Art and Life

My Artist E-Circle is reading Julia Cameron's WALKING IN THE WORLD this winter. My favorite quote so far is this one:

“Our life is supposed to be our life and our art is supposed to be something we do in it and with it. Our life must be larger than our art, it must be the container that holds it….Rather than yearning to be full-time artists, we might aspire to being full-time human beings…art is the overflow of a heart filled with life.”

Live, Love, Laugh and Write!
Kathy-Diane

Heading into the Unknown

I always equate writing a novel with feeling my way in a dark room. As 2014 begins, and it's time to get back to the novel in progress (which is about as appealing as crocheting earmuffs from dust balls), I love this thought:

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.

There will be something solid for us to stand on or WE WILL BE TAUGHT TO FLY.

-Patrick Overton

Off to face the dreaded blank page!

Kathy-Diane

Failure

 

Opened my daily planner to find this quote:

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -Samuel Beckett

I've learned gut-wrenching lessons from every failure.

Steve Jobs said: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Better to be a happy failing fool than to have never had the courage to crack open the hollow shell of longing.

Never stop. Seriously. Just do not let yourself.  Dream.  BIG.

Why do we tell stories?

 

We've had a week of sun and each morning when I'm finished work, I head out to the deck with a pot of Chiai tea and a copy of "Writing asa Sacred Path" by Jill Jepson.While the sparrows eat the aphids on the golden hops vine and cardinals dart through the willows, I turn the pages and wonder over the gift of being able to tell stories.I don't why I'm a writer, but I'm pretty sure the obsession to put words on the page was tattooed in my DNA from day one. Here are a few abridged quotes:

Storytelling may seem too commonplace--even trivial--to be the key to a writer's spiritual path. But this is because , like all seemingly simple work...we fail to see how remarkable it is. When you try to analyze the feat of telling a story, it becomes an act of immense complexity and depth.

When you tell a story, you become what F. Scott Fitzgerald called, "part of the consciousness of our human race." Stories sculpt meaning; they shape how we think about the world; they provide framework for understanding our place in the Universe. Stories determine what we cherish, despise or ignore. Stories express the inexpressible.

Stories remind us that we are not separate, isolated individuals afloat in the cosmos, but part of the universal stream of life. Stories are gifts.

E. B. White: "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally held responsible if even a small one were to be lost."

Lofty thoughts, right? It's true that writing is excruciatingly hard work, exasperating, nerve wracking, ulcer producing and much much worse. But when the vision inside finally begins to come into focus on the page, the feeling of satisfaction warms to the core like a golden benediction and, like birthing a child, I instantly forget all that came before. I always go back for more.

May your pages be dusted with 'enchantment' today. 

Happy Writing! Kathy-Diane

 

Inspiration from RUMI

If your writing is calling you to a wounded place you don't have the courage to probe because it's too raw, honest and painful, contemplate these words from RUMI:

With this pain,

You are

digging a path

for yourself. 

 

Trust the process.  I find writing, like a GPS for the soul, often leads me to higher ground.  Be brave!

 

 

Kathy-Diane

No more excuses?

 

As writers, we'll often find any old excuse to delay putting pen to page. When you work at a desk job, one excuse that seems full proof is that you just can't squeeze in the time.

Not so. In "The NightTime Novelist" Joseph Bates lists authors who held day jobs and wrote at night: Franz Kafka worked at Workers Accident Insurance in Prague...Stephen King taught high school English...John Grisham worked as an attorney...William Faulkner did a stint as a postmaster.  

There's more: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorn. 

In fact, according to Bates, there are "only a handful of writers working who make their living solely by their fiction."

Guess it's time to cross that excuse off the list. Take that procrastination!

Happy writing! Kathy-Diane

"Roads Unravelling sends the reader off the beaten path and down an honest dirt-road trek...a great piece of Canadian literature." -Lesley Choyce author of Clear Cold Morning

 

For Writing and Life

 

From Sylvia Fraser's "The Green Labyrinth:

"Perform in humility, just as birds accept that air is their vehicle."

Reading this quote from an Amazonian shaman, got me pondering: As a writer, what is my vehicle?

There is a mystery, something larger, more expansive and powerful than myself that sustains my imagination, sparks my creativity, transforms words into wonder when they bloom on the page...

I don't need to dissect this unknown, quantify it or squash it into a neatly labelled box.

I only need to put my pen to the page.....marvel with rising joy and rumbling fear...and be always, bone-deep, astonished and grateful.  

The Tao

On of my favorite verses from Wayne Dyer's "Living the Wisdom of the Tao:"

6th Verse

 

The spirit that never dies

is called the mysterious feminine.

Although she becomes the whole universe,

her immaculate purity is never lost.

Although she assumes countless forms,

her true identity remains intact.

The gateway to the mysterious female

is called the root of creation.

