The Fourth Annual Burning of Badjuju!
Don't get the wrong impression. This isn't an act of violence, it's a celebration of overcoming adversity by virtually setting all your doubts, worries and bad karma aflame.
Here's a quick version of the backstory:
Each fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico there's a part of the annual Fiesta called the Burning of Zozobra. Created by artist Will Shuster in 1924, this flaming of the "Old Man Gloom" effigy represents letting go of all your cares, disappointments, and griefs that have accumulated in the past year so you can be free to start anew with a brand new sense of expectation and motivation.
For weeks prior to the event, residents converge on the offices of the Santa Fe Reporter to leave artifacts of their troubles (and for the first time this year, they've even enabled "worries" to be submitted online). The monstrous puppet is then stuffed with these notes, documents, photos, legal papers, and other representations of aggravation and set ablaze before a crowd of thousands.
In 2010, we created our own version of Zozobra for writers, dubbing it "Badjuju."
The event was so popular that Badjuju made an encore appearance in both 2011 and 2012. And hey, here he is back again for a fourth celebration in 2013!
Last year we had some very colorful flames from the variety of bad stuff that was cast into the blaze. There were several "I Suck" Fairies, a generous dose of self-doubt, several major distractions and a few lack of progress "hamster wheels." Some of our contributors from past years have gone on to final in the Golden Heart, complete troublesome manuscripts, and become multi-published authors, so there must be something to this little exorcism of doubt, don't you think?
We invite you to join in the fun and help us stuff our "Old Man Trouble for Writers." Let us know in the comments what you'll stuff into Badjuju before he's set ablaze on Thursday night...and then start the next phase of your writing journey with a renewed sense of hope and expectation.:::Whoosh::: Burn, troubles, burn!
