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by Nancy Waldman

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because some have wondered…

I am Nancy Shepard Metzger Waldman
I proudly carry all three of my last names.
Each symbolizes a major age of my life.
Three is enough.

I’m a working writer and artist. Most of what I’ve done—as well as who I’ve been—in my life has been primarily concerned with creativity and communication. That’s why The Practically Creative Quarter came into being and continues to be such a rich and enriching format for me. I can play around with every kind of creativity while engaging in communication. Since I’ve moved The PCQ to a blog format, it is possible that the communication will go both ways.
I hope so.

my creative interests

I write mainly novels, but also short stories, poetry and short non-fiction. As yet, I haven’t received financial encouragement from the publishing world but that could be because I haven’t knocked on their doors often or persistently enough. One of my major goals in life is to get better at sending my work out to publishers and agents.

I have just entered into another aspect of writing with a new publishing venture in collaboration with writers, Sherry Ramsey and Julie Serroul. As editors of the brand-new Third Person Press, our first publication will be a collection of speculative fiction and poetry called Undercurrents. It is intended to show an alternate side of writing on Cape Breton Island and we hope to have print publication by June 2008.

As an artist, I painted, exhibited and marketed my work for a decade or so a while back. At the moment, that part of my creative life has recessed a bit. I painted in watercolour, acrylics, oils; did a lot of mixed-media and monoprints.

I make quilts. Unless I have a deadline such as a wedding or baby, these progress slowly and are often put aside for long stretches but when they please me, I always work my way back to them.

Photography is a recent passion. The immediacy and ease of digital has made photography accessible to me, but I also have a lo-tech LOMO LC-A, which I love.

I’ve done many—most?—kinds of arts and crafts - sewing, weaving, fibre and wire sculpture, needlepoint, paper-making, collage, greeting cards, pinatas, digital art, knitting. I love to cook.

I started studying the piano when I was 45. I consider it one of the best things I ever did. My husband sings and plays the guitar very well and he is kind enough to encourage me sing along with him. It’s a joy for me since participatory music was late-arriving in my life.

my novels
I completed one novel and have made significant progress on four others. Obviously I cannot work on all of them at one time but because of NaNoWriMo—which I enjoy immensely—I keep starting a new one each year. How long I can keep this up is unknown. I give NaNoWriMo FULL credit for getting this far in my writing life. I do not know if I could ever have completed a novel if it hadn’t been for this great idea! If you have ever thought—I’d like to write a novel someday—check it out.

The completed novel is historical fiction set in Texas in 1956. It’s called Pray for Rain and is about a family caught up in J. Edgar Hoover’s communist net.

There are also two young adult fantasy novels—The Third Corridor and The Winged Self—set in an imaginary world split into three dimensions—each dominated by one colour. Five young people, inadvertently brought together from each of the dimensions, find that the world they thought they knew is full of lies. The Third Corridor is a completed first draft; the second one lacks about 20,000 words to be a completed first draft. As I post this, another November is looming. There’s a strong possibility that this will be a trilogy.

The novel I’m currently writing has the working title, Beyond Words. It’s set in the decade from 1962 to 1972 and is about a family in Canada whose wife and mother dies in a car wreck while visiting her childhood home on the island of Tobago. The three children, adrift without the anchor of their charismatic mother, spread out into the world of the 60’s while coded, written messages from her arrive periodically, mysteriously and with profound consequences.

why I do The PCQ

As a person who works in many creative fields I find that the problems I struggle with are shared by many friends and colleagues who are involved in the same kinds of work.

I procrastinate. I put everything else in my life before I do my creative projects. I have a hard time doing self-promotion (for example, writing an about me page is difficult not to write, but to post. I wrote this months before I had the umph to put it online!)

Even with decent ego-strength and the wisdom of age, I have self-doubts that sometime get in the way of my productivity. I occasionally hit a creative wall and don’t know how to recover quickly. At times I have engaged in out-and-out self-sabotage. I sometimes forget what I once knew about dealing with these life issues. I tend to get obsessed with one creative activity at a time to the detriment of all the others even though I know from experience that doing several at a time would benefit them all. I have trouble keeping a balance. There are times when I bounce between poles like an alternating current. While self-motivation is strong, the finish line is often one that seems to be just beyond my reach.

