So this week, Christina Katz discusses Purity in The Prosperous Writer. She discusses have pure intentions or as she puts it purity of intention.
Since I read The Prosperous Writer on Tuesday, I’ve been pondering this idea. I don’t doubt my purity of intention as a writer, but something made me uncomfortable as I read her article this week. I can’t quite figure out what.
I think it has something to do with the following sentence. “When you allow your purity of intention dictate how, where, and with whom you spend your time and energy, everything is better, easier, happier, more fruitful.”
When I read this sentence I started thinking about each component. How do I spend my time and energy? Where do I spend my time and energy? With whom do I spend my time and energy? And, how do each of these contribute to my intentions as a writer? My heart thumps and my breath catches in my throat every time I revisit this.
I know what my intentions are as a writer, and I know they’re pure, but I fear I let outside influences interfere with those intentions. I fear I do this because I want to be liked and because I don’t want to disappoint other people. That’s unacceptable, but it’s a truth I must face. There are times when I downplay being a writer and my work to make other people feel more comfortable. Well, that stops now. If you can’t be comfortable with my writing and my intentions as a writer, I’m sorry but that’s who I am and what it means is you’re uncomfortable with me. I’d rather have you dislike me for who I am than love me for being someone I’m not.
As I begin to look at where I spend my time and energy, I feel a little disappointed in myself. Over the years I’ve taken on more and more responsibility because I feel like I have to. I feel like it’s expected of me. I feel like I “owe” it to other people. I agree to help friends and acquaintances even when it interferes with my goals. I agree to take on one more chore or run one more errand to make my husband’s life easier. I agree to add one more thing to my day because “it’ll only take 5 minutes.” I take that phone call because I’m needed even though it means I won’t meet my daily goals. I agree to add one more thing to my schedule because it just needs to be done even though I know I generally run 1.5 to 2 weeks behind the schedule I’ve set for myself. In the process, I’ve let my pure intentions as a writer slip. I’ve decided my intentions, my needs, my goals for my career can come later. I want to be too much to too many people. And, that’s got to change. I can’t do everything nor is there a reason I should try. When I focus on writing the best work I can write and producing the best product I can produce, I’m happier and more focused. I feel in sync with who I am.
As for how I spend my time and energy. Well, the theme from above is that I spend too much of it trying to please other people and not nearly enough concentrating on achieving my intentions for my writing career. When I focus on my writing career, I garner results. I produce product. I get in touch with my creativity. I find my place.
Sadly, there are people in my life who drain me of all creativity. I’ve blogged about this before, Creativity Creators and Drains. All my creative energy just flows off me into a puddle at my feet when I interact with these people. It can take hours or sometimes a day or two for me to feel truly creative again.
Happily, there are also people in my life who remind me of my true self and who fill me with creative energy simply by being there. Just talking to these people about nothing or anything sparks my creative mind. As I work to attract more people like this into my life, I find I want to spend less time with those who drain me creatively. I also want to contribute to other people’s creativity. Give and take creates an ebb of creative energy that keeps flowing if we let it.
What does this have to do with purity of intention? Well, I’m trying to figure out how pure my intentions are when it comes to my work. I know what I want from my career, and, in many ways, I work toward that, but I allow other people to affect my intentions. There’s where my purity of intention fails. And, that’s something I need to remedy…
I’ve decided that over the next few weeks, I’m going to take some time to focus on my purity of intention. I’m going to evaluate what I do and how it works toward my goals for my writing career and my life in general. Maybe I’ll have to re-schedule some things or perhaps remove some things from my schedule (okay, the thought of that last one has me almost hyperventilating…) in order to focus on the purity of my intentions, but what must be done must be done. Wish me luck. And, don’t forget to think about your own purity of intention for whatever it is you do in your life…
Christina Katz thinks one way to be The Prosperous Writer is to be healthy. Well, on this one, she and I couldn’t agree more. The healthier I am, the better my output. Actually, the better life is.
Several years ago when I first started putting an emphasis on health, I found a lot resistance from every angle. It wasn’t that people wanted to be unhealthy. Many people believed the hype companies put on their processed foods. I heard many times when I’d argue against the hype that the companies couldn’t claim it if it wasn’t true - false advertising. Other people just believed that living a healthy lifestyle was just too hard and too inconvenient. There is some truth to that if we’re unwilling to make changes.
However, becoming healthy is really quite simple.
Stop eating processed foods. Seriously, that’s a great first step. Now, I’m not a tee-totaler on this, but I’m pretty close. I have crackers, a few canned goods, and pasta in my pantry. On occasion, I will even buy some totally preservative-laden food just because I have some fond memory attached to it. It usually disappoints. For most of those I’ve found healthy alternatives. And, it helps that I love to cook. I love to try new recipes. I love to experiment with foods from around the world.
