It's been a very popular notion for a very long time that if a creative person isn't suffering for their art, they must not be any good. They must not be serious about (insert artistic choice here). They are just indulging a hobby. Just look at all the quotes by the successful authors out there about writing that somehow or other involve the idea of "bleeding on the paper".
There is the "starving artist" mentality. The "eccentric locked away in their writer's garret" label. The "no tears from the writer, no tears from the reader" warning. (And I gotta ask, why on earth does anyone only want to read books that make them cry???) We hear the "write drunk, edit sober" pro tip. It is highly suggested that all of us need to be medicated - whether by a professional or through recreational means - on a regular basis. Over all, creative people of all sorts are often looked at as weirdo loners with a penchant for self destructive behavior. I call bullshit. Sure, a lot of us have fallen into one or more of those stereotypes at least a time or two just like everyone who mistakenly claims they don't have a creative bone in their body. Do we do it BECAUSE we're creative? Nope. I think it's much more likely that there are two things at play with that perception-made-reality. 1) There's a giant expectation that we all be nuttier than a deep winter squirrel feeder. 2) A great many artistic people are introverts who are required to sing for their supper to a large audience that is just dying to throw mean words at them for it. Bonus: There are those who manage mental illness through creativity. Depending on the severity and symptoms of their condition, it might be very easy to believe that they are simply pain fueled. In other words, I don't think that the act of channeling that creative spark every single human on this planet has glowing inside them is - or should be - painful. If pain plays any part in the process, it is only when it is being drawn out of some past wound through a creative act undertaken to heal the injury to our spirit, or when we are having trouble dealing with current events that have us drowning in hurt and fear. At those times, the pain has to be removed or it poisons the creative well. The art (in any form) created from that process does often hurt, but it is pain toward healing, not simply the necessary fuel for our creativity. There is no creativity that requires developing a case of chronic emotional pain to produce a finished piece worth a place in this world. Read that again. Want it in easier terms? Creativity should NOT hurt you. It should bring you joy or relief. It should give you a channel for all of those innumerable emotions you have floating around inside of your being. It should provide healing or celebration. Want to know something else? You don't have to listen to ANYONE who says differently. All they are doing is peddling an addiction to the misery they don't want to let go of. Tell them to take a hike. Then, go make something beautiful. Make it with as much joy as your soul can shine into it. Don't do it in spite of them. Do it for them because they won't do it for themselves. Happiness and contentment are addictive, too. Maybe one day that will be everyone's emotional "drug" of choice.
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It's harvest season here at the house. My main focus has been on the garden and other gifts Mother Nature has been kind enough to send my way. These things take precedence because, after all, winter is on its way and grocery prices sure aren't going to drop along with the temperatures.
You may think that the time spent collecting, processing, and preserving this bounty is a derailment for my writing...well, more of a derailment that I've already managed on my own in front of the tv. Outward appearances would definitely suggest that you are correct in this assumption. Not many words have been scrawled across the back of the scrap paper I use to hand write rough drafts, after all. I have managed to type up the previously written scribblings into something that at least approximates progress on the second novel, but I'm still an abysmal number of words short of my goal. Who could blame you for believing that this is a stagnant time in my writing world? It's not. While my hands are busy with peeling and stirring, and my focus is on building the means to eat well through the cold months ahead, my creative side is thrilled to have me out of my own way for a change. It is winterizing my creative world. It's taking stock. It's revisiting my "why" and making sure that the foundation of my goals is sound. It's patching the cracks in my creative well so that the waters won't be muddied with doubt as that well fills. It's correcting the course for all the times I wandered off the path I've mapped out...and keeping me from running after shiny things that might be amazing down the road but will only cost me precious time now. It's gearing up for the long haul during the snowy months I'll be spending in front of the wood stove bringing my worlds to life on the page. Mine is a creative soul. It thrives on the magic that flows through it and out into the world by my hands. But it needs a rest now and then. An actual rest. One not filled with the anxiety produced by feeling like I'm not living up to expectations - mine or anyone else's. My creative side needed this down time in the same way that my pantry and freezers need the influx of fresh produce. Winter is coming. Remember to stock up your creative pantry along with the physical one. I think I should start out by acknowledging that not everything I write is remotely nice. I do, in fact, write some dystopian type situations and some characters that make me truly uncomfortable while they are whispering through my synapses. Not every story had a happy ending. I read the occasional strictly dystopian book, and I have a true affection for disaster movies. There is nothing wrong with dystopian fiction...until there is.
