pens

If Not Now, When?

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In two more days, I will be at the Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference.  Between now and then is laundry, packing, about elebenty bajillion emails, and some furious keyboard pounding, as the Beach Ball reaches endgame. This year, I’m pitching again, after a couple years’ break, and I am co-presenting for the first time ever. There’s no time to be nervous. There’s only time for doing what has to be done, and figuring out the time in which I can do it. This entry is getting pounded out in one go, because I have pages to fill, and there is the aforementioned laundry to be done, with the help of Housemate, because I have, according to Housemate and Real Life Romance Hero alike, sustained the most Anna-y injury ever. I hiccupped too hard, and now my back thinks it’s digging-Housemate’s-car-out-of-the-snowbank all over again. Good thing my work involves sitting in a comfy chair.

Every three months, a new issue of Art Journaling magazine comes out, and I pounce on it as soon as I possibly can. Every time, I scan it quickly, then take a longer look later, with beverage of choice, possibly a nibble or two, and drink in all the inspiration. I wish I could make pages like that. I wish I could layer colors and make backgrounds and figure out where to put stamps, and knew the best kind of white pen to write on paint or magazine images, and not look like a third grader on the first day of art class (even though pretty much every artist ever has been a third grader on the first day of art class, at some point in their creative journey.) I look through, and I want to make those pages, and I make some pages, and some of them are kind of okay, but nothing more than that.  At some point, I throw my hands in the air and wander off, leaving scraps of waxed paper and blobs of gesso in my wake.

This past weekend, while doing my regular grocery shopping, I made my ritual pass through the notebook aisle and found something I’d never seen before. Cahier style notebooks, with multicolored bright pages, plain black cardstock covers, but -BAM- color explosion inside. I am pretty sure that the package of three notebooks jumped into my cart of its own accord. This is not a bad thing. I hate blank white pages. Hate them. They’re…blank. They’re…white.  They’re…:gestures vaguely: there. Daunting. Where the heck does a person start on a plain, blank page? This is exactly why my morning pages have to be done in a pretty book, or one I make pretty with my own embellishments. I knew as soon as I saw these, I had to take a crack at using them to make those pages.

Yesterday, I needed to get out of the house, so I threw a few long-neglected supplies into a bag, grabbed my new toy and headed for the coffee house I hadn’t seen in over two weeks. No overthinkings, only making marks on the page. I’d started at home, with an ink test on the last page of one of the books, and then…I printed. I doodled. I squiggled. I made notes on things I had bought but never tried, or tried once and wandered off because it didn’t work perfectly the first time. I put in my earbuds, put on some Netflix, and I put stuff on the hot pink page.

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Here’s a better look at the supplies I used:

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I didn’t use the glue stick, because I didn’t bring anything I could glue onto the page, but it’s in the bag, so it’s there when I need it. When it was time to go home, I had a couple other techniques I wanted to try. I slapped some gesso on the next spread of pages (okay, first, I slapped some matte gel medium on the inside cover first, because I didn’t read the label before I opened the jar) and then, when that dried, thought I’d have a go at another thing I’d always wanted to try, and always looks foolproof. It is not foolproof. I am referring to the green blobs in the corners.  Those green blobs were meant to be gentle washes of different shades of green. Maybe next time.

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Even so, I think I did okay. This is only two layers on one substrate. I still have stamps I’ve been too nervous to try, because they are special stamps, from a favorite creator, and I don’t know, or have forgotten what I did once know, about inking those images and getting them to do what I want. Still, the way I see it, I have two options here. I can leave the special stamps safe in their packaging, or I can rip off the cellophane, slap some ink on those suckers and see what they can do.

In that respect, it’s not all that different from writing. When I sat down with the contents of my travel pouch, and a pristine, hot pink page, with its subtle contrast of lines, I wasn’t going for perfect. Nobody ever had to see this. Nobody would ever judge this (that only applies when one does not slap it on the interwebs, btw) and my only goal was to explore and have fun doing it. I knew I would create imperfect pages, and that took all the pressure away. What did this tool do? What kind of mark does this pen make? Let’s find out. Let the movie play and slap things down on the page and drink tea, censors off.

