I have a post up today over at Pureblogging which reflects on how important it is for bloggers to read books about blogging. The underlying assumption of the post is that all writers benefit from reading different types of writing. I try to make sure that my own reading agenda includes blog posts, in-depth online articles, magazines and books. I also try to make sure that the content of that reading material is varied. I believe that this helps to broaden my own experience of life as well as to inspire my own writing.
Although I do think that any type of reading at all can do this, I find that it’s useful for me as a writer to read books that are specifically about creativity and the creative process. I don’t, however, limit myself to reading books that are about writing. In fact, I have found that books about creativity in general tend to be more useful to me than books that are specifically about getting my writing going. Rather than writing prompts, I prefer reading about how to make my entire life more creative. A life lived artistically is a life that has inspiration around every turn.
It’s probably no surprise that the first book like this that I discovered was The Artist’s Way. It was years ago that I came across this famous book and worked through the exercises to unleash some of my creativity. I have since read several of Julia Cameron’s books and although I don’t always do the twelve-week process that they’re all about, I do find that I can get some refreshed inspiration here and there by reading through her ideas on creativity. Even the series of quotes lining the margins of her books is often a source of new ideas for me.
The most recent book that I read on creative living was Living Artfully by Sandra Magsamen. This book provides tips, anecdotes and examples of bringing creativity into your daily life. It touches on everything from creativity in your home decor to artistic ways of making your holidays more special. I particularly liked certain tips (such as using empty wine bottles as unique picture frames). But more than this, I found that taking the time each morning to read a few pages really got my creative juices going. This inspired me to provide creative ideas to others in some of my blog posts (see examples here and here) as well as to be more creative in my own personal projects.
In fact, it helped me to come up with many of the projects that I’m working on this year for my own personal development, including the neighborhoods project which I mentioned here in the blog recently. And because of that, I’ve added another goal to the list which is to fill an entire shelf on my bookcase with the books on creativity that I read this year.
Seeking Input: What other books on creativity should I add to this year’s reading list?
At the end of each year, I set forth some goals for what I would like to accomplish in the New Year. These aren’t resolutions in the traditional sense. Instead, they are a series of projects that I work on throughout the year. By writing them down on paper, I find that I am more likely to work towards accomplishing them. And although they are often unrelated to writing, they are all projects which add information and excitement to my life - something which ultimately results in better writing throughout the years.
Here are some of the annual projects that I’ve got going as a source of inspiration for 2008:
- Neighborhood project. By far, the project that I’m most excited about this year is the neighborhood exploration project that I started. I live in San Francisco, a city that is filled with distinct neighborhoods that each offer their own type of experience. Now that I’ve been here a few years, I stopped really getting outside of my comfort zone and found myself sticking to the same neighborhoods. The neighborhood project is designed to get me out and about again, learning my city. I chose one neighborhood per month and the goal is just to spend time there, to learn about it online and to find places there that I enjoy. For the first month, I cheated a bit on the definition of “neighborhood” and chose to explore the East Bay, primarily Berkeley, because I had some other things going on over there this month anyway. So far the best thing I’ve checked out there is Lake Chabot - and the hiking trails around it - in East Bay Regional Park.
- Hiking. This also helped jumpstart one of my other ‘projects’ which is to go hiking in a new spot at least once a month. I really believe that physical activity helps to rejuvenate the spirit and get your mind into a clearer place, something that is crucial to being able to write well.
- Milan Kundera project. I often say that Milan Kundera is one of my favorite authors. However, I’ve really only read two of his books and that was many years ago. This project consists of reading all of his books sometime in 2008. Unfortunately, I’m finding that I don’t seem to love the writing as much as I thought I did. I think it might be that I’m not in a mood for heavy writing this week though so I’m going to give it another chance again soon before dismissing the project. I may end up choosing another author in the end (Somerset Maugham comes to mind).
