Wollman Rink in Central Park.
I'm down there somewhere doing my thing.
In public. Sharing with others this experience.

I'm trying something new for me. New in so many ways. First, I want to practice more spontaneous writing and creative risk-taking. I don't set time out in my day right now to do either so I want to make more of an effort to do that. Secondly, I want to allow my writing and creative risk-taking to be more public. I don't normally expose my creative side to anyone but me so I figure if I can at least get used to, and hopefully comfortable with, the idea of publishing random thoughts and projects on this blog, then maybe I'll eventually work up the courage to publish what I consider to be my more serious writing.

I've discovered a few interesting blogs that post creative sparks...ideas to get the words flowing, paint brushes moving, drums beating, shutters snapping, etc. One of them is Friday Fill-Ins, a simple list of fill-in-the-blank sentences published every Friday. Quick, easy, and painless. So far. You can check out my first Fill-In above. Another quick and easy writing practice is Fiction Friday. The rules are simple: a topic is posted, you write for at least five minutes, and then post what you've written without any editing (okay, that part may not be so simple for me...but that's exactly why I'm doing this!). Sunday Scribblings is a similar posted-topic assignment but with more wiggle room. I've taken to reading Sparkletopia on a daily basis as well. It's a new blog by an artist I met through Peach Tree Gallery. Her name is Christine Mason Miller and there's something about her that draws me in...her artwork, her personality, her passion for creating and inviting others to do so too. And then there's Keri Smith. From her 100 ideas to her Artist's Survival Kit, I'll never run out of fun things to write about or do.

As you can see, there are a lot of blogs out there to motivate, move, guide, encourage, gently push, nicely pull, and otherwise feed the creative side if one is looking for that. I'm sure I'll run across other blogs I'll like and begin to participate in so don't hold me to just the ones posted above. I have no particular agenda here, no time line to follow, no mission to accomplish. Only a desire to JUST DO IT!