This is National Novel Writing Month.

I like to put in a plug for it every year, but at over 90,000 participants (it started in 1999 with around 25 people), maybe that’s the last thing they need. That, at least, is how I’m justifying not mentioning it until past the middle of the month.

If you’re interested, you can still sign up but you might consider just lurking around the highly entertaining forums to get your feet wet before jumping in next year. On the other hand, if you need inspiration and a fast approaching deadline, go for it!

In case you don’t know, the idea is to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel in the month of November.

My first year was 2002 which makes this—doing fast math—my sixth nano year. I have considered not doing it some years, but I think I’m past that. This year even with absolutely no time to plan, there was no question that I’d be back, doing my very best to come up with another story worthy of at least 30 days of my life.

I love it because doing NaNoWriMo has taught me, more than any other class or teacher or mentor ever did, how to write a novel. It taught me how to write through the dry periods, the uninspired days, the drivel that sometimes comes out when we sit down to make up a story. It showed me the vast amount of words you have to put down before finding the right ones in the right order. It not only taught me, but also it illustrated for me, the reasons behind turning off your internal censor and suppressing at every opportunity the doubts that are always there.

A daily word count goal (sometimes even an hourly one!) goes a very long way indeed toward overcoming the mechanical (I don’t have any good ideas), emotional (I am not good enough) and practical (no time!) reasons most people never write a novel.

If writing a novel isn’t something you aspire to here’s another option. This year I’ve joined a very active social networking group called NaBloPoMo that promotes blogging everyday in the month of November (reason No. 2 why this little site o’ mine has received less attention from me than usual). I’ve been blogging most days about my NaNoWriMo writing process, as I’ve been going through it, as well as posting a few tips along the way. You can see these posts in the NaNoWriMo category on my blog. As well, I’m going to be posting the Graphic Reminders I’ve done, here on The PCQ.

I haven’t been totally neglecting The PCQ, however. There’s work-in-progress to have a new social networking branch of The PCQ. This will be a place where you can easily post and share your own works of art or writing, start your own discussions and groups on whatever kind of creativity you’re into, and decorate your own profile page with whatever you like! Hopefully an email will be going out to all registered members soon, inviting you to see it (but I have to get through November first!). Either way, look for a link to it on The PCQ home page and please do click over and see what it’s all about.

Cooking is one of the few creative activities that I engage in pretty much everyday. However, I realized recently that somewhere along the line I stopped giving cooking the respect it deserves.

I have always enjoyed cooking but I guess my children—over time—with their penchant for the bland and the familiar, ate away at ( )the amount of creativity that I generally poured into daily meals. I remember my younger son exclaiming that a quickie “Sloppy Joe” dinner was “The best meal you’ve ever made, Mom!” That’s okay. As a busy mom, I’d take any compliment I could get.

But for years now, it’s ordinarily just my husband and myself and since we’re both adventurous eaters, I have free reign over what to cook. I’m not much of a planner. I work until my tummy tells me it’s time to eat, go downstairs, think about what I’m hungry for, see what’s available— sometimes pulling out three times as much as I’ll use—and start cooking. I rarely use a recipe for evening meals. The results are usually good and often delicious (my rule of thumb is Would I be happy if I’d paid for this at a restaurant? and often I can answer “Yes!” to that question)

However, I don’t usually think of it as part of my creative day.

Recently, I had a different kind of cooking that needed to be done. We—like many people this time of year—have a surplus of zucchini from our little garden. I don’t even particularly LIKE zucchini so I knew that I needed some creative ways of using up these mass quantities. I looked on the internet for zucchini breads and ran across a beautiful cooking blog called 101 Cookbooks by Heidi Swanson. There, I found a recipe for a zucchini bread with an ‘Indian’ twist. This looked perfect as I was having my book club over that weekend. Our book club does a pot luck dinner with food suggested by the book we’ve read and this time it was Indian.

I set to work making this and what I ended up with was not only a yummy dessert and a little less zucchini to deal with but also a renewed appreciation for cooking as both a creative outlet and catalyst.

Right from the start this zucchini bread recipe offered me two things: 1) the opportunity to bake—which I love but don’t allow myself the time to do and 2) a recipe to follow. Nothing earth-shattering there, but it dawned on me as I got into it that following a recipe was allowing me a mental escape. Follow the directions. Do this, then do this, then do that.

