AUTHORS AND THEIR ART

How Tiny Art Saved Me by T.K. Thorne

During the pandemic, the muse deserted me. I could not put pen to paper except to edit. Fortunately, I had a lot of material to edit, but the more days that have turned into weeks and months, the drier the well of creativity seemed. I had finished my police-witch trilogy (House of Rose, House of Stone, and House of Iron) and an eight-year nonfiction project (Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days). I finished a rewrite of an old manuscript and had no idea where to go next. I felt aimless, adrift. Everything had a surreal quality.

A good friend introduced me to a form of art called Zentangle. It is done on little 3×3-inch pieces of stock paper—tiny art. I played with it and decided to add colors. Because it is so small, it was not intimidating like a big canvas would have been. I’ve never done any “art thing” beyond doodling, but I’ve always wanted to. They may not be great masterpieces, but the world fades away when I am working on one.

But still fresh words eluded me. No stories pushing to be born.

Then a fellow-panelist I almost met at a writer’s conference that was canceled at the beginning of the pandemic emailed me and asked if I were interested in submitting a short story to an editor in Australia who was putting together a crime anthology featuring law enforcement authors and wanted some submissions from women. I am both of those things—an female author and a cop, a retired one anyway, now a short, gray-haired old lady. I agreed to submit a story. The catch is I had to write it. I had to create it. I told myself—this is like the tiny art. It’s a short story, not a novel. Even so, I was totally blank. But I promised, so I had to do it. One word at a time. I was delighted and surprised that the words came. The story is about a short, gray-haired old lady who is an ex cop and witnesses a murder. I sent it off and it was accepted for the anthology. Maybe I’ll do another short story, a writing “tiny art,” or maybe I have found a character for a novel….