by John on February 29, 2008
Let it be noted that today, I finally became cool enough to be a licensed Scrivener user. I’m taking on a large for hire writing project. It involves research and multiple sections, and it occurred to me this is exactly the kind of thing Scrivener was made for. Hmm…now something else is going to have to bear the weight of my technolust.
In some completely unrelated blog news (that doesn’t merit a post of it’s own):
- We have been hovering just under 100 subscribers to the RSS feed. I’d love to push through that on to 200. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I hope you’ll consider doing so.
- I have a few others working on some guest posts that I think will be help all of us find new ways to practice creativity. If you have thoughts you would like to share in a guest post, please let me know.
- With the capture everything series wrapped up, I have one or two more series in the works. If there are some topics you’d like to see developed, please leave a comment below.
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by John on February 20, 2008
I need to write this entry for myself as much as anyone.
I’ve been consumed by my task list this week. Too many projects converged at once with barely enough time and energy to get them done. I’ve kept so busy doing, I’ve had little chance to just be.
As much as I love practicing GTD, I find that it can become a system that consumes me more than it should. With lists of projects and contexts and dreams, these inventories themselves can start to become more important than the outcomes. GTD can become an artform in itself, and my constant tweaks and tunings to the system cause me to lose focus on why I GTD in the first place.
I GTD to create space. I GTD so that I can have a trusted system to hold what needs to be done. I GTD to clear my head of the do’s to make sure that I have space to be.
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by John on February 8, 2008
Two elemental fears sabotage my creative process time and again.
The first fear is that my creative expressions won’t be received well by others. It would take many blog entries (and hours of therapy) to unravel that fear. That’s not what this blog entry is about…I’m afraid no one would want to read about that anyway. Maybe I’ll talk about that someday. If everyone is really nice. And asks nicely. And promises to not be mean. And tells me that they like me even if they don’t.
The second fear is that I am going to run out of creativity. To put words to that sounds silly, but I find that impulse often lurks just beneath my consciousness. Creativity, however, is without limits. It doesn’t deplete like a self-contained reservoir that will run dry.
Creativity begets creativity. Each idea I explore generates two or three more. The idea for this blog wandered aimlessly in my head for several months. I wondered if I could sustain it. The simple action of writing that first post generated a flow of thoughts for future posts. My primal instinct was to pile them in a corner, thinking that I should hoard them for the future. If I only shared one every few days, I thought, I wouldn’t run out of ideas.
Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way. As I write, I find that each new post releases more captive ideas. Now if you’ll excuse me, Ijust got another one.
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by John on February 5, 2008
More words from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird:
You are going to have to give and give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
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by John on February 2, 2008
In Orthodoxy, the ever quotable GK Chesterton writes:
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.
Those words have meandered back into my head while reflecting on yesterday’s quote from Anne Lamott. Chesterton suggests that it is the exercise of expression that helps heal the pained poet. I’m not sure if research would back up good old Gilbert’s assertion, but I find merit in them. (I’m also not sure if I should consider myself on a first name basis with Mr. Chesterton.)
Creative works that draw us to that place we don’t want to go don’t just happen. They come from the tattered soul of an artist that is reaching in to find what is there. Not all creative expression is born out of, or deals with, the pains and hurts of life. Yet I find that when an artist takes me someplace, it is only because they have been willing to go there too.
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by John on February 1, 2008
From Anne Lamott’s fantastic book on writing (and life), Bird by Bird:
We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words–not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.
When I am marked by a film, a book, a painting, or any artistic piece, there is a quality to it that captures what Anne Lamott explains here. The best creative expressions are those that usher us into places that we don’t want to go, or places we yearn to go, but don’t seem to know how.
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by John on January 26, 2008
I cherish the simplicity of a clean workspace on my computer. My wallpaper is a simple black. Almost.
One of the simple joys of parenthood has been the rediscovery of the Dr. Seuss books I read as a kid, plus a few I wasn’t familiar with. Everytime we read Dr. Seuss I come away with a smile on my face and a stirring in my soul. If I have a creative superhero, he is it, and that is why this quote from him stretches boldly across the bottom of my screen:
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Creativity comes when you find your voice and let it be heard without worrying how it will be received. There is little doubt this advice worked for Dr. Seuss, and so I try to live this way too.
If you don’t mind.
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by John on January 25, 2008
Leo Laporte and a few others are writing a collaborative story via twitter called 140Novel. They are taking turns adding to the story within the 140 character limit that Twitter imposes on them.
Who knows if it will be a good story? I am more interested in watching how creativity can be stirred within a collaborative process. It removes anxiety when you know that you are only responsible for what you are going to write at this moment, and someone else will pick it up from there.
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by John on January 21, 2008
“You’re such an amateur!”
Even if jokingly, these words are often spoken to let us know that our efforts aren’t top notch. It’s too bad, really, because there is something beautiful about the genuine strivings of an amateur.
Not too long ago, someone pointed out to me that the word amateur shares the same Latin root as the word love. Quite literally, an amateur is someone who does something purely out of love for the act itself.
It is love, and not finances, that must drive creativity. It is something we have to get out, a voice that has to be heard, a song that has to be sung, or an image that has to be seen. If your creative outlets help pay the bills, great! If not, remember that an income, or the dream of one, is not what makes your voice worth hearing.
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by John on January 18, 2008
“We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.”
- Madeleine L’Engle
HT: Joshua Longbrake
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