Note: Someone on my friends' list said I should make a Fictitious Tits T-shirt, so I did!
Only $17.99 for the regular T-shirt, and $18.99 for the long-sleeved T-shirt.
LIMITED TIME ~ CAMPAIGN ENDS August 12, 2015
Orders filled by Teespring & delivered to your door!
Ladies, show us your (fictitious) tits!
Men, support our (fictitious) tits!
The back of the shirt reads: "The creative feminine voice you've always wanted, but never knew you needed!" http://www.teespring.com/fictitioustits
Women kick ass. Tweak everyone's interest (get it?) and celebrate sisterhood (or support it) by wearing this unique shirt. Countless women around the world create music, art, writing, fiber arts, and everything in between. Fictitious Tits is a nod to all creative women.
What is Fictitious Tits? It's the name I came up with for a female-centric word and music platform, à la Kathleen Hanna's groups Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and The Julie Ruin. Kathleen is not only a musician, but she's also a feminist and a writer.
Fictitious Tits needed to exist outside my imagination. Hell, why not? FT will be a combination of spoken word recordings (since I'm a writer) and electronic music with a decidedly female edge. Once I have several cuts, I'll add them to online outlets like iTunes or Spotify.
Your support will help me reach my goals to make Fictitious Tits a reality to publish/perform both spoken word *and* female-driven music.
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Friday, July 12, 2013
A creative offers up thanks
This week I’ve been humbled by many people who’ve encouraged and supported my creative endeavors, whether it be writing, editing, creative coaching or online course instruction. It’s amazing and humbling. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! Truly, my gratitude knows no bounds.
The creative journey is often a solitary and lonely journey. It’s not an easy one, and the world works against it in so many ways. Some people don’t see it as “real work,” but it most assuredly is. If it was easy, don’t you think everyone would be doing it? But they’re not.
Think of all the products, services and entertainment you wouldn’t have without the creative work of artists, writers, musicians and others who put blood, sweat and soul into contributing to those things and bringing them to life so you may enjoy and learn from them.
Creativity enhances life and exists for the betterment of us as human beings; it speaks to the very depths of our souls and makes our hearts sing. And creativity is not “pie in the sky,” flimsy-whimsy stuff that doesn’t apply to real life. All you see, hear, touch and experience began from a creative spark in some way — even if it’s a product that ultimately landed in the buttoned-down financial offices on Wall Street. Someone has to write those boring technical or procedural manuals for corporations everywhere, right? Business and creativity DO mix and creativity IS essential for innovation, change and improvement, regardless of the industry.
Creativity expresses itself in a myriad of ways, and in a variety of settings. Please encourage and support (in whatever way you can) the creative workers you may know in your own life — especially independent artisans (Etsy and beyond!) of all types. They will be grateful to you (boy, will they!), and you will be doing a fabulous thing for the world in general.
As a freelance writer and editor who has been earning a living from my words and ideas for 16 years (and most freelancers fail after a couple of years, according to most statistics), I humbly offer my appreciation to you.
There are plenty of negative and horrible things that happen in this world, but there are also many amazing and wonderful people and things that happen in this world. This past week has reminded us that Paul and I know many amazing people, and we are incredibly blessed because of it.
Thank you!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Elemental Muse's Word of the Week: zelotic
Welcome to 2011! It's a brand new writing year, and a brand new year for doing all sorts of creative things. This year, one thing I'm doing that's new is Elemental Muse's Word of the Week. It's designed to expand vocabulary and jump-start creativity. How? Here's the idea:
Each week, I'll choose a Word of the Week. I'll post the word on my blogs and on Facebook. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find out what that word means (some of them you'll already know), use that word in a sentence (or a paragraph) and use it to jump-start a freewriting session. Build a short story from it, build an article from it, build *something written* from it. The main thing is to USE that word to think about that the word means, how it feels to you as a writer, how you could use that word in a piece of writing (could be a sentence, could be a longer piece) and go from there.
