Category Archives: creativity

Fern and the Art of Living

Posted on by authorcarriecox

The South has awesome oak trees. Amid the branches you can often see moss, ferns, and other creeping plants growing. Government Street in Mobile, AL is lined with fabulous live oaks—their trunks and main branches support leafy green ferns and mosses. (Mental note: take picture next time I’m downtown.)

The past two years, one of the water oaks in our backyard has been home to a struggling fern of its own. We have plenty of moss/other fuzzy stuff on the different trees.
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But, for some reason, the fern is magical to me. Maybe because it conjures images of faerie laden forests or a tropical getaway. Or the fact that the odds of a plant growing out of rough, tree bark is inspiring. If the fern can cling to life, then I can stick with my goals, right?
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Whatever the meaning, I’ve made a goal of supporting the fern. Hopefully the plant, and my goals, will flourish when the summer heat arrives.

Images and Words

Posted on by authorcarriecox

“Reality lies beyond the horizon…” That’s been my mantra for over half my life. The saying—yes, with the ellipsis because it proves that reality isn’t final in this moment—came about the same time as my self-appointed nickname “Wonderwegian.”

When I was seventeen I dubbed my room WONDERLAND and inhabited my kingdom with Wonderlonians. I’ll omit the embarrassing titles I gave my favorite people but let you know I had everything from court jesters to royal exiles. And Wonderland was covered with pictures of people, places and artwork that inspired me. I even had items hanging from the ceiling!

Besides covering my walls with images, I placed several quotes in key locations. Most were hand written in calligraphy on index cards and they were everything from lyrics to writing quotes. One of them stated “Reality lies beyond the horizon… -Wonderwegian.” There was also a paragraph-length exposition on that theme I wrote with the input of my pen pal Justin Williams, but I can’t locate it right now. (However Justin did locate me on Facebook two years ago. Hello!)

I’ve tried to “grow-up” décor wise since getting married and what was once a room-size collage is now crammed onto an 8×5 bulletin board. I’m wondering if increasing the space of visually inspiring images would produce more written work.

What are your thoughts?

Can you work in a room like that (okay, maybe minus the Nelson poster—though it does have three autographs now) or do you need calming negative space?

P.S. If you insist in knowing, I’ll give you one title: Thor was guardian of the realm.

Creativity in all Forms

Posted on by authorcarriecox

I’ve focused on creative projects—other than writing—during July. Part of the reason was a house full of kids, but the other was to reset my thinking between novels. It’s been close to five months since I’ve written anything on my historical project, FORTITUDE, and I needed to distance myself from CORRODED.

The main productivity has been in the yarn department: knitting like crazy for my ever growing list of people who want gauntlets (fingerless gloves.) If you check out my Pinterest board for knitting at http://pinterest.com/wonderwegian/yarntastic-knits/ you can see the pattern I’m using as a reference.

Last week I did dabble in knitting Barbie bathing suits, but I’ll save myself the humiliation of posting a picture of them. They are more like long tube tops. Enough said.

The past two days have been all about miniatures. My fourteen year old son (on the autism spectrum) got a dollhouse kit for his birthday.

He’s wanted a dollhouse all year—and we’re cool with that. I think it has something to do with Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice, but I already let him know he can’t smash things up.

 

 

 

So, with the help of my wonderful guy, we built the house.

His favorite parts were choosing the paint colors at the store and then gluing on all the shingles. And yes, he loves “Bear in the Big Blue House” if you couldn’t tell.

 

Now I’m back to writing—just in time for Laurie Halse Anderson’s Write Fifteen Minutes a Day Challenge in August. Follow her blog here: www.madwomanintheforest.com/blog for daily tidbits and encouragement for the next thirty days.

 

P.S. I haven’t been posting what I’m reading here because I’ve been doing so at www.facebook.com/authorcarriecox so be sure to check there for more regular updates.

Attack of the Writer Blob Blog

Posted on by authorcarriecox
I’ve noticed that my production level tapers off the last half of the week and I need to do something about it.
Maybe it’s the fact that I typically bake on Wednesdays, so I have a cookie hangover Thursdays.
Or the several late nights of research and writing builds up and my system crashes for a day (or two) to reset itself.
Add that to the fact that I haven’t officially exercised in about two months and you get attack of the writer blob blog.
My original Cookie Monster Blob:

Until the next time, you can see what books I’m reading, what cookies I’m eating, and what I’m working on at www.facebook.com/AuthorCarrieCox