My Daughter’s Eyes*

Every year, I celebrate the effort it took to write My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories, and to writing in general. Even writing here takes time and faith. Writing is both a joy and an effort, I have to make time for it. I have to nurture it, and believe in it. Art is the same way. I have to have courage, but my life is forever enhanced by the creative effort.

It takes a lot of persistence and determination to continue to any creative project when you have a full life filled with committment to family, four legged loved ones, full time and part time jobs. So, if you are like me, a writer, and creator of any type of art, music, stories, poems, please continue. Do not let anyone or anything stop you. Art nourishes your soul and heals what is nameless.

I love the creative process be it creating art, a blog, a lecture, a story. I pray that I continue to share my art and my stories with you, but I am slow, I take my time in the mist of the forest of my life. Every year, I focus on one or two stories I have written and I edit them. I edit them and try to find a homes for them with time given if any.

Sometimes, I am lucky, like when I wrote “Butterfly Kisses”, I read it at the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center at their Friday’s Open Mike, and an editor liked it and asked me to submit it, and Viola!!! it was published in a beautiful anthology. The same happened at another reading, and it was translated and published in spanish in an anthology as “Besos de Mariposas”

In the winter months I write lots of stories, whatever comes. In little black notebooks, and then I return to them to find one or two I can type, and then in the summer, I edit. I edit and then I try to find a home for it, when I find the courage. Rejection can paralyze me, yet rejection is what strengthens my resolve. Mostly, I try to sit and write. Yet, I never stop writing. Writing and breathing are equal to me. I breath therefore I write.

What is your creative process? How do you manage your life and your art? How do you find your balance?