Up in the Air

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I wanted to share with you some recent photographs I took while flying across the country to visit Rachel.  Many of the pictures don’t seem like pictures of land, more like textures or maybe even baked cookies on a sheet.  What do you see?

I am thinking of sending this one in to Southwest, actually.  I love the way it came out.  You can see the horizon-line starting the sunrise.  The sun is over the plane on the right, as though it’s over my shoulder.

I love this.  It looks like waves or something.

Somewhere between Colorado/Utah.  Looks like the moon.

Fuzzy horizon (actually think this goes with the first shot, just without the airplane wing).

I’ve always wondered, do the squares down there form by roads, or just natural contours of the land?

Clouds or landforms?

Clouds?  Snow?  Water?  All of the above?

This looks unlike land, to me; maybe a map?  Frosted cookies?

More sugar-frosted brownies.  You can see those lines I mentioned above much more clearly in this image.  Map lines?  Aliens?  Roads?  Elephants?

I have always loved planes.  This is the back-end of the jets on the wing.

More mountains.  Haze in the air as the sun cuts across it.

Much less snow here.  Utah, methinks.  The plane wing is more shadowed, I think we changed direction and are headed a little more northwest.

Forest with the line of snow.

There’s just almost a rainbow in the right side of the picture.  Weird how the camera interacts with the double-pane glass of the airplane window.

Almost looks like clouds, but I think that’s actually snow.  Interesting, since the snow indicates elevation but the whole ground looks like it’s mountains of the same height.

This looks like meringue, no?

My knitting project with my notes.  (You know I had to get knitting in here SOMEwhere, right?)

This is me playing around with the “effects” on my phone.  This one is the vignette setting.

Looks like cloud froth, but is actually snow.

This looks like ocean waves, but is actually mountains, valleys, and some cloud formation.

This is the “negative” effect on my phone.  (Who knew negativity could look so cool, eh?)

More meringue.  Anyone getting hungry for pie?

What do you see?

—
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
– E.E. Cummings

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Check out BURNING BRIGHT, available from Samhain Publishing.
Check out EMERALD FIRE, available from Torquere Books.
Check out “Taking a Chance“, part of the Charity Sips 2012 to benefit NOH8, available from Torquere Books.
Watch for COOK LIKE A WRITER, coming February 2013 from the Guerrilla Chicks.
Watch for TIGER TIGER, coming July, 2013, from Samhain Publishing.

Spot the difference

Writer Zen Garden Posted on by
This post is in response to Ways of Seeing.

#1 taken Saturday 19th early afternoon
#2 taken Sunday 20th 8.15am
#3 taken Sunday 20th 5.45pm

The request is for mundane photos, and these sure do fit. I decided on these because of some interesting photographic possibilities and that gorgeous Peppercorn tree is right opposite our driveway! 

Let me know what you see, if anything.  🙂

love,
Eaton

Creature Care

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Having finished evening pet care, busily scrubbing the sink until it shone, I came to realize that little time is spent on caring for myself.  It’s a common theme among peoples of all situations, but worth addressing.  After all, if we adults don’t care for ourselves, who will?

And the first to suffer is my inner artist.  That’s something any reader of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” knows all too well to be a true shame.  All the same, I’ve succumbed to bad habits and failed to refuel my creative nature.  Time for that to change.

Never a fan of New Year’s resolutions, for goal setting should never revolve around the calendar, I do intend to change this behavior as soon as possible.  So why not now?  There are plenty of fun projects at my fingertips; just a few minutes of letting my inner kid play would do wonders.

First, of course, I need to feed the fish.  Oh, well, I hope you’ll join me in doing something fun today!

Ways of Seeing

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In college, one of our assigned books was Ways of Seeing by John Berger, based on a series of 30-minute films in the early 1970’s.  While I recommend the book, this isn’t a review of it.  Rather, the title is evokative of a state of mind.  It’s on my shelf in my line-of-site from where I do a lot of my writing, so it’s something that’s in the background of my consciousness and the words have become a phrase in the substrata of my mind.

The way we see is unique.  Each of us could look at the same scene and come away with different impressions and imagery of what we saw.  This is valuable and necessary.  We don’t have to believe it for it to be true; we just have to see.

Do you have a camera, even just the simple one in your phone?  (Granted, some of the smart phones out there have cameras that are anything but simple.)  Have you experimented with just shooting a picture series of what you look at every day?  Try this:

Tomorrow, as you go about your daily round, take pictures.  If you drive, pause and snap what you see out your windshield before you start driving.  If you walk or take transit, snap pictures of stuff you see every time you go on your route.  The more mundane, the better.  Like a detective, we are after data and facts, not art.

Do you dislike pictures of yourself?  Experiment by taking one picture of yourself every day this week.  Do not judge; just take the picture and record the date.  “This is what I looked like on Tuesday.”  Play with different expressions and poses.  If you find yourself with one particular expression a lot, make that expression (for example, the one you have on your face when the phone rings) and take a picture of yourself.  What do you look like with that expression?

If you don’t have a camera, there are several good, inexpensive models you can find here, here, and here.  See if you have a friend who would loan you theirs.  If you have an affiliation with a school, they sometimes have them available for loan.

The point here is to become acquainted with how we see the world.  A fun twist on this exercise is to do it at the same time as your kids and then compare notes.  See what you might learn about each other.  Be prepared – leave your expectations at the door.  When you open your eyes and look, you’ll never know what you might see.

Have fun!

Darla’s Recommended Read: The Sound of Many Waters

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Do you enjoy novels that take you on a mysterious, extraordinary journey?  If so, Sean Bloomfield’s first publication is one you definitely want to pick up.  While written in an intelligent way still easy enough to follow without causing brain freeze, this particular trip takes the reader over land and sea, back and forth in time, and even into the human soul.

