Renewing Creativity, Amazing Maps, Miniature Manuscripts
Plus great AKMARAL news and a creative writing prompt at the end.
In winter, I look forward to the solstice more than any of the other celebration. It promises new light rising from the darkness and the spark of new beginnings. Countless myths and traditions have come down to us from ancient times surrounding the return of the light, including lighting candles and decorating holiday trees.
Solstice celebrations center on rebirth and renewal. At this time of year, I like to renew my creativity, too, by focusing on wordless, tactile things. Trust me, I love writing! But sometimes I need to refresh my brain and think just a bit differently.
This week I finished a knitting project and started a new one: a traditional Aran sweater, at the request of my son. I also have a stack of botanical prints I made earlier this year which I’ve cut out to experiment in collage. And I knew (because I hinted very loudly) that a watercolor set would be under our holiday tree. While I’m an excellent craftswoman, I’m not a skilled artist, but I’ve been excitedly trying some of the simple techniques that come up on my Instagram feed.
Being an artist is more than dedication to a single craft. It is a way of seeing and relating to the world. Each time I explore a new means of expression—dance and acting in my early career, writing for the past many years, but also nature photography, textile arts, and most recently a bit of painting—I am exploring the essence of beauty and life, and finding new ways to express meaning. And each new creation shows me a path to, and often well beyond, myself.
During these last few, dark days before we return to our busy lives, consider exploring a craft or art that you are unfamiliar with. Even the attempt will open your senses and your mind to new possibilities.
Being an artist is more than dedication to a single craft. It is a way of seeing and relating to the world.
Amazing Maps and Miniature Manuscripts
If you were born in the last twenty years or so, you may never have held a real paper map in your hands. But I still have a few fraying roadmaps tucked in the door pocket in my car. I have always been a fantastic navigator—and luckily my husband is happy to follow my directions. In the days before GPS, I got us out of traffic jams by finding local by-ways, and unlost in countless locations, including in the city where he grew up and where I had been only once before.
Even if you’ve never seen a map that wasn’t on your phone, you’ll want to check out Oculi Mundi, an amazing collection of early maps, digitized for pleasure and perusal. What I love about old maps is how they expose misperceptions of distance and space, and how they personify natural phenomena, including maelstroms as monstrous sea creatures and the four winds as gods in the clouds. The collection includes celestial maps which demonstrate how far we’ve come with our understanding of the universe.
I’ve been blessed to have seen maps like these in person, thanks to my long-time friend Stuart Lutz, historic documents expert, who invites me to the Antiquarian Book Fair in New York every year. There, in 2022, I came face to face and a thick, Lucite cabinet’s distance away from the handwritten “A Book of Rhymes by Charlotte Brontë—Sold by Nobody and Printed by Herself” from 1829:
I can’t wait to see what treasure they have in store in 2024.
AKMARAL Audiobook, Lead Title, and Most-Anticipated!
I’m so excited that AKMARAL will have an audiobook! I don’t know who will narrate it, but I’ve suggested a couple of wonderful actors that my husband has worked with. (He’s an audiobook and podcast producer, as well as a narrator himself. But with a female, first person protagonist, his voice isn’t quite right this time around.)
And AKMARAL has been selected as a Lead Title to be featured at American Booksellers Association (ABA) Winter Institute this February in Cincinnati. That’s where booksellers from all around the country meet to pick their favorites for the coming season. In fact, if you are a bookseller or librarian—or know a bookseller or librarian—please consider stocking AKMARAL and nominating it for Indie Next! Thanks to everyone for spreading the word.
Finally, AKMARAL is featured on Hasty Book List’s Most-Anticipated Historical Fiction of 2024! Scroll down to May and you’ll see it there!
SUPER SPECIAL REQUEST: Pre-Order AKMARAL on my Bookshop.org page and you give both me and my novel an extra boost!
Raffle Winner
I’m excited to work with my paid-subscribers-only raffle winner Kathy MacKay. I haven’t met Kathy before, but I can’t wait to get to know her in our virtual private writing session. Congratulations, Kathy, and thanks to all my paid subscribers for your support.
And don’t forget PitchFest on January 25:
Creative Writing Prompt: Untranslatable Words
This one is inspired by one of my favorite novelists, Elif Shafak, who recently wrote on her Substack about untranslatable words. Consider the way language shapes our communication and even our thought. There are words in other languages that carry emotions and nuances that English words simply cannot express. She talks about duende, a Spanish word meaning the “heightened state of emotion produced by a moving piece of art.” Why don’t we have a word for this in English? She also mentions a word I’ve loved since beginning my research for AKMARAL: khiimori or hiimori, a Mongolian word sometimes translated as “wind horse” meaning one’s psychic spirit. Related to the Taoist concept of chi, this word refers to one’s inner strength, clarity of thought, determination and good intention. But because the concept is rooted in shamanism, it also nods to one’s connection with the natural world and the world beyond.
Take some time to write about a concept or feeling that is bigger than can be expressed in simple words. At this time of year when light slowly returns to us, how can we express our complex feelings about the passage of time and the future that we long for as we make our resolutions for the coming year?
Thank you, everyone, for your support. And to my paid subscribers, you are ANGELS!
Forthcoming from Regal House Publishing - May 7, 2024
AKMARAL: a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Asian steppes must make peace with making war
"A gripping saga, a love story, and a convincing portrait of a time and people lost to history” —Christina Baker Kline, #1 bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles
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Definitely agree that "Being an artist is more than dedication to a single craft. It is a way of seeing and relating to the world" ... I am primarily a writer but I also regularly crochet and collage and dabble in all kinds of other creativity as well. Love this share.