Reconnected

Tuesday: I spent a lovely evening helping my friend Pam select a red wine for her cheese event, What's Cooking at the Library, next week. (It's sold out, but visit Pam's website It's all about the cheese! for upcoming events.) Pam gave us a preview of the amazing cheeses we would taste, as well as other delicious morsels she'd brought back from California's Artisan Cheese Festival. The company was excellent and my taste buds were thoroughly satiated. I went home, settled in, and turned on my computer to discover that the internet was down. Resetting the modem yielded no results. I flipped on the TV to horrifying static on all channels.

The following notice hung on my door: "Time Cable has conducted a routine service audit in your area and discovered we have been providing service that was not ordered. We have corrected our error and disconnected that service..." I immediately called up Time Warner. No record of the disconnection existed in the system and Friday was the only day I could be available during working hours for a technician to come out. Three whole days without television and internet. I would miss an entire round of American Idol. The fury, the frustration, the utter helplessness of it all overwhelmed me.

And then, I got over it. I cooked dinner and read a book. I wrote a poem:

Three days offline and off-screen
and I'm pheening for a fix of the net--
connectivity and HDTV to numb the brain,
entertain, and even inspire.
Wired to watch and read and recognize other's art,
I've stood apart and willed my heart to wait--
wait for time and wait for genius,
missing the whole point of creating.
Cramming my craft into spare moments
rare and few and far between,
I've seen the dark and dismal underside of self-denial,
all the while feeding on the fiction and distraction at my fingertips.
With the stroke of a key, a press of the remote,
entire worlds unreal revealed,
and creative intentions ditched.
Thanks to a cable audit glitch,
my disconnect affected a hard reboot
straight to the root of my discontent.

Well, I do need the internet to be able to post this. And email really is essential to communicating, especially for the freelance work I do. However, I learned that I shouldn't rely so much on a cable connection. Yes, it keeps me connected to others, but often quite disconnected from myself. So this brief interruption in my cable services has helped me reconnect with my commitment to making a habit of being inspired.

Tim, the very friendly and helpful Time Warner tech, confirmed that the "error" lay in the fact that the auditor disconnected me in the first place, but we'll let bygones be bygones, as they agreed to credit my account for my days without service and I learned a very valuable lesson. Let's hope it never happens again, though.

Who Is Saint Giovanni Online Novel Blogging Event

The very talented and amazing Rane Anderson is hosting a blogging event of her YA paranormal romance novel, Who Is Saint Giovanni. She will post a chapter every week, starting today, April 11, at The Lit Express. For behind-the-scenes information, click here.

Rane has inspired me to fully delve into the realm of YA fiction, so that I can gain the courage, confidence, and creative stimulation to start writing my own novel. She has also given me the great honor of editing her novel before it is published in e-book format. I get a bit of a head start on online readers, as Rane sends me chapters in installments, and let me tell you, you're in for real treat!

Start reading to find out who Saint Giovanni really is.

Making a Habit of Being Inspired

The need for creativity has been both a blessing and a curse for me. There are times when I brim with creative energy that spews forth in all kinds of personal projects. At these times, I write regularly, manage to maintain an exercise routine, whip up tasty meals, craft special gifts, and find beauty and inspiration in just about everything. And then there are the lows, when I drown myself in fiction: YA novels, Asian dramas, manga, anime, Bollywood musicals, movies--any story that can seduce my imagination and suck away my time, time that I could spend creating my own stories or artwork. Of course the fiction I consume provides plenty of inspiration, because anything that can entertain and force you to care for fictional characters is simply brilliant. However, when I don't create and my fiction binges go on for too long, my soul dries up and cracks in the frigid winter of my whiny, self-pitying discontent. I see only repetition, useless toil, frustrated hopes, stifling stagnation, and no beauty anywhere.


During my latest creative drought,  a dear friend introduced me to Rane Anderson, a very talented writer and freelance editor. Her blog The Lit Express and upcoming online book Who Is Saint Giovanni? have inspired me to keep writing and creating (and reading, too!). I've even joined The Lit Express's book club on Goodreads. This month, we're reading Across the Universe by Beth Revis. What's not to love about a sci-fi YA novel with a bit of romance in a dystopian future? 


The biggest lesson I've learned from this latest bout of self-doubt and uninspired dreariness is that I need to stay connected to people, places, and creations that inspire me. I need to help build a creative community that provides its members with support and challenges us to take risks. I need to make a habit of being inspired so that I can feed my need to create and contribute to the communal reserve of creative fuel. Starting this blog will force me to create so that I'll have something new to post. At the very least, I will have a forum to comment on the lovely works that others create, and write about the things that inspire me.