Increase your daily fruit and vegetable intake. Yeah, yeah, I know. I can almost hear the protests. But, it’s true. The more fruits and vegetables I eat, the better my body functions. Almost a year ago, we decided to do a vegetarian experiment. My body seems to like it very much. I lost weight, stopped having stomach aches every night, and my skin got clearer, tighter, and healthier looking. All wins if you ask me. My husband’s body didn’t like it as much - I think this had more to do with lowered protein intake than not eating meat itself but… So now we’re adapting our diet to make us both happy. I ate a small piece of chicken breast over the weekend - and when I say small I mean about four small bites. The weekend before I ate a few bites of lamb but couldn’t handle any more than that. I can’t even imagine eating meat like I did before… And, I love fruits and vegetables, so I’m in good shape.
Eat organic and local as much as possible. The food tastes better, so it’s worth it. I don’t mind giving up foods that come from afar or are out of season to really enjoy local, in season foods. Again, I’m not a tee-totaler on this, but I do work at it. That said, there are some things I’m just not willing to give up - tea, coffee, and chocolate to name three. I found I needed to go to the doctor much less often, healed faster, and generally felt better when I started choosing organic over the other stuff in the grocery.
Treat yourself. Never deprive yourself of things you enjoy. Deprivation leads to giving up. I love a nice glass of wine or a tasty mixed drink now and then. I love a good, well-made dessert or sometimes just a piece of fine chocolate. And, if treats are an occasion, you can splurge on them. Buy the better ones and enjoy.
Exercise. Incorporate some type of exercise into your day. Try to choose something that makes you feel GOOD. For example, I do yoga 4-5 days a week. Once in while I do a weight or aerobic workout instead, but yoga is my primary workout. Yoga focuses my mind, stretches my muscles, and strengthens my body. It gives me clarity when confusion sets in. It allows me to remember that I’m important, too. At the end, I feel refreshed and ready to go. Don’t choose an exercise that you hate and that leaves you feeling unhappy. For me, that’s running. I refuse to run, flat refuse. It puts me in a bad mood and leaves me feeling physically drained. I hate it. My husband, on the other hand, swears running energizes him, puts him in a good mood, and helps him focus while yoga bores him to tears. So more power to him, but I’ll stick with yoga. Find the exercise that works best for you, and make the most of it.
Mental and Spiritual Health. To be perfectly honest, when it came to my writing, this scared me the most. My work generally came from angst, anger, sadness, and despair. I feared that I as I got healthier mentally and spiritually, my work would suffer. I struggled to believe I could write if I was happy and balanced. So I held on to the drama like it was a lifeline for my work. Finally, the line broke when I could no longer deny I felt balanced. For a while my work did suffer. I wrote some really sappy poems during that time and it took real effort to incorporate emotional distress and conflict into my fiction. One short story is pretty much devoid of any conflict other than the main character disbelieving the happiness in her life. Okay, that didn’t last long. I found my footing again, and my stories grew more balanced than they’d ever been. I’d say mental and spiritual health is important to writing well and to having a career in a field so teeming with rejection.
To become mentally and spiritually healthy, one must work through one’s issues. Writing often helps with this, Many works of fiction revolve around the needs and desires of humanity for just this reason. As we see people struggle with life and feel the struggles life bring ourselves, those emotions, issues, and dilemmas make it onto the page. For readers, life struggles in a story can provide a catharsis for the struggles they are facing.
Have a support system or two or twenty. Okay, twenty is extreme, but the point is find support in your life. A healthy life is a life where one knows where to find the support needed at any given moment. Have friends to bounce ideas off - and know which friends are best for which ideas. I have friends that I only discuss writing related things with. I have other friends I rarely discuss anything more than the most superficial aspects of my writing career but I share other aspects of my life. I have a few close friends with whom I discuss both my writing and, to varying degrees, my personal life. They are people I know always have my best interests at heart and who will give me honest feedback even if it’s not what I want to hear (in a loving way of course). They are also people with very little in common, so they always give me slightly, or sometimes radically different, perspectives on the issues on my mind. So find your support system or systems, and use them to keep your sanity. Just don’t forget to return the favor… Support systems only work when they go in both directions.
It can be work to keep the body, the mind, the spirit, and the creative self all healthy and balanced, but it’s worth it. Take one small step toward being healthier today, and you’ll find the next step easier, and the next even easier, etc. until one day being healthy is a way of life. Then you’ll wonder why you ever thought it was inconvenient or difficult!
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz discusses permission seeking. When I first saw this, I totally misunderstood. I thought she was referring to writers seeking permission to write, and I got defensive. Then I started to read and realized she was talking about giving credit and asking permission to use other people’s work. Okay, that made much more sense to me. Still, a little part of me was surprised people needed reminding. This concept was drilled into my head in both high school and college as the right thing to do.
