Claire Cook's Blog, page 3

Kaleidoscoping Around

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”—Jean Houston

I started playing around with online kaleidoscope and mandala makers while I was researching Life Glows On—one of the many perks of researching a book about creativity. I find it really fun and relaxing, and as much as I love writing, it’s a nice break from working with words all day. I should also probably warn you that it’s a little bit addicting!

If this sounds like the kind of fun (or procrastination!) you need right now, here are two easy and FREE options for you to try.

In the photo at the top of this post, you can see what I made on Kaleidoscope Painter. It’s a free website that’s easy to use. I also love this one because the designs make me remember the magic of looking through a kaleidoscope as a child.

Once you click on the link above, you’ll see a canvas and a welcome message. You can choose your background color and paint color and brush size. But the best part for someone (like me!) who doesn’t have any real drawing experience is that you can also click on one of the patterns in the little squares below the canvas. After you do that, just click on the canvas and drag. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to create!

Above is the beginning of a mandala I made with Mandala Maker Online, which is another free, non-intimidating tool I like. To get started, leave the background white, choose a color for your brush, and then click and drag your cursor around and see what happens. After that, you can add more colors, change the width of your brush, or whatever else you feel like doing.

With both of these tools, just keep trying things and don’t worry about ruining or breaking anything. You can always clear and start again! And when you’ve finished, you can download and save your masterpieces like I did.

Life Glows On is filled with so many more ideas for reconnecting with your creativity. If you haven’t started reading it yet, I hope you will. You can buy your copy here: https://amzn.to/3Auskko

Talk to you soon!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books.

Lantana in My Garden

Happy first day of spring, everybody!

Claire Cook wrote her first novel in her minivan when she was 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of her second novel, Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of 21 books, including Life Glows On.

Hang In!

I’ve definitely had days like this (especially when I’m trying to finish a book!), but one thing I’ve learned is that whenever I want to give up on something, when I try just a little bit harder, that’s when all the good things happen. So whatever is or isn’t happening in your life right now, hang in!

I talk about this in Life Glows On:

Excerpted from Life Glows On
Copyright © 2021 Claire Cook. All rights reserved.

How do we know when it’s time to give up? 

If we quit midway, it doesn’t feel good. It feels like failure. And that failure might be small and insignificant in the scheme of things, but it has a tendency to trigger memories of all the other things we’ve started and not finished. It can tear a surprisingly big hole in our self-esteem. 

So hang in. Take it day by day. Finish what you set out to do. You’ll learn so much from the experience, about your creativity and about yourself. Even if you didn’t love it after all, it will help you choose your next creative thing. And when you finally find that creative click, you’ll recognize it and appreciate it all the more.

But what about those bigger, long-term, pie-in-the-sky goals? The destinations that our headlights can’t see in the fog, the ones we dream about as we toss and turn at night? Not our very achievable one creative thing, but the huge, go-for-it goal we’re hoping is waiting at the end of the long and treacherous road. 

We’ve been painting and painting, but every art competition we submit our work to turns us down. We’ve been working so hard on our memoir, but not a single literary agent we’ve pitched has even asked to read it.

How do we know when we’re simply frittering our lives away on these dreams? How can we tell if we should just let them go and move on? 

What I see over and over again are people who just didn’t hang in there long enough. A couple of waves knock them over, and instead of getting up again and brushing off the sand and positioning themselves for the next wave, they pick up their surfboard and go home. Or they let an imaginary rip current take them way out to sea. And then, after going through all that, when they finally swim the whole way back to shore, instead of reassessing and using all that hard-earned knowledge to take the next step, they jump to another project.

I get it. Failure is awful. It’s demoralizing. It’s embarrassing. But here’s the truth. Everybody fails. And if you try to keep your life really small and unassuming to avoid failing, you’re still going to fail. You’ll just have smaller failures, and you’re going to miss a whole bunch of growth and satisfaction. So you might as well go for what you really want.

