Sheena Cundy's Blog, page 2

Guest Blog: Nimue Brown ~ Madness & Magic

I’m a Druid, and a part of what that means to me is holding inspiration sacred. Awen, the Welsh word for inspiration, is used by Druids to indicate this as a magical force. We seek to open ourselves to the flows of inspiration and creativity – thus far, so good. It all sounds a bit airy fairy arty farty, and sometimes that’s how it works out in practice, too. Mostly, it isn’t. Inspiration needs looking after, and if neglected, it dries up. A bit like a houseplant, I suppose. Without calm and quiet, without mental space, the voice of inspiration gets lost in the mix. Drowned out by to-do lists, shopping lists, parenting requirements, can you just... and I need it by Thursday. Without making room for inspiration, it tends to be in short supply. Modern life with the endless pressure to do more, earn more, work harder, make even less go even further, is really an enemy to creativity. I’ve found if I want to write something longer than a blog post or an article, I need a craft project to busy my hands and loosen up my brain. A life without inspiration, a life full of busy noise that gets little done, is miserable and frustrating. It’s all too easy to end up living this way. Banality is a form of madness, and not a good form, it just sucks the vitality out of everything, and you don’t need to think of yourself as a creative person to suffer from that. Then there’s the other end – the flooding. Sometimes inspiration is not a mournful trickle, or a manageable stream. Sometimes it comes as a tsunami, with little warning. Either you ignore it, and feel you soul shrivelling as a consequence, or you go with it, and life goes mad. Cannot stop writing at midnight kind of mad. Cannot think about anything but this urge to create. It might sound fabulous. It might even feel fabulous when you’re in the throes of it, but it’s hazardous, and it can be frightening. Last year I found myself in a pub with friends I’d not seen in a while. I’d been deep in a book, and only just surfaced. I realised I could not talk. I couldn’t explain where I’d been, or what I’d been doing, because so much of me was still away in the tree-based Druid apocalypse that is ‘When we are vanished’. I couldn’t even work out, that night, how to properly explain why I couldn’t string decent sentences together. All my words had gone somewhere else. Sometimes in full flood, inspiration leaves no room for this life. It doesn’t want to eat, or shop, or do the dishes or herd a child off to school. It doesn’t want to sleep, or wash, or do anything else that would make me socially acceptable and bearable to live with. It can be a fight, a kind of inner violence trying to work out the bare essentials for being functional. It’s awful, and no fun to live with. At the same time, when I’m not that mad, obsessed and immersed, I miss it. There isn’t much sense in any of this. Writing novels is all about hearing little voices in your head. It’s about characters who develop so much identity that you can no longer make them stick to the plot. It’s forgetting that everyone else isn’t living in your book, sometimes. Of course there are other ways of writing books – calm, professional, craft orientated approaches to first drafts that probably cause far less trouble. I’ve never been much good at them, and the work I put out that way has always been wooden. If there isn’t a fire in my head, if I’m not a bit bosky, a bit away with the faeries, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point.

Many thanks to Nimue.
To see more of what this prolific writer has up her sleeve, go to https://druidlife.wordpress.com/
...and here's a glimpse of her latest work with http://www.moon-books.net/
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A hard day in the office

Okay,this may not sound like any big deal to all you techno geeks out there, but to me - completely non-techno geek - let me tell you IT IS.I began the day with a small to-do list, of which the first thing was to put an Amazon image of my book on here - a widget I believe they call them (what sort of a word is that?) The rest of the day was set out to write and get on with the next chapter of my book.OH YEAH? All I will say is... I have just ticked off No.1 after six hours of toil, head scratching and lots of chocolate. I can barely speak for the steam puffing and blasting out of every orifice. How do you (techno geeks)lot do it? I know, you hire someone else to do it for you - that is, if you have the money and want to be getting on with your work. That's the real work right? Well, let me tell you, beneath the gut wrenching frustration and feelings of utter helplessness of trying to work something out without any idea of how - there is a perverted sense of mild euphoria from having gone and done it, no matter how long it's taken give or take a few light years. Where that comes from I don't know I'm sure - believe me I wanted nothing more than to get on with my work today - but that's just it isn't it? This is all part of it.THE WORK. So I will try and take the positive from this...*silence for about ten minutes*...and probably turn it into a story involving Minerva of course. If it's going to happen to anyone, it'll be my mad and magical heroine... The sequel is literally bursting from me at the moment, but you must wait dear readers I'm afraid! And in the meantime, take a look at the first rendition of Minerva's exploits in The Madness... it might just give you a taste of things to come. Go on, buy it and see - give me some kind of weird justification that I have not wasted my time! I dare you.