See, the thing is that too much of it can be a serious problem just like too much of anything can be. What we read changes how we think. It changes how we see the world around is. Worst of all, it can subconsciously be the tool we use to make decisions and react to changes. The stories we tell ourselves become the blueprints to our reality. If you are ONLY ingesting dystopian stories about how terrible a fictional world is, you are far more likely to recreate that in reality. Want an example? Just look at how 2020 went and ask yourself if you are making choices based on the very worst things you've heard about the experiences of others during that time even if you did not have similar experiences yourself. Be honest. You're no longer expecting any sort of "return to normal" and you have probably bought extra toilet paper, haven't you? You've done this based on the stories you've been hearing even if your personal experience does not reflect the same level of crisis. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be concern. I'm not saying there isn't a problem that needs to be addressed. I'm also all for being prepared. Doing so buys you the time and ability to make better decisions without immediately being in crisis mode if things go wrong. But, what else have you done to prepare for the worst case scenarios you've been hearing about? What are those around you doing? And how can those choices actually manifest into those scenarios becoming your reality simply because you expect them to occur? Now, would that be the same reality if we were all focused on the more positive aspects of the situation? Imagine if instead of worrying over the horrors and uncertainty we all actually focused on the silver linings and positive things we can do to actually solve the problems. Want an example? How many households and companies could both benefit from a workforce that can functionally work from home while encouraging a better work/life balance? Not only could a solution like that lower the overhead of many industries, it could allow families to reconnect, show children the value of work in real time, lower traffic congestion (and emissions) during daily commutes, and potentially produce happier employees with more productivity. Instead, we latch on to the horror stories of zoom calls gone wrong and dysfunctional home environments. Or how about instead of expecting farmers to euthanize livestock or let crops rot because the facilities and shipping industry are having problems connecting goods to consumers, we focus on grass roots efforts to work together to solve the problems at more local levels. Nothing is insurmountable if we look at a situation with hope. The biggest problem we currently have is that we don't solve problems, we embrace them and expect them to be our experience. You attract what you focus on. Your brain believes the words you tell it to believe - especially when you say those words over and over and over again. It really is as simple as that. I personally think that this issue of creating negative realities through the stories we tell ourselves is especially true when dealing with young minds that are still forming their own opinions of how the world around them works. Feed those minds on a diet of terrible worlds and hopeless situations, and that is the world they will see around them. That is the future they will build for themselves. They won't have the problem solving tools necessary to find a positive way out of a bad situation. As an author, I think it is my personal responsibility to help hand the tools necessary for positive outcomes over to my readers. Do I do this every time? No. Do I always hand the best tool for the job out? No. There are those stories written under this pen name that refuse to have nice endings and there are those characters that just don't deserve them. Plus, let's be honest here, life is not always fair. That's important to know, too. What I do try to do is keep some kind of balance in both what I put into my brain, and what I allow to come out of it - or at least what I share with others that comes out of it. So, if you are a writer, I guess that what I'm saying is just be mindful. That nasty little world you are building on paper could very well be the one you are living in one day. Those hate filled characters may just be your neighbors. You may want to write in a fire escape that helps us all get to a better place. If you are a writer who is in search of an agent or publisher, you will completely understand this post. If you're a reader or someone who is a little less familiar with the process of how it all works, here's a little insight.