“If what you’re doing is significant,” I say in Never Too Late, “of course you’re going to fail. In fact, if you can’t remember the last time you failed at anything, you might want to step it up a little. You might be playing it way too safe and easy.” 

Failure can really take us by surprise. It catches me every time. I don’t know if my setpoint is to be naturally optimistic, or if I’m just really good at denial, but I’m always at least a little bit shocked when something doesn’t work out the way I imagined it. It’s no fun.

It doesn’t help that we’re so used to looking through the lens of social media, where everybody’s curated lives appear so perfect. Sure, there are plenty of people who overshare every single thing that goes wrong in their lives on Facebook. You have to avert your eyes fast so you don’t have to see that photo of their post-surgery stitches or itchy rash or bony bunion. So you don’t have to read their post about the nasty thing the person at that store said to them or how they just got fired or dumped by a boyfriend.

But lots of us, and I have to admit that I’m one of them, have a tendency to only tell the good stories. I think, for me, it’s not that I’m trying to make my life look perfect. It just feels that focusing on the positive becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and brings more good things into my life, while focusing on the negative would probably send lots of negative vibes my way.

So I tend to gloss over the bad and celebrate the good. But trust me, it’s not all good stuff.

There are lots of versions of the saying don’t quit before the miracle floating around right now. But the sentiment has been around for a long time. Even Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Think about that. What if you quit today and your big dream could have happened tomorrow, or next week, or next year? And you’ll never know.

It’s what we do after our inevitable failures that matters most. We can consciously flip those failures into fuel and use that energy to drive us forward. Personally, as soon as I hit a dead end, I let myself whine and wallow and get all pathetic and feel ridiculously sorry for myself. I used to give myself twenty-four hours, but I’ve failed enough by now that I’ve streamlined the process down to a few hours. After that, even I’m sick of my dramatics. 

And then I ask: What else is possible? What’s my next step? 

Because if we want to get where we’re going, it’s all about tenacity. Failure is just a stepping stone. It teaches us what to do differently to get to the next stepping stone. It makes us resilient and helps us fine-tune our focus. 

Failure makes us more creative, because it forces us to find a new approach, another way of going forward. It makes us learn more, be better. 

We all know the stories. Harry Potter was rejected dozens of times. Gone with the Wind was supposedly rejected thirty-eight times, The Dubliners twenty-two times, A Wrinkle in Time twenty-nine times.  

Film executives told Harrison Ford he didn’t have what it took to be a star. Meryl Streep was told that she wasn’t pretty enough. 

One of Oprah’s early producers told her she was “unfit for television.” What if Oprah had believed that producer?

The Help received sixty rejections from literary agents. What if Kathryn Stockett had quit at ten or twenty, and not hung in there and written query letter number sixty-one?

If you look carefully at a successful person, you see someone who wants things enough to keep going back in again and again. She’s not necessarily more talented than everybody else, but she’s definitely more determined. She pivots, sharpens her skills, finds another angle, reimagines, reinvents, reconnects, resets, restarts, refocuses, readjusts as many times as she needs to. And most of all, she keeps moving forward.

Vera Wang almost qualified for the Olympic figure skating team in 1968. That failure led her to reinvent her career and she became a fashion editor at Vogue three years later. When she was denied the editor-in-chief position, that failure gave her the drive to start her own fashion chain. At first glance, it might seem like a random path, but each of those steps are connected in unexpected, creative ways. Each failure was a step in figuring out who she was and refining her dream.

For each of us, I think there’s a sweet spot between what we have to offer the world and what the world is looking for. We just have to hang in there until we find it.

Even if your one creative thing is something you have more control over, maybe to write a children’s book as a surprise gift for your grandchild, you’re still going to fail along the way. Some aspect of it will turn out to be harder than you thought it was going to be. You’ll have everything uploaded to the photo site, and you’ll get a message that your pictures aren’t high resolution enough, and you don’t even know what the term high resolution means. Or you can’t figure out how to get the text to align the way you want it to in the text boxes, and you have no idea how to figure it out because you’re not even close to being computer literate. 