I’m a stickler for giving credit where credit is due. I even give credit even for song lyrics in a Facebook status update or an offhand comment in conversation whenever I quote someone. I sometimes see people give an amused half-grin when I do this, but I don’t care. I think it’s important. People work hard to put words together to convey their message. If I’m quoted I want to be credited because I know how much effort goes into my work. I assume everyone puts the same amount into theirs.
It’s all about respecting and honoring the work of the artists who produce the material. When you quote someone, you show your respect for the work and perhaps drive a customer to the person’s work.
No matter what your job you can think of it this way. Would you do your job for no credit and no compensation? Using words to convey a message is a writer’s job, so when you give credit to the writer who wrote the words that inspire you or education you so much you wish to share them with another human being, you are honoring that writer’s hard work.
When you credit someone else for the work they’ve done, you show confidence in your own work because you put your work right next to the work of the person you’re crediting. Giving proper credit is not only the right thing to do morally and ethically, it is the smart thing to do for your own reputation.
Respect others. Respect yourself. And, you then earn the respect of others. Sounds like a win-win solution to me.
Sometimes Christina Katz’s topics are so frighteningly on target for the events in my life, I wonder if she has my office bugged!! This week she discussed being busy in The Prosperous Writer.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can add something new to my already overcrowded schedule. As I looked at shifting my priorities around, eliminating some activities, and postponing others, I began to have panic attacks. I would sit at my desk frozen, clutching my chest as my heart pounded, and struggling for breath. My guilt over projects I’m already neglecting as I work on smaller projects began to overtake my rational thought process. The truth is that I’m always busy. And, I get a lot done but am I focusing on the things I want to accomplish or am I stalled as I focus on being “busy”? I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the last trap. My schedule is packed so full of small tasks that I’ve forgotten to include the big projects on it. That’s really a backwards way to do things but it sure does keep me busy.
So I think it may be time to revamp my schedule to focus on the large projects that are important to me and my career. I can then fit the smaller projects that are also important to my career goals around those large projects. It may also be time to re-evaluate some of the activities that keep me busy but aren’t really contributing to my career goals. But who has the time? I’m too busy…
It’s time to stop using being busy as an excuse to not work on my next book projects. I have two novels started and stalled and an idea for a nonfiction book that I need to explore developing. All this is essential to progressing my career. It’s also plenty to keep me busy.
So I have to decide whether I want to be busy with busyness or busy with the important stuff… I choose the important stuff. What about you?
In this week’s The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz talks about being polite.
I have to admit when I read polite was this week’s topic, I murmered “No duh. That’s a given.” But then I thought about it. How often have you been somewhere where rudeness ruled the day? How often have you wondered if anyone teaches manners these days? So, okay, maybe some people do need to be reminded to be polite.
I am a Southern girl. Please, thank you, you’re welcome, yes ma’am, no sir, excuse me, sorry etc. roll off my tongue without effort. That being said I can also turn on the Southern charm and tell you in no uncertain terms where you can spend eternity - no, not heaven, sweetie - and have you thank me for it without even realizing it until later. You may think that doesn’t exactly fit the definition of polite, but in my world it does.
People sometimes accuse Southerns of having their very own brand of English, and there may be some truth to that. Where else can you hear someone drawl slowly, “Well, ya know he’d had no raisin.’ Bless his heart. His Momma and Daddy just did the best they could. Bless their hearts.” Translation. He’s ornery as a rattlesnake (oh, geez, I just threw another southern expression in there. Translation 2: He behaves really bad.) and his parents never disciplined him or taught him how to behave. But, oh, doesn’t the first one sound so much more polite.
Once I was temping at Boise Cascade in Boise, Idaho. My job was to call a list of their offices around the country to gather information. The first three I called I received very abrupt greetings, got my questions answered, and went on my way feeling grumpier by the call. The fourth call I made I didn’t even pay attention to the number as I dialed. The gentleman who answered greeted me very pleasantly with a cheerful hello. When I told him what information I needed from him, he replied “Well, yes ma’am. I’ve got that right here for you. You let me know when you’re ready.” I smiled and said. “I’m sorry, sir, but do you mind if I ask where you’re at.” He said. “Of course not, ma’am. I’m in Florida. And, what part of the South are you from, ma’am? I can tell you’re not from Boise.” I laughed. “Sir, I knew you were in the South. There’s just something about Southern manners. I’m from Kentucky.” He laughed. “Yes, ma’am, my Grandmama would have my hide if I didn’t mind my manners.” We finished our business and hung up after wishing each other a pleasant rest of the day. As I went to get a drink of water, I realized how his politeness had lifted my mood while the three early calls had made me feel like an intruder. Amazing what good manners can do.
