Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 108

Loose Leaf Art Journal Holder

My studio is slowly filling with loose leaf journal pages while I experiment with them–exploring ways to store them, to hold them, to contain and organize them.

While I love the three-ring binder approach, I don't want to automatically assume I'll put three holes in each sheet. So I'm holding some of them until I am certain I want to do that.

How am I holding them? Well, in accordion folders with pockets, and as of tonight, in a holder I made by recycling a lentil-envelope holder.

There was something about the compact shape and the clever use of corrugated cardboard in the box. The corrugation holds the loose leaf pages just perfectly.

The transformation started with a visit to the VSNA book sale today. I picked up several Atlases to use the maps as background paper. I also picked up some books in foreign languages, dictionaries, and math books for background papers.

Next, a coat of gesso to cover up the nature of the box. I didn't paint the corrugated cardboard because I like the way it looks. Painting it is only going to make it look like painted-something-it's-not.

Covering the box with map pieces gives it a whole new lease on life. The color and the idea that the cards represent a new world of thought is a perfect connection.

The corrugated cardboard is fit back into the box, and the loose leaf pages fit perfectly.

I love this card. It shows four circles of mica on dark blue and gold monsoon papers. It represents time changes as shown in the phases of the moon–as the shadow of the earth changes its shape. The back of the card says, "Our shadow changes the shape of the moon from a sliver crescent to a disk of light floating through the stars. It is not the moon that changes; it is our perspective of the moon."

I'll be teaching a class on making these cards, including monsoon papers and a holder for them on May 5-6 at Valley Ridge Art Center. The class will include sessions on intuitive, soul-deep writing. It will be quite an experience.

--Quinn McDonald is a writer and artist with an ink-stained soul. She is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art.

Filed under: Coaching, Journal Pages, Raw Art Journaling Tagged: art jouraling, ink-stained heart, loose leaf journal pages, mixed media, postaday2012

After the MacGuffin

The question that filled up my email box was, "Well, thanks for pointing out the MacGuffin in our life, but then what?" What do you do with the plot point you hang your life on? The belief that you build your story on? "My mom never encouraged my creativity, so now I don't have any." "My brother got the attention, so I have no self esteem." Those stories. We spend a lot of time making other people wrong for our stories. Part of it is blame, and part of it is showing the world the statement is correct and has therefore ruined our life. Deep inside, we are still waiting for the prince to ride up to save us, or the sword in the stone to move under out hands. The magic you seek, however, is most likely hiding  in your own hands.

You'll have to walk your own road, but the hike can be beautiful. This one is in the sandstone sculptured slopes of the Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area on the Arizona/Utah border.

The sad thing is, we keep refreshing our MacGuffin. Over and over again. How should you change your story? Frankly, I don't know. I'm not a therapist. But I believe that therapy can help free you. If you want. Unfortunately, if you keep going from therapist to therapist, repeating your story, it won't fade. It will become a huge center pillar in your life, and you will be chained to it.

I'm also a life- and creativity coach, and a holder of my own MacGuffin, and I can suggest some ways to make the MacGuffin do the right thing, and fade by the third act of your life.These are just ideas, and if one of them resonates with you, take it for a spin through the next week or so and see what happens.

1. The MacGuffin excuse comes in two parts–naming the hurt, ("Mom never encouraged my creativity,") and pointing to the consequence ("so now I'm not creative.") Separate them. Make sure the second part is true on its own–without the first part. Are you really not creative? Are you sure? What's your proof? Is your proof related to the first part of the statement? You might turn up something interesting.

2. If the second part is true on its own, then is the origin still important? We can't change the past, so you can't go back and un-do that part of your life. What has to happen right now to make your story shift focus? What can you do to change the direction of the story? In the case of a real MacGuffin in a screenplay, it is useful only until the audience find the main characters capable of overcoming difficulties in the plot. Ask your friends what is wonderful about you. Keep a list of behaviors, actions, accomplishments you can be proud of–even small ones. Write them down. Don't trust them to your memory.

3. Ask yourself "Who would I be if the MacGuffin fades?" Imagine a great success you would love to have, for example, being a great creative writer.  Is that MacGuffin really keeping you from it? Could you start practicing that skill now? If you immediately say that you are too old, or too far along in another career, ask yourself another question–what can you do to start enjoying the experience itself? You don't have to have another career, you just have to enjoy. Remember, you are letting the MacGuffin fade, so you aren't looking for another reason for anger or blame, you are looking for your own power. Take a creative writing course, see what it feels like once you can hold your own power.