Not only does it feel like the project is a failure, it feels like you’re a failure. You’re over your head, it’s never going to work, what a stupid idea this was.  

Take some time to feel sorry for yourself if it helps. Then figure out your next step. You could hire someone to do the whole thing for you. Or you could ask the grandchild you’re making the book for to help you, although I guess that kind of does away with the surprise element. 

But you’re going to feel so much better if you use this roadblock as an opportunity to figure it out yourself. You’ll grow. You’ll add tools to your toolbox. You’ll be so proud of yourself. 

Just take it one step at a time. Start with the search bar at the photo site. Type in tutorials. Or photos. Or text. If you can’t find what you need, start Googling. You don’t have to fully understand everything about creating picture books on a photo site. You just have to figure out the things you need for the book you’re making. 

As the old cliché goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Fail. Regroup. Correct. Move on.

I spend a huge chunk of my life doing this kind of thing, and I can confidently assure you that there is a YouTube tutorial that will take you step by step through just about everything you need to know. Watch the first step. Pause the video and do that step. Watch the second step. Pause the video and do it. 

Take it from me, you can accomplish just about anything in the world like this. We live in a time of unlimited resources, and the information to turn your failure into a next step is always available, often for free.

If you haven’t read Life Glows On yet, I hope you will!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books, including her latest, LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Seven Simple Steps to Your Next Chapter

Seven Year Switch is my novel about a single mother whose husband ran off to join the Peace Corps, leaving her with a three-year-old. Seven years later, just when they’ve figured out how to make it on their own, he’s ba-ack, proving he can’t even run away reliably! Jill has to face the fact that there’s simply no way she can be a good mom without letting her ex back into her daughter’s life. They say that every seven years you become a completely new person, and it takes a Costa Rican getaway to help Jill make her choice — between the woman she is and the woman she wants to be.

At the end of the Seven Year Switch, I include seven simple steps that I really needed to hear again. So I tweaked them a little to share with you just in case you do, too.

Seven Simple Steps to Find Your Next Chapter

SELF. You can’t have self-awareness, self-confidence, or any of those other good self words until you decide to like yourSELF, and who you really are.

SOUL SEARCHING. Sometimes it’s just getting quiet enough to figure out what you really want; often it’s digging up that buried dream you had before life got in the way.

SERENDIPITY. When you stay open to surprises, they often turn out to be even better than the things you planned. Throw your routine out the window and let spontaneity change your life.

SYNCHRONICITY. It’s like that saying about luck being the place where preparation meets opportunity. Open your eyes and ears—then catch the next wave that’s meant for you!

STRENGTH. Life is tough. Decide to be tougher. If Plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters (204 if you’re in Japan!).

SISTERHOOD. Connect, network, smile. Build a structure of support, step by step. Do something nice for someone—remember, karma is a boomerang!

SATISFACTION. Of course you can get some (no matter what the Rolling Stones said). Call it satisfaction, fulfillment, gratification, but there’s nothing like the feeling of setting a goal and achieving it. So make yours a good one!

BONUS STEP: SIMPLIFY! In the years since writing this list for Seven Year Switch, I’ve discovered how truly fabulous it is to simplify. I’ve moved and downsized twice in the last decade, cleared away so much physical and mental clutter, and learned to say yes only to the things I really want to do. I’m finding the balance between writing and walking the beach every day.

If you haven’t read Seven Year Switch yet, you can buy your copy here:
Kindle
Nook
iBooks
Kobo
GooglePlay

Praise for Seven Year Switch:

“A beach chair worthy read.”—New York Times

“A hot summer beach book.”—USA Today

“Bestseller Cook charms again in this lively, warm-hearted look at changing courses mid-life.”—People

Talk to you soon!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books, including her latest, LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Digging Up Your Buried Dream

I’ve known I was a writer since I was three. I was one of eight kids, and when you grow up in those great big families, you desperately want something that’s just yours to make you feel special, to separate you from the pack. I grabbed writer.

