Jumpstarting Creativity

I often find myself stressing over to-do lists. I’m constantly wishing there were more hours in the day. But, when I break down my projects into parts and start, I spend more time trying to figure out how to do what I want to do than just…doing it. Like with writing. I never seem to have enough time to get a chapter or short story written. At the rate I go, it will take much longer than I’d like to finish my novel or perfect a short for submission. It’s like the stress of the to-do list, the exhaustion of constantly carrying the weight of all I have to do, blocks me from actually getting anything done.

Or, at least, it used to feel that way. Then, I discovered a little secret to clearing my head and getting stuff done: Morning Pages.

Morning Pages is a concept taken from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. In it, she explains that the goal is to sit down first thing in the morning and write three pages by hand (not computer). Three pages. No more, no less. By writing, you clear your head of the negativity and junk that comes with being an adult, and you reconnect with the child within, the creative nature you possess. So, the premise is, if you make a habit of writing three pages every morning, you’ll clear yourself up to “be.” To do what you are made to do without the mechanisms we, as adults, have succumbed to that inhibit us.

Let me just inject here that I wasn’t “all in” when I decided to do this. My entire adult (and part of my childhood) life, I’ve tried keeping a journal. Especially since becoming an artist and writer. I’d buy a new journal and start with the best of intentions, only to let life and a lack of anything to say cut me off. Or, I’d get overwhelmed with the negativity I found in the pages and think that I was cultivating a negative lifestyle by writing it. Or I’d just get plain lazy. I even tried keeping a journal with smaller pages and a goal to write just one page daily. I failed miserably.

So, when I started considering this concept of Morning Pages, I didn’t think it would work for me. Not only that, I didn’t see how it would help my creativity or writing at all. Plus, at the time I was starting this journey, I’d just had surgery on my dominant hand/wrist. How was I supposed to free hand three pages each day when I could barely hold a pen? I had every reason to chunk Cameron’s book across the room and get back to my normal. But I was exhausted with my normal. I was sick of what my normal was creating in me: an apathy for life and a wandering existence without hope or focus toward anything. And most importantly, a lack of belief in myself.

So, I decided to give this Morning Pages thing a trial run. I committed to writing every day for thirty days. I planned to reassess, at that time, and decide if I was getting anything out of it. And, if I wasn’t, I could then chunk the book across the room and move on. But, if I was going to try this, I knew I’d have to create a few guidelines for it:

1.     I gave myself freedom to be messy. Beyond the fact that I had an injured hand, I’d often struggled with journals because of my perfectionism. I wanted them to be neat, with beautiful penmanship and nary a scribbled-out section. This time, I told myself that mess was okay, that it didn’t even matter if my hand writing was illegible to me. The goal was getting words out, not making them a work of art.

2.     I gave myself permission to write about nothing. I’ve always wanted my journals to be these profound sources of information. Like, when I die, someone would find them and they’d become these artifacts in a museum. But I’m not George Washington, and nobody needs to see these. In fact, Cameron encourages that you don’t even read your pages, at first. Because in the beginning, you are getting rid of the junk holding you back. If you read that too soon, all you’ll see is how NONE of what you’re writing is helpful. So, I told myself that, if all I had to say was how tired I was over and over again, so be it. If the pages turned into a gripe session about my life, who cares. I was getting out whatever I needed to process to move on and be productive. Not even I have a right to judge what that looks like.

3.     I gave myself latitude with the “Morning” part of the habit. I’m not a morning person. My best self is around 9pm at night! And I currently have a job that requires I be up around 5am and, sometimes, has me going at full speed the moment I step through the doors. Because of this, there are days when I can’t even think about a journal, let alone write in one, until later in the day. So, I told myself that the goal would be first thing in the morning, but, as long as I finished before bed, it was okay. It was the habit of just writing I was looking to create, not another task I’d beat myself up for if I didn’t do it by the letter.

4.     I gave myself permission to not write in a day. This one, I kept with restrictions. I had a string of three days where I struggled with a migraine and just couldn’t do anything. So, I told myself it was okay that I didn’t write those days. Normally, this breaking of a goal would have made me berate myself, and that constant bashing would have led me to guilt and self-shaming. Instead, I gave myself grace. But I did so knowing that this grace and permission to not write was the exception, not the rule.

With these guidelines in place, I set to work. I wrote, jumping from topic to topic without line break or transition. I wrote free-style, penning whatever popped into my head. Some days, it looked like “I hate this stupid journal and Cameron is a moron. I have absolutely nothing to say.” Other days, it was reveling in something amazing that happened. Much of the time, it was a self-pity trip about whatever was causing me pain.

I wrote on, anyway.

