Take a look inside Doomed Queens!

Random House has just posted this very cool widget for DOOMED QUEENS. It offers a juicy preview of it — take a look!

Yesterday was the official Doomed Queens launch and publication date! I have a post incubating about it, but in the meantime, check out Diane’s post. Diane modeled for my Catherine of Aragon drawing, and was one of the “queens” in attendance at the launch party.

• Filed under Uncategorized, lover's path, mythic living, sister sites, studio and gallery, travels | One Response

links on the side: Elizabeth Genco on How To Connect With Your Muses

I’m away on vacation these next two weeks. During this period, I’ve arranged for several guest bloggers to visit. I’ve long wanted to feature some of the talented people whom I’ve linked to on the sidebar of this blog. First up is Elizabeth Genco, a multitalented writer, tarotist and Brooklyn neighbor — she’s written a wonderful post on romancing the muses, a subject very close to my heart.

Elizabeth is also affiliated with the Endicott Studio blog, which is one of my favorites. If you’re ever short on inspiration, a quick visit to the either Elizabeth’s or the Endicott Studio site will set you up right!

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How To Connect With Your Muses: 9 Ways To Get Inspired When You’re Anything But

Ah, muses! How I love thee!

I’ll confess: I do love muses. And I appear to be somewhat fascinated with them, as they often appear in my work (of course, I didn’t notice this until an amused - pardon the pun - third party pointed it out). I have a few of my own and yes, I’ve been one for others a time or two (oo la la!).

But what happens when they don’t show up?

All artists face creative challenges, from sticky wicket story problems to out-and-out fallow periods. It’s part of the price of entry, I think, of being a creator. Odd as it may seem, that perspective alone is one of the hardiest tools in my toolbox for when it happens to me.

Here are a few others that have helped me keep the muses within reach and working overtime:

1. Work.

Early and Often. Not to sound like your mother or your high school art teacher or the countless professional creative types who have said it over and over, but: work whether you’re feeling inspired or not. Keep doing that and you’ll be inspired way more often.

I have no idea why that is. But I do know this: cliches are cliches because they’re true! Okay, at least this one is.

2. Make a list.

I’ll counterbalance the obligatory muse medicine with a muse, uh… popsicle (currently my husband Leland’s favorite treat, feel free to substitute your own). Making a list of your muses is a lot of fun, plus we’ll use it in the next few steps. What inspires you? What shows up in your work all the time? Here are a few of mine:

• New York City
• Folklore, fairy tales and old books with the same
• Mythology
• Tarot and esoterica (fancy word for “occultism” don’t ya know)
• Ghosts, ghost stories, cemeteries
• New England
• Ballads and old school folk music
• Boardwalks and amusement parks
• Husband

Just writing that all down gets me excited. A zillion ideas I’ll never have time to get to. Thinking in those terms zaps the lack mentality pretty darned quick.

3. Cultivate, collect, splurge, indulge.

Got your list? Great. I hearby give you permission to bring these things into your life in any way that you can and as much as your budget allows. Behind me is a bookshelf (check out a picture here) filled with books and things on all of those muses I mentioned. Most of them have been carefully selected for strategic writing room placement. This is not an accident!

4. Now go play with it all.

One of my favorite games in the world: go to the shelf, pick up a book, flip around until I find a picture or old tale or old song or whatever calls to me at that moment, and write a story around it. No pressure, no rules, just me chillin’ and having a gay old time doing what I love.

And yet, several published pieces have come out of it, including things that I’ve actually received checks for. Haha! I win!

That’s never the intent going in, of course. The intent going in is to just to totally indulge myself in what I love. Note: I still win.

My advice? Give it a try.

5. Take walks.

When I’ve got story problems, nothing but nothing beats a walk. Oxygen to brain? Check. Healthy glow and spring in the ‘ol step? Check.

Muse and mind working overtime while I’m not looking? Check, check and check.

