wind and wave made beach sculpture at twin rocks. for more pics from rockaway beach click here.

We are off to our rented hideaway on Rockaway Beach, Oregon. I’ve set up some posts to go up automatically while I’m away, including this retroactive post from my stay here last summer while I was on writing retreat with Jen. Reading this helps me to breathe easier. May it bring a peaceful sigh to you as well.

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8.16.06

My body is still warm from the bed, which is so soft and heavy with quilts that it holds me like a cupped hand. I have taken in as much sleep as I can absorb. It is nearly nine and the quiet of a solitary house surrounds me – there’s only just the hum of the refrigerator for company.

Today there will be blackberry muffins and a walk on the beach and discoveries all unto myself. A cottage day on Rockaway Beach.

Today’s review over in Magpie Suggests is of Karen Michel’s very useful book The Complete Guide to Altered Imagery. This is a great how-to for magpie artists like me. I’ll also be using this book in September to launch Magpie Girl’s First Friday Creative Challenge. Mark you calendars for the roll out of this every-one-can-play project starting September7th!

The session on blogging is very cut-throat and business oriented. Not a lot of touchy feeling stuff in this lot. The main message is that in order to brand yourself you have to specialize. Not exactly the message a magpie like me wants to here! I like be distracted by sparkly things. I get too bored with just one topic or item. So what’s a girl to do?
Hmmm…the answer might be “just screw branding.”

In an effort not to toss the idea of branding and self promotion completely out with the bathwater, I thought I’d make some notes for a more rational, less discouraging moment. (If it ever appears.) Here are some of the questions that the panelists are asking us to ask ourselves:

What do you want to be known for?
What is your unique promise of value?
What uniquely do you stand for?
What is your 2-3 word tagline?

And here’s an assignment to help you write a blog post that both works your brand and captures attention:

Try writing a post that combines two non-related topics that you just happen to like and hook it back to your specialty?

Oh…the longer they talk the worse I feel. Maybe generalists are doomed to the bread line? I’m pretty sure this is another one of the big problems with trying to making a living via your art. The art/business marriage is certainly a rocky one.

The panelists would really hate “distracted by sparkly things” as tag line. Too vague. How about this one? “Artful things for soulful living”. What do you think?

Claudia, a sweet and super-productive writer friend of mine, has finally made it big. So big she has multiple book deals with real and artful covers and profession photos of her self blown up to giant proportions at booksellers conferences – photos where she looks super cute and inexhaustible interesting—and y’all know that an adorable picture when you are no longer in your twenties is a figgin’ gold mine. Claudia’s life has been shockingly difficult—is still shockingly difficult, in spite of this beautiful commercial success, and I should be turning summersalts for her in front of the capital building.

But instead I had the teeniest, tinest, pitty party of a cry.

My book – not my baby, just a book, but my first book – is still sitting on my agent’s list of not-yet-picked-up manuscripts. It’s been roundly rejected by all my Christian publishing contacts who so eager asked me to “send them something” because it’s to…um…I guess the nice way to say it is “interfaith.” (Really, they probably just think I’m a raving heretic.) Now it’s making the rounds of smaller less ‘religious’ and more ‘spiritual’ publishing houses, but still no bites. My agent swears that it’s great writing and just needs to find the right home. The poor thing has been homeless and hoofin’ it for about six months now and I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, part of an literary agent’s job is placate vaguely neurotic writers until he finally, absolutely must admit that the whole thing is a no-go.

I know it’s shallow, and Ani DiFranco, she-who-didn’t-sign-with-a-label, would shake her head in dredlocked disapproval, but it I personally would find it very encouraging right now to have one piece of my work stamped “professional.” I want/need to be able to say “I am a writer” and have something to show for it. Also, I think Soulcrafting: 12 spiritual practices for soulful kids is somethign a lot of people could really use right now. And lord knows my marriage needs me to bring in some money so there’s some kind of fiscal equity going on.

Andrea says to ask for what you want. So I am, loudly and often.

I want to write and publish a book without compromising the integrity of the work.

Ooooo…aren’t they so pretty? I’m having so much fun working on my next Zine! Though the pages might not look like much, it’s a long process as each page is features either watercolors, ink work, or image transfers. For instance, here’s the process for these two simple pages:

-journal for an hour about what you want to say
-edit it down to a pithy little opening salvo
-find a background image — in this case a photograph of handmade soap blocks in sherbert colors
-scan in photograph
-reduce to various sizes and adjust the colors
-cut large sheets of cardstock to zine-appropriate sizes
-use gel medium to transfer the image onto the zine page (spread gel medium. use brayer to remove air bubbles. burnish just the right amount. wait the perfect amount of ’set’ time. gently peel back the image paper. rub off excess paper pulp with your figure pads. repeat when it doesn’t work the first time.)
-pen out what you want to write on scratch pages to get the spacing decent
-look up various and sundry spellings
-resize summer photographs to be the right teeny tine “photo booth” size
-affix photos to zine pages
-hand-write text
-forget to leave enough margins for the binding. begin again at step one.

