Reading Barbara Sher's Wishcraft, I finally had to sit down and decide whether or not I was willing to make those old dreams of mine come true. I had to seriously ask myself whether or not I wanted to be a writer. At first, I found myself hesitant to decide. The dream hurts a little bit more than it used to -- too many long dry stretches with no words at all, too many false starts and empty promises to myself. And yet, considering the alternative, I felt my heart breaking. In the end, I chose to take that chance.

I am a writer. Once upon a time, I thought that was all I was -- how fortunate that those days have passed! Now I know myself as many things: a reader, a singer, a SCAdian, a seamstress, an amateur Jungian, a student, a teacher, a healer, a classicist, a Latin speaker, a devoted Moby Dick fan . . . the list goes on and on. I am large. I contain multitudes. Yet twining through each of those identities is the overwhelming focus on language. There are gifts I have found, and gifts I have lost, and gifts I have traded away in order to fit myself into that round hole that I once thought life had assigned for me. But throughout my life, there has only been one gift that I've clung to desperately, unable quite to picture myself without it. I know now that I can survive without writing, but it is a dark and empty life, scarcely worthy of the name. Scribo ergo sum.

The long and short of things is that I will no longer be posting my newer poetry to Deviant Art, although I may well begin posting it on lj, under a filter. I'm never going to get published if I keep posting my work for free on the internet, and as daunting as the submission process seems, I can't keep avoiding it. I may still upload some of my old work, since none of it is really good enough to get published, or at least, I think it's not. I'm not a very good judge of my own poetry, and I'm a bit too out of touch with the modern poetry scene to really say how mine matches up. I've got to try, though. It's time that I started treating my writing seriously.

I uploaded a few illustrated journal entries and some story notes into my scraps section if anybody is interested. Of course, that brings me absolutely no closer to finishing up my Yuletide fic. Let's hope I wake full of inspiration tomorrow.

(stolen from idolhands)

1. Why did you join?

I first joined DA a few years ago because several members of the B'ham communities were on the site, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. A few people had also recommended it as an alternative to pathetic.org, where I posted my poetry. Navigating the site was really difficult for me though -- it seemed very anti-intuitive. After awhile, I gave up and forgot about it.

In October, though, idolhands mentioned that they'd been spending a lot of time on DA and that I might want to check it out. I dusted off my old account and logged in, but once I realized how many people from the fandom were members here, I decided to start up a new account under my pen name.

2. About how many deviants do you watch?

About five or six.

3. In your opinion or experience, why do people sometimes choose to leave Deviant Art?

Damned if I know. My best guess would be that people either get tired of the site or the community, or that they want to focus on publishing their work professionally. I doubt I'll be hanging around here once I decide to start doing that.

4. Have you had a personal experience with an art thief and if so, how did you deal with it?

I haven't personally, no.

5. Do you have a preference for comments or favorites on your work?

Either one is wonderful.

7. How do you use your favorites feature?

I'll fave anything that I want to see again. I suppose I use the favorites feature as my own personal library.

6. What are your favorite aspects of the format?

I'm glad that the site allows for a number of forms of artistic expression. The site definitely does have a focus on VISUAL arts, though -- I haven't found any significant writing here. Sadly, I don't think the site can equal pathetic.org for poetry, which sucks since I've been lookig for an alternative to it -- if anybody can suggest another good place for uploading poetry/original writing, I'd love to hear about it!


7. Any rants?

Why on earth can't the lit previews keep formatting such as line breaks intact? Honestly! Just glancing at the previews for the poetry, you'd think I didn't know how to use punctuation!

8. Anything else you'd like to bring up?

I'm still new here, and still trying to find my way around the site and figure out who's who. Wonka fans, feel free to introduce yourselves. I'd love to find more artists to watch!

Spending more time on DA has definitely been inspiring. I've been drawing a lot more since I joined. One of these days, I'll have to upload my latest batch of "decorated" class notes to my scraps section.

It's kind of sad that I felt like I needed to upload a decent poem to make up for my crappy drawing! It's like I'm saying, "No guys, I swear, I don't completely suck at everything I do!"

I really need to make some sort of avatar for DA, even if it's an ugly one. I'm getting bored with the plain old DA logo. Maybe I'll play around with photoshop the next time I'm on campus -- none of the programs on my iBook will let me resize images, at least not that I've been able to figure out. I'm so technologically illiterate!

This site is becoming addictive, though! I swear, I'm logging on here several times a day to see what's on the front page! I'm really getting inspired looking at everybody's artwork. The other day, I went out and bought myself a pack of good-quality colored pencils. I've been playing around with them a lot (thus the crappy drawing), although I don't really know what I'm doing. Ah well. I'm trying to just experiment and let myself suck. I'm not really trying to be artistic, although I wish I could be, because a few of the stories in my head would make very good comics, or even movies, just because they come with such strong visual images. But alas, anything cool and artsy is well outside of my skill range. For now, I just want to play around and distract myself from the pressures of school and work.

It's such a fascinating process uploading my old poetry to DA. I'm enjoying going through my old work, deciding what makes the cut, what won't. So far, I've been conservative with it, trickling writing into the site whenever I'm feeling bored or guilty that I don't have any actual art to upload. (I'm loathe to think of a single drawing or painting I would be willing to share anywhere besides my scrapbook. Flawed poetry is one thing -- I've got a skin a mile thick when it comes to my writing, and I take criticism without batting an eye. But my artwork is different, I suppose. It comes from a part of me that I feel a lot less comfortable exposing.)

I'm amused how much of my original moves in cycles. I really wish DA would let me arrange them as such. I've got my Persephone cycle, my Daedalus cycle, my Artemis and Athena cycle. Myths make sense through repetition, I read once, though I can't remember where, Joseph Campbell or Jung. A constant lifetime of repeating, repeated here again for your new eyes. I'm sometimes tempted to upload them all, to send a deluge of mythologies into this new hang-out of mine. But I'm remaining cautious. I'm holding back. I'm starting, I suppose, with a sampling from my various pools of work.

And then I shall repeat those themes, and then again, until they began to deepen and resonate, to betray some measure of the strength they bear, until they grow enough in my mind to require another ripple in the ever-widening ring, another repetition and variation to echo what I've learned. Sometimes I fear I am locked in a cycle of repeating.

The rest of the time I know I wouldn't have it any other way.