When I was growing up, there was no choice but to use good manners. Everyone, including my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and family friends would remind us to use our manners if we forgot. A few years ago I was with someone I didn’t know very well when her child asked me for something. I handed it to the child and when the child didn’t say thank you, I said “What do you say?” The child looked at me blankly and I was astounded. So I said very gently “Thank you. When someone hands you something you say “Thank you.” The child mumbled “Thank you.” I said “You’re welcome.” When I turned toward the mother, she was glaring at me. I mumbled to the mother “Sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep.” She shrugged. Since then I always look to the mother before saying anything to the child. It doesn’t change the fact that I feel all children should be taught good manners. I’ve just realized that unlike my upbringing some parents don’t appreciate others trying to teach their children manners.
When dealing with people in any setting, good manners always rule the day. They make people feel accepted and respected. My characters generally have good manners. Sometimes though, for plot lines, there are good reasons to create rude characters. They add interest to the story and depth to the characters. Showing someone who is normally polite suddenly being impolite can be a way to signal to the reader that the character is stressed, scared, or otherwise out of sorts.
One thing I’ve always found is that good manners open doors while bad manners get them slammed shut. When you treat someone politely, all you’re really doing is showing respect and consideration for the other person as a human being.
If you tend to throw niceties out the window for the sake of convenience, I challenge you to incorporate them into your daily life. You may find being polite gets your faster, better results. You may find it attracts people to you who are helpful and want to see you succeed. You may find it makes interactions that you normally avoid more tolerable. You may just find that it attracts success right to your door.
So, thank you for reading my blog. And, I hope you’ll back real soon! You’re always welcome here!
This week Christina Katz discussed empowerment in The Prosperous Writer. I’m looking forward to exploring this topic. I like empowerment. I like empowering others and feeling empowered myself. The very word empowered makes me smile. I can’t help it.
It’s also odd that this week’s topic is empowerment because my husband and I were just discussing the topic while driving home from Kentucky. I’m concerned about my nieces and nephews and wish to empower them to see their lives don’t have to be what they presently see. I want them to realize they have the power within to envision a different reality for themselves and make it happen. I found that power years ago and I want to show it to them. I’ve taken some criticism and been accused of abandoning my roots for taking steps to create the life I wanted to live. I didn’t abandon my roots because I appreciate them and I don’t forget them; however, I choose to live differently than my upbringing. I kept what served me well, learned from what didn’t, and applied it all to creating my current life. I’m not talking about perfection. I’m talking about finding the power within to change circumstances that don’t serve one’s life goals and make one feel joyful and grounded on a daily basis. My husband pointed out that without daily contact with my nieces and nephew, the influences under which they live are going to be stronger than anything I can do. I accept that reality, but still I must try. If I don’t, what kind of aunt am I? I don’t think empowerment can be shoved down anyone’s throat. The best we can do is open a door and let people choose whether or not to walk through it.
I spend a lot of my time trying to empower others because I know what empowerment has done for me. There have been people throughout my life who have empowered me to dream big, to reach beyond expectations, and to see possibilities. The least I can do is pass that on to other people, so I give it a good faith effort.
When I chaired Murder in the Grove, I felt that part of my role was to empower the authors participating in the panels and workshops to feel confident about their participation in the conference and what they had to offer both in terms of content and their books. It was important to me that lesser known authors be treated with the same dignity by our committee and our vendors as the well known authors in attendance. In turn, I expected the authors to pass on empowerment to the conference attendees. For me, the goal of the conference was to send all those present home with a sense of empowerment to explore their career goals and to know they had contacts to whom they could turn for encouragement or with questions. In turn, I felt empowered by the energy of the conference, the participants, the attendees, and the committee. Eventually though I began to find that I was giving away more empowerment than I was getting in return, and I started to feel depleted. At that point, I needed to re-evaluate my priorities and my role in the conference. The re-evaluation forced me to look at how my own goals had been pushed to the side. I had to find ways to refocus on them and eventually, in part due to the additional challenges a move to a different state brought, found it necessary to resign to focus on my writing.
I actively work to encourage fellow writers on social media sites and in person whenever possible. I find that an encouraging word can make all the difference in times when someone feels less than powerful. Truth be told, I sometimes feel that lacking when I need it in my own life. Usually when that happens I turn to a couple of good friends that I know will remind me of my own power even if I don’t tell them I’m feeling less than empowered at the moment.
Sometimes friends and family will express pain or despair over life circumstances. If I can say something empowering, I do. If I can’t, I let him/her know that I care. Sometimes that’s enough to empower.
I’ve known people who exhausted all my empowerment with their incessant need. I learned that it’s important to replenish one’s supply. If someone is constantly in need of empowerment but completely unable to give back, you may need to pull back from time to time to take care of yourself. Sadly, some people can never get enough empowerment no matter what you do. They are only empowered in the moment the power is given but can’t maintain it beyond that. Those people will leave you feeling used and exhausted. When empowerment works like it should, the person receiving it will either give it back or will pass if forward or both. Either way, he/she will learn to generate their own empowerment.
