Inspired Idea

There's a store in California's San Fernando Valley called Creative Courage. It's a combination art gallery/gift shop/art studio. Here's how resident artist Lupe describes it:

"You know those cool funky stores that you only find while you're on vacation, well I wanted to bring that close to home. Creative Courage is an artistic haven....If you don't find what you're looking for we will help you make it in our Art Studio."

The backroom studio is equipped for customers making mosaics, collage, decoupage, etc.--a fully rigged-out puttering lab.

Great idea Lupe had. I wish it were closer to my home.



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Mystic-Lit

Do go and visit this new blog called Mystic-Lit. The heart of the idea is, of course, writing fiction that somehow involves the spiritual. But that is broadly defined. It's also simply about writing:
*a self-declared obsessive's issues with "in" versus "into"
*the curious matter of events and people in one's novel-in-progress starting to
turn up in one's life
*reversion clauses in book contracts
*the deer in legends as a symbol of call to adventure

The very idea of "mystic lit" calls to me. It's what I write. God speaks aloud in my first novel Revelation and a mystical experience of Hinduism guides a pivotal event in Sister India. My novel-in-progress and biography-in-progress are both about visionaries. I even take part in a monthly lunch meeting to discuss metaphysical subjects which we call Mystic Pizza.

Seven writers--one a day--are writing at Mystic-Lit. I'll be an occasional guest columnist. I hope you'll take part in or visit that conversation as well as this one.



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A Brainstorming Game

What's the lesson in creative courage to be found in this image? I'll bet there are many. Any ideas?



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Cut Loose

A lot of folks think of Bradford pear trees as stiff and brittle, rather formal; and there's some truth to that. Yet at this time of year the prim and rather delicate Bradford pear cuts loose like no other leaf in the forest, setting a lovely example.




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Accepting The Gifts on Offer

When I was younger, I wasted a lot of time trying to prove myself, not taking advantage of all the resources available to me. The kind of stuff I turned down...well, the details are too embarrassing to recount. I was a horse you could lead to champagne and she still wouldn't drink.

In retrospect, the gutsier thing would have been to focus on what I was trying to accomplish and use the resources available to do it.




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Paint with a Loose Arm

Ms. Nature doesn't hold back.












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Telecoaching

The splendidly encouraging Lisa Gates at Design Your Writing Life is beginning two new sessions of group telecoaching: one for writers and one for anyone else. The idea is to get your writing or other project/career/dream in motion.

Try a free introductory call in December to get a taste of the group telecoaching process:

Tuesday, December 4 at 5 p.m. PST
Friday, December 7 at 12 Noon PST

Complete information on the two groups is available here:

Group Telecoaching Info

Lisa is especially good at being practical and specific with her suggestions. The first week of the curriculum is on "getting real about time and space."




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Gutsy

This weekend my husband and I went home to my mother's for Thanksgiving. She had recently been diagnosed with shingles, which ranges from quite painful to excruciating.

She'd decided the best approach to having this (and it can last either a few weeks or as long as the rest of your life)was to take the medicine, delay her planned foreign travel, and otherwise ignore it. So she went on with her usual in-town engagements: parties, concerts, church, soup kitchen, duplicate bridge, house guests, groceries, hauling the trash to the curb, etc.

She's 85. One of my sisters-in-law says she has "mental discipline." I think she's gutsy.




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Cause of Recent Bad Mood Discovered

Well, it turns out that sipping sweet tea (caffeinated) from fast-food establishments from early morning until late night is not good for the mental health.

The amount of tea had sort of crept up on me. I did know that I was buying it by the gallon.

It took a doctor to tell me that caffeine is a depressant and undoes the good that serotonin-encouraging drugs do.

By the gallon!!!

And so on Tuesday I went off the stuff. I cut down to a modest cup of home-brew in the mornings...and no more. Practically cold turkey--in keeping with the holiday.

The transition hasn't been as bad as I'd expected: I wake up with a headache, take a couple of Tylenol and then in twenty minutes I'm okay. At some point, the headaches will likely stop.

In the meantime I've discovered faintly-flavored water. Pas si mal, as the French say. Not so bad.

And I'm relieved to discover the ridiculously simple cause of the blues that kept threatening to recur.



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Sexiest Deep Thinker

Here's a bit of wisdom from a quite unexpected source: People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue.

Actor Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) wins the title of Sexiest Deep Thinker with his answer to the question: how would you title the movie of your life?

He would call it Increments. That's the word his father said to him each morning as he left for school. What that meant was that every test, paper, and dab of homework is part of "the final grade."

I don't like to think that I'm working for a grade; in fact, I want to eradicate that thought. But I do know what he means in another sense: all the little bits are part of the outcome.

