Posts Tagged ‘goals’
Desire for an idea is like bait. You’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in—-those ideas. David Lynch
Summer is almost upon us. Last month, I began a series on spring cleaning for your creative life. There are three steps in the process:
1) You reassess your space, your schedule, and patterns of mind to see what is supporting or not supporting your creative life.
2) You reorganize your space, schedule, and patterns of minds to allow you to create with more ease.
3) After reassessing and reorganizing, you rededicate yourself to having a productive and joyful creative life!
If you’ve spent some time reassessing your space, schedule and patterns of mind, in connection to your creative life, then you should be in great shape for the next step which is reorganizing.
Reorganizing is an essential component of this process. And, this is where we can get stuck very quickly. In dealing with physical reorganization, if we don’t plan carefully, we’ll leave lots of stuff just laying around.
We actually have to combine intention with action to yield results.
Besides thinking of what’s working or not working in your physical space, you might also want to evaluate how and when you schedule your creative work. Really, it’s about having a creative rhythm. The word schedule conjures up the endless to-do-list.
Spring and then summer usually bring new rhythms into our life that can support our creativity. We are often making time for fun travel, to being outside more, and to taking much needed breaks and naps. All of this can be used in service of establishing a different creative rhythm.
How can we reorganize our schedule to take advantage of this energy? How do we cultivate the patience and spaciousness of mind so that we catch those wonderful ideas that David Lynch refers to?
Here are some easy tips:
-Move your practice outside for some of this season. If your tendency is always to be tucked away in a home office, take opportunities to write at the beach, at the lake, or at a state park.
-Take more advantage of the longer periods of light this season. Can you rise an hour earlier to shoot your photographs or try writing later in the day during the season’s glorious sunsets?
-Keep an idea journal. This is a place for all your ideas as they bubble up. Give yourself lots of permission to allow this idea journal to be filled with musings that delight you. Don’t put any pressure on yourself to turn these ideas into ones that have to ‘become something’. The idea journal should be a place to have fun and play.
Do You Need to Write a Letter, Poem or Manifesto to Fear? How to Combat a FEAR ATTACK
Posted on: May 27, 2018
- In: creative writing | creativity | writing
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Hi folks,
Last week, I was away at sea, on a cruise, so I wasn’t able to post. This trip was the kickoff to my upcoming 50th birthday and there is LOTS to tell about that (I got to visit Cuba!). I will share my reflections SOON.
Today, I wanted to follow-up on ridding ourselves (or at least examining) unhelpful patterns of mind as part of my Spring Cleaning and the Creative Life series. My last post was on fear and there is *always* more to say about this topic.
Four years ago, I wrote a poem about fear and its presence in my creative life. Four years ago, I held a big creativity summit online with renowned coaches and writers. I went on a roller coaster learning curve and at times it was painful. Four years ago, I was also submitting my work like crazy and getting poems published and placing in contests. Inevitably, as we grow bigger, we often have to deal with our fears that come wrapped in new clothes. This was true for me in 2014. Looking back now, I can see that my creative growth triggered a powerful fear attack. If I hadn’t pushed through it, I might have stopped on my creative journey and never made it to this amazing time in my creative life.
It is really powerful to use four years as a marker on your creative path. Amazing podcaster and writer, Joanna Penn wrote an excellent post on using the Olympics as a way to think about what one can achieve in just 4 short years. Check it out, I think you’ll find it inspiring:
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2012/08/11/measuring-achievement-by-olympics/
Here is the post I wrote in 2014 (almost exactly four years ago) that explores how to handle a fear attack:
As a coach, I have found that the number one thing that stops most people from pursuing their deepest and most meaningful heart’s desire is fear. Fear comes in a variety of forms, shapes and personas including ‘what will they think’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’ll never make money doing what I love’, ‘I need more credentials’, and ‘what if they don’t like what I create’, etc.
None of us are immune from feeling fear, especially when we’re moving outside out comfort zone. The danger is that fear with its tricky (and sometimes believable) tunes of gloom will get the best of us and immobilize us for far too long. I’ve had my own run-ins with fear over the years. What follows below is an impromptu ‘talking back’ that I recently gave to fear.
When you’re in the grip of a fear attack, it might be fun to write a poem/letter/manifesto to your fear and finish the lines ‘I’ve lived through….’
I am looking you, FEAR, straight in the eye
I am looking you, FEAR, straight in the eye
How dare you try to intimidate me!
Do you know what I’ve lived through?