Every morning take a moment to assess your own sense of empowerment. Do you feel like you can face the chores of the day? Do you feel like you can tackle your latest writing project or other project? Do feel the power within you that gives you the ammunition to proceed? If not, what can you do to find it? For every person, it’s something different. Maybe working out will do it for you. Maybe getting those first words written will do it. Maybe you need to call a friend for encouragement. Maybe you need to reach out to your support system. Tap into your empowerment in the way that works best for you. It may take a few tries before you know your best resource and especially before you can find it internally, but you’ll get there. You have the power!!
I encourage you to try to empower one other person once a week for the next month. It doesn’t have to be the same person. If that works, go for more often - twice a week, three times a week, or even everyday if you have the reserves. You might find you feel more empowered yourself.
Empowerment has the power to travel from one person to another, from one person to a group, from a group to one person, or even within one’s self. Empowerment has the power to wrap itself around a person and radiate from them in every action they take. Empowerment generates more empowerment when treated with integrity. Stand strong in your empowerment and give it freely!
Empowerment is how we move forward. Empowerment is how we create change. Empowerment is how we feel our own strength. Empowerment is how we help others find their strength. Empowerment fills the voids inside. Empowerment tells us we can accomplish our goals and our dreams. Empowerment allows us to stand strong. Empowerment gives us the strength, knowledge, and desire to empower others as well as ourselves.
I was out of town last week when Christina Katz wrote aobut being Integrated in The Prosperous Writer, so my first instinct was to just not post anything on the topic. After all, I was on vacation. Besides, at first I couldn’t think of anything to say. Of course that changed…
Just to clarify, my vacation was a family visit to Kentucky.
Being integrated in any sense of the word is an ongoing challenge. Whether we’re talking about integrating people or integrating the contradictory parts of ourselves. In 1999, I wrote a poem, Laid Bare, about the contradictions that create me. Here are a few lines from it.
I stand before you
Presenting all I am
Nothing more, nothing less
Battle scars and smiles
Bruised heart and laughs
Broken soul and forgiveness
Too harsh with words at times
Too sensitive for my own good
Blind with determination
Afraid to succeed
Dreams of a perfect life
Doubtful of anything too good
Embracing the future
Hiding from the past
Needing too much
Independent to a fault
Loving fully
Pushing love away
Too trusting
Not trusting myself
I stand before you
Risking all I am
As I integrated the various parts of myself, I found I could learn from my contradictions. My contradictions weren’t positive or negative, they were what I’d needed at various times in my life to survive. I continue to use those contradictions to inform my writing as well as to live a fuller and happier life. The parts of me that protect me have relaxed because they no longer fear I can’t handle living. This isn’t to say they’ve disappeared, only that they aren’t on full alert at all times any more. The side of me that can enjoy life permeates my being much more because I’ve stopped fearing that happiness will make me vulnerable to pain. Integrating my contradictions is important to living a happy life and writing successfully. On the other hand, I love my contradictions. They make me the unique me I am, so I no longer try to kill them. I simply accept them, and they integrate themselves.
I’ve said before that accepting myself was much harder than finding myself. Those contradictions played a monumental role in my reluctance to accept myself for years. I struggled to accept that I could have contradictory urges living inside me, so I would try desperately to suppress the one I thought most undesirable. As I began to accept that those undesirable thoughts, feelings, and urges were a part of who I was, their power dissipated. They began to feel less undesireable and more acceptable.
I wrote to explore those contradictions and their integration. I found inspiration in them. As my various contradictions became integrated, I feared losing my inspiration to write. Instead I discovered that the integration meant I could better understand not only myself but others. I could write work that honored my contradictions without getting mired in them.
What about you? Are your contradictions integrated? Or do you struggle against them constantly? I urge you to use your contradictions to inspire your work and to find integration within yourself. Just keep in mind, integrating yourself and your work is an ongoing process, so embrace it and enjoy it. Life is better when we integrate.
This week Christina Katz talks about being joyful as a quality of The Prosperous Writer. I usually try to find some way to disagree with her take ever so slightly because, well, to be perfectly honest, I rather enjoy playing Devil’s Advocate… This week however, she hit on something I think bears repeating. “Because joy is connected to your soul. And that’s what makes it deeper and more profound than mere happiness, which is often more superficial and fleeting.”
I would put it slightly different. Joy is the result of inviting happiness into your being and allowing it permanent residence. Joy is when we choose to live in a state of happiness and optimism.
Even on my worst day, joy resonates from inside me as I put words to paper. Even tackling issues that anger me to my core can’t touch that joy. When you follow the path you’re meant to follow in life, joy finds its way into your life and holds on tight, hugs you when sad moments threaten your happiness, and gives you hope when all seems lost. Joy fills your being and radiates from you like a beacon when you allow it to have a home inside you.
I spent a lot of years steeped in negativity. I was raised with the motto “Hope for the best but expect the worst.” I understand this is an expression encouraging one to be prepared, but it also brings a certain sense of hopelessness and pessimism with it. If you always expect the worst, how are you ever supposed to see the best when it happens? I didn’t recognize the good in my life and the true possibilities life offers until I stopped living by this motto.