Bonus tip if you live in one of your muses like I do: get off the beaten path and go somewhere new. Instead of looking at the ground, look up. There’s a huge world in those buildings and it lives above eye level. (Learned this from Rachel Pollack while sitting on a bus heading into the city. Changed my life. Seriously.)

6. Be with people that love you, support you, and support what you do.

Nothing scares the muse off quite like judgment. I’m sure you have enough of ‘em living in your own head; you owe it to yourself to banish them from your enviornment, or (because I know that’s way easier said than done) reach out to folks of like mind.

Cultivating a team of cheerleaders is an oft-overlooked tool in the creative person’s arsenal. I couldn’t do this thing without mine.

7. Make some space for the muses to hang out in.

One way you do this is by working. The rest are trial and error. For me, that means having a relatively clean office (ie, just the right amount of creative clutter), plenty of open space, pictures on the walls (this one’s all Leland), books nearby, and a notebook close at hand everywhere I go.

The notebook thing is crucial. I’ve even taken to keeping a small leaflet-style book (from redhorseshoe.com) in my wallet. Its official job is keep track of where my money goes, but serves double duty for ideas in a pinch. What does this do? This sends a message to the muses, and the message is this: “I love you! I am always prepared! Feel free to stop by any time!”

And so they do.

8. Refill the well.

Creative work is a delicate balance of input and output, and you really can’t have one without the other. So drink up! In addition to what’s on your muses list, look elsewhere. Books, movies, music, plays, pictures, places, people — fodder is everywhere and you need it like crazy. Indulge in your medium or genre, but step outside of it, too.

One word of caution, especially if you’re working in a commercial medium like comics or screenwriting or novels or whatever: it’s all too easy to produce the same stuff that we’ve all seen over and over. No judgments here, just a quick check of the compass. One thing I don’t like to admit out loud (and yet, here I go, about to do it now) is that I haven’t read a lot of the classic fantasy literature. I found fantasy well after I left home, and sometimes I feel a zillion years behind. But I’m learning that there are real advantages to that, too. Again, balance.

9. Rest.

Easy does it. You can’t create when you’re exhausted, and my muses always seem to know when I’ve hit that point before I do. When they stop coming ’round, that’s my cue to take a nap.

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defining moments

Now that I’m in the midst of the New Book, it’s been harder for me to splinter my attention into blogging. I’ve continued posting my Goddess Inspiration Oracle countdowns each week, and some posts on publishing. But I’d like to share more than these bare bones.

I’ve been thinking lately about defining moments. (Maybe this phrase should be written with a capital “D” and “F”, to underscore their importance.) My life lately feels a bit like this right now. For the most part, things are in a welcome state of peaceful equilibrium, like the Balance card in the Goddess Tarot. I tell myself to remember this peaceful state and to cherish it. Having sold the NB, watching my daughter grow up into a beautiful little girl, feeling connected to a supportive community around me — it’s all good. I want to capture this defining moment, like a snap shot to be pulled out of my memory at will.

Though other defining moments I’ve experienced haven’t always risen out of contentment, they are equally important to me. They’ve helped me to figure out exactly I am, what my path should be. We all experience these moments, these quick-brilliant flashes of mythic living that illuminate our lives. What’s tricky is to recognize them for what they are before they fade into yet-another-detail to be cataloged.

One true story: I think I’ve mentioned in the past here that I lived for a year in England after I sold my first book. It was one of the most magical years of my life — it was the first time that I was able to devote myself entirely to art. And I was living in one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, surrounded by intensely creative and gifted people.

Sometimes it was hard. Even with a book contract, I still worried about making a living and whether I’d be able to sell future books. I also worried that my art would be beautiful enough to move people as I’d like it to. Would I’d ever be able to reach the artistic goals I yearned for? I pondered this intensely, wondering if I’d chosen the right path. Art can feel like an indulgent proposition, when so much of the world is in trauma.

