The Passionate Artist

What’s in a Secret?...

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:14:58 -0700

There are secrets that are best left alone, actions we’ve committed and our sharing of them would do no one any good. There are also the ones that we might consider how we might broach with the adults in our lives that we are intimate. Then there are those that beg for us to open up and r elease for in doing so we liberate not only ourselves but aid those close to us in seeing that life, while chocked full of tedious tasks and myriad of uncertainties, can be endured and enjoyed.

These secrets are usually the ones we keep from our children.
For me it was the fact that I didn’t’ have any friends during my time in elementary and through to high school. I wasn’t necessarily hated, nor did I hate others. I just wasn’t one of the in crowd.

There’s a lot of us out there. I meet them as parents whose children attend school with mine and I’ve come to know them in therapy, both as adult and those adolescent clients undergoing what I experienced.

It was and is easy to talk fellow parents and other adults about my trial. They, like me, survived. The fact that we joke about it evidences we got through it fairly unscathed. Yet some battle scars remain, those we keep hidden—and mostly from our children.

I know I have a secret tearing to come out when one of my children begins to tell me about an incident at school, usually hurtful, that they’ve experienced at the hands of another, either a classmate of another student. My chest tightens. My breath grows short. I want to march to the school and inform this student how much hurt my child felt in response to their words and actions. But it’s not only my child that is bothered. I am too.

Truth be told I’m back there on the playground as that little girl who in third grade was squeezed out of a threesome that became a twosome taking with it the girl I though was my best friend, or I as in high school learning that I hadn’t been invited to the party that would begin after the prom.

And though my friends who like I have survived, know that in the scheme of things, these events, however much they hurt, lose importance over time, I also know a residue remains.

I happen to think the memories remain not to haunt me, but to make me a better parent, someone who can identify with my child. This only happens when I share my secret—that like my daughter, I too had a childhood. And some days, more than I want to admit, truth be known, were difficult, challenging.

What’s in a secret?

A lot if we’re honest. And even more if we choose to open up and show we’re human.

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Where is Your Satsanga?

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:20:24 -0700

“Our minds are always sometimes keeping bad company, sometimes good company. When it thinks well of it- self and looks favorably on other people, our mind is keeping good company, and when it thinks ill of itself and other people, our mind is keeping bad company. When the intellect makes good decisions for itself, when it resolves to act well and thinks well of other people and understands them to be good, it is keeping good company or satsanga. And the imagination is keeping bad company when it imagines the worst things possible about itself and about other people.

… if it were to think good things it would find peace. So our company, both internal and external should be good.” Baba Muktananda (excerpted from Keep the Company of the Self, DARSHAN/ Good Company, Great Resolve, Glorious Destiny 125, August 1997 pp. 35-37)

Tibetan Monk Walking Along Wall at Sunset

As artists it is imperative that we “keep good” so that we might continue to create our works of art and experience joy in practicing our artistry. Then what we offer to the world will heal and promote well-being. But as Baba Muktananda points out, the company we keep resides both inside and out. And that company influences both what we create and karma and the energies it invokes.

As an artist who is also a psychotherapist, I know as well, that the company of thoughts that reside and that we nurture within ourselves determines to whom we are drawn and move toward in our external walk.
The internal and external company we keep determines the nature of our success both emotionally and financially.
The recent publication of my first book, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, explores a violent event through the eyes of the protagonists that live and move at the center of my eight stories. The first story displays the story. This first story and each successive story reveals a secret, long held and rumbling, within the lives of the characters that witness or hear about the event. The secrets, long held and rumbling wreak a silent havoc upon the lives of the protagonists and their fellow characters, often family members.
The clandestine moments of histories of my protagonists live as close to them as their breaths. They emotional residue dripping from the sad and painful occurrences stand between my protagonists, and those whom they most love, and who love them. These secrets separate the protagonists from their most essential self. They, and the thoughts they give rise to are not good company.

And yet these mysteries form a piece the identity of the individuals who shelter them. They shape their personalities and thoughts, how they see the world, the beliefs they hold about themselves and others. Would the quality of their lives have been better without the meanderings of their haunting thoughts often oblivious of their own existence?

By what standard to we assess the value of our living and presence in the world, the creations we render from this experience?

