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

[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. ^_^