Relaxation was the first thing I noticed. I scooped and measured the dry ingredients, enjoying the gentle mess of flour as it sifted across the counter. I used my food processor with childlike glee to shred that huge zucchini in the photo in a just few seconds.

Then I noticed that the relaxation was overlaid with something else: stimulation. My sense of smell became activated in a major way by the ingredients. Lemon zest! Wow, what a virtual explosion of associations: summer and heat and childhood and so many others—all good! Then there were the more familiar but homey smells of pecans (being from Texas where pecans grow, I used them instead of walnuts), cinnamon and vanilla. My senses were further delighted by surprising ingredients such as crystallized ginger and curry powder. What yummy smells and sooo delicious.

By the time I popped the two pans in the oven, I was as relaxed, happy and energized as if I’d had a late-afternoon walk on the beach or a great yoga class. I felt raring to go! Ready to take on more baking (I used up more, though not all, of the zucchini on Heidi’s gorgeous chocolate zucchini cupcakes! which we are still enjoying around here) and more of anything creative I could get my hands on.

I would have come upstairs and written this post right then if I hadn’t had Book Club coming the next night!

What I realized—remembered—is that cooking, when we can relax into it involves the senses as few other activities do. Not only smell and—of course, taste—but touch and sometimes even hearing. And it’s one of those activities such as walking or riding a bike, driving or taking a shower that can put us into a C-mindful state. I’ve often worked through plot knots while cooking. The activity is absorbing enough that it distracts but it doesn’t require a great deal of concentration—sometimes none at all. Perfect for c-mind problem solving!

So here’s the reminder: We have to eat, so why not approach the occasional cooking *chore* as an opportunity to delight our senses, relax our minds and catalyze whatever we want to do with our excess creative energy.

bon appétit

[process, essay]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

Hi everyone. Welcome to September. Summer here in North America is fast waning—even though where I am in Nova Scotia, September is one of the best weather months.

I’ve been feeling quite ambivalent about the PCQ over the summer. There are lots of new visitors and subscribers and readers which is wonderfully gratifying and fun for me—Welcome to all of you!!—but I haven’t posted frequently or sent out emails which made me feel a little guilty. On the other hand, I’ve had a great summer for creativity so I felt that I was working to recharge my batteries, build up my reserves and just change things up for a while. As we know, it’s easy to get in a rut. Even if it’s a creative one that works for us, it’s still a rut and ruts tend to get deeper and less roomy the longer we’re in them. Sooner or later, we have to climb out, stretch and look around for a renewed way of being.

Summer is the best time for me to do this.

My husband and I have an old Victorian-era house that we’re fixing up (the exterior), so we have a small window of opportunity for working outside. August is prime time. It felt really *right* to be outside doing physical work. I had spent so much time at my computer last year that I was beginning to have nerve pain from too much sitting! I thought the physical strain might be problematic for an old gal like me who’d been so sedentary of late, but not only did it feel great (okay, there were mornings when I woke up in considerable pain—but it was the *good* kind of pain that went away fast!), but it got rid of my sciatica almost immediately!

More than all that, it reminded me that as much as I love the computer—The PCQ, the writing, the digital photo work, the website design, the computer art—I also love other things that I’ve been neglecting. I haven’t been playing the piano and will soon loose what little ability I have if I don’t remember to practice. I love cooking, baking, yoga, gardening, reading, quilting, photography, painting and more. None of those can be done while sitting at the computer.

It’s all about balance, isn’t it? And balance, like most things in life, isn’t static. It requires constant adjustment. Think of a tight-rope walker. A short walk high above the ground requires untold numbers of constant muscular changes to negotiate the span. No matter how many times the acrobat has walked the rope, no matter how talented or experienced, his awareness of balance must be at the forefront of his mind every single time.

As we grow and evolve, we’re the same. We don’t get to a point where balance becomes automatic. Our lives will always be susceptible to being off-kilter. And, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we come across some new passion, there’s not a thing wrong with throwing ourselves into it even if we neglect certain other things for that new activity! However, when we realize there are beginning to be negative side effects from our tilted world, (like nerve pain from sitting at a computer for hours a day!) we still and always have to stop, take stock and see what we can do to re-achieve balance.

What can get easier over time, is our awareness of the need for balance. For me, the seasons help. While I no longer have kids (in the house) who go back to school, September is a change nonetheless. I like to use the different seasons to trigger my awareness of how I’m spending my time in the context of ALL the things I love to do and want to accomplish.