My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It’s quite possible that mine was the only entry in the three-and-under category, since Cutie Fizz was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and half a dozen white plastic whale-embellished mugs with turquoise removable handles.

When I was six, my first story was published in the Little People’s Page in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family dachshund, even though we had a beagle at the time, the first clue that I’d be a novelist and not a journalist) and at sixteen I had my first front-page feature in the local weekly. I also wrote really bad poetry in high school that I thought was so profound—yep, I was that girl. I majored in film and creative writing in college, studying with some big-name writers who gave me lots of positive feedback.

I’d been on this writing road for most of my short life, and it seemed like a straight shot to my destination. I fully expected that the day after graduation, I would go into labor and a brilliant novel would emerge, fully formed, like giving birth.

It didn’t happen. Instead, I choked. I panicked. I guess I’d learned how to write, but I didn’t know what to write. I felt like an imposter. So, despite all expectations, especially mine, I didn’t write much of anything over the next couple decades. Even the prospect of writing a thank-you note would throw me into full-blown anxiety mode.

Hindsight 20/20, I can see that I just hadn’t found my stories yet. I write about real women—their quirky lives, their crazy families and friendships and relationships, what they want and what’s keeping them from getting it. I simply needed to live more of my own life before I could accumulate enough experience to write my books. If I could give my younger self some really good advice, it would be not to beat myself up for the next twenty years.

But I did. Most of the time I felt a low-grade kind of angst about not living up to my potential. I did my best to ignore it, but sometimes it would bubble up and I’d feel gut-wrenchingly awful. I tried my hardest to bury the feelings, to forget about my dream.

But it never went away. Writing a novel remained the thing I wanted to do more than anything else in the whole wide world, as well as the thing I was most afraid of.

So I did some other creative things. I wrote shoe ads for an inhouse advertising department for five weeks right out of college, became continuity director of a local radio station for a year or two, taught aerobics and did some choreography, worked as a bartender, helped a friend with landscape design, wrote a few freelance magazine pieces, took some more detours.

Eventually, I had two children and followed them to their artsy little school as a teacher. I meant to stay for a year or two, but somehow I stayed for sixteen. Sixteen years. I taught everything from multicultural games and dance to open ocean rowing to creative writing. I loved the kids and even won the Massachusetts Governor’s Fitness Award for innovative programming. But all along I was hiding from my true passion, the thing I was born to do.

And then one day, propelled by the fierce, unrelenting energy of midlife, the dream burst to the surface again. I was in my forties, sitting with a group of swim moms (and a few good dads) at 5:30 A.M. My daughter was swimming back and forth and back and forth on the other side of a huge glass window during the first of two daily practices that bracketed her school day and my workday as a teacher.

The parental conversation in the wee hours of that morning, as we sat bleary-eyed, cradling our Styrofoam cups of coffee and watching our kids, was all about training and form and speed, who was coming on at the perfect time, who was in danger of peaking before championships, even who just might have a shot at Olympic trial times.

In my mind, I stepped back and listened. Whoa, I thought, we really need to get a life.

And right at that moment it hit me with the force of a poolside tidal wave that I was the one who needed to get a life. A new one, the one I’d meant to have all along. I was not getting any younger, and I was in serious danger of living out my days without ever once going for it. Without even trying to achieve my lifelong dream of writing a novel. Suddenly, not writing a book became more painful than pushing past all that fear and procrastination and actually writing it.

So, for the next six months, through one long cold New England winter and into the spring, I wrote a draft of my first novel, sitting in my minivan outside my daughter’s swim practice. It sold to the first publisher who asked to read it. Lots of terrific books by talented authors take a long time to sell, so maybe I got lucky. I’ve also considered that perhaps if you procrastinate as long as I did, you get to skip some of the awful stages on the path to wherever it is you’re going and just cut to the chase.

But another way to look at it is that there were only three things standing in my way all those years: me, myself and I.

My first novel was published when I was 45. At 50, I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the movie adaptation of my second novel, Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which I’ve since turned into a 7-book series. I’m currently in talks for a television series based on the Must Love Dogs book series.

