Writing: I haven’t written for a couple of weeks as I planned a research trip, got ready for a class, and did some family babysitting in my role as grandmother. So the story feels far away. It’s like climbing back on a wild horse to write at it again. Horse is out there in the corral bucking and snorting, and I’m sitting on the fence looking at it and thinking, I can’t ride that. Can and will. Have before, but it never gets any easier.
Teaching: Leading an Artist’s Way. Not doing it the length Ms. Cameron suggests, but Rice U. makes the rules. We’ll be at it six weeks. Everyone is so eager and interested. I’m in love with them all. Morning Pages I will do. It’s the Artist’s Date that’s hard for me. As Ms. Cameron says, “We hunger for what might be called creative living—an expanded sense of creativity in our business lives, in sharing with our children, our spouse, our friends.” Don’t you?
Me: I’m taking a watercolor class. Have told myself for years I wanted to. Finally got around to it. Have no art or drawing background or preparation, which means I don’t get near the end result I want. 
But I love it…….l….o….v….e……it. It’s a great stretch and good play. I don’t play enough. Do you? It also challenges me. To be bad, a beginner, at something.
Karleen Koen — writing life 
I wanted to be a writer at one time, but I discovered it was the research I loved, not the writing. I was so fascinated with what I learned when during my research, I could never quit long enough to write. So…I went into genealogy, so I could keep researching. Lol
I have a number of folks I know who love genealogy. I think it’s the adventurer in them, the surprises encountered…….
Karleen, I remember you were getting pretty good at drawing. I hope you find watercolor a liberating and enjoyable experience. Any art practice (finger paint, crayons and play dough included) is better than no art practice.
Lucy Wiley, is that you? Talk more to us about art practice, please……
I tried to leave a comment a moment ago, but I suspect it has been lost. If you find it, please treat it gently. It needs a good home.
You make me wish that I were back in Houston again and able to impose upon my status as a Rice alum to take your writing class. Enjoy the course, the watercolors, and character wrangling. Of these, the only one I’m likely to ever see are the wrangled characters, but I look forward to meeting them in your next wild and wonderful novel.
Keep up the blogging if you can, and know you never bore me. On the contrary, you give me hope. I am not the only one who finds her characters staring at her coldly from across the parlor when I return from a life-imposed hiatus, and I am not the only one who has had to cut back on the blogging because of the energy required.
Shala, thanks for this. Yes, wrangling a book is something else, and no one gets to see it. It’s done in solitude. Sometimes life, particularly for a woman, doesn’t allow energy investment in self, at least for awhile…..interesting.
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