Once again, I turn to Rob Brezny’s Horoscope for some words of wisdom. Here is mine for the week beginning on the 18th:
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Coloring books for adults are best-sellers.
Tightly-wound folks relieve their stress by using crayons and markers to
brighten up black-and-white drawings of butterflies, flowers, mandalas,
and pretty fishes. I highly recommend that you avoid this type of
recreation in the next three weeks, as it would send the wrong message
to your subconscious mind. You should expend as little energy as possible
working within frameworks that others have made. You need to focus on
designing and constructing your own frameworks.
I find this amusing for a couple of reasons: I never cared much for coloring books as a child because I always wanted to color outside the lines and create my own doodles to color AND a friend bought me one of these adult coloring books for Christmas and I’ve only colored one page. My friend loves her adult coloring books and has completed a couple of them. I get the concept. Great for relieving stress. Keeps you sharp and focused on one task, so also great for people with ADD or ADHD. It’s not so good for creative types with OCD because just one color outside the line and well, we go bonkers! I am more comfortable without the lines or my own lines, thank you very much!
I am encouraged by Rob’s words. To design and construct my own frameworks. I’d like to think that this is what I have been doing a lot lately with my writing. I think that the more I step outside my comfort zone and write things that frighten and scare the shit out of me, the more honed my skills are becoming. I also like that I am doing my own thing with my writing these days. For so long, I concentrated solely on one genre, believing that this was all I was cable of and not much else. Or that I needed to write mainstream fiction if I ever wanted to be published. But now I know that isn’t so. Now I don’t care about publication or mainstream. I just care about the writing. I love the characters I’ve come up with lately. And I enjoy exploring the dark side of my subconscious.
So thank you, Rob and thank you for the reminder to keep doing my own thing!
As the Fates Would Have It 