What about you? What triggers your awareness that it’s time to readjust the balance in your life? Take care all and happy change of seasons wherever you are!

[-painting, process, interview-]

Interview with artist, Donna Marsh
by Nancy Waldman

what I’m reading; oil on canvas, 8 x 16; © 07 donna marsh all rights res.

Donna is an internet friend whose juicy paintings have inspired me to begin painting again after a long time away from it. I knew that she had stopped painting for years and has returned to it fairly recently, so I asked her questions that are pertinent to this process of picking up a “lost art” and also ones that her paintings made me wonder about. I share my questions and Donna’s answers with you in the expectation that there are others out there who have gotten away from a creative activity that they love; those who need a push to get back to it.

Whether or not you’re in that situation, I know you’ll enjoy reading Donna’s story, her thoughts about painting and of course, seeing a few of Donna’s more recent paintings. If you are thinking about picking up a lost art, here is your nudge in the right direction.

green room with mirror; oil on canvas, 14 x 18; © 2007 donna marsh all rights reserved

What got you back into painting after a long time away from it?

I was working as a cashier at a grocery store. An old painter who has a name around here started talking art to me whenever I tallied his oranges. He gave me a book of his paintings. I also accepted an invitation to go see some of them. This was really exciting for me because I hadn’t thought about painting in a long time. After two years in a college fine arts program life moved on the way it does and I just forgot about it. I never really decided to stop. I just forgot I did it. When Mr. Nemeth found out I had bothered to study he wanted to see my paintings. I didn’t have any. He said, “But you don’t stop. You never stop. You can take a rest sometimes but you don’t stop.” Then he never stopped asking for that painting until I produced it. He had an answer for everything too. When I told him I didn’t have any paint he picked a day to go downtown and buy some. He gave me brushes. Later on he advised me to quit my job because I wasn’t painting enough.

I told him I needed the money. His answer, “The world looks after artists.” What a wonderful way to think. I thought it was a bit nuts but he was born in 1919. He had to know a thing or two.

It was like coming back to life to paint again.

houses, Dorval; oil on canvas, 20 x 20, © 2007 donna marsh all rights reserved

What’s been most difficult about getting back into it?

There was a lot of fear in the beginning. People see paintings. They’re hard to hide. Maybe I didn’t know how anymore and people would see that. I had to get over that “doing things right” anxiety because to get it back and then go forward, I had to be willing to let things go wrong. Also, painting is messy and takes up a lot of physical space. I had to learn how to take that space and defend that space because it was important. The same applied to the time. Defending the time has probably been the most difficult part of getting back into it. In school I was studying so nobody ever questioned it. It was hard to teach others and myself that “I’m home painting” does not equal “I’m doing nothing please interrupt me.”

balconies and fire escapes; oil on canvas, 30 x 36; © 2007 donna marsh, all rights reserved

Do you have any tips for other painters in the same situation?

People actually have opinions about what painters should paint. This can be a shock at first. But if they’re really dying for a certain image to come into being they can go paint it themselves. Paint what you want and don’t worry about it making sense or fitting in with what’s going on at the other easels or even fitting in with what you most admire. Sometimes these things don’t work out to be the same. I can sit for hours in front of large minimalist works that appear to be one grey, taking in the sweep of the brushstrokes and subtle gradations of light on the work. Though it wouldn’t excite me to paint that myself, I’m glad it excited Charles Gagnon enough to paint it. It’s taken me a few years to know what I want to paint. I find if it excites me I’m on the right track. Execution becomes a fascinating challenge.

let’s get lost; oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches; © 2007 donna marsh, all rights reserved

Do you paint from photos? what’s in front of you? memory? imagination?

I paint from photos and from what’s in front of me. I’m interested in painting more from memory. I think there’s always imagination in a painting. I admit I’ve been working out some guilt over the use of photos. I wasn’t trained that way. It wasn’t allowed. But I like to have something to look at as a starting point and I found the terrain too limited for what I wanted to do if I only painted “in situ”. I still enjoy getting out for some plein air work or I’ll drag the outdoor easel over to something in the house that interests me. There’s a different feeling to translating space that’s all around me and in front of me. I like to stay in touch with that.

a hotel window; oil on canvas, 20 x 24; © 2007 donna marsh, all rights reserved

In what ways has your painting changed over the years?

