This week we are discussing where we all are in our journeys to our creative selves.

I have always been creative. As a child, I was highly imaginative; I read a lot, and spent much of my time dreaming up stories and making up characters. As soon as I learned to write, I began writing down my stories. When I was about seven, I created an entire series of books about Candyland that I wrote and illustrated.

When I look back on my childhood, the one thing that strikes me is that I was so clearly a writer. Writing was something that I did, all the time. It was my priority. It was my play. If I wasn’t reading, I was writing. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading. Books and words played a huge part in my life.

When I became a teenager, I actually preferred staying home to write rather than going out with friends. My 13th birthday stands out for me because my parents bought me this extremely old, second-hand (18th-hand, more like it) Underwood typewriter – to this day, I love the sound of typewriter keys hitting the paper and am always searching for something that imitates that sound on my keyboard.

Most of the money I came across after that went towards buying paper. I would buy reams and reams of inexpensive newsprint, and every time I came home with a new stash of paper, I’d feel like I was carrying a treasure trove. If you’ve ever read the Emily of New Moon stories by LM Montgomery, you’ll know what I mean. While my old Mint and Candyland books were lost in the midst of all the moving around I did as a child, I still have a box of stories and poems written during my teen years.

In my last year of high school, I won a number of national fiction and essay writing awards aimed at teen writers. I was poised to continue on my journey as a writer. But then, life intervened. My mom and stepfather moved across the country (only to end up getting a divorce), I moved in with my then-boyfriend and started university – and suddenly, I was a grown-up. And a grown-up has to focus on making money.

I continued to write, mostly short stories which I sent out to various short story magazines. And then, at the point when I began receiving personal rejection letters (one memorable one from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: “Almost, but not quite. Try us again.”) … something happened. Something in me gave up. It was too hard to make a living as a writer. I was an adult now. I needed to do something that would bring in an adequate amount of income.

So I went to law school. I ended up getting married, having a baby, passing the Bar: suddenly, I was a practicing lawyer. A practicing lawyer with a little one, and another baby on the way.

It was a hectic time, and somewhere during that period, I stopped writing fiction. Time was at a premium, and there was no support for my writing, in either my professional life or my personal life. At one point, I let my then-husband read one of my short stories. It was a creepy little horror story that had a humorous ending; he thought I was trying to be “too smart”. That hit me hard, much harder than I let myself admit at the time.

That period of my life was a dark time in terms of my creativity. And it wasn’t until my divorce a few years later that I was able to find my creative self again. Even then, it started slowly.

I began my journey back to my creative self by getting to know my inner self. I started with a gratitude journal that brought light and hope into my life. And then I began writing morning pages, and for six years, I faithfully wrote three long-hand pages every single morning before doing anything else. I discovered a kind of magic in those pages; whenever I expressed a desire in these morning pages notebooks, more likely than not, the desire would be fulfilled, sometimes as quickly as that very same day. Cheques arrived in the mail, jobs showed up (by then I had my own business), synchronicities abounded.

Then, about six years ago, an astounding thing happened. It still amazes me to this day. I realized how much I longed to get that love of the process of creativity back, all those magic moments when I was a child and a teenager when I lost myself in the writing of my stories. I remembered how time seemed to stand still, and the joy that flowed through me as I wrote. I wanted that back. I wanted for my writing to be all about process, and not about the results (as in, making money).

My desire was granted, but not the way I had envisioned: one day, I picked up a pencil, and I drew a picture of my kids playing a video game. I had always thought I couldn’t draw, that I wasn’t artistic except with words. I can remember sitting outside my house when I was eleven or twelve, staring at a tree and trying hard to draw it. I couldn’t even draw a straight line – yet there I was, drawing my kids, and having a great time doing it.

For the next few years, I explored art-making, and discovered that what I loved most of all was creating portraits using charcoal. My skills improved slowly but most importantly, I had re-discovered the thrill of process.

Then life intervened again: I had a baby with my second husband. Dylan was a miracle baby, and my life took yet another turn. There was no time for art, no time for writing. I was busy, juggling my home-based business and a new baby.

