Musings of Two Creative Minds

Today I was in one of my moods regarding creativity and decided to share another side of myself.  As many of you know,  I not only write, but I'm also an artist who specializes in soft pastels and charcoal.  I know I've shown some of my book covers, but today I felt like sharing some of the other works I've come up with over the years. This first piece is a soft pastel which was inspired by a song by Nina Gordon, "Tonight and the rest of my Life".  Her we have an angelic figure who holds a universe in her arms and behind her you can make out large fingers which in turn cradle her. This piece was coming along beautifully until it came time to do the face.  I couldn't find the right one to use, or get the angles right.  Then my wife stepped in and posed her head just right, and from then on the painting seemed to come alive.  It held even more meaning than before to me as I retouched areas and strove to finish it with great love and affection, f...

We've all been there, slaving away at a story and finding yourself getting more lost or frustrated with where it's going.  Even if you have a well planned outline to guide you, there's always a scene or situation that arises that leaves you flummoxed and frustrated.  You can't seem to move the story or yourself forward for one reason or another.  What do you do? Well, in my case I get up and walk away from the story and I mean in every sense of the word.  Step away from your computer and do other things.  "But for how long?" I hear you ask.  My answer is simply this, "As long as it takes." "But I can't stop writing, I've got so many ideas in my head..."   GREAT!  Go work on one of those instead.  I'm not saying stop writing by any means.  What I'm suggesting is that you let your brain work on other projects, or activities such as go bowling... Take a nice long walk... Go someplace... In...

         Welcome back to another installment of collaborations: what do they look like and how do I make mine work?  Okay, actually, I’m continuing the discussion from last time.  After all, this is supposed to be a blog, not an ongoing saga.  I also want to apologize for any strange grammar or punctuation errors in this entry because I’m using Dragon instead of actually typing on a keyboard.  WRONG DRAGON! SORRY DIDN'T MEAN TO WAKE YOU UP, SIR.  PLEASE JUST GO BACK TO SLEEP!            Whew!  Anyway, I'll be sharing my adventures with Dragon Speaking Naturally software, and learning how to use it, in another blog entry,  For now I’m going to continue to share my experiences with collaborations            Now, last time I talked about my collaboration with my old friend Rich Caminiti, today I’m going to be discussing my other collaboration with my wife H...