Synchronicity for Writers



Synchronicity comes in a variety of packages and at myriad times if only we are open to hear those whispered voices. For writers and other creatives synchronous events and unexpected connections are the gifts we need to keep going when challenges or deadlines get too much for us. Recently certain connections have made it possible for me to get back into writing mode and set art journaling aside. Oh I'm not giving up art journaling but I'm definitely curtailing it to two or three times a week. Writing every day is more crucial if I'm to meet my goals. So here are the happenings that lead me to focus more.

Firstly I heard about a woman in the Temecula Valley Woman's Club who has written and published three novels and I am meeting with her on Friday. The value of a partner in this writing life is crucial and since we moved from New York to California I am missing my writing group of amazing women.

Last night we attended the monthly meeting of the Temecula Valley Art League and I happened to be talking with a woman about possible places I could find a writing group. A few minutes later, during an acrylic painting demo that was truly remarkable, she tapped me on the shoulder and introduced me to a man who belongs to a critique group. At first I feared it was the local library group that turned out not to be very welcoming but no, it's a different group. I will try it out to see how it fits.

Yesterday I discovered that one of my favorite online teachers, Melanie Faith, is offering a novel outlining class in September. Part of me wants it to be sooner so I can get my novel set up to write. But it actually works out fine. I enrolled in the class and I know it will be coming up but in the meantime I will take these few months to finish my two current writing projects.

The first is a chapbook of haibun and tanka prose that I am writing for a contest in August. I have three online poetry classes over the months of May and June and that should result in enough poems for the chapbook and give me the month of July to revise and properly order the poems.

The second is a chapbook of connected flash stories that I've been nurturing for a while now. I'm using my present online class in Writing Short with Len Leatherwood to write and get some critique on a few of the stories. And this project, called "Thursdays at Seven," has just given rise to an ongoing writing project I am heartily looking forward to.

I want to take the main character of these stories and expand it into a novel. The chapbook project will give me time and space to develop her character and her problems and find a direction for the novel. Though the chapbook and the novel will be able to stand alone, the novel will be a direct spinoff from the stories in the chapbook. From there I would like to take three other characters and create novels with them as the protagonists. It will be a romance series with a setting in the vineyards of the North Fork of Long Island. Again, writing these flash stories will give me a chance to build these characters and there stories. A way to get to know where I can go with bigger stories about each one.

Everything seems to have aligned this week to put me in writing mode and I can't ignore the signals. The colorful paint will have to be brushed aside and replaced with my blue, purple and red pens, and yellow highlighters. The canvases and art journals will be replaced by spiral notebooks and moleskine journals as well as my computer and printer.

The writing life awaits at the tip of my pen and I am ready for it.

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