Nanowrimo

Well it's been a zillion years since I've blogged and a zillion years since I've done Nanowrimo. I figure since I've been working on my Nano novel, day 1 and 1700 words so far, I might as well write a blog entry. That's how it all starts up again by sitting down and starting.

I'm still on a bit of a high from the International Festival of Author's that takes place yearly here in Toronto. It was a fantastic year and the cartoonist Lynda Barry came back to the festival which was awesome. She has of course her book, "What it is" about writing and is apparently based on the stuff she teaches in her class, Writing the Unthinkable. And she came this year with her latest book, "Picture This" which I guess could be considered the drawing equivalent.

It was nice to see her again and nice to have a chance to chat with her. When I met her 2 years ago I'd said that I'd stopped drawing when I was a kid and she told me to pick it up again so I did. This go round I showed her the type of drawings I'd been doing since her suggestion and she was so excited and supportive and well, how could you not a) love her and b) be inspired to continue.

There really are so many exciting ideas in the world when you feel like getting back in touch with your creativity. During Dany Leferriere's reading, he read in French, I wrote down the words I could identify from his reading and wrote a poem based on the words I identified. It's funny how the most arbitrary little games can still bring me to what I'm really feeling at the time.

I guess, the gist of what Lynda Barry gave me was reminding me about how free we all were when we were kids. We could make a song out of nothing, we would sing and never thought about whether we KNEW how to sing or not, we could make up a story in response to someone telling us to tell them a story. I'm trying to go for that childhood freedom. Get back in touch with it. There are so many reasons to take care of the myriad of distractions that abound but if I take a moment to hear what my creative thoughts my creative wisdom is telling me, well I can spend a little bit of time soaking in my own happiness. Life is really rough without inner happiness.

EY