I've been in a creation headspace for the past week or so. Ideas have come to me in fits and starts, and I've welcomed them no matter when they show up (because I'm all too familiar with their painful absence), listened to them and taken them seriously, and given over my warm unconscious for incubation. (I find that drinking lots of milky tea and wearing fuzzy sweaters helps warm my unconscious, too.)

In the creative process, I struggle most with patience. I have the beginnings of an idea and I want to execute my idea, all in one fell swoop (even though I know the process rarely works like that—it is, after all, a process). Though I love a good notebook as much as the next writer, all the mapping and webbing and associative thinking that goes in to the development of an idea is a bit of a buzzkill for me. Probably because it entails the translation of what I see in my mind, and translation isn't a clear-cut thing. I'm deathly afraid of losing the essence of the idea once it's spelled out on paper, and then, having to settle with something that's not quite the thing I'd originally conceived. But, how else to share something with the world? We have to take that risk.

So, to honor the golden egg that is my idea (and the pages of notes that I have yet to write), while tempering the part of me that wants to be on the other side of creation right now, I've reached a compromise with myself.

Still focused on service, I want to share with you the very beginnings of the bigger something that's still cooking in my mind. How to Use Curiosity to Send Correspondence that Delights is a petite (and free!) eGuide that touches on a couple of my favorite topics: curiosity, communication, and creative writing. Ever the faithful correspondent, I decided to share my top tips for writing the kinds of postcards, emails, and snail mail that will land you on someone's red-letter list.

'Til soon,
Helen

Notes from the week of November 1

EXCITEMENT SHARED

+ created a new ABOUT page (it contains some fun facts you might not know about me)

ADMIRED

+ Ellabell Risbridger and her brave weekly column at The Pool, "Sometimes it's the Little Things"

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ slow-cooker vegetarian buffalo cauliflower chili (so good and not too hot—we nixed the blue cheese)
+ Luis Cañas Crianza 2010
+ Cubo Tempranillo 2011 (can't make myself finish it; tastes like cough-syrup!)

LOCAL COLOR EXPERIENCED

+ three police officers went knocking on the door to our neighbor's travel trailer (we haven't stopped speculating since!)

CURIOSITIES TO BE MADE

+ paper mâché tray for my succulents to sit upon (having a moment with paper mâché...)