- Ryan Phillippe project. Likewise, I say that this is my favorite actor (Playing by Heart and Crash were favorite movies of mine) but I haven’t seen him in too many things. He has a diverse range of roles and I think it’s good to expose yourself to different creative mediums - such as film - so I’m going to check out all of his movies this year. This started with 54 which reinspired me to start checking out some of the art from that time period again.
- 20 wines project. I only became a wine drinker in the last couple of years so I don’t really know that many wines. I’ve been wanting to learn more about which ones I like and which ones I don’t. Maybe I’ll even start to notice which kinds go with which foods! My goal was to try twenty new wines this year … and to do some research learning more about them as well. I’m already way ahead on this project so I might need to modify it. Let the wine flow!
I believe that inspiration comes from a variety of sources. Writing is drawn from the experiences that we have in life. Fresh experiences translates to fresh writing. Besides, life is healthier and more exciting when you’re learning new things and having new experiences!
Question of the Day: What do you think of annual projects as inspiration throughout the year?
I’m halfway through my week of reporting on MacWorld for Mac-Forums. It’s been a great week so far but it’s also been a really tiring one. I’d forgotten how exhausting it can be to be out and about doing the 9-5 thing! It’s funny, because I generally put in more than an eight hour day. But there’s something about doing it from the comfort of home, without a commute or the sensory overload of a shared office, that makes it a much more relaxing experience.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m thrilled to be at MacWorld this week. I’ve had a chance to learn about all sorts of different gadgets and applications. I’ve met people associated with EFF and people putting out cool magazines that I didn’t know about until now. And today I got the chance to hear some really awesome guest speakers talk about some topics that interested me. I am enjoying every minute.
But I’m also coming home at the end of the day totally ready to just veg out! Of course, in addition to the MacWorld Expo, I’ve to the rest of my fulltime work to keep me busy. So I don’t truly have the opportunity to just relax when I get home. But I’m trying to keep that always important life-work balance in mind to make sure that all of my work is as good as it should be.
Today is Monday which means that it’s my Friday. I’m still learning the ins and outs of working a 5 Day Week that doesn’t have normal days off. It’s what works best for me but there’s an adjustment period of figuring out the details with clients since they, of course, work a Monday through Friday week. It seems to be working out for the most part. I think the fact that I am almost always able to guarantee a quick turnaround for my work is a big contributing factor as to why those two days off in the middle of the week don’t affect my clients too much.
I’ve thought a lot about the turnaround thing and why that is. Many of the writers that I’ve worked with in the past, particularly when I was running MoKa House and needed writers to turn stuff into me, have required far longer turnaround times than what I usually need to get the job done. Part of the reason is because I do write quickly. But most of the reason is that I am organized with my work. It’s amazing what a high level of organization will do to make work go in and out quickly. I’m not sure how I got blessed with an organized brain but it’s definitely something which makes my work flow more smoothly.
As such, the week of work went well. Here are some of the highlights from what I’ve written since the work week began on Thursday:
- VoIP Philosophy: Wirearchy
- Blogging and Blog Commenting Etiquette
- Two Gay Men Donate Sperm to Surrogate Mom
- Gain Weight Safely
- Emotional and Physical Tips for Making your Bed
- Gracefully Back Down from an Argument
- Check your Finger Size for Osteoarthritis Risk
- ASPS Refutes Three Common Concerns about Silicone Breast Implants
- Reverse Mortgage Seniors Should Celebrate Organize Your Home Day
- Improved Technology Reduces Risk of CT Scans
Now I’m going to go enjoy my “weekend”!
Somehow November slipped by. I meant to write and didn’t which seems to be the story of my life. I’m okay with that. If I was ever able to write as much as I had in me to write, what would I have left to do? It’s the same way with reading. Every time that I go into a library, I see thousands of books that I want to read. I’ll never read them all but that’s okay because if I did, there would be nothing left to look forward to when I went into a library.