On observance and in truth we are pressed to find anyone without secrets, any person lacking something–an act or a deed committed or omitted of which they do not hold the slightest bit of regret. It would seem that the passage from infancy to toddler hood with which the entrance into preschool and kindergarten follows is thereafter fraught with things we all wished to not have done. Our first response is to forget them.

Freud concluded that one of the main features that distinguishes depression from sheer grief at the loss of a life or material object was not only the past presence of that person or object, now gone or extinguished, but the fact of having known or seen, or held the destroyed piece or having known or held relationship, however slight or brief with person now deceased.

Amber Palace, Jaipur, India

In Freud’s opinion, which often varied from subject to subject but remained focused in his intent to heal, depression was the loss of something the person [depressed] had never possessed, or of that which had not existed. In simple terms depression was the loss of the intangible, unmanifest, an illusion, or more aptly put, an erroneous belief.

Are secrets real? Or are they erroneous beliefs long held and hesitantly relinquished, if ever, abandoned?

What are the dreams that haunt our nightly deaths, of which we desert and forget on rising in the morning?

What would we have to give up to make those dreams come true, infuse them with vitality?

What death would we have to die to make room in our lives for their fruition?

The protagonists of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident realize that to dispel the power their secrets hold over them, they must not only acknowledge or reveal the secret, if only to themselves. More importantly they must let go of a falsely held belief concerning who they are.

As artists we face our secrets each time we approach the blank page, face the canvas, attempt the first note of our warm-up scales. The sound we hear with that first note, the image we begin at the easel, the first word of our poem or story, is a call to adventure–a dying of sorts to the old of what we have created, and a surrendering to what is emerging on the horizon. Each time we ignore or forget that call and opt for the road filled with travelers, our soul cries out. Will we respond and unleashed it from the secrets of our past, the lies we were told about ourselves and world and what we can do in it? Will remain hostage to the illusions and what has never existed except in the minds of our detractors and, and live separated from our destiny?

What comprises your satsanga?

When in just the presence of yourself, alone, do you feel comfortable, and safe?

Or do you long for more?

If so what can you give yourself today, this moment that will bring your closer to freedom as you practice your art?

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Words: Drug of Life, Energy of Spirit

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:37:47 -0700

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
--Rudyard Kipling

Writers love words, and the power they carry and amass when joined with other words. Part of writer’s job is not only to tell a story, but to also develop a way with words that allows you to convey your chosen story in a way that moves the reader.

But writers can never adore the words we write, the phrases and paragraphs we craft, to such a degree that we fail to look at what we writer critically and ask:

Nuomi's Photo Stream--77156497_d264050206

Has what I’ve written bolstered life?

Do my words inspire and affirm?

Do they tear down?

That the answers to these questions need always favor our readers and their situations is obvious. How to accomplish this is not always as clear as one might think.

Since characters form the heart and soul of any story, what an author thinks of her or his characters, how much she or he loves them and coveys that on the page is a great place to start.

How much do you, if you craft fiction, love your characters?

How much do their flaws endear them to you?

Do they repel you?

Do your characters even have flaws?

How big are your protagonist’s problematic character traits and do they play prominently into your story line?

The same can be asked of a painter concerning the images beckoning her or him to give them life on a canvas.

I was once taught that the three C’s of a story with which readers resonate are: character, conflict and core emotional need. And every good painting has a plot that lay embedded in the overall disposition or spirit of the painting.

A character whose life so touches readers that the readers are compelled to finish the story, if for no other reason than to know that this character will survive is a well-written book. Vibrant and vivid characters write the most entertaining and moving books by guiding the author’s hand, just as the most abundant and forceful images energize us to pick lift a brush and construct what our minds thought our hand and fingers incapable of painting. To gain this strength, the character must feel that she is accepted, love, not in spite of, but because of her or his flaws.

This acceptance is inherent on the writer or painter’s part when she or he surrenders to the call of the muse, the inner yearnings of a soul striving to assert its immortal presence upon the world and humans.

The first ears that the words of our characters touch, the eyes that perceive these images and visual ideas in their most nascent and raw forms, are that of the writer and painter who will construct and shape them. These artists’ hands will bring formlessness into being and provide them with a viable container rendering them comprehensible to the world.