Let's start with the fairy tale. You know the one: the writer in some sort of desperate need taps away at their keyboard day and night surrounded by a sea of notes and character collages. Many tears later, the words The End appear on the page and the manuscript gets sent off to achieve a million dollar advance and a life of fame and fortune. Now, sure, we might hear a passing comment about how they queried a whole slew of publishers before they found their perfect match, but the fairy dust in the telling still sparkles on the accomplishment and softens the edges of that time before the fame arrived. There is a version of this fairy tale out there for every kind of endeavor a person could possibly hope to pursue. Sort of like a career related drama or rom-com. In reality, creative people hear the word NO with the same frequency as a three year old on a sugar rush who hasn't had a nap in a week and has somehow acquired a fork and the determination to stick it in an outlet. Sometimes that no is just the sound of mental crickets when the response time has elapsed. Sometimes you receive a form letter. Rarely, a more personal response arrives. There are also varying degrees of niceness in those letters. Some are worded as encouragingly as possible. Others, well, not so much. I usually write my submissions on post-it notes with a response time to expect, and then add them to a cork board section on the wall by my computer. In the past year I've had about twenty up there involving two projects that I am test driving in the traditional publishing realm before I commit to one or more of the self-publishing routes available these days. I'd like to see if either might open a door that could gain me a larger audience than I am able to attract on my own. I am currently down to two. One should answer sometime this week, and the other in March of 2022. I have no idea if either is secretly the golden ticket, although the odds are not in my favor. Now, don't get me wrong. The no's I've received have hurt. As a Gemini, I have two inner children. One of them sits in a blankie fort letting her tears soak into her stuffed unicorn wondering if she'll ever be worthy. The other breaks her toys while muttering all of the words she's not supposed to say and vowing revenge on the injustice of it all. They are welcome to their reactions but I am a fully functional grown woman whose parents raised her to be rational and - you know - adult in her reactions. I'm also a realist. I know how to manage my expectations. Those two post-it notes aren't just hopes and dreams that the writing fairy godmother will pay a visit, they are place holders in my calendar. They are buying me the time I need to make plans of my own. So, why does it sound like I'm ambivalent about hearing that nasty little two letter word that so many see as a dream killer? There are two reasons, really. One is that I know that nothing that is meant for me (good or bad) will miss me. The other is because I love what I do enough that I don't require anyone else to feel the same in order to keep loving it. Okay, there are three: I also know that I would not enjoy every last string associated with a contract. (If you are curious, ask me one day about a contract that I requested - multiple times - to be released from on a novella or the one I turned down on another book. See, there is publisher interest in my work. I'm not just some self-published hack with an overinflated sense of self worth. *grin*) NO is not the end of the world. In many ways it is actually the best answer the wrong agent/publisher can give. It keeps me from needing to create excitement in a publisher where there isn't any while simultaneously trying to create excitement in readers. NO helps me hone my skills and become a better writer. It also allows another book that I might LOVE reading find a home in the slot that might have been mine under different circumstances. I can happily live with all of those things while still pursuing my dreams. Does that mean I don't want to hear the beautiful sound of YES? Absolutely not. Everyone wants the fairy tale even with it's wicked witches and trolls lurking in the corners, don't they? Everyone wants a fairy godmother to make us beautiful in the eyes of the world. I'm just not relying solely on pixie dust and the hope of a book contract to get me wherever I'm meant to be. So, if you think your fairy godmother is kicked back on a beach somewhere ignoring your dreams, remember the dollar store sells wings, wands, and glitter. There is no rule saying you can't fire her and handle the job yourself. *NOTE: Oh look what I forgot to post on Monday. Blame my peach tree.
