A New Day on My Creative Journey – More Lessons Learned

Wendie Donabie ♦ April 13, 2013 ♦ 3 Comments

The older I get the less I seem to know, or perhaps it’s that I realize how much I still need or want to learn. I think the quest to learn and grow keeps us young. When we stop enquiring, investigating, creating, trying something new, we stagnate.

So, here’s one thing I’ve learned this month. I don’t like the WordPress poetry challenge. I thought I would. I love writing poetry but what doesn’t fit for me is the pressure to create one each day. My poems arise from deeply felt emotions and powerful experiences and I can’t stir them up on command. Plus I need to be alone in a quiet place without distractions to write them. At the moment, my life is filled with activity – painting for upcoming art shows, editing and re-writing stories for submission to contests and publications. Not exactly a quiet mental environment. But unlike penning poetry, I am able to write fiction and to some extent paint with noise and activity in me and around me. It’s almost like the busyness helps me to focus. Actually I love to write fiction in noisy coffee shops – maybe it’s also the coffee? 🙂

Is this just weird? Maybe, but I think all Creatives are unique and what works for one may not work for another. It appears I employ different strategies for each pursuit.  The variety keeps me interested in all of them.

This month I’ve also been reminded to be easier on myself. I set a lot of goals for 2013 and I’ve attempted to employ standard goal setting techniques to accomplish them. Those techniques worked well in the business world but aren’t cutting it in the pursuit of my art. I needed a different strategy.

Now I keep an ongoing list of projects with deadlines to keep me on track but each day I choose to work on whatever moves me. This has been effective in eliminating  pressure to produce. Instead I approach my projects relaxed and eager to get at them and surprise, surprise, I’m being productive. My painting and writing time is energizing, exciting, fills me with a passion for life and the strategy is working for me.

What strategies work for you? I’d love to hear from you.

After saying I didn’t like the WordPress poetry challenge, I’d still like to share some of the poetry I’ve created over the years.

Today I selected, Dawn’s First Light, one of a small collection of poems I wrote while spending a few months living in Cape Cod. I hope you enjoy it.

Dawn’s First Light

In dawn’s first light,

the blanket of the sea

sparkles like a tray of diamond dust

and from beneath his watery coverlet,

the ocean giant rolls over,

defying wakefulness.

Floating birds tossed into the air

drift down and settle again

to ride the steady rise and fall

of his deep, full breath,

while along the beach,

sandpipers chatter after the retreating surf

snatching up breakfast morsels.

Gulls nesting on the sand

reluctantly lift heads from downy warmth,

blink at the rising sun,

stand and stretch wings and voices,

screech complaints of dawn’s too early arrival

then soar, silver-winged into the light.

© Wendie Donabie