Terri Windling's Blog, page 222

Rituals of beginning

Here are wise words on "the creative habit" from the excellent book of that title by choreographer Twyla Tharpe:

"A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they start their creative day.

"The composer Igor Stravinsky did the same thing every morning when he entered his studio to work: He sat at the piano and played a Bach fugue. Perhaps he needed the ritual to feel like a musician, or the playing somehow connected him to musical notes, his vocabulary. Perhaps he was honoring his hero, Bach, and seeking his blessing for the day. Perhaps it was nothing more than a simple method to get his fingers moving, his motor running, his mind thinking music. But repeating the routine each day in the studio induced some click that got him started."

My own morning ritual (as I've discussed here before) is to take a walk in the woods behind the studio with Tilly, and then to sit among the trees or on the hill with a thermos of coffee, a pen, and a journal for scribbling notes and sketches and early-morning ideas...or else, on those days when I need a lift, with a volume of good poetry instead, which never fails to kickstart my imagination and re-ignite my love of language. Tilly sits or prowls nearby until it's time to head back to the studio. Once there, I like to start my day by lighting a candle on my desk. It's a ritual act of muse-summoning; an offering to the Ancestors (all those previous generations of mythic artists whose footsteps I humbly follow in); and a tangible signal that the workday has now started. 'Time to get down to it.

"In the end," notes Tharpe, "there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started."

And you...? What compels you to start?

A faith of verbs, art, and the woodlands in the spring

“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”  - Terry Tempest Williams

"I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, 'I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.'"  - Jeanette Winterson

Tilly among the bluebells and arum maculatum, May 2012

Foals Arrishes

Speaking of getting out to the land for inspiration, as we were just yesterday, here are some pictures taken a few weeks ago out on Dartmoor, during my fertile-and-productive weeks of hiatus from online life. (I highly recommend taking periodic time-outs, by the way, in order to re-root oneself in the natural, actual world when one's soul becomes fractured in cyberspace. It sure did me a lot of good.)

The photographs come from on a walk on the moor with my dear friend and neighbor Wendy Froud. The old stone circle, called Foals (or Foales) Arrishes, is what now remains of an Iron Age settlement. The stones might have formed part of a hut circle (according to some archaeologists), or a livestock enclosure (according to others). Whatever the stones were then, they are beautiful now, mysterious and strangely tranquil.

Above is Wendy, my moorland companion. For her view of the same walk, visit her enchanting blog: The Realm of Froud.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” -- C.S. Lewis

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”  - Jane Austen

Maintaining the flow

Excellent advice on writing from Hilary Mantel:

“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.”

For me, when I'm stuck and scowling at the page, the best thing to do is to whistle for Tilly and head immediately for the hills -- for in the simple act of motion, whatever has been causing the blockage of words generally shakes loose.

 In the quiet of the hills or woods or fields, I am able to hear my internal language once again.

But all writers are different. I know some who write to music, using particular albums or compositions to push their work forward, and others for whom the background hum of a busy cafe is the necessary soundtrack.

What about you? What's your best remedy when the words are just not flowing...?

Tune for a Monday Morning

Today's tune: "Featherstones" from The Paper Kites, out of Melbourne, Australia. The video was directed directed By Pete Seamons, from a concept by Sam Bentley...though it seems to me like one of my sketchbooks come to life. Which is precisely why I love it.

 

Moss and stone

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future...but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly." - Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

So true.

Two stories: Dartmoor and the Dales

I've caught a little bug and won't be back in the office for another day or two...but in the mean time, please enjoy these photographs by my friend Helen Mason of two very beautiful parts of England, north and south. The pictures above were taken near here on Dartmoor (at Hound Tor), on a rainy day this past weekend. The pictures below are of the Yorkshire Dales (in the north of England), taken back in March, at the cusp of spring.

“There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.” -- Linda Hogan

Ssssh. Listen. The hills are telling their tales.

This Sunday, at The Picture House in Exeter:

 

I'm still on my "online hiatus" this week, but wanted to pop in briefly to post the flyer above, for the premier of the new fairy tale film by the Chagford Filmmaking Group. We'll all be there (our daughter played the dragon in the film, and Howard's mum worked on costumes)...and perhaps we'll see some of you who live in the West Country at the premier too...?

I'll be back on this blog on Tuesday, May 2nd. In the meantime, a few quick recommendations, if you haven't come across these items already:

New Portrait of Janey Morris; Molly Crabapple's Week in Hell; "Dear Daughter" by Mur Lafferty; "Girls Who Read" by Mark Grist, and Axel, the thatcher's dog.

