Our First Guest Chick

The 4 Chicks are delighted to welcome their first Guest Chick!  Shelby is a talented photographer in the Orlando area.  Here, she discusses with the Chicks how she ended up on this creative path and what she loves about it.  To see some of Shelby’s amazing work, visit http://www.simplyshelbyphoto.com.

Make Something of Yourself

The 4 Chicks Chat about Julia Cameron’s Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity – Chapter 3: Discovering a Sense of Perspective

“The readings and talks of this week aim at detoxifying your thinking regarding the arts and your place as an artist in our society.  Art is tonic and medicinal for us all.  As an artist, you are a cultural healer.” ~Julia Cameron

This week, the Chicks looked beyond the barriers in their way, used their frustration as fuel, and made a slightly, er… different video.  As always, they shared their candid thoughts with each other, and with you, dear reader, about the art they are making and the artists they are becoming.  What are you making, and making of yourself, this week?   

Vision Board Resurrected

Like my fellow Chicks Eva and Tracey, I finally saved my vision board from a dusty netherworld.  Mine was in the corner of my office behind my sofa side table. 

What does it mean that I relegated it there?   That I am not taking my own vision seriously enough?   That I fear others will scoff at my dreams?   Maybe and definitely yes and probably much more.  I now have it by my bookshelf where I can see it more easily.  It’s not mounted, framed and lit, but if  others look around when they come into my office, they can see it too.   And now, anyone who looks at this post can see at least a corner of it.

I love looking at it.  Every picture on it speaks to me.  Which is why I guess it made it to my vision board in the first place.   What will others think when they see it?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is what I see.  And that I’m inspired by it.

Believing Mirrors

The 4 Chicks Chat about Julia Cameron’s Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity – Chapter 2: Discovering a Sense of Proportion

Recently, my dear Chicks sought out self-definition as they discussed mirrors. No, not the mirror on the bathroom wall. The mirror that reflects who we are meant to be as an artist. What they found is that they share something in common – each other as Believing Mirrors.  If they look hard enough, they will see the possibilities of what they can become, of what they truly are.

Try looking into your Believing Mirror and find the inspiration, the creativity, the artist within yourself.

Expand Your Creative Identity

The 4 Chicks Chat about Chapter 2: Discovering a Sense of Proportion (PART 1)

This [chapter] inaugurates an ongoing process of self-definition.  As you redraw the boundaries and limits within which you have lived, you draw yourself to a fuller size. Coming into ourselves, we sometimes encounter resistance from those in our immediate environment.  The readings and tasks of this week aim at bolstering the sense of a realistic self in the face of difficulty and even discounting.

– Julia Cameron, Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity

If you’re burning to find me–the Muse–YOU can be a part of  the Chick Chat, too.  Here’s how to play at home:

1. The 4 Chicks read a chapter.
2. The Chicks meet and discuss the chapter.
3. Over the next month or so, the Chicks do the tasks in the chapter and blog about it along the way.
4. You’re invited to do the same and/or comment on the blog, sharing your own experiences and Chick Stories.
5. You may even consider starting your own 4 Chicks group to simultaneously work through either this book or its prequel, Cameron’s ground-breaking The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.

I’m waiting for you to find me…

An Author? A Writer? What Am I?

I just stumbled upon this great question on the front page of WordPress.com: So Am I An Author Yet?

My natural curiosity just wouldn’t let me continue on with my own task.  I had to follow that link.  Because this is a question we who write struggle with constantly.   Er… I was going to say “we who have not been published” but then caught myself.

Why do I see myself that way — as someone who has not been published?  I have been published: one article in a national trade journal and a couple of articles in a now well-established and popular niche blog.   And yet, I feel the need to say “that’s all.”   Why??   It’s not a lot, but it’s a start, isn’t it?  Do I devalue it simply because it wasn’t a book or an article in the Atlantic or a national consumer magazine?

Am I an author?  Am I a writer?  What am I?  And who decides?  You see my struggle.

Anyway, back to that link…At the end of it I found a great post by C-C Lester.  She expressed the writer/author identity struggle eloquently and, ironically, it made me identify with her.  Aha!  I thought.  She’s one of us. In C-C, I recognized a kinswoman.  A woman-writer-perhaps-author chasing the muse, who also recently decided to share her story with the world via the blogosphere.   C-C and I, we may not know what to call ourselves, but we know that writing is an inseparable part of who we are.

An author?  A writer?  Who knows?  Who cares?  I write.  Period.

To read C-C’s post, click here: http://theelementarycircle.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/so-am-i-an-author-yet/