November slipped by in part because of the vast amount of change that has happened in my writing life recently. Sometimes change demands your attention and asks that you analyze it, look it, figure it out. In those times, the writing is frequent because it’s a tool used to understand the change. But there are other times when the change is happening at such a deep level that you can’t do anything with it yet. You have to just let it happen. That’s what November has been about for me. It’s been a settling, a stirring, a constant motion that underlies everything I do but can’t yet be articulated.
I was busy in November despite this change. I was busy with the normal work that I do - the blogs, the articles, the news writing. (A post will be up soon with links to my most recent work.) I was also busy with drafting the book on alternative home building that I’m working on. But more than that, I was busy just being. I was busy watching the changes in my work subtly manifets themselves.
As most of you know, some big projects I was involved with ended in the last few months. One was MoKa House, my writing firm. Another that’s been ending - or perhaps evolving - is San Fran Voice. Sales of that site are in the works and I’m not sure if I’ll be resuming my work on it yet or not. I’m waiting to see what happens. Other smaller jobs have ended and begun. That’s what this writing business is all about. It’s about learning from the work and putting the learning to use in new ways.
I’m looking forward to December as a month for more reflection. And I’m looking forward to the beginning of the new year - which will be here before we know it! - as an opportunity for new changes and more exciting things to come.
One of my favorite things about making a living as a freelance writer is that I am always learning something new. Part of this is just the nature of the job. And part of this is because I am always taking on new writing jobs that aren’t in my own areas of expertise. That has allowed me to broaden my experience of the world (and my own expertise for that matter) and to explore areas of study that I would probably never have gotten around to studying on my own. It also makes me interesting at parties and dinner table conversations since there’s always some job that relates to the topic at hand.
Because of my work as a writer, I know the basic qualities of all of the signs in the horoscope. I know the latest medical trends and technologies in preventive imaging software, stem cell research and infertility treatment options. I know that there are certain areas of San Francisco which are said to be haunted including hotels, bridges, forts and homes. I know that black is the new black. The research that I do for my writing has helped me to hone my own use of technology in the home and the office. The articles that I’ve written on plastic surgery and diet pills have reminded me to take a close look at my own relationship with food and my body. And the pieces that I’ve penned on musicians around the globe have helped me to explore a kind of creativity that I would never have gotten so intimately familiar with on my own (since, you know, I’ve got no musical talent).
I was never much of a fan of school. I did it and I excelled at it but it wasn’t for me. One of the problems was that I was always bored with a curriculum. I would read the first assigned book of the semester and then I would become passionately interested in that topic, or a tangential topic, and want to keep exploring it rather than wanting to move on to the next assigned reading material. Being a writer allows me this option. I find out about one new kind of computer software and I want to learn all that there is about related software … and hardware and online applications and careers that use this stuff. And so I find a way to write about it so that I can explore my interest while making a living.
This is what being a writer is all about. I don’t always love every job that I take on (although I try to take on only those that interest me so that I can provide the best writing). But I do generally love the exploration of learning new things. The only drawback is that I always want to visit some new travel destination I just wrote about or to buy some new gadget that I just discovered in my research. But I would say that’s a small price to pay for doing a job that you can always be excited about doing.
The last thing that I wanted to do this morning when I woke up was to sit down at my desk and start writing. That’s not normally how I feel. Normally, I enjoy writing. I really do. But today was one of those days when I wanted to do anything but write. I wanted to be creative, I just didn’t want to write. I wanted to make mixed CDs for friends, create a new photo collage for my apartment, figure out how to sew the shirt that I’ve been meaning to sew for … um, like two years. The creative urge was there, but writing was not what I wanted to do.
I made myself sit down and write anyway. I set a writing goal this week of fifteen pages per day on one specific project. And I’ll be damned if I was going to set a goal and not achieve it. I don’t usually make clear goals like that and I wasn’t about to sabotage the entire week by throwing in the towel today. So, I sat down. I forced myself to start typing. I told myself that it didn’t even matter if I didn’t use a single word because it was the act of meeting the writing goal that mattered.
The work was done before noon.