I know there are simpler ways to make zines. Ways that involve only a computer and a xerox machine at Kinkos. But I just can’t help it. I love the handmade-ness of it all. I’ve put at least 24 hours into this already and I’m only on page six! Paul says I can spend one day of the three day weekend at my studio, so I’m hoping to have them ready by the end of the weekend for June orders. Now all I need is a name…hmmmmm….

There is no scheduling task as hard as protecting your writing time.

This is a universal truth. You go to bed on Sunday night thinking, I’m going to have so much time to write this week! But when Monday morning arrives you realize—between the dentist appointments; and the days school gets out early; and the classroom volunteering; and the taking of the ridiculously chi-chi dog to the groomers—there’s one 2 hour block available for actually working. See it? You have to kind of squint a little and look…right…there! It’s that tiny gap between babysitting the neighbor’s kids and making dinner for 12. Two tiny hours. About six pages worth, if you’ve got your groove on. Which you probably won’t, because you haven’t picked up the piece you’re working on for a week or two and it will take half that time just to get your mind back in the game.

I moaned about this to my writers group on Monday and everyone agreed. Protecting your writing time is a bitch.

I know some people who write in the wee hours of the morning, and others who stay up half the night. I know some who bow out of family stuff on the weekends to get some work done, and others who have to resort to sitting the kids in front of the boob tube in order to meet their publishing deadlines. No matter how you slice it, it’s hard. There are sacrifices. And it’s very easy to fall into a cycle of constantly worrying whether you are using your time wisely and justly. It’s a big energy-suck, which ironically, makes it all the harder to do your artistic thang.

So here’s what I think, let share our ideas with each other. What does your working life look like as an artist. How do you find, make, or protect your artistic time? I’ll give you my method, and you let me in on yours. I am confidnet that between our creative bass ass selves we can make this art thing happen!

Magpie Girl’s Tips to protecting your Art time

1) Make a list of the non-negotiables. This helps you worry less that your aren’t doing your fair-share in life. Go ahead, write them down. Now, cross of about a third of them because you probably just think they are non-negotiables. Go on. Be bitchy and way less helpful that you usually are. Mine include getting enough sleep; exercising every day; preparing for monkfish abbey once a week; cuddling with the kids in the morning; hanging out with our household after dinner (most nights); grocery shopping; cooking 2-3 real meals a week, and doing the household bookkeeping. That’s it. Eight things that are absolutely my responsibility.

2) Put those non-negotiables on a schedule and see what time you have left. Try not to cry. It will be enough. At least, it will be enough for now. Small beginnings are good.

3) Protect that time like a banshee. This my friends, is the hard part. After I slot in the must-do’s I end up with 9hrs a week of workable time. 9hrs. It’s not even a .25 equivalent! If I am realistically going to get anything done as an artist, I have to honor that time, no matter what. For me this means only booking appointments on my one “family task” day a week; saying no to school volunteering except for one field trip per kid per year; only emailing 15 minutes each evening; avoiding the internet; and getting my family to help with the household tasks.

4) Enlist and Reinforce. Show your new schedule to your family, post it next to your calendar, tape it into the front of your notebooks, and write it out once a day for two weeks— whatever it takes to solidify your boundaries. Then keep going back to it until protecting those nine hours (or whatever) becomes a habit—as customary to you as going to church on Sunday, or watching Grey’s Anatomy on Thursdays, or whatever. Keep practicing until it is part of your rhythm.

That’s what works – most of the time—for me. How about you? What tips do you have for protecting your artist life?

Reposted from here, because I think it still matters.

Well, here I am back at work and ready to finish up the collage journal I’ve been working on since last Summer. Alas, the scanner refuses to play nice with the computer and I can’t get the last two pages ready for print! Stymied from bringing even just one project to completion, I am a frozen by the possibilities of tinkering with dozens of unfinished or yet-to-be-started projects. It’s been two weeks without creating anything more solid than Christmas cookie dough. I’m not stuck exactly, just sort of stiff in the artistic joints. “So,” I say to myself, “Let’s warm up with a nice little blog.”

Let’s talk a bit about the creative process shall we? It’s a long and bumpy one, by most accounts. Paintings do not spring forth from your brush fully executed, nor do novel pour out of your fingers without numerous backstrokes long periods of chewing on the ends of your hair. Read the rest of this entry »