prompts

Challenge completion, continue

| Sheree

A couple of days ago, I completed the 30 day sketchbook challenge, successfully. Not a day missed.

I’m really proud of this achievement as it proves to myself that I can turn up for my art-making consistently. That I can use my sketchbook as a place of play and wonder. A place to take risks, safely.

The importance I place on the creative sketchbook practice is immense but not to the point of paralysing myself and then not creating out of fear of failure.

The plan is to continue the practice. And I have been turning up each day since. I’ve been using my own prompts, following my curiosity, leaning into my own style. Listening to my voice.

The original course came with an additional 30 prompts. So I’ll start them when I run out of my own ideas. Then I can also restart the original course again and then explore a comparison between the creations and reflections of the first round with the second.

This is definitely, at the point, turning into an 100 days project, an just saying that as another milestone to meet and to keep myself accountable.

And again, I’ll keep the pages for my eyes only, not ready or even wanting/needing to share the pages I create or to move onto larger, external canvas or panels.

I do not feel the need or the call to create any formal work as yet or share. I’m happy exploring within my sketchbook and following where that takes me within the pages.

I realise that has been where I’ve gone wrong in the past. Skipping the sketchbook phase which I’m thinking is simply like the drafting stage of writing. The loose, trial and error phase, where we’re just playing. I’ve been missing out this phase and going straight to the big stuff, the art put into the world. The exhibitions, the judgments and appreciations.

And what I’ve produced mainly carried little meaning for me or messages for the viewer. I feel that it’s fallen flat and felt like a void. And I think this is because I wasn’t sure of my voice, my style, my meanings and messages.

This is what I’m taking away from this sketchbook practice now. And I’m so enjoying the process and I’m open to what surfaces. But I’m also patient and loyal in terms of showing up and doing the work. I trust all will become clear and strong and full in the process.

Couplets – Open Heart – Day 12

| Sheree

Feel the breeze through the trees. Even the leaves strive

to stay alive. The energy is flowing through you, my love.

Pause and feel its spinning. The way of this world , freedom

is for the taking with every breath, linger

in the outside, the black outside while still enclosed within,

for now.

Welcome to 30 Days of National Poetry Month

| Sheree

It really wasn’t on my radar. But I must have signed up for a co-writing salon with Lemon Grove Writers. And you know how it is, afterwards they send you they send you other emails, sharing the stuff to buy into. Well one such email was sharing that the Lemon Grove Writers were offering a free 30 day poetry prompt email send out for the month of April to coincide with National Poetry Month in the States. As you know I’ve tried a number of years to write a poem a day in April, some years more successful than others.

It’s free, what did I have to lose? So expect to find a poem a day here for the month of April as I try to create something to the given prompt. I begin today with the weather.
If you want to receive these poetry prompts in your inbox, just sign up here. Happy writing.

Spirit of the South

| Sheree

As mentioned at the beginning of this month, when I declared that June was the month of the Mixmoir, going forward I plan to use Mariëlle S. Smith, Fleshing Out The Narrative: A 31-Day Tarot and Journal Challenge for Writers in conjunction with The Earthcraft Oracle Deck by Juliet Diaz and Lorriane Anderson and illustrated by Daniell Boodoo-Fortune in order to get the creative juices flowing.

Using these tools and prompts, not only allows me to create content for the mixmoir but also allow me write around the subject, explore the process and progress. This bit excites me and keeps me engaged. Working out what I’m trying to say at the same times as holding up to the light the rituals and practices I have around writing, is enlightening as well as encouraging. One way of working might work well one day but the next not.

I’ve been using the pomodoro technique with Abao in Tokyo on YouTube. Writing/ working/ practicing for 25 minutes at a time and then taking a 5 minute break, helps with the concentration and productivity. I’m really enjoying the process sandwiches into neat sections of time for a focused amount of time each day. It’s a simple practice which I look forward to and really get engrossed with during the allotted times for writing.

I found it interesting today that I pulled the Spirit of the South card when I was exploring the fire within yesterday and how I’d rather allow it to burn outwards and accept what ever backlash it may bring rather than living in fear of the fire outside consuming/ canceling/ destroying me.

This card came along today, I feel, to reinforce what I’ve been thinking of late, that is to not hold back and to stop finding/ making up excuses for not doing the work/ practice and to crack on and just do it. To follow my dreams, tell my story and to hell with it all.

And here ends the daily cheerleading chant for Sheree and the Mixmoir.