In the best of all circumstances the forms we apply to our creations allows the work to evolve over time—that each new set of eyes observing and/or reading the images and words spawns a new concept or belief, faith and realization concerning that person, their identity, and the meaning of their life in the context of the lives of others.

Transposing the words and images that come to us in our stories and paintings—physically availing them for others to touch and experience deepens the observer's consciousness of self and others.
This is one of the most vulnerable, and yet exciting, experiences in which anyone, artist or observer, can engage. The artist must be present to the work—with every word penned or typed, with every stroke of color made upon the canvas--if they are to summon and hold the awareness of the observer.

Yet this is the place where the artist dwells and thrives—this state of being, ebbing and flowing in a vicissitude of tides and showers.

Rudyard Kipling’s statement deposits us back to the importance of what we, as artists do--that of bringing words to the formless stories of our minds, or as painters, casting images that bespeak a thousand words upon canvas.

In either case, words are the intoxicant allowing us to imbibe meaning from these creations, and share our ideas with others, or rather acknowledge the affirmation and acceptance they have engendered in us as observers and readers.

Whatever the case we are purveyors of spirit.
As such we must tread softly, and with awareness.

Writers and artists we deal in a serious business. Our words, and the images that evoke more words than one can ever speak, carry the power to bestow life or cast death.

Our creations either resurrect or exile spirit and hope. The decision is ours.

The answer of what we shall do lies in our most vulnerable selves—what we see and encounter when transposing the musings of our psyche.

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The Wealth of Imagination

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:35:06 -0700

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
--Albert Einstein

These are interesting words coming from the person who is considered to have held greatest mind of the 20th century. What some may not know is that Albert Einstein received the first inklings of what would become his theory of

Amber Palace, Jaipur, India

relativity—concepts that shaped the very way we view ourselves and the world and the relationships thereof—in a dream. It would take eight years of gaining intimate knowledge and understanding of the math needed to form and shape his theory.

Einstein, I am told, had skipped all his math courses in that he was so advanced. But delineating the theory of relativity required a tedious comprehension of these concepts and equations that he otherwise could have forgone learning. Hence imagination is more complex and valuable than knowledge.

Imagination shows us where we need to go, the direction in which the forces of the universe have destined we travel in body and mind, but in so doing highlights the skills we must attain to bring into physical manifestation raw and untried ideas delivered in the glimmers of our imagination.

Our minds swarm with musings, inklings and glimpses of what our hearts and souls seek to see our hand manifest in the physical form of words, paints, musical notes, etc.
But we do not always possess the skills to attempt the creative feats placed upon the altars of our dreams. Thus we must become apprentices to the process. We must, like Einstein go back and gain the capability and expertise to fully realize the wishes of our psyche.

The experience of educating ourselves becomes just one more in a level of inner discoveries where we, in vying with our despondency to hone yet another aspect of our talent, come to recognize aspects of ourselves yet known.

Quantum physics, as it relates to emotions, asserts that not only do the physical components of any sort of reaction influence the outcome, but that the presence of the human observer must as well be included as one of the variables effecting the out come.

Quantum physics is based on quantum theory, whose roots emanate from the theory of relativity.

Everything is related. And so all is relative.

Imagination can then be seen as the root beginnings of knowledge. Thus artists in practicing their artistry, like Einstein, are forever on the brink of uncovering what could forever change the way we humans perceive life, ourselves, and others, and the relationships therein.

Like Einstein, we too must develop patience and diligence.

Knowledge can be gained in a finite periods of time, like radiant energy that quantum theory proposes is transmitted in discrete units. But imagination comes in waves like the dual aspect of quantum theory—wave-particle theory—holds that light travels in. These waves, be they light, the fires of inspiration or the burning embers of imagination, mount a greater force to which knowledge must bow.

And to which we must also do the same.

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Means Unto an End

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:46:53 -0700

"You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you have something to say." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sunset

Fitzgerald’s worlds are apt for any artist. Whatever the artform or medium the true artist pursues her or his creation not for the purpose of simply bringing this one project to fruition, but because she or she is committed to the process of manifesting ideas into physical form accessible to others through sight, sound, touch, taste and even smell.

