Stephanie's Studio

I am on my way somewhere. I think I have an idea of the destination but really I'm unsure. I'm the type that likes to hold onto things. As a nostalgic person, I'm very resistant to throwing things out. I hold on to old letters, redundant email addresses and ancient digital files. Those should be the easy things to trash but they aren't. Then there are the larger items, clothing, shoes, coats and books. You don't even want to know the age of my collection. This morning I had a novel idea. I decided to pack things up and give most of them away. The nicer things I'd put on consignment. "Where's all that stuff going?" My husband asked as I carried bag after bag out the front door. "Away," I said, feeling as though my stuff had found a different place to live and was moving out. When I reached the 25 pound weight-loss milestone I had what I thought was a clever idea. I began packing away clothing that was too big for me in chests...

Magick and great ashe stems from engagement with plants. Over the years I've come to regard them as a reservoir of healing, font of wisdom and source of creativity. Healing with plants is an important facet of holistic health. Herbs are quite capable of gracing the mind, body and spirit with age-old energetic insights that lead to wellness. I've written a good handful, maybe more, of posts about gardening. Gardening as a pastime, a pleasure, a metaphor and a space for cultivating hopes and dreams. Do you remember when I shared the post  Seeding the Snow ? That was in March and I was so relieved that spring was actually going to show its face after a long, hard Chicago winter. Still, winter was unrelenting so it seemed as though you'd have to plant in the snow. The snow didn't want to make an exit. Then there was this post called  Weeding , which focuses around the activity of gardening as a form of mind/body/spirit therapy. When I wrote "Weeding" I was s...

(Untitled: Colored pencils on Paper by Stephanie Rose Bird) Whew! That was a busy post I did previously called  Getting the Word Out There . I wrote it as a member of IWSG  for our monthly blog hop. Thanks so much to so many new people for stopping by during that event, joining this blog as members and adding me to your circles on Google+. I have been humbled by all of the new connections I've made with fellow bloggers, readers, writers, artists and people generally this past year. I am a private and quiet person. Coming out of my den and connecting with the world once again has been an inspiration. As I was busy blog hopping last Wednesday and Thursday as a part of the support group experience, I stumbled upon a post by a fellow member Gwen Gardner called  Giving it Another Try . One of the most compelling parts of her post for me was that she posed the question to us, is blogging dead? As an artist specializing in painting, I've heard that topic discusse...

Insecure Writer's Support Group It's no big secret. I'm not fond of critiques. Last April I wrote a post called  Critique Anxiety . This was about presenting an excerpt from my manuscript for a workshop. That was the same manuscript that I almost gave up on and wrote yet another post about my loathing of rejection called  Query Burn Out . While it seemed to me that I was bathing in rejections, eventually I got a publishing deal for my debut work of fiction. Now that the book will be published I have gone about setting up a blog tour or even hiring a publicist. I reached out to a publicist and unexpectedly she critiqued my online presence. Signing up for a critique or asking for one through your actions, such as submitting work for review, is one thing. When they come out of the blue, it's quite another. Unbeknownst to me, the publicity firm combed through my social media. Then they reported back what they thought I needed to do to make it better. This didn...