KaBooM WritersKaBooM Writers

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

The KaBooM Writers Notebook: Our Blog

Goal Tending

By Mary, August 29th, 2011 | 2 Comments

I am not a jock. I can hear my friends and family laughing at this massive understatement, but I make it to underscore that I am the last person one would expect to use a sports metaphor. However, I find myself thinking about the phrase, goal tending, and how it applies to basketball and the life of an artist.

In basketball, goal tending is a foul. Wikipedia defines it as ” the violation of interfering with the ball when it is on its way to the basket and it is (a) in its downward flight, (b) entirely above the rim and has the possibility of entering the basket, and (c) not touching the rim.” It goes on to add that “in both NCAA and NBA basketball, goaltending is also called if the ball has already touched the backboard while it is above the rim in its flight, regardless of whether it is in upward or downward flight.” Clear as mud right?

I remember my first college basketball game. I was a freshman at the University of Kentucky. My date was a member of the UK track and field team so we sat in the athletic section. I watched in amazement as my date transformed from the thoughtful, slightly shy boy I knew into a raving lunatic, swearing at the referee, questioning the parentage of various players on the opposing LSU team. One of the moments I remember most came when the referee called a goaltending foul on UK. I asked my date in confusion, “Why aren’t they supposed to tend to the goal?”  My date gaped at me, clearly wondering how I made it into college with such a fundamental gap in my education. What can I say. I was a basketball virgin.

When it comes to an artistic career, I think goal tending is an absolute necessity. There are fewer clear, defined landmarks for the arts than there might be in another career. It is necessary, therefore, that you not only create your own goals, but defend them from the many distractions and detractors that come with the messy process of living.

I ran across a journal the other day that I kept while participating in a workshop using Julia Cameron’s classic book, The Artist’s Way. For one of the exercises we had to write down at least three secret desires for our work as artists. I wrote out my wishes, thinking that they were far-fetched and unlikely to come true. I wanted to have my own show, I wanted to land a large commission, and I wanted to have my work displayed in a public place. Imagine my surprise when looking through the book three years later, I found that I have fulfilled each of those desires.

Although I had not thought of that exercise in those three years, I believe that the deliberate act of writing them down pointed me in the right direction to succeed. By writing down my desires, I transformed them from wishes into goals and placed them into the back of my mind. My subconscious tended to those goals even when I was not thinking of them with the result that I had a show of my work at Beaumont Inn, I landed a large private commission, and I now have a quilt hanging in a prominent space in the Mercer County Library. Slam dunk! How’s that for a sports metaphor?

 

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Creativity,Mary Alexander,Setting Goals —

The Power of the Pen

By Mary, May 16th, 2011 | 2 Comments

I love my computer. It simplifies the physical process of writing for me. Editing is easier. How did we ever compose without cut and paste? Spell check, for all of its faults(and they are many), catches errors that the eye might overlook. The computer makes writing faster so that when I type, I can keep up with the racing thoughts that sometimes accompany creative energy. I find it easier to get my thoughts out when I’m not distracted by the feel of the pen in my hand, the drag of the ink across paper, or the shape of the letters.  As arthritis gradually eats away at my knuckles, typing is also less painful than writing by hand. Yet, even though the benefits are many, I still feel the need for hand writing. Why do I bother with hand writing anything when it’s so much more convenient to tap out a quick email and hit send?

Have you ever wondered why legal documents require a hand written signature? The answer is obvious; our signature is unique. Nobody else can sign our name the exact same way we sign it. Even talented forgers make tiny errors that enable experts to detect the difference between a real signature and a forgery. The same thing can be said for all of our hand writing. Dr. Rosemary Sassoon, the creator of the Sassoon series of typefaces, said, “Handwriting is an imprint of the self on the page.” Our handwriting is imbued with our personality in a way that a typed page can never capture.  I can look at something scribbled on the back of an old picture and know if it was written by my mother, my father, or my grandmother. I have letters from my grandmother that show the passage of time by the way her script began to waver as she aged but even wavering, it is still undeniably my grandmother’s handwriting. My father often typed his letters; as a businessman, he had ready access to a typewriter. But he always signed them in pen and ink and I still get a warm feeling when I come across an old letter with his signature at the bottom. The hand written signature connects me to my father in a visceral way that the typed pages don’t. I can see my father’s hand swooping, forming the “d” for David and final swoop on the end that crossed the “t” in Harter with the tail of the “r.” It’s unmistakably my father’s hand.

