Category Archives: Writing

Things I've Learned, Writing

Consistency is the Key

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One of the lessons that has hit me upside the head over the last couple of years, is how consistency is not just a good idea, or nice to have, or even fairly important.

No, it is KEY.

Just about everything in life works better if you do a little bit frequently, rather than infrequent binges. If you want to learn something, spending 30 minutes on it daily will be more effective than two hours once a week. If you want to clean or unclutter your house, a daily process of getting it a little more clean and uncluttered today than it was yesterday is more effective, and build the necessary habits to keep it clean. The same thing applies to exercise, to meditation, and to writing.

Writing consistently, as in every single day no matter what, has changed what, how, and how much I write significantly over the last months. I’ve been writing quite a bit for about five years now. For the first several I wrote between two and four times a week, and between 300 and 1000 words per session. That isn’t a great deal of productivity, but it isn’t bad, and a great deal more than the zero words per week that I was doing most weeks before that.

But in the last few months, I decided I wasn’t happy with that volume of writing, and I started writing every day. And I mean every day, no matter what. I deliberately set the bar low, at a minimum of half a page in a day (about 150 – 200 words, which takes me about 10 minutes), so that even when I was tired or cranky or just not feeling it, I didn’t have an excuse to skip doing that tiny little bit of writing.

This tiny little bit of writing every day (and many days I did more than that minimum) set up a habit of consistency. It made writing every day something that I don’t have to think about now, something I don’t have to spend any energy or decision power on, and no time or brainspace is needed to justify not doing it. The decision is already made, today I will be writing.

Now from this habit of consistency, I’m working on a greater volume and speed of writing, and I’m getting more done more quickly that I would have thought possible a few months ago.

I was one of those people who had read, over and over again, the advice of writing teachers to write every day. And I nodded and smiled and then didn’t do what they said. But finally taking that advice has made a huge difference. And I’ve gotten similar benefits when I started meditating every single day. And doing yoga every single day.

Over and over again, I’ve seen that the first thing that must happen is consistency. And after that, you can worry about quantity and quality, and things will really take off.

But consistency must come first.

Creativity, Writing

Are you an Artist?

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It occurred to me the other day, that I’ve been blogging for over a year about creative writing and the creative process, and I have never stopped to really define Art or and Artist.

I agree with the definition that Seth Godin provides in his book “Linchpin”, which is a very broad definition, and it is basically this:

Art is something that requires some skill and craft to do well, but it is made special by the Artist, who brings his/her whole self into the performance of the Art.

So in other words, just about anything can be Art, as long as you bring some skill and soul into doing it. That means that Art is a whole lot more than writing, drawing, painting, acting, and the other ‘fine’ arts, but also includes things like waiting tables, and rehab therapy, and driving a taxi and many, many other things we don’t traditionally think of as Art.

But no matter what Art we’re talking about, it isn’t Art until there is skill and there is soul.

So if you want to be a writer, a true artist of a writer, you need to pursue increasing skill, but you also need to bring your whole self to the writing; let your readers see from your viewpoint, through your eyes. Let them see you reflected in your work.

If you don’t pursue always increasing your skill, then you are a dilettante, not a real artist, you’re not taking your Art seriously.

If you don’t bring your whole self to the writing, and let yourself be reflected in your work, then you are a hack. A highly skilled hack, perhaps, but a hack nevertheless.

And the same is true no matter what your Art. Bring the skill, bring yourself. You’re an artist.

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Things I've Learned, Writing

Challenges, not Resolutions

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For the last couple of years, I haven’t set New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve set myself New Year’s Challenges. As a result, in 2016 I’ve written blog posts weekly (or more), and written around twice as many words of fiction than I have in previous years. The years when I’ve set resolutions, nothing much has changed.

So why is that? Being a curious person, I’ve naturally stopped to think about this for awhile.

My conclusion is that it’s all about the underlying psychology of it. Resolutions are based on “I WILL do this”, so that they are all about willpower, changing yourself through sheer determination.

