January 4, 2018

Guest post: Are you a creative or a multi-creative?

Self portraits of Vincent van Gogh and Matthew Gubler

Yo, my loves. I'm starting a series of guest blog posts written by the wonderful members of my team—the very people who are helping TUBE happen. Please welcome Lilith Matilda Gearhart—artist, activist, advocate, hippie, and the Shipping Goddess who helps ship your books, and the Support Goddess whom you've seen reply to your emails.

ARE YOU A CREATIVE OR A MULTI-CREATIVE?

You might not know who I am, but I know who you are. Aside from being avid organ donors to a Russian with an addiction to the written word, you are also (in your own mad ways) addicts as well. We all are. We are addicted to writing and reading, but we are also very simply addicted to creation. For some, creating is something that can be put into one category or medium. These people are creatives. For those of us who perhaps find it impossible to express ourselves in only one medium we get to be known as multi-creatives. We are basically the same, but instead of being in competition with one another, we can learn from each other.

September 17, 2015

Writing after depression

by Ksenia Anske

Mike Verbickas asked: "I wanted to reach out to you considering the hell of a year I have had thus far. I was hospitalized for depression a few months back, real mind altering stuff. I haven't been able to write since. I am still experiencing considerable problems writing. I don't have any ideas currently and need help with creative stimulation. Do you have any thoughts/suggestions? Can you describe your creative process? How do take an idea or two and flesh them out into a first draft? How many hours a week do you roughly spend writing? How long did it take you to get adjusted to such a schedule?"

That's a ton of questions, Mike, so I'll tackle them one by one. I'll do my best to give you all I have learned over the last 3 years that I've been writing and you tell me if it was helpful or if you have any more questions, okay?

August 10, 2015

Where I answer questions from your postcard, Penny

by Ksenia Anske

Thank you for beautiful questions, Penny. Here are my answers.

1. Have you ever gotten lost thinking how it all could just be make-believe?

Yes, all the time, since I was very small, in fact. I often thought that life as I saw it wasn't real and made up my own theories about it. When I was 5 or so, I was eating purplish berries from the juneberry tree bush at our dacha, standing on the rickety bench, and I came up with an idea that when I will grow old, I'll turn around and grow young again, then grow old, and so all those stories about death are nonsense. Another time I was fascinated how I could never look at myself the way other people look at me. I could never get out of my head, so I set upon staring at the mirror and trying to get out of my head. And yet another time when I looked under the bed where my grandmother laid out persimmons on the newspapers to ripen, I thought I saw a sea of them, not just some thirty persimmons, but a whole sea, and I was convinced that my reality was realer than what I saw. I still do it, when I write. I sometimes catch myself thinking that maybe all of it is make-believe, only we each have our own, and I live in mine and show others what it's like through my stories.

February 2, 2015

The trip to Spokane and how I keep shedding my fears

by Ksenia Anske

It happened! It happened! The universe provided—because I shouted that I will wring its neck if it won't. Namely, I've been invited to do a book reading at Auntie's Books (THANK YOU!!!) in Spokane and had no idea how I would get there (I have no car), but then a miracle happened. Like, a real miracle with thunder and lightning and everything. One of my readers, Katie Lee Cook, shouted at everyone everywhere to find me a ride. Then my other reader, Cassie Rainn, has graciously offered to haul my skinny fundament from Seattle to Spokane and back. And she did. And not only that, she made me dried bananas and strawberries and elephants, and fed me along the way.

August 14, 2014

Writers and depression

by Ksenia Anske

What a timely topic, in light of Robin Williams' tragic passing and the chaos in Ferguson and more awful news in the world which I'm sure are happening but I refuse to even go and look, because they are likely to lock me in depression. Depression. The dingy surly greyness sullied by black smudges of an almost irresistible desire to quit it. Quit it all together. Why live? The world is such an awful cruel place. We all seem to be shouting on every corner how we want to be loved and to love, and at the same time carry guns and find every bit of an excuse to use them "to protect our freedom" or whatever the mantra is. "I"m protecting my manicured lawn." "Don't fucking trespass on my property." Don't do this, don't do that. Why does this concern artists so much? Why do we get so wound up seeing things like this happening? You know why? I'll explain.

Artists are extremely sensitive people. You might call us crazy, or ADD, or bipolar, or whatever psychological disorder is in fashion in the media currently. Why? Why do we appear this way? We are normal, except for one thing.

WE HAVE NO SKIN.