Then, something shifted. I started writing about my hopes. I started hashing out concepts or ideas I had for a story, things that were not working, things that I needed to think through in order to create.  I started telling myself I could do this. I started pointing out the good within me and my projects. Sure, there were still moments when I went on negative binges, but, more and more, these entries contained sparks of inspiration.

And I filled an entire journal. Still, I kept on writing.

And, here’s what I noticed about the rest of my life: I was becoming more creative. I wanted to write. I broke through stagnant moments, and I found how to plow through plot points giving me heartache.

I became a productive writer.

Nothing else in my schedule changed. In fact, if anything, life became more hectic. But the practice of creating became easier and a higher priority.

It didn’t just help with my writing, either. I’m beginning to see the effects of Morning Pages in other aspects of life. I’m not weighed down by things as easily. I’m seeing ways to improve relationships and be more productive at work. I’m becoming more confident in who I am and what I have to give this world.

Coming from a type-A personality who makes lists of lists, who would have thought that the one thing to increase my productivity most would be something chaotic and, seemingly, unproductive? Yet, it was just what the doctor ordered.

The Hurt of Rejection

Last month, I received a rejection for a writing contest I’d entered. This, of course, is nothing new in an author’s life. But this particular rejection hit me harder than usual. Sure, I had other difficult things going on, and the rejection just added to the misery. But it was more than that.

What is it about rejection that hurts so much?

It’s not losing a contest or publication. We know those are tough to get. I knew, down deep, that rejection would be my constant companion, so it wasn’t as if I believed it would never happen. And I’m smart enough to realize that, if I keep at it, I’ll eventually win/get published.

Every time I submit something, despite the odds, I still have a spark of hope that this time will be different. This submission will be the one that finally works out. Most authors I know operate with that same hope. Why else would we keep trying? But, for me, this time the rejection extinguished that spark.

I didn’t question the quality of my submission, I questioned my quality as a writer.

Reacting as I did, rejection can smother any hope you have in yourself. For many like me, writing is a personal thing. We pour our hearts out onto our pages, and creating stirs hope within us that someone, somewhere out there, might just understand where we are coming from. Someone might just see the twisted, weird, deep, or unlikeable parts of ourselves in the story, and say, “I thought I was the only one.” We want that connection. Isn’t that what everyone wants? To know and be known?

But, the rejection comes and it is a giant slap in the face. We forget that they are reviewing our words and instead feel the dismissal of our voice, of that connection we threw out into the cosmic universe in hopes of someone commiserating. And, after one too many times experiencing that dismissal, we lose hope that we’ll ever be known. In turn, we question our writing. Maybe it won’t eventually pan out.

Our industry tells us rejection isn’t personal, and we scold ourselves because we are somehow less. Because, for us, it is completely personal.

Separating our work from ourselves is vital to a writer’s longevity. A rejection is not about you. It is about your work; the readiness of it, how well it works within a whole (journals), or if it fits stylistically with that editor/publication. Somehow, we as writers have to grasp this fact.

I’d like to say there’s a magic formula for realizing EVERY time the separation that exists between rejection of our work and rejection of ourselves. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t have wallowed away most of last month, eating cookies and contemplating the superior writing of a friend’s three-year-old.

So how do we move past what we perceive as personal rejection?

Here’s a few things that have helped me:

1. Surround yourself with people who believe in you. Not just in you as a writer, but you as a person. When you doubt yourself, their encouragement can snap you out of your gloom.

2. Keep a list of things you love about yourself. Give yourself a way to see your true self outside of writing.

3. Keep a list of things you do well when writing. Remind yourself of your talent.

4. Read something terrible. Sometimes seeing a book in print that has no business being in print is encouraging. If they could find their niche, so can you.

5. Read something that moves/inspires you. Feed your longing for beautiful language. It will make you want to create something equally beautiful.

6. Now, go write. The beauty of creating a story is that it fans the flame within you, and, before you know it, you believe in yourself – and your writing – again.

What helps you get over rejection? Share your tips in the comments below.

All Hail the Great Muse

I’ve been a creative long enough to know that inspiration comes and goes in waves. (Anyone else just read the end of that sentence to the tune of Greg Laswell’s Comes and Goes [In Waves]? But more on that later…) One day, I’m consumed with too many ideas for stories or paintings. The next, I’m curled in a ball on my couch, eating cookie dough ice cream from the tub and crying because the women of The Real Desperate House Wives are cleverer than I. Okay, maybe that is a stretch. Especially since I have very little patience for reality TV. But you get my drift, right?

I’ve also been a creative long enough to know that, if you want to soften the waves, you have to douse them with a little fire. For me, nothing strokes my creative fire like other creatives.

I’ve sparked an idea for a story from watching movies, seeing paintings, reading other books, enjoying really great food, even through the wonder of a beautiful sunset. But the most consistent source of inspiration, for me, is in music.

