Focusing on what matters

One of my problems, and I would guess that of many creative people—I love to do too many different kinds of things. There are creators who totally get into one medium and nothing else exists. They paint, sculpt, photograph, or write. Anything other than their 'one thing' amounts to a hobby. They are dedicated to one method of expressing themselves.

For me I have had times (which never lasted more than a few years at a time) where all I did was one kind of creative pursuit—painting, sculpting or writing. When I am extensively into one, that’s pretty much it.  The closest I have come to mixing mediums was a period where I painted and sculpted a lot. The painting was all of the human form as were the sculptures—hence they went together and in many ways were romantic.

It doesn’t require a lot of gathering information when painting or sculpting. You are in the moment. It's all about what you see, the medium you are using, your hands, the material you are shaping. For me there wasn't a lot of thinking about it. It was being there and doing it. I would say those two forms of art are very Zen in how a person feels when in them.  In short, they take you out of the world, and into the creative process, which is why many like doing them so much. Me too.

Just to think of having an easel, canvas and my paints in front of me makes me want to start a painting. The recent snowfall would have been great inspiration. Fairy tale scenes out my window, lush shades of white, soft snow, still falling. I feel the brush in my hand, the mixing of the paints, and the laying down colors on a canvas-- how to capture the shadows on the snow, how to make white come alive as snow does. It’s a wonderful feeling especially when it works.

Sculpture was the same. I never worked from a model. It was just the clay and me. Knead it, feel the texture and then watch as the shapes within come to life. Clay is organic which is why I preferred that which I could fire to the more plastic sort that would lead to bronzes. The whole process was organic as I added water to keep it malleable, shaped it and began to see what part of the human condition it would depict this time. I think about both—but for now I don't do them. There is a reason.

Writing does not go well with either—at least writing like I do.  Writing is everything when I am doing it and I’ve been doing it for some years now, putting aside the enjoyment of painting or sculpture. Maybe if I had a studio, I could manage all three, but I don’t think so. I think writing is about not so much going within—although there is that. It is about looking around and absorbing what is out there to capture it in words. If it wasn’t, the writer would constantly make themselves the star of their books. That might work for some but it’s not what I do.

For my writing, the ideas come from outside me, from other places. The characters, what happens in their lives, where they end up, they're not who I am, nor who I want to be. They are what the story needs-- or the story is what they need.

Sure there will be pieces of me and my thinking in them but I don't think of them as me at all. I am not living vicariously these experiences-- I am the voyeur observing and then finding a way to depict that energy with the right words. To me writing a romance is all about an energy-- the energy of life. It's what makes romance have value for readers who also don't want to live it. They want to have that energy internalized. The best romances give that to the reader. It's where writing is like painting and sculpture with transferring an idea, an emotion in a way others can share it.