I’m now the New York Times bestselling author of 21 books. The overarching theme of them all is reinvention for 40-to-forever women. I’ve also taught reinvention workshops and spoken about reinvention at conferences all over the world. Not many days go by that I don’t take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the career I almost didn’t have.

I think we all have that sweet spot—the place where the life we want to live and our ability intersect. For some, the trick is finding it. If you’re one of those people, you’re still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up—at 30, at 50, at 70. My advice is to keep trying things until you find that click.

For others, like me, deep down inside you already know what you want, so it’s about finding the courage to dig up that dream and dust it off. It’s not too late. Dreams don’t have an expiration date. Not even a best by date. If it’s still your dream, it’s still your dream.

I’m cheering you on!

xxxxxClaire

Claire Cook is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books, including her latest, LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Kaleidoscoping Around

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”—Jean Houston

I started playing around with online kaleidoscope and mandala makers while I was researching Life Glows On—one of the many perks of researching a book about creativity. I find it really fun and relaxing, and as much as I love writing, it’s a nice break from working with words all day. I should also probably warn you that it’s a little bit addicting!

If this sounds like the kind of fun (or procrastination!) you need right now, here are two easy and FREE options for you to try.

In the photo at the top of this post, you can see what I made on Kaleidoscope Painter. It’s a free website that’s easy to use. I also love this one because the designs make me remember the magic of looking through a kaleidoscope as a child.

Once you click on the link above, you’ll see a canvas and a welcome message. You can choose your background color and paint color and brush size. But the best part for someone (like me!) who doesn’t have any real drawing experience is that you can also click on one of the patterns in the little squares below the canvas. After you do that, just click on the canvas and drag. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to create!

Above is the beginning of a mandala I made with Mandala Maker Online, which is another free, non-intimidating tool I like. To get started, leave the background white, choose a color for your brush, and then click and drag your cursor around and see what happens. After that, you can add more colors, change the width of your brush, or whatever else you feel like doing.

With both of these tools, just keep trying things and don’t worry about ruining or breaking anything. You can always clear and start again! And when you’ve finished, you can download and save your masterpieces like I did.

Life Glows On is filled with so many more ideas for reconnecting with your creativity. If you haven’t started reading it yet, I hope you will. You can buy your copy here: https://amzn.to/3Auskko

Talk to you soon!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books. Be the first to hear about new releases, giveaways, and insider extras by joining my list at https://ClaireCook.com/newsletter

The post Kaleidoscoping Around appeared first on Claire Cook.

Pretty in pink on my walk today

I took this photo with my iPhone leaning up against a telescope.

It’s a roseate spoonbill. The long beak is rounded like a spoon at the end so it can scoop up shrimp and other pink crustaceans, which is how its feathers get that great color.

I’m so grateful for my island life and the amazing nature I see every day.

Hope you get to walk somewhere wonderful today, too!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books, including her latest, LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

How I Started Collecting Heart-Shaped Rocks

Here’s the story of how I started collecting heart -shaped rocks.

Excerpted from Shine On: How To Grow Awesome Instead of Old
Copyright © Claire Cook. All rights reserved.

HAVE A HEART

I love found sculptures. Walking in the woods at Christmastime and discovering a scrubby little pine tree with candy canes hanging from it and a tinsel garland wrapped around it like a hug. Or strolling across the beach and finding all the left-behind flip-flops dangling from a mast-like hunk of driftwood.

Midlife Rocks is something I say all the time, so maybe that’s where it starts. As I walk along the river path, I find myself stopping occasionally to make a pile of little flat rocks, each one smaller that the one it’s perched on. I stack them on the ground, or on a boulder, or on a fallen moss-covered log, or even on a tree limb reaching out like an arm.

And then I keep walking. It’s fun. It’s zen. But mostly it’s a gift. I hope that when other people notice one of my tiny rock sculptures, it will make them smile.