As the first draft of the Beach Ball bounces its way to the finish line, I’m keeping that in mind, and that’s also the plan for draft two of Her Last First Kiss. Create imperfect pages, on purpose. Let the movie play.

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Waiting on Wise (Wo)men

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Technically, it is still Christmas until January 6th, but it’s the first Monday of the new year, and that seems like the perfect time to jump back into the daily routine, beginning as I mean to go on. New year, new chances, and all of that. I like the idea of a clean slate. It fits into my clean sweep/more layers mindset, and now it’s time to draw from that well that the tucked-away week filled.

This time last year, I did not have a new planner to move into on the first of the year, and I don’t have one to move into this year, either, but for a different reason. This year, I picked up a seventeen-month planner (how have I managed to ignore these things until now?) so I moved into the new planner in the summer, and am starting the year off by using the stuffing out of this one. The pen for this book is actually a Sharpie liquid pencil (another thing I had no idea existed until recently) and, so far, it’s working. I have long since accepted that I am a planner. I want, even need, to know what I’m doing, and when I’m doing it. Then, within those boundaries, I can run wild. Hey, it works.

So, what does the new year hold? For one thing, lots of historical romance. Actually, that would be two things, as I mean both reading and writing my favorite genre. Last year, I set my Goodreads reading goal at fifty  books. I actually read eighty-nine, so this year’s goal is ninety. I have one down so far, and should be finishing at least one more in the next day or two. The way I figure it, if I read two books each week, allowing two weeks for dry spells/rest/deadline crunches, I’m going to be sitting pretty in the reading department.

Writingwise, this is the year. The last ten have been a wild ride, which could be a book in itself, but I don’t write horror. What I do write is historical romance, and, with Melva Michaelian, historical-adjacent romance. Since I work best with regular feedback, it’s my responsibility to make sure I get exactly that. Today, I will work on the next draft of chapter two of Her Last First Kiss, which I need to turn in to N tomorrow morning. She, in turn, will have pages from her WIP to show me, and the plan is to read and comment on the spot. N asked me to bring printed pages rather than sending in email ahead of time. This is out of my comfort zone, as it will require me to A) figure out WTF is jamming my nifty awesome printer that will not print, or B) hie myself to library or office supply store to print on their devices. Probably B) and then A, but the point is that this is stretching, which is what I want.

Thanks to the RWA critique partner matching registry, I have a good lead on a historical romance critique partner. Not only do we share common interests within the genre, but in other things as well, and even prefer similar historical periods. Next step is exchanging sample chapters and seeing if we are indeed the good fit it looks like we may be, and then onward we go. If I’m being held accountable and receiving regular feedback, it’s a lot harder to tell myself nobody cares, or I’m not making a difference. Maybe the benefits of external validation have something to do with being an extrovert, maybe not, but this feels good. It feels right. It feels as though a piece of the puzzle that got knocked loose during the last ten years is fitting back into place. I like that.

While I was writing this entry, I got a notice I had new email, which, of course, I had to check, because A) I am me, and B) email fits into my social media time, and I am darned shooting sure going to stick to what’s on my schedule on the very first day of having said schedule (seriously, this planner works with the way my brain works, but more on that later.) What was said email? Notice that I had won a Fierce Cheerleading session with abundance coach, Eryka Peskin (who is super awesome, and if you have a chance to be in on one of her challenges, I highly encourage you to take it.)

This morning, I had another notice, on Goodreads, that a new group had been formed, dedicated to the love of historical romance and fiction set in one of my favorite eras, the seventeenth century. That’s the setting for my Orphans in the Storm, and one hundred percent a setting I plan to use again, maybe soon. That’s because my next goal, after finishing both Her Last First Kiss and the Beach Ball in 2017, I need to look farther down the road and decide what’s coming next. Sitting down in front of a blank screen doesn’t work for me, so that means I need to put some feelers out there and see what I’m going to be writing next, after these two couples find their happily ever afters. Because writing historical romance? That’s my HEA. Okay, that and Real Life Romance Hero, because he has truly earned the title, but this is the year to be a little (or a lot) less  “Grace Kelly” (though the party in the video does look awfully fun):

and more in the spirit of this ditty below (language may not be for gentle readers or little ones in the room):

