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 and absurdity. I once said that I cannot live without poetry, but the rhyme and rhythm were gone.

Some might say that writing is not a form of magic, painting doesn’t bring joy, or that being creative is not a way of practicing spirituality, but I am not so sure. I have been writing, drawing, and painting again. Along with making stained glass, doodling, and sewing. And I find myself returning to this blog. I paid for one more year of web hosting– just to see if I enjoy writing again and if the discipline of showing up for this blog helps me jump start my writing. Many of the posts are from years ago and I have left them. 

For now, I am here. You are welcome to follow along with me. I won’t make any promises about how long this blog may exist.

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. Yes, even if I haven’t been doing as much as I did in the past. Also, I have struggled for years with being creative, despite that other people who know me consider me to be a creative person. I don’t think human beings are ever not creative. We just forget how sometimes.

Also 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. Why? If a person writes, they are a writer. Not just me, you too.

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. 

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