It’s amazing how restful a clean, empty surface is.

I also did pretty well on personal decluttering – I’m about 7.5 pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the month.

Continuing my Spring Cleaning theme, for April I’m tackling the studio. It’s time for a major reorganization and purge so I can find the floor and the surface of the tables.

I think I may pack up my kaleidoscope supplies for now. I haven’t been making them lately although I think I’ll get back to them eventually. I let myself lose momentum when a couple promising designs didn’t work out, and kits never feel like they’re completely mine. I seem to go through phases anyway – I’ll dig all the stuff out again when inspiration hits.

I want to set up a basic metals station instead. I’m not sure I’ll do much soldering (although I may play with my little butane torch) but I want to at least be able to make sheet metal frames without worrying about metal shavings in my clay.

I always wanted to be a writer. And that’s when I realized that if I didn’t start writing, it was never going to happen. Pretty simple epiphany, huh? But it got me moving.

So, my question for the year is:

Who do you want to be…

Today? Tomorrow?

In ten years?

And this year, I’m going to work on the baby steps to get there.

Writing

• Write every day (or close to it)
• Finish the rough draft of The Median by the end of the month
• Revise my YA princess story Hyacinth
• Submit to at least 25 agents by the end of the year
• NaNoWriMo in November

Art – I’ve been neglecting this for the writing, lately.

• Organize the studio – I do this every so often, but the piles have overtaken me again. I need a clean work space to get inspired and fill it all up again.
• Sculpt a creature that looks like a cross between a tamarin and an anime character (with the big eyes). I want to write a story about them eventually
• Have fun – grab some clay and just play

Life In General

• Declutter/arrange the house so it’s more relaxing
• Eat better (this is what I need to do to lose weight)
• Increase exercise – there’s a gym at work and I’ve been doing some, but I need to do more

Btw, I did pick a word for the year, but I’m not sure I’m going to post it. It’s the right word, and gets me into the right mindset, but I think it’s going to sound sappy and trite if I try to explain it

Winnow

1. to free (grain) from the lighter particles of chaff, dirt, etc., esp. by throwing it into the air and allowing the wind or a forced current of air to blow away impurities.
4. to subject to some process of separating or distinguishing; analyze critically; sift: to winnow a mass of statements.
6. to pursue (a course) with flapping wings in flying.

When I was a kid my family would go up for a week every summer to visit my grandparents, and while we were there, we’d rake blueberries for the family stand.

Then we’d come back and run them through the winnowing machine. A blueberry rake strips the low bush of berries, but that means you get everything: ripe berries, green berries, a few squashed ones from the metal tines of the rake, plus sticks, leaves, and a few spiders.

The winnowing machine has belts and a fan. The green and squashed berries are carried away by the moving belts. Leaves and sticks are blown up and away by the fan. The heavier ripe berries (which is all you want) roll down the belt to be caught in the green quart baskets. And you can’t beat wild New Hampshire blueberries fresh from the fields for taste. The bland cultivated ones around here are nothing in comparison.

It seems like a good word for a year where I want to declutter the house and a few pounds, finish the rough draft of my NaNoWriMo book, and go back and edit another into a final draft and finally try submitting it to agents. I want to take my life and blow away all the time wasters and things that don’t make me happy, and end up with tangy sweet goodness at the end

Other possibles for word of the year:

Savor Mastery Act Complete Completion Baby-Steps Climb Control Refresh Renew Compose Plan Wu-Wei Dream Adventure Brave Concentrate Breathe Declutter If… Joy Create Commit Grow Soar Coalesce Shine Decide Discover Practice Sift Harvest Gather Emerge Refine

I think I’ve finally figured it out. I had to delete one major scene, and restructure a couple others. I also added a new scene with a grizzly bear and her two cubs. Every futuristic story needs a bear attack, right?

I’m at 58,000+ words right now, although that’s including the deleted scenes – they’re in a cuts folder in case I end up using anything from them. The most important thing is that I’ve been writing again and making progress. It’s back to fun again.

I’m not doing too badly with my wordcount but I have a little catching up to do. There’ve been a few things here and there that slowed me down. (I blame it all on the cats)

I’m off to the library with my laptop to get some progress made. The story itself is going along… The wordcount seems to slow down the most when I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

That shouldn’t be a problem at the moment though. Sec (future cops) were just about to capture the bad guy when he did something horribly dastardly and killed most of ‘em off. Now my main character is all by herself and she’s the one who needs to escape….

I picked up some cool silver frames that I plan on using with a sculpted design inside. And I also got some wonderful labradorite beads – I love the way the colors flash in the light. I haven’t decided what to do with them yet, so they’ll probably spend some time in my collection with everything I’ve bought in previous years

I also got some great pewter charms which are made by Green Girl Studios – definitely worth checking out if you don’t know their work. I love the round little hippo I got.

If you’re in New England, drop by the Connecticut Bead Society’s 12th Annual Bead Bazaar.

Sept 12 & 13 – Hours 10am – 5pm
admission $5
The Holiday Inn, 201 Washington Avenue,
North Haven, CT
(Rt 5) Exit 12 off I-91

Official description: Over 40 vendors will offer for sale everything from vintage glass and lampworked beads, semi-precious and freshwater pearls, raku and porcelain, seed beads and silver, polymer clay, beading supplies and much more.

The Southern Connecticut Polymer Clay Guild will be there and we’ll be selling original work by our members – including me. Stop by and visit.

The postcard above shows some of the great work from the rest of the guild. The fox in the lower left is mine.

It’s a nice bead show – the only problem is that I always spend more than I make

Cormorant relief sculpture

My Cormorant relief was accepted into a local exhibit – the Wickford Art Association’s 14th Annual Art Of The Ocean State Open Juried Show. It runs from July 17 – August 12, 2009.

I think cormorants are really interesting birds and I haven’t seen them depicted as much in art. I also wanted to try a looser style with this and just capture the feel of the bird, not every feather.

This was the largest relief I’ve done yet. It’s 12 inches high and sculpted in black Premo.

I added a wash of watered down turquoise acrylic paint to the background, and also used acrylics to highlight the beak and eye. I drybrushed the feathers in dark brown to bring out some of the texture and lift them from the dark background.

I’ve done it once – at the time I picked Delight. It helped me remember to have fun, try new things, and allow myself to take some time just to do what I wanted, and be happy. It’s not a resolution, just a little reminder, but it helps.

I’m not quite sure what I want my word to be this year… I know what I want it to mean. I want it to be all these things rolled into one (only without any associated advertising jingles):

• Seize the day
• Just do it
• One step at a time
• Baby steps
• Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

I want it to remind me that all it takes are little changes to add up to something big. That all I have to do is Start, the rest will come on its own. That if I just take those 5 or 10 minutes here or there, that I can accomplish something, but if I just sit and procrastinate, I never will. One foot forward. One step at a time. But taking time out to slide down the bannister is always allowed.

I want to remember who I am and who I want to be, and “keep on swimming” until I get there. Emergence, Leap, Practice, Accomplish, Do, Action, Begin, Focus, Climb, Stairway? It doesn’t really matter what the word is, as long as it brings the right thoughts to my mind.

And the word that seems to resonate for me right now is Focus.