Challenges, by contrast, are “Can I do this?” They’re based on curiosity, exploration, a more fluid and playful approach, instead of the rigid and serious approach of a resolution.

And that’s what makes all the difference.

So again this year, I’m setting myself challenges, instead of resolutions. I’m doing a couple more writing challenges, to continue the productivity of last year. I’m also trying out a challenge to get more exercise, as that was one of the things that I think held me back last year.

The challenges are serious, to the extent that they will require me to push myself, stretch myself beyond what I did last year, but I’m also keeping it playful, as a question to explore instead of something to power through with determination.

Can I do this? I think I can.

Creativity, Things I've Learned, Writing

The Creative Tension of Mastery and Rebellion

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Creativity springs from the combination of mastery of a domain, and rebelling against the rules and accepted wisdom of that domain. The trick is to learn the knowledge and tools of a domain without becoming so indoctrinated into the ways of thinking that you can no longer be creative or innovative.

As I mentioned previously, I’m taking the “Cracking the Creativity Code” course through Coursera, and Professor Maital was talking about education in the context of mastery and rebellion in order to produce creative thinkers. What he said got me thinking – the combination of mastery and rebellion is just as necessary for artistic creativity as it is for business and engineering creativity.

But how do you maintain the balance? That isn’t an easy question to answer. It means dedicating yourself to learning the craft of your art, the techniques, the history and the nitty-gritty details, while at the same time working on developing your capacity to think wild and free, come up with weird new ideas, and find the best way to tell, show or produce those ideas using the craft of the art, but still with the option of breaking the ‘rules’ if that’s what’s necessary.

In my experience, most artists struggle with this balance. Some get so caught up in the craft they produce technically flawless pieces that are a re-hash of old ideas, sometimes even thinly disguised plagiarism. Others produce interesting, original, fantastic ideas that they don’t seem to have the patience to complete and polish and make into really high quality works.

I tend towards the latter type of artist; I love coming up with great new ideas, but I tend to get impatient with the process of editing and revising (of my own work only, interestingly enough. I have a great deal of patience with editing other people’s work, for some reason). But what this means is that I need to make especially sure to work on my technical mastery, the techniques and fine detail that gives the great implementation to a great idea. I need to find a way to be patient with editing and revising my own work, spend the time on finding better ways to present the ideas.

If I look at some of my artistic heroes, writers whose work I admire, whose work has inspired and changed me, I can see that tension working there, under the hood. Those writers are all skilled in the craft of writing; they have undoubtedly devoted many hours to mastering the skills and to re-working their pieces to make them better. But they also show a willingness to challenge ideas and assumptions, do things in a different way, think different things.

That’s the creative tension that lies behind great works, and that I’m striving for, as an artist.

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Creativity, Writing

Your Personal Creativity Machine

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How, specifically, do you come up with your best ideas? What really sparks your imagination?

These are not always easy questions to answer, but they’re fairly important for creative people to at least attempt to answer. I’m currently taking a course through Coursera (www.coursera.org) called “Cracking the Creativity Code”, it’s done through the Technion Institute in Israel, written by a professor (a Canadian ex-pat!) in their School of Business. It’s been an interesting course so far, though their focus is on creativity and innovation in terms of business and entrepreneurship rather than the arts, so I’ve had to do some “translating” of a number of their concepts and ideas from a business context to an arts context.

One of those concepts was that of the Personal Creativity Machine, and the questions above. In the course, they gave the example of one of their former students, who’s answer was that he called up the genie (the big blue one from the Disney movie Alladin, voiced by Robin Williams) in his mind, and thought about what he would wish for. He’d then consider why he was wishing for it, and, because he doesn’t want to actually use any wishes, he’d find a way to make the wish come true by himself.

It’s an interesting and imaginative technique, and I could see how it would work if you’re looking for business and entrepreneurship type of ideas, but I don’t think it’s quite as useful in a creative arts context.