Have I been spending far too much of my writing time staring at the TV? I sure have. I've blown through seasons and series of shows I'm not even all that impressed with over the past few months. The word count is suffering. I'll admit it. I'm in the hole to the tune of over 10K words according to my revised schedule - over 20K if you look under the red scribbles to the original number. To reference last week's post, I haven't been showing up. This is a problem. Now, I'm not the kind of woman who shows up with a problem without also bringing an idea (or 20) for a solution - even when I'm only showing up to myself. I'm also not the type that looks at a problem from the surface level and claims to know exactly what its nature is. I'm more of a digger. The foundation is more important than that weird looking weeds growing out of it. So, as I've been letting my brain turn to mush watching pretty colors and varying degrees of acting ability on the screen, I've also been stewing on the foundation of my lack of motivation. I've come up with a few real-to-me issues and potentially viable plans to fix the structural integrity of my goals. Since most of these are not writing specific, I thought I'd share so you can see if any of the same problems exist in your world and then work off of my ideas to fix them. 1. Problem: Too many unrelated activities/responsibilities/goals in play at the same time. Solution: Get back to a schedule. Allot "x" amount of time to each thing that requires attention. When that time is up, move on unless there is a larger problem that will arise by not completing the activity right now (i.e. I can't just set the peaches aside of it takes longer than I anticipated to peal, slice, and get them in the freezer when they hit a certain point of ripeness. Rotting peaches mean less peaches for later. Finish the whole job before cleaning the house or writing a new chapter.) 2. Problem: Too many related activities/responsibilities/goals in play at the same time. Solution: Again, get back to a schedule. Allot a specific time to ponder publishers or agents. When that time is up, move on to writing for "x" amount of time. Schedule a "submissions day" and don't turn it into a week. Block out a chunk of time for layout if necessary. Stick to word count expectations. Try to limit the number of projects that I'm working on at any given time so that they create a balance instead of just bogging down the entire process. *Note: see #3 3. Problem: The current story is heavy. It weighs me down emotionally. This, in turn, makes me want to take a break from it. Solution: Find the balance project. Write something light and fun to shake off the dreariness this book is bringing to the table. Adjust word count expectations accordingly but stick to them. 4. Problem: Interruptions. (i.e. phone, people, cats, barking neighbor dogs, driveway/garden alarm, social media, e-mail, stray thoughts, etc.) Solution: this is the toughest one... Ignore everything that doesn't qualify as an emergency. Shut the office door. Let Scott handle the majority of other things when he's not busy. Music or ear plugs. Find my focus and take what I'm doing seriously enough to stick to it (Note: see #5). 5. Problem: Self-doubt (i.e. Thoughts that limit progress such as "this creative thing is never going to get me anywhere", "I'm wasting my time writing", "my art/writing is never going to be more than just a hobby, I should be doing other things instead" (Wait, remember how I said #4 was the toughest one? I was wrong. This is where the giant crack in the foundation is. This right here.) Solution: Get over myself. Show up. Stick to the schedule. Put in the work. Reach for the next level of success, then reach again...and again...and again...until I'm where I want to be. So, now that I have all of my foundational gremlins named, I guess I should stop making faces at them, gird my loins, and head into battle. Send chocolate. I'm going to need it. You may not see the relationship between Simone Biles' decision to step out of this year's Olympic competition and the relationship that all of us everyday people have with our dreams but I promise you, it's there. I also promise you that I am going to leave the injected politics of the situation out of this post while I prove it.
Back in the day - eons ago during my jr. high and early high school days - I was in gymnastics. I even placed from time to time and got to hear my name on the morning announcements for my achievements. That's a pretty cool feeling even for a shy girl. Now, before you think I was actually good, let me go ahead and burst that bubble. I was not. While flexible and able to look graceful during floor or balance beam routines, my abilities fell incredibly short in tumbling and anything that required a lack of fear. I am also not a competitive person. Like the vast majority of my counterparts, I was lower level mediocre but I truly loved the sport and harbored the not-so-secret dream of waking up one day to find that I had magically become good enough to compete in the Olympic games in my future. The thing is, dreams don't become reality by magic. This is true no matter what they may be. Dreams are all fine and dandy when they are sitting in your head as a thought. Birthing them into being requires WORK. It also requires a plan, tenacity, and resilience. Without these things talents cannot be developed. A person cannot overcome the fear of both success and failure. The path cannot be forged. Now let's talk about pain for a moment because guess what: Turning a dream into reality requires pain. The undertaking is, at it's foundation, a birthing process. Pain is part of the territory. In the case of gymnastics, yes, gymnasts train and compete while injured. I can't tell you the number of times I performed