Thank you, thank you, everyone who shared or donated to the Lexington Writer’s Room on Ky. Gives Day! We made our goal and then some.
Hooray! With other fundraising activities, we’re on target for what we need this year. Which is wonderful!
Soon I’ll be able to say more about a particularly stressful thing going on for C & I (we are fine, and taking all the steps we can to stay safe, I promise). In the midst of that extremely free-floating stress, we went on a walkabout around town on Saturday for our “artist date.” Yeah, yeah, technically The Artist’s Way says don’t do the artist date with other people, but our group reading the book together are all about adapting things so they work best for us.
The Artist’s Way and Dating Yourself Kinda
For those who are unfamiliar, the key elements of The Artist’s Way are morning pages and artist dates, and then there are twelve chapters that work through different big building blocks/themes/issues that might cause blocks in creativity. I hadn’t done it since college, and have been finding it super useful.
Of those two things, the morning pages are kinda self-explanatory — a three-page dump of whatever comes out. They aren’t the kind of writing you revisit ever again, really. I’d never managed to do them successfully until this most time and now I really do find them a very helpful part of my day. I do them as quickly as possible. I’m not allowed to do the crossword until I’ve done them. Or anything else. And I find they are doing exactly what they’re meant to — help clear away detritus. Now, with the aforementioned stress thing going on, they can’t magically get rid of all of it, but it still helps. Clears the brain for writing later.
Artist dates are an hour or two or however long you schedule yourself to do something each week that fills you up and inspires you creatively, and you aren’t allowed to feel guilty about not working or etcetera. So far, we’ve taken a forensic session that included hands-on skull replicas and recreated crime scene components and clues for free at our local library.
Which was absolutely fascinating.
And also, this past week, there were all sorts of things going on in our neighborhood. Mayfest in the park, where we wandered artisan booths, and I bought a rad necklace that’s a soldered foreign Mucha postage stamp. (You might remember how much I loved the Mucha exhibit that the Speed had earlier this year from when I wrote about it.)
The maker’s etsy shop is here.
We also hit the farmer’s market for ice cream and a few plants. And then, the absolutely most happy-making thing, a zine show!
For those of you who are not friends from the ancient days of yore or who remember my Dear Aunt Gwenda advice column in Small Beer’s LCRW (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet) (those legends! Still going!), you may not know that Gavin Grant dared a bunch of us and our friends to do zines and, well, we did. When Christopher and I first got together, we co-edited a zine called Say… (although my co-editorship of the fiction has been erased by the internet of SFF), with different themes for each one. The first issue featured cover art by Tom Canty (which in retrospect how!?). We published lots of great writers and friends and legends too, many who you might know, like Ted Chiang, Terri Windling, Richard Butner, Kelly Link, Justina Robson, E.L. Chen, Jeff Ford, Greg van Eekhout, Scott Westerfeld, Melissa Moorer, and many, many more AMAZING writers and poets (Anya Johanna DeNiro was our poetry editor and we were lucky to know artists who loved us back). (My actual first publication was in Christopher’s protozine …is this a cat? a short story I wrote about cat detectives and which a review called “oddly humorless” — delighted me, still does — and I would probably die if I reread the story.)
I went to dig these out! I’m sure we DO have a copy of #4 somewhere around here; I just couldn’t find it. Or perhaps it never existed. It was work, but fun and energizing work, and there were so many other wonderful zines happening in SFF at the time.
Anyway! So walking into the zine show and meeting people who absolutely still have that energy, buying all these tiny bespoke little art projects, laying them all out and reading them when we got home. So. Happy. My favorite favorites were from DNA Press’s Alex O’Keefe about fairy tales and you should track them down. I am a such fan now. The unicorn one is another fave, a whole little fantasy world in a bestiary. And all these, really, so fun and glorious and inspiring.
Question Time:
What’s your ideal artist’s date for yourself? Have you done something that qualifies lately? Share, share! I want to hear all about it. Or YOUR favorite zine or magazine, now or then? Or just tell me about the peonies in your neighborhood.
I just started doodling/painting in a pretty journal I just bought. I just had date today actually! 😍😍😍
I started doing morning pages in January when I started The Artist’s Way with a group. It’s been so good for me to mostly keep up with the daily habit! Artist’s dates are harder for me with 3 kids who play sports and a part-time job... but looking forward to doing some this summer. I love that you “broke the rules” and did them together. It’s finding what works, right?