I love color. It's the first thing I think about
whenever we move to a new home (I wrote about that here),
and I tend to think about colors in terms of moods, textures and smells, and to have
strong feelings about them.
I was very inspired by this article, The Keeper: 39 Paints, in the latest New York magazine. It’s all about color and has practical elements--advice about the proper paintbrushes, lighting, coordination, etc.--but the
parts I really liked were the shiny streaks of color, with a designer’s brief comments
about what that shade does for him/her. These people with their thoughtful impressions about hues felt like kindred spirits. And each blurb seemed to have a complete story ensconced within. I was so inspired that
I sat right down and wrote a new short piece, titled “Resonant Blue.”
On the subject of blue, there’s
an exhibit running through January 2016 at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena:
A Revolution of the Palette: The First Synthetic Blues and their Impact on French Artists. At the beginning of the 18th century,
“Prussian blue” was accidentally discovered in an alchemist’s laboratory, and
this new pigment had an irrevocable effect on the artists painting in France
and throughout the world. Who’s
with me for a visit to the Norton Simon?
Lastly,
don’t miss the blue moon tomorrow, Friday, July 31. Here’s a scientific take on this
fleeting phenomenon: Blue Moon, but you’re free to hold tight to the more imaginative
and artistic interpretations.
Change is natural. Change is good. Change is what happens
when you’re making other plans—is that it? When I was a kid, I used to
rearrange my bedroom a lot. I liked the fresh perspective it gave me, a way of
being a new you in the same place. So. You may have noticed this blog’s new
clean and stream-lined look. I started typing away in this space five years ago
and I’ve really enjoyed it, not only as a way to join the dialogue about books
and writing, but as a practice field for my skills, a place to work out thought
processes and flesh out ideas. I’ve written book reviews, contemplations about
the writing process and the publishing business, film reviews, short fiction,
and lots of posts that can only be filed under the subheading: Other. And for
the past year, I’ve been sharing a “Poem for the Weekend” each Friday, a
practice which accomplished what I had hoped: it got me reading more poetry. A bonus: the exchanges I had with readers about poems they love.
So although I’ll be discontinuing the Poem for the Weekend feature, I remain open to hearing about poems you’ve found and I might still share one myself from
time to time.
So what’s the new direction, you ask? The thing is, I’ve got
this novel to write. Anyone who's undertaken this foolish task will tell you
it doesn’t leave much creative juice for anything else. I will still be
blogging (no fear!), but maybe my posts will be more brief, less fleshed out.
And because I’ll be deeply immersed in fiction, I anticipate
that the offerings will lean towards topics involving inspiration and creativity
and of course, the routine and practice of writing. I may share something I
saw that galvanized me; I may point you to something I read regarding the
nuts and bolts of the process. And I will always feel obligated to point you to an amazing novel or film. Often, I may just pop up for air and to say hello.
I’ll still be writing an occasional book review or
musing for the LitChat blog (as long as they’ll have me), like this one about
which readers YOU should be writing for: Writing in the Round.
Meanwhile, there are more changes afoot! Keep an eye on my
author site, maryvenselwhite.com, in the coming months for more new stuff and
possibly, some book news. And of course, I’ll be hanging around Twitter and Facebook if you’d like to connect there. Thanks, as always, for staying with me.
I've been away on vacation and so, did not have a poem prepared for this week. I decided to Google one, maybe something about summer, but noticed that the first thing that popped up when I typed the single word, "poems" was "poems about rain." So although the weather is entirely southern-California perfect here today, I give you a poem about rain. Because apparently, it's the sort of weather that gets people thinking about poetry. If you're wondering what the second Google prompt was, it was "poems about love," another topic that figures into Robert Creeley's rain poem. You can read about the author here.
"As soon as we express something, we devalue it strangely. We believe ourselves to have dived down into the depths of the abyss, and when we once again reach the surface, the drops of water on our pale fingertips no longer resemble the ocean from which they came...Nevertheless, the treasure shimmers in the darkness unchanged." ---Franz Kafka
About Me
Mary Vensel White is the author of Things to See in Arizona, Starling, Bellflower, and The Qualities of Wood. Her writing has appeared in The Madison Review, The Write Launch, Catapult, The Rumpus, Author Magazine, december magazine, and other places. She is an adjunct professor at Concordia University, Irvine, owner/editor at TypeEighteenEditing.com, and owner/publisher at TypeEighteenBooks.com. Currently, she lives in southern California.