Posts filed under 'Creative process'
My little home-based workspace (i.e., spare bedroom) looks like the Office Depot delivery truck crashed through it. Manila folders, notepads, books, magazines, printouts, and sticky notes cover every possible surface area. To say I let things go while writing this book would be the understatement of the century. Not that I was much of a domestic diva to begin with. But I did like to keep my desk clean. Even if work was nuts, I could stare at the blank patch of pine and know that at least one little thing in the freelance universe was under control.
Today, buried under Mt. Everest on my desk I found a printed page containing these 10 Commandments. I imagine I wrote this list early in 2006 to try to coax myself into a regular book-writing schedule. After much nail-biting and hair-pulling, I did get on a regular writing schedule, but it was nowhere near as smooth as I envisioned when I sat down to draft this list a thousand months ago.
I know as far as fresh blog posts go this is cheating, but I thought you’d want to see anyway. Besides, if you know me even the slightest bit, some of the items will likely make you piss yourself from laughing so hard.
So herewith, I give you The 10 Commandments of Getting Off My Ass:
- Write first thing in the a.m. OK to eat and/or walk dog first. On weekdays, get on computer by 9:30 a.m.; weekends, as long as it’s before noon, you’re golden. Write for 1 hour without getting up, break for 10 minutes. Repeat 1 to 2 more times before moving on to lunch and afternoon tasks.
- Schedule interviews/research for afternoons. Do whenever possible. This mainly applies to weekdays. Crucial to get the writing time in during weekday mornings.
- Don’t watch TV. Just don’t. Really. I mean it. Or you’ll be sorry. Unless it’s after 5 p.m. and you’ve done your writing for the day. Even then, you should be researching or doing chores while the tube’s on. Otherwise, it had better be off or you had better be watching a movie you rented.
- Let household chores and errands wait their turn. Must not be done in lieu of writing time. However, it’s perfectly OK to do them on brief writing breaks (see commandment #1), at lunch, and before or after the workday. Do out-of-the-house errands at the end of the day. You’ll be dying to get out of the house anyway.
- Do client writing work in afternoons, evenings, or weekends. Under no circumstances should you write your newspaper/magazine articles or do your bread-and-butter corporate work during the a.m. book-writing time. Exceptions: You can only get a source on the phone for one of the aforementioned assignments during the a.m., in which case, your book-writing time had better extend into the afternoon to make up for it. (BTW, no penalty for writing book all freaking day if you so desire.)
- Don’t answer the phone. Let the voice mail get it. You’re paying Qwest for it, so you might as well make use of it. Return calls at the end of the day or — here’s a concept — the next day.
- Same with emails and IM. OK to read emails on writing breaks (see commandment #1, lunches, and before and after work). OK to send a quick response during these times if it has to do with immediate plans, important work stuff, interviews, and so on. Otherwise, wait till end of workday or evening to respond. As for IM, just don’t even log on.
- Same with e-newsletters and Google alerts. Just gloss over them till the day is done. Or else.
- Same with Jehovah’s witnesses. Don’t answer the door during the day. Even if the solicitors on your doorstep can see you through the windows. Just motion to them that your dog is vicious and likes to eat strangers who engage in religious dialogue with other strangers. By the same token, don’t make plans with people during the day. Meet them after work. The only one who gets to see you during the day is Buddy, and yes, he is entitled to a midday walk, provided you’ve finished your morning writing. (The a.m. pre-writing walk with Buddy will really help in this department.)
- Don’t eat instead of writing. Eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, yes. Snack when hungry, too. But know that this does not include scarfing a box of cookies in front of Judge Judy instead of starting the next chapter or section you’re supposed to be working on.
***Bonus commandment: If you fall off the wagon, don’t belabor it and bang your head against the wall as punishment. Just tell yourself you’ll do better the next day and make sure you bloody well do.
(Can anyone guess which commandments I followed and which I didn’t? To my credit, I did hit far more of these tenets than I missed. And before we close the, uh, book on this subject, would anyone care to share a page from their own creative routine?)
November 16th, 2006
Besides Dems take the house, I was tickled to come across this gem today:
It’s really silly to just be a slave to work that you can do instead of want to do.
Found it in my interview notes for an article I’m writing on self-employment. The interviewee who said this is a former math professor with degrees up the wazoo. Not long after she began teaching, she found herself dreading Mondays and living for the weekends. So to make life more interesting she started her own petcare business on the side, as an evening and weekend hobby. Still, she didn’t think she could ever give up the day job she had trained so long and hard for, despite the fact that it was bleeding her soul dry. This is what I should be doing, she’d tell herself about the unfulfilling math career. And because women are so underrepresented professionally in mathematics and the sciences, she felt it was her responsibility to tough out a gig she’d grown to resent, if for no other reason than to serve as a role model for young women contemplating what career path to follow.
Somewhere along the way the weekend hobby took on a life of its own, eating up every waking second this woman wasn’t at her day job, all the while remaining a constant source of joy. It was time to choose between shoulding and wanting, and this time to choice was clear: Kick the day job to the curb, and pour her heart into her burgeoning petcare business. And so she did. And happy she remains, with a thriving new enterprise of her own.
