A large part of success in getting published or in almost any activity is being able to BORROW ENERGY from the great forces. Even when making the most iconoclastic art, it helps to have an awareness of the tides and trends--for making the best choices of allies, venues, timing, and marketing strategies.
Friend, shaman, and author Kelley Harrell gave me this week the startling seasonal wreath you see here, in celebration of our heading toward the cold season. I love it--the drama of it, the mystery, and the gutsy lack of cuteness.
Among other things, this wreath reminds me that, though we're heading for cold, we're now in the harvest season: editors who were at the beach a lot in summer are back in their rolling desk chairs now. It's time to send out the new ideas, harvest results from earlier efforts, and begin a new cycle.
The dark image, with its mirror and cross and feathers and cobwebs, is also for me an image of the meditative moment: when action will come to a dead-halt, before setting forth again in a new revolution.
Until I placed this rather delicate structure where it is, I hadn't realized how my mantel has been working on a theme. At the other end, though I know you can't see clearly, are prints by my artist and office-partner buddy Carrie Knowles. The shorter one is a highly stylized rendering of a greenish-gold sun. The tall one is three pictures: each one of the same wave forming and growing taller. (She made that rising wave while living in Australia, only weeks before the tsunami hit Asia.)
All these images are reminders of the great universe beyond the day's activities. They also manage to remind me that even if my work is new and odd, I can still hitch a ride on the existing power and HELP MY CHANCES FOR SUCCESS BY:
*locating the most sympathetic markets for my style and purposes
*calling people when they're most likely to be in their offices
*finding out the schedule and deadlines for a target magazine's theme issues
*jumping on opportunities wherever they turn up
*not planting flowers in the shade, thinking they'd be so much more comfortable there (as a beginning-gardener friend of mine once did)
*figuring out when to try to ride a big wave and when to run for high ground
May we all have an especially rich harvest this year!
3 comments:
Here's seconding the wish for a rich harvest for all...:)
I spent the past 4 days in the NC mountains, where I had a close encounter with a beautiful and bold black snake, a slightly less close encounter with a black bear, and was wowed by the beginnings of the fall blaze of color. I was most awed this year by the abundance of purple berries hanging from shrubs... I need to get my book out and make an identification... but they were hanging in huge bountiful bunches along the roadsides, almost dripping down onto the top of our car, and I couldn't help but see it as a metaphor for other things.
I managed to write 6 longhand pages while there, good scenes that I feel sure were fueled by the surrounding bounty.
I love this time of year - and Kelley's wreath celebrating our move toward winter is stunning. What a great way to decorate the "hearth" of your writing home!
By the way, I have done some work on my website (not yet complete, but getting there) and part of my update is kicking off a blog of my own, camera-obscura. It will be mostly photographic with a bit of text, but I hope everyone who visits here will take the opportunity to stop by and comment if you feel moved to do so!
Lots of good stuff, Billie! Purple berries, six pages, and a new blog. I look forward to seeing the blog.
Bounty increases... I just pulled out the notebook with the longhand pages and discovered 8 instead of the 6 I'd remembered... :)
The blog is up and running with one entry... had I taken our one digital camera this weekend I'd have been stocked up for weeks, but I'll have to go out hunting for some images here.
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