What is it about a song that can overwhelm you? There are some treasured favorites that bring me to tears. Every. Single. Time. Even though I listen to them frequently. Others catch my breath with their peacefulness or hope.

A simple search on the web will give you endless articles about the effect of music on humans. Some, like this article, link it to a primal need we had to communicate before language existed. Whatever the case, there is something about a melody that connects with us.

What music inspires you?

My favorites, truthfully, vary according to mood. But there is something about Claude Debussy’s Claire de Lune, the haunting trumpet wail of Miles Davis, the poetic lyric of Passenger, the realness of Gang of Youths, the instrumentation of Cody Fry, the creativity of Conan Gray, or the raw emotion of Johnny Cash that make me want to rise to their level of creativity. They get my fingers typing, and the plots reveal themselves.

No Author is an Island

I used to love the Timehop app. Just by scrolling through it, I could remember forgotten trips, funny life moments, time with friends and family. Plus, it shows milestones in history, which feeds my curiosity for random information.

But then, it happened. Typos.  

The bane of my grammar fetished existence. I pride myself in being above par with commas, prepositions, and sentence structure. In fact, I’ve earned one job from pointing out a typo on the company paperwork. I never text with acronyms, and I use punctuation. I know the difference between there, their, and they’re.

Yet the typos kept appearing.

Now, I can spot them with ease. Which begs the question: why couldn’t I then? The answer lies in distance.

These little imperfections we create shine brighter with the passage of time. When we create typos, we are often too close to see. It is like looking at a painting. When you are inches from the canvas you see something completely different than if you stand across the room. Time gives written work the across the room perspective.  

Enter the Editors of the world.

Editors provide fresh eyes to see your work from another perspective. This goes beyond nuts and bolts grammar. They can see where your story is falling short. You may see brilliant swirls of color and texture, but they can see the giant chasm of disconnect that section has to the rest of the story. Their fresh perspective enhances your manuscript and highlights those things to which your eyes have grown accustomed. You know that old adage, “two are better than one?” It’s never more true than with editing your manuscript.

I highlight this because I’m flabbergasted by some work currently in print. Just because it has never been easier to publish, doesn’t mean writers should be the only one to touch their manuscript prior to publishing. I have nothing against those who choose the self publishing route. I have everything against those who do so without hiring an outside editor. Can’t afford it? At least put your manuscript in front of a writer’s group. No, your friends don’t count. They love you and don’t really want to hurt your feelings. You need a group of ruthless critics, who value the quality of the finished product above your own emotions. Because, in the end, good writing is what sells, not a writer’s good intentions. 

No author is an island. The best works are those that have many hands in the pot. Don’t believe me? Read the acknowledgements. I’ve come to value the input of others in my work. Even the ones who are the harshest. Usually, their life experiences lend them to seeing new angles or problems. Often, their corrections lead me into a more complex, rich, and beautiful story.

And they catch my typos, so I don’t have to cringe later.

Join the conversation. What is your opinion on editing and editors?

Leave a Mark

Every morning, I pass a construction site on my way to work. Traffic around the site is always beastly. Half a dozen mammoth dump trucks are usually lined up to turn left into the chaos. Sometimes, we wait endless minutes for them to exit and enter. The construction also creates a lane closure, bottle necking traffic. I could probably go another way and it would be faster. Given my short fuse for traffic and frustrating drivers, I’d be better off with the detour even if it weren’t faster.

But I suffer the mayhem for Felicity.

Felicity is the flagger who works the morning rush. And, in the bitter Seattle cold, in sun or rain, she always – always! – smiles and waves at each passing car. She’s the long lost friend who celebrates a reunion, the Buddy the Elf when he hears Santa is coming. Her joy is uncontainable and real. You can see the smile in her eyes, not just her actions.

Felicity reminds me that attitude is everything.

When you think about the job of flagger, you don’t naturally envision a wonderful career. Besides the weather, you are inhaling car fumes and getting covered in dust all day. And lets not forget the port-o-potty facilities. Just the thought makes my skin crawl. But instead of dwelling on the negative, Felicity sees her position as opportunity to greet the day, and each passing vehicle, with her own ray of sunshine.

By watching her, I’ve learned that, with the right attitude, even the grittiest jobs become enjoyable. I’ve practiced this philosophy, and do you know what I’ve discovered? When I’m dwelling on the positive, the task I was dreading goes faster and easier. I learn and grow, and – God forbid! – I have fun! Best of all, positivity is contagious. It softens hearts, builds comradery, and leaves a mark.

She is a reminder that, no matter how badly your life is going, there’s always someone else in a worse position. And you never know just how much you might make their day, might raise their spirits, by opting for positivity. Every morning, Felicity raises my spirits for the workday ahead, and gives me a jolt of happiness with which to face its challenges. Wouldn’t it be great if more people were like that?

 The world could use a few more Felicitys.