Category Archives: Writing

Creativity Insurance

Today was the weekly writing jam in which I participate, where three of us get into the same room and hunch over our laptops, typing madly. It’s creativity insurance: for at least one afternoon each week, we get some writing done, because if the sound of your fingers hitting the keys ceases, someone bullies you into starting again. (“No retreat, no revision, no regret!” Ceri announced during a writing lull this afternoon. “No words,” t! replied succinctly. This is funny on several levels, for t! is the original author of the writer’s threefold war cry Ceri quoted. If you know t! in any way, you also know the idea of having no words is a paradox in his world.) Last week Ceri worked on developing content for her web site, and this week I decided that since I’d been uploading a ton of stuff to Owldaughter, I’d take her work as inspiration and use the afternoon to work on some sort of introduction for the spirituality section. I pulled off fifteen hundred words this afternoon, which wasn’t bad at all. Then tonight, after my husband went to bed, I pulled off another seventeen hundred. That brings my total to just over 3,200 words for the day.

Awesome.

I also got another couple of chapters of that manuscript edited. Tomorrow morning I’ll draw up the editorial memo, run it past my contact at the publisher, then send it and the first third of the book off to the author.

Making progress, yes, indeed…

God As A Fellow Artist

Surrealmuse takes a look at art in several different ways. Her subtitle was what really caught my attention: When the muse is alive in anyone, they become an inventive, searching, self-expressing creature.

I found this paragraph in Art & Spirituality:

I envision God as another fellow artist, the master artist with a touch of scientific knowledge, but an artist all the same. Who else but an artist would create such beautiful scenic beaches and mountains? With the same token, the dark side of God’s artistic vision is illustrated in the creation of angry, fiery volcanoes. But God also has a sense of humor, who else could create a platypus?

I thought that might get your attention. Enjoy the site, and think about how your own creativity conveys your spirituality.

Division Of Labour

I just got a call from my publisher. My bid to rewrite the current book for which I’m consultant has been accepted — sort of. They’re splitting the book up: the regular copyeditor answers all the obvious (and justifiably snarky) queries she put in for the author to clean up, and I get The Ultimate Chapter From Hell to change, alter, rewrite, and otherwise make professional and appropriate.

It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but I’ll take it. This abnormally long chapter constitutes a third of the book, after all. Dividing the rewrite gets things done twice as fast, and this book is already late; it ought to have been in production by now.

Synchronicity Strikes

I keep a Hanson-Roberts tarot deck on my desk to play with when I get stuck on something. A couple of days ago I shuffled and drew three cards: Justice, the Empress, and the Star.

They’re still on my desk, because something’s been niggling at me. Namely, the fact that as soon as I saw the Empress, I said, “Ooh, Brid!”

Now, Brid is usually seen as a Maiden figure. (Paradoxical association has Saint Brigit being a matron of pregnant women. Go figure.) She is associated with the first stirrings of spring, creativity, healing, and crafts, among other things. The Hanson-Roberts deck (which isn’t my favourite by a long shot; it’s just slightly smaller than the average tarot deck and fits my hands comfortably) portrays the Empress as a golden brown-haired woman crowned with twelve tiny flames, gowned in a dress of brown-red, white, and soft blue, sitting in a chair that has a back with a large round headrest. The blue headrest is outlined in gold, and provides a frame for her face. Traditionally the Empress indicates a woman of mid-age, and is associated with fruitfulness, family, motherhood, abundance, progress and such things.

So my immediate recognition of the Empress card as Brid stumped me for a moment. Then I looked at the card again, thought about my research, and began to understand why.

I’ve been doing some key research on the concept of Brid as figure of Sovereignity, a representative of the energy of the land itself. In that respect, the figure of the Empress and her associations of fertility and abundance work quite well. The tiny flames crowning her head are of course associated with Brid’s fire aspect. The blues of the card call to mind Brid’s water affiliation through her healing aspect. The grain growing around the Empress is not only used to feed the people of the land, but the cattle and other domestic herds who are under Brid’s protection also. The round disk of the chair back brings to mind the possible solar connection Brid has, as well.

If someone had asked me to choose a Major Arcana card to represent Brid before this happened, I’d likely have chosen only the Star. I’m a writer; I tend to relate to Brid in her creative aspect first and foremost. These three cards together, though, seem to show me the three sides of Brid: the brightness of inspiration in the Star, the fertile Sovereignity aspect of the Empress, and the rulership/warrior aspect of Justice.

A good writer and researcher keeps her mind open to possibilities. And since in my world I choose to believe that there is no such thing as coincidence, and since it was the Empress card that really jumped out at me, I think I’ll be following this line of Sovereignity research for a while.

Noooo!

I left my printer paper and brand-new sticky tabs at work last night.

I think I’ll go back to bed. Or make a cup of hazelnut hot chocolate and curl up with an Anne Rice novel or something. You know, the complete antithesis of academic application.

Research Crisis

I woke up with way too much pep at a ridiculous hour this morning. Got up, dragged all my notebooks and research texts and my pencil case to bed in order to work…

and discovered that I had only one coloured sticky index tab left.

Woe!

You cannot possibly imagine the depths of my despair, because you’re not me. I’m a stationery geek – no, not as in immobile, that’s stationary. I mean stationery as in paper and office products. Notebooks, pens, pencils, staplers, paper clips, Post-It notes, coloured sticky index tabs that you position on a page to indicate An Important Point You’ll Want to Refer To Later.

These things have been my life lately. Yellow for references to the Brigantii tribe; red for references to the goddess Brid; green for healing references; purple for general goddessy stuff I’ll work in later. Blue for whatever. It’s a system. Every academic has his or her system. Ceri has index cards. I have sticky tabs.

When I’m stuck for inspiration, I buy a new pen. When I begin a new research project, I buy new coloured sticky tabs.

I ought to look upon this crisis as a Meaningful Milestone, namely that I’ve done so much research that I’ve come across a couple of hundred important points. At the moment, however, I’m just glum. Even promising myself a trip to Bureau en Gros on the way to work isn’t brightening my day as much as it could.

Although I do need new highlighters; my current ones fade out after thirty seconds of use. And I need a new package of paper for the printer, too.

Well, fine. So I’ll stop and pick things up. If I leave now. I’ll have an extra twenty minutes to poke about before I have to be at the store for noon for my shift.