Recently,  I received a short, hand written note from a woman I have never met. This woman had seen a piece of my art work that is hanging in the public library in Harrodsburg, Ky. She was inspired to write to me to tell me how much she loved my work and she offered me some hollyhock seeds for my garden, the hollyhock being the subject of my quilted work. I was so touched by the note that I immediately called to tell her. I told her that not only did I appreciate her compliment to my work, I appreciated that she had taken the time to write.  She laughed and said, “That’s what we old women do!” I told her that it was more than that. She gave me something to save; something to read again when I’m feeling particularly discouraged about my work. I hope that writing by hand is not a dying art. I hope it’s something that we all will continue to do, not just “we old women.”  I can’t picture a stack of emails being saved with quite the same reverence as a bundle of love letters tied with blue ribbon. I hope that the hollyhocks will bloom next summer in my garden and remind me of the kindness of a stranger and the power of the pen.

 

 

 

 

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Creativity,Mary Alexander — Tags: , ,

13 Years of KaBoom; How on Earth Did We Get Here?

By Mary, February 20th, 2011 | Click to Comment

Lynn, Mary, Jan, Gail, Pam, Susan, and Leatha

A question I ask often myself is how on earth did I get to be this old? And the answer is always the same- one second at a time.  I am sometimes asked the same question about KaBoom. How on earth have we stayed together for 13 years? The simple answer, of course,  is one meeting at a time. But as with age, the simple answer doesn’t tell the whole story. After much reflection I have come up with reasons both general and personal that have contributed to the success of KaBoom. I am listing  these suggestions in the hope that they may help someone who is looking to create a similar writing group.

General

Size: Like Goldilocks, we have kept our group neither too large nor too small. Eight seems to be the upper limit to allow time for full discussions of each other’s work. We like the intimacy of a smaller group, but try not to fall below four in order to ensure a variety of opinion and style.

Membership: New members should be agreed upon by all members. It’s best to say no if there are doubts about someone before they meet with the group. All shoes do not fit all feet and all writers do not play well in group settings. If a problem arises with someone after they have joined, the others should approach that person as a group, explain their concerns, and try to reach a solution.

Place: A neutral meeting space has been important to us. It should be a convenient location with plenty of parking and a tolerance for raucous discussion. We usually don’t meet at a member’s house so no one has to clean up or feel obliged to provide sustenance and so all can simply enjoy being together.

Time: Pick a regular meeting time, recognizing that at various points in life, members may have more demands on their time and that these demands will fluctuate. Don’t sit there with a stop watch waiting for late offenders. Simply begin your discussion and let the late ones catch up when they can. Over time it always seems to even out.

Personal

Be tolerant. We are all struggling and sometimes the things that irritate us most about others are the things that secretly irritate us about ourselves.  Kindness is an important component of our group dynamics and seems to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine of honest criticism go down.

Be honest. If we don’t tell each other the truth about our work, believe me, someone outside will. Honesty fosters trust and although we don’t always agree with each other, an honest discussion enhances our work and helps us see it as other see it.

Be committed. You won’t always feel like going to a meeting, reading another manuscript, or discussing someone else’s writers block, but those times pass, and then it will be good again. If something isn’t working for you in the group, speak up before quitting. Anyone can quit, but not everyone can find a group of like minded people with which to share a creative life.

Have fun! This may be my most important suggestion. Laugh, tell jokes, and share life with one another. Don’t take yourselves too seriously even as you struggle to produce serious work. And maybe 13 years from now you will look at your writing group and marvel at the way time passes, one second at a time!

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Falling Apart: In Defense of Procrastination

By Mary, December 6th, 2010 | Click to Comment

When I was in high school, I had a wonderful piano teacher, Mrs. Blackwell. A few weeks before my senior recital, I drove my family crazy practicing the same tricky sections over and over, trying to get the music as close to perfect as I could. Then, a few days before recital time, the music that I thought I had perfected fell apart under my fingers. Suddenly, I hit all the wrong notes and couldn’t remember entire passages. Instead of advising me to practice more, Mrs. Blackwell patted me on the back and told me to play something else for a few days. Something fun. She said, “Don’t worry, Mary. You’ve worked hard and the music is still there. Sometimes things fall apart just before they come together.”

It was hard to follow her advice. I wanted perfection, after all, and the only way I knew to achieve it was to work harder.  But being an obedient student, I put aside the broken pieces and played something else instead.  Then, on recital night, the music flowed. It wasn’t perfect, of course, I never managed perfection, but it was very good. It was better than I had ever played it before. It was a miracle!

