Sunday Salon - Get Caught Reading and Creative Beginnings Month

Get Caught Reading

Yes, May is Get Caught Reading month as well as Creative Beginnings Month.   Can't imagine anything better than reading or being creative. Speaking of creativity, for ROW80 (A Round of Words in 80 days) I'm still working on first draft of Red Thief.  It's going a bit slowly and shame on me, but I didn't work on it every single day this week.  Kind of an off week. Check out how everyone else is doing here. 

 

I just finished reading "The Sandalwood Tree" by Elle Newmark and will be posting my review on Tuesday.  Excellent historical fiction novel set in India during two time periods - the 1840's and 1940's.    Now I want to read her other books "The Book of Unholy Mischief" and "The Chief's Apprentice."   And guess what, Elle has written a guest post for me about her travels in India while researching "The Sandalwood Tree" which will be live on Wednesday. 

My book buying ban seems to have disappeared with the April winds.  Yesterday, I went to Bereans to pick up "What's in the Bible 5" dvd for James which unfortunately they didn't have.  Instead  I picked up favorite author books  "The Priest's Graveyard" by Ted Dekker, "Tenth Stone" by Bodie Thoene, "Out of Time" by Alton Gansky".  Also a couple authors I haven't read yet - Alister McGrath's "The Aedyn Chronicles" and Robin Hatcher's "Fit to be Tied." 

I just finished Week 10 of The Artist's Way - Recovering a Sense of Self Protection.  It's all about the dangers of the trail and creative roadblocks we place in front of ourselves.  Cameron talks about how 'fame' and 'competition' are spiritual drugs. 

"Fame encourages us to believe that if it hasn't happened yet, it won't happen.  Of course, it is fame.  Fame is not the same as success and in our true souls we know that.  We know--and have felt--success at the end of a good day's work.  But fame?  It is addictive and it always leaves us hungry....   The point of the work is the work.  Fame interferes with that perception. (pg 171)

"Competition is another spiritual drug.  When we focus on competition we poison our own well, impede our own progress.  When we are ogling the accomplishments of others, we take our eye away from our own through line.  We ask ourselves the wrong questions, and those wrong questions, give us the wrong answers.  

As artists we can't afford to think about who is getting ahead of us and how they don't deserve it.  The desire to be better than can choke off the simple desire to be.  As artists we cannot afford this thinking.  It leads us away from our own voices and choices and into a defensive game that centers outside of ourselves and our sphere of influence.  It asks us to define our own creativity in terms of someone else's.  (pg 173)

So true and it is hard not to compare yourself to others.  The grass is always greener mentality seeps through, tainting the well of inspiration.   Cameron says it best:

"If the demand to be original still troubles you, remember this:  each of us is our own country, an interesting place to visit.  It is the accurate mapping out of our own creative interests that invites the term original.  We are the origin of our art, its homeland.  Viewed this way, originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves." (pg 174)

Speaking of creativity, James has started  a blog called Bowser Jr.'s Fan Fiction.  Check out his latest entry.

This week theme for Read 52 Books in 52 weeks is Q is for Queen.  Interesting tidbits about the monarchy.  The British Monarchy website is very interesting, fascinating and educational.


I'm excited.  I got one of these:

Except I didn't get a white one. It came out the day after I ordered my phone.   I'm having a lot of fun exploring and playing, discovering all kinds of interesting apps.  The only thing I'm miffed about.  I didn't find out (and must have missed it in the small print somewhere) that the fee for the Internet Hotspot is $20.00 extra a month.  *face palm*   Oh well. It's worth it in order to have internet where ever I go. 

Happy Reading!