My evolution of art

I had a lot of fun this week doing something that’s been a long time coming. As the folks who read this blog and my newsletter know, I recently finished painting the interior of my house. But what most people don’t know is that I’ve had my own oil portraits waiting to go on the walls for the last fourteen years.

I guess the reason most people don’t know about my art is because I gave it up in 2005 to focus on the writing (more about that part in another blog).

 Right from when I first started writing fiction for children as a teenager, I started doodling pictures of the characters. And it evolved from there.

Black ink, The Great Adventures of Splat the Wonder Dog

Nature does not hurry and yet everything is accomplished. ~Lao Tzu
 

I started out as a writer determined I’d be one of those special hybrids, the author/illustrator, because I’d admired Tove Janssen’s work so much as a child. The next twenty plus years were spent pouring hours into the text and then just as many hours into the illustrations. Unfortunately, this only served to put more barriers between me and publication as publishers took umbrage at what they saw as my ‘taking work away from in-house illustrators’. I loved to illustrate my own stories though, so I continued putting pictures to the words.

Black ink and pencil, for The Great Adventures of Splat the Wonder Dog
 

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape. ~Anonymous

 

One day, I was showing work such as the illustration above to my friend, the great artist and sculptor, Liz Sutherland. “It’s good,” she said, “but you should take my class in oil portraiture. It’d teach you to be bold in painting and in life.”

My first two oil portraits, 2000 and 2001.

 

 

There is no shortcut, snake oil, or passwords to greatness. You just have to put in your time, fill up your sketchbooks, draw from life, say yes to scary assignments. Eventually, it starts making sense. These victories are ridiculously thrilling. ~ Zelda Devon

I committed to making the drive up to Kaukapakapa every Saturday, to take classes with the dynamic Mrs Sutherland. It was very different to any type of art I had ever done before. It was time-consuming and took months to produce one finished piece and yet it was so deeply rewarding. I understood Liz’s passion for oil paint—because of its depth and texture. As Liz said, “Sometimes an oil portrait can look better than a photograph because of the richness.”

My eldest son at 17.

 

Art is not a thing; it is a way. ~ Elbert Hubbard

 

A few years and two more babies later, I had amassed seven A3 size oil portraits. But now there were two small children to raise and I was no longer able to spend leisurely Saturdays sitting in the countryside, painting. Two of the portraits were given away as gifts. One was a commission. The others have waited for me to paint the interior of the house so that I could hang them on the walls.

My middle child, at 10 months.

 

“The most important thing about art is to work.” ~ Steven Pressfield

 

The paintings waited in bubble wrap until last week. The walls of the house had been painted. I’d purchased the ‘damage-free hanging hooks’ and spent half a day measuring the distances. The boys helped me hang the paintings and then they posed beneath their baby portraits. It was a cross-the-finish-line moment. As I said on Facebook, Victories are hard to come by so you've got to celebrate when you get them. Then I saw this comment echoed by my friend, author, Joanna Marple, who said, ‘Celebrate the small victories.’Yes, exactly!

The top right painting is of my youngest son, aged 12 months.

“The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne.” ~Geoffrey Chaucer

 

And what about your art, Yvette? you say, did you continue? Still thinking on this topic, partly because it's come up lately and partly because of getting to hang my portraits and look at them again. At any rate, we shall revisit this topic in another blog, never fear.

Do you paint, draw, or craft? What other creative outlets give you joy?

Ttl,

Yvette K. Carol

 

Does using social media really help you sell more books?

This week, writer friends and I have been talking on the interweb about the thorny issue of using social media to sell our books and art. An author and artist I know posted this status update on Facebook, I'm not convinced that having a self-promoting Facebook page and blog actually does anything for ones income after all.

It was this status update which inspired my blog post. What a great question!

