Muse Quest PDX

Romancing the Creative Life in Portland, Oregon

Kim Switzer

Inspiration, Aisle 5

I’ve had an especially inspiring, creatively stimulating week. First, after several years and a couple of false starts, I have a writers’ group again! We had our first meeting Wednesday night, five of us in a little back room in Anna Banana’s coffee shop. I’m so excited by this! But I’m writing at length about that in my writing blog, so I won’t go on here.
Instead, I’ll mention the time of year. It’s late July. Nearly August. Do you know what that means? If you’ve been in a store lately, and you’re anything like me, you’ve probably guessed what I’m talking about—school supplies!

I love school supplies. Pens. Notebooks. Folders and binders, calendars and planners, index cards, rulers…These make my writerly heart go pitter pat.
Why? I don’t know for sure. I know that I’ve always been excited by all of the new school supplies at back-to-school time. My mother loves school supplies, too. Maybe it’s genetic.
I think one of the reasons I get so excited by school supplies is the seemingly limitless creative possibilities in them. Imagine all the stories that can fill those notebooks! All the notes and ideas and new bits of knowledge. Picture all the drawings and doodles that can fill the blank books! It’s a blank slate, a wide open invitation to create as much as you can, to fill all the pages with your ideas.
The other wildly attractive part of new school supplies is all of the organizational possibilities. I always imagine having just the right folders and calendars and things and being very organized, having everything where I want it, knowing not only what I’m going to do with my stories and pictures now but also what I’m going to do next. I think I somehow believe that with enough index cards and calendar pages, even I can be organized. It never quite works out that way for me—I don’t think my brain quite works like that—but the chance that it might happen never ceases to inspire me.
I’m off now to add a few notebooks, maybe a little 18-month calendar/planner I have my eye on, and another stack of index cards to my stash. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be rearranging files and folders, labeling new index tabs, and generally preparing for the most creative time of the year.

Kim Switzer is an aspiring novelist and avid dabbler in various visual and fiber arts, especially embroidery, beaded embroidery, oil painting, and her new-found love--art quilting. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her boyfriend, her cat, and various incarnations of her muse. For more information or to contact Kim, you can use the
following links:

Website: http://www.mythicwriters.org
Blog: http://www.wordcolors.blogspot.com
E-mail: kimswitzer@mythicwriters.org