Writing, Writing, Writing

12-year old Phillip in photo for BSA month celebrating
the American Indian subtext of Scout life. It was the
front page spread in February, scouting month and
shows my Indian costumes recalling all the fun we had
camping out there on the creek while working at home
in the city dreaming. 

I'm writing a lot these days, so much as to bite seriously into my art studio time. Still, I consider writing one of my arts so I am taking advantage of a Writers Workshop being held just two blocks from the house. My topic relates to my childhood and its fantasies and values related to my Grandparents' farm out on Clarks Creek south east of Junction City, KS where I grew up.

The place fostered plenty of images for my boyhood, ones that related to place, family stories, Boy Scout outings, and hours of reading books from the public library. I was a youngster serious about his fantasies. Now I'm an old man still serious about them but now as topics and stories to be written. And I admit, I still sometimes work with feathers and glue as I do mixed media pieces of art.

Denver 2016

Writing

What my writing efforts look like on paper!
by Phillip Hoyle

Writing used to be a job. It was part of my profession as a minister and educator. I wrote notices, the occasional column for the church newsletter, and recruitment letters for volunteer singers and teachers. I worked hard to write well and in my thirties began writing curriculum resources for religious education. In my forties I began writing resources for a publisher and did so for ten years. In my fifties I began writing as an artist, at least that is how I think of it. I wrote then for myself stories from my life experience, pieces for magazines, short stories, and more. In my sixties (I’m still in them) I wrote a novel and so far several hundred stories of my life, vignettes of life from different points of view. And as you know if you are reading this, I keep a blog related to art matters—mostly the arts in which I am involved directly.

These days I am not going it alone, but while I don’t have an editor like I had at the publishing company, I have two groups that hear my pieces. Reading them aloud always sharpens my ear to mistakes and awkward expressions.

I write a bit almost every day and in so doing start stories I wasn’t planning to write. Writing is not a job but still some kind of vocation and always a joy. Still its joy demands some kind of discipline that to me is more like play—play among the world of ideas and words.

If you are interested to read more of what I write, follow this blog artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com. Also I contribute occasional pieces to sageoftherockies.blogspot.com.

Denver, 2015