Career coach extraordinaire Curt Rosengren first introduced me to the debilitating concept of shoulding all over oneself, though I doubt he put as ineloquently as I just did. As a roadmap of sorts for The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, I wrote an article earlier this year on ten myths of career change we women subject ourselves to. Unfortunately, when it comes to career change, shoulding is just one of the many roadblocks we set up for ourselves. You can read about nine other ways we’re our own worst enemies here. (Free subscription may be required.)
The shoulding ourselves doesn’t begin and end with career decisions though. There’s also the crippling shoulding we creative types commit when we sit down — or avoid sitting down — to work on our arty projects. While devouring all sorts of online interviews with writer Aimee Bender this week, I came across this great conversation she and Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold had with each other, on shoulding all over one’s creativity, among other things. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, I should know the work of all the literary greats before I pick up a pen myself, or I should write literary fiction as opposed to sci-fi/fantasy because everyone knows lit fiction is [insert snooty assertion here], or I should plot out every twist and turn of my novel before I actually begin writing the dang thing, read this interview.
November 8th, 2006
I took a workshop at Richard Hugo House in Seattle this weekend with the endlessly talented Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures, and An Invisible Sign of My Own. Reason I mention it is not because the class was eye-opening and wonderful (it was), but because toward the end of class on Saturday the conversation invariably turned to the instructor’s own creative habits.
My friend Angela has told me on more than one occasion that she’s heard Aimee Bender say in interviews that she writes two hours a day because for her, it’s “the law” — a non-negotiable rule she’s set up for herself. This of course came up in class, and Aimee confirmed that she indeed works on her fiction two hours first thing every morning, before turning on the lights or anything, often on weekends, too, except when traveling. Before she had the law to guide her, she said, she had too much angst about whether she was writing enough. In interviews, most published novelists and short story writers will tell you they have similar hard-and-fast writing rules and schedules for themselves because really, it’s the only way to get the job done. I just like how Aimee Bender calls it “the law.” It’s so resolute.
As I come off the final page proof review of my book (turned in this a.m. — yay!) and start to think about how I’m going to juggle some of my creative writing goals with the paying work I’ve signed up for this fall, Aimee’s law serves a good reminder: When juggling artsy-fartsy endeavors with bread-and-butter work, structure and commitment is everything.
November 6th, 2006
Some fab resources for writers I came across recently:
The Renegade Writer. The blog by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell, authors of the must-have book for freelance writers, The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success. Check out such helpful blog features as You Ask: We Answer (an interactive Q&A column) and Sourcery Central (a place where you, too, can find people to interview for that article you’re writing on those with unspeakably weird phobias — Paging Tyra “Can’t Get in a Pool with Dolphins” Banks).
Written Road. An invaluable blog for working and wannabe travel writers, by Jen Leo, author of the Sand in My Bra series of spit-take-inducing (or so I hear) travel essays. I mentioned this site in my book — reason being, it’s loaded with tips, markets, resources, and as the site’s subhead says, “the inside scoop to the travel publishing world.” Plus, Jen’s published about 9,000 books and articles on her travel adventures, so if anyone knows what they’re talking about, she does.
Miss Snark. The blog of a dominatrix-inspired, anonymous lit agent who doesn’t mince words. Tips and answers to all your burning questions about the book publishing biz are served up as wryly and brutally as possible. Submit an ill-informed question or a shitty mini-mini book proposal for that blog-turned-novel and be prepared to be crushed like the pondscum nobody you are. Or as the blogstress herself puts it, “When Miss Snark mingles with authors in her stilettos, there are no survivors.” Still, you will undoubtedly learn something. Or at least spit your milk all over your keyboard. Thanks to the infamous Ariel of Electrolicious for tipping me off to this wondrous site.
November 1st, 2006
Yesterday I had the blissful experience of returning to Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers I attended this spring on lovely Whidbey Island.
I was punctual for what I suspect was the second time in my life. I wrote about the first time I visited Hedgebrook (and was punctual) here.
I can’t remember if it was Annie Proulx or Ang Lee that said they thought each of us has our own Brokeback Mountain, but the statement struck me. I take this to mean not necessarily that we’ve all had the good fortune to share a tent with Heath Ledger or Jake Gyllenhaal, but that we all know what it means to lose ourselves in bittersweet nostalgia and serious longing. And Hedgebrook is pretty much my own Brokeback Mountain, only without all the hot gay cowboy sex.
But. I. digress.
Reason I went to Hedgebrook yesterday was to read applications for the 2007 residency season, along with a dozen or so other alums. And I just wanted to share. Because reading dozens of applications for a writing fellowship was quite the eye-opening process.
The applicants’ personal histories were so vastly varied and fascinating, no matter what their writing background. What’s more, I learned exactly what not to write next time I go to apply for a grant or fellowship.
When asking people to give you money or room-n-board so that you can do your creative thing uninterrupted, you certainly don’t want to serve up the artist’s version of an “I love long walks on the beach and romantic candlelit dinners” personal ad. Nor do you want to sound utterly devoid of personality. But making the review committee fall hopelessly in love with you — sight unseen — man, that’s the hard part. I hope I can pull it off next time I’m on the other side of the page.
October 22nd, 2006
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