Not all days are that easy. Not most of those sentences are good. But I did what I had set out to do with my writing today and that means something. It means that I took my own self-imposed requirements seriously enough to accomplish them. I think that speaks directly to why I am able to manage my life as a freelancer. And I think it also speaks to the potential for future projects to go more smoothly than some of the ones in the past did.
My day isn’t exactly free now. I have other work that I’m going to do, other commitments to my writing that I have to keep. I’m putting in a full day at the desk. But if nothing else gets done, at least I met my writing goals.
My friends who work in the financial district get lunch breaks. Come to think of it, they also get coffee breaks. And judging from the amount of time that I see them active on their instant message programs, I think that they get a lot of other breaks during the day. But at the end of the two week pay period, their check comes just the same as it always does, whether they’ve taken long lunch hours or not. That’s not a luxury that the self-employed freelancer gets to enjoy.
Don’t get me wrong. We get our breaks. There are days when the work just won’t come and I end up wandering around the city, trying to get inspired. I can take a two hour lunch without having to explain myself to anybody. And if I don’t want to wake up with the alarm, I can meander into my day and no one is going to be the wiser. These are luxuries I don’t take for granted. But on the flip side, when I take long lunches and spend afternoons in coffee shops, I don’t get paid. In order to maintain a living, I must put in a forty hour week. And my forty hour week doesn’t include a water cooler or a smoke break.
This, right now, is my lunch break. I’m working on completing a goal of getting fifteen full single-spaced pages written on the new book today. So, during the time that I’m sipping the Hot ‘n Spicy soup leftover from last night’s order-in Chinese, I’m also taking care of things that are (but aren’t) work. I’m updating my website’s blog, obviously. I’m also going to make sure to leave comments on some blogs that I meant to get to over the weekend. I’m going to finish responding to my work email that got ignored this morning. I’m going to mail some documents that need to be out by the end of the day, make an appointment with one of my editors to discuss some details about my work and place a phone call to someone that I’m supposed to interview. When “lunch” is over, I’ll return to those fifteen pages.
I’m afraid that I sound like I’m complaining. It’s always so difficult to convey emotion in a blog post. I’m not complaining. I adore my job. I think that the fact that I create my own schedule, can jump from project to project and can support myself while writing is a wonderful thing. I’m just saying that it gets overlooked now and then by people who think that working from home is always a luxury. It’s a luxury, but it’s a job as well. And it doesn’t come with paid lunches and coffee breaks.
The above image is not mine. It is the mosaic collage art of Stacy Alexander, a Bay Area artist who works in a number of different mediums to create beautiful, clearly eye-catching work. Learn more about her from her interview at San Fran Voice.
Today I will write at least forty different articles on a variety of topics. People who first find this out are often aghast at the fact that I can write so much in one sitting. But this is my job. In order to survive as a freelance writer in the most expensive city in the country, I am forced to be prolific. As a full-time writer, I pride myself on my ability to continually craft original content that is researched and (hopefully) interesting while turning it out at a rapid pace. Mind you, I don’t always write so much in one day. But I regularly write a bulk of articles in one sitting. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. And when you write to live, you make sure you get on a roll often.
But before I sit down to write those articles, I enjoy my morning routine. When I wake up, I read for a little while. This morning it was a book that I’m enjoying by a Bay Area author who fell in love with a Northern California inmate and writes to tell people how that happened. I brought my coffee to bed and read a chapter before getting up and doing the normal shower and breakfast thing. Then I did the morning work - the applications for new writing jobs, the checking email to make sure nothing needed immediate attention, the dash to the mailbox to send out what needs to go out this morning. Then came the second round of easing into the morning … the second cup of coffee, the journal writing, the making of the To Do list.