The big difference between now and then (when I stopped) is that my colours are brighter and I’m less inhibited. I like to feel the paint and really muck around in it. Impasto is no longer a stranger to me. In the years since I’ve restarted, I find my understanding of what I want to paint has become much clearer and the paintings make more sense to me as a group. Also as I gain more control over the paint I get looser.

drive-thru service; oil on canvas, 22 x 28; © 2007 donna marsh, all rights reserved

And now, my turn—why Donna’s work is so inviting and appealing to me.

Part of it is what Donna talks about when she mentions Charles Gagnon. Often what we like is something that we would never choose to paint ourselves. I am drawn to Donna’s urban and suburban landscapes because I wouldn’t think to paint them but I like seeing them. Her use of thick paint and bright colours for these seemingly drab subjects makes me want to re-think them. It makes me believe that I haven’t really seen what’s there.

I am also drawn in by the energy in these paintings. The brush strokes, the lines drawn into them, the runny paint, all impart the bodily energy that Donna uses when she paints. The paint may have dried and hardened but the energy is still there as I look at them.

I also notice space, or lack of it, in Donna’s work. In ‘houses, dorval’ we get a long wide open view. The paint is applied going away from us, stretching out in response to the scene. In ‘balconies and fire escapes’ the lack of space is part of what makes it all so effective. The representation of over-lapping structures makes me feel the crowdedness of a city.

Being representational scenes, there is also light to consider. With Donna’s paintings, the light is conveyed through colour. I don’t get the feeling that there is any separation as she paints, between the objects and the atmosphere and quality of light that is with them. This gives the a glow to the work that seems to radiate from within.

Energy, colour, looseness, inner light. It’s not ’safe’ painting and, for me, that’s why they work.

Thanks, Donna for sharing your work and your thoughts with us. You can see more of Donna’s paintings at her flickr site. Donna lives with her family in Quebec, Canada where she just manages to carve out time and space to paint.

[-warm-up, drawing-]

Here’s a creative warm-up exercise that uses categories.

Choose a category each day to draw in your journal. Divide your paper into 8 - 12 small sections. Decide on the length of time you want to devote to this. My suggestion is to start with no more than ten minutes. Quicker sketches will loosen you up. Later on, you may want to devote more time to the sketches.

Draw a version of your chosen category in each of the sections.

The idea is to warm-up your creative brain by doing quick, non-threatening, simple drawings. Doing a lot of drawings of one thing helps you explore your visual knowledge of that category. You will find that you’re going to learn a lot about yourself, your visual memory, your ability to express a simple thing quickly and you’ll find yourself being more observant of that category once you’ve done the exercise.

Here’s my “Fruit” category page:
As you see, this isn’t great art. They are quick simple, even iconic sketches. And yet, I found out a lot from doing them.

I found out quickly that to distinguish between a drawing of an apple, a peach, a plum and even a lemon is tricky, but can be done. I found out that though I have removed plenty of them, I couldn’t, when I started, remember what the stem of a pineapple looks like. I found out that in order to make a peach look like a peach, you have to turn your pencil on its side to get a softer edge. I remembered that the skin of a lemon is pitted and that’s a bit of a different pencil mark that the tiny seeds of a strawberry. I found out that in order to sketch a bunch of grapes, it’s easier (and more fun) to sketch the dark, negative spaces that just draw the overlapping grapes. I found that sometimes a fruit is best depicted by the drippy, wetness that ends up on the surface below it. I found out that it was hard for me to come up with twelve fruits and that I didn’t seem to have a clue what shape a fig is.

Try it. It’s fun and you’ll be amazed how much it will stretch you.

Here’s a list to get you going:

I threw in the last three to remind you that these don’t have to be solid objects. But stick with the simpler ones at first. See what happens. After doing these for a while, revisit a category so you can see how the first sketches compare with ones you do after sensitizing yourself to this process and to thinking visually.

And, let us know what you learned by doing this exercise!

[-process, painting-]

Mama and baby gables

Originally uploaded by nuanc.

Hi all! I took some time off from posting during July. It’s been good to get outside and away from the computer. One of the things I’ve been doing is painting—but not my usual kind.

We are finishing up painting the roof line of our old house. This project started in 2002 when my husband put a pitched roof on the previously flat-roofed house. That gave us five new gables. (They are all different sizes so, in order to be able to refer to them without confusion, I dubbed them the Grandfather, Papa, Mama, Teenager and Baby Gables.)

