For the Muse

My muse has been incredibly generous lately, providing me with gallons of inspiration to drink each day. I've got two short stories on the verge of completion, and I've been writing poetry like mad.

I have been so busy trying to get this manuscript completed so I can get it back to my author and things in my personal life have been rocky, but every night I manage to write a poem before bed, and sometimes I write one when I wake up. Since I don't have much time, I wanted to share a quick poem with you. I haven't forgotten about my faithful readers, and hope to find more time to blog soon.

Nectar

I drink you
like nectar
resting in the
cup of a flower
mouth to mouth
skin to skin
we dance around
obstacles, shedding
fabric like
a snake sheds
its skin
then wrap together
like crawling vines
reaching toward
the sun.

I'm off to cram in about 20 more pages of edits, then dreamland. I hope you're all having a fantastic week! I need to make my blog rounds, and I apologize if I haven't popped by to visit you lately. Life certainly has a way of interfering with play time.

Don't forget, tomorrow boasts the return of Thankful Thursday. See you there.

When the Universe Speaks...

...Perk up your ears and have a listen. You'd be surprised how much you might be missing simply because you aren't paying attention to the signs. Yesterday I blogged about characters and their relationships to us writers, and for the last week or so my fabulously creative musician husband and I have been talking rather deeply about where inspiration comes from. We've also been talking about synchronicity. Of course, yesterday as I finished posting my blog on our relationships with our characters, I checked my blog roll to see what my fellow bloggers had to say. I was drawn immediately to a post by Matt Selznick, author, blogger and podcaster extraordinaire titled, All Creators Please Take Twenty Minutes to Watch.

So I did. And I called in my husband to watch it with me, because frankly we both felt like we could use a little creative advice from the universe right now. And it was exactly what I needed to hear. So now I want to share it with you, because I think that as creators we all come from this weird place that the so-called normal world can't identity with. We've all gotten the complimentary eye-rolls when we mention that we're writer or artists or musicians. You tell someone you're a painter and automatically they want you to help them coat the outside of their house. You mention that you're a writer and automatically everyone wants to know if they've read your novel. Musicians must come from famous bands or orchestras, otherwise how could they classify themselves as musicians.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love spoke at the TED conference earlier this month, and she put into words a lot of how many of us have felt for years. She also spoke at great length on the magic of the creative process. It was such an inspiration that I want to share that speech with you now. I hope you will take twenty minutes out of your day. I know sometimes it's hard to find twenty minutes to do half of the things we want in the span of a day, but this speech is well worth the listen.



We get so wrapped up in the daily motions of the world, in the rat race and that longing to simply belong that we sometimes forget to celebrate our creativity. I strongly believe that we all have a little genius in us. I hope your genius is doing its job, and I hope that you all continue to show up and do yours!

Please stop over and subscribe to Matt Selznick's blog. He's always got something interesting to say and you won't regret it.