I pushed away love, friendship, and compassion because I expected the worst to come from relationships. I turned away numerous opportunities because all I could see were the worst possible outcomes. I avoided trust because all I could see was the potential for betrayal. I walked away from happiness and joy because I didn’t want to experience sadness and loss. Then one day I realized I was always sad and angry. That wasn’t the way I wanted to live. I decided then to take a risk on happiness even if that meant the worst happened. I decided to expect the best instead of the worst. The best began to happen, and for a moment I regretted all those lost years. In all honesty, I still have an occasional regret when I wonder how my life would be better if I’d expected the best earlier in my life. Then I remind myself, this is the path I needed to take to be the person I am today.
Slowly, because it is a process to allow joy to reside in you, I began to accept happy moments. I began to accept love when it was offered and to give love from a place of generosity instead of selfishness. I began to embrace friendship in a new way. I allowed people to care about me. I started trusting. My heart still races a little when I think about trusting people without reservation. I’m still working on that one. The more I allowed happiness to stay around, the more joyful I felt.
Somewhere along the way, I began to live in a joyful state. I smile easily, laugh readily even if I sometimes catch myself giving furtive glances when I do, and express love without the need for it to be returned. I learned it’s okay to embrace joy. Actually it’s more than okay, embracing a joyful state is essential to a healthy and productive life. My physical health even improved when I accepted joy into my being. I can sympathize and even empathize with my friends and family without my joyful state being destroyed. I can return to my joyful state to balance myself against the world.
When I first began to wake in a joyful state, I worried my work would suffer. I’d always written my most powerful work from the emotional state where I lived - anguish. As I released that anguish, I feared my writing would lose the power pain brought to it. I resisted joy. I fluttered between joy and miring myself in anguish for my work. The duality became unbearable, and, to be honest, I preferred the joyful state. One day as I wrote about an issue that angered and saddened me, I realized I felt joyful! My heart pounded with fear that my work would lose its power just as my soul had lost its anguish. I finished the first draft and sat down to read it. It was better than my previous work. A thread of hope weaved through the words while still expressing the urgency of the issue!
In allowing myself to accept joy in my life both personally and professionally, I’ve found a new way to embrace the world. I can be more honest, more vulnerable, and more open to others because I know my joy is safe even if I get hurt or disappointed.
So, I choose to live in a place of joy without forgetting the path I had to take to get there. I’m appreciative of every experience that brought me to joy even the ones that still hurt to my very core when remembered. I’ve learned to use that pain to inform my writing and inject a little hope from the joy I feel to make my work richer and fuller.
Do you use your joy and your path to joy to inform your writing and your life? I’m sure you do even if you don’t realize it. Think about it, embrace it, and write on!
As I read Christina Katz’s discussion of rhythm in The Prosperous Writer, the thought popped into my head “Oh, my God, I’ve lost my rhythm.” But have I really?
I don’t think so. I think my rhythm has just been undergoing an adjustment. It’s like when you’re on the dance floor and you’ve been dancing to fast music for quite a while, and suddenly, without warning, the DJ plays a slow song. Your body still vibrates in tune to the faster rhythm for a minute while you struggle to force it to find the new rhythm. A couple of deep breaths starts the body on the road to adjustment. Sometimes an almost imperceptible shake of a hand, foot, or the head helps the body adjust to the new rhythm. Next time you’re on the dance floor watch the people around you, and you’ll see even the most rhythmic person on the floor will seem a bit off during the adjustment.
Or try it yourself in your living room. Close the blinds if you’re self-conscious about your dancing skill or the neighbors thinking you’re crazy. Put on music to play in a random order and dance. Make sure the selection you choose has both fast and slow songs. Then just have fun with it. Feel the change in your body as the rhythms shift unexpectedly. Then think about your writing rhythm.
Writing is no different. If you write in multiple disciplines as I do, you’ll find when you shift from nonfiction to poetry or poetry to fiction the mind, the heart, the mind, the soul, and the physical body must all shift to find the appropriate rhythm. Once the rhythm is found, the words flow easier just like dancing to the slow song eased when the body adjusted to the rhythm. When you try to jump from one writing discipline to another without allowing your rhythm to adjust, you will stumble and the words will come out all wrong - jumbled and incoherent.
Once you understand your writing rhythm, you can make it work better for you. So play with it until it fits you. When the rhythm lets you know you need a shift, pay attention. It just may be trying to help you improve your work.
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz talks about being slightly dis-satisfied. She encourages writers to “take your critical eye and turn it towards your own work, not other people’s work, so you can look for ways you can improve what you do instead of critiquing what others are doing.”
