The Right Frame of Mind

photo courtesy Nuala, Flickr Creative Commons

"art is more than a product of your efforts - it should be about feeling, life, attitude, soul..." ~Sergio Bongart

I love this quote, and it seems to me to go with the picture over here. Because it's all about frame of mind. If you focus on the streets or the clouds in the upper right, it's a rainy day...but if you focus on the center, the sun is breaking through the clouds and it looks as if the day is changing.

To me, art is an amazing painting or a great photograph or a really well made quilt. It is something that I can look at and that might, in turn, change the way I look at things.

Which, I suppose, means the books I read (and write) are, in fact, art. However, if you ever hear me say something like, "I'm an ahhhrtist", please feel free to slap me about the head, mmmkay? Back to the topic of art.

There are days when I look at my computer and I am the rainy, slippery street: I need to be avoided. I'm focusing on what is wrong with my book or characters or whatever kerfuffle abounds on the interwebz that day. I'm in the wrong frame of mind. I'm missing that beautiful moment when the sunshine breaks through (a review, a new contract, a kind word from my agent or editor) to change the day.

Those are the days when I remind myself to change my frame of mind. Not to focus on the slippery street of a bad review or another writer whose career seems to be going places faster than my own. Instead of that negative focuse, I look for the sunshine breaking through. More often than not, that sunshine is that I get to do this wonderful, amazing thing. I get to tell stories and the stories that I tell might change the way someone looks at their corner of the world. Maybe just for a moment, but maybe, that change will be longer lasting. In either case, I've done my job well.

What is your art? How will you celebrate it today?