Category: Writing

Music, Podcasts, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In September 6, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals8

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • work on Moonchild all seven days – DONE.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.
  • five digitizing sessions – DONE.

Music

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 168 nights (24 weeks) in a row – DONE.
  • write Morning Pages every day – DONE.
  • don’t pick up the phone until after Morning Pages – I held off on picking up the phone until after MPs on four days, and definitely felt the MPs went smoother and faster on days I didn’t look at my phone first.
  • do an Artist Date – DONE. I took time out and watched a movie.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In September 6, 2020” →

Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Time Travel: Creative Monsters and Champions

Chrys Buckley

task7Today’s column will cover the Time Travel tasks from Week One. Next week, we’ll move on to Week Two. You can find the full schedule for the rest of the year at the bottom of this post!

I decided to pull out the Time Travel tasks (Tasks 3-7, so most of them) from Week One in their own post for a couple of reasons. One was to be able to ease in, pacing-wise, by spreading Week One out over two weeks here.

Sometimes starting (or restarting) The Artist’s Way can feel a bit like thawing out something frozen, and there’s something painful and scary about that. It can be like melting something that solidified inside you. And it’s not easy.

To me, these Time Travel tasks feel like the first steps in that process. And they can be hard. Last time through, in March, I skipped most of them and only half-heartedly and incompletely did the ones I didn’t skip.

I thought they deserved extra attention in their own post as an acknowledgement that they’re hard, and a way of tackling them together.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Time Travel: Creative Monsters and Champions” →

Music, Pop Culture, Writing

My Pop Culture Digest – August 2020

Chrys Buckley

folklore coverIt’s going to be light this month. It’s been a month of a lot of personal emotional turmoil and change, and somehow in that, I haven’t consumed as much pop culture as usual.

The only TV I watched was some Veronica Mars early this month with my good friend, and I haven’t watched any since he moved last week, and some Better Call Saul for recaps for the site.

I tried to watch the Bachelor GOAT episode for Ali’s season because it was one of my favorites (Kasey has to be one of the most memorable characters of all time on that show) but those GOAT episodes are just TOO LONG and I gave up and listened to podcasts about it instead.

Speaking of podcasts, oh podcasts, this month, I think due to sheer emotional exhaustion that’s been going on for months, I just couldn’t with much other than replaying old episodes of Bachelor-related podcasts from old seasons back in the day.

Most of my pop culture consumption this month was in the arenas of music and books. Some are repeats, and some are new.

Continue reading “My Pop Culture Digest – August 2020” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 30, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals6

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – for the second week in a row, nope, didn’t do it.
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – I did six.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.
  • bank two more Better Call Saul recaps for this site – nope, didn’t do this either. Rethinking how far ahead I do or don’t want to plan these out.

Music

Lifestyle

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 30, 2020” →

Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Chrys Buckley

MPs coverSo here we are (again, for me, so many times over), Week One.

I’ve had a lot of false starts with The Artist’s Way, AW for shorthand as it’s known around my journals, so this chapter is well-trodden ground. So much so that some parts I know so well that I could give a good gist without reading it anew. Like knowing almost all the lines and all the music cues in a favorite pilot episode.

Technically, Week One in The Artist’s Way book will span two weeks here, since next week’s focus is on the Time Travel tasks from Week One (for the full schedule, check out the bottom of this post). So we’re easing in a little here.

Since this is the first post based on a Week chapter, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to structure the posts. I’m thinking I’ll go section by section through the chapter, giving a bit of commentary on each. I’ll pull out a favorite of the quotes scattered throughout the chapter, and then discuss or post excerpts of the tasks. I’ll pepper questions into each section. If you’re joining in, now or in the future, feel free to answer as much or as little as you’d like.

The picture on the right is a picture of my current Morning Pages journal, which is almost all used up.

Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Shadow Artists

In this section, there are several examples given of how a blocked creative person can be a shadow artist. Sponsoring a creative person but not allowing your own creativity (there was an amazing story about a blocked billionaire who gifted an artist with a year’s living expenses so they could focus on their art, so I’m just saying that if there are any benevolent billionaires out there looking for creative people to sponsor, I’m right here). Investing in supporting a loved one’s creative career while never igniting your own. Representing artists, working as a critic, becoming an art therapist or a marketing exec instead of an artist, going to law school or med school instead of writing (ummm ooops?), all these ways of being on the periphery.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety” →

Blindness and Disability, Writing

(Overdue) Writing Update: Second Place in Kay Snow

Chrys Buckley

KaySnowContestLast month, I posted a much-overdue writing update about being published in Aerial. In continuing that trend, here’s another update that is also long overdue.