And one day, the answer came to me when I least expected it.

Of all places, it was on the Underground, London’s equivalent to the NYC subway system. I was in London to show my portfolio around, in hopes of alleviating my ever present “can I make a living as an illustrator” anxiety. Though the Underground was crowded, I managed to score a seat — much welcome, since I was tired from walking around the city all day. I settled in, keeping my eyes low and body tucked tight, to avoid any contact with strangers.

Suddenly, I heard a woman’s voice. “You must be an artist.” Sitting next to me was a middle-aged woman, neatly dressed in business clothing. She continued, “I usually don’t do this, but look at your hands — they’re so long and graceful. You must be an artist.”

Stunned, I nodded yes.

The woman said nothing else to me during that crowded train ride. But what she said was enough.

And what about you? What defining moments do you value?

• Filed under art and words, be-mused, mythic living, the art world, the world around me, travels | No Comments

the magic of place names

When I was a child, I loved to study maps. And I still do. Tom, my anthropologist husband, shares this fascination and has collected a wide variety of them. For years, we had a map of the moon and a map of the Vienna metro thrown in the back of our car, just in case. I mean, what if you needed to locate the Sea of Tranquility? Or wanted to navigate your way around the Ringstrausse?

Growing up in (to my mind) boring, suburban New Jersey, maps offered a glimpse of an alternate world that I might visit one day, if I got lucky. Whenever I looked at a map, I would imagine what each place might be like, what their names signified. Even local place names held magic within them: Would Spring Valley be filled with flowers? What about Bellemar — how beautiful would the ocean look there?

In particular interest to me were places that shared the same names. Vienna, Virginia and Vienna, Austria. Paris, France and Paris, Texas. Jamaica, New York and . . . well, you get the idea. My favorite fantasy was that there was a sympathetic field between each of these same-named places. Words are magic, after all. If you located this power field, you would be instantly swept in a vortex of energy from one place to the next. You’d close your eyes in Venice, California and next find yourself chasing pigeons in the Piazza San Marco.

Name travel instead of time travel, as it were.

All of this is a long preamble to describe my visit last week to Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania.

Chadd’s Ford, as some of you might know, was home to the noted book illustrator N. C. Wyeth. N. C. Wyeth may now be eclipsed in fame by his son, Andrew Wyeth, but during the early part of the twentieth century, he was quite the celebrity among artists.

N. C. Wyeth was the student of Howard Pyle and inspired generations of illustrators, including myself. He was also well-paid: N. C. Wyeth used the payment he received for Treasure Island — the modern-day equivalent of $200,000 — to purchase land at Chadd’s Ford, where he built his home and studio. When you consider that most children’s book illustrators make under $10,000 for a picture book, this is an astonishing symbol of the power Wyeth’s art wielded in the marketplace.

N. C. Wyeth’s studio (above) is only available for visits during warm weather. Though I’ve visited the Brandywine River Museum previously, it was in the winter. This time, I got lucky.

This is the view from his studio. Imagine gazing upon this as you paint, and how inspiring it must have been for the great illustrator. His commute to work was a bucolic garden path leading up from his home, about 100 yards or so.

In my twenties, I lived for a year in a village in England named Chagford. Chagford was home to several well-known book illustrators. (I do not include myself in their illustrious company, though I hope to one day!) These artists included Alan Lee and Brian Froud. Terri Windling of the Endicott Studio for the Mythic Arts has a cottage there. In other words, Chagford is a nexus attracting book artists of all sorts — illustrators, writers, and so on. Including myself.

When I left Chagford to return to the United States after my visa expired, I felt like Eve expelled from the garden. I still dream about Chagford regularly, walking its winding streets toward the moors beyond.

Chagford, England and Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania. Both homes to noted illustrators. Both attracting artists and writers.

Coincidence? Or a bit of sympathetic place name magic?

• Filed under be-mused, mythic living, publishing, the art world, the world around me, travels | No Comments