a routine with at least one ankle taped nearly stationary because I had twisted it earlier and needed the added stability. I had friends who came to practice or meets with broken fingers or toes. We wore knee supports or wrist supports. Ace bandages and sports tape were common place. Pulled muscles were everyday events. Even at the ripe old age of 14, most of us didn't know what it was like to not be at some level of soreness every day. The top gymnast in my school - a girl who was good enough that she competed in larger area/state competitions - wore a tens unit during practice after breaking her arm. And before you make that face, this is normal. This is what it takes to compete even at the level where you're lucky if 20 people are in the bleachers watching. We also showed up for practice or competitions when our hearts were breaking as they did so very often at that age. We showed up after we came in last on the scoreboard. We showed up when we were struggling with every day life. We showed up when we were afraid we might not be able to fit it all in. We showed up...until we didn't. That was the moment that the dream died. So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles, those of us trying to birth that weird little creative urge into something viable, or anyone just working on the dream of making ends meet? Let's work our way up from the incredibly difficult world of just keeping up with the bills. In order to live paycheck to paycheck while keeping your head above water, you plan for your expenses and work accordingly. This means going to work when you'd rather go on vacation. You go to work when your back hurts or you've had a craptastic day. You set the alarm and get your butt out of bed when you didn't sleep well. You keep your eye out for a better paying job than the one you have now. If you want to actually put money away into savings, you step up that game and do more of it. How many people do you know in wrist braces for carpal tunnel, or special inserts to help with sciatica, or those who work around broken bones? How about the ones who manage with disabilities? What about those who show up even in the middle of divorces or custody battles or shortly after the death of a loved one? How many people out there are trying to turn their creative dreams into reality even though it feels like all they encounter is rejection or lukewarm, shrugging acceptance that disappears almost the second it is given? How many creatives out there feed their dreams with tiny scraps of hope and haul their behinds out of bed when they have the flu just to move them a minuscule step closer to reality? How many work through injury and apathy in the hopes of seeing that little spark they have inside them light up the world? Like I said, turning a dream into reality is a painful process. It honestly doesn't matter what the dream is. Just ask Wesley from The Princess Bride: "Life is pain, princess...anyone who says differently is selling something." So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles? Do I think she failed? Do I think she should be honored for her choice to step back? Honestly, neither. And this is another really important point I'd like to make here. My opinion of her decision SHOULD NOT matter. She made the choice for her own reasons as it should be. I will be snotty enough to say that I wish she had made it prior to committing to participation on the world stage, but that brings up an even bigger point that I want to mention: outside expectation. We, as onlookers, tend to push people we don't even know to greater and greater levels of achievement just to please us. Sometimes this is a good thing as it encourages progress. I think this is especially true in the beginning stages of bringing a dream to life, when the struggle becomes drudgery, or when an individual has hit an uncomfortable plateau in their journey. Without a little outside pressure, those dreams would wilt and die. Other times, as with Ms. Biles, that encouragement shifts into a demand for more and greater achievements that (most likely) have nothing to do with her original goals. It's like adding too much fertilizer to a garden. Instead of nourishment, the dream burns up. Had she competed at the same superb level as before, there are far too many people in the audience who would have been disappointed that she did not bring more to the table this time. Why on earth would she have any desire at all to continue working through the physical and emotional discomforts/pain in order to have the armchair gymnasts out there casting disappointed looks at her as they lounged on their couches eating their favorite snack? She has already achieved the dream of Olympic gold. She is not responsible for fulfilling the dreams of those who only want to watch her do it again...only "better" this time. At the same time, I wish that she had come to this conclusion earlier. I wish that she had not been in the spotlight when she made it. It's a seriously off note in the symphony of her accomplishments, and the timing does not speak to the professionalism that I believe Olympic competition should require. In my writing world, it would be like me achieving the status of having three books in the series I'm working on hit the best seller list and then pulling the fourth from publication the day before it was supposed to be released. My guess is that she'll go into retirement. If she had a dream to take home the gold from another Olympics, that dream is probably gone now. No judgement, here. That's just the cost of stepping back when she did. Reality is unforgiving to dreams that way. I hope you're still breathing through the difficulties of the next step towards yours. |
AuthorJosie Dorans Archives
June 2022
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