Eclipses Bring Cookies and Change

Oh my, I can't believe it's December. And not just December, but like, halfway through December.

So sorry it has been a bit of awhile since I last blogged. My boss has gotten some funky new jewelry in at Falkora Jewelry, so I've been writing web copy for pieces like these fun atomic age earrings.

Falkora also had a show at the recent First Fridays in Pittsburgh, on Penn Ave in the Friendship/Garfield area, and was very successful!

I am not sure yet that I totally have the whole Christmas thing in hand this year, but at least I did get some decorations up and baked some sugar cookies today.

Today was also a lunar eclipse, and funnily enough I did hear of two major (or one major, and one semi-major for my family) events that took place today: my dad, stepmom and stepsister got two new kittens (monumental since the deaths of our other two cats), and my cousin got ENGAGED!!

That is the big one. I have been smiling all evening after hearing about it. I haven't met her fiancé yet, but thanks to Facebook I pretty much feel like I know him. I am so happy for both of them.

As winter approaches, we come up with so many reasons to celebrate and try to bring light back to the world. Peace and love and light to you all, dear friends, in the coming days.

*photo courtesy of www.falkorajewelry.com

a bit of fashion, a bit of rain

after what began as a long, stressful week is now finally unwinding to a semi-relaxing weekend. if only it weren't forty degrees and raining. hmm. the wine might have to come out of the fridge.

today i went briefly to the vendor fair and student fashion show, as part of the tail end of Pittsburgh Fashion Week. i do wish i had gone to some of the other events during the week, but alas, they cost a bit of money and that's just what i should not be spending in excess right now.

the vendor fair had a nice collection of jewelry samplings, but it was a bit smaller than i expected. also, my $10 ticket for "general admission," which allowed me to pick one fashion show to attend, seemed a bit pricey considering each show was about 5 minutes long. i was able watch two before they moved us out of the conference room and brought in a new crowd, but even so, in total, my $10 got me about…12-15 minutes of actual fashion catwalk time.

perhaps this is how fashion shows work, however. God knows the New York fashion week is probably zillions of dollars to get into, to view one waif-like model clad in shiny six-inch heels and a couture burlap sack.

on the other hand, the excitement and pride of the student designers, in getting to display their work, was inspiring to see, and reconciled the price and time length issue for me. and their designs were fun–well cut, unique, inspired. and maybe that penn state freshman who's been designing clothes with his mom and grandma since he was 11, will be famous one day, and this was the opportunity that helped foster his confidence to keep designing.

meanwhile, i am starting other new and exciting projects (more to follow on this!). but my fat orange cat has just climbed onto my lap, so for the immediate future, i guess my project is rubbing tummies.

novel: take-off!

finally, having had the first weekend in many where i have some me-time, i am pushing myself to begin to write my novel. i used to write short stories all the time, but as i grew older i somehow felt less creative, like it had all been done before.

now i feel like i have something to say–but to be fair, last year i didn't feel like i quite had anything to say yet. so. it takes time.

as i have never written a novel before, the idea is daunting, even while exciting. i'm starting by using the snowflake method, which is forcing me to think critically about the structure and message of my writing–something that's never easy for most writers, even though non-writers often seem to think that full novels and essays just leak out of our fingertips, onto the keyboard, without any editing required.

below is an excerpt from the couple of pages i have so far.

<><><>

"Happily I go to Amazon.com and start clicking through to the Books section, and then into Astrology. I start scanning through cover images, occasionally clicking on interesting titles like The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, and The Secret Language of Relationships. I’ve actually read this one—or by read, I mean I’ve frequently gone into Barnes & Noble to thumb through it about various astrological relationship combinations. I can’t bring myself to actually buy it, because it only contains about a paragraph on each combination, so you only need it for about five minutes if you’re only reading about your one romantic relationship. Buying it would be an acknowledgement that I’d be requiring it frequently in the future."

writer's block

i feel uncreative. it used to be that my mind would be wandering aimlessly and i'd suddenly have this spark of inspiration, and i'd run over to my computer and quickly write down whatever phrase had come into my head. i could sit and write for hours; the stories seemed to pour out of me in a river of words and everything was fresh and new.

now i sit down and try to write and nothing comes. blank. even recording my day in a journal or in a blog seems trite and mundane. did my life become less exciting, or did i just use to see reality differently?

what is more, lately i look back on most of the things that i wrote and now they seem like crap to me. at least my thesis has some merit–not a whole lot, but some–and i would love to sit down and rethink it. but my fiction, my characters, my plots that i imagined were so unique and witty–they were all just imitations of already published works, other people's genius, poorly mocked by me. i am not a Poet, it seems.

how do writers write as they do? where does that holy fire come from–the flame that supplies all of the energy and wit that becomes translated into the classic novels that stagger me by their greatness? i could never write like austen, or doestoevsky or shakespeare, or faulkner. actually i could write like faulkner but i believe in punctuation. no, that's not fair. he won a nobel prize. anyway, lately i feel bummed that i'm not writing inspired, passionate works about the meaning of life.

maybe because i haven't found out yet what it is.