Now that you've got the idea, here's your FIRST word of the week:
Zelotic
Got it? Great! Now find out what it means (if you don't already know), then use it in a sentence. After that, see where you can go with it! What kind of story can you build around it? Give it a shot!
Have a good week, everyone! :)
Each week, I'll choose a Word of the Week. I'll post the word on my blogs and on Facebook. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find out what that word means (some of them you'll already know), use that word in a sentence (or a paragraph) and use it to jump-start a freewriting session. Build a short story from it, build an article from it, build *something written* from it. The main thing is to USE that word to think about that the word means, how it feels to you as a writer, how you could use that word in a piece of writing (could be a sentence, could be a longer piece) and go from there.
Now that you've got the idea, here's your FIRST word of the week:
Zelotic
Got it? Great! Now find out what it means (if you don't already know), then use it in a sentence. After that, see where you can go with it! What kind of story can you build around it? Give it a shot!
Have a good week, everyone! :)
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Writing and Emotion
Cats. Fire. Nature. Michael Jackson. Cinema. Music. Ghosts. Metaphysics.
What do all of these have in common? These all have evoked an emotional response in me over the past several weeks. In my mind, I've written quite a few blogs, essays or articles about these subjects -- and more. The way my thought process goes, I see, hear, smell, taste something and, invariably, that sensory experience connects to emotions/thoughts and then I'm led on a near-constant journey where the original stimuli branches out and connects to hundreds -- or even thousands -- of other stimuli. It's a never-ending process. And if you aren't a writer, artist, musician or other creative individual, I'm quite sure it could drive you stark raving mad.
Deep down, I'm undeniably an emotional person. Even overly sensitive. People who don't know me well may never guess that since I sometimes come off as stand-offish, distant, detached or blunt, but the truth is that I often display those behaviors because that's my shell of protection. It's a way to avoid getting hurt or used. The layers of shell have built up over decades of being fooled, manipulated and used by people I thought had my best interests in mind, but who didn't. Nonetheless, if you crack and pick off the shell, you'd find a soft inner core that, unless kept in check, reacts to anything and everything through the conduit of emotion. Television news is horrible for me to watch because it doesn't take much to tug on those wispy emotional threads that dangle so precariously inside my heart and soul.
When someone dies, whether I knew them as a person or not, I feel it like a deep, stabbing pain of sadness and regret for a life lost. Rationally, I believe the essence of life, personality and intelligence doesn't end when your physical body dies; after all, I'm a paranormal investigator and founder of a well-known paranormal investigation group in my hometown. Given our personal brushes with paranormal encounters, electronic voice phenomena and videotaped anomalies, I can say with conviction that I do believe that we survive after our corporeal, bodily form has passed. However, even though I believe that, I still mourn when someone passes -- especially when it was a tragic and unexpected surprise. This covers losses of people who were known or unknown to me, as well as celebrities and average people.
The loss of children hit me especially hard, most pointedly in the case of missing and/or exploited children who've been snatched from their homes or off the streets from strangers who turn out to be monstrous murderers. I can't understand people could commit such a heinous, cruel and horrible crimes against such innocent beings. Such cold, heartless and evil acts are beyond my comprehension. As a mother of two wonderful children, I cannot possibly imagine the agonizing sense of loss and unequivocal pain and suffering families of these missing/murdered children have to go through. If you have a heart and a soul of ANY kind, how could you conceive of such an outrageous black act? Then again, criminals such as those must have empty, black souls. Such, to me, is evil incarnate and resident here on earth.
Horror films featuring paranormal phenomena aren't really horror to me; it's the shocking acts of human beings -- living human beings -- that qualify most as horror to me. As I've said quite often, I'm less afraid of the dead or undead than I am of the living. The true embodiment of evil is the sick, twisted, living human who's lurking out there on the streets (or in your own home), not those souls who've passed on to another plane of existence and who are simply trying to get your attention or making their presences known to the living (if they're able to). More on this at another time.