I’ve been thinking hard about this concept of being slightly dis-satisfied since I read The Proserous Writer Tuesday. I’m pretty good at approaching my work with a critical eye - some even think I’m overly critical of my work. I tend to edit, edit, and then edit some more. I’m never 100% satisfied, and I’m always willing to listen to critical analysis from others. I have a tendency to take slight dis-satisfation and hammer away at it relentlessly. There comes a point when I have to let go, when I have to accept that I’ve done my absolute best and any more revision is simply perfectionism gone awry.
While I agree with her that slight dis-satisfaction is an important tool for writers to tweak their work and make it the best work it can be, my tendency toward perfectionism makes slight dis-satisfaction a potential minefield for me. Be careful to use slight dis-satisfaction to your advantage and not your detriment.
Know when slight dis-satisfaction is improving your work and when it has become an exercise in achieving the unachievable. Sometimes that goal toward the unachievable is actually procrastination in revealing some vulnerability in the work. When focusing on slight dis-satisfaction ventures into unrealistic perfectionism or procrastination, find a trusted friend to read the work and provide feedback. Then you can know if you’re really feeling slight dis-satisfied, being too perfectionistic or procrastinating.
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz discusses vision. As part of that discussion she focuses on creating a vision of the professional career one desires.
This couldn’t have hit me at a more apropos time. I started writing a publicity/marketing plan for my latest manuscript - a chore I’d been avoiding for a long time - the day before The Prosperous Writer on vison arrived in my email box.
I had a good excuse, or so I told myself, for procrastinating the publicity plan. Every time I started to work on it, a rewrite of the novel became necessary. So I pushed the publicity plan to a later date. Finally, I put it on March 5, 2010 with a “hard” deadline. When I didn’t complete it on time, I let it go red on my Outlook Task List. It was at the top of the list screaming at me that I was avoiding it. Okay, publicity plans tend to be a bit tedious. Anyway, this week, I finally put my butt in the chair and started working on it.
I answer a series of questions about the book, myself, and my career goals to create a publicity plan. As I started working through the questions, something started to shift inside of me. Distractions began to fall away and my vision of my goals became clear again. I started realizing that since I wrote my last marketing plan for a manuscript of short stories that I’ve yet to publish, I’ve actually accomplished some of the goals listed in that publicity plan. I began to feel energized about my career again. I hadn’t even realized my enthusiasm had waned. Interesting how focusing on one’s vision for the future can crystalize those goals laying on the periphery.
I started out thinking I would rush through the publicity plan just to get it off my list, so I could focus on other things. When I relaxed and started thinking the answers to the questions through, I began to feel better about myself, my career, my process, my progress, and my future. I strongly believe this is because as the distractions melted away, they stopped clouding the vision of my future I’d set a while ago. The focus on what I’d accomplished and what I still want to accomplish reminded me to keep my eye on the overall vision, work toward making my goals happen, and embrace opportunities I hadn’t considered that may get me closer to my vision of not only my career but my life.
Without vision, one wanders aimlessly. Aimless will get you somewhere. The question is will it get you where you want to go? For me, I took a detour onto Aimless Street that actually released my creativity but clouded the path to my long term vision. In the short term, Aimless Street was exactly what I needed, but I wanted to stay too long. Now it’s time to merge from Aimless Street back on to Vision Highway.
So, with my vision of my future clear again, I’m ready to reassess some goals and make sure I’m on the right track.
Is your vision of your future cloudy or clear? I encourage you to embrace it and find out. Once you see it clearly, remember, the path isn’t concrete, it will shift like an unfamiliar mountain trail. Don’t be so rigid, that you lose your way because you can’t see beyond the step in front of you. And, I’m going to remember to remind myself of that as well.
This week Christina Katz discusses commitment in The Prosperous Writer. She compares a writing career to the commitment necessary for a marriage to work. I’ve been married 18 years, so I can relate to that quite well.
The definition of commitment has changed for me over years. Commitment is knowing that when you doubt every aspect of the very thing to which you’re most devoted, the feeling will pass. It’s knowing that on the other side of that doubt lies the love, acceptance, progress, and success that makes doubt irrelevant.
One day this week, I had a crisis of self-doubt. It didn’t come from any particular source. I fought it at first. Then I ignored it. Then I explored it to see if there was a lesson I needed to learn. Then I just accepted it. As soon as I admitted its existence, it started to dissipate. That’s when I knew it didn’t have any real source. By acknowledging it, I was able to bring a recent commitment I made about being more honest about my feelings - especially when they make me vulnerable - to the forefront. At one time in my life, I would’ve spent days instead of hours berating myself eventually obsessing about every mistake I’ve made in my entire life. Believe me, with my fortieth birthday approaching, that list takes some time to get through! Applying my commitment to be honest about my emotions stole my self-doubt’s power. Wow!
