Art

Building Your World on Your Dreams

/ still a dreamer

Morning by Maxfield Parrish

“Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

– James Allen from “Visions and Ideals,” As A Man Thinketh

When Life Gives You ….

/ still a dreamer

Most of you will probably finish that line with “… lemons, make lemonade.” It’s an old adage about making the best of things, to which I have added my own variation. “When life wakes you up at the crack `o dawn, get up!”

At first, I was really fighting this. For whatever reason, this year and last, I have been waking up with the sun, this year even more so with a bumper crop of birds singing about 40′ from my open bedroom windows.  I’m a morning person,  but 4:45 am? Come on! But awake I was. I tried going back to sleep, to no avail. I lay there and harrumphed – needless to say, that didn’t help. But I was becoming more and more tired as I was still going to bed at the same time. What to do?

Adjust! I started going to bed about 10, so when 4:45 rolls around, sometimes heralded by the sun, but always by the birds, (clearly I am now synching with their bio-rhythms), I can actually get up and start doing stuff. By the time I start my jobs, I’ve often accomplished quite a bit. Ergo, the photo of the carrot bread.

I got out all the dry ingredients and mixing bowls, loaf pan, etc. last night and grated the carrots. After feeding the small fry this morning, I opened up the windows to a nice cool 65˚, whipped it together and popped it in the oven. Voila! a cooling carrot bread at 7:50 a.m.! By the time you see the finished photo with a cream cheese icing, it will be a few hours later.

Sometimes reality is a pain in the butt. We don’t always want to hear about it, nor deal with it. But the fact remains – whatever the reality is, if it’s not something we can change, it’s not going away. So for now, one of my realities is waking up at 4:45 a.m. And although this was a carrot bread morning, I discovered that this new reality also affords me extra time to work on my children’s books with no interruptions.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll give the little choristers a standing ovation.

Hold on to the Dream – NJ SCBWI Conference

/ still a dreamer

There’s always one bad thing about the NJ SCBWI Conference … it’s over.

Dr. Seuss, now …. my book, tomorrow!

Driving home from the conference, I am always tired, but also revved up, thinking of all the things I learned, what manuscripts I want to get right back to, editors/agent’s comments, etc.  And then there’s the next step – I walk in the door. Lo and behold, the life I left behind to immerse myself in days of children’s books is still there. Waiting for me. Needing me. Demanding of me. I don’t imagine it’s terribly different for many of you. And unless you have reached that wonderful position in life where you spend your waking hours writing and illustrating children’s books, you, like me, can watch your dream start to fade into the laundry, kids, pets, dinner, work, etc. And we haven’t even put our bags and portfolios down yet.

So, I’ve been working on some ways to hold on to that wonderful dream we nurtured at the NJ SCBWI June Conference. I hope these work for you.

  1. First off, I make the time to make a list of all the things I want to do as a result of the Conference, from sending a thank-you to jotting down what I will be focusing on. (Details can come later.)
  2. In the next day or two, I write out thank-you’s to the editor’s and/or agents who have helped me with my work.
  3. I find a couple of photos of the conference – or even the conference center – and print them out and put them on my desk. If I can find a printable one of the agent I met with, I do that, too. Even on days when I have no time to write or draw, those images keep the experience alive.
  4. I follow up by filling out the survey that Laurie sends out and by checking Kathy’s blog for post-conference news and updates. (I check her blog daily anyway, because she is such a wealth of information about children’s books, but especially now, I look forward to her posts on this event.)
  5. I pull out whatever MS was/were critiqued over the weekend and put them in a separate folder – this is what I will be working from – I put the names of the MS on the front, and place it in plain view.
  6. I next set up a real schedule for myself regarding what time frame I want to get what done – what is the date I want to get a revised MS back to the agent?, etc.  I also, at this time, review the bios of the editors and agents attending – who might be appropriate to send something to …. now while the iron is hot!  Some of those submission windows close sooner than others. And then I send them within the next few weeks. Setting up a special calendar where you mark your deadlines can be very helpful. It’s one thing to do it on your computer, but another when it’s 3-D and you look at it every day!
  7. Back to the list – take a little time to think .. how can I fit what into my schedule and when. I managed to really step up my game pre-conference. How can I keep that energy going, (and yes, still sleep, etc.)? When can I block out some time consistently to focus on one of my dummies and/or illustrations each week? Where can I block out some time to write until it becomes a habit again? If I really want to write and illustrate children’s books, I must figure this out now.

That’s what I do. I admit that I do well with a list, but … I don’t want this experience to fade, or fold in on itself in the face of the many demands of everyday life. I plan to hold on to the dream, and imagine that the little reading group up there is reading MY children’s book. Who knows? They might be reading yours!

If you have any more ideas of how to hold on to the dream of writing and illustrating children’s books post-NJ SCBWI June Conference, let me know.

Balance

/ still a dreamer

It has been my thought for a while now to write about balance … it has been a constant source of reflection over the past weeks … months. So while I mused over my subject, I searched for an appropriate photo for this post.

Unfortunately, having the love affair I’ve had with photography most of my life, looking for a photo is something akin to the proverbial child in the candy shop. Or better yet, wandering in the woods. I easily get lost. I searched for a photo by my subject, but the word ‘balance’ didn’t yield what I wanted, so I tried see-saw. Nothing. I tried `edge’ and that brought up images I didn’t expect, (like knives), so I tried `ledge.’ Still nothing. Then I thought of one of the greatest ledges of them all …. the parapets of Notre Dame. And gargoyles. This now became free association at its best.

And so you see the photo I chose, above. This is probably one of the most famous gargoyles in the world; he may even have a name, but I don’t know it. As someone who has been enamored of gargoyles before they became faddish and fairly common garden statuary, I have a few of my own; in particular, I have one of the Notre Dame gargoyles in candlesticks.

I’m in love with this photo. The gargoyle is quietly looking over his beloved city, shrouded in mist … HIS Paris. I look with him. And I contemplate the wonder of it all … the beauty and richness of life and the sometimes pain;  the inescapability of responsibility and the luxury of letting it all go to become steeped in daydreams; being surely anchored in cement and that violent shrug in which we break free and fly.

So yes … balance.

NJ SCBWI June Conference Approaches

/ still a dreamer

Today I was fortunate to find the following quote by Thoreau:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will put something behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, or the old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense; and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”

What does this have to do with the upcoming June SCBWI Conference? I find, and have found in years past, that as this wonderful event approaches, many of those attending who will be meeting with agents, editors and/or art directors start moving into a “do or die” mental state. It is as if this opportunity to be critiqued by a professional in the children’s book field is the very last chance on earth to get published. Of course, we know that this isn’t true, but the stress that starts to build up before the conference is enormous.

Yes, there are deadlines to get work in; the manuscript deadline has passed, and the deadlines for intensive attendees may have also. For those if us participating in the juried art show and/or portfolio display, and/or prepping dummies and illustrations,  the heat is on. And writers now start questioning the worthiness of their submitted stories. I struggle, at times, with some of this myself, trying to keep a balance between preparation for the June Conference and the rest of my life, and a perspective on it all.

I want to arrive at the conference serene and confident. How about you?

The quote by Thoreau helped jog it all back in perspective for me. All we can do is our very best. Let’s keep our eyes on our dreams and not get mired down in perfection, a need for approval or to be published this minute, or whatever runs amok through our minds at times like these.

Nothing is stopping us from advancing confidently in the direction of our dreams and endeavoring to live the lives which we have imagined right now. It’s a daily practice, thinking this way, but it sure beats the alternative – becoming mired in baseless fear and crippling stress. Cheers to success! See you at the June Conference!