The experience of applying structure to the what lives in one’s heart and mind requires not only commitment to attending to one’s bursts of inspiration, but also ascertaining the skills necessary to render comprehensible the dream-like concepts and hopes of one’s mind, and images that so enrapt one’s thoughts. The artist adept at her or his craft delivers them in a manner that stimulates the observer, taster, listener, reader.
She or he brings into form a work that when the admire, in physically touching the artist’s creation, is moved in other, more aesthetic and less measurable, but no less potent ways. The admirer as did the artist come to know the artist, as did the artist her or himself, in completing this leg of the process.

So much of what we as artists create is a recreation of who we are, our identity that is forever changing and evolving. Just as each story the author weaves is autobiographical, each song the musician either writes or reinterprets in her or his understanding of the music, and each painting the painter completes, is but one more rung on the ladder toward defining not only their purpose in having committed themselves to their chosen artistry but also in discovering and revealing their need to create. And with that they are given a wider glimpse and perspective of the one directive that so drives their inspiration.

Author and poet, David Mura, says that, “… when the writer discovers why she or he is writing,” realizes the larger story that is coming through them, “…that writer is then able to write all the smaller stories they imagine and are drawn to write.” [David Mura, author of Turning Japanese: Memoirs of an Sansei, , Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity, After We Lost Our Way, Angels for the Burning, The Color of Desire: Poems.]

As artists we live in the macrocosm of our hopes, dreams and wishes held within the microcosm of our imagination. These creative desires manifest themselves and all their comprising aspects the various projects we perceive within and bring to completion in physical form. We experience these desires in their early stages of their appearance as inspiration.

Inspiration is our need, the urge within us, to tell these smaller stories, paintings, and piece of music that form a mosaic to the larger end of clarifying for ourselves and others to see why we create. The compilations of our work, the body of our creative endeavors are in essence an ode, or rather numerous variations on a larger theme of who we are, and our need to bring life to what would otherwise remain a wish or thought hidden in our memory.

To create something just for the sake of completing that one creation is myopic and gives short shrift to the intricate and complex beings we are. No one painting can express the essential nature of an artist, both as a human being and a person who has experienced and followed through on the compulsion to bring form to the chaos of yearnings of their heart and soul.

For those who say,"I had not the energy nor the desire to persist,” perhaps what lay embedded in their words is, “I lacked the strength to discover and experience who I really am.”
A human individual is never a means to an end, rather the end of long sought after revelations, the creations of which the artist’s hand unveil during each step of utilizing their craft and skills.

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Surrender

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:37:50 -0700

Today I had no idea what I would write about in this blog. And then one of my children asked me to help them decipher a Tarot card layout they had made for themselves. It was in essence a reading. And my child needed my assistance.

On helping them understand the nature of the layout—three cards from left to right and representing past, present and future, I was drawn back into a world that I had not visited in a quite a while.

Young Novice Praying in front of of Laying Buddha

I entered graduate school to study psychology in the early stages of pregnancy with this particular child who had asked for my assistance. I took my first class in Jungian psychology as this child gestated inside me—embarked upon my dream—that of learning about and coming to understand the inner workings of the human mind.

After their birth and for the next four years I moved through my graduate program—a wife and mother of two studying what was at that time my passion. During this time I entered into my own process of healing, that of allowing myself to go back and explore areas of the human psyche and soul—mine—that I had always relished the idea of exploring.

In addition to studying dreams and images, I began to work with the Tarot as one of my attempts to heal while ascertaining the skills to become a psychotherapist--one who would assist others in their desire to heal. Carl Jung utilized astrology and Tarot with his clients. And so one summer, when this child was little more than three years old, I ventured on an experience of learning to swim—a major feat for someone who lost his or her only sibling to drowning. Once learning to swim I swam every day. After showering and drying I would then return home, and there each afternoon following my hour in the pool I gave myself a Tarot reading. This is how I came to understand Tarot.

All that I had learned and discovered during that summer and the years that followed, came flooding back when my child—that child who had been only three and who now stands taller than me—laid before me the three cards their fingers had pulled from the Tarot deck, and asked for my assistance in helping them decipher what the cards meant in the scheme of their life.

