Get Your Creative Costume on!

Some days I am especially grateful to have children.

Halloween is one of those days. I live in an area of the country where many people do not celebrate, mostly for religious reasons.

I am not one of those people.

It's not the candy, or the horror flicks on television. It's the chance to dress up. I LOVE dressing up. It is a way to fit my love of stories into my daily life, along with my fascination with costuming (engendered in my theatre participation), my love of sewing, and my need for imaginative play all together.

Thankfully, it's my year to take the kids trick-or-treating. I dress up either way (even when I hand out candy), but it's infinitely more fun when I get to walk around from door to door, ostensibly to "monitor" my kids as they do the same, only with pumpkin pails to collect their candy. (The candy doesn't interest me in the least… okay, maybe a little, but only the Almond Joys and Bit-o-Honeys).

So we're starting school as soon as possible this morning, and then prepping splendidly for a night of walking around in character. I'll update this post later today with a picture of all of us!

Absence Makes the Fingers Fearful

Halloween is the perfect time to face my fears. But what could I possibly be afraid of? What have I been most afraid of lately?

It isn't wrinkles. I have plenty of those, and they don't bother me. It isn't really any physical feature. I'm pretty content with all that, and even if I weren't, what am I supposed to do about it? Go under the knife. Please.

Courtesy of Freepik.com

I'm not afraid of teaching. I've been doing that all over my house lately, teaching my kids Latin and other stuff, working them hard, lecturing, writing lesson plans, creating projects for my kids to tackle. It's time-consuming, but still worth it.

No, what I've feared lately is writing. That thing I once loved to do passionately, but which, for a variety of reasons, I haven't done in months. I've considered it millions of times. I've even briefly felt my heart pitter patter with excitement at the thought of starting a new project. But my fear has always overcome me. I would have gone absolutely mad except I threw myself into reading with the same level of passion.

But reading can only tide me over so long. And its effectiveness has passed. I've stopped reading at least a dozen books over the last few weeks, dissatisfied with the characters, the plot development, or even the narrative voice of them. I've suddenly become a listless reader. And that can mean only one thing: Fearful or not, I need to return to my writing, or I will go off the deep end, so to speak. (You see, it's been so long since I've written that I'm using all sorts of bad cliches. AAK!)

It's fear-facing time. Time to face the scary blank white Microsoft Word screen and type something into it. Time to make blogging, playwriting, noveling, and poetry writing one of my four big priorities (FINALLY it will take precedence over "cleaning"!) Time to venture into the web-covered old haunted house that was my writing life. Time to sweep out the cobwebs, the spiders, the red-eyed rats, and clean up the place so that I can fill its walls with some new artwork.

Time to write, write, write every day. Without fail.

And no more cliches! (Okay, maybe a couple. I'm sure you'll see them here and there when you come back.)

Spiders -- For Goth

Is it that their wiggly legs

With hair or plastic looking

Might fall into your runny eggs

When you are busy cooking?

Or do you fear the brown recluse

Who hides inside your closet?

Or patchy webs in that old spruce

That make you want to lose it?

Instead of shivering in your shoes

Or jumping back in fear

Think, "Spiders would make great tattoos

Or fancy underwear."

"I think I'd like to dress like one

For Halloween, or Christmas

Their weaves shine like aluminum

And float between things, weightless

"Perhaps I'll climb into the lap

Of Daddy Longlegs, napping,

Or try a taste of venomed sap

Black Widow makes--most strapping!

"I want to see the world their way

The people passing by

Too big, or running all away,

While I sit in the sky.

"Such an adventure it would be

To be the spider on my knee

If she were I and I were she

A spider, weird and wild, and free."