We decided to give the outside of the house more detailing and a lot more colour! The painting started in 2003 with the largest of the gables. We are only now back around to where we started with the last little bit of trim near the roof. (Then we have the rest of the house to paint….after we put on a new front porch!)

The painting is, as you can see, fairly intricate and calls for precision. As I paint, I can’t help but be pulled back to other times in my life where I’ve used paint brushes on a daily basis to do art, not house painting. The feel of paint leaving a paint brush is very enticing, even when all you’re trying to do is paint a straight line.

The process puts me back in touch with that realm of paint and colour, edges and transitions, the build-up of colour and illusion of light that all go into painting a picture on paper or canvas. It is attracting me back to something that I once spent a lot of time doing but have been away from for a long time.

So what do I do with this urge that I’m not only feeling, but—now with this post—acknowledging in public?

It would be easiest for me to let it pass. That I have other interesting and important things to do with my time, other than paint, is true. That summer is busy enough without starting in on another creative pursuit is logical. But the real reason I have for resisting the urge to put paint on paper or canvas is that I’m afraid. I’m afraid of not being inspired once I get to it. I’m afraid that the urge is best felt and not acted on. I’m afraid that what was once a passion of mine, will not recur for me if I try it again. I’m afraid that what I paint will be unsatisfying and mediocre. All of these things and more have kept me away from painting for years now.

But here’s the other side of fear. One of the big reasons I started Practically Creative was to use it as a fulcrum (”an agent through which vital powers are exercised.”) in continuing to work through blocks and indecisions and self-defeatist issues that have always been a part of my creativity. I have fewer problems than I used to, but—as this as yet un-acted on urge shows—those issues never fully recede.

I’ll paint something other than my house today (it’s raining today, anyway). I’ll dust off some tubes of paint, pick a favourite brush or two and I’ll start small. I can’t promise myself much but I think I can manage enjoyment of the seductive feel of paint coming off a brush.

Then, I’ll see what appears.

Happy last days of July!

Here’s a post from my blog that has photos and details of the house painting project: The Up Side of Outside
Another post about the history of our old house: Of Things Dreamed Of

[-process, essay-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

As we create, we use up media, materials, tools, ideas, time, and our own creative energy. Working from abundance means having a well of resources—more than we need—to create what we want.

My son used this expression in a conversation about the new songs he had just recorded. I mentioned how much the phrase resonated with me and he said that he had heard it from a professor who used it in terms of writing. In both instances, they were talking about accumulating, creating, way more than is needed for a project and then winnowing it down later to a more refined level.

Not everyone creates this way. I have a friend who writes sparsely and then fleshes out the story after she has the skeleton of it constructed. I’m the opposite. I overwrite and then must be brutal with myself about taking out everything that isn’t necessary.

However, the crucial aspect of abundance isn’t the number of words we write or the collection of materials on our worktables or the amount of paint we have at our disposal. It’s not even about time.

Time is necessary and without it we can’t create. But, there are people with loads of time who don’t use it to record music, make art or write novels. So having the time will only work for us if we have an abundance of what will motivate us to work, to play, to innovate.

Working from abundance is more about a certain attitude. This attitude incorporates elements of openness, generosity, fearlessness, confidence. At times, whimsy and audacity. It involves letting go of negatives, so there can be no sparsity of spirit. It’s about not worrying that we will use up all our good ideas if we throw everything we’ve got at a project. It’s about having faith that creativity is a renewable and sustainable resource.

There’s also energy to consider. Creative energy doesn’t have to be about being upbeat and feeling energetic. Many depressed people, who didn’t have the energy to bathe, have created masterpieces. It’s about using what we have to put into the process of creating.

While it’s true there are those instances when the more we create, the more energized we feel, it does have a limit. We have to always be aware of when we begin to feel like a worn-out battery. At that point, the idea is to get away from what is depleting us and re-charge ourselves. Working from an abundance of creative spirit will always result in a more effective creation.

And perhaps, that’s all we need to remember about abundance. If we can accumulate a deep pool of the attitude of abundance, then we will have what we need to create what we want.

[-crackles!, c-mindfulness-]

by Nancy Waldman

I am in the process of writing an article on using the non-dominant hand in journaling as a way to reach the R-mind. In doing so, I decided that my icon and ’short-hand’ talk of R-mindfulness, based on Betty Edwards work regarding the use of brain hemisphere dominance to teach art, is at the least out-of-date and at the most, offensive to the small percentage of left-sided creative brains out there. The good news is that those people don’t know they’re offended because most of us haven’t had our brains examined.