Celebrity deaths elicit the usual sadness in me as does the death of an average person. However, the deaths of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson affected me in ways I hadn't expected. The curious thing is that, even though I respected the artistic talents of both men, I can't say I was a fanatic or hard-core fan of either of them. When Heath died, I called my husband on the phone and was sobbing so hard I could barely speak. Likewise, when I read Michael Jackson had died, I began bawling like a child. I never owned any Heath Ledger movies and I never owned any Michael Jackson albums in my life. I enjoyed Heath's movies and Michael's movies, but my response to their deaths would lead you to believe I'd been a hardcore fan of both. The sting of Heath's death lessened with time, but Michael Jackson's has hit me harder than I imagined -- ever. What was it, I wondered? I sat for hours watching MJ videos, listening to MJ songs, viewing MJ interviews. What was going on?
There were two emotional points going on for me, I figured. The first had to do with accidental and/or unexpected death. The type of death that knocks the wind out of you and leaves you gasping in utter shock. I felt the same way with David Carradine's death, but only after I discovered the cause of his death. These deaths reminded me of how I felt after the accidental death of my first husband in 2001. It was sudden, shocking, unexpected, mind-jarring, incomprehensible. My world -- and my life -- changed forever. I was given a second, different life in the process. Unfortunately, coping with the remnants and ghosts of that first life still lurk like torturous wraiths in the corridors of my soul.
I think it's the combination of sudden and accidental that gets to me the most, probably because it dredges up a huge maelstrom of painful emotion and memories that I have tried, over and over, to leave behind. Each time I read or hear about a tragic, sudden death, the ghosts of my past come back to haunt me. I keep trying to escape the specters of my past, but in doing so I've ignored the fact that you can't really ever do that. You have to make peace with your painful past -- and death itself -- before you can truly move on. I'm still at war and still fighting a battle of epic proportions. I long for complete and total resolution, but so far it's eluded me. I'm at 75 percent, but that last 25 percent is a real tough bitch.
Yes, it doesn't take much to bring tears to my eyes or elicit a lump in my throat. I won't fish because I can't stand to put worms on hooks because of the pain the worms will go through. Yes, I'm a sensitive bleeding heart in a huge way. Animal shelters break my heart because I don't want to leave ANY of the animals there. I can't take them all home, but if I had the power to find all of them homes, I would. Two of my cats I adopted from the shelter. Both of them are black cats, and black cats tend to be abused and abandoned in larger proportions, usually because people think they are evil or they believe that owning them portends of bad things happening to the owner. Pure bunk!
There are countless experiences and subjects that send me over the end into the abyss of deep emotion. This can be both good and bad. It's good in that, as a writer, you must be able to feel and to connect with the feelings of the world and its other inhabitants. It's fortunate because those emotions fuel your muse to write about those subjects, and writing about those subjects can serve as a catalyst for change, or at the least, meaningful dialogue.
The other side of the coin is that emotion, at least for me, can be crippling. If I give into it too much, then I find myself paralyzed and depressed. Once I've reached that stage, I am unable to write until I regain my center and composure. There are things I know I can and should write about, but I am unable to because of the overwhelming emotional connection I have to those subjects. And yet, I know I need to write about them -- not merely for myself, but for others who are dealing with the same issues and/or past events. There is catharsis in writing about such things, but the danger lies in of teetering back into a chasm of despondency.
Where does one find the balance? It does no good to eradicate emotion -- and really, can one do that at all? Emotion, for me, is an integral part of the writing process. I never write about anything unless I can generate emotion about it, whether it's joy, anger, surprise, disgust or [fill in the blank]. If a subject doesn't engender a sense of emotion in me of some sort, then I don't want to bother. But how does one taste of emotion, dip one's proverbial toe in it and swim in its waters without drowning? How does one write with emotion without risking going off the edge and into the painful abyss? I don't have the answer. Yet. Perhaps you do.
