Open Any Vein...

Another book post.  (I had one of my William Morris/Thursday posts lined up, but Jules isn't hosting her usual link-up this week.)

So instead, I'll tell you what I ordered on Amazon Prime last night.  (Amazon Prime is an awfully cool and addictive thing, and as a result, we get deliveries nearly every day. 98% are for my husband, who always wants needs some small electronic component or geegaw, either for work or the house.)  (And for sure, nobody paid me a dime to say that.)

I ordered Julia Cameron's Vein of Gold, another of her books on creative exercises and mind tricks to get yourself writing (or painting, or dancing, whatever your creative itch may be). I never buy diet books, or self-help books, or any of the sort of non-fiction, commercial "life changing" twaddle that's always stacked up in the front of my local Barnes & Noble.  (Okay, so a long time ago, I bought a Depak Chopra book.  For years afterward, my husband teased me about the status of my "vata.")   But Julia Cameron has been very helpful to me in getting motivated and tackling my fears in the creative realm.  I've about wrung all the inspiration I can get out of The Artist's Way, so it's time for a new infusion of butt-kicking.  And the reviews I've read on Vein of Gold make it sound like it's very good for "taking it to the next level."

Since the beginning of the year, and my renewed dedication to the blog, I've been so immersed in the blog and the internet and trying to find my online groove that I've sorely ignored what I consider my true writing self.  After I lost my handwritten essay back in September, something soured in me and I stopped writing. It's stupid. I wish I wasn't such a timid, twitchy little forest creature when it comes to writing, but I am: I come out into the sun-filled meadow of writing, and then some small event (or thought process) scares me, and back I dive into the underbrush.

So I ordered the Vein of Gold to whip me into shape, to force some self-discipline into my days. I'll post an update on my progress sometime & let you know how that goes.

Second, I ordered Planting Dandelions, by Kyran Pittman. Pittman's writing trajectory from poet, to mom, to blogger, to writing some articles for Good Housekeeping and then getting a book deal, is one that I can certainly relate to, and certainly admire. I'd been a fan of her old blog for a long time, and it was exciting to see it all unfolding in real time, the hard times, the doubts, and then the opportunities that have since come her way.  It's time that I finally read her memoir, now that's it been out for over a year.

Image from kyranpittman.com

I'm still working through my library haul, so it'll be a couple of weeks before I get to Pittman's book. But I hope to crack open and start tackling Vein of Gold right away.  Crap, you know what that means: morning pages, here I come.