Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art.
Today’s prompt is a color: green.
I recently took a wonderful poetry workshop at Blue Mountain Poetry Salon, in which we were each asked to choose a color and think about ways we experience it, especially using each of the senses. Inspired by that, I’d invite you to think about the color green, where and how you experience it, and what that evokes for you.
Here are a couple of “green” pictures to get you started. 🙂
Irish moss in bloomFragas do Eume, Galicia, Spain
What does the color inspire for you? If you’d like, please feel free to share thoughts and responses in the comments. On Facebook, I’ve also started a “Maker’s Day Sharing Group” where we can talk about the prompts and support each other’s creativity. New members are always welcome!
You can find all the Maker’s Day prompts together here. If you’d like to receive the prompts weekly, please consider subscribing to the blog. Thanks for visiting!
Today is a bit of a down day. There’s a lot going on in the world (right now, especially here in the US) that’s dark and nerve-racking. I’m definitely having one of those days where I wonder about making art, what it’s good for, and what I’m hoping to accomplish with it.
I’m trying to hold onto the idea that how I feel is always temporary. I might feel down, but that doesn’t mean I am down; that would imply that the feelings don’t change. I’m also holding onto the fact that there are still, always, lovely things out there to admire. We have a nest of wrens in the backyard. Our bee balm is in bloom this morning (I didn’t even know it had flowers!). The goldfinches are back for the summer and making themselves at home.
Bee balm flowers. Who knew?
In the spirit of looking for and sharing beauty, I thought I’d share a little more music this week. These are two recordings I made a couple of years ago. The composer, William Byrd (1540-1623), is one of my favorites, though you don’t hear his keyboard music played much. Byrd was one of the greats of the English Renaissance and is mainly known for his vocal music, especially liturgical pieces.
These two pieces are both Byrd’s arrangements of folk songs that were popular in his time: “Will You Walk the Woods so Wild” and “The Maiden’s Song.” Each piece is a theme and variations. You’ll hear the main tune presented first, simply, and then changed up and ornamented in a series of variations.
Both pieces are meditative and lovely. I really enjoy playing them, and hope you’ll enjoy listening.
William Byrd, “Will You Walk the Woods so Wild”
William Byrd, “The Maiden’s Song”
Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means a new Maker’s Day prompt. Please stop by and check it out, and meanwhile, if you like what you see here on the blog, please consider subscribing. As always, thank you for visiting!
If you’re a writer, do you like to listen to music while you work? For me, that used to be a hard no. I love music, but I used to need all the quiet I could get when I was writing, to get myself into the right head space.
Things have changed a little over the last couple of years. When I started working on my big rewrite of Fourteen Stones, in the spring of 2020 right as Covid was turning things upside down, I needed some help to “stop thinking so hard” and get past some creative blocks. Last week I posted about how writing in general was pretty hard for me then. I wanted to do it, but my mental health was a big challenge. It didn’t work too well to sit in silence at my computer and try to will myself into the world of the story; that was overwhelming and scary, and I would give up pretty fast. Instead, I tried something new: making a playlist of songs I thought would help me get out of my head.
I’m a classical musician. Listening to and playing classical music has been a huge help to my mental health, especially when I’m having high anxiety. To help me get back into Fourteen Stones, though, I found myself thinking about other kinds of music, mostly favorite pop tunes going back to when I was in junior high. The playlist I eventually came up with was pretty eclectic, with everything from the Temptations and Genesis to Vance Joy and Maroon 5. (You can definitely laugh at some of my song choices; so do I. 😉 ) Since Fourteen Stones is set in a fictional world, in a time period that doesn’t parallel our 20th or 21st century, my playlist wasn’t meant as a real soundtrack for the story. (My husband, who’s a composer, has been working on a real soundtrack for it, which I hope to share as we get closer to launch!) Instead, the songs I picked each had some kind of emotional resonance or energy that got me headed in the right direction.
Today I thought I’d share three of the ones I listened to when I was working through that rewrite. They helped cut through my anxiety and resistance, and made it much easier to dive back into my created world and get to know my characters again.
Oldest first: “Follow You, Follow Me,” by Genesis. This was maybe my first-ever favorite song; I fell in love with it when I was in sixth grade. Revisiting it was a kind of personal anchor. Fourteen Stones also has a love-story angle that this song fit with well (at least in my head).
Another favorite was “Exes and Ohs,” by Elle King. Very different energy. 😉 This was on the radio a lot a few years ago, when I was writing the very first drafts of what would become Fourteen Stones. I usually listen to the radio when I drive, and when this song came on, I’d turn it up for an energy boost.
