New Abstract Piece by Scott Mattlin

Scott has been going through a period of creative crisis. He'd grown tired of the paintings he's been doing for the last few years. His galleries love his figure work and would often call and specifically request that he paint pieces like others he'd already done. He makes his living painting and so he'd do it, but the work was just that. It felt joyless and stale. Today he tried something different. He tuned in Brazilian music on Pandora and he did this abstract piece. I saw a joy in his movement and in his painting that I haven't seen in a very long time and I just love these.

Sometimes I sense the same creative crisis when I read books by certain published authors. That joy and natural flow that was in earlier work is suddenly gone. The book in my hands feels like the product of a loveless marriage between the author and her publisher. I wonder how common it is for an established author to be asked to reinvent work that's shown itself to sell and I wonder how often it kills the love of writing in a person.

The romance is back for Scott and I think it shows. What do you think?

P.S. Amateur video here for those who have taken their Dramamine. Who knew the little camera could do this??? After I got done, I realized I should have turned on the lights :)

I'm Still Alive!

...And I have some great pictures from Carleen Brice's very fun book launch party that I'll post later.

I've been woefully absent from Eudaemonia and from all of my favorite blogs these last two weeks -- business travel, lots of work, blah blah blah -- and I confess I've also been spending a little time at my other blog too.

At the risk of cross-pollinating these two very different forums, I'm going to link to the first of a series of 8 posts I put up at Compassion in Juvenile Sentencing today. The posts are a fairly lengthy Q&A that I did through the mail with Jacob Ind, one of the 46 juveniles serving Life Without the Possibility of Parole in Colorado. He was incarcerated at 15 and is 30 now. Of his time in prison, over half of those years have been spent in Supermax, where he is today.

The focus of the Q&A is on Jacob's experiences entering prison as a juvenile, the phases he's gone through and what prison culture is like. I found his answers to be fascinating. As most of you visiting are writers and some are sociologists and psychologists, I thought this rare glimpse into the world and the thoughts of someone who has literally grown up in prison might be of interest.

Part 1 is here.

Chapter 10 of the Dickens Challenge should be up by Sunday and my somewhat normal, bordering on obsessive visits should resume soon.

Hangin' Out in San Antonio

Tonight I had the pleasure of meeting the absolutely fabulous, funny, beautiful, wise and warm (and terribly fit) Patti from the Patti-O, here in her hometown of San Antonio.

She surprised me with this way cool gift bag filled with Fiesta goodies -- and yes, those are tiny umbrellas for "umbrelly drinks". Fiesta is a major celebration that takes place here in April -- all I ever knew about it was that I can never find a soul in the office that week, but should I find myself in town this year, I will be well supplied. I have my own margarita glass with sombrero base, shot glass, suspended by beads so I can wear it around my neck, beads with chili peppers, tiny umbrellas and the eggs -- arghhh, now I can't remember what they are called -- dyed and filled with confetti so that you can smash them over people's heads! What a welcome!

We went out to dinner and we talked and we laughed and we maybe almost cried a couple of times. It was a great night. We had to talk the wait staff into taking our picture together on the way out and here we are:
I had Scott's new camera and as an accidental bonus, the girl taking this picture also shot this fine film:



Someone recently said the cool thing about the blogosphere is that it helps us find our people.

So glad I found Patti!