I’ve lived through being a battered woman’s child
I’ve lived through being an abused young woman
I’ve lived through poverty
I’ve lived through being almost homeless
I’ve lived through discrimination
I’ve through academe
I’ve lived through the vagaries of a creative life
What else do you think you can do to ME?
How dare you sit there!
How dare you, FEAR!
How DARE you, FEAR!
So what if they laugh? I’m supposed to be worried if the unspecified THEY laugh?
What do you mean?
THEY have laughed before, so I imagine that they’ll laugh again
How dare you trying to make me afraid!
for asking for more
for wanting more
for trying more
for talking more
for being seen more
for saying I deserve more
for desiring more
How are dare you, FEAR!
Here’s what I want you to know, FEAR
Your days are numbered
I’m cleaning house in 2014
You better get in line
Or, I will strip you down into the dysfunctional four letter thing that you are
And EAT you!
When fears are attended to, it clears the way for clear and simple writing that comes from your heart. Even the briefest attention can melt fear.
-Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, author
Last week, I began a series about spring cleaning for your creative life.
There are three steps in the process:
1) You reassess your space, your schedule, and patterns of mind to see what is supporting or not supporting your creative life.
2) You reorganize your space, schedule, and patterns of minds to allow you to create with more ease.
3) After reassessing and reorganizing, you rededicate yourself to having a productive and joyful creative life!
Reassessing your physical space is a great place to start because it is visible and you spend a lot of time there. Another thing to reassess during spring cleaning are your ‘patterns of mind’. By this I mean, the habitual ways of thinking and responding to your creative life.
One powerful pattern of mind is fear.
Fear can show up in so many ways in a creator’s life. We fear to write, draw, and sing badly, we fear rejection, we fear we won’t reach our potential, we often fear the blank page, canvas, music studio, etc. Fear often causes us to procrastinate.
Fear looks like not following through when an editor asks you to send them new work.
Fear looks like talking yourself out of registering for that art class that you’ve been dreaming about.
Fear looks like spending more time listening to writing podcasts than taking time to write.
One thing that helps is acknowledging and tracking our fears. One great way to do this is by keeping a fear journal.
In 2015, I had the good fortune of meeting the writer Daisy Hernandez, author of the incredible memoir, A Cup of Water under My Bed. During a talk she gave to my upper division ‘women and creativity’ seminar, she said that keeping a ‘fear journal’ has been helpful to her writing process. She explained that a fear journal is where she lists her fears that come to her as she begins writing (or even after she’s finished). So, while she works, she has her fear journal open on her desk. Sometimes she’ll write ‘Still afraid’, or she’ll name a fear specific to the project that she is working on.
What I love about this concept is that it acknowledges that writers tend to have lots of fears while writing and that it is powerful to capture them in one place. Fear is a normal part of the writing experience. Writing it down allows us to have some distance from the feelings that the fears evoke. A fear journal helps us to see the ebb and flow of our worries and concerns.
Fears never go completely away, but by employing self-reflective exercises, they don’t have to immobilize us.
Do you have a pattern of mind that needs some attending to during spring cleaning?
Image credits: Dreamstime; Shutterstock
- In: creativity | writing
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Wow, we’re in the middle of the second quarter of the year! Can you believe it? It seems like only yesterday when we were writing down resolutions for our creative lives for 2018. Have some of those commitments and intentions gotten sidetracked since then?
Totally understandable. Spring can put us back on track. This season enables us to connect with a feeling of renewal that we begin to see physically manifested all around us. Spring also powers us with the energy to tackle the physical spaces (and states of mind) that no longer serve our creative life.
Several years ago, I started writing about the power of spring cleaning in support of one’s creative life.
Spring presents us with a perfect time to reassess, reorganize and rededicate ourselves to the projects that we most want to bring into the world.
Here is my three step process that I have found useful for spring cleaning:
1) You reassess your space, your schedule, and patterns of mind to see what is supporting or not supporting your creative life.
2) You reorganize your space, schedule, and patterns of minds to allow you to create with more ease.
3) After reassessing and reorganizing, you rededicate yourself to having a productive and joyful creative life!
Clutter can immobilize our creative lives.
Ah, Houston…we have a problem!
I know from personal experience how debilitating and draining it can be to work in a perpetually cluttered space. I’ve written about how powerful it was to tackle clutter and re-imagine my home writing space.
My desk=before
My desk=after
In upcoming posts, I’ll talk more about the 3 ‘R’s as it pertains to schedule and patterns of mind. But, let’s start with reassessing your space.