When Dylan was two, tragedy struck. My baby sister, Joy, died at the age of 32. But in my grief, I realized the gift she had given me: physically she wasn’t here, but I knew she wasn’t gone. I knew this with a conviction I never had access to before. And from there, I began a spiritual journey that has changed my life in incredible ways. Shortly after, I met a group of amazing women online, all conscious creators, and I haven’t looked back since.

My writing has returned to me. During the times when I wasn’t writing, I had continued to get story ideas, lots of them. They’ve all stayed with me, and these days, I feel like I have another treasure trove in front me. Deciding which ones to work on is the most challenging thing. But the most important thing of all is that I’m starting to BE a writer again. I am deliberately making this choice, choosing this identity, resting in this identity fully. And the magic is happening, once again.

I didn’t even manage to pop in to say, Happy Holidays, and here’s to a wonderful new year!

(So I’m saying it now, a little belated.)

We welcomed in the New Year at Disney World in Orlando, Florida – it was a great trip, but being one of those excursion-oriented trips (theme park, theme park, and then more theme park) when we arrived back home, I felt in need of a vacation (I assume you’ve all been there, done that).

While we were away, I actually spent time pondering over what I would be doing with BelleEnchanted in 2009 – yes, that’s one of the many ways my mind likes to occupy me when I’m away on holiday. A few things occurred to me:

1. I am just not cut out for the whole journaling live online daily thing. I occasionally get into a nice blogging rhythm but I confess, nearly anything can distract me and steer me off course. And I mean, anything. Like a good book. Or a new blog idea (I don’t even want to go there. I’ll just say it happens. And happens.) Or a good dinner (and we have quite a few of those around here). Or deadlines (we have lots of those around here, too).
2. But when I fall out of blogging here, eventually I think about something I really really want to post about, and I find myself back here again. Because frankly, blogging here is fun. When I’m not distracted, that is.
3. And even though I just don’t have the disposition to blog consistently, I LOVE the thought of having done so. (It’s kind of like me and my writing, but let’s not go there, either, okay?)

These random thoughts lead me to something else: I’d like this blog to be about authenticity, inspiration and creativity. At the same time, I’d love for it to eventually resemble (somewhat) a journal (of sorts) – you know, a piece of me and my life for my kids and grandkids (if I have any) to enjoy (or not) at some vague future date (very future date, let’s hope).

All of which, I know, has nothing to do with the title of this post – yes, I’m back from Disney! And in subsequent posts, I will be putting together a little journal of our days, mainly for me and Ward, and for the kids. With pictures. Because yesterday I spent an hour uploading over 700 pictures from my digital camera to my computer. All of which I need to sort through.

But first, I felt like writing something here. And here it is.

Happy new year, everyone! Here’s to a great and fabulous 2009!

Here’s a serious aside that totally takes away from what I’m going to write about in this post but it’s buzzing in my head so if I don’t get it out, it’s going to buzz around more and throw a wrench into the whole post-writing works: I can’t help wondering, why is it I don’t GET NaPloBloMo as an “url acronym”. I mean, I can never remember it the way I remember NaNoWriMo. I always want to say, “NaBloMo … um something”. The only reason why I get it right is because I check out my own links first, each and every time. Sheesh. You’d think I’d know it by now.

Okay, now that I have that out of my system, back to Staying in Love with Life. What I really wanted to say is that I’m having one of those gloriously beautiful moments when I realize how wonderful this life I’ve created is.

I love moments like this, because the bliss factor is just brilliant. I also love that I’m having this moment, when just four hours ago I was tackling a deadline for an assignment that I really really didn’t like. I was emailing friends and telling my family, look, next time something like this comes up, please, please, please REMIND me how much I hated it the last time, so I won’t take it on again.

Yet still, now that it’s over and done with, I am touching that bliss. There’s a consistency to the practice of Being who you choose to be, and this, I think, is what happens when you do practice this Being consistently, as consistently as possible. I’ve been doing that, or being aware of wanting to do that (two different things but still close enough in some ways, I think).

