chronicled & illustrated

Time for review!

I got away from blogging and even writing for The PCQ last year. I do not feel apologetic about it however. That’s because 2008 was one of the most successfully creative and full of my life.

One of the reasons for this is collaboration. Two of the projects that took a lot of my time were done with other creative people…some local and others far-flung.

The local one was the time-consuming and totally exciting collaboration between myself and fellow writers, Sherry Ramsey and Julie Serroul. Under the auspices of our Third Person Press, we spent untold hours reading, editing, talking about, re-editing, and polishing fourteen stories for our first release: Undercurrents. The process was enriching on many different levels. Most importantly: our friendship and respect for one another was deepened. Secondly, I learned so much not only about editing but also about writing. I felt that I was immersed in the short story for the year and it was good. I learned how difficult it is to write an excellent story! There are many pitfalls. But I also renewed my experience that with diligence, these are problems that can be corrected and good stories will rise up out of those pits.

The book was launched very successfully at the beginning of December. The promotional part of this project has been the hardest for all of us. We’re writers, not promoters! But we did it and are learning about that—as with all of this—as we go. Sales through December were way in excess of what we expected and we hope to continue to sell books through the year and beyond. See the previous post for a promotional video that Sherry put together.

Oh and I must mention that my two partners were kind enough to let me do the cover design! It was SO fun and a lot of people have commented on how much they like it. We don’t necessarily want people to judge our book by its cover but we don’t really mind if they buy it because of it! Again, I learned so much from doing it.

Further good news is that we enjoyed the process enough that we’re talking about the next one. JUST talking!

In addition to writing and revising (at least 12 times) a story for the anthology, I also wrote two others, entered a Writer’s Federation contest (no, I didn’t win anything but I was happy to get something sent off!) and began a YA novel that I—so far—love.

The other creative collaboration was a fiber art round robin done under the direction of arlee barr. This was the second round (I didn’t participate in the first) of an Exquisite Corpse project. Each person drew a design on a piece of fabric and divided it into six sections. We ‘filled in’ one section with fabric artistry and then covered it up and sent it to the next person on our list (Hi Anne Marie in Ontario!). They did the same and so on and so on until each one finally came back to the originator. Then we each got/get to uncover all the artistry and see what the results are!

I have yet to get mine…but I understand it’s in the mail (Hi Carol in Wales!) Ones I’ve seen so far have been amazing and beautiful. But again, more importantly, the process has been so good for me. I’ve never done anything like this, though I’ve always loved fabric, fiber art and have done many many kinds over the years. For me, it meant getting away from the computer and doing art. Each piece is small and doable and there’s a deadline which means I couldn’t let it go or get too busy. It was perfect! Thank you arlee and all the members of my group for a perfectly delightful creative endeavour. I loved it no matter what the end product looks like. And speaking of that, it’s been a bit excruciating not to be able to post photos of the work as I’ve done it! More posts will follow with the work and links to the other artist’s sites. Here’s arlee’s exquisite corpse blog.

Here’s one of my piece before I sent it to anyone else:

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under art, collaboration, creativity, fiber art, fiction, processing, projects, publishing, self-evolution, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.