Dear everybody

[dampscribbler]

Please answer these questions:
What is your art?
What role does your art play in your life?
At what point in your life did you start taking your art seriously? If you don't yet, why not?  
Feel free to elaborate as much or as little as you like on any of these.
If you prefer to answer in your own LJ, please do, but provide a link here so I don't miss it. 

Thank you.  I have a feeling I'll be posting rather a lot starting early next week sometime. 

Comments

[chillyrodent.livejournal.com]

I am a writer, which doesn't mean I'm a professional writer, but it's sort of how I see myself. Despite that, I don't know that I take it seriously still, because I don't get money for writing, and we all know that money is the true measure of art.

I experience everything as fodder for a story. Sometimes that enriches the experience and sometimes it's just another filter. Like the way I see something arresting framed as a photograph. Yesterday the dishes in the drainer looked striking to me and I went dashing off for my camera. After I realized it wasn't around, I "settled" for enjoying the arrangement without recording it.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I am a writer too, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I often get very excited about figuring out how to "frame" something in a story. I've recently discovered that I'm a lot happier when I am actually writing than I am when I am planning to write something, or figuring out how to write something. This is a new development for me. "Figuring things out" has always been fun and exciting for me, but it doesn't really get the job done. When I am writing, I am telling a story, and the story is either interesting or not, and the "figuring" is about is there anything I can change to make it better, or is it just not an interesting story, and I can abandon it?

I like your photograph story. Enjoying a moment without capturing it is an important skill.

[chillyrodent.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I have had only a sprinkling of ideas for stories that I then sat down to write, and those are the stories only I like. :o) If I sit down with a pen and begin to write, often a story comes out, but figuring it out ahead just doesn't happen for me.

It's hard for me to transform a strong personal idea I into interesting writing. I think it's too close to the bone and I lose my perspective; I think it's engaging, but it's really watching ink dry.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

I often find when I finally sit down to write that things come out on the page quite different than I "planned" them. So, I need to keep in mind that the planning can be wasted effort. If I'm having fun with it, fine, but if the time would be even more fun if I spent it writing, well, that's what I should do.

It's very hard to transform something that is deeply personal into writing that interests others. I've spent years doing exercises in that -- sometimes it works, sometimes it's watching ink dry. ^_^

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

Writing.
It's something I need to do to stay centered and sane.
I began trying to publish when I was 16 and sold my first piece at 17, but my efforts were sporadic for many years. After I finished my graduate degree and married, I began writing daily and submitting regularly with a deeper commitment.
I would still write regularly even if nobody ever published me.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I've never sold anything, only submitted fewer than half a dozen things, and I have an awful time taking my writing seriously enough to say "I will make time for this every day, this will be a part of my life that gets nurtured." Instead, I say quietly to myself (and others) "I want to/hope to/plan to someday find time for this, it's important to me." Even when I make commitments to write, I keep them to myself, guilty secrets to hide away at the first sound of approaching footsteps.