Dylan is all better now, by the way. He insisted I take this picture of him “doing ballet”:

Yes, that’s my kid. He loves trains, cars and trucks, princesses, dragons, playing the Wii, jumping on the trampoline, going to IKEA just to have their mac n cheese, ballet, his Trainz game on the computer, Thomas the Tank Engine, chess, drawing, singing and giving lots of hugs and kisses. We’ve been trying to find a ballet or dance class that he can take that isn’t all girls. I figure one will show up when the timing is right.

And right now, it feels so easy staying in love with life.

(By the way, if you want to get a sense of what some of our house still looks like, just check out the “before” pictures below – I could take shots like that in a bunch of places. I am way too familiar with bare, unmudded drywall …)

So fast forward seven years (my goodness, it’s been THAT long that we’ve lived in this half-finished house!) and we both feel we’ve discovered the right contractor for our place. Out of all the contractors we’ve talked to, all the ones who’ve deigned to come see the place and give us a price, he’s been the only one who (1) didn’t suggest we tear down the whole place and build a ranch house instead, (2) gasp in horror at the idea of doing a renovation instead of a tear-down (are you sensing a pattern here?) or (3) marvel at how “different” a house this is, and how a tear-down would be the thing to do.

We have no plans to tear-down our house. We do live in the suburbs, just outside of Toronto, but unlike the rest of the community, the area we live in is not made up of new or practically new houses (as in, built within the last 20 years). We have a very distinctive house, the kind of house that a realtor would say, ah, yes, not everyone would like it, but certain people would just adore this property.

We are that type of person. The first time the house was listed, we were all ready to go see it – but the sellers, who were in the midst of a break-up, decided they would give their relationship another go, and took the house off the market. A little while later (the go at repairing the relationship apparently didn’t work) the house was back on the market, and this time the timing was perfect. We were in the market, and went to see it on the day it was listed. We made an offer for the house that very day.

I remember saying to Ward, if the inside is only half as beautiful as the outside, I want this house. And the inside turned out to be about three-quarters as beautiful as the outside. It was small – too small for us, really – and it was old. The roof leaked, the windows needed replacing, and it has a very odd design. The front door opened directly into the sleeping area, and the gathering areas (kitchen, living room, dining room) are all downstairs, in what would be a basement in any other house. We don’t actually HAVE a basement. But this downstairs walks out to the backyard, so when you’re down there, you don’t actually really feel like you’re in a basement area – because you’re not.

So no, this house is not a tear down (although after the botched renos, I have to say it’s probably far more of a tear down now than it ever was!). Our outdoors is just so beautiful. We’ve fooled with it quite a lot in the years we’ve been here, so it looks nothing like what we fell in love with, but since we had a hand in the transformation, it’s safe to say we’re more in love with our property than even that very first look.

This is a part of our side garden:

Zen Garden

This is a part of our back deck:

Back Deck

This is our kitchen deck. This picture was taken just after Ward finished building it. We have two long wooden tables there now plus wooden chairs, but I can’t find the pictures, so this will have to do for now!

Kitchen Deck

We put in a new IKEA kitchen about three years ago that we like very much. These pictures are from just after that renovation – it’s too messy right now to take new pictures. Just replace the appliances with stainless ones, move the microwave to a different corner and replace the small bookcase with a large one with glass doors, and that’s about the way it looks now (when it’s not messy).

Kitchen

Another View of the Kitchen

So you see why we’ve shied away from all the contractors who hinted it would be the perfect thing to tear down our house and put up some sprawling ranch house? Sure, it’s not perfect. It gets very cold, especially in the addition, during the winter. We have exterior holes which mice apparently have marked as the entrance to their winter abode (ie inside our floors).

But this contractor (the one who STARTS TOMORROW), who is a good friend of our bookkeepers, took a look at the house and said, “wow, look at those lines.” “What an interesting job this will be.” And, part of what sold us, “I like the actual renovation-type jobs the best.”

He also got bonus points for not laughing at the drywall mudding job in the master bedroom, which yours truly worked her behind off to accomplish, huge bumps and all.

Plus, he’s only ever been at the most an hour late for appointments with us (unlike other people who’ve worked on the house and seemed to consider arriving the next day as being “fashionably late”). Not only that, so far he has always CALLED us if he’s going to be late. We find this to be very amazing.

