Moss Whispers

From now on, the drawings/paintings might take me two days instead of one! Lots more detail coming up!  Since these scenes are actual places at The Hillock down in the meadow, they are very fresh in my mind and I find it hard to leave some of the details out! When I later go back and try writing this in prose, it’ll be interesting how it goes!

I’ve been so busy writing and painting that I haven’t taken much time to work on my studio, ACIU. I named it ACIU because that’s my favorite Lithuanian word.  Unfortunately, it’s been so full these last few years, that I haven’t had many times (or especially SPACE!) to create in it! So I’ve brought my $3.oo goodwill light table and paints and supplies into the house and set up ‘camp studio’ on the living room sofa and coffee table bench! Now it’s time to RECLAIM this Studio Space!  

ACIU: Aciu means “thank you”…and to me “it’s thank you every moment!”

It’s quite a menagerie! and I’ll let you in on a big secret, if it won’t scare anyone! It’s a lot like my mind! Actually, may even be better-sorted than my mind, but I’m sure my mind is a little more dynamic!

The drawers are the most organized in sorted. We’ll open them some time later!

Who better to enter the story than Slab, the Potter, who knows every inch of the Hillock, above and below ground. A perfect catalyst for Martha Julia Agnes Adele’s upcoming adventure. And maybe he’ll have some clues to the whereabouts of her shoe! He may need to be toned down a bit to keep him ‘manageable’. He does need to keep rather big hands and feet for digging and tunneling on his hunts for the best clay. Interesting that he doesn’t even have shoestrings to tie on his shoes!

Yesterday and today I have been attending a Picture Book Writer’s Boot Camp online! It has been incredibly motivating and instructional. I’ve so much to learn about writing and illustrating! I now know why I haven’t til now submitted my book to an agent or publisher! It’s incredibly difficult for me to write something as ‘simple’ as a query letter! Perhaps I have stretched a few writing muscles these two days! And now to get back to Martha Julia Agnes Adele. Tonight I’ve been trying to learn more what she looks like, how she moves, sits, thinks, etc. These are a few of her poses, though I haven’t found the one that goes with the next part of her story.

Every spring I so look forward to the first poppy blooms! Here’s the one for this year! My garden has poppy plants popping up all over the place! In another week or two there will be so many!

Hatching stories is quite a process! And sometimes the eggshell waiting period makes perception do unusual things. For instance, in this partially hatched painting, the eggshell also looks like both a sunrise and a sunset, a starting and a finishing.

I know I will hatch through this process, and right now, I am also struggling with what to write. I feel more and more like the little lizard with the egg shell over his head. I can’t see where I am. I can’t see where I’ve been. I can’t see where I’m going. I can’t even see myself in the process at times. And, I can’t see what characters are next to flow through me. It’s a tight feeling. Seems like it should be a freeing feeling… to live in the unknown…to step out not knowing what my foot will find to support me and not knowing which direction to go.

I’m also in a place of waiting…waiting for Apple to get back to me giving me the ‘go ahead’ to publish my first book. Waiting for all the loose ends that I THINK I’ve tightened up to ‘show up’ that way! Waiting for the last few details to fall into place. Waiting to find out what other details I haven’t handled that i don’t know about yet. Waiting to find out how much the next steps will cost. Waiting until something comes together as FINISHED! PUBLISHED! And then, waiting to see if it even matters, if anyone out there enjoys reading it. And probably the biggest ‘waiting’ of all is for me to just let go of it…and move on to what’s next.

And then there’s the unknown of what am I going to write next? I keep pouring over all my words, my reams of things I’ve written, trying to decide which to work on next. Then, I toss them all aside and put a blank page in front of me….and continue the reams…Maybe the illustrating would be more fun! But does it have to always be fun? Dunno…I do want my passion in it.

My passion right now is down at The Hillock. Every day it’s ‘down to the Hillock with Lacy and Francklin and a bucket and my little shovel. It’s really got a life of its own. I’m just working on the ‘infrastructure’…I think that’s the word…the road systems, the misting systems, and interfacing them with the dwellings. Adding dirt, rock, and a little bit of moss here and there. Actually, most of the moss is just spreading from what was already there in the beginning. Setting up ‘waterworks’ for warm weather is important. And the more I’m there, the more I begin to see elements of the story unfolding. What i can’t see is the plot, and some of the characters, and I don’t know who is telling the story. I’m sort of just watching… Maybe the dogs are a part of it…but I don’t think so. Maybe there are animals…again I can’t tell.

The holes… seem to be the most mysterious part of the Hillock. And the ‘unseen’ characters. When are they there? Are they the Twigs at Twilight themselves? I don’t know yet. It’s hard to write a story about characters I don’t see.

Maybe the story IS about the little lizard with the eggshell on his head….
Ohhhh the chaos before it ALL comes together in some shape…meanwhile, I’m just looking and listening for something…signs…sounds…

The Writer’s House is on the northwestern end of The Hillock, just above the World MailBox and below Owl’s Tree. An interesting thing to note is that there are quite a few holes in the ground near the house, with openings about as large as a silver dollar. And there is one hole that is covered with the bottom of a glass bottle, so you can see down into the hole in sort of a magnified way. Or is it so someone could look up from below and see things above in a much larger form? These holes are truly there, but didn’t make it into the camera’s eye…hmmm…wonder if they have something to do with a writer’s point of view? hmmm…

I’m not sure if this little guy is a character in the next story or if he is really just representing how I feel right now…as I’m fine-tuning things on the last book, learning the ropes of self publishing, and hatching ideas for the next one! Hmmm…maybe I should play around with him as a character. Actually there is a dwelling at The Hillock, called The Writer’s House. It’s under Owl’s Tree and just above the community World Mailbox. There’s a small pencil in a green jar attached to the house and quite a few bits of leaf stationery floating around. Children in our neighborhood actually leave little notes in the tiny mailbox. There’s something so magical and life-giving about communicating with the unseen and unknown. Writing in different languages and spellings doesn’t seem to make any difference to the readers. Somehow there are connections with one’s ‘inner knowing’. So this little ‘lizard guy’….must be pretty trusting to be moving about without seeing where he’s going. I know that’s how I’m feeling about this writing process, especially putting it ‘out there’ for everyone (the unknown) to see, even when I can’t see where it is going or I am going. Hmmm…writing inside one’s own egg…walking while writing…trusting while writing…writing while trusting…back to the breathing thing. There must be some light coming through…something that keeps sparking the process. Perhaps there’s an advantage to keeping our eggs over our heads while we’re trying to focus on growing something. Less distractions, only room for emerging thoughts that feed your purpose. Hmmm…a writing egg…more intimate and fueling perhaps than the old writing carrels in libraries. And this little guy’s shell was pretty flexible, more like a breathable space helmet.