I was hoping that this month’s post could be about something I’ve written getting accepted for publication, but unfortunately that’s not yet the case. Over the last year or so, seven of my submissions have been rejected. Even though I am not featured in it, I encourage you to check out The Molotov Cocktail’s 2018 Flash Monster Contest Issue. I’m sure it has some great stories if 2017 was any indication. I also pitched my short story collection to an agent and received silence, which is common practice in lieu of a rejection letter. I still have three stories out to different journals, so here’s to hoping! Seven really isn’t a whole lot. I thought I’d sent more things out for consideration, but the last year was very busy with work so I guess that makes sense.

This time last year I’d just started keeping this blog and had just put together this website and my essay had just come out in Gold Man Review. Looking ahead to next November, I hope that I’ll have some new fiction baby out in the world reaching strangers I’ve never met and probably disturbing them a bit (my writing is weird and sad most of the time). For now, I’ll have to be satisfied with the smaller things I get to create - petition forms for work (woot for making beautiful, precise, fillable PDFs), webpage copy that may or may not ever actually see the light of day, and online degree plans that are never 100% accurate the longer they exist and are exposed to system updates. Oh, the joys of the modern world.

On a more enthusiastic note, I took a Community Education felting workshop taught by Jennifer Bryan-Goforth (here is her Etsy page) and I loved it. There’s an open call for fiber art at Make.Shift that I’m planning to submit to, so that will be fun. I checked with the gallery director, and she thought my creation (left) looked good enough to show, so that’s a kind word from a stranger. I call them whimsy trees.

My first whimsy tree is inspired by the colors present in the gemstone fluorite. According to this random website I found, fluorite is supposed to help you find your divine purpose in life, your pathway to joy and happiness, and protect against negative energies. I hope my little tree can inspire similar magic, if such magic exists.

My second whimsy tree is inspired by the gemstone called bloodstone. Bloodstone, according to said random website called Energy Muse, is a guiding and encouraging stone in the sense that it helps you see the transformation ahead of you and face it with “renewed…resilience and vigor.”

To riff on “encouraging” for a moment - did you know that the root of the word “encourage” is related to the word for “corazon” and obviously “courage,” also the Old French “corage” and the Latin “cor”? Corage and Cor both mean “Heart.”

This stone, and perhaps my little whimsy tree too, might embolden the heart to carry on through difficult transformation.

I’ll probably make a few more to take to Make.Shift for January’s Art Walk. I hope you’re creating things too! If you have any ideas for gemstones, please send them my way. I think my next attempt will be a whimsy tree inspired by amethyst.