I keep coming face to face with the notion that creative work does not get done in a vacuum. As much as the romanticized notion of a writer typing away day after day in their tiny attic space might appeal to some, there is a point at which every person who attempts to do creative work must engage with the world and with other people. My introverted self usually wants to stay tucked away in a safe corner; I was always the student who inwardly groaned whenever a teacher assigned a “group project.” But lately I’m feeling more and more led to the kinds of interactions that encourage new ideas and processes, and even to actual collaborations - to working together with other artists and writers in the making of something good.
TLC Book Tours: Love May Fail
What’s not to love about this book? Once again Matthew Quick serves up a group of quirky, oddball characters, the kind of people many of us would hurry by if we were to pass them on the street, and challenges us to change our expectations and accept personality types that are vastly different than those we’ve come to expect as “normal."
The Sunday Salon: Regrouping
Ah, summer. You have finally deigned to grace us with your presence, and those of us here in the midwest are appropriately grateful. I am showing my gratitude this Independence Day weekend by exercising my freedom to sit on the deck, read, ride my bike, read, go for a ride in our classic sports car, read, eat lunch at a favorite outdoor cafe, read...well, you get the picture.
Life In General: Off Kilter
I woke up feeling off kilter, out of my element, draggy, decrepit, and a little dispirited. “This is still the age of dinosaurs, only these days I’m the dinosaur,” writes Karen Maezen Miller, in her book Paradise in Plain Sight. That is how I feel today: slowing lumbering along and stiff-leggedly plodding through a world that whizzes by 100 miles an hour.
Write On Wednesday: Small Doses
Sometimes life lessons come in unexpected places.
Like from exercise videos.
I wrote about it once before, in Life In General, in a chapter called “You Can’t Do It Wrong.” My favorite exercise videos are Leslie Sansone’s Walk At Home program, and Leslie herself always provides an extra dose of energy and “feel-good-ness” that I appreciate to start my day. Her upbeat optimism and encouraging words (like “You can’t do it wrong!”) are the best thing an exercise averse person such as myself needs to hear.
The other day I was in the “cool down” phase of a video I’ve done many times before, when a particular phrase jumped out at me.