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Book Review: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
I have been playing around with writing fiction for the first time in a long time. A fantasy story about elves has been playing around in my head for years. I sketched some character descriptions and tried writing few scenes in the past but it’s never gone anywhere. I decided to invest in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel because I have heard it recommended many different times to help in plotting out a novel. I’ve written out short stories before, but nothing recently and I have never written anything that comes close to the length of a novel. What if I’m too much of a beginner to benefit from…
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Make it Portable – Creativity on the Go
I have been trying to write more for years now. I have notebooks, a binder, and a laptop. I write my morning pages in a paper notebook long hand everyday. I write many first drafts in my writing binder. I also use my laptop for second drafts or for typing out first drafts. Writing First Drafts My current writing project is my first attempt at writing a novel. I try to write a little in the morning before work and a little at bedtime. I started out by planning and drafting long hand in my writing binder, but as the story started moving along well, I found it more efficient…
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Seeing in a New Way
In my creative life, I dabble in a lot of things. Recently, I have been spending time working on collage and painting in my art journal. I’ve also been working on creative fiction writing for the first time in a long time. Both of these types of creative work feed off each other and I’ve noticed they change the way I look at life. Visual Arts: Learning how to see As I practice sketching and painting, I have been starting to look at forms and shading in new ways. The deep looking you need to do to draw or paint a figure trains your eyes in a way that carries…
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How Can I Track and Reinforce my Creative Habits?
Tracking Word Count Recently, I have been writing more frequently. I have been finding a lot of joy in tracking my word count as a measure of what I have written. There are a lot of versions of habit trackers out there. I drew one myself by sketching a picture of a tree and chopping it into boxes. I counted by 100 words for each box and I color in how much I have written. My goal was to write 10% more than what I wrote in 2020 and I blew that goal out of the water. There are probably prettier ways or more exact ways to track word count,…
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Daily Creative Habits: Vote for Who You Want to Be
I was listening to Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast interviewing James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. His book talks about habit formation and he suggests we start by envisioning the type of person we want to be. For example, if you want to eat healthier, instead of focusing on the diet plan you want, he would suggest envisioning a healthy person. When you go into a restaurant and look at the menu, the prompt to yourself would be “What would a healthy person order for lunch?” This type of question will help you drill down to the types of daily choices that person would make. Habits are a vote…
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Book Review: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
This book is small and cute like the kind of thing you would get as a Christmas gift for you artsy friend. It’s the kind of visually appealing book that would catch your eye in the checkout line at Barnes and Noble and suck you in. Its quick read text layout and the appealing black and white graphic design make it a fun and easy read. I read the whole thing in one sitting and it left me feeling inspired and holding on to the following concrete takeaways: 1) All creative work builds off the work of other earlier artists. The author encourages us to dig deep into the works…
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Six Tips to Manage Your Creative Works in Progress
You can do everything, but not all at once! Are you the type of person who has a variety of creative interests? If your creativity branches off in many different directions, you might have several projects going at once. Your creative goals and dreams may be overwhelming. There may be a variety of art supplies cluttering up your spare room. Nothing is getting finished! How can we keep making progress in our creative work when our creative interests send us in many different directions? 1) Get all your ideas down in one place The first step to organizing your creative impulses is to get all your ideas down in one…
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Big Picture, Small Steps: What if I’m overwhelmed thinking about my goals?
When you read about goal setting, people suggest you visualize what achieving the goal would look like. You write about your ideal day or make a vision board. All of these activities help you lay out what you would like to do in so much detail you can taste it. But what if step one is incredibly far from the vision in your head – like comically far away? It can be overwhelming and create resistance toward even getting started down the path to achieving your goals. Where do you start? Here are a few steps to keep in mind. 1) Find your next step and focus on that Life…
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Finding time – 5 easy ways to block out more time for creativity
Creativity takes time to develop. If your creative pursuits need to compete with with your full-time job and family obligations, you may wonder if you have time to improve your craft at all. How on earth are you going to get to practice your 10,000 hours if you can’t find time to do your creative pursuits? I’m a mom with four kids. I work outside the home, or at least I used to before COVID. Now, my office is a TV tray in my bedroom. My job takes up much of the time when the kids are in school. If your life is busy with other responsibilities, you need to…
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New Endeavors: What if I’m not a Creative Person?
When children play, their creativity is obvious. Kids imagine and build. They sing and paint. Often you see them playing pretend with complex back stories using their vivid imaginations. While almost every child has active creative interests, the grown-ups I talk to often say “but I’m not a creative person” or “I was never good at art in school.” While it’s true that one person might be more creative than another, we all have creative possibilities deep in our DNA. Even early humans painted on cave walls, and you have an instinct for creative self-expression, too. You just need to tap into it by taking the first step. Some of…