Because I am a scribe and a communicator, I have no choice but to keep writing. Because I am a human being, and one with a heart and a soul, I have no choice but to keep feeling and emoting about life, people, things, subjects. I suppose in the end I should consider myself lucky in that many people do not have an outlet for their overwhelming emotions, but I do. It's a gamble as to whether or not I'll be overcome when I'm writing about those emotions connected with an idea or subject, but for now that's a chance I have to take. Let's hope I can keep from drowning in them.
What do all of these have in common? These all have evoked an emotional response in me over the past several weeks. In my mind, I've written quite a few blogs, essays or articles about these subjects -- and more. The way my thought process goes, I see, hear, smell, taste something and, invariably, that sensory experience connects to emotions/thoughts and then I'm led on a near-constant journey where the original stimuli branches out and connects to hundreds -- or even thousands -- of other stimuli. It's a never-ending process. And if you aren't a writer, artist, musician or other creative individual, I'm quite sure it could drive you stark raving mad.
Deep down, I'm undeniably an emotional person. Even overly sensitive. People who don't know me well may never guess that since I sometimes come off as stand-offish, distant, detached or blunt, but the truth is that I often display those behaviors because that's my shell of protection. It's a way to avoid getting hurt or used. The layers of shell have built up over decades of being fooled, manipulated and used by people I thought had my best interests in mind, but who didn't. Nonetheless, if you crack and pick off the shell, you'd find a soft inner core that, unless kept in check, reacts to anything and everything through the conduit of emotion. Television news is horrible for me to watch because it doesn't take much to tug on those wispy emotional threads that dangle so precariously inside my heart and soul.
When someone dies, whether I knew them as a person or not, I feel it like a deep, stabbing pain of sadness and regret for a life lost. Rationally, I believe the essence of life, personality and intelligence doesn't end when your physical body dies; after all, I'm a paranormal investigator and founder of a well-known paranormal investigation group in my hometown. Given our personal brushes with paranormal encounters, electronic voice phenomena and videotaped anomalies, I can say with conviction that I do believe that we survive after our corporeal, bodily form has passed. However, even though I believe that, I still mourn when someone passes -- especially when it was a tragic and unexpected surprise. This covers losses of people who were known or unknown to me, as well as celebrities and average people.
The loss of children hit me especially hard, most pointedly in the case of missing and/or exploited children who've been snatched from their homes or off the streets from strangers who turn out to be monstrous murderers. I can't understand people could commit such a heinous, cruel and horrible crimes against such innocent beings. Such cold, heartless and evil acts are beyond my comprehension. As a mother of two wonderful children, I cannot possibly imagine the agonizing sense of loss and unequivocal pain and suffering families of these missing/murdered children have to go through. If you have a heart and a soul of ANY kind, how could you conceive of such an outrageous black act? Then again, criminals such as those must have empty, black souls. Such, to me, is evil incarnate and resident here on earth.
Horror films featuring paranormal phenomena aren't really horror to me; it's the shocking acts of human beings -- living human beings -- that qualify most as horror to me. As I've said quite often, I'm less afraid of the dead or undead than I am of the living. The true embodiment of evil is the sick, twisted, living human who's lurking out there on the streets (or in your own home), not those souls who've passed on to another plane of existence and who are simply trying to get your attention or making their presences known to the living (if they're able to). More on this at another time.
Celebrity deaths elicit the usual sadness in me as does the death of an average person. However, the deaths of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson affected me in ways I hadn't expected. The curious thing is that, even though I respected the artistic talents of both men, I can't say I was a fanatic or hard-core fan of either of them. When Heath died, I called my husband on the phone and was sobbing so hard I could barely speak. Likewise, when I read Michael Jackson had died, I began bawling like a child. I never owned any Heath Ledger movies and I never owned any Michael Jackson albums in my life. I enjoyed Heath's movies and Michael's movies, but my response to their deaths would lead you to believe I'd been a hardcore fan of both. The sting of Heath's death lessened with time, but Michael Jackson's has hit me harder than I imagined -- ever. What was it, I wondered? I sat for hours watching MJ videos, listening to MJ songs, viewing MJ interviews. What was going on?
