Stuff List -- Creativity in general, but writing mostly.

1. Tuesday, we had at thunderstorm that tripped the shortout button on the outlet my Internet's plugged into. But -- here's the yayful thing: When Audrey went out to the garage to push the reset button, (I can't get to it), she found my mother's old sewing notions box. \o/
   
   I was sure I had brought it down when I moved, but I couldn't find it for months, and I'd been doubting my memory, and I was worried that I'd left it up there, and it had gotten thrown out or sold off when the house was cleared out and sold after Dad's death.
   
   The top was cracked, and it looks like Dad had taped it back up with glass fiber tape (it looks like his work). He probably did the work out there, and left it out there, thinking that he could always bring it back inside the next time he came to visit. Only -- they found that cancer, and he never came back to visit.
   
   So it appears that The Universe now approves of my notion to make my own version of a teddy bear.
   
   
2. And then -- after I got my Internet back, I checked my email: There was a note from Irene O'Garden: The Art Garden is back on!!
   
   \o/
   
   The Saturday after Thanksgiving -- the theme is "Gold"... oh, yay! oh, yay! you don't know how depressed I've been without the Art Garden, and its people. ...Mostly, its people.
   
   It will be the 50th gathering of the Art Garden -- yay. I pretty sure that means there'll be a party... even if it's just that the regular writers who've been doing it since the beginning (or nearly so) will be in a party frame of mind. Which is all you need, really I'm in the "nearly so" camp. I've been doing it since Art Garden #12 -- I think I only missed about 3 or 4 from then, till now.
   
   
3. This afternoon marked the 31st consecutive day of my Mid-Year Resolution (To sit down with a timer and write something entirely new until the timer stops). I've only missed one day. I haven't missed a single day since I've made it the rule that the timer and the word processor are the first programs I open, before logging onto the Internets, or playing games. Twice now (when I've turned off the computer on leaving the house, and turned it back on when I got home) I've had more than one writing session a day.
   
   When I get to the 45th day, or so, I might start extending the time on the clock (right now, it's set at ten minutes). Then, I'll have a decision to make:
   
   • Do I keep doing the ten-minute writing sessions, daily, and add a second (or third) writing session of a longer duration, or
     
   • Do I substitute sessions of progressively longer times?
   
   
   Ten minutes is just enough time to introduce the feeling of a setting, the personality of the protagonist, and just the slightest hint of what the conflict might be. It's kind of nice to have a collection of these nibbles -- these deliberately unfinished scraps to which I have no obligation: they're a reminder of how flexible my imagination can be. Someday, I might want to go back and write more about them, but I might not.
   
   I'm getting an inkling that when I get to an hour or ninety minutes, I may actually be able to reach the point of conflict resolution -- if not a complete story, at least, a complete narrative scene.
   
   
4. Art Garden! Teddy Bear! Art Garden! Teddy Bear! Squeeee!!
   
   
5. It's probably just that the announcement of one followed so closely on the discovery of the other, but I want to make my teddy, write hir into my Art Garden piece, and bring said teddy onto the stage as a prop...

:-)