About this Website

The Stars Are Not Made of Fire is my blog. For years and years, I wrote thousands of words, took hundreds of photographs, drew scads of sketches, painted piles of paintings, etc.  I worked hard developing my “creative practice”.  And then I hit a wall. I just stopped. The blank page became insurmountable. White canvases remained as white as a blizzard. I quit carrying my DSL camera around. It kind of all felt really… pointless.

Some people might bandy about the words “burn out”. Others might say that I lost my groove. I do know that the world began to be far less colorful. The universe lost some of its mystery. I once said that I cannot live without poetry, but the rhyme and rhythm were gone.

But you insist–creativity is not a form of magic. I am not so sure. I have recently begun to write, draw, and paint again. And I have returned to this blog. Many of the posts are from years ago and I have left them. I plan to add more posts as overcome the blank pages and white canvases. I am documenting my journey on my creative path here. You are welcome to follow along with me.

In the menu you can find the following:

People Who Inspire

We all need heroes. We all need examples of people who have done what we want to do because they show what is possible. Ideas come before actions. We have to believe things are possible before we can do them.  The category of “People Who Inspire” is filled with information about the ordinary people who have accomplished great things.

People Who Inspire has five subcategories: Artists, Poets, Authors, Uppity Women, and Innovators.

Writing

Writing can be in and of itself a way to develop a creative practice. For years, I wrote poems, short stories, and a couple dreadful novels. 

Writing has three subcategories: Poetry, Writing Fiction, and Writing Nonfiction.

Art

The word “art” covers a lot of ground. I went to art school for a couple years and I have spent countless hours in museums. I have been exploring just the act of creating art with no expectations– a kind of intuitive art.

Art has five subcategories: Drawing and Painting, Experimenting with Color, Design and Design Thinking, and Photography.

 

About Me

I am an artist, poet, writer, photographer and teacher. Also, I have struggled for years with being creative, despite that other people who know me consider me to be a creative person. I have struggled at times to reignite my creativity and made it a mission to figure out what creativity is and how to develop a creative practice.

Oddly, despite the fact I have written fiction, poetry and nonfiction since I was in elementary school, I sometimes struggle with identifying myself as a writer. In my mind I dismiss my achievements– “I am not really a writer because I haven’t___________.” And there is always some achievement I have not unlocked that pushes the goal farther out.

When I write about self-identifying as a creative person or a writer or an artist or whatever, it feels awkward. It feels somehow overblown. And yet if I don’t identify myself first as being creative, no one else will. 

Now, having had my life be nothing but day in and day out struggle with little creativity, I can say leading a creative life is like going through the looking glass. I have begun seeing glimpses of how heartbreakingly beautiful the world can be. There are stories at every turn. 

I hope you will come along with me on this journey as I walk this creative path.

I can also be found on twitter at: twitter.com/thestarsarenot1

My facebook page is at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Magazine/The-Stars-Are-Not-Made-of-Fire-112115122243243/

I can be found on instagram as annebsunflower