AUTHOR/ARTIST...

Since September, penning the two black squirrels for Art Drop Day instead of dropping books I have been burning the candle at both ends with my day job in the middle writing and drawing. The lines between the two are blurred sometimes. I want to do a picture book with some of a friend's photographs that includes small segments of historical prose that sort of blends a number of things together. Finding the time to tackle a project like that is the real challenge!

I have yet another idea as to how to start the Garnet & Quella story for the X-teenth time. This is getting tedious but I want to get it right so it all works.

Meanwhile, it is a week before Christmas and I am busy drawing pictures for friends who all put in their requests TODAY! I am currently doing something for a gift I am giving, so the queue is growing behind my own project with three in line already.

I am taking a vacation day tomorrow to finish my need-to-go-to-an-actual-store Christmas shopping. I also have my sister-in-law's birthday on Friday and my sister's birthday on Sunday. Oh, and did I mention the Small Art ArtWalk on Friday evening? In addition, I was contacted by a reporter for the local newspaper who wants to talk to me about my black squirrel art. I don't mind any of it, I just wish I had the ability to add three or four extra hours to every day of my life so I can accomplish everything I want to do! Melissa Volker gave me the White Queen's wand she made this past Sunday at the WhipCity Wordsmiths meeting and holiday celebration. I am honored to be the recipient of one of her works of art. I would love to wave this wand about and create a window into a room where time stands still but I can move and work and get things done, then when I'm ready, step back through the window and find no time at all has elapsed!

I'm not complaining. I have never been one who can actually sit down and relax. My mind is constantly buzzing with ideas and stories, images and plans. To sit own for an hour to watch something on TV is a struggle for me.

If I was to be asked which means more to me- being an author or being an artist- I don't think I'd be able to answer that. I have been both all my life. I can't really separate one from the other. I can set one or the other aside temporarily (like my art being set aside for 18 years!) but on a whim, I can just pick it up again and set writing aside, sort of. I'm doing both but not to the extent I wish I could be doing both. But, retirement is just a few years away. Unless retirement gets moved up again like some sort of unattainable prize- the time to enjoy ones life before it's over!

Does it sound like I'm complaining? No, I am merely regretting time I wasted when I was younger when I could have been doing this but was wasting my time writing junk stories that never went anywhere because I did not have the discipline I now have. They were wonderful, dramatic, romantic, and sometimes terrible stories with beautiful images and ideas in them...and they all got thrown away.

"Her heart seldom spoke to her, but when it did, it asked for the impossible." That is my all time favorite line I ever wrote, but the story it was written into is long gone.

I am not complaining. I am ruing and regretting (when I should be drawing...so now I'm guilting myself besides!)

But, that's me. I am like a pastel portrait that someone has run their finger down the middle of, smudging the crisp lines dividing art and literature, blending me, blurring me. Yet, what I can produce with a keyboard and a pen, nib, and bottle of ink is crisp and vivid. You don't see the blurring and blending. You only see the end results.

I'd best go apply pen to paper and finish the drawing I started last night so I can check it off my to-do list! Thanks for bearing with me and enduring my ramblings & musings tonight!