I have conflicting feelings on this subject. I don’t have a ‘fan page’. I use my own personal page on Facebook for everything. I enjoy Facebook. I think it’s fun. I really get a kick out of communicating back and forth with friends over silly pictures or discussing favourite television programmes. It’s a good way of keeping up with family too in this busy life. I’ve found the community of writers online to be supportive and pretty great. Yet, a lot of times when I post some new thing on my page about something I’ve done to promote my book-in-progress, the comments and likes are low-to-none. The airwaves go eerily silent. You can hear owls hooting in the distance.

Sometimes, with something new, you’ve got to take things slowly....

People seem to be incredibly sensitive to feeling they’re being ‘sold something’, and I admit I'm exactly the same way. I don’t like it one little bit when I feel I’m getting to know someone, only to have them turn around and try to sell me something.

So when we have our work ready to share with the world, is it a good idea to promote ourselves on social media? Or are we all simply wasting our time?

One author responded to the Facebook post, I have FB, a blog, an awesome as website, twitter etc and nothing. I have paid to promote some of my FB posts about my books and it has not resulted in any sales. Your FB page, on the other hand, is awesome in that it keeps you in touch with people who already care about what you do. But, making money. Nah. Not me.

Another writer said: It seems to me that it has a more subtle role. Drawing attention to what you are about and finding those who are interested in what you do.

ThomasUmstaad gave a podcast, featured on Author Media recently about the seven key differences between published and unpublished authors, and number seven was Marketing. He said, Published authors see marketing as part of their mission to entertain, help & inspire others. Unpublished authors see marketing as their publisher’s job.

Utilising social media always comes at the top of every respectable bloggers list when it comes to how to sell more books.

And yet , there are always exceptions to every rule. According to one person who commented on our conversation on Facebook, I went to the exhibition of a friend who doesn't have a blog, twitter, Facebook, or even her own email address and watched as artworks priced between $3,500 and $10,000 sold within minutes.

The comments reminded me of hearing our famous New Zealand author, Margaret Mahy, speak once at a festival. I was surprised to hear Margaret  say she didn’t use email, or have a website, or have a blog or a page on Facebook. And of course, when you think about it, J.K.Rowling started out the same way. While I enjoy Facebook, and Pinterest, etc, I find the notion of not doing social media a relaxing thought. Mahy and Rowling were writers. They wrote. Perhaps we should all take a leaf from their book and spend more time creating? The really successful people don’t usually sweat the small stuff like the rest of us, it seems.

And this is where the conflict comes in. Self-promotion on social media probably doesn't work, and it is a pain keeping up with it, and yet it's also quite a lot of fun. Maybe the wisest thing we can do is lower our expectations of what social media can do for us? When you have a creative talent you wish to share with the world, do so, and tell people about it. Then move on to the next project. 

As Jim Carrey famously said, “Success consists of letting the universe know what you want and working toward it, while letting go of how it comes to pass.”

If it’s meant to be, it’ll all work out perfectly....
 

What do you think? Tell me, I'd love to know!


Joke for the week~
Why shouldn't you tell a secret on a farm?
Because the potatoes have eyes and the corn has ears!

Ttl,
Yvette K. Carol :)

The Creation of the seal for the Order of Twenty-four

The Creation of the seal for the Order of Twenty-four

Hands up who’d like to get paid?

It seems fitting on Insecure Writer's Support Group Day to talk about a tetchy subject that gives some of us the heebie-jeebies - that of self-promotion. This week, author and blogger extraordinaire, Kristen Lamb, was saying on Facebook that she’d received some flak for adding links to her book and classes at the end of her blog posts. She commented, ‘And this is what hurts writers, the belief that we should not be paid for what we do.’