What about your creative space? Does it need a spring tune-up?
Go and look at your creative space. What’s the state of it? Do you feel a sense of ease when you look at it? Is it crammed with stuff that belongs in other rooms of your house? If you live with other people, is this space known as your special writing/photography/painting, etc., area?
Have you even claimed some special place yet, or are you waiting for permission from someone else? If you’re struggling with this, see my post on claiming creative space.
Survey your space and make a quick list of what you feel needs your attention most. The questions below are not exhaustive*, but offer a good place to begin.
-Do you need to organize and sort your paper files?
-Would it be useful to create an index for your piles of journals, scripts, flashdrives, DVDS, boxes of sewing materials (i.e. whatever you consider your primary creative material)?
-Are there notes from conferences, master classes, residencies and/or workshops that need to be reviewed and filed?
-When was the last time you did a backup of your computer files? Do you need to delete or add programs?
-Are there financial records related to your creative life that need to be updated?
-Are there creative projects that you’ve abandoned that still take up lots of physical space? Can they be re-purposed or stored elsewhere?
-Do you need to physically clean your computer?
-Do you have visible reminders of your creative accomplishments? Is it time to take some down and put up new ones?
-Do you have too much or too little of something in your space?
-Do you need more or less shelf space?
-Are there big physical jobs you’d like to do (e.g. paint)?
Once you have your list you can break each item down into specific tasks.
It’s important to not get overwhelmed during spring cleaning. Many people decide they will devote a day to a spring cleaning project and then realize that they’re cranky after two hours and that the task requires at least two days. Start small and reward yourself often. Why not take from now until the official start of summer to spring clean? You could choose one project each week. I suggest working in 15-30 minute intervals so there’s less chance of getting frustrated and overwhelmed. I enjoy using an online stopwatch.
What plans do you have for spring cleaning in relation to your creative projects?
*adapt this question and others to your needs if writing isn’t your primary focus
Actress Sandra Oh: How To Keep Going Creatively Even When You’re Not Being Chosen
Posted on: April 28, 2018
I found this interview with the multi-talented actress, Sandra Oh so inspirational. She talks about keeping herself engaged and inspired as an actress even when she wasn’t getting the kind of work she wanted. In the end, as creatives, we only control how we partner with the creative process and what we produce. In addition, she talks about how important it is for creators from marginalized communities to believe that we can be the heroines in our own stories–even if that isn’t always mirrored around us.
Check it out: http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/sandra-oh-killing-eve.html
It’s been about a month since I’ve worked on my own creative projects (not including blogging). I’m stuck and I know it and I kind of know why. I’m rewriting my NaNoWriMo draft (a mystery) and have been happily buzzing along until I came to a section that I have to write completely fresh. It was great when it felt like I was just revising and had a template in front of me to follow. Also, my writing group loved the last chapter and told me they can’t wait to read the next one. For some reason, I internalized their excitement as SUPER DUPER PRESSURE TO BE GOOD. All the while I have been telling myself, ‘Oh, you’re just taking this inchoate baby NaNoWriMo draft to the toddler level.’ I was having fun with it, not needing it to be GOOD. And, then I felt that pressure and did it tighten up the creative juices.
Isn’t it funny how something wonderful (like readers wanting more) can create inner turmoil? OK, problem diagnosed! Now I just need to start somewhere and remind myself, it doesn’t need to be good on the first or even second round. I’m just putting words on the page. In the famous words of Anne Lamott, it’s OK to produce a “shitty first draft”.
I’m just going to start putting one sentence in front of the other until I get to the end of the scene and then I’m going to write the next scene and so on.
I found this article a few days ago and it has some wonderful tips on how to come back to writing when you’ve been away for awhile.
And you? How is your writing going? Do you have some favorite ways to get unstuck?
- In: creative writing | creativity | reviews | writing
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This isn’t a book review. It’s an appetizer. You know when you start reading a book and you feel like it’s about to reshape everything you’ve thought about a subject? And, you can’t wait to tell everyone about it? That’s me, right now. I’m obsessed with the new book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living.
It’s an amazing book exploring raw vulnerable truths, myths and contradictions about writing and making a living. The collection includes essays and interviews. Every piece moves me.
Last fall, I heard an interview with the editor, Manjula Martin, on the wonderful DIY MFA podcast, hosted by Gabriela Pereira. I bought it and have been devouring it this past week. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it soon. Right now, please excuse me as I curl up with Scratch until the wee hours of the morning.
