Devils Out, Good Luck in

So it's Groundhog Day in the USA (2/2) and Setsubun in Japan (2/3), for a few minutes at least, until it's not 2/2 in the US anymore.

You all know by now that Punxatawney Phil saw his shadow and there's six more weeks of winter. However, what do you know about Setsubun?

Well, I thought I knew this Japanese holiday well enough to make it my favorite one of the year. Someone in the village or in the family puts on a devil's mask (a cute, rather benign devil--more like an imp) and the rest of family pelts him with beans, shouting, "Devils out, good luck in!" Right? And you eat the number of beans that represents your age in years, right? And you eat rolled sushi, right?

Well, that's how we've always done it, but this year my husband decided to research the traditional and ancient custom online (bit of an irony there), and he discovered the purist's way to celebrate Setsubun. It seems that shrines recommend that if there is a person in the family whose Chinese Zodiac year it is (and it's the year of the dragon--if you were born this year, or if on your birthday this year you will turn 12 or any multiple of 12 (as in 24, 36, 48, etc) then you are a dragon and this is your year), that person is in charge of purifying the house of devils. Luckily, my older son is a dragon, so he was in charge. (If you don't have  dragon in the family, everyone shares the duties.) So my older boy had to go to each window and door in the house, open it up, and thrown beans out while yelling "Devils out, good luck in!" Which in Japanese is, "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!"

But there was no dressing up as a devil and pelting one another, as we did in years past, taking turns as devils. We still get to eat makizushi (rolled sushi) though. I like it the old way better, which I guess is really the new way since the way we celebrated this year was the real old way. I'd better start campaigning right away for a return to the mask-wearing next year; I don't want to be a purist, at least not on Setsubun. And I'd better go sweep up the beans that have fallen around all the doors and windows in our house. Another benefit to our previous way of celebrating was that there was a single door around which beans needed to be cleaned up.

My family, last year, boys still in pajamas, celebrating Setsubun. No masks were worn this year; no pajamas either. My dragon son is holding a peanut, which we threw last year. Peanuts are an acceptable replacement for dried soy beans. Or they were, before we went purist.

Friends Helping Friends

Once again, from Diane Lockward's excellent monthly newsletter I borrow another link, this one to a Yahoo! Voices article by Angie Mohr entitled "A Bestseller in the Making: 7 Ways You Can Help Your Author Friends."

Do you have a friend who's just published a book, and do you want to be as supportive as possible? Mohr gives hints how to help, ranging from the obvious (buy a copy of the book), to the more subtle (face the book cover out, not spine out, on bookstores you visit), to ones I'd never thought of (bump up positive Amazon reviews by finding them "helpful," and bump down negative ones by not by marking them "not helpful"). She also advises on how to use social media to promote your friends' work.

Most of us writers do have publishing friends, so this is a great resource.

What else have you done to help a friend promote a newly published book?

Seeking Inspiration

From Diane Lockward's amazing monthly newsletter, I got this link to to an article in the UK Guardian entitled "Top Artists Reveal How to Find Creative Inspiration."

I was surprised to read from composer Mark-Anthony Turnage: "Routine is really important. However late you went to bed the night before, or however much you had to drink, get up at the same time each day and get on with it. When I was composing [the opera] Anna Nicole, I was up at 5 or 6am, and worked through until lunch. The afternoon is the worst time for creativity."

I agree about the routine part (for many artists at least), but really, am I the only who writes in the afternoon? I cannot concentrate in the morning until all the things that must be done that day are done, and once my family's home in the evening, it's chaos, so I am often writing in the afternoon. Anybody else?

From director Rupert Goold, this observation:  "Get an alarm with a long snooze function and set it early. Shallow-sleep dreams have been the source of many of my best ideas (sadly, small children are no respecters of prospective genius)."

Yes! Waking early in the morning I sometimes find I have solved in my sleep the creative dilemma I went to bed thinking about.

Rupert Goold makes  a few other points I found provacative:
"Once you have an idea, scrutinise the precedent. If no one has explored it before in any form then you're 99% likely to be making a mistake. But that 1% risk is why we do it.";
and, "Make sure you are asking a question that is addressed both to the world around you and the world within you. It's the only way to keep going when the doubt sets in.";
and "An idea is just a map. The ultimate landscape is only discovered when it's under foot, so don't get too bogged down in its validity.";
and finally, "Love the effect over its cause."

From playwright Lucy Prebble, this encouragement: "Feeling intimidated is a good sign. Writing from a place of safety produces stuff that is at best dull and at worst dishonest."

Here's a tidbit from artist Susan Philipsz that coincidentally has been on my mind recently as a real lack in my creative life: "Daydream. Give yourself plenty of time to do nothing. Train journeys are good."

From artist Polly Morgan: "Hard work isn't always productive. Your brain needs periods of inactivity. I think of it as a field lying fallow; keep harvesting and the crops won't mature."

I've certainly found this to be true; sometimes I feel like I'm not working, not getting anything written, and then I have a suddenly hyper-productive period that follows the fallow time, and wouldn't have been possible without it. See my post Patron Saint Against Writer's Block.

Enjoy more insights at the UK Guardian link above.

Poetry Shots

YesYes Books has just released a new project: Poetry Shots. Poetry Shots, brainchild of KMA Sullivan, are poems paired with original artwork in a downloadable format. The first five offerings match the following poets/artists:

Ben Mirov/Eric Amling
Dana Guthrie Martin/Ghangbin Kim
Dorothea Lasky/Kaori Mitsushima
Metta Sama/Mihret Dawa
Angela Veronica Wong/Megan Laurel.

You can even get a free EP to get a sampling and see what Poetry Shots are all about.

Henry Miller's Work Schedule

This comes from my friend Will D; thanks, Will!  Love #5 and #8 especially.