Do You Need A Writing Group?

Is there an e-book that is dying to climb out of your brain?

Have you been wanting to start -- or keep up with -- that blog idea you have?

Are the characters in your novel waking you up at 3:00 a.m. each morning, uttering sentences they are bugging you to write down on their behalves?

Do you keep saying to yourself, "I gotta write. I gotta make the time and do it?"

Well. Then my advice is, "Try a writing group."

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm lucky enough to belong to a fabulous group that meets once a week. For two hours. With a rotating group of attendees. And our goal is to park your butt in the chair AND WRITE.

Administrated by the fabulous networking/do-gooding/supportive/all-round-awesome group A Band of Wives, the group is facilitated by smart, flexible, interesting and steadfast author and editor Carol Pott. (Find her business editorialgirl here. And check out her books here.)

I am grateful for the time I spend at this group. Finishing up my own e-book (about beginning to market your own art, which I plan to have up as a Kindle selection later this fall). Writing blog posts. Writing pieces for Eric Maisel's World Salon. Writing. Writing. Writing whatever needs and wants to be written at that time, without the distractions of life when we're sitting somewhere else . . . often, trying to avoid writing :)

And I'm grateful for the pastries.

And chocolates.

And coffee.

Support of smart friends. (Like @alembic . . . .) Uninterrupted time. Pastries, chocolate. Coffee. Recipe for writing success.

Have heard so often lately from folks that they want and need to write. Sometimes the public commitment to sitting one's butt on the chair and doing it will launch you right forth into the project. Go for it!!!!

Kate Barrengos: Architectural Play

Meet Marin County artist Kate Barrengos.

This photo is from Kate's website, which gives you all the deets on her background, including the galleries and shows she's been in around the San Francisco Bay Area for the past couple of years. We here at Beans have admired her work as a fellow member of the Marin Arts Council, and sincerely feel like if we could paint, we wish it would be like Kate paints. Check out pieces in earlier MAC show here.

Kate's newest show is "Architectural Play." Fifteen acrylic-on-linen paintings of childhood block interpretations of architectural icons . . . like here, Stonehenge.

Quite fittingly, the show is in the Mill Valley building that houses Thompson/Dorfman Urban Residential Development.

Kate's paintings, and the curation of them here, are stunning. The dust-to-umber-to-sienna color palette, the clean rectangles of the pieces, the geometry of the blocks within them all look just right in the building's foyer . . . .

. . . and up the stair well

. . . and into the offices themselves.

Kate's written statement about her art includes a sentence we love particularly: "I paint in order to understand." Which reminds us a lot of Flannery O'Connor's explanation of why she wrote: "I write to discover what I know."

We love Kate's work. We love the precision, creativity, architecture, vision and exploration in it. We love how she paints in order to understand, and that she engages in that process, and brings forth these images into the world.

We hope you'll check them out yourself through October at this show, and visit her website to see more: http://www.katebarrengos.com/

Thanks for your artistic self, Kate! YOU ROCK!!!!

Holy Crap! It's the Fourth Quarter!

Yes, folks. It's the first week in October. Which means we've entered the Fourth Quarter of 2011.

Let us not fret about the passage of time. About where the other three quarters of this year went. About how we all could swear it was JUST New Year's Eve about two weeks ago. About how we quake in our boots when we realize that -- gasp! -- the "holiday season" is nearly upon us. (Again.)

Instead, let us take a deep breath.

Yes!!!

Do it.

Do it again.

Feel better? GOOD!!!!

Now, instead of freaking out, let's get positive. And proactive.

Grab yourself a warm beverage . . . .

. . . grab a pencil . . . .

. . . wield that little sucker like a javelin in your fingers . . . AND MAKE A LIST!!!!

Because when it comes right down to it, there's hardly anything that can get your butt in gear better than brainstorming what you want and need to do, and getting it down on paper . . . where you can see it, and be proud of it, and where it is no longer rattling around in your brain to wake you up at 3:00 a.m.

Moreover, sharing that list with someone else gives you added visualization and accountability motivation. When you communicate to someone else what you intend to do, it means something more to you, and is far more positive than when you simply recite in your head, "I ought to get around to that. Damn. I still haven't. I suck."

So . . . here's my own list of what I want to accomplish in the Bean Up The Nose Art part of life in the Fourth Quarter. (The order is irrelevant to each's importance.)

1. Create new products (journals! phone covers! water bottles! travel mugs! for example!) and load those little puppies up for sale on a website like Cafe Press.

2. Finish, and publish on Kindle, my e-book: about how to begin marketing YOUR art!

3. Create 7-10 new greeting card images.

4. Get way far into website renovations.

5. Research licensing.

6. Research and apply for 2012 fairs.

That's the plan, folks. I've committed to it, by sharing it with you and the world :)

Now . . . what do YOU want to accomplish in this Fourth Quarter?!?!?!?

Let folks know! Log on below with a comment. Make your own blog post about it. Tell us on Twitter. Post it on your Facebook page.

The point: figure out where you want to be by Dec. 31. Write it down. Tell someone. And work to make it happen :) And we will all be cheering each other on.

Best of luck!!! You rock for trying!!!!