These are the reasons I started The Practically Creative Quarterly (now The Practically Creative Quarter) in 2005. I want to share what I’ve learned (and sometimes forget) about how to manage all these issues and more. I find that writing about these issues for The PCQ has been a strongly positive influence on all aspects of my creative life. The PCQ is all about how to be more productive, contentedly self-promotional, easily self-confident, balanced, continually evolving, and successful—inside and out.

about me and my family

I was born in Missouri, but as both my parents were Texans, we moved back to the Lone Star State when I was a small baby. I grew up there in Austin, San Antonio, Freeport and (mostly) Houston. As an adult, I have lived in Houston, Connecticut, London, England and Nova Scotia, Canada.

I have bachelors and masters degrees in nursing. My masters is in psychiatric-mental health. I haven’t worked in nursing for a long time but found it to be a wonderfully varied profession. I worked with cancer patients, in labor and delivery, in public health, in schools, in a premenstrual syndrome clinic.

I have also been a teacher of nursing, prepared childbirth and parenting, as well as teaching quilting to seniors, art to children and Sunday school to both adults and children.

I’m likely to go back to school at a moment’s notice, as I love learning new things. I’ve studied stained glass making, American Sign Language, became a Lay Speaker in the Methodist Church and have taken countless art and writing courses and workshops. I am most comfortable, however, teaching myself. I learned html and web design as well as computer graphics by my favourite method: trial and error!

My Shepard roots are strong with my mother (though a Shepard by marriage) our matriarch. She’s 89, feisty, strong, mentally-quick. She writes emails that range from poetic, to profound, to hilarious and sometimes that’s all in one message. I find her to be my greatest role model in how to age gracefully. She’s taught me that the main things I need to do are 1) stay flexible and 2) stay flexible.

I have a brother in Canada and a sister in Texas who are in or near retirement. I expect that we’re going to be having a lot of fun once we all stop being so busy and tired. My siblings have given me one nephew and four nieces, all of whom I treasure.

My first husband, of Connecticut and Detroit, Michigan, Jim Metzger, is the father of my wonderful sons, Carson and Tyler.

Carson teaches at the University of New Mexico and is working on his PhD in American Studies. He still manages to find time to write, record and perform his unique, complex, interesting music. The word I would use to describe him is “balanced,” but within that he can be quirkier than anyone I’ve ever known. What a great combination!

Tyler is a drummer, sings and plays guitar, and writes fiction, songs and poetry. Last year he started painting with an energy and commitment that is a joy to behold. And, for that matter, so are his paintings. He is experiencing the first pleasures and pangs of self-promotion, in taking steps to show/sell his unique art. He has taken Tyler Darvintyne is his professional name.

Ty is raising—by himself (and doing an amazing job of it)—my gorgeous granddaughter, Cadi. Being a grandparent compares to nothing! She is amazing and a constant delight. She and her daddy live in Maine which is great because it means I can get to them with one loooong day of driving.

My husband, Barry, is the love of my life. He says he fell in love with me when I walked into 7th grade homeroom back in Texas, but then, he does have a wonderful way of spinning a story. We met up again after being out of touch for 35 years and got married in 2001. We live in a 100+ year old house in the woods, both work at home, have two golden retrievers and a cat.

Barry has three children. My talented step-children are Tara, a photographer, living in New Orleans, Louisiana, Karissa, who is studying dance at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and Caleb, who is in high school in Victoria, British Columbia and who seems to be most interested in film.

Let’s see, that’s five kids and from oldest to youngest we have potentially: a musician-singer/songwriter, a photographer, an artist, a dancer/choreographer and an filmmaker. I think we have creativity covered!

In addition to all these things, Barry and I are on the Board of Directors of and volunteer many hours for an educational charitable organization that he started in 1996. It’s called EPIC.

If you’ve made it this far, you are indeed a patient and good person.
Here’s a link to my personal blog, my photoblog and my flickr site.
I’m usually known as “nuanc” online so if you see me here or there, be sure to say “hi.”

Thank you for taking the time to come to my website. Please communicate with me if you are so inclined.