Getting Creative... in a new way!

Hi everyone! Danica Favorite here. Recently I had the opportunity to attend a class on art journaling. I've always been fascinated by creativity and creative pursuits- obviously, because I'm a writer. But visual art is something that's always been something I've been afraid of. I'll be honest. I'm not a great artist. I have never been able to do anything in a straight line. But when my friend said she wanted to teach a class on art journaling, I was curious and signed up.

Wow! What a freeing experience! I am in love! The first thing I learned is that you don't have to be good to make art. It reminded me of an art phase I was in while in college. I painted and colored, and did all sorts of artsy things. But I stopped when people told me I wasn't very good at it. Well, I'm not good at it. I'll never win awards or make any money with my art, but you know what? It felt good.

So I've signed up for more art journaling classes. I am in heaven. I'm learning to make my mistakes beautiful and, even better, I'm learning a lot about how to incorporate art into my spiritual life. Even though my kids look at the stuff I'm making and politely tell me it's interesting (code for, can you be any worse at this?), I am so happy!

The photo you see is one of my first attempts at creative lettering. I'm finding it addictive, to be perfectly honest. When I did my first one, I realized that I used to doodle like this all the time. For whatever reason, I stopped, but now that I've learned about art journaling, I'm going to do even more!

Are you an artist? Do you have an art journal? I'm curious to hear what your experiences with art are.

Ask Elnora--About Building a Book??Lenora Worth

If I had a hammer.... We all know that song, right? Lately, Elnora has heard a whole lot of hammering going on. Big Daddy has single-handedly renovated our retirement condo here on the bay in Florida. I know this because while I write my chapters, he's downstairs working away on everything from carpet to tile to bathroom fixtures to paint and then he starts it all over again. He has suffered through with cuts, bruises, a hurting back and yesterday, he drilled his thumb. Not a pretty picture. He and a friend built a closet underneath the stairs, too. Amazing! That got me to thinking about how we write. Maybe we use some of the same tools but in a different way. We build our stories, word by word. We use certain tools to do certain things. For example, we hammer away at creating an outline or synopsis then we take that and make a blueprint of what we want to create. Following that blueprint (kind of) we lay out the foundation and measure off the needed space. Then we take patterns (formulas) and saw away until we have the right shape for our words. We put the whole thing together by hammering away, holding things together with plot points sort of like nails and glue hold a house together. Then we tread on the carpet. Pacing is always important, especially when building up to the end. We tend to level off and stay on task, but we are always editing and tweaking in the same someone does when creating a room. We rearrange here and move a piece there to make things match up, but we keep an eye on the whole overall creation to make sure it flows and looks pretty. We build up walls with our characters then tear them down to get to the foundation of a character's roots. We open doors where walls once stood and we go down paths where no one has ventured before. We build communities and new worlds and we explore frontiers and start all over from scratch. While writers don't drill holes in our thumbs, we do drill ourselves at workshops and with "how-to" books because just like a true carpenter, we never tire of creating. So let's discuss--building books? What are some of your favorite tools? And who amongst us has the cutest tool box?? Are you a carpenter or are you a design specialist? Architect or contractor? If we build a good story, they will come. What do you think??