A Writing 'Altar'

I was just talking about this to friends on the WordWenches  and though I mentioned it briefly in the composite post about writers and their  ‘writing totems’ I thought it might be of interest to you.

Years ago I did an on-line course with Barbara Samuel (aka Barbara O’Neal). It wasn’t about craft-of-writing, but about nurturing the writer within. One thing she did was so ask us to make a ‘writing altar’ for our muse. So here is mine.

It’s an old wooden chalk box (about 5 X 6 inches) dating from when my parents were teachers, and it’s older than I am. Inside  it  is a collection of tiny objects that are meaningful to me.

On top are some small bears — Barbara got us to do an exercise  to reveal our ‘totem animal’. Mine was a bear (this being a Nth American site, there were no Australian animals). But I’ve always loved bears, and have a ceramic bear on my window sill, as well as a number of metal bear silhouettes that I bought in Montana, long before I did this course.

The picture in the background represents the romances I write, and the crumpled paper around it is Chinese joss paper, for luck. The crystals and amethysts represent clarity and focus, and as well, I just love them and have always collected them.

The tiny red bowl (a Japanese saki cup) contains  some red dirt symbolizing my country — the heart of this land is red, and so is the dirt. Friends brought several small bags of various shades of outback red dirt back from the Northern Territory and gave them to me.
There is also a polished piece of boulder opal found in the outback by a friend and her husband, who polished it up. They were gem-fossickers  (who search the outback for gold and precious stones and have the most amazing collection.) You can just see the glints of color in the stone. It’s the bigger one in the photo on the left.

The other little dish  is a Chinese wooden stand (from when my parents lived in Malaysia) and it’s filled with smooth, tiny pebbles from the French beach (in Brittany) where I sat, and wrote and wrote, and resolved to try to make it as a writer.

There is another stone that you can’t really see in the photo, a sliver of grey slate, that I picked up from a little stream in North Wales where I wept over the story of the faithful hound, Gelert. Beddgelert means the grave of Gelert (Click here to read the story — but you’ll need tissues.)

I picked up the little mother-of-pearl shell on a beach — I am a born beach-comber— and the mouse-shaped grey one is pumice stone from New Zealand. The little turquoise charm/totem is from one of my visits to the USA, and was a gift from a friend. 

Finally there are the little red shoes. I made them myself from polymer clay (one of my hobbies). They’re there because we also discussed fairy tales and I hate the story of the Red Shoes, where a little girl was horribly punished for the sin of wanting pretty red shoes. It reminds me to write stories that always end happily.

So that’s it — my writing altar. Good thing that box is small — I could add loads more things to it. Do you like the idea? If you were to make one, what might you include? (And if you do make one, take a photo and email it to me, and I’ll share it on the blog.)