scrapbook – Page 2 – Deborah Makarios

How did it get to be the end of November already??
The year is just flying past, and the Artist’s Way chapter 11 is already inviting me to take a look back over how far I’ve come.

Before the year’s end I want to read through all my posts again, but in the meantime, I’ve considered how much change has occurred since January. Looking back, it’s actually quite a lot, although it didn’t seem so at the time – rather like not noticing the rings forming on a tree trunk.

I have a blog. (But you knew that.)
I write regularly. It started as morning pages and irregular blog posts; now I post regularly and have a whole day each week set aside for writing.
I take myself seriously as a writer. It isn’t just a hobby I do in my spare time when I feel like it.

I feel less anxious and guilt-ridden about Getting Things Done – still something I struggle with, but I’m learning to lighten up, without becoming totally irresponsible.

I am more generous with myself. Giving to others was a no-brainer, but with myself I played the “I bet I can carry on without that” game, instead of actually considering whether it was a good idea. For myself I had an automatic ‘no’. I was Scrooge.

I don’t mean to suggest that more is better and you should fulfil your every whim, but sometimes you lose more by going without than you gain. In the spirit of which, I had an enjoyable struggle with the AW exercises on self-nurture, over six months and during one week.

In the longer term, I plan to reward myself for finishing the current WIP draft with a new fountain pen (droooool). I also want to learn to crochet.

While I was off work sick, I managed to read nine Agatha Christie novels, three Ngaio Marshes, and two Patricia Wentworths. This was so relaxing and refreshing I had the brilliant idea of setting aside a day every now and again to do nothing at all but read. Perhaps once a month?

My nurturing week includes classic things like a movie or an icecream, and simple things I enjoy like having a nice sit-down afternoon tea, or going to a charity shop to try on hats. I may also buy a magazine – no magazine in particular – and go through it for pictures to put in my scrapbook.

The Artist’s Way also challenges us to reconsider our understanding of God, particularly in the area of creativity. I have realized lately that I need to learn to trust God more and trust his dreams for me.
After all – look how far he’s brought me already.

Exercise 5 invites us to list the ways we will continue to change as we allow our creativity to grow and flourish. My very scientific projections suggest that I will become more relaxed, more joyful, more enthusiastic, more energetic, more generous – and more productive.

A little scrap of joy to end: sometime in the last month someone somewhere entered the words “blancmange pen” into their search engine – and they found me. My life has not been in vain.

Until next week, whether life brings pens or blancmange,
Sinistra Inksteyne

I used to have a scrapbook when I was little.

It was actually half a scrapbook, some excessively sensible parent having decided that a scrapbook as large as the child could prove problematic. (Visions of their little darling pasted flat between the covers?)

Or possibly the number of children involved exceeded the number of scrapbooks. Sharing a scrapbook is best done only with someone who has the same tastes as you; and small children are not noted for their predilection for sharing in any case.

Once I got over the trauma of seeing such an Atlas among scrapbooks (hur hur, sorry…) cut in half, I quite enjoyed the thing. I have vague memories of gluing pictures in to the scrapbook with my father (the gluing happened with my father, not to him.) That was more than twenty years ago, so I can be forgiven for vagueness of memory, I think.

The point, however, is that I enjoyed scrapbooking – the proper old fashioned sort with gluepot and scissors, none of this fancy sticker-studded deckle-edged album stuff you get these days. Proper old-school cut and paste.

So I was quite pleased when the Artist’s Way chapter for May (details to follow) suggested – nay, encouraged – the starting of a scrapbook with images that inspire, encourage, and remind you of the life you want to be living.

In my case, this includes straw bale houses, nice writing spaces, clothes I like the look of, and my own kind of LOL: Little Old Ladies.

In a magazine I found a marvellous LOL perched on top of a woodstove knitting, but she looked so comfortable I decided to leave her there. For now.

I’m not entirely sure where the LOLs sprang from, but possibly it has to do with the discovery of my first white hairs and the realisation that what I want to be when I grow up is, in fact, a little old lady.

Visual inspiration comes up a lot in writing, especially for those writers who are visually oriented.

Some have photos of their ideal ‘cast’ to hand while they write, others collect images that evoke the tone or mood they’re going for in their WIP.

Some have images more related to writing itself than to the thing they’re writing – an aspirational picture of where they’d like their writing life to be going, or an image of someone or something that inspires or encourages them to keep going.

Some have images of their setting – the more artistic being able to create their own, the rest of us cadging off others – or from the real world. This, for example – ideal fairytale castle for the more realistic sort of kingdom (none of that Neuschwanstein insanity here, thankee kindly):

One writer I’ve heard tell of has a mock-up of the cover of his WIP above his desk so he can see what he’s pushing for.

What about you?
Do you use visual inspiration?
Digital, pasted in a book, stuck on a wall or to the fridge? And do you hunt & gather or grow your own?

Tag: scrapbook

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Visual Inspiration