Category: Writing

Crafts, Writing

Another Day, Another Collage

I had to go out and purchase more magazines. I tried a couple local thrift shops and in one I found National Geographics from the early 80’s, which was perfect because these next couple collages were supposed to be things from Birth-Age 5 and Ages 6-10. Even more perfect: one had a whole section on Nebraska in celebration of writer Willa Cather. I literally cried seeing photos that my heart knew were Nebraska before my brain read the words on the next page that told me they were, in fact, Nebraska. It was wild.

There weren’t a lot of magazine pictures left for the second poster, sadly, so it mostly got old family photos, interspersed with a few magazine bits from England or California, which were big family trips during Ages 6-10.

Crafts, My Own Personal Weirdness, Writing

Grab Bag Collage

Another Vein of Gold post. Sorry, it is eating my brain lately, so it’s what you get to see. Here we were supposed work as fast as we could, grabbing thirty or so images that struck us from magazines, and make a collage without overthinking it. Overthinking it. Hahahaha. Well, I hit a couple walls right away: 1) we don’t keep magazines in the house, really, and 2) I was totally out of scrapbooking tape.

So I gathered up all the Entertainment Weekly’s and Tyler Today’s that my dad had at his house (with permission) and here’s what I came up with. It took way longer than you might think. Enjoy!

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement Failure

I was supposed to speak to the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Facebook Group today about “Selling Your Short Fiction to Anthologies.” Instead, I had a long series of disasters, which lead to me posting the text of my speaking notes, offering writing prompts, and sending links to some good places to submit short stories. It was so frustrating. But no one seemed to mind, so I guess that is something, right?

Lifelong learning, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

Vein of Gold conundrum

I’ve been doing mine longhand, but it’s about killing my hand after three pages in the morning. Today’s task has us writing a personal narrative and I’ve had to write another six handwritten pages in the afternoon. Our class calendar gives us three days to do 10-15,000 words of a personal narrative and I just don’t write that fast, especially not longhand. What to do, what to do?

Fortunately, some of the writing I have already been doing for BYOB dovetails nicely with some of the questions suggested by Julia Cameron to answer, so I do have some of that kind of thing written already recently. I’ve also had two decades of blogging about my life to draw from, so I have some things I can go back to here to kind of look through for inspiration. I may just not be able to do all of it by hand. Typing or dictating is much easier on the hands.

Thoughts, anyone?

Lifelong learning, Writing

My Vein of Gold Setup

My cute little notebook for Vein of Gold writing prompts. I’ll do all of my Vein of Gold writing here and leave my regular daily notebook for other tasks.

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Speaking Engagement on 08.26.20 at TPLWC

I will be speaking about “Selling Your Short Work to Anthologies” at the Tyler Public Library Writer’s Club Facebook Group on August 26, 2020 at noon. You can find us at: {link}

Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, What I Love, Writing

The Vein of Gold

Image may contain: 1 person, text that says 'The Vein of Gold VEIN GOLD Journey to Your Creative Heart book discussion facilitated by Jessica White JULIA authoref CAMERON the ARTIST'S WAY'

Before I knew I was going to be running behind on my BYOB project, I’d already signed up for this writing class/workshop/book discussion group covering Julia Cameron’s The Vein of Gold. I have done a book by Julia Cameron before, many many years ago, called The Artist’s Way, and then several years ago, I also went through her book Blessings. So I was pretty sure I was going to enjoy this when I saw it come up as an option on one of my book groups.

Today’s the first day the group is meeting (and coincidentally also the kids first day back to school). I just discovered that, sadly, I’m already a little bit behind. Apparently a calendar went out over the weekend when I wasn’t paying attention to the group yet, starting daily personal activities last Sunday. Ah well, it looks like it should be pretty easy to catch up, as I actually already have a Morning Pages and Daily Walk habit. I just have to catch up on the very small amount of reading. 🙂 I cannot wait to get started!

health, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

BYOB Delays

My posts for BYOB have not turned out to be daily. I have been having health issues again, the same brain and blood issues that I had last year and the year before and the year before. It always seems to get worse this time of year. You would think I would be used to it by now, but I am not.

So, I am up to day three now with my posts and today is the thirteenth. I don’t imagine that I will catch up, but I did have a phenomenally productive day yesterday with writing, so there is still hope.

My whole publication over at Medium.com can be found here: https://medium.com/life-according-to-lisa.

Computers and Internet, Lifelong learning, Writing

Artist Dates

Another one of Julia Cameron’s big things is taking yourself on an Artist Date. Julia describes them thusly: “The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy.”

A bajillion years ago when I did my first Julia Cameron experience, I had no kids, I lived in a big city, I wasn’t immunocompromised, and there was no pandemic going on. So there are big changes in the here and now version of my life.

I’m really not leaving the house much these days. I go on walks around the neighborhood, the grocery store occasionally, and Wal-mart even less often than that. Not much more than that. So Artist Dates are hard to imagine right now. Fortunately, the group I’m doing this with is awesome and came up with a list of alternate ideas for artist dates, some of which I’ll share below:

For this week, I did an Artist Date with my youngest son. We painted “pawtraits” of some local rescue cats as part of a charity fundraiser to raise money for O’Malley Alley Cats in Tyler (the group we fostered for this spring and summer).

Writing

New Critique Group – Pineywoods Critique Group

Over the summer, both of my critique groups faded away to until it was just me and one other person, so we advertised for new writers to join us. We’ve named our new group the Pineywoods Critique Group. I’ve been doing critiques this afternoon and am so happy with the first half of our new members (we’ve got so many that we split into groups of four that send submissions every other week). I could just cry. Such good writers! 🙂❤️❤️❤️