Author AND Potter

Don't get me wrong, I still love to write. I still love words and weaving them together. BUT. Because the publishing side of things can be soul-sucking and life-draining, I've had to step back from it. My mental health was struggling, big time. My soul had become bitter, envious, angry. I didn't like who I was anymore, nor how I felt about ... everything. 

SO! I let it go. How that felt? Terrifying. Then vindictive. Then liberating. A metaphor: if my writing had been a bundle of paper, each sheet inscribed with a living cell from my heart, putting it aside was comparable to tossing the bundle over the rail of the Rio Grande Gorge bridge and watching the pages (and my heart) scatter to the winds.

I couldn't breathe for a while. Didn't know who or what I was. Realized it was a stupid, detrimental thing to put so much meaning and identity into something that never met my hopes and expectations. A real esteem-killer. No wonder I'd been crumbling for years.

Me cheesing it amid the Rio
Grande Bridge, Taos, NM

In the void that followed, I picked up an old hobby: pottery. My tools had been packed away, my wheel and kiln had both become shelves for storing odds and ends. My glazes had dried up, and my buckets of clay had to be rehydrated under sopping wet towels.

Once all that gear had been excavated, my hands had to relearn how to shape mud into something usable, if not quite pretty. I was astonished by how my heart came alive. If publishing had become soul-sucking, pottery was life-giving. A year later, I have a successful Etsy store (it's called Candletree Clay), a renewed heart, a happy soul, and no more mental health crises.

So I'll be posting about my pottery journey now too. Maybe I need to rename this blog as something like Clayshaper? Or maybe Wordweaver/Clayshaper? 

Anyway, a few pics of what I've made with mud lately:

   

 

  

Find my Etsy store at Candletree Clay.

A Change of Seasons

A big summer with lots of changes afoot. First, seven years of working on my novel project came to a close. First anchor raised. Second, on Saturday night I closed LegendFire's doors, after 8 years of caring for the community. Second anchor raised.

Tough changes but good ones. There are times I definitely feel adrift in unsteady waters, without a compass or land in sight. Scary, depressing, exhilarating.

Third, I turned 40 this September. Very little that I had hoped for or imagined about my life has turned out. Terrifying.

Right now all possibilities are on the table. So much freedom is overwhelming and a bit daunting. Attempts to write new things have been hit and miss. My brain is fighting for rest, and I try to be gentle and grant it. But I can't just wait for new inspiration to strike. Been playing with a story about my tragic bard. Submitting his first adventure. No luck so far. Almost but not quite a couple of times. It's a novella, though, so no surprise. There just aren't enough markets for fiction that length.

Also trying to become involved in a couple of other writing forums. None will feel like home, I'm afraid unless I'm willing to dive in all the way and get my hands dirty with discussions and crits. ... Betting I need time away from that sort of thing, too. Nothing wrong with a vacay to recharge the desire to help humanity and seek help in return.

In the meantime, lots of prayer, lots of Bible study, lots of meditation and refocusing about life.

So seasons change. The trick is to find joy in the shifting colors.