Take hiking boots. The trip may be steep going.

4. Art heals. If the topic of creative writing is too steep a mountain to climb, take a dance class, join a choir, learn to knit, sign up for a drawing class. Exploring what you are missing is the only way to discover it.

5. No one will do the work for you. No one will hand you a solution on a crystal platter –and if they did, you wouldn't value it. Satisfaction, joy and success come from overcoming obstacles. Put on your hiking shoes, it's going to be an interesting trek.

–-Quinn McDonald no longer wonders what her life would have been like if she had gone to a Seven Sisters University,  had a mother who loved her or why the good girls didn't get the attention the bad girls did. It just didn't happen that way. She's now busy living out her destiny.

Filed under: In My Life, Opinion, Raw Art Journaling Tagged: creativity coaching, life coaching, MacGuffin, mending the past, postaday2012, self-help

Stop Living Your MacGuffin

When Paul Lagasse, a colleague and wonderful writer, wrote about the demise of the excellent writing in Burn Notice, something began to roll around in my head.

Paul did a fine job of explaining  the term MacGuffin, so I'll let him do the talking:

A MacGuffin . . . is a plot contrivance that authors use to kick off the action and put the characters in motion. It can be an object that the protagonist wants to obtain, or a goal that he wants to reach, or a threat that forces him to act. But regardless of what the MacGuffin is, its purpose is to serve as a catalyst. Once the characters and the plot take over, the MacGuffin fades gracefully into the background, usually to be forgotten by Act Three. The story has simply moved beyond it by that point.

Perfect example of a MacGuffin--the Maltese Falcon, being held by Humphrey Bogart.

What began rolling around my head like a marble in an empty soda can, was the purpose of the MacGuffin. The purpose is disappearing. It's not supposed to hang around to the end of the movie. What makes a movie awkward, or a TV show stumble is the MacGuffin taking center stage just as it should vanish.

As youngsters, we adopt a MacGuffin in our life. Maybe we were the youngest and felt we could never be as smart or accomplished as our siblings. Maybe our parents couldn't afford a great college, so we went to a community college and then to a state university. Maybe one of the popular kids told a lie about us, and we were outcasts for a school year.

All of those experiences hurt, all of those experiences shaped our souls–maybe put a dent in our spirit, a pulled thread in our souls, a bruise on our heart.

And then, like a true MacGuffin, it disappeared. Except, of course, when it does not. When we won't let it fade, when it becomes the focus of our life, we can't develop our characters fully. We can't become the hero of our own story.

When we keep pointing to the pulled thread in our soul, it becomes a focal point of our lives.  Instead of blending into the texture of a well-lived life, it becomes the thread to pick at, to pull. It moves from a pulled thread to a dropped stitch, to a run that zigzags through the pattern of our life.

We construct excuses around it, to inflate the importance until we are more familiar with the pulled thread than the rest of the fabric. "Well of course I didn't get the promotion. My parents sent me to a state university." "Yes, it's my third divorce. It's inevitable, my sister was the gorgeous one." What makes this tragic is not the genuine pain, but the elevation of the MacGuffin to the main plot line. (I'm sorry about the mixed metaphors. My mom liked my brother best.)

Most of our MacGuffins should fade by the time our personality grows up. The MacGuffin was meant to shape us, not become the crutch we lean on. They aren't that interesting. In spy movies, they are often "the papers," or "the suitcase," the contents of which we never see.

If you are over 40, it's time to show your true character, realize that how you solve problems is what people are interested in, and let that MacGuffin fade. It's not serving you. You are creative, resourceful and whole. Let your creativity serve you.

–Quinn McDonald is glad the marble has finally rolled out of the soda can. It was getting noisy in her head.

Filed under: Creativity, In My Life Tagged: MacGuffin, running your life, write your life

Lessons From My Motorcycle

For long-time readers of the blog, you know that I believe Suzie Lightning taught me everything I know about creativity. (Yes, my motorcycle has a name, and it's from a Warren Zevon song.) Now that the weather is warming up, I'll be riding through the desert more often. It's another form of meditation–one that requires full awareness in the moment.  You don't think of anything except where you right now when you are on a bike.  Full awareness keeps you alive.

