Describe your writing or art-making space.

Yark!  I write wherever I am–sometimes at my computer desk on the desktop computer or in a notebook.  Sometimes I write while sitting on the couch or in bed, with the laptop or pen and paper.  I’ve been known to go to the library and hide in a corner and scribble like mad in a notebook.

For art–there’s always the floor–and the table–when I can find it.  Usually the floor though–more room there and I can spread out more.  Since i cannot get to any table lately, I have actually been using my ironing board as a sewing platform to hold my sewing machine aloft as I sew.

Describe your writing implement, device, equipment, or tools you use to create.

pens of all sorts, pencils, crayons in a pinch–usually because my dd steals all my pens and leaves me broken bits of crayon in place of the stolen pens, laptop computer, desktop computer, dip pens, markers, a finger or two dipped in paint upon occasion

What is the oddest object in your creative space?

a big round metal thing–we found it on the ground during a trip to the library–it looks as if it fell off someone’s car although for the life of me we cannot identify where on any car or truck or anything else it could have come from–it’s as big around as my hand with a big hole in the middle and all rusted and beautiful–and my dd and I immediately said we needed it for an art project–that particular art project has not yet presented itself so I have the piece just lying here and there as it gets moved around alot just to keep it out of the way

Do you listen to anything while you create? If so, what?

my dd singing is a norm–Deva Premal, Duran Duran, Madonna are other typical things–of late my favourite thing to listen to is absolutely nothing at all–which has now come into conflict as we live in an apartment and school is nearly done for the year apparently as there are kids–as in near teen-agers always about yelling and screeching and basically being a menace on many levels

Do you engage in any interesting habits, exercises, warm-ups or rituals before you settle down to create?

hiding from cats and kid?  making a nice strong pot of tea is a definite–I drink tea all day and night.  other than that I do alot of deep breathing all the time

when I use the laptop I do try to keep the charging cord nearby just in case I need it lest I lose anything 

Raven TK

http://onthewrongsideofthemirror.wordpress.com/

In no real order at all…with no real rhyme or reason…

1.  Geisha by Liza Dalby–an exploration of the real world of Geisha 

2.  Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman–much better than the movie too

3.  Emotional Yoga by Bija Bennett

4.  Drawing As A Sacred Activity by Heather Williams

5.  All Year Round by Druitt, Fynes-Clinton and Rowling

Raven TK

http://onthewrongsideofthemirror.wordpress.com/

These are all books I’ve acquired since I moved out here, and I deliberately chose different books–it didn’t seem interesting to grab all the communication texts I teach from

1. 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Phoenix.  A book that breaks down interesting hikes by views, difficulty, location.

2. The Zen of Seeing. A beautiful book,  hand-drawn and handwritten using shades of gray and black inks, that promotes seeing and drawing at meditation.

3. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.  Music and the brain. (I’m tone deaf.)

4. Book Proposals that Sell.  Step by step instructions for writing the non-fiction book proposal.

5. Create Your Own Artist’s Journal. A beautifully written and illustrated book that grounds you in the practice of keeping a visual journal.

My books are in no particular order:

The Creative Habit

The Witch of Portobello

The Elements of Design

Not Quite World’s End

Jottings: Flights of Fancy from Liz Smith

Only by closing my eyes in front of each section of shelves stacked with books, more or less arranged in genres, and reaching out blindly.  Thus, I came up with these five.  In an hour, or a day, there would be a different five.

1.  Die To Live – Questions and answers about meditation, existence, life, reincarnation, etc., with humor and wisdom.

2. The Source  - one of the first books taking one place on earth (a tell in Israel) and relating a fictionalized history of that place and surrounding area since the very beginning.  Going through the history of pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, the book relates the beginnings of the centuries-old problems still affecting that area, and the world.

3.  Writing From Life: Telling your Soul’s Story – great prompts and writing information to assist you to dig deep into your life and its motivations.

4.  Soul Collage – Great information and examples on how to do collage to enhance the processing about who you really are and why.

5.  The Doomsday Book – science fiction whereby historians in 2055 go to the 14^th century to observe, unfortunately arriving in the midst of an influenza outbreak which complicates their project.  

I can’t just list five - here’s another I have to include:

6.  God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder - dealing with the connection between findings of the new physics and the insights of the great mystics.

1. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats - poetry

2. Zen in the Art of Writing - essays on writing

3. Aunt Dimity, Vampire Hunter - a cozy mystery

4. The Fire Rose - a fantasy, retelling the story Beauty and the Beast, set in early 20th century San Francisco

5. The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns - the title says it all!

- She Wolf

The place where I like to write is where I am right now.  A comfortable computer chair with head and lumbar support combined with a card table situated by a window looking out over my backyard.  From this spot I can meditate, read, or write at the table with my purple gel-pen.  Frequently I lean back, gaze out the window, watch the birds, butterflies, bugs and bunnies, while clouds of all configurations coast by. I delight in the deciduous and evergreen trees of all hues of green, and revel in whatever flowers are blooming, from the huge wild rose bush with cascading white-flowered canes to the erect purple iris – I observe it all, and mull.

Mulling is the process whereby I throw various ideas and thoughts in, allowing them all to slowly simmer at their own pace as they recombine into new permutations and possibilities.  It is my brain’s slow-cooking process whereby ingredients swirl around in the stew pot, colliding, passing by, softening and recombining, each adding flavor to the other, to concoct a great stew or soup.  And sometimes an unexpected ingredient I forgot I even added enhances the end result. 

I sit, surrounded by bookcases of books, art supplies, pictures of my loved ones, even a reproduction of a clay Sumerian tablet from about 2500 BC I purchased on one of my many visits to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia.  I often wonder what people might think if they rummage through the collapsed remains of my house in Arkansas years from now and unearthed what would appear to be a Sumerian artifact.  One of the unexpected ingredients surrounding me.

The place where I like to write is also the place where I like to meditate, read, mull, watch nature without the exposure to ticks and chiggers, plan gardens, listen to music; in other words, the place where I relax in ways necessary for my life.  I realize, though, that I might sometimes need to inject a little more fire and play into my mulling to prevent the tendency to drift off with the clouds.  

1. The Creative License - a book about creative everyday journalling

2. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior - novel with a spiritual twist

3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time- written from an autistic boy’s perspective

4. Himalaya - armchair travel

5. Beyond Baked Beans Green - veggie cookery

Small Graces- simple beauty of everyday life

Brian Froud’s World of Faery - luscious artwork - over 30 years of his magical mystical beings

The Book of Weird - a quirky encyclopedia of mythical creatures & their descriptions

Green Man myths - an anthology of wood sprites/beings/stories

The Golems of Gotham - “A book Job might have written if he had a wry sense of humor” - “magical realism that delves into Holocaust memories”

The Practice of Poetry(Robin Skelton, once my teacher, a guru, wizard, and  poet-this book is always in use for the classes I still teach)

Possession (the novel of research and librarians, greed and determination)

Benang (  Perhaps the  most imaginative historical novel I have ever read, the story of the aboriginal people in Australia)

Chaos (James Gleick makes the history, science and art of chaos theory understandable for those of us who, perhaps we were girls missed out on  physics courses in our education)

Narrow Road to the Interior (Hamil translation of Basho reminding me of a world that once was so very gentle)

And and extra for an old woman’s vanity:  Flight Patterns, my own book of poems by me!