I thought maybe people don’t realize the realities these days. It’s a different world out there now for writers, artists, actors, models, in fact for everyone. The reality is folks rely less on advertising to make their purchasing decisions. We listen more to  word-of-mouth and social media. Watching Fashion Police on E the other night, Joan Rivers took a few minutes to plug her new book, saying that it could be preordered through her website, and when you think about it, this sort of individual self-promotion is something we’re seeing more and more. Whether it’s a byline about your book at the end of a blog post or the list of URL’s following your name on emails or the website you attach to your name via Gravatar, these are perfectly respectable practices these days. As long as each of us is respectful and honest in our approach to sharing our work, then what’s wrong with that? If we’ve ‘tilled’ the land by writing a blog, or providing a service, or making people laugh, then surely we may plant another seed which may grow further?

One of the members of my critique group who is a literary editor and agent recently commented, ‘The good news is that one of my authors' books came out. With all the social media, emailing, and other marketing she's been doing, including an Amazon Bestseller campaign, she hit No. 1 in her categories. She sold 174 copies in four days! Marketing pays off!’

Like it or not, this is the reality for an author these days. I remember meeting an author once who said he was ‘the talent’ and it was over to the publisher to handle the marketing because ‘that’s their job’. For one thing, smaller numbers than ever before in history are knocking on the doors of traditional publishers. For another thing, even if you do win a traditional contract, I hate to break it you, but you’re still expected to do the lion’s share of the marketing It’s up to you. So hang your shingle out on whatever doors are available to you, and don’t apologize.

Stand strong!

Kiwi author, Julie Thomas, was asked, ‘A lot of people want to self-publish books. What’s your advice to them?’ Her advice was, ‘You need to publicize, every day.’ How do you publicize, every day? In small, continual ways that are easy to maintain like this at the end of my emails (which I just started doing this week, bad me):

http://www.yvettecarol.com

http://www.yvettecarol.blogspot.com

 

How else do we get the word about our books (or products) out if we don’t actively promote ourselves? Through publishers advertising us? Forget it unless you’re in the top tier of authors who receive the lion’s share of the advertising revenue. Through friends and family? Not likely, apart from the precious 1% who do, most people are just too busy to spread the word about your new book no matter how much they may love you. No. These days it’s up to the individual. Because remember, as Jane Friedman said, For all the hosannas you can hear on one hand about backing the car over gatekeepers and barreling down the honeysuckle-festooned byways of 99-cents self-publishing, there are: Tales of impenetrable thickets of discoverability.

 

Well, those are my thoughts on the subject. What do you think?

See ya' in the funny papers!

Yvette :-)

 

 

 

 

 

The Creation of the seal for the Order of Twenty-four

The Creation of the seal for the Order of Twenty-four

Five simple steps to looking like an idiot

1)      Be 49

2)      Take up jogging

3)      Run as slowly as grandma

4)      Run like you’re going to stop any minute

5)      Look as pained as if you’re Prometheus*, having your liver torn out by a giant eagle.

Lately, life has thrown me a very humbling curve ball. I went to see a life coach, and he challenged me to take up jogging – he had the cheek to say I wasn’t doing enough aerobic exercise! I knew I'd walked strenuously every day for 20-30 years. I knew I was fit. Why did I need to do more?

The very next morning, I started jogging. When I say “jogging”, I ran down the last hill, five minutes before my house. And it just about killed me. My heart pounded like a baby alien trying to claw its way out of my chest. I felt I couldn’t breathe, and strange fat on the outside of my thighs—that I never knew existed—shook and juddered as if my legs had taken on a life of their own. Turns out I wasn’t as fit as I thought I was which actually came as a shock.  My ego was hurt. When I reached home, at last, I was honest-to-goodness sweating and my face was beetroot! The whole thing was an exercise in embarrassment.

 

(Keep smiling becomes my mantra) 

 

A few days later, I added another downhill slope, despite the fact that every added step made me feel how tired and old my body had become. All pride I'd ever felt about my years of exercise fell away. Who knew running was so hard?

Next, I added a stretch of flat road. To run any further was pushing me to my absolute limits, especially the first ten minutes of punishment, when I never knew from one minute to the next if I’d be able to keep going. From a bird’s eye view, I saw myself faltering along the sidewalk like an old woman, taking tottering little steps. I'd get home, drenched in sweat and my face like a plum.