Listen to her voice,

hear it echo through creation.

Without fail, she reveals her presence.

Without fail, she brings us to our own perfection.

Although it is invisible, it endures;

it will never end.

"I pay attention to my inner callings and apply my uniqueness to everything I undertake."

Writers who CARE: the 50/50 Project

I was so pleased to get the opportunity to talk about Writers who CARE: the 50/50 Project on CBC Radio's "Close to Home" show. Host, Carmen Klassen, called from Halifax wanting to know more about how the project works. The money we are raising is going to the Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world. Thanks to all the talented writers who have volunteered their time and talent to do critiques. If you'd like to hear more about this project with CARE International to raise money for the crisis in the Horn of Africa, listen to our chat at CLOSE to HOME.

ANSWERING THE CALL: Writers' Retreat

Answering the Call VIII: Releasing the Writer Within

A WORKING WRITERS’ RETREAT

WHERE: The Villa Madonna in Renforth, New Brunswick (just outside of Saint John)
WHEN: October 14, 15 and 16, 2011

FORMAT:
October 14, 2011:
5 p.m. Registration in foyer.

6 p.m. Opening Address: Answering the Call by Kathy-Diane Leveille
6 to 9 p.m. Meet and Greet Social

October 15, 2011: Full writing day.
7 to 9 p.m. Optional critique group

October 16, 2011:
11:00 a.m. Closing and wrap up.
1:00 p.m. Heading home after lunch and out by mid-afternoon.

FEE: $168.00 which includes single room and board.

All writers dream of getting a block of time for themselves to write. The Villa provides the perfect opportunity. Over the years, we've created touchstones within the weekend's framework that provide optional opportunities to connect with other writers to share work-in-progress and experience.  Rooms are single and private, so there is not excuse not to write.

E-mail shadowsfall@kathy-dianeleveille.com for more information.

"All of us can see ourselves in Leveille's characters. These are stories that speak to the complicated bonds we have with siblings and parents, who they were and who they are now and how we learn the truth of what we took for granted before."  -The Daily Gleaner

Thoreau

Thoreau writes eloquently of the deceptive appearance of TIME. It is quantifiable and measurable; however, beneath our need to contain it, TIME possesses an eternal, elusive quality.  I think this is also true of the well of CREATIVITY that exists within and without us. We barely dip beneath its surface,  but on occasion some of have been lucky enough, through pure clumsy accident,  to drink deep.

"TIME is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is the pebbly stars."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Where Creativity Meets Spirituality for you?

Where does creativity meet spirituality for you? I'll be posing that provocative question to various artists/writers/creatives I've met over the years. This week I sent it to Annie Harding, who I met this winter in an on-line group that touched base weekly to discuss Julia's Cameron's book FINDING WATER.

Annie: About me, I am a minor published poet with work in four internationally published anthologies.I am working on a collection of poems bout Nova Scotia.I also write Haiku,Sijo, Tanka and Hagia- a combination of photography and Haiku. Originally from Boston I have lived here for the last nine years on a small farm called foggytop. we raise sheep,goats and poultry. We are trying to make the farm self surviving-easier said then done. I was trained as an artist but I spent thirty plus years in corporate America. I design rare gemstone jewellery and work as a fibre artist and photographer.

 

Where does creativity meet spirituality for you?

 

I always been on a spiritual quest, creative energy must originate from the creator,  I am sojourner of sorts finding many religions offer aspects of joy and awareness that brings me peace. The Dali Llama- to take what we need and leave the rest. At the base of all religions I find a oneness-that connects us all.

 

Thomas Merton has a prayer where he confesses his uncertainty and in his uncertainty he concludes that by merely trying to please God, we do in fact please him. In this mindset I wrote the following

 

knowing

that I know nothing

I surrender

my mind centers and my breathing slows

it is in this silence

I at last find

you

waiting for me

on the other side of each breath

 

 

The 12  week journey we just completed FINDING WATER, THE ARTISTS WAY gave us many beneficial tools to help harness the Creator and our “believing mirrors” to build us up when we can not go  on. So I thank Lungta the wind horse blow blessing across the universe and leas us al to a new creative  level -

 

Namaste Annie

 

 

Hafiz poetry

There was a lovely poem in my mailbox from my friend, poet and photographer, Sarah:

WE HAVE NOT COME TO TAKE PRISONERS

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift ~ versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Finding Water: Julia Cameron

This week wraps up my e-mail Artist Circle's exploration of Julia Cameron's book "Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance."  I've enjoyed a variety of things about this book. This excerpt is only one of many that moved me:

Working at art  is really an act of communion. When I write, I am praying. When I miss a day's writing, I, in effect, miss a day's prayer--and I feel it.  I believe there are higher forces that we connect with when we work...I have written for 20 years. That has given me a spiritual life. I believe that I am intended to write, that when I write, I open myself to Spirit.