There can never be too many stories. -Gail Carson Levine in Writing Magic.
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Conference week is almost over. I think I am the only one in the building this morning. I was definitely the only one in the parking lot anyway. What a week! Snow, snow, snow. But oh so lovely! I've been shoveling every day, and it is so beautiful--quiet, white, full of mystery and otherworldliness.
I've also been spending a lot of time painting sets for the upcoming school play. It is a bit ironic because I had just started working on another graphic illustration for Black Dragon and was having a bitch of a time getting the perspective right. So then my co-director asked if I'd help on the sets. And what's the big problem? Perspective. My husband finally suggested that I order a few books (yes, HE suggested it! I must have seemed in a bad way because our house is overflowing with my books!) on drawing and perspective. They haven't come yet, but I've been pushing forward anyway with a book called Mastering Perspective for Beginners (from the library--what great places libraries are!).
It is exciting and eye-opening to me to learn all this stuff. Not that I'd take drawing or painting over writing, but it has changed the way I look at things. Yesterday (driving home very slowly in all this snow) I was musing on my life. I know, I think too much. But this was good--or at least, not bad. I was thinking about how, given my viewpoint, things like politics and the economy and the war in Iraq can seem so... overwhelming, huge, scary, horrible.... But if one were to change the viewpoint and stretch the vanishing lines (parallel lines that intersect at some point--sometimes outside the picture) to infinite, then the whole picture changes. My life, the majority of the picture according to my viewpoint, becomes nothing but a dab of paint in the whole of an incredible masterpiece. Only someone with a viewpoint of eternity could see what part it plays in the whole.
Okay, so I don't know if any of that made any sense, but maybe, just maybe it changed my perspective just a little. I'm crazy busy with this play and new writing class I'm co-teaching, but sometimes it's good to be stretched. (hurts a little though--although, come to think of it, that might be all the shoveling!)
Looking forward to Khardomah and a few large chunks of writing time!
3 comments:
Sarah;
I certainly share your perspective on snow. The thing that amazes me, in spite of all the blustering winds, snow stacks in/on all kinds of places. The other morning, taking the dogs out to the kennel, which is made of chain-link fence, snow formed a pattern of small triangles in the bottom portion of each diamond-shaped fence loop.
Or look at how the wind sculpts freeforms along roof lines or along the road. I love snow before anyone leaves tracks in it. Or the two-steps-forward-one-step-back of rabbit waltzing under the light of the moon or just the way the moon reflects off new snow making it seem like day. All enjoyed best watching a fire dance in the stove.
Thursday we got half-way to school--about 15 miles--and heard on the radio Kentwood closed. Had to turn around and take my daughter back home and then go to work. No matter what the roads are like, the idiots still think slowing down is 65 mph.
Barely two weeks to Khardoma. Looking forward to it, but better get writing.
Hey Larry,
This snow is definitely best viewed from by the fire! Too darn cold for me.
"Too darn cold for me."
C'mon. Where's your sense of adventure?
I remember walking to school in February--no it ewasn't uphill both ways--and the air being so cold it prickled my nose. Steam rose off the river below the dam. That was in Rockford when the still had "dam lights" that flooded the ice formations where the water broke over the dam in red, yellow, and blue or green. Nice place to park after a date.
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