But it still got me thinking about how I find ideas, what techniques I use, and what fires my imagination. In that respect, my flash fiction project this year is already bearing fruit because it has forced me to keep my creative cycle very short and tight and I can examine it a little better. What I’ve found is that for me, stories are sparked by concepts and settings rather than characters or dialogue. I’ve come across a number of writing prompts online that are snips of dialogue to start with; some are quite clever and evocative, but they don’t spark anything for me. When I try to write from those dialogue based prompts, I usually write another two or three lines and then I’m stuck and I can’t get any farther. However, when I see Wil Wheaton make a throw-away comment about the problem of clones escaping from the lab, or someone else mentioning a Library where things have been put away for good reason, a spark ignites in me, and I can write a story.

Now that I have identified this, it makes my search for good story ideas a little easier and better, because if nothing else, I know what isn’t really helpful, and I can mostly ignore. It isn’t really a creativity machine, but it’s a step towards understanding what works for me and what doesn’t. It’s a step towards the prototype of the machine, perhaps.

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Creativity, Things I've Learned, Writing

Creativity is all about the motivation

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Back in 1990, creativity researcher John Hayes from Carnegie Mellon University identified that the big factors between creatively productive people and those who were not, was motivational. He identified that strong motivation was needed to work hard, to work for an extended period to develop mastery in the chosen creative field, to have the discipline to revise extensively, and to find and pursue interesting problems to high standards. (If you would like to read his paper on this, the pdf can be downloaded here)

I found this interesting because most of the more recent material that I’ve been reading and studying on creativity doesn’t get into the issue of motivation except to mention that there is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and creativity springs from intrinsic motivation. But then they stop and go on to other questions like whether creativity and IQ are correlated (they’re not) or whether one’s environment affects creativity (it does).

So how do you develop intrinsic motivation? I have come across many, many instances of people who want to be more creative, to increase their creative production, but simply find themselves unable to do so. And it one way or another, it comes down to the fact that the person does not have the intrinsic motivation to do the work.

Where does that intrinsic motivation come from, and how do you develop it? I think it comes from self-awareness, and that is, unfortunately, often uncomfortable to cultivate. First of all, you have to ask yourself why you want to do the work. Is it for the money, because you want to be famous? That’s really an extrinsic motivation, and won’t be enough to carry you through the years required to gain mastery at your art.

If, instead, you look closely at your own reasons for doing your creative work, and are doing it because some part of your soul will die if you don’t get it out, or because you need to add some small bit of beauty to the world, you might have a chance. If you are fine with forever working in obscurity, with no one ever recognizing any brilliance on your part, and never being appreciated beyond your own circle of friends and family, if you are willing to accept this and keep working, then perhaps you have sufficient intrinsic motivation to achieve greatness.

This isn’t very cheering, I know, but creative work is hard, and there’s a reason why so few people achieve greatness; it isn’t because few have sufficient IQ or a genetic gift, it’s because few have the motivation to keep working long enough and hard enough.

If greatness isn’t your goal, that’s fine, too, but that doesn’t change the need for self-awareness and knowing your whys. If you aren’t getting to creative work you want to do, look again at your reasons for doing it; re-thinking and changing your purpose may change everything, and you just might find the level of intrinsic motivation needed to reach greatness, after all.

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Philosophizing, Writing

Writing Anansi Stories

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There are days when I think (or it’s said to me, either directly or indirectly) that writing fiction is an indulgence, something selfish that doesn’t really help anyone or accomplish anything real in the world. But then I re-read this excerpt from Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, and I remember why I write, and that it’s not trivial, or selfish, or an indulgence

The old man started to talk in a gentle sing-song. “When I say Tiger,” he said, “You got to understand it’s not just the stripy cat, the India one. It’s just what people called big cats – the pumas and the bobcats and the jaguars and all of them. You got that?”

“Certainly”

“Good. So…a long time ago,” he began, “Tiger had the stories. All the stories there ever were was Tiger stories, all the songs were Tiger songs, and I’d say that all the jokes were Tiger jokes, but there weren’t no jokes told back in the Tiger days. In Tiger stories all that matters is how strong your teeth are, how you hunt and how you kill. Ain’t no gentleness in Tiger stories, no tricksiness, and no peace.”

