Cross Training in Creativity

I have tried keeping different types of more visual journals before.  Once in the mid-90's, I tried collecting images from magazines and gluing them into a sketchbook.  They were not exactly revelatory--I realized that I wanted a slimmer body, different furnishings, different destinations--but I already knew that.

I've tried keeping a journal of sketches several times through the decades, but it's usually lasted a day or two or three.

What is different this time?  Why have I come back from the Create in Me retreat with not just one, but 2, new journaling disciplines that I'm still keeping 5 weeks later.

I'm still keeping a dream journal.  I'm sketching with colored markers several times a week.  I've also been keeping up with an offline journal that I started during my retreat week.

Part of it is the colored markers that I bought.  A large part, in fact.  I hope that habit will carry me forward once the novelty of the markers wears off.  I think it will.

I worry about my limited time, that time spent sketching means time I'm not writing poems.  But I also know that creativity in one area feeds creativity in other areas--a sort of cross training, if you will.

Yesterday I noticed that I had bought 2 markers that were the same color--I spent several hours feeling bad, since I could have had a different color.  I finally called the store, who said, "Sure.  You can exchange it for a different color."

Last night, I returned to a sketch I started earlier.  I had written some responses to the refrain of the song, which I thought was rather simplistic.  The Spirit often says go, and people refuse to hear.  But I didn't like the rebuttals, so I drew over them.  Then I kept filling in white spaces, and ended up with this:

I still wonder if it's too busy, too frenetic.  But for now, I'm just sketching and trying not to judge.  I worry that I'm repeating the same, basic sets of shapes.  But it's soothing, so I'm not going to second guess myself now.

And at some point in the next day or two, I plan to write both a fiction piece and then rework it into a poem:  I plan to write about the angel Gabriel who is having an identity crisis.  Has he been in the wrong career field?  Is he really a devil trapped in an angel's body, or does he just want different work?  I'll write it up as fiction for our Purgatory project, and then I'll see about the poem possibilities.

 

Is writing in the voice of an angel really so different from writing in the voice of God?  In the voice of an HR director?  Those are voices I've tried on during the course of our Purgatory project.

 

Stay tuned!