It's the same idea that the world's funniest writing writer Anne Lamott expressed in Bird by Bird: you can only take on the project of documenting a jillion birds by dealing with them one at the time, "bird by bird."





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Guilt-free Thanks

My Thanksgiving thought: Do something WONDERFULLY DIFFERENT this holiday.

So I ask myself what that will be for me....And after much pondering conclude: I will HARBOR NO GUILT this Thanksgiving for any of the gifts/advantages that have come to me.

In fact that's probably a prerequisite for experiencing gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.




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Comedy Therapy

Another good idea floated in for dealing with the frustrations and lows that seem awfully common in our line of work:

"I do comedy therapy. I spend a lot of time, an hour here or there,
watching something like the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies or Leave it
to Beaver or Andy Griffith. I do this for several days in a row. It can
work magic."





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Writing on the Side

I just shipped off a small essay I wrote last week when I was on vacation. I hit the Send button with such satisfaction. It was an absolute pleasure to write.

I don't always find writing an absolute pleasure.

What was distinctly different this time was that I was under NO PRESSURE from myself or anyone else. I was doing it as play, because I had something very particular to say, and to divert myself from the remainder of my now-famous bad mood.

The feeling of satisfaction reminded me of something I once heard from a devoted outdoorsman. At the end of a day of hiking, he loved to take off his backpack and go for a walk.

Now I know what he meant. It's doing the thing you love, unburdened and fresh once again. It's re-energizing.







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The Small-Dog Solution

Having a book in progress is like having a cat purring in your lap-- that thought came to me while writing the previous post, and it stayed in my mind.

Then this weekend, I discovered that sitting with an actual miniature dachsund named Moonshine in my lap was even better than having a metaphor in mind.

Several people have recently suggested time with an animal as an antidote for a sinking spell. I hadn't actually planned to try that one, since I do it every day already. My husband has a sheepdog (a Bouvier) and a mastiff-like dog who outweighs me (a Kangal) and I spend a fair amount of time reading and patting.

I now also see the delight in lapdogs (the sensible non-nervous type). Moonshine sat in my lap for hours at a friend's beach house this weekend. The experience was amazingly soothing. After a while I asked her "human companion" novelist/memoirist Lucy Daniels if she ever wrote with Moonshine in her lap. She does it a lot, I learned.

I can see writing while holding a little dog as a great way to avoid getting myself tied up in a knot, or swearing at the computer, or a number of other characteristic pitfalls. For some reason, sitting with that little warm dozing creature was entrancing. A deep trance is good for novels and pretty much everything else.

Thank you, Moonshine!






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An Inspiring Example

Thursday night I attended a reading by novelist Angela Davis-Gardner in honor of the re-release of her two first novels, one of them published 25 years ago.

Angela is a tremendously talented writer. And she has gone through the usual struggles getting her work into print.

And now she has been hit by "literary lightning." Not only did she get a contract for her newest, Plum Wine, (now out in paperback) but she received, all in one swoop, republication deals with major publishers for her first two novels, and a contract for a fourth (due in January.)

Now the struggle is simply to write fiction on deadline, rather than the more typical efforts of writers.

Her work deserves this attention. These are wonderful books. (The other two titles are Felice and Forms of Shelter.)

And I love this story of finding the pot of gold. It can happen.






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Working on Vacation

In spite of my avowed two-week vacation, I slid back into writing yesterday. I was indulging myself, since I was feeling pretty low; it seemed to be the only thing I wanted to do.

Five hours later, much restored, I found that I had a draft of a little essay about the day I met Benazir Bhutto in a drugstore in a Raleigh shopping center. Working on that story, I had no sense that time had passed. I was feeling like my regular self again.

A person can't write ALL the time, though. I'd like to think it was possible to pause.

I once knew a very successful writer who didn't pause. Just before she finished one book, she started the next, then finished the first one, then went back to the second. That way she always had a story in progress, a cat purring in her lap.

I don't think that's entirely healthy. But I understand the impulse. And she did get a lot done.






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More Ways to Fight Depression

This is a compilation of additional ideas people have contributed for pulling up out of a sudden bad case of the blues. THANK YOU so much for sending them.

I found the one about singing an improvised opera version of my problems to be a real howl. Irresistibly funny and mood-improving.

This is Part II of the list. And I welcome more ideas. I'll happily post a Part III. Note: exercise is the one most often mentioned.