Then one day I find my first heart-shaped rock. It’s maybe two inches in diameter and nestled on a bed of pine needles about a foot off the path. It’s perfectly imperfect—undeniably shaped like a real heart, but more like The Velveteen Rabbit kind of real, as if it’s been bumped around a bit and loved into shape by nature.

I know I should leave it to make someone else’s day like it’s just made mine, but apparently my midlife rocks generosity is limited. I can’t do it.

Instead I use pebbles to create the shape of a heart around my found treasure. Then I pick up my heart-shaped rock and walk away.

In my head, Janis Joplin breaks into “Piece of My Heart,” which doesn’t help the guilt factor.

Confucius jumps in to make me feel better: “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”

And so a collection is born. I start seeing heart-shaped rocks everywhere. (I even find one embedded in the beach pebble tile on the floor of my shower.) Collecting them is another way of training my eyes to see. It’s also a way of being present, not something that comes easily to me given my tendency to drift along with my head in my imaginary book world. It’s inspiring. It’s uplifting.

When I post a photo of one on Facebook, I find out I’m not the only one collecting heart-shaped rocks. Linda says finding one means I’m going to have a good day. Beth says a heart-shaped rock is nature’s valentine. Janie says she has looked for heart-shaped rocks on beaches all over the world.

Elizabeth says that a friend of hers used to collect heart-shaped rocks. When she died, her kids gave each person at the funeral one of her rocks to take home to remember her by. Deanell posts that just the night before, she was reading Must Love Dogs: Fetch You Later, where Sarah talks about finding a heart-shaped rock. It’s my book, and I don’t even remember that part. So I look it up, and of course she’s right: “I squatted down to pick up a perfectly heart-shaped beach pebble. The first time I’d found a heart-shaped rock as a little girl, I’d asked my mother if the ocean did this on purpose. I turned it over in my hand, still wondering.”

I have absolutely no idea where that came from. It’s freaky how often my life imitates my fiction, as if a part of me knew all along that something was going to happen.

What I do know is that I’ve always had some ambivalence about hearts. Valentine’s Day is my  birthday. The doctor who delivered me tried to convince my parents to name me Valentina. I remember scratching my way through an entire birthday as a toddler wearing a puffy, itchy dress made out of red organza with white hearts. Heart-shaped lockets. Heart-shaped birthday cakes. Conversation hearts, gummy hearts, cinnamon hearts. When it came to my birthday, we had a theme.

On the one hand it’s a great birthday to have, because people remember it. On the other hand, while it’s definitely not as bad as a Christmas birthday, it’s kind of a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Over the years, I think I’ve received every Happy Valentine’s/Birthday card ever made.

As problems go, this is a good one to have. But still, no one is more surprised by my new heart obsession than I am. I see hearts everywhere. Bleeding heart flowers. The petals of a pansy. The heart-shaped leaves of redbud trees, elephant ear plants, violets, morning glories.

My heart-shaped jewelry disappeared during the robbery, but I dig up a scarf with hearts on it that someone gave me and wear it for the first time. The next time I’m in a store, I’m drawn to a white blouse covered in funky batik-like blue hearts. I leave without it, then drive all the way back to the store two days later to buy it.

Our collections can be lots of things. A way of creating a legacy. A way of comforting ourselves by accumulating. Sometimes it’s the thrill of the hunt. Collecting can be a kind of obsession. The first step on the slippery slope to becoming a hoarder. A stress reliever. A way of reliving our childhoods. A competitive challenge. A way of bringing order to a disorderly world.

A friend of mine collects Hello Kitty memorabilia. Another collects Elvis stuff. In my novel Life’s a Beach, Ginger and Geri’s parents collect a tiny bottle’s worth of sand from every beach they visit. My mother collected buttons in little Whitman’s Sampler boxes. My mother-in-law collected Hummel figurines.

Over the years, I’ve known people who’ve collected lava lamps, jewelry boxes, perfume bottles, antique bottles, snow globes, seashells, sea glass, egg cups, dice, salt and pepper shakers, cookbooks, autographed books, Pez candy dispensers, owls, frogs, feathers, thimbles, pitchers, Tarot cards, crystals, refrigerator magnets.

