'Ole!’ to you, just for having the sheer human love
and stubbornness to keep showing up.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
That's one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite TED talks on the creative process. Sadly, I've not been very good at showing up. That was one of my biggest realizations at last year's Asian Festival for Children's Content. It was like stepping back into a wonderful world I once knew so well, yet had lost touch with because I didn't keep working at it. I felt a little out-of-place, much like my Yellow Paperclip... which is not an unfamiliar (though not exactly the most welcome) feeling. I felt like a new kid on the block when I really shouldn't, right?
But "Ole!" to that realization and more so to the resolve of changing things this year. Not only will I show up at the AFCC again but also at more gatherings of our local SCBWI (Society for Children's Books Writers and Illustrators) group as much as my crazy work travel schedule allows me. I will also show up on this simple writer's table in the little nook I've created for myself in my humble home-for-now apartment. I will stop ignoring my poor journal which has been running on empty since December 21. I will start blogging again because the adventure never stops and there is still so much back(b)log to catch up on. I will show up and write a little bit more than I did yesterday.
And if not on this writer's desk, then I can also write in bed propped up with pillows, as I learned last Saturday night when I finally wrote out my story for Sofia (after letting it simmer for two months and leaving my first draft on a worn brown envelope that made its way to San Francisco and back to Singapore - but that's for another blogpost!). I have shared my draft for our SCBWI meet-up and critique session this week and I am excited and anxious to get constructive feedback from the group.
The more I show up, perhaps the more willing my elusive genius will be to "let some wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment, through [my] efforts". If not, I still need to show up anyhow.
Thank you, Elizabeth Gilbert. Ole!
