Stephanie's Studio

Recently, I surprised myself with the anxiety over submitting a manuscript excerpt to my writer's workshop. It all started rather normal but then took an odd twist into what I consider abnormal behavior. I always edit and revise. All writers do that. But this time was different. I edited the heck out of it. Maybe combing over it 15 times total and revising it each time, eventually nothing was left in my opinion accept for tweaking but tweak I did. This was to a work that had already been edited several times. I hope I haven't leached the life out of that excerpt. It is from my work-in-progress, "Out of the Blue." I am still filled with dread when I think about the upcoming evening of my critique, which takes place about a week from now. You know I've posted before about  Critique Anxiety . When I read over that post from last year, I see that the anxiety I blogged about arose because I was in a different workshop, about to present my work. I'm not this ...

As a painter I was never overly interested in realism. I liked a few realist artist’s works and was always sure to include them in my slide lectures, in case students in my class had a preference for working that way. My first love was impressionism, followed by post-impressionism and then the fauves and abstract expressionists. I prefer contemporary surrealism, where elements of the fantastic are allowed into the picture or even classical surrealism, such as the work of Magritte.                                                  (Magritte, Oil on Canvas - The Donor) As a writer my fiction novels have never been urban realism or any other type of straight forward narrative set in our world, as people generally understand it. I remember first being moved by the work of Carlos Castaneda in art school. He was a controversial figure, particularly prolific ...