Jogging, I decided, was pure torture. But I’d been challenged! There was no way I could back out.
 

 

                                                  (Keep smiling, dagnabit) 

A few weeks passed, and I added another flat stretch and downhill run. I still took mincing steps, still thought I was going to die the whole way, and still came home covered in sweat, my face too-red.

It takes a lot to become aerobically fit, apparently. Stupid jogging.

Chalk up two months of adding a yard of distance every day, and I’m at the point now where I only have to walk the very steepest part of the uphill sections. I run the rest of the way. So that's progress. I still come home covered in sweat and my face carrot. However, I can truthfully say to my life coach now that, I’m a jogger. I’ll keep to myself the fact that I’ve never felt so tragically old or pathetic.

However, I'm assured running is good for me. So I shall persevere!

 

                   (My gran always used to say, 'give away your smiles, they're free')
 

Have you ever tried jogging? Love or hate running? I'm definitely in the 'not sure' camp....

See ya in the funny papers!

Ttl,
Yvette :-)

 

*Prometheus was a Titan who Zeus punished by chaining him to the Caucasus Mountains. Prometheus had to suffer having a giant eagle tear chunks out of his liver every night only to have the liver magically re-grow every morning, so that Prometheus’s punishment was never-ending.

How do you consider your readers and stay true to your soul?

The first Wednesday of every month is officially InsecureWriter’s Support Group day! It's a wonderful way of supporting other starter bloggers, like myself, on this new, exciting journey into the world of blogging.

 

I had an interesting conversation this week with a friend. I’d regaled her with the story of how my original idea for my book, Aden Weaver & the Or'in of Tane Mahuta was for the setting to be an ‘alternate version of earth’ (a la Philip Pullman’s, His Dark Materials trilogy). However, not a single person in my critique group thought the setting in my story worked. They felt ‘pulled out of the story’ by references to earth, and they suggested I create a more fantastical setting. The good folks who receive my newsletter weighed in by casting their votes on a number of potential names I gave them for a fantasy world. End result: a new setting called Planet Chiron.

My friend was aghast. “What I’m getting is that you should stick to your vision for the story,” she said, “your critique group is not writing your story, you are. So stay true to you.”

Talk about instant conflict!

There’s a fine road to tread between considering the reader, and staying true to oneself.

In my fiction, I write a lot about non-humans. My early picture book manuscripts were about bugs. I sent these to a well-respected assessor, whose response started out with, ‘Great stories. But lose the insects.’ I asked one of my writing teachers, Kate de Goldi, about this advice. She said, ‘Don’t think about getting published, write whatever your compulsion in your soul is to write. If you’re writing about insects, you’re there for a reason.’

In the end, I decided on a compromise. I'm sticking with my beloved insects, and my own vision for these books. However, I have also heeded my critique group's advice that the setting wasn't working. It felt like a small 'wiggle' which didn't detract from the heart of the story. This is after all, what a critique group is for, to give you the sort of feedback which might come from a cross-section of the reading public. It's a way of testing how well you've delivered your ideas. It's a way of 'considering the reader'.

Yet the core has to be your personal truth.

Go with what feels natural to write, I say, if it's animals for you, or monsters from Wackakazoo go for it. My characters in the Aden Weaver series are an ancient insect species that can change their shape from insect to human, thanks to their alien ancestors. I'm expecting it not to be for everyone! However, I really do believe in writing what you're drawn to write. 

Anne Rice ~ Protect your voice and your vision . . . Do what gets you to write, and not what blocks you. And no matter where you are in your career, whether you're published, unpublished, or just starting out, walk through the world as a writer. That's who you are, and that's what you want to be, and don't take any guff off anybody.

 

Thanks for reading. See ya' in the funny papers!

Tell me, how do you 'protect your voice and your vision'?

Yvette K. Carol