Maeve tried to imagine what kind of stories a big cat might tell. “So they were violent?”

“Sometimes. But mostly what they was, was bad. When all the stories and the songs were Tiger’s, that was a bad time for everyone. People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song. And in Tiger times, all the songs were dark. They began in tears, and they’d end in blood, and they were the only stories that the people of this world knew.

“Then Anansi comes along. Now, I guess you know all about Anansi – ”

“I don’t think so,” said Maeve.

“Well, if I started to tell you how clever and how handsome and how charming and how cunning Anansi was, I could start today and not finish until next Thursday.” began the old man.

“Then don’t.” said Maeve. “We’ll take it as said. And what did this Anansi do?”

“Well, Anansi won the stories — won them? No. He earned them. He took them from Tiger and made it so Tiger couldn’t enter the real world no more. Not in the flesh. The stories people told became Anansi stories. This was, what, ten, fifteen thousand years back.

“Now, Anansi stories, they have wit and trickery and wisdom. Now, all over the world, all of the people they aren’t just thinking of hunting and being hunted anymore. Now they’re starting to think their way out of problems — sometimes thinking their way into worse problems. They still need to keep their bellies full, but now they’re trying to figure out how to do it without working — and that’s the point where people start using their heads. Some people think the first tools were weapons, but that’s all upside down. First of all, people figure out the tools. It’s the crutch before the club, every time. Because now people are telling Anansi stories, and they’re starting to think about how to get kissed, how to get something for nothing by being smarter or funnier. That’s when they start to make the world.”

“It’s just a folk story,” she said. “People make up the stories in the first place.”

“Does that change things?” asked the old man. “Maybe Anansi’s just some guy from a story, made up back in Africa in the dawn days of the world by some boy with blackfly on his leg, pushing his crutch in the dirt, making up some goofy story about a man made of tar. Does that change anything? People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as the people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the fold who never had any thoughts in their head but how to run from lions and keep far away from rivers that the crocodiles don’t get an easy meal, now they’re starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper’s changed. Yes? People still have the same story, the one where they get born and they do stuff and they die, but now the story means something different to what it meant before.”

“You’re telling me that before the Anansi stories the world was savage and bad?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

She digested this. “Well,” she said cheerily, “it’s certainly a good thing that the stories are now Anansi’s.”

The old man nodded.

And then she said, “Doesn’t Tiger want them back?”

He nodded. “He’s wanted them back for ten thousand years.”

“But he won’t get them, will he?”

The old man said nothing. He stared into the distance. Then he shrugged. “Be a bad thing if he did.”

 

Creativity, Things I've Learned, Writing

Ignore Everyone – up to a point.

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There are lots of writing blogs – and blogs on writing – that give the advice to ignore the critics and criticisms that tell you that your writing is bad, your plot is horrible. Even more so, the ones that give biting criticism phrased as backhanded compliments, the ‘your writing would be good if it wasn’t so terrible’ kind of ‘helpful’ criticism.

And they’re right, you should ignore them. What they usually don’t tell you is that if you should ignore the criticism, you should also ignore the compliments. Even when they are carefully phrased as objective assessments of your work, they are fundamentally subjective, coming from the person’s particular experiences, biases and perspectives. If the person who lambasted your work didn’t like your writing because they happened to read it on a bad day, perhaps the person who loved it just happened to read it on a particularly good day for them, and your work got the benefit of the rosy outlook the person happened to have that day. Or perhaps your work just happened to be perceived by that person as saying what they needed to hear that day.

Either way, a person’s reaction to a writer generally says more about the reader than the writer. Writers getting feedback from people need to keep this in mind.

Of course, like most things – especially most things I talk about here – there’s the balance, the opposites that are true at the same time. You should ignore everyone, those who criticize and those who praise, except when they are truly pointing out flaws in your work, and ways you can do it better.