It has been over ten years since that summer when I swam each day and gave myself readings. Over ensuing years I began process painting, an experience that for many years followed an hour after again swimming. Swimming, exerting my body safely through the water, something my deceased brother never learned to do, and engaging in the breathing that swimming requires, has always, and still remains a very healing experience for me. Incidentally, while my father was an experienced swimmer, my mother remained terrified of the water throughout her life.

My learning to swim was a major part of my individuation process toward becoming the person I was destined to be, my experience of connecting with the person inside me that I had hidden for over three decades. That my child felt the freedom and the safety to ask me to assist them in their attempt to come to know who they are, uncover their identity—that child who is now a teenager—touched me immensely.

Upon sharing my knowledge with them—what I knew of the meanings each card held and symbolized, we then together referred to the book that accompanied this set of Tarot cards. And so the learning began again. But this time with a knowledge and wisdom I did not possess a decade and a half ago.

While examining the cards, and then the two of us reading the meanings the accompanying text attached to each card, I began to see my child in a whole new light—not one that shattered or threatening our past, rather a here-and-now experience adding substance and stature, and grounding our relationship, as my child moves into young adulthood.

It was a creative moment. One in which I, having surrendered to a child’s request, came to not only see that child in greater depth and emotional texture, but also wherein my own past and present came into clearer view.

For that I am thankful. And also for the fodder of real life experience that gave me a subject and focus for writing this blog.

The artist, while committed to her or his mission of creating, must never remain so focused on their work that she or he forgets the existence of those closest to them. We must never lose the ability to surrender to the needs of those living with with us and in our care--individuals whose very lives attach purpose and meaning to our life and work as artists whose work mirrors life, hopes and dreams.

For in these persons—our friends and family—lay the greatest of ideas and the inspiration for what we will create.

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Creating the Future

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:24:50 -0700

How often is it that we artists consider the future when we are creating our work?

Amber Palace, Jaipur, India

I pondered this while reading about yet another celebrity behaving badly by mistreating a fellow co-worker. The person about who I am speaking is two-time NBA champion and Hall of Famer, President of Madison Square Garden, President and coach of the New York Knicks basketball team, Isiah Thomas who was recently found liable for sexual harassment toward a fellow executive. That the executive is a woman is beside the point when one considers karma and Thomas’s physical and spiritual future. To consider the plaintiff’s gender, would in the eyes of some, worsen the nature of Thomas’s crime.

Though divided jurors, ruled not only against Thomas, but added that the owner and chairman of the New York Knicks must pay the plaintiff more than $11 million dollars. Thomas, “…disappointed that the jurors could not see the facts [stated] I will appeal…”

Reading this my mind slipped into the beyond holding myriad of what if’s.

What if Thomas in a future life exists as himself and undergoes the kind of abuse he was found liable of exhibiting toward the fellow executive?

And what if there is no one to listen to him—no court in which he can have his day—and state his case?

What if he witnesses someone close to him undergoing the same type of abuse he has been found liable of committing?

What if he, in another life does the same thing, but suffers an illness and must be cared for by the very person his words have most injured? Or what if after committing these cruelties he is tortured as punishment?

Or what if after hurling insults such as these, those closest to him remove their presence, avoid, and abandon him to an unbearable loneliness that drives him mad?

And then I considered, what if Thomas’s actions similar to, if not exactly like so many of those exhibited by our leaders is a result of actions in Thomas’s past lives, behaviors Thomas and those like him have yet to resolve internally?

And what if our choice to look past the affronts the fire upon us, and others speak more to our desire to mimic and be liked and respected by them, rather than our fear of the consequences should we speak up and declare, “No, you can’t do this to me, or any other human. I won’t let you?”

What are we saying when we honor people who misbehave like this? Surely Thomas didn’t start in recent years using the profane words the plaintiff alleged.

The what if’s about which I speak involve not only the perpetrator, but those subjected to the vicious whims of their tongues and actions of their bodies?

What if artist’s started speaking out about these type of injustices, these types of maltreatments which have become daily signatures of human interaction that we not only accept as common fare, but in many cases expect to occur? And when they do not we become suspicious. Our loss of expecting, or requiring, respect speaks to our lack of spirit, adoration of humankind and gratitude for not only this life, but all who we encounter in it.

