Thursday, January 21, 2010

On writing and other random thoughts.

I'm still embracing my word of the year, white space. And with the exception of procrastinating on an editing/translation job, I'm doing a pretty good job.

I've created white space in my blog for 2 days now. I've created white space in my body by exercising every day and logging it. I've created white space around my desk by sorting papers and giving myself a stamp on the calendar every time I do it.

Spiritually, I feel a little white space opening up in my soul. I want to trash the guilt and the insecurities and just create for creation purposes. I want every day to be my January 1st.

I'm also embracing my fear of failure, or rather, my need for success. I'm not writing for the Oscar or the Pulitzer, I'm writing for the white space. And as long as I don't trick myself into thinking that this will magically make any of those things metamorphosize, then I'll be okay.

I have a gift. Wow, that sentence was really painful to write. I am creatively gifted. And even if my gift is only seen by one person, that is enough.

I am my own white space. I am my own blank canvas. I am nothing and everything at once. And if I sit still long enough, I will realize this.

So I will write haikus, and children's stories, and limericks and screenplays and novels and blog entries and I will honor my words by typing them up and putting them out there.

And maybe all this white space will lead to my dream job at Pixar, working with the folks who put story into words and pictures. Who push the white space until there is something for everyone to see and relate to.

Amen.

Daycare Pick-up Haiku

In an effort to honor my word of the year, I'm trying to create more. And I'm also going to throw away some of those creations, just because I can. So here is my imperfect haiku, composed on the way to pick up my boys from daycare yesterday.

rain drops on car glass
dirty streaks streaming downward
no pink elephant

For those of you not familiar with Seattle, the Pink Elephant is a car wash and its neon sign is a landmark.

As a side note, DS1 won one of the top prizes in the all prefectural art competition for his age group. His drawing of an elephant (!) will be on display at the Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum from January 26 to the 31st.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

White Space

I follow several blogs and instead of resolutions, they suggest a "word of the year." I had a hard time with this. At first, my word was "less." Less stuff, less drama, fewer regrets. But "less" seemed so negative to me. So I brainstormed through lots of words: simplify, act, do, create, focus. I finally came up with "challenge."

But, a week later, and it still wasn't singing to me. I did the worksheet that was sent to me from christinekane.com (Yet another link I had followed.) So today, I sat down, indulged myself and finally came up with White Space. Yes, I realize that that is two words, but I'm okay with that.

White space is what I need in my inner and outer lives. In my inner life, I need a clean canvas to figure out where I'm going to create and to start creating. In my outer life, there is so much visual and audio clutter going on that I can't focus. I remember taking an art class once and the teacher explaining how artists leave white space so that the viewer's eyes have some place to rest. It's the same feeling when reading a novel. The paragraph ends and the white space reassures me that I can keep going to the next paragraph or chapter.

So I'm announcing to world (and the few people who read my blog) that I will white space myself through this year and make the changes I want to make. And that means I will be blogging more to show my progress.