So this is the area he’s going to transform first:

Before Picture No. 1

As to why there’s an exterior door hanging in the middle of nowhere, I’ll just say that I’ve been known to say things like that scene in Sleepless in Seattle. You know: “why don’t we just pick up the house, rotate it, so that the living room is the dining room and the dining room is now the kitchen and …” Once, about an hour before company was due to arrive for dinner, I actually persuaded Ward to MOVE the train room into the dining room, and the dining room into the train room, transforming it into, uh, the dining room (again – because a month previously I had persuaded him to do the first switcheroo).

Anyway, I had the bright idea of increasing the valuation for our house (which kept being appraised as a bungalow, so that none of the living space downstairs, in the not-basement, was counted) by cutting away the floor and putting in an entrance right in the middle. It transformed our house into a “backsplit”. But it just never really worked structurally. (It did help with the appraisal value though. See, there is usually a method to my madness, if you look hard enough …)

Before Picture No. 1

So the door’s going to go. We’ll get a nice window, the ceiling put back in, a laundry room that leads into the bathroom (right now you get into the downstairs bathroom by going through the furnace room, which means walking by the cat litter, which our daughter Hayley is in charge of cleaning. Enough said about that cat litter – I’ll leave it to your imagination.) And upstairs we’ll have a nice little alcove where we’ll be putting a sofa bed. My mom will be able to have a nice little place to herself when she sleeps over.

It will be perfect. Just keep your fingers crossed for us, please!

1. The brilliance of the chance for change.

2. The power of this breath of hope.

3. The eloquence of a new day, birth to a new era.

Life truly is just so incredible, isn’t it?

I got my new book review site up yesterday, and in the process fell in love with this new Wordpress theme, which really wasn’t suitable for the new site. But the theme kept nudging me all afternoon, so I finally gave in and uploaded and implemented it.

I think I’ve worked out most of the kinks, although I’m going to leave the integration of the Flickr feed in the sidebar for now. And I have to figure out how to get my images centered again. But I think I’ll leave it for now – I’ve got more deadlines to get through, another NaNoWriMo session tonight, and need to work on my mandala for Art Every Day Month!

I’m just writing because I’m in need of a good dollop of fun right now.

It’s been incredibly busy around here – I’ve got deadlines coming out of my ears. I took a look at my schedule and realized I’m going to actually have to complete quite a few deadlines ahead of time if I’m going to stay sane over the next few weeks. I’m very good at procrastination, so this is a totally different direction for me.

The great news is that this year it looks like my “heavy crunch” time when it comes to work is happening in November, and not in December, which means I’ll have lots of time to really get into the holiday season. Christmas is my favorite holiday – I’m one of those smiley uplifted chirpy people who adores Christmas and am all set to plunge into the spirit around mid-November (it would be earlier but like I said, the deadlines are coming fast and heavy over the next two weeks!).

I finished up a couple of deadlines yesterday, and as you can tell, I didn’t procrastinate (no blog posts for two days, see?). But after all that single-minded focus – not to mention one of my projects involved linear algebra, something about which I know absolutely nothing (still), although it did have the effect of numbing my brain somewhat – I am in huge need of other things right now. Fun things. Anything other than work.

I’m promising myself the fun of writing this post before I plunge into the next project.

Reading

Now that I think about it, maybe my focus hasn’t been that single-minded. I did, after all, manage to start and finish The Mysterious Benedict Society yesterday morning.

It was another, much-needed, distraction. After I finished reading, I felt energized and renewed, and actually plunged back into my work easily and almost happily.

Not to mention, it was such a fabulous read. It was the kind of book I would have devoured as a kid (who am I kidding? It’s the kind of book I devour now, too!). Such a wonderfully fantastic adventure, with characters you can fall in love with, a nice strong plot that holds firm to the very end and a victorious resolution that ties up all those loose ends.

I’ve got the sequel on my to-buy list.

Halloween

Halloween has crept up on us. For the longest time, it felt like it was ages away. This morning we realized – hey! it’s Halloween tonight!

Dylan has changed his mind several times about his costume. He was going to be a train engineer (we bought the hat at Aberfoyle Junction)). Then he wanted to be a witch. Followed quickly by: a fairy, a pumpkin, a fire fighter, a fire engine. This morning (yes, we do like to leave things late) he decided, finally, on a witch again.