Riding feeds me lessons in creativity. Your heart is lightened by the views of mountains and arroyos, Saguaros and blue sky. Arroyos are dry river beds that fill up in minutes when it rains, and can lift a big car when only 8 inches deep in water. My favorite drives are away from the interstate, the roads that curve through desert and the endless sky.

The road is two-lane and largely deserted. I stick to the speed limit, because I'm sight-seeing and not in a hurry, and 65-75 is plenty fast for me. But cars appear behind me, fill my rear-view mirror, then explode past me.

When that happens, I back off the throttle, slow down, and move over. If you ride a bike, you know that you stay out of the grease-strip in the  middle of the road, and ride on either side of your lane—the first rider on the left, to protect the space, the second rider two seconds behind on the right, to fill the lane, and the third rider back on the left side.

When a car or pickup comes flying past, I move over in case they cut back too soon, and slow down to give them more space between us. My full-head helmet is expensive—it's a "single-use helmet," and I'm not eager to give it the single use I bought it for.

Watching a pickup truck cut back into the lane in front of me, I realized that that motion of slowing down and moving over is a creative tool, too. When I'm dealing with ideas that are approaching fast and need to pass, I let them go. I don't try to speed up and catch them. Nor do I  try to stop them or teach them a lesson. Ideas are plentiful, and not all alike.

The people who participate in my art classes (and some of my business classes, as well) are always worried that each idea may be their last. It's unlikely. There are a lot of ideas, and a few really good ones. Like the cars that whiz past, I remember the interesting ones, the unusual ones, the ones that remind me of something useful. The rest I just watch as they vanish in the distance.

Seeing a lot of cars, like ideas, allows me to choose what I want to remember and use. And let go of what is commonplace, too fast, or not remarkable. It's a good idea to let ideas go speeding past. It helps develop discernment.

–Quinn McDonald listens to her motorcycle for creative ideas. Suzie and Quinn never run out of roads, ideas, or stories.

Filed under: Bike Creativity, Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: ideas, motorcycle creativity, nature travel, riding a motorcycle

Scared? Smart? It's a Wild World

Martha Beck spoke at Changing Hands bookstore tonight, and packed so much information, power, inspiration, laughter and honesty into just over an hour, that I took notes faster than an Angry Bird slingshots at a green pig.

Her new book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World is subtitled Reclaiming Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want. It's not only a mouthful, it's a mindful. And maybe a heartful.

Martha spoke about fear in a fascinating way. She was learning to track rhinoceros and as most trackers, followed footprints that led through the bush in South Africa. She kept her eyes glued to the ground as the tracks grew less visible until she heard a companion gasp. Looking up for the first time she realized that she was within 20 feet of a mother rhinoceros and her baby. And the mother rhino was angry.

Martha Beck at Changing Hands bookstore.

Martha is a slight woman, and could have easily been trampled to death. What happened in the next second was that she thought she was going to die, and felt a wave of fear and panic. And then she wondered about the two questions that form the cornerstone of the book–"How the hell did I get here?" and "What the hell should I do now?"

instead of being filled with fear and panic, Martha realizes that this second fulfills a lifelong dream of adventure, being fully engaged in the natural world, and living in the moment with friends. Were she to die, it would be with a "joyful pounding heart."

As she was standing in front of us, she did not die, but she knows that each life has an angry rhino, and we all must bring ourselves to decide what to do in that moment of truth.

After the rhino encounter (which has an amazing resolution) Martha spent the next five years speaking to many people in many cultures so she could answer the question, and she realized that the answers she heard from wise women, shaman, medicine men (and women) were the same–that all of us on earth are facing huge change–economic, climatic, geographic, historic, and cultural. This change is roaring down on us like a giant wave. We can either drown in it or surf through it. If we want to survive, we have to become surfers who become skilled in surviving change.

"Our culture trained us to be factory workers–to sit still and take limited action when we were created to solve huge problems as they occur, spontaneously," she told us.

Her book explains the four steps that contain the wisdom she gathered during her years of research:

Wordlessness
Oneness
Imagine That Which Has Never Existed
Forming (not forcing) your art, your life

I'm looking forward to reading her book, not just as a reader, but as a life coach who knows that each of us can have a fulfilling life, rather than a life of drudgery and soul-snuffing work.

—Quinn McDonald agrees with Benjamin Franklin who said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

 

 

Filed under: Book Reviews, Book Reviews, In My Life, The Writing Life Tagged: book signings, life coach, life coaching, living the life you want, Martha Beck

Forget It? Remember It! Journaling Does Both

Writing to Remember

If you keep a journal, you fill pages with detailed memories and ephemera to remember events or people. You had a wonderful reunion with a friend. You write it down so you'll  remember that evening years from now. In your journal are all the details, ready to replay in your imagination long after your memory records it as fuzzy.

