Reminders for myself

Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.

- Bird By Bird

In order to be an artist, I must:

Show up at the page. Use the page to rest, to dream, to try.

Set small and gentle goals and meet them.

Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.

Remember that it is my work to do the work, not judge the work.

“Your day’s work might turn out to have been a mess. So what? Vonnegut said, ‘When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth’. So go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to BE an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

Leap, and the net will appear.

- The Artists Way

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

- Georgia O’Keefe

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.

- Shakti Gawain

"Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things."

- Ray Bradbury