The traditionally-dubbed *creative side* of the brain is usually but not always the right side. The dominant hemisphere of a person’s brain is not necessarily the left side although research supports an estimate of left brain dominance in at least 70% of people. And in looking at this today, I’m reminded that ‘dominance’ isn’t always about language but frequently about motor skills. Handedness is one of the ways this has been studied and, researchers have found that not all left-handed people (approximately 15% of the population) are right brain dominant even in motor skills. This is an area of research that has no definitive answers but there are some studies that have suggested that the more firmly dominant the left-handedness is, the more likely that person is to be right brain dominant at least in terms of language.

Confused? Me too. Every time I wade into the marshy bog of *Creative Sides of the Brain* I feel that I’ll soon be up to my elbows in a thick peaty mush of ideas that do not have scientific studies to back them up. So why bother? Because it’s fascinating! Because we all have brains and because conventional wisdom is that we use a fraction of the power of the brain in our everyday life. Because the kinds of exercises that I’ve been calling “R-mindfulness” do work on some level for most people to trick the dominant, organizing, practical side of our brains into letting go for a while, so that we can put the non-verbal, metaphorical, visual sides at the forefront while we’re creating.

But because not everyone accesses the right side of the brain when they do my R-mindfulness exercises, my referring to the R-mind is—what shall I call it?—hemispherism? leftism?

Wikipedia in talking about the historical and cultural bigotry surrounding left-handedness (or just ‘left’) points out:

Even the word “ambidexterity” reflects the bias. Its intended meaning is, “skillful on both sides.” However, since it keeps the Latin root “dexter,” which means “right,” it ends up conveying the idea of being “right-handed at both sides.” This bias is also apparent in the lesser-known antonym “ambisinistrous,” which means “clumsy on both sides” and derives from the Latin root “sinister.”

So from now on, the articles about R-mindfulness will have to reflect my newly raised-consciousness about this. However, the phenomenon discussed in these articles is the same whatever side of the brain is less dominant. The point is to access the lesser used portions in tricky ways so as to circumvent the normal functions. It’s complicated so I have to call it something simple!

How about…full-mindfulness? F-mind? ooh. Not so good. The innocent letter “F” has an undeserved and much more negative bias even than left-handers. There’s mind-fully or, quite appropriate in a metaphorical sense, fully-mined. Well…that probably gets us off-track. Fully-mindful is too fully-mouthful. Whole-mind is used in other ways to teach reading and such. Non-dom, short for non-dominant? That’s a bit negative. Alternate-mind. Alternate-hemisphere? Alt-mind? That sounds like a keystroke shortcut. Oh, there you go: Alt-control! Hmmm. Alt-hemi? Demi-hemi? Semi-demi-hemi?

Okay. This is a total illustration of how my creativity works (or more specifically: does not work).

For now I will settle on C-mind—short for Creative Mind—until, unless, I can think of a better iconic term.

Any suggestions?

June 16: This article was withdrawn and re-written after its first posting, evidently to illustrate more fully my personal brain’s challenges.

For a brief description of what I’m talking about, here’s the first article I wrote about the R-mind.
Here’s another one called Changing States.
Click on C-mind tag to get a full-listing or go to our Topics list and click on C-mindfulness

[process, inspiration]

Book box

Originally uploaded by cramzy.

A Good Sunday Morning in May to you all!

The photo to the right is one from The Practically Creative Group on flickr. It’s posted by ‘cramzy,’ a wonderful fibre artist whose work has impressed me continually.

Cramzy, also known as Emmy Schoonbeek, does all kinds of fanciful, beautiful and colourful stitchery, constructions and embellishments. This one caught my eye because of its cross-pollination effect. It’s so many things and includes so many things all at once.

It’s fibre art. It’s collage. It’s construction. It’s functional. It’s art. It’s a box. It’s a book. It’s got words, music, textile, paper, beads and probably lots more that we can’t see. Do click the image to see it in larger form.

I believe that this process of cross-pollination is one of the best ways to be freshly inspired and motivated.

It’s easy to utilize various skills and interests in our work when we’re already FEELING inspired and creative. That’s part of what makes it fun when one good idea or impulse bounces off another to create something new and unique. But it also can work for us when we can’t find that FEELING.