There were two emotional points going on for me, I figured. The first had to do with accidental and/or unexpected death. The type of death that knocks the wind out of you and leaves you gasping in utter shock. I felt the same way with David Carradine's death, but only after I discovered the cause of his death. These deaths reminded me of how I felt after the accidental death of my first husband in 2001. It was sudden, shocking, unexpected, mind-jarring, incomprehensible. My world -- and my life -- changed forever. I was given a second, different life in the process. Unfortunately, coping with the remnants and ghosts of that first life still lurk like torturous wraiths in the corridors of my soul.
I think it's the combination of sudden and accidental that gets to me the most, probably because it dredges up a huge maelstrom of painful emotion and memories that I have tried, over and over, to leave behind. Each time I read or hear about a tragic, sudden death, the ghosts of my past come back to haunt me. I keep trying to escape the specters of my past, but in doing so I've ignored the fact that you can't really ever do that. You have to make peace with your painful past -- and death itself -- before you can truly move on. I'm still at war and still fighting a battle of epic proportions. I long for complete and total resolution, but so far it's eluded me. I'm at 75 percent, but that last 25 percent is a real tough bitch.
Yes, it doesn't take much to bring tears to my eyes or elicit a lump in my throat. I won't fish because I can't stand to put worms on hooks because of the pain the worms will go through. Yes, I'm a sensitive bleeding heart in a huge way. Animal shelters break my heart because I don't want to leave ANY of the animals there. I can't take them all home, but if I had the power to find all of them homes, I would. Two of my cats I adopted from the shelter. Both of them are black cats, and black cats tend to be abused and abandoned in larger proportions, usually because people think they are evil or they believe that owning them portends of bad things happening to the owner. Pure bunk!
There are countless experiences and subjects that send me over the end into the abyss of deep emotion. This can be both good and bad. It's good in that, as a writer, you must be able to feel and to connect with the feelings of the world and its other inhabitants. It's fortunate because those emotions fuel your muse to write about those subjects, and writing about those subjects can serve as a catalyst for change, or at the least, meaningful dialogue.
The other side of the coin is that emotion, at least for me, can be crippling. If I give into it too much, then I find myself paralyzed and depressed. Once I've reached that stage, I am unable to write until I regain my center and composure. There are things I know I can and should write about, but I am unable to because of the overwhelming emotional connection I have to those subjects. And yet, I know I need to write about them -- not merely for myself, but for others who are dealing with the same issues and/or past events. There is catharsis in writing about such things, but the danger lies in of teetering back into a chasm of despondency.
Where does one find the balance? It does no good to eradicate emotion -- and really, can one do that at all? Emotion, for me, is an integral part of the writing process. I never write about anything unless I can generate emotion about it, whether it's joy, anger, surprise, disgust or [fill in the blank]. If a subject doesn't engender a sense of emotion in me of some sort, then I don't want to bother. But how does one taste of emotion, dip one's proverbial toe in it and swim in its waters without drowning? How does one write with emotion without risking going off the edge and into the painful abyss? I don't have the answer. Yet. Perhaps you do.
Because I am a scribe and a communicator, I have no choice but to keep writing. Because I am a human being, and one with a heart and a soul, I have no choice but to keep feeling and emoting about life, people, things, subjects. I suppose in the end I should consider myself lucky in that many people do not have an outlet for their overwhelming emotions, but I do. It's a gamble as to whether or not I'll be overcome when I'm writing about those emotions connected with an idea or subject, but for now that's a chance I have to take. Let's hope I can keep from drowning in them.
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