This year,  I don’t feel a letdown at the end of the tucked-away week,  like I have in the past. 2017 is the year I get to cross  “present at NECRWA’s annual conference” off my bucket list, and I could  not be in better company than my co-presenters, Corrina Lawson and Rhonda Lane. It is still Christmas until January 6th, what my father called Three Kings’ Day, which others may know as Epiphany, or the celebration of the wise men arriving at one very special manger. This year, my planner has “ornament harvest” where “take down tree” used to go, because, this year, I’m looking at the new season differently. I think I’m going to like the view from here.

Treasure Box

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We’re a few days into what’s usually my favorite week of the year, that tucked-away week between Christmas and New Year’s. Jury is still out on this year’s version. Normally, going to the Laundromat is a lovely pocket of time, and doing so during my tucked-away week would make it doubly so. This time? Not so much.

We’ll start with the fact that I had to put laundry in and take it out of four machines before hitting one that would actually h0ld everything and did not have any mystery detergent residue that would play havoc with sensitive skin. Add in a quick dash back home to collect more quarters, because I ended up using the industrial sized washer. On the plus side, clean bedding.  On the minus side, there was the person who asked me if I was taking the week off, and, when I said that was my plan, answered that they didn’t think that was possible. Since I work for myself, my whole life is apparently “relaxing” and I do whatever I want, whenever I want. Yeah, not the way it works, person. Seriously not. Add in another unwanted interaction,  and I was in a foul mood by the time I got home.

I’m not sure what drew me to the small cardboard box in the hallway closet, but I figured I could use some diversion. I knew it had some of my dad’s art supplies -now my art supplies- in it, and art time is usually a good de-grumper. I noticed the paint first, four small tubes of watercolors. Some pencils, of varying vintage and purpose, some tools that look like they’re for carving clay (can check with a friend whose husband is a sculptor) and then there was the pen. Which I may want to call The Pen.

 

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Rather plain at first sight, black cap and silvery barrel, but still a pen. I took the cap off.  Either a fountain pen or dip pen, though I can’t see where I could get the pen apart to check for where I’d refill if it’s a fountain pen. That’s when I examined the nib and found the words that caught my attention. Mont Blanc. Huh wuh? That’s a good pen, isn’t it? Quick check online and my suspicions were confirmed.

White snowflakey/star thing is present on top of cap and bottom of barrel, as well as the clip. “Mont Blanc” is on the otherwise plain nib, and “Mont Blanc Germany” is on the cap, below the clip. I’m not finding what model this is, and not sure where/how to continue the search, but when a fabulous pen falls into my lap, I’m going to take it. Whatever ink may have been in there at one time is completely gone now, and if it’s a dip pen (though I don’t see any evidence of Mont Blanc making any dip pens) then that would explain the lack of ink. This is going to require more investigation. The closest Mont Blanc store I can locate is in White Plains, which is a road trip in itself, but Westchester and tracking down the identity of a super cool pen? This may need to happen.

 

The paints, I think I like on their own rather than together, but this is only my smush them on the page and see what they do stage, so it doesn’t count. That’s still something hard to accept, that I can put something on a page, whether words or colors or shapes, and it doesn’t have to, and as a matter of fact, probably won’t be perfect the first time around, but treasure boxes like these are helping me deal with that.

It’s highly unlikely that I’m going to haul a box out of the storage unit and find it’s full of words, characters, plots, etc (apart from old manuscripts or boxes of books) but that same spirit of playing around, tossing something on the page and seeing what it does -What  color is this, really? What mark does this make? What happens if I get this wet? Can I scratch into it for some texture?- that can only infuse new life. Time to take a few risks again and see what comes out. There may not be gesso for the written page, but there is a delete key. First drafts are meant to be messy, same as laying down a background color; that’s only the base. Many more layers are yet to come before the finished product is ready to be seen.