Jamie Shear keeps his iMac just behind the worn wooden worktable where he uses a turkey quill and homemade ink to inscribe Hebrew scriptures on calfskin parchment for Jewish ritual objects such as Torah scrolls, mezuzahs and tefillin.

Shear seamlessly shifts between old and new technologies, one for holy objects and the other for artworks. They both use the same 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet whose forms are laden with mystical meanings.

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Challenge post here.

Inspiration for writing happens to me like a punch in the gut. It often comes out of nowhere and can be triggered by the most unexpected of things. I can go looking for it--kind of like picking a fight with my own imagination--with no guarantee of finding it (although I usually do, my imagination being a sensitive sort), when I have an assignment to fulfill. Other times, a line from a song, an image, a scrap from a book will bring it on without warning. But I need that blow--be in an image, a line of dialogue, an emotion--in order to really and truly be able to write well.

Writing is a solitary, entirely internal process for me. Much of my "writing" goes on in my mind before I put anything to paper. At that point, it becomes a matter of transcribing what is already "written" in my brain. Other times, I just let the story unfold and record what happens. But I am not a person who can write collaboratively or even share what I've written until I'm satisfied with it. As a young writer, I made the mistake of sharing a story-in-progress with a friend and found that I couldn't write on it any more after that. Suddenly, there was an audience before me whenever I tried to write. I saw the people who would be reading it, and I found myself worrying about pleasing them rather than telling the story as I thought it deserved to be told. I was inhibited; I worried how every word, every action by my characters, would be judged.

Writing is so intensely internal that I sometimes lose track of where I am. People will speak to me; I won't hear them. I sometimes end up in rooms with no memory of going there. I can also work in environments many would name distracting--I once wrote most of a NaNovel at the ice rink where my husband played hockey and now do a lot of work at the resort where he snowboards and works on Ski Patrol--because I can go deep enough into my own mind to block most of that out. I know I do weird things while in this state--I bite my hands and wrists a lot when not in the throes of inspiration!--and people probably wonder at me. Let them.

As an English teacher, I refer to the "five-stage writing process" in my job all of the time. Mine is really two-and-a-half stages: Imagination. Writing. Very light revision. If I do prewriting, it is only so I don't forget my own plot (I have no memory for plot and often have to look up which major event came before which other major event in Tolkien's books) and is in the form of single words or short phrases because, if I elaborate too much, I feel like I've written the story already and it's no longer fun. There has to be the opportunity for discovery in there. Revision is mostly to make sure things sound like they did in my head but the massive cutting and rewriting that some writers do is not something that I can fathom.

Sometimes reading Facebook threads in Scadian groups can be the worst thing ever.

A recent discussion on the SCA Scribes page, a hijacked thread that originally started about paper sizes, has me seeing red.

A well known master from another kingdom attacked a Laurel from my kingdom, a friend of mine, when she commented that she has traced bits and pieces from period examples in addition to hand drawing things for her scrolls. She's a Laurel for other kinds of art, but her scrolls are beautiful and she gets commission requests because of her talents. When she tried to explain that she only traced pieces to make sure to get certain things right, for spacing, for whatever reason, the non-Caidan speaker pretty much went on to insult anyone who traces, to pooh-pooh the whole concept of tracing being in period, and to then pretty much say that people who trace things shouldn't be considered artists, shouldn't receive any recognition for their contributions, and that scribing isn't the Special Olympics, so if you can't contribute at a certain level you shouldn't contribute at all.

THIS IS THE EXACT MINDSET WE HAVE BEEN TRYING SO HARD TO OVERCOME OUT HERE!!! How will we ever get new people interested in scribal arts if they're made to feel like their abilities will be judged and that they'll be told they're not good enough because they're not someone who went to art school and who makes art as their job and life calling?