Commitment to a marriage, a friendship, even a familial relationship, takes no effort when things are going well. When things go askew, commitment provides the freedom to work through the problem. Knowing a disagreement or a fight won’t end everything makes it easier to discuss the issues at hand. Sometimes it even makes it easier to just say that it really doesn’t matter in the end and let the fight go altogether. When the commitment is worth it, neither party feels drained all the time. There will be draining moments in any relationship, but relationships that are a constant drain generally have a one-sided commitment. One-sided commitments rarely work for very long. This applies to commitments to other things in life as well.
As a writer, I find that I must commit to any project I start. If I’m not committed to it, the project will simply wither from neglect. If I’m not careful, it may die. Each project I encounter requires a different type of commitment, and often different levels of commitment. I’ve discovered the more I care about a project, the more I will commit to it, the more excited I will be to work on it, and the better the end result will be.
When I commit too much time and effort to projects that drain me and give me little in return, I exhaust my mental, physical, and emotional resources. I’ve learned to carefully choose the projects I’m to which I’m willing to commit my time and attention. This way I work toward my overall career goals and don’t feel I compromise the essence of who I am.
When I talk about commitment, I mean more than agreeing to meet a requirement. A commitment must come from the heart and soul in order to garner results. Whenever I’ve agreed to do something that I wasn’t commited to, the results have never been satisifying to anyone involved. If I feel myself saying “I have to do this.”, I know I’m in trouble. My commitment level isn’t where it should be for the project. I then must reassess to determine if I’m not committed to the project or if there’s interference that’s keeping me from giving it my best.
The importance of commitment to the success of any part life is monumental. Without commitment, achieving any goal becomes impossible. Commitment allows people to see beyond the hard work to the desired result and keep perservering even when every move seems to fail.
So, commit to your next project with your whole being, and you’ll see results that make you proud as well as fulfilled.
Christina Katz’s The Prosperous Writer on Authenticity this week reminded me of an incident from my college days. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this story in some ways was the beginning of me recognizing my authentic self though I wasn’t quite ready to embrace her completely.
I went to my advisor to discuss problems in a class I was taking. The problem revolved around the professor’s treatment of students in the class. I hadn’t been singled out, but I found his intolerance of and belittling comments to other classmates offensive. After I described the situation to my advisor carefully avoiding, or so I thought, anything that would identify the professor in question, my advisor sat back, crossed his arms over his ample stomach, lifted one hand and removed his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and re-crossed his arms. I knew he was giving the situation careful consideration before answering. As memory serves, he said something to the effect of “I know you wouldn’t come to me if you weren’t terribly bothered, but you have to think about yourself in this instance. You are only a few weeks from graduating, and he’s a tenured professor.” At this point, my eyes widened, and I opened my mouth to speak. He held up his hand halting me before I could. “Yes, I know to whom you’re referring. I won’t say how. The point is if you make a formal report, he is in a position to find a way to give you an incomplete and prevent you from graduating. Besides, as you’ve explained it, the people he’s targeted want to let it go, so they’re not going to back you up. You’re going to end in a situation where it’s your word against his topped by the problem that those he targeted won’t get involved.” He paused briefly. “Let’s face it, you don’t grovel. I doubt you know how. I like this about you, but it will make it difficult for you to work the politics involved if you make a formal complaint.”
There was a bit more back and forth. I saw his point, but I was uncomfortable with just letting it go. We worked up a solution that included an anonymous, generic complaint against the professor’s behavior in class that my advisor wouldn’t actually make until after I graduated. While it wouldn’t do my classmates any good, I felt like at least I’d said something to someone.
How does this relate to authenticity? When my professor pointed out that I didn’t grovel, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He was right. When I thought I was right about something, I would stand my ground relentlessly. Still do. I wasn’t good at asking for forgiveness even when I knew I was wrong, so when I was right, there was no way it would happen. I’m much better now at asking for forgiveness when I’m wrong. I don’t play politics, and I don’t do spin. I believe that honesty is the only solution, and that dishonesty only makes things worse.
My friends tell me that they only ask me a question if they want to hear the truth. They’re quick to point out that I’m never mean about it, but that they know I always give my honest response from my heart and my gut. But, my friends also tell me, they always know I’ll listen to their side of the story without judgment.
I’ve always been who I am without apology even when I was unsure who that person was. Even when I felt the need to protect my heart, soul, and mind by not allowing anyone to get too close or to see too much vulnerability. Oddly, looking back, I realize even that person was authentic in many ways. It wasn’t who I would ultimately become, but it was who I needed to be at that time in my life. Any time I’ve tried to become someone I’m not - too nice, too sweet, too tough, or whatever - it has always backfired. People, myself included, have ended up hurt, so I don’t play those kind of games.
The hardest thing about being authentic is understanding that no matter how authentic we are, there are going to be people who don’t relate to our authenticity. There are going to be people who would rather play games and hide behind manners than to be their true selves or to see our true selves. Don’t misunderstand, I think good manners are essential in life and not taught nearly enough, but I don’t like it when people hide behind manners to avoid the truth of who they are. It is possible to be polite and authentic at the same time. If you and