I think collections are fun. They give us a goal and the pleasure of achieving it. Even if we’re simplifying our lives, collecting things can be a way of narrowing down what we want to hang on to. Our choices say a lot about who we are.

Displaying our collections can be another way of being creative. Under a glass bell jar. Inside an unused fireplace. Over a doorframe. In a shadowbox. Or an old wooden chicken feeder. Or a vintage wood typeset printing letter drawer.

I arrange my heart-shaped rocks on a shelf so I’ll see them every time I walk into my office. When one of my cats bats one off the edge, it breaks in half as it hits the floor. Oh, well, I’ve certainly had bigger broken hearts in my lifetime.

Who knows why hearts suddenly speak to me. Maybe I’m remembering who I’ve been all along. Maybe it’s about who I’m becoming.

Out of the blue I recall that when I wrote my novel Wallflower in Bloom, I began each chapter with a chiasmus—two parallel phrases with a reversal in the order of words. So I make up a chiasmus for my new collection and write it in my Shine On notebook:

You can’t have a rock-shaped heart while looking for heart-shaped rocks.

Keep reading! Buy your copy of Shine On: How to Grow Awesome Instead of Old:

Paperback
Kindle
Nook
iBooks
Kobo
GooglePlay

Talk to you soon!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books, including her latest, LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Life Glows On is here!

LIFE GLOWS ON: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life is out in the world!

As a reader, I know how great it feels when you find the right book at the right time. As a writer, I really hope it’s exactly the fun, encouraging, optimistic book you need right now.

Here’s a little bit about the book: Need some sunshine in your life these days? LIFE GLOWS ON will help you shake off the stress and anxiety we’ve all been feeling and find that sparkle again.

Equal parts creativity guide, post-pandemic mood boost, midlife manifesto, self-help salve, and breath of fresh air. 100% witty, wise and generous Claire Cook, who shares everything she’s learned on her own journey that might help you in yours.

Filled with great stories and quotes and insider tips. Packed with fun ideas and solid, practical strategies for reconnecting with your creativity and making the rest of your life the best of your life. Shake off all those worries about getting older and embrace what can be your most vibrant and empowering chapter.

If you’re a forty-to-forever woman who’s interested in making your life glow on, don’t miss this inspiring and motivating book.

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to share your early creativity stories while I was writing this book. I include lots of them in LIFE GLOWS ON and they really help the book come alive. I truly couldn’t have done it without you!

The quickest way to buy your copy of LIFE GLOWS ON is by using these links:

Kindle: https://amzn.to/3Auskko
Paperback: https://amzn.to/3A0vmN2
Nook: https://bit.ly/3AlTE4x
Apple Books: https://apple.co/3hyM7qj
Kobo: https://bit.ly/3ynHh6g
GooglePlay: https://bit.ly/3jIouhC

You can also ask your local bookseller to special order a copy for you. And, of course, you can ask your local library to order it, too, though I think you might want to have your own copy of this one so you can refer to it whenever you need some encouragement and inspiration.

Thanks so much for reading LIFE GLOWS ON. I hope it’s just the book you need in your life right now!

xxxxxClaire

CLAIRE COOK wrote her first book in her minivan at 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 Amazon bestseller of 21 books. Be the first to hear about new releases, giveaways, and insider extras by joining the list at https://ClaireCook.com/newsletter

The post Life Glows On is here! appeared first on Claire Cook.

Lantana in my garden

Lantana in bloom in my garden. Happy first unofficial weekend of summer, everybody!

(If you can’t see the photo, go to https://clairecook.com/claireblog/)

xxxxxClaire

Claire Cook wrote her first novel in her minivan when she was 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of her second novel, Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack, which is now a 7-book series. Claire is the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of 20 books, including Never Too Late: Your Roadmap to Reinvention. Sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss a thing!

The post Lantana in my garden appeared first on Claire Cook.