Happy New Year!

What is your resolve for this blessed new year then Witches? What have you released and let go of? And what will you cast upon your life as the wheel begins it's magical turn once more? Last night, we walked between the worlds, crossed the threshold between the strands of time and space...chanted, drummed, called upon the Ancestors, moved on Souls. We came together, we laughed, cried, sang and sent prayers to the Summerlands. We embraced the old Gods and created new ones. We called upon the forces of light and dark, slipped into the chasm of No Time and danced around the circle of No Return. We stepped into the hallowed space and did what Witches do... worked our magic. Celebrated. A heady occasion!Now, it's time to step firmly back onto the earth and weave into our lives the magic of Samhain. To remember and hold the space within and play it out. For what good is one night of offering, honouring and remembering if we cannot bring the magic back and use it, share it and celebrate it. The mundane will always be here, reminding us to integrate, to make sense of, to include. The work is then, not to forget or sweep aside until the next celebration. But to remember the celebration continues every hour and day that passes. In outlook, conversation, chores, walks and in the daily grind. Magic... keep it real.  

Call of the Ancestors ~ Morrigans PathLight the sacred he...

Call of the Ancestors ~ Morrigans Path

Light the sacred herb and see
How your soul is breathing
Set your mind and spirit free
As the smoke is leaving
Call us anytime you like
Tell us something new
In between the strands of time...we are here for you

All your prayers are on their way
They know where they're going
Everything you want to say
Taking form and growing
Call us anytime you like
Tell us something new
In between the strands of time...we are here for you

We will meet you halfway there
As the veil is thinning
We will meet you halfway there
When the world stops spinning

Leave the comfort of a place
Where you've been free to roam
Step into the hallowed space
This is home sweet home
Call us anytime you like
Tell us something new
In between the strands of time...we are here for you

Memories of long ago
Fire in your head
Lighting up for you to know
The voice of the un-dead
Call us anytime you like
Tell us something new
In between the strands of time...we are here for you

Hats off to NaNoWriMo

I have a lot to thank NaNoWriMo for... If I hadn't taken the plunge three years ago and decided to write 50,000 words in a month I would not have had a first draft by the end of November. I would never have known I was capable of the focus and the discipline needed to produce that amount of work. I would not have realised how much enjoyment such a solitary challenge would involve and perhaps never have known that writing is something I could do all day, every day, without fail. It was in fact, something I needed to do.
But I did all of that, proved it to myself and my husband - the one who held the fort for a month - and you can't put a price on an opportunity like that. It's golden from all angles.
      It was the first hurdle of a three year journey to publication, and thanks to Moon Books and their blog it was the start of a 'work in progress' posting a chapter up every month. This was another great opportunity which kept me focused on the re-write and slowly but surely, the work reached submission stage.
To be accepted for publication, has been a dream I have been living. I have not chased or followed it, but imagined it...writers are good at that. If you can immerse yourself completely in the world of your own imagination and write a good story, then you can keep on imagining after that story has ended. You can keep visualising, keep focusing, and discover that what you are doing is creating your own story. The story of your life. And anything can happen, whatever you want can happen if you can picture it first.
Have I been lucky? No. Luck suggests a power which determines what happens to us, but fate does not seek us out... We create our own destiny.
   So, to all NaNo contenders I will say this: Grab this opportunity. Write your heart out and go the distance. For a whole month you get to be a writer. You will have a book by the end of it and anything could happen then... imagine that.
                         
Wishing you all the best and magic your way!

http://www.moon-books.net/books/madness-magic
http://moon-books.net/blogs/moonbooks/your-magical-nature/
www.sheenacundy.com


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