Tilly sends her regards.

Click on the picture for a larger version, in which you can see the bluebells....

The path forward...

I've been back in England for over a week now. Jet-lag has finally diminished, but my intense joy in being home in the Devon hills remains just as strong as ever -- so much so that even the chilly, changeable weather of recent days can't dull my spirits. I've returned to my old practice of beginning each morning in the woods behind the studio, with a notebook and a thermos of coffee close to hand and Tilly the Wonder Dog at my side. (The painting below, by my friend and village neighbor David Wyatt, captures such mornings perfectly...and I should mention that he has many lovely prints for sale, including this one, in his Etsy shop.)

Settling back into my studio, I've been taking blunt stock of the ways that six months of coping with crisis has impacted my working life -- taking a deep breath and facing all of those things that were pushed to the back burner while I was dealing with Scary Life Stuff instead. The length of my "To Do" list is a bit scary in itself, as such lists always are après-crisis -- which is of course precisely the time when, flummoxed by all that you've just been through, what you want is for life to be simple and calm (or else to lie on a hot beach somewhere in the Carribean)...not to have to face the dust and cobwebs covering the negelected life to which you are returning. But as someone who has re-built my life more than once (due to health problems in the past), I know that this small mountain of things I now have to do, although daunting, is actually a very good sign: it's the very last hurdle before normal life resumes. And that's a fine goal indeed.

At least my mountain is made up of largely interesting things: writing and editing work to catch up on, e-book rights and texts to sort out, art commissions to finish for people who have been very, very patient for far too long. I have an Etsy shop to stock up again, a great deal of backed-up correspondence to respond do, and some lovely new projects to plot and plan (which I will tell you more about in due time)...while also finding a proper work/life balance that can support fragile (but strengthening!) health and keep the Muse (and the pooch!) well fed.

I know many of you cope with the same things too: the balancing act that a creative life requires -- balancing work needs and health needs and family needs and the soul's contrary need for both community and solitude. Back around Christmas, I read an article suggesting that the very best gift that one can give to a writer or artist is the precious gift of time...and that's a lovely idea, but I think we also need to be able to give ourselves that gift. For many of us, that means saying shush to the voices (usually inner rather than outer) insisting that others deserve our time more than we do, and that only when everything else is done may we retreat from the world and plunge into our art. Yes, there are times in life when unstinting selflessness is required from each of us...but there are also times when self-fullness (to invent a term that's less loaded than "selfishness") is what is needed most: for our art, for our health (physical and mental), for our vital connection to the landscape around us...and even for those others (children, aging parents, etc.) who depend on us to stay strong and whole.

So here's the path forward for me right now: I am going to be self-full and take some needed time off. Not time off from work, mind you, but the opposite: time to dive deeply into work again -- by taking time off from my Online Life to focus on Life Unplugged. 

I'll be back to this blog in approximately two weeks, when I'm a feeling a bit more caught up again, more deeply rooted in the work rhythms of this new season. And when I come back, I'm eager to resume the discussions here that Life Stuff interrupted: more posts in the "Inspiring Women" series; more work-space profiles for the "On Your Desk" series; more sketches and rambles and reading recommendations; more photos of Life in a Devon village, and of a certain bouncy black canine Familiar....

Thank you all for taking the journey with me through the long, rough months of the winter just passed. I look forward to sharing a wildly creative spring and summer with all of you in the Mythic Arts community -- and 'til then, to quote Jane Yolen (as I so often do): "Touch magic, and pass it on."

The bluebells are blooming. It's the season for magic.

Now, what about you? Where does your path lead...?

Welcome to Bordertown is out in paperback today, with a...

Welcome to Bordertown is out in paperback today, with a spiffy new cover, and a spiffy new website. Please check out the site, and the Bordertown video below (if you haven't seen it already), and enter the "Bring a Friend to Bordertown" contest for a signed copy of the book and other cool swag from the Elflands. Ellen, Holly, and team have done a fabulous job with it all. I hope you'll join us on the Border.

And okay, we're talking elves on motorcycles here...but here's why the Bordertown series is so important to all of us who have worked on it over the years (as well as being a whole lot of fun): These are stories about kids who find their way through the dark with the help of art, music, and the "magic" of community and friendship. And there are kids out there who need these kind of tales. Please help us to get the book into their hands by spreading the word.