Tom Moore writes in his Prayer for Accepting Our Humanity, “…I am the people I have met...”
(Tom Moore, Dreams Alive, p. 24, and The Catholic Faith Handbook For Youth, p. 52)

If the people we encounter are aching, so are we. We artists must be out in the world—if only to retreat and create from the madness we experience when interfacing with those chained to the externals of the world. We must undergo this process—this transformation, transmutation of energy—if our works are to hold authenticity that touches and moves the souls of observers, readers and listeners.

We thereby touch upon the future, by leaving our thumb prints upon the present and all that occurs in it.

Both Thomas and his accuser are hurting.

And so am I.

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Today was one of those...

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:35:05 -0700

Today was one of those days when I didn’t feel well--inside or out.

Great Firewall of China

Yesterday, after arriving home and while removing groceries from the car I my head on the garage door while walking onto the garage. It hadn’t lifted all the way and for some strange reason I didn’t see it. That strange reason was that I was in a hurry.

I’m always in a hurry. As a wife, and mother to 3, time is in short supply for me.
Add to that that I’m a published author, painter and psychotherapist—well let’s just say, “It gets crazy.”

I woke up this morning to a dull headache, despite the two 8 hr Tylenol I took. That was probably due to having stayed up—past midnight—to watch the movie, Onegin, based on Pushkin’s book, Evgenii Onegin.

All this took place after working for hours on my computer. As a writer I’m always writing—that is when I’m not picking up children, helping with homework, counseling them on peer issues—and then there’s cooking, washing clothes—you name it I’m doing it. And let’s not forget I still have my book that I’m working hard along with my publisher to publicized and market.

It’s a lot.

I was tired when sitting down to write this blog despite having slept until 2pm.

My husband was glad that he can provide a life wherein I can do it.

I still don’t feel I’ve done enough.

There’s so much to do.

I had no ideas on what to write.

They headache is still with me.

Oh, and let me add, I’m observing Ramadan.

And then I thought of this prayer—for accepting our humanity.

I had read it three nights ago when assisting my 9th grader with their religion assignment.

My heart warmed while re-typing it.

I’ve listed it below.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Prayer for Accepting Our Humanity

Big Buddha in Ancient Temple

I am a person like no one else in
the world.

I am the people I have met.
I am the mistakes I have made
   and the wisdom I have gained
I am the lessons I have learned
and the good ones I have given.
I am the good times in my life
   and the bad ones too.
I am the emotions I have felt
And the thoughts I have
     thought.

God I am the life I have lived.
Although it’s not a perfect one,
understand that I’m doing the best
      I can
      With what you have given me.
Because all that I have to work
     with…is me.

                     (Tom Moore
                     Dreams Alive, p. 24
                     and
                     The Catholic Faith Handbook
                     For Youth, p. 52)

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Avoiding The Fall—Maintaining Our Garden of Eden

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:41:02 -0700

Last evening while helping my child with their homework I was called to read a re-interpretation of the Creation Story presented in Genesis. The assignment focused on Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden—a result of both Adam and Eve having eaten fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Waterfall

The interesting thing about this book’s interpretation was that it saw the results of Adam and Eve’s act of eating of the tree of knowledge as bestowing them with not only an awareness of pain, death, and of shame, but a stark awareness of these factors that rendered them so naked and vulnerable as to destroy their ability to interact with divinity face-to-face. For some divinity is truth. For others it is a static or transforming deity governing one’s reality—Christ, Oya, Siva, Yahweh, Allah, The Buddha.

Many artists perceive God in and through the works we create. We interact with divinity when painting, writing, shaping poems or glass we blow into being with our breaths. Whatever the material, our work as artists is both an extension and expression of all that we cannot see, but know and sense present in this life.

The experience of creating is in essence a way, our attempt at touching upon, if not re-entering the Garden of Eden, if only for but a moment as when we give that last touch of color to an acrylic painting on canvas, write the final word of a novel or poem we have revised for the 5oth time, or simply stretch out a note on the piano or cello—take it into the unknown where sound meets with silence, and one absorbs the other.