Luckily, since Hayley has been amassing props for her film-making for years, we already have a witch’s hat (every year we hit the after-Halloween sales to stock up on props, which get wrapped into a nice big prop bundle for Hayley at Christmas). And last year we bought a cape for Dylan (which he didn’t wear, because he ended up being a pumpkin). So we don’t have to go to the costume store and dig through all the left-over stuff!

(I love good news like that.)

Taking Dylan out trick-or-treating will be another much-needed distraction today. I’m looking forward to it very much.

Writing

Despite all the deadlines, I’m still trying to keep one part of my brain focused on writing. It’s pretty easy, actually. Every night before I fall asleep, I come up with a new scene or character for the novel that I’m going to write during NaNoWriMo.

I’m also jotting down all the scenes I plan on writing onto Post-it notes, which I will then be able to re-arrange to my heart’s content. I’ve also been developing a character mindmap form that I’m hoping will hold the most important information at a glance.

I really intend to get this novel written during November, deadlines or no deadlines.

The Big Draw

Dylan and I worked on another drawing together the day before yesterday (another much-needed distraction from work!). This was done, again, in our humungous sketch book (seriously, this book is something like 18 inches by 12 inches, I think), using our new gel pens. We decided to create a birthday party:

Birthday party. Gel pens.

Yesterday, Dylan drew an incredible drawing. He used Ed Emberley’s Make a World Book to jumpstart his imagination, and created an imaginary bedroom in which he gets to share a bunk bed with his big brother Sean (that’s Dylan in the lower bunk). In case you’re wondering, there’s coffee in the hot cup (Sean’s 17 and marked this very important year by becoming a member of the coffee-drinking population of the world), juice (for Dylan) in the other cup, and the plate holds gingerbread cookies.

Bedroom. Crayola markers.

Ed Emberley’s Make a World book is a fantastic drawing book for kids, by the way. When I was little, I used to borrow this book from the library all the time. I remember my delight when I managed to lay my hands on a large piece of poster board – I went wild and truly created a world. Dylan has loads of fun with this book, although it’s actually been a while since he’s used it, since he usually prefers to draw “from my imagination, Mommy”.

Blogging

Traditionally, at this time of the year when I’m at my busiest and going crazy with deadlines, I start seriously blogging. No, really, I do. So lately I’ve been thinking about reviving a spiritual blog I have, and I also decided to start a book review blog, because now that I’ve discovered the power of reading to ignite my urge to write, I intend to keep reading fiction all the time, even when it feels like I don’t have much time. I’ve gotten as far as purchasing a new domain name for it. If I get seriously bogged down in deadlines, I’ll probably have it up and running over the weekend.

(Before I discovered blogging, I would procrastinate by cleaning the house and doing laundry before Ward could get to it. He’d come home, look around, and say, “you’ve got a deadline, don’t you?”. I consider blogging a huge improvement on the whole house-cleaning-urge thing – it’s definitely a much nicer and far more fun procrastination tool.)

I think I proved to myself yesterday that reading what I love to read is beneficial even when I’m bogged down with deadlines. So time (or lack of) is no longer a detriment. If I make reading a priority, my writing will become a priority too. Which has nothing to do with blogging, I know. But everything to do with procrastination. Or rather, distractions.

That’s how my mind works.

Now, back to work. Because I feel refreshed again, after dipping in here. Which is such a wonderful thing.

Earlier this month Hayley had an assignment in which she researched women’s battle for the right to vote. She’s such a sweetheart – ever since she handed in her project, she’s been using an old-time logo promoting women’s right to the vote as her computer’s desktop background.

Here are Dylan’s Big Draw catchup drawings (not really catch-up for Dylan, more like catch-up for Mommy who managed to get everything scanned tonight). We’re posting three, one for Sunday, Monday and today:

Tree scene (Daddy drew the star). Crayola markers.

Face mask. Crayola markers.

Car (Daddy added the headlight, which Dylan did not like at all!) Crayola markers.

And here’s my entry for today (no catch-up drawings for the two missed days, unfortunately!):

Face. Pen.