Writing holds your emotions and memories, it heals and creates.

 Writing to Forget

Pouring emotions on paper lets you release it. Have a disagreement with a friend? Pour your feelings out in your journal, and you will leave them there, because there is no reason for you to want to hold on to the hurt. Writing is an act of healing, and the healing begins when you release the need to rehearse the pain over and over again to make sure it's still there. Knowing it's in your journal is reason enough to quit rehearsing the details.

How can journal writing do both?

How can writing help you both remember and forget? Writing is a creative activity, and the act of forming words carefully, with a pen, creates a reaction between your brain and hand that lets you think through the emotional impact while you are writing. Writing by hand slows down your thoughts and helps you concentrate. (Some recent studies have shown that people who have learned to use a keyboard at an early age may get the same release from typing.)

Writing helps you forget, because you can vent on the page, examine your motives and reactions, and decide what to take with you as you move on. You learn from your hurts, as long as you don't nurture them to feed anger and thoughts of retribution.

In the same way, writing down a to-do list allows you to forget, because you have the items written down. No need to keep rehearsing the list in your mind. Keeping a to-do list reduces anxiety and feeling overwhelmed because you no longer repeat what you haven't done yet over and over.

When you write down to remember, something different happens.  You write to enforce a memory, to recall more details, to bring a full range of emotions to the top of your mind. As you feel an enjoyable emotion or physical pleasure, the words you write create a path to feel that pleasure again, in full measure.

Keeping a journal is both a creative act and and act of healing. It can do both at the same time. Visit your journal often and allow your creativity to fuel healing.

—Quinn McDonald keeps a journal. She helps people learn how in her book Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.

Filed under: Journal Pages, Raw Art Journaling, The Writing Life Tagged: jornaling to remember and to forget, journal writing, journaling, mixed media, postaday 2012

Paper Marbling with Shaving Cream

Great results from paper marbling using shaving cream.

Shaving cream as an art medium was something I'd never thought of, but when art instigator Rosaland Hannibal came over today, she demonstrated the excellent results.

Materials:

Shaving cream, not gel. For your nose's sake, try to find an unscented  brand.
Stack of newspapers
Inks, acrylic paint, or watercolor paint–in liquid form.
A squeegee or 12-inch ruler
A plastic fork, several skewers, or a hair pick (see illustration)
A small, flat pan or a large piece of wax paper.
Light card stock or drawing paper, even water color paper, about
Paper towels and a bag for trash

Method:

Hair pick for distributing color over shaving cream.

1. Gather all materials. Spray the shaving cream on the shallow pan or piece of waxed paper. Spray in a rectangle slightly larger than your card stock. Fill in the rectangle, so you have a solid space of shaving cream. Even the top with a ruler so it is the same height all over.

2. Drip on color. You need drops, not a splash. You can use as many colors as you want. I tried using one color family–greens/blues–three colors and one contrast–yellow.

3. Drag the colors around.  Use the hair pick, or skewer. You don't want to stir, you want to drag the color across the surface in interesting patterns. Use the hair pick to create strips in one direction, then drag the pick the other direction for a traditional marbling pattern.

Blues, greens, and a bit of yellow. This is a second print, so it's a softer pattern.

4. Place the paper, face down, on the prepared shaving cream. Pat down the paper so the entire surface comes in touch with the ink or paint.

5. Lift the paper up, starting at one corner. Lift up the card or paper in one smooth motion. Place it shaving cream side up  on the newspapers.

6. Squeegee off the ink or paint. Use a smooth, firm, steady motion from one end of the paper to the other. The squeegee will drag the paint, so keep the motion in the same direction as you placed the paper for best effects.

7. Take the foam from the squeegee and return it to the foam layer. It will add background to the next layer. The ink doesn't get muddy. You can make another impression or add more ink. The second print may have a softer look, which is still attractive.

The color runs across the image, but I squeegeed it up and down. You can see the result.

8. Let the paper dry. Iron it between sheets of parchment to set the colors. You can rinse the paper to remove the smell of the shaving cream.

—Quinn McDonald appreciates the art instigators in her life.