It’s eleven in the morning and I am only just about to get started on my workday. But this is the only way that I am prepared to work so intensively for so many hours. And before I do, I’ll make a collage. I don’t do this every morning, but it’s a regular part of my ritual. I usually find an inspiring quote amidst the morning reading or sometimes don’t come up with a quote at all. I sit at my desk with a selection of magazines, cutting out images as they inspire me. Then I arrange them together, sometimes adding the quote, taping them carefully on to a small piece of paper to make a miniature collage. I prop that up on my desk to look at it throughout the day, to remind myself that there is time for the little things.
I’m no artist. Creating these collages doesn’t meet some specific desire to create visual art. But that is precisely the point. What I am is a writer. When I sit down at the keyboard, I need to be focused. I need to remember that I am creating what will be the steps along the path of my career. What I am doing is working. I may love it, I may take pleasure in the projects, I may be prolific at least in small part because I thrive on what I do … but it is still work. I am lucky to love my work, but as with any job, it is sometimes a job. I am not an artist, and so I can sit down and create a collage and there is no pressure, no thought behind it, no concern for the resulting product. If I decide that I hate the piece, I flip the page and start anew the next day. I don’t care if it’s “good” or “bad” … I care only about the few minutes that it takes to make it, the minutes in which I am completely immersed in the physically creative process of crafting that collage.
I think every writer needs a second creative outlet. We need some sort of visual art, performance art, design work that we love to do but only as a hobby. We need a low-pressure way to explore the different things that we are thinking and feeling and experiencing in a way that doesn’t have to do with words. We need to wake up in the mornings and ease into our day doing something artistic that isn’t our work. This is the way that we refill the creative well, the way that we get ourselves ready to be prolific in our writing.
It’s time to do that now, but I have not forgotten the importance of the steps that come before.
[Tags] collage, art, writing, writer’s life, creativity, inspiration [/Tags]
It’s obvious that if you want to get writing work done, you need to minimize the distractions that take you away from the writing. It’s obvious; but it’s not easy. I have offered writing consultation advice to a number of people through one-on-one interaction as well as published articles and I always include ways to minimize writing distractions. But the truth is that the tricks don’t matter. What it really boils down to is having self-control and self-discipline. It’s about committing to your work. Once you’ve made that commitment, cutting down on the writing distractions is really fairly easy.
I was reminded of this today because I feel like I overcommitted myself a little bit to a new project. But I’m excited about it, so I’m happy to do it. It just means that I need to drastically reduce the distractions and increase the focus. So this morning, I woke up at the usual time. (I wake up early but without an alarm clock; I need enough sleep and waking up naturally in order to work well.) I got my normal cup of coffee and eased into the day. I read part of a book from the library because that’s what I do most mornings. But instead of lingering over the pages, considering dipping into a new book or otherwise making reading a reason not to work … I put the book away after a few pages and committed to writing.
The distractions were there if I wanted to entertain them. I’d been working on making a mixed CD for a gift and I hadn’t finished it so I could’ve easily started listening to music to try and complete that project. I wanted to finish the DVD of shows that I’d gotten so I could return it to Blockbuster. But I didn’t turn it on. I didn’t stop to go to breakfast with the friend who asked. I didn’t answer the text messages that came through. These are things that I normally have the luxury of doing during the day. And that’s part of what I like about the writer’s life. Some days are free for indulging in distractions. But some days are not those days and the committed writer knows the difference.
You can get advice from professionals about minimizing distractions. They’ll tell you to only check email once in the morning and once in the afternoon, to turn off IM programs, to set goals. They’ll tell you that if you’re a WAHM, you need to turn a video on for the kids or get a mommy’s helper for the day. They’ll tell you that you need to eat breakfast and lunch and not wander into the kitchen five times in between. But you don’t need them to tell you these things. You know what distracts you. And you know that if you make the conscious decision that you’re not going to let it distract you, it won’t (barring emergencies, of course).
Minimizing writing distractions is about committing to your work. It’s about taking yourself seriously. And it’s about doing what you’re supposed to do instead of what you want to do. But ultimately, if your career in writing is what you want to do, it all serves the same purpose.
[Tags] writing, time management, distraction, writing tips, writing advice [/Tags]