I must say it was known to me from the time of download that, unlike many of my Kindle e-books, this plot is not about romance.  Don’t expect to read some simple story about soul mates overcoming all odds to be together.  What you will find in this plot, however, is lots of heart.

“The Sound of Many Waters” follows two stories through amazing twists and turns, ultimately converging in a way virtually impossible to foresee.  If anyone out there guessed the ending, you have my utmost respect.
The two tales are intertwined by Spanish gold – one following a Spanish Conquistador who loses everything but begins reclaiming his humanity and the other tracking a modern day fellow with a good heart and extremely rotten luck.  Whether or not you particularly like these very human men, you cannot help being riveted by their ensuing trials, tribulations, and intermittent triumphs.  And the people they meet along the way are entirely tangible, however fantastic or humble his or her role might be.
I implore you to check out “The Sound of Many Waters”, the first book in many months that I plan to re-read from start to finish.  There is so much delightful symbolism that I want to journey with these characters again, especially knowing what I know now.  And I hope to get friends and family hooked into the tale, with hope of sharing my experience.

To read the author’s own synopsis, learn more about him, and find a link through which to purchase “The Sound of Many Waters,” please go to SeanBloomfield.com – The Sound of Many Watersand poke around.  You’ll be glad you did.  Happy reading!

NaNo; Now What?

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A few days ago, I succeeded in amassing a fifty thousand word rough draft to meet the National Novel Writing Month challenge.  I am grateful to NaNoWriMo creators at the non-profit Office of Letters & Light, as well as members of this blog, for the opportunity and the inspiration that made my creation possible.  With the closure of that November madness, I have relaxed from my frantic writing pace (a bit too much, truth be told – I don’t want to lapse back into a recent state in which I barely wrote at all).

So, now what goal should I set?  Wise folk have told me it is best to step back from a new WIP, letting the creative mind take a break between the processes of writing and editing.  With that in mind, I incidentally plan to focus initially on writing for blog posts.  One particular endeavor is overdue for a new chapter on a serial story.
Obviously, posting chapters requires a very different technique from the NaNo rush where no time can be spared to look back.  NaNo is simply a mad rush to produce new material.  Instead of just diving into writing for that blog, I first need to review the chapters so far posted, getting back into the mood of that tale.  I think the distinct change of pace will be most welcome.

Please wish me luck.  And happy December, all.  May you create in abundance, however you proceed.

NaNo No No

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It’s no secret that I’m participating with National Novel Writing Month (NaNo for short).  Sadly, I find myself in a very different place from when I wrote my Writer Wednesday installment for this blog.

Today I sit at the keyboard wondering why the house is so quiet at 1:30 in the afternoon instead of simply enjoying the fact.  Usually I hear talk radio wafting from the office next door where my husband works from home.  There’s no sound at all, though, and I realize he may be taking a rare nap.

This realization should make me happy.  After all, he’s not going to disturb my writing if he’s asleep, right?  Instead, I found myself wishing he would knock on my door and ask me to come out to spend time with him and the cats.

Why is this?  Sure, it’s nice to be wanted but, frankly, the inner critic is telling me to throw in the towel.  The dream sequence idea that so motivated me the other day seems to have taken over.  My most recent story additions consist of nothing more than aforementioned dream sequences, endless sex scenes, or worse yet, a puzzling combination of the two.

The predicament is actually more funny than truly worrisome, I know.  And this bump in the road should motivate me to jump off in another direction, even if the new tangent makes no sense.  That’s what the motivational messages on the NaNo web page suggest.

Instead I’m tempted to turn on the television and see what mindless drivel might distract me from my frustration.  And therein lies the “no no” from my blog post title.  Stopping now, just after 2:00 when possibly a crazily productive hour could lie ahead (I typically write until three on a good day), is a rotten idea.

So, I’m going to wrap this up and jump back into my silly, meandering, but growing manuscript.  Trimming, editing, and overall refined plotting can wait.  There are words to write that have never seen the light of day.  That’s too big an opportunity, some might say even a responsibility, to quit now.

I hope you’re having a productive day, whatever your endeavor.  Just keep moving forward and you’ll hopefully find yourself advancing to a better place with every step.  Even if your walk only seems to take you backward, I’m rooting for you from my own little path, so hang in there!

Darla’s Writer Wednesday – Keeping the Faith

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Today I find myself nearly smack in the middle of National Novel Writing Month.  If you’re a writer, I hope you’re with me.

This, my third effort, started shakily.  With only a title thought up on a whim, one character that has starred in numerous unpublished short stories, and the vaguest of plot concepts, I fell prey to my biggest failing – editing instead of writing.  The word count floundered, the tale going nowhere as I painstakingly sought the perfect verb for a single sentence instead of pouring forth the paragraphs required to generate fifty thousand words for the month.
Then yesterday happened.  Dreams from the night before woke me with vivid if nonsensical images.  I wrote what I remembered in my morning pages (like a journal, it’s an exercise recommended by Julia Cameron’s “Artist’s Way” creativity workshop), whether to purge them from mind or record them for posterity, I do not know.
Still getting an early start after that, I sat at the keyboard with no clue how to continue.  The people on the page meandered through some dialogue when the notion of a dream sequence occurred to me.  I’m sure you know where this is going, but I’ll say it anyway.  Why not use the new material my sleeping mind generated?  I proceeded with my largest daily word count ever.
The whole sequence might be throw-away material; I don’t know yet.  But knowing I’ve produced something that has never before existed has left me invigorated to keep going.  And as soon as I post this, I’m going to get back into that document and strive forth.

I’ll say again, I hope you’re with me.