Filed under: Journal Pages, Links, resources, idea boosts, Raw Art Journaling, Tutorials Tagged: art journaling, Marbled paper, marbling, mixed media

Art Journal Pages: Loose Leaf

Sure, I have spiral art journals, bound art journals, handmade art journals. I've been avoiding loose leaf art journals–there is something about a binding that makes you plan and think before you commit. And keep track of your pages over time, in that time-narrative way we like.

After spending 20 minutes flipping through journals to find the color swatches I'd made (in three journals) I realized that it would be practical to have all color swatches in one journal.

Nothing against books that are stuffed with ephemera, but if you are going to work on a series of pages with pockets, fold-outs and attachments, a loose-leaf book has advantages.

A partial set of Biblical Matriarch cards--love the black-and-white illustrations and the not-always flattering stories. A pocket holds the cards while I decide what to do with them.

And yes, perfectionists can learn to love loose leaf pages, too. Make a page you hate? No one will know if you don't include it. I'm working on some alternatives to punching holes, but so far, the idea of finding lists, collections, and color swatches in one place works for me.

The three-ring binder has chipboard dividers, so you can divide your pages by date, by size, by content, by location.

chipboard binders and tabs--or you can make your own.

I found this binder (about 6 x 9 closed) ready for painting. You can also find great cook-book binders, home-repair binders and other pre-printed binders you can re-purpose at thrift stores like Goodwill.

—Quinn McDonald is working on loose-leaf pages for a number of binders in progress.

Filed under: Creativity, Journal Pages, Raw Art Journaling Tagged: art journals, binder journals, mixed media DIY art

Dreaming Book Titles

In my journal, there is a page with a list. Not a to-do list. Not a to-don't list. It's a list of titles, or maybe flash titles, as they are shorter than flash fiction.

iPhone wallpaper

They are a fragment of an idea. A question without an answer. OK, here's an example:

Writing in a Burning House

See? You can see it, but it's just out of reach. When I add to the list, I never check amazon, iTunes or any other source, as I don't want to know if it exists, I just want to consider it.

Spinning Tears into Gold and Gold into Dross

Some seem sad around the edges, some make sense if you don't think about it too hard.

High Thread-Count Fear

Cactus-spine needle, threaded with rain

Surely I can't be the only person who does this. Or maybe I am.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who draws with words.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Journal Pages, Opinion, Raw Art Journaling Tagged: dream titles, half-baked ideas, titles

Messy Desk Pride

Evey thing in its place, and a place for everything. Yep. That's my workspace. The place for everything is on the return to the right of my desk. The space is piled high with three neat stacks. Want that magazine article on Groupthink? In the second pile, third from the top. The stats for the improvement in the December 18 class? Left stack, in a plaid folder.

Albert Einstein kept a messy desk.

My desk is littered with a collection of  receipts, paper ephemera, a mat for my coffee (or water), and my notebook. It is not neat. I know where everything is. The mess gets better occasionally and rarely worse.

When the receipts begin to gather I file them while waiting on hold for a company who wants me to know my call is important to them, but not enough to actually talk to me. I gather the ephemera for my journals (tickets, fortunes I like from cookies, ribbons) when I go to the studio.

Anna Wintour's desk at Vogue. Is that a ewer and basin on the desk? And is she sitting on a metal chair? Yep. It's a $250 zinc French bistro chair. Chic. Hard, but chic.

It's a personal preference. Some people like neat desks. I'm not one of them. I have six cartons that clutch the contents of prior file cabinets. They are sealed, and I haven't opened them in three years. Throw them out, you say? Can't. They contain the paperwork for the sales of my houses, an old passport, and files that prove tax records.

I'm cursed by an out-of-site, out-of-mind brain. A file in a cabinet has vanished from the real world. I can find nothing in file cabinets, because I don't call items by the same name all the time. Old checks (when I still kept them) were called Canceled Checks, Checks, Old Checks, CBT stuff, PNC paperwork–all the same, all different names, labels marking the names of banks.

There are some advantages to being a piler, not a filer. The important items work their way to the top of the stacks because i use them frequently. The unimportant items move to the bottom. Once a month, I go through the stacks and throw 75 percent of it out. Were I a filer, I'd be building a room onto the house to hold file cabinets. Important items rise to the top of the stacks, detritus gets churned to the bottom and tossed out.

Efficient. And it works for me. What works for you?

–Quinn McDonald is a tidy person who wrote Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.

Filed under: Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts, Opinion Tagged: neat desk, neat v. messy, pilers v. filers