It’s been over forty years since I graduated from high school. I went to college as a music major and graduated as an art major. I married and raised two children who have given me four wonderful grandchildren. I’ve continued my work in art and branched out into writing. Yet, the advice given such a long time ago by a gifted music teacher still comes to mind when I’m struggling to perfect a paragraph or finish a quilt and it’s not going well. I back off, work on something else for a while. Then, when I return to my project, I tackle it with a renewed spirit and see solutions to problems that before appeared unsolvable. I call this method creative procrastination and see it as part of the process. Mrs. Blackwell was right. Sometimes things fall apart just before they come together.

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Let’s Put on a Show

By Mary, October 11th, 2010 | 2 Comments

I love old movie musicals. Particular favorites of mine are the show within a show variety where teens would gather together to solve some financial problem by putting on a show. Within a few days these enterprising young people produced a show with amazing singing, dancing, and costumes that not only saved the theater, school, or whatever the needy cause but also resolved all of the romantic entanglements of the young stars. Everybody would come together in the last scene holding hands and belting out the final number with shining, happy faces.

Of course, in real life, many of those young stars went on to lead tragic lives complicated by alcohol and drugs, multiple love affairs and marriages. Putting on a show in public to cover up their very real problems only exacerbated them and the money they made didn’t solve anything in the end. Their personal show within the show too often closed early without the happy last scene.

I recently had the pleasure of putting on a show of my art quilts at the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg. It was my first solo show and I spent the better part of the year preparing for it. I was surprised and honored by the number of people who came to see my quilts but I also experienced a form of stage fright. As gratifying as it was to see my work displayed in such a beautiful setting, it was terrifying as well. It was difficult to listen and watch as people looked and discussed my work. But I also had my own part to play in the show. I had to answer all the questions and pretend to be unfazed when someone made a remark about the price that I had put on a particularly large, complicated piece. Nobody knows the real worth of a piece of art more than the artist themselves and having to translate that worth into a dollar value is a daunting task.

Does putting on a show solve our financial problems? Sometimes, perhaps. I didn’t make a sale at my show, but I did have someone call several days later about doing a commission piece. Selling is a validation of the worth of our work. But most of us don’t create only for the money. I can think of many easier ways to make money than by making art. The show is only part of the process and the show within the show is the actual time spent in creative activity. That’s where the drama, the comedy, the tears and the laughter are found. And if we’re very lucky and work hard, that’s where our happy ending lies.

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Creativity,Events,Mary Alexander —

Getting Organized, A Fairy Tale

By Mary, May 24th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Before

First, a disclaimer. I’m in no way a neat freak. Housework has been on my list of things to be avoided at all cost since I was old enough to know that homes are not self-cleaning. I would use my last dime to pay someone to clean for me and consider it money well spent.  Nevertheless, I hate working in a messy environment. Go figure. I even clean the kitchen and put stray dishes in the dishwasher before I start dinner. Like I said, go figure. So when I started to avoid my sewing studio, I knew exactly what the problem was- it needed cleaning.

Periodically I’d take a deep breath and open the door, determined to bring some order to the space. I would look in horror at the mess, the detritus left by unchecked creativity. Were the heaps of material growing? Did the magazines hurl themselves from the shelves? Jumbled fabric demons with thread hair lurked under my sewing machine and taunted me, hissing, “You’re not the boss of me!”  So I ended up closing the door again, trying not to imagine the fabric scraps dancing with the dust bunnies on the floor.

Things came to a crux two weeks ago. With a deadline looming, I had to get some work done.  But things were so bad in the studio that I could no longer see any of the flat surfaces in the room. And that included the floor. There was no way I could start something new surrounded by such chaos. In desperation, I did what any sane woman would do. I cried. Then I picked up the phone and called for help. Help arrived in the form of a professional organizer named Kathy Needy. She calls herself the DeClutter Doc, but I call her my fairy godmother. When she came to the house for an initial consultation, I must admit I was worried that she might take one look at the place and run screaming from the room. Instead she looked calmly around and said, “This is a beautiful space!” I knew immediately that she was gifted with uncommon vision and the ability to look at something and see not what it was but what it might become.  It was a beautiful space, and Kathy was just the person to help it reach its full potential!