And finally for this sampler, “Sorrow and Joy,” by Indigo Girls. This was a tougher one. In the summer of 2019, a friend of mine passed away very suddenly. I first heard this song a few months later, and found it hard to listen to, but at the same time, it had a lot of resonance.
The revision-playlist trick was so helpful that, when I started writing a new book this past fall, I made up another playlist to help push me through the first draft. That book, Nicky True, is set in 1945, but my playlist mostly taps music from the ’60s and ’70s. I found that, again, it was less about the time period or making a “soundtrack” for the story than about finding songs that had the right kind of energy for me. I’m using the same playlist again as I dig into revisions of that draft.
If you’re a writer or another kind of creative artist, what supports your process? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
As always, thanks for visiting the blog. If you could use a little creative inspiration, please stop back tomorrow for our weekly Maker’s Day prompt!
Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art.
This week’s prompt comes from my writing student Sandra Perez, who also takes beautiful photos. She shares these two images as our creative inspiration this week:
Balloon flower blossom
Statuary
What might one of these images, or both together, inspire for you? If you’d like, please feel free to share thoughts and responses in the comments. On Facebook, I’ve also started a “Maker’s Day Sharing Group” where we can talk about the prompts and support each other’s creativity. New members are always welcome!
You can find all the Maker’s Day prompts together here. If you’d like to receive the prompts weekly, please consider subscribing to the blog. Thanks for visiting!
Today I’m thinking about writing (when not?), and more particularly, the connection it has for me with mental health. Here on the blog, I’ve posted about my own mental health challenges, especially with anxiety and depression. I know many of us deal with similar challenges, and I like to be open about mine, because (a) they’re the truth and (b) I figure it never hurts if we can talk about these kinds of things.
Writing is often a great healer for me. I feel most grounded when I’m working. When my brain is busy with some project, hanging out with my characters and working through the puzzle pieces of story, anxiety and depression have a harder time getting their hooks in. I like how my brain is willing and able to latch onto the “good stuff”; I have a side helping of OCD, which, sadly, doesn’t translate to keeping my house even remotely neat, but does help keep me laser-focused on my writing-in-progress. Obsession can be a terrific superpower for an artist. It does tend to drag perfectionism along with it, but if you can separate the two for a little while, you can harness all that energy to help get a project done.
The flip side of the writing-and-mental-health mix is the fragility of sharing work, especially work that has meant a lot, and dealing with rejection. This has been much on my mind lately as the launch of Fourteen Stonesgets closer. I’ve found myself thinking about some particularly tough times three years ago, when getting this book into the world seemed extremely far away and probably impossible, and between that and other factors, my mental health hit an all-time low.
My therapy cat, Fergus, who knows when his assistance is needed.
For the first time ever, I found that I couldn’t write: my brain simply refused to go into the world of story. A solid wall stood between me and the one thing that had always helped me. Even reading was no fun anymore; I couldn’t concentrate on books, couldn’t surrender and take a ride with another writer’s imagination.
If you’ve ever been there, you know how disorienting and difficult that is. When your creativity is such a big piece of who you are, and you can’t tap into it because your own mind won’t let you, you start to feel pretty detached from yourself and unsure about everything. I’ve never had the same level of anxiety, before or since, that I did during those months. If you have mental health challenges, you know it’s the worst when your mind is your enemy. You can’t escape from yourself, as much as you want to.
I spent a while (way longer than I’d have liked) in that limbo. Finally, in late fall of 2019, I found myself starting to edge back towards creativity. One day I found I could sit down with a novel and actually get into it. Then, a while later, my favorite characters from Fourteen Stones started to nudge at me. I found myself sketching scenes with them, not to use in any real writing but just for fun, just because hanging out with them felt right. That was when I knew I was getting better. My beloved characters were a solid, strong lifeline. I could hang onto them and they would help me heal.
Map of my fictional country, Namora, which I taped up over my desk when I started writing again.
The good thing, as I found when I finally started to come out the other side of that time, is that once you’ve gone through that kind of fire and know you can survive, it’ll never be so scary again. You might not feel like you’re quite the same person you were before – I don’t, and I’m still learning about what’s changed – but you can feel grounded in yourself and know you’re doing okay, even when you run into bumps in the road.
In the spring of 2020, when Covid hit and everything turned upside down, Fourteen Stones helped me again when I launched into an overhaul of it. It felt so good to dive into the world of story, especially in lockdown, when real-world escapes had mostly disappeared. Since then, writing has stayed around as a touchstone, motivation, and release that I’m very grateful for. Sometimes it feels bizarre to make art, and worry about story and characters, with everything going on in the world. But I do think that it matters to put ourselves, our hopes and pain and wish for beauty, into what we create, and that by doing it, we can make a difference.