If you are in the doldrums with painting, try writing in your journal. Brainstorm. Do calligraphy until it turns into something else. Play with letters until they are abstract shapes.

If you can’t get started writing, do a quick symbolic collage of your main character. Or put on music that you love but don’t often listen to.

Another trick is to use these alternate parts of ourselves to be creative while taking a break from whatever has depleted our motivation. For example, when I’ve written myself into a corner, I find cooking to be a wonderful activity to immerse myself in. It’s creative and involves the senses but it doesn’t require a lot of mental concentration. This flow of activity allows my mind time to wander in a relaxed way. Without forcing it, I often find a way out of that corner and come back to the writing inspired and motivated—with a good meal under my belt!

Thanks, Emmy, for your inspiration this morning. Be sure to visit cramzy on flickr and at her blog.

[-exercise, un-blocker-]

by Nancy Waldman

Do you feel creative but still have difficulty creating?
Is something holding you back but you’re not quite sure what or why?
Are you feeling blocked?
Do you feel that your output is a trickle instead of a flood?

Here is a exercise designed to explore these kinds of problems in a new way.

In Marks Have Meaning, I made the point that small, quick, abstract marks can and do communicate emotions and concepts. This same concept can be used as an effective tool for problem solving.

The idea for and way of using marks as problem solving devices came to me from Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Artist Within, which I highly recommend.

Get several pieces of paper and a pencil with an eraser.

Sit down for a moment and think about your life. Choose an issue that is a challenge or an on-going problem, something that you don’t really have a handle on. It does not have to be a creative problem but if one of those questions at the top of this article is bothering you, it might be a good place to start.

Once you’ve decided on a problem, don’t think about it. Begin to draw.

Ms. Edwards suggest that you first draw a boundary on your paper. She calls this a format for the problem. It does not have to be a rectangle or square. Make it any size or shape that seems right.

Then begin to draw the problem. This drawing should take focus as a photograph developing before your eyes. Be in the mind of the issue you’ve chosen but don’t control this drawing with words. Let it come. The main thing to remember is that it should not include any representational or symbolic icons or figures. No hearts, or words, or lightning bolts or pictures of any kind. Just lines and abstract imagery.

Draw for as long as it takes. Remember, you are letting another part of your brain work for you. You are letting the r-mind communicate in the way it can. Enjoy the feeling of being wordless.

If one drawing doesn’t seem enough, do another. Don’t forget to ‘format’ it first, even if you choose to let the edges of the page be the boundary line.

Once the drawing or drawings are done, take a moment to assess how you feel. Are you refreshed? Frustrated? Feeling lighter? Or do you feel silly? Whatever it is, jot the word(s) on the back of the drawing.

Then think about what the drawing is telling you about your problem. Now is the time to try and put it into words. Say out loud what you see, how it makes you feel, what you observe about what you’ve drawn. It’s a similar process to recounting a dream. Often in retelling a dream, there is a process of identifying, of focussing. We might say, “There was a cat in the corner and that cat was—spooky…no, not really spooky, that’s too strong a word. More eerie. That cat gave me an eerie feeling that was like…well, surprisingly it reminds me of Great-grannie Gertrude!” And so on.

Turn your drawing over and on the back write the words that your r-mind has communicated to you. Ms. Edwards suggests that you “memorize” the drawing and the words. The idea is to hold both in your mind at once. Don’t let the words take over because the drawing may have more information in it than you can see right away. Before leaving this exercise, close your eyes and try to picture the drawing you did. Is it memorized? Then think about the words and hold them both in your mind at one time. It isn’t that hard, since you created both. They came from you and therefore are not foreign. The process has simply put them into your awareness in a new way.

Here’s a drawing I did years ago. I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t sustain creative efforts to completion.

In the same way that my dream would have significance to me, but would not to you, this drawing will mean nothing to you. Even if I point out the barriers and the difference between one side of the drawing and the other, it’s not your mind, your problem or your experience and therefore, not significant. However, what you should know is that I gained multiple insights from this and similar drawings. Doing these drawings over the years helped me deal with situations in my life with a broader understanding and awareness of them. In the same way, if you go through the process with openness, your drawings will have deeper significance because they came out of you.

Give it a try and see what happens in your life. For those of you who try it, share your experience with our readers by making a comment below.