I dropped off another house portrait this morning. I think they were happy with it. Normally I like to wrap the paintings before I deliver them but this one was still a little wet so there was no ‘reveal’. I will think twice about that in the future as I think it adds to the excitement.
I also found out about an opportunity to enter some artwork for a hospital expansion. I will look more into it, but it looks like University Hospital has a 'call for entries’ for their new women’s health wing. The theme is “Texas in Bloom” which could be the theme of a lot of my plein air paintings from 2021. I like the idea of having my artwork in a professional building but, I also like the idea of my work being associated with healing and renewal. That’s inspiring.
As I’m writing, I’m sitting here looking at my new painting of the church. I worked on it this morning and I think it’s coming along. I’m painting it using several photos as references, so I’m really on my own trying to figure out where to go with it. The client wants a nocturne, which is cool because the nighttime photos I found have lights strung on the rafters. It adds warmth, and makes it feel special. Moody, but in a good way. But nocturnes still feel a little out of my league. It’s only the second nocturne I’ve done and they’re not as easy as they look.
This afternoon I’m going to the grocery store to get ingredients to make my Little Women recipes. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make the biscuits or not but I think I’ll go ahead and do it. This is about having fun and finding something to enjoy. I’ve read the scene where Hannah makes ‘pounded potatoes’ and Amy makes lemonade but I haven’t read the part where they make the Cottage Pie or the Maple Biscuits yet. Now that I’m making recipes from the Little Women Cookbook I don’t want to read the book too fast.
I’m at the part where Marmee has gone to DC to nurse her husband and Beth has come down with scarlet fever. Ugh. I already know Beth dies and I can only assume this is how. If Marmee hadn’t left town she would have gone to the German family’s house to help them out and been the one who was exposed to scarlet fever. But, it’s not Marmee’s fault. It’s no one’s fault. It makes me wonder of Luisa May Alcott had a sibling that died. if Little Women is semi-autobiographic, did she have a sibling die or did she just make it up for the sake of the story?
I guess you can’t have a good story without a little drama. It makes me think about my own writing and whether my stories are captivating. When I first started sending out query letters I never heard anything back. Nothing. But in the past month or so I’ve been getting a lot of rejection emails. And even in the past week the rejection emails have been somewhat lengthy. This morning I got one encouraging me to continue querying. Weird.
I know all I can do is continue. All I can do is keep writing and keep sending out letters to agents. When I was in high school a teacher told us about an author who sent out query letters for years, never hearing back. She kept writing though, and ended up with several manuscripts by the time a literary agent became interested in her work. At the time he told us who the author was but I can’t remember now. All I remember is the tenacity. I hope I don’t have to wait decades to hear from anyone, but it does make me realize that relying on an agent and or getting published to make me feel legit is insanity. I want to write. I think about it even when I’m not writing. So that’s what I’m doing.