Unfortunately, those who can give truly helpful, constructive criticism are few and far between, and for the most part, a writer has to depend on herself to analyze her own work and find ways to make it better. But most of the growth of an artist comes from focusing on improving the process, rather than focusing on improving the end product; improving the process pretty much always improves the product, but as a side effect

I’m writing this for a reminder to myself, as much as for anyone else reading this who needs to hear it. Feedback on my writing is good, I like feedback. But I also have to remember that most of the time I have to just write what I want to write, paying attention to improving my own process, to produce writing that feels right, that sings to me. If I do that, feedback or no, praise or criticism, it doesn’t really matter; I’m a writer, I write.

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Creativity, Things I've Learned, Writing

Find good enough

Good enough is important in the content of your writing – if you refuse to let it out there to be seen until it’s perfect, it will never leave your computer, or possibly your head – but it also refers to time and place. The time and place will never be perfect; there will always be pesky life things like dirty laundry and bills to pay and there will always be people who need (and deserve) your time and attention, sometimes even when you’d rather be writing. But the time and place needs to be – must be – good enough.

First, there must be a time and place that allows focused attention, and there needs to be materials that are good enough that you can work without thinking about them. It doesn’t even need to be the proverbial room of one’s own, it just needs to be good enough.

I didn’t start being a productive writer until I figured this out. It wasn’t so much that I was waiting for the perfect time and place, as that I didn’t realize how little was actually needed to write productively. When I finally made the decision, and made the time to start writing, I was working almost full time, and wrote during my lunch hours and weekends. This was a relatively stressful time, but I found that a regular writing practice went a long way to grounding me, and keeping me sane through the stresses and pressures in my life.

But then things really fell apart. I ended up working two jobs, with a highly variable schedule and next to no time off. Many things that I enjoyed doing fell by the wayside, because I simply didn’t have the time or the physical, mental or emotional energy to keep doing them. But I kept writing.

For about a year or so, it felt like every minute of my time was spent working my tail off for everyone else’s benefit. When I wasn’t working for one of my employers, I had household chores and family demands. I only got a few nooks and crannies of my life to myself, which I spent writing. It felt like writing was the only thing in my life I did only for me, and no one else.

It wasn’t a pleasant time in my life, and I’m quite happy that my situation has since improved, but it was a valuable learning experience. If nothing else, that year taught me how little is necessary for the time and place to be good enough. I found if I had a decent notebook and a pen (preferably my favorite Zebra brand pen), I could write. And if nothing else, that year taught me not to take the time and space I have for writing for granted.

So every day I try to not take it for granted. I have a little time, I have a little space. It’s enough.

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Creativity, Writing

Do you want to do, or have done?

I know a guy who, on a regular basis, talks about how he is going to write an amazing book, or get an MBA, or build a million-dollar business, or some other great and wonderful thing. And every time I hear about the newest thing he says he’s going to do, I shake my head and think It’s not going to happen. He doesn’t want to do that, he wants to have done that.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve heard from a couple of different people the statistic that 81% of Americans want to write a book, even though a much, much smaller number actually do write one. In both cases, the person was quoting the statistic to encourage people to go follow that desire, and go write that book.

Which is good, I’m all for encouraging people to write, to explore their ideas and creativity. And there are lots of reasons why people don’t write a book; fear of rejection, fear of criticism, even fear of success. But I think there are also plenty of people in that 81% who say they want to write a book, when really they want to have written a book.

And that’s an important distinction. Why are you writing? Or perhaps, why do you want to write? Is it because writing feeds your soul and keeps you sane, or is it because you like to be able to go to a party and tell people, when they ask what you do, that you’re a writer? Is it because you have ideas or stories in your head that need to come out, or they will fester and rot and make you sick, or is it because you want to be able to go to a meeting and tell the person to look you up on Amazon?

I have to admit, I struggle with this distinction. Most days, I write because it does keep me sane and healthy and feeds me in ways nothing else does. But there are also days when I find myself thinking a little too much about the theoretical future social and monetary rewards writing will bring. I really, really don’t want the desire to have done get in the way of doing, and doing it well, for its own sake. So that if I don’t get social and monetary rewards, I’ll keep doing it anyway. Because it keeps me sane. Because it feeds my soul in ways nothing else does.

And that’s enough.

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