My Fairy Godmother and her assistants

She returned last week with her two lovely assistants, Kristy and Laura, and piles of boxes. They set to work immediately, their movements a ballet of organization. They conquered the huge piles by dividing  them into  multiple smaller piles and then putting them away. They assembled shelving and filled it with my painting supplies, all neatly sorted. They constructed a clever grouping of wire baskets that not only tamed my out-of-control fabric, it gave me another table surface to use. They took the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and chased the dust bunnies and scraps out from under the furniture. They sorted and filed and filled large plastic garbage bags with trash. All I had to do was stand back and watch, occasionally answering questions about the value of one thing or another. It was amazing, it was a miracle, it was magic. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Kathy had pulled out a magic wand and chanted, “Bibbity-bobbity-boo!”

After

By the end of the day, my studio was transformed. Everything was in its place, neatly accessible. My painting supplies had their own place out of the way. My design wall was cleared and ready for work. I could see the floor and no more dust bunnies! The area around my sewing machine was clean and quiet with no hissing demons underneath. Kathy and her crew bounced down the stairs and out of the house leaving behind complete order and the smell of lemon Pledge. I stood in the doorway, surveying my sparkling studio, and made myself a promise. I will never, never go messy again. And as I work happily drawing up designs for new quilts, I know that I can create again thanks to my fairy godmother Kathy Needy, at  DeClutterDoc.com.

Comments (3) — Categorized under: Creativity,Mary Alexander —

Nooked

By Mary, March 15th, 2010 | 1 Comment
My husband gave me a Nook for Christmas.  Don’t get excited. Although it sounds like something naughty, the Nook is an electronic reader. Marketed by Barnes and Noble Booksellers, the Nook rivals Amazon’s Kindle, but the idea behind both products is the same…the user can hold an entire library in one hand.
The Nook is about 5″ by 8″, weighs a paltry 8oz., and holds 1500 books. I can now travel without the 60 lb. bag of reading material that I consider necessary for a trip of any length. My husband gave up arguing with me about the bag years ago although he almost convinced me by pointing out that I look more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame than the sophisticated traveler I aspire to be. Now I can tuck my Nook into my purse or carry-on bag and have hundreds of books available, including a dictionary and a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which came pre-loaded for some reason.
Besides the obvious advantage when traveling, the Nook proved invaluable this winter when ice and snow kept me trapped in my house for weeks. From the comfort of my chair pulled up next to the fire, I could browse an entire bookstore, read reviews, check out new releases and order any book that I wanted with the tap of a key. It was delivered to me in minutes with no driving involved and no haunting the mailbox.
Sound too good to be true? There are drawbacks, of course. The Nook doesn’t offer the feel of the traditional book, the scent of fresh ink, the quiet joy of turning the page. The Nook doesn’t curl up in your hand. However, let’s face it. Not all books are archival material. The thought of forests felled to print the latest thriller or romance novel is disturbing.
Another drawback is the price.  Although the books are cheaper, the reader itself is costly. At roughly 250 dollars, it’s a lot to spend for something that can be scratched or broken. Fall asleep in the bathtub, drop the Nook, and neither one of you will ever be the same.
Still, the Nook has a place in the literary world. It’s convenient, conducive to instant gratification, portable, and green! The trend in electronics has been a steady reduction in price as popularity rises, so the Nook will be less pricy in the future. Just don’t fall asleep while reading in the tub.
Comments (1) — Categorized under: Mary Alexander,Uncategorized —

Caught on a Thread

By Mary, October 4th, 2009 | Click to Comment

I seem to always end up sewing something no matter where I start out.  My grandmother taught me to sew when I was a teenager saying that if I insisted on wearing my skirts at belt length,  I should learn to hem them myself. Well, it was the 60s and miniskirts were the height of fashion.  My mother refused to do any sewing, viewing it as a chore.  I’m afraid  I adopted her attitude for years until I caught a severe case of  quilting fever. Now I’m a fabric artist sewing scraps of fabric and thread into complicated wall hangings. I have a studio, a design wall, a website, and a sewing machine that cost more than my first car,  all dedicated to sewing. My grandmother would be proud.

Still, I thought writing would be the one activity that would never involve sewing.  I found out how wrong that assumption was when KaBoom decided to create a book.  Not only did we write, edit, and design our book, we have actually sewn many of them as part of the binding process.  The elegant edge, caught up in what Susan named the butterfly stitch, is a thing of beauty most book lovers will never see.  I , however, will not look at another bound book without seeing the stitches holding the smooth pages together and feeling the prick of the needle as it winds in and out. And I am sewing yet again.

The Butterfly Stitch

The Butterfly Stitch

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