Whatever our conduit for touching upon this blissful part of life and living that exists through, in and around us—the ultimate reality that bestows meaning upon our lives, we owe it to ourselves to let nothing stand in between our ability to return and sup from the brim of its overflowing cup.

We must remain committed not just to the act of creating that so brings us joy, but also to the truth that emanates through, and about the works of our artistry.

We must acknowledge the breath of life moving in and out of us engendering the life force that directs our brush, guides our fingers in typing, our hands in writing, our voice in singing. We must remain honest with ourselves, and follow the lead of our hearts. We must not fall in the search for certainty, and lose grip with its ever-present and evolving beat.

The heart knows what God desires, what we need, what we must create and how to accomplish it. In our hearts dwells truth--that of the eternity of the ages. It lives in each moment we take a breath.

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The Business of Learning One’s Craft

nobody@vox.com(Anjuelle Floyd) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:35:13 -0700

Today I received an e-mail containing the announcement of a former editor at a New York Publisher, stating that the editor would be reviewing 500 manuscripts for the next 6-8 months. Those interested could e-mail the editor at the address given in the announcement and receive guidelines.

Curious, and having heard of this up-coming announcement, requested the guidelines.

Green Tea Cup and Saucer

To my astonishment the guidelines included a $500 fee for reading each manuscript from which the submitting writer would receive a critique of their work. The purpose of the critique and the fee, ultimately the submission, according to the guidelines is to give the submitting writing a clear sense of how their submission might fare if sent to a publishing house and feedback on where the writer needs to focus her or his attention in refining their submission—again for the larger goal of submitting the work to a publisher for publication.

I was surprised by the $500 fee because for that amount of money an interested person could take a class at say Gotham Writers Workshops or better yet, the would be author could choose from a range of short story and novel courses, all within the price range of $175- $500, classes that last from eight weeks to six months during which the writer submits stories on line to a published and season author of short stories and/or novels and receives not just critique but detailed lessons/lectures and assignments on the craft of writing.

The question was pretty clear to me: Does one want to pay $500 for feedback given from having read 500 manuscripts or $500 or less for the experience of learning to write?

And the answer to that is also simple: The latter is the better bargain by far.

I do not hold any ill sentiments toward the former publishing editor for offering such a service. She has simply joined the ranks of many who already offer this service at much higher fees.

What did strike me as interesting was the great anticipation with which would be writers seeking publication held toward this editor’s announcement. It was if many saw this as their lucky break.

I can’t exactly criticize these writers eager for publication in their hope of receiving some sort of boost in their career and desire. What left me downhearted was that in the flurry of excitement toward this editor’s announcement, nothing was ever said of why the editor had chosen to commit herself to read 500 manuscripts—better yet what she was looking to gain.

Perhaps this is a mercenary question that I propose. But seeing one’s work come to print is costly—not only from the publisher’s end, but for the writer as well. And much of that money must be committed to years, often decades, before a publishing editor will even look at your work. In other words, would be authors must commit to learning how to write and how to improve their writing. And that costs not just time, but also money.

That money can be spent in a myriad of ways, writing groups facilitated by established writers and poets, on-line classes facilitated by those who have made a career in the fields of writing an publishing, writing workshops where one’s work is critiqued over a period of one or two weeks, or MFA programs. The field is wide open with much to choose from if one wants to truly learn.

But learning involves writing and re-writing—writing stories to present to one’s teacher and peers, and then more writing, after receiving comments and critique to learn how to correct one’s mistakes and refine one’s ability to craft and structure stories.

I received 4 more e-mails after receiving the guidelines from the editor who is to read 500 manuscripts. Those subsequent e-mails contained critiques of various stories. The authors of these stories went unnamed. The critiques for the novels ranged from comments on dialogue, to suggestions for theme, and critiques on plot.

The editor, as most in the publishing field who are good at what they do, presented in explicit form just what was not working in the various stories, and what each author needed to attend in revising their story.
Alas, what was not present, was how to amend the suggested challenges—the true stuff of writing--revision--the work that each writer has and at some point must face on the way to the forum of publication--the ability to recognize, foresee, avoid, correct, the pitfalls that plague any and every writer.

That was not included in the critiques. That is what classes teach.

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