Canvases for Creativity

In later years, when I wonder why I accomplished so little creatively this summer, let me remember the other creative projects--specifically, the house.

Yesterday I wrote an e-mail to a friend.  We both live in the same county, but it's harder and harder to carve out time to see each other.  She and her spouse share a car, and they're both working, and my job requires more and more hours.  So we e-mail each other, as if we lived hours away.

As I made a list of all we've been doing in terms of the Great Housing Project, I thought, I have been creative, but it's seldom been my writing in the past two months.  We spent a chunk of time yesterday contemplating wood stain colors.  Over the week-end, we spent a chunk of time thinking about Corian countertop colors and ordering some samples--when they arrived yesterday, we spent time last night moving them around and staring at them.

Soon, this phase of the Great Housing Project will come to a close, and we'll spend days moving the furniture again--but at the end of that moving, I'll be back to having a writing space where I can have the lights on in the morning.  I didn't realize how much parts of my writing and revising process requires the lights be on.   I still draft my poems on paper first.  I revise my fiction by looking at the rough draft on a page and making handwritten notes to be typed in later.

This week-end, while I'm still drafting in the dark, let me return to a short story that I'm writing.  My past week of blogging has showed me that I can write this kind of draft without the lights on.  I have a few weeks before the pace of my online classes picks up again.  I'd really like to get something new written.

During these past weeks of upheaval on the home front, I've really been grateful for creative time at church.  A few weeks ago, we painted canvases to prep them.  It was so satisfying to blend different shades of green together.

I am now surrounded by walls and a ceiling that need paint, but that won't be the same kind of thrill.  I don't think I'm brave enough to experiment with the canvas of a house as I am when it comes to my sketchbook or a canvas.