The Week, Writing and Other Things.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way last week, without realising it's actually a 12 week course. So, I decided I'd try it out. I've previously done the exercises in Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer and found them extremely useful, so I thought this might prove a similar experience. My verdict, after the first week?  I think this might be something special. You have to get over her use of 'God' as a generic term for the creative force outside yourself, but, once you've overcome that barrier, a lot of what she says makes sense. I've already identified incidents that may well have been responsible for various barriers I've placed in my own way throughout life and I'm now ready to do something about removing or clearing those hurdles.

The grass has had its first cut, the mild weather allowing it to grow at an alarming rate. So, a few hours spent in the garden. There's a deal to do out there, but most of it will have to wait until I have more free time and spare energy.

My brother and his wife are leaving the town for a village some 70 miles or so away, so we spent a grand evening with them and drank too much wine but had a great time. As he's been clearing his bookshelves for the move, I've also inherited some new books to add to my 'to read' stack, which now totals over 190 titles. Updated the lists on the blog and Goodreads to account for that.

Read my Writers' Forum magazine and Writers' Digest and updated the Writing Contests page on the blog here. After asking the question, I discovered a way to place PDF docs on the blog, so I've installed one for the contests, another for my 'to read' list and yet another under the 'Tools & Links' tab; this latter is an alphabetical listing of over 10,000 first names taken from all over the world and colour coded for gender. Useful for searching for suitable character names, or even for choosing the name for your new baby. And, since these are PDF docs, I thought I'd better install a link for people to download the Abode PDF reader, which is free, in case they don't have it.

So, not a lot of writing done, apart from the 3 hand-written pages that are a daily requirement of the course, and a feature to place on the blog at the end of the month. But I'm gradually clearing the decks and making space to get on with some serious work in the near future.

The NaNoWriMo novel? I'm no longer sure what to do with that. Let's say it's not developing the way I had hoped. Time will tell on that one.