*Spend some time with a dog, cat, or horse. Or taking care of an animal. Mucking out stalls gets excellent reviews.
*Ask someone who sincerely admires you to say nice things to you.
*Mentally plan a trip.
*Take a trip.
*Stand in the sun for ten minutes.
*Do some tai chi.
*Make small decisions, in order to give yourself a renewed sense of control. (I like that a lot.)
*Have some favorite comfort/perk-up books, (David Sedaris?), or cheering music (Lightnin' Hopkins?) ever ready for these occasions.
*Sit outside. Or walk.
*Wallow in misery for a preset limited time.
*Drink two big glasses of water.
*List ten things you're happy about or that you love.
*Do a Mona Lisa smile, which will kick off some happy chemicals, whether you mean the smile or not. Even holding a pencil in your mouth, crossways, can do that, just by pushing back the lips into a smile-like position.
*Lower your expectations.

I'm feeling much better. I hope things are good with you.






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Writing Withdrawal

More on the subject of fast slides into depression. Mine, reported below yesterday, came on Night 5 of a much-needed vacation. It's better today and, full disclosure: probably the main reason is an adjustment in the medication I take for my touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder, no doubt mixed with some tendency to the blues.

With that said, other things are also helping. And other causes besides my chemistry are at fault. 1.Doing without the outlet of writing and producing (other than these daily posts) is also much to blame. As is 2.some business tension. 3.The freeing up of time by not working creates a space for all kinds of things to arise and unfold.

I've pulled together A LIST OF TACTICS for dealing with these times that right many of us go through. These come from my experience and observation, the helpful replies yesterday from Billie and Debra, my doctor, my psychologist-husband, and my reading. ("All the king's horses and all the king's men.")

The List:

*Read Dr. Seuss's My Many-Colored Days
*Do some small helpful thing for someone. See The Healing Power of Doing Good.
*Go to a movie.
*Vent to a friend.
*Hang out with a friend.
*Avoid delicate transactions.
*Exercise.
*Eat chocolate (unless this will lead to a binge and feeling worse.)
*Sit it out.
*Consider the possibility that useful creative stuff is stirring; jot down any little epiphanies...or big ones.
*Remind yourself that the mood will pass.
*Do a relaxation exercise.
*Cut yourself some slack.
*Ask someone to do some small immediate favor for you.
*Do some reckless art...without regard to result.
*Cry.
*Spread mulch.
*Make love.
*Don't chop wood or vegetables.
*Make something (a cake mix? string Christmas tree beads?) This one comes from Julia Cameron of The Artist's Way)
*Organize one drawer of stuff.
*Read an utterly absorbing novel.
*Clean one dirty object.
*Do some never-see-the-light writing or drawing.
*Avoid alcohol and any personal-danger behaviors.
*Delay decisions, if possible.
*Call your doc.
*Take a nap.

WHAT I DID, in addition to more meds, is:
*complain to friends, including my husband and my doctor,
*go to see George Clooney in Michael Clayton
*get deeply involved in someone else's novel (Michael Ondaatje's)
*write blog posts
*jot down my little epiphanies, including this charming bit of distorted thinking:
when I feel bad, I'm a shameful failure, because if I'd played my cards right in life I'd have no reason to feel bad.

Probably it's good I uncovered that little doozie. Since it doesn't quite hold up in light of consciousness. That discovery alone may have been worth the trip. In any event, Humpty Dumpty is, for the moment, pretty much together again.

I welcome any other ideas you could add to the LIFT-DEPRESSION TACTICS lIST. Thanks.





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Bad Mood

What constitutes boldly living one's best life on a day when one is in a very, very bad mood?

I would love to hear what your strategy is for such times.

I am indeed in a bad mood. And since I'm on a stay-home-and-read vacation, I have lots of should-be-attractive possibilities open to me and no work to either burden or distract me.

What's clear to me is that I should avoid any negotiations or conflicts while I'm feeling this way. Not schedule any conversations that require tact and a good view of human nature.

Exercise would probably help. (Skipping?) Don't know that I'm willing to force myself to do it.

Writing this helps. But writing is my work; and so this is again just falling back on my old stand-by.

I could sit it out. See what bubbles up in my mind.

Well, I'm open to suggestions that could benefit all of us.




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Skipping

Remember skipping? Not as in cutting classes or turning past the boring parts of some books. I mean the thing you probably used to do on sidewalks.

I haven't done it in some time and haven't missed it at all.

Turning through a Positive Thinking magazine from the summer, I came across a profile of a woman, Kim Corbin, who started skipping one night with friends and decided then and there to start a national skipping movement. "'As adults, we're conditioned to conform and worry about what other people will think....When you skip, you get in touch with the side of yourself that doesn't care about all that."

Twelve years later she still skips daily, and as Head Skipper organizes several large skipping events a year.













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