Last year, I placed second in the Kay Snow Writing Contest in the category for graduate-level students. I’d previously placed third in Kay Snow nonfiction back in 2013 for an essay. This was the first time I entered since. You do have to wait a couple years to be eligible again (I think two or three) and I gave it six.

The piece I entered was a memoir chapter called “Eclipses of Jupiter” (previously called “Constant Eclipse” on here) a flashback chapter in Moonchild, the memoir project I’m working on (which you can read about in this sketch, and on my Memoir page, and see lots of posts about here).

It was also the chapter I read, so long ago, at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC as part of The Best Memoirists’ Pageant Ever in 2007, which I apparently never posted about back in the day, though I was sure I had (couldn’t find anything in my drafts either). The picture on my bio page comes from that event.

One of these days, I’d love to get published AND paid for a piece of writing. It’s always been one or the other, never both. This was a cash prize, of $100. Plus a free day at the Willamette Writers conference.

I had plans for that. The timing was perfect for the conference last summer. It fell towards the end of an Enrichment Week at medical school, meaning we had to sign up for activities but most of the week was totally open. Meaning that I could go. Meaning that my writing life and my medical student life were brilliantly coalescing for the second time that year. Back in March, the yearly AWP conference had been here, in Portland, on my bus line, perfectly overlapped with my Spring Break. It was all so charmed.

Continue reading “(Overdue) Writing Update: Second Place in Kay Snow” →

Music, Pop Culture, TV, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020

Chrys Buckley

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

goals5

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – oops, I completely forgot. I usually journal about it on Sunday mornings and today I just got up and went to my regular Moonchild work.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still on here, gotta do it – DONE today!
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – and to get more specific with what I’m working on with this book project, my goal convert all reeeeeally old Moonchild files that are locked in old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks files (.cwk) into files I can read and search – DONE – there were two files that were too corrupted to be salvaged, but all the rest are salvaged, converted, and saved.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.
  • bank two Better Call Saul recaps for this site – DONE – recaps for “Uno” and “Mijo” are written and scheduled.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – did six, will do one extra this coming week
  • get up through song 90 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – instead of a new lesson this week, it’ll be a lot of practice integrating from the last several lessons – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – DONE.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – yes, this is the same page as last week; it’s a loaded page – and get through the G major/minor scale building and exercises – DONE.

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 153 nights (five months) in a row – DONE, except my math last week was bad, 147 + 7 = I’m up to 154.
  • read through page 477 in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which I’m reading for the NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation)’s PWA Book Club – DONE. I’m LOVING this book, sad I’ll soon be done with the whole thing!
  • write Morning Pages every day – six out of seven.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Re-Starting the Journey

Chrys Buckley

complete awIn previous posts in this Artist’s Way Reflections column, I’ve written about having a two-decade relationship with this landmark book on creativity and its basic tools (Morning Pages and the Artist Date) and its essays and exercises and tasks, all aimed and at opening, or re-opening a connection to creativity. Discovering and recovering your artistic self.

And now that the Basic Tools have been covered, next week I’ll move on to the main text of the book.

I’m hoping that some of you will join me on this Artist’s Way journey. Later in the post, I’m going to give a sketch of my plans for doing the book and this column, and different ways to join in. To find that, you can skip ahead to the section titled The Plan.

First though, I wanted to give a little history on my latest re-launch of the journey.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Re-Starting the Journey” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 16, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals4Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – DONE this morning.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still haven’t done this, so it’ll remain on the list.
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – currently working on Nick timeline (the timeline for a relationship that figures prominently in my memoir project, explained in the reflections section of this previous check-in) – DONE.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – yeah, I actually did ten! I wanted to make up for the lost sessions last week.
  • get up through song 86 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book and introduction of the D chord – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – eleven! Also making up for lost sessions last week.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – DONE.

Lifestyle

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 16, 2020” →

Blindness and Disability, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date

Chrys Buckley

Artist DateIn The Artist’s Way, the seminal book on creativity, author Julia Cameron introduces two Basic Tools, after the introduction and before the week-by-week chapters. These two Basic Tools, she says, are the cornerstone to connecting with creativity.

The first is Morning Pages, discussed in last week’s Artist’s Way Reflections column, the practice of writing three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind every morning. I’ve wrestled with these pages, but ultimately find them to be helpful, a way to connect to what I’m actually feeling, which isn’t always easy but is in its own way grounding. They’re also a good source of fresh ideas, a way to puzzle through problems and often a place to dump the mental waste before starting the day.

The second Basic Tool is the Artist Date. You’re supposed to go on a “date” with your artist self once a week. Do something fun for an hour and no one else is allowed to come along. Quality time with your creative side.

And I’m going to be real. I get the theory behind it, it all sounds great when Julia Cameron extols the values of an Artist Date. But in actuality, I hate it.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date” →