I hope you can spend some time today with whatever grounds you and lights you up. As always, thanks for visiting the blog.
Last week I introduced something new on the blog: Maker’s Day Wednesdays. Each Wednesday I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art.
This week’s prompt is a single word:
mosaic
A couple of supporting visuals (courtesy of Pinterest):
Ancient Roman depiction of water birdsFloral pattern
What might this word and idea conjure up for you? Mosaic as an art form and/or a way to capture history; a group of broken pieces coming together to make something new and striking… I invite you to reflect and maybe, if you’re feeling inspired, create something in response.
You can find all the Maker’s Day prompts together here. If you’d like to receive the prompts weekly, please consider subscribing to the blog. Thanks for visiting!
Sometimes I get pretty philosophical here…hoping you’ll bear with me today!
Making art is a challenging business. I know my fellow “makers” relate to this: we spend a lot of time, usually solitary time, piecing together the ideas in our heads, separating tangled threads and weaving them into something we hope will connect with someone else. We often have a picture of the ideal creation, the dream. As we’re putting the words on the page, or the notes on the staff, or the paint on the canvas, we know we can’t shape that perfect piece of art, because we’re not perfect ourselves. Still, we’re going to do the best we can. And maybe, when we’re finished, we’ll look at what we’ve made and feel proud.
Often we do. When I finish a draft of a writing project, I usually go through a phase of “oh yuck, what is that??“, but after a little time, I can see the beauty in it. Sure, it’ll never be “perfect.” When I wrote Fourteen Stones, I could imagine a story that was breathtakingly lovely, so powerful it would make a reader laugh and cry and fall in love with the world and the characters the same way I had, and when they read the last page and put the story down, they would never be quite the same again. I could imagine all that, but I knew chances were, it would never be as perfect and beautiful on the page as it was in my head. Still, I gave it my best, and when it did get done, I was pretty proud.
One of the real-world places that inspired the world of Fourteen Stones.
We all know how tough it can be to take our art out into the world and share it. We open ourselves up in a way that, since we’re often such solitary people, can be terribly uncomfortable. Of course we’re scared of failure – nobody likes it! – and I think sometimes we’re also a little scared of success. What if everybody sees it? What if they’re all staring at it? At me??
That’s one hazard of making art. Another, which I’ve been running into a lot lately, is that “so what?” thing.
If you’re a “maker” too, I suspect you know about that. So what if I write this story? Who needs it? So what if I bust my brains making this piece of art as good as I can? It might go out into the world, sure, and people might even like it, but really, is it doing any good?
For me, it can be overwhelming to look at all the dark and terrible stuff in the world, and then look at myself as a maker of things. I’m not out there doing much of anything to solve the world’s problems. I get involved when I can, as much as I can, but there’s always that sense of being one tiny person, and a pretty impractical and super-introverted person at that. I desperately want to wave a wand and fix things, but what I have to offer feels so very small.
A favorite meme – not mine – that sums up how I feel during the writing process.
In those times, I try to remember that when we make something of beauty – even if it’s small – and when we share something of ourselves in the world, we do make a change in it. Maybe a very small one, just in our individual corner. But nobody else could make that piece of art we made, and we never know how it might touch someone else.
Someone might smile today because of your piece of art: and maybe they needed that smile, maybe they couldn’t find a whole lot to feel glad about, but you showed them a reason. Or someone might stop a minute in the middle of a stressful time, when the dark feels heavy and thick around them, and take a breath of fresh air because of that work you created out of your mind and heart. It might only last a moment, but in that moment, you’ve made a difference. You’ve done something no one else could have.
If you’re wondering what all this has to do with hummingbirds, here’s the connection. Recently, I was introduced to the video below. The message in it resonated with me: that even if what we have to offer feels small, we can always choose to do what we can. For me, that’s telling stories, sharing stories, helping other people tell and share theirs. What is it for you?
As always, thank you for visiting the blog. If you’d like to receive my weekly posts, and/or stay tuned with Fourteen Stones launch infoand “Maker’s Day” Wednesdays, please consider subscribing. See you next time!
I thought I’d try something new on the blog on Wednesdays. In the spirit of creating mental space and maybe also extra beauty, each week I’ll share a small prompt: a picture, some music, a quote, etc. If you feel like it, I invite you to take a little time and see what the prompt inspires for you. It might simply be contemplative time, or, if you’re feeling creative, it might inspire you to make some art.
This is always and only for you: never any pressure to complete or share anything.
Today’s prompt is a picture of the new red irises I planted last year in the backyard. They’re bloomed out now, but they were lovely. Irises are my favorite flowers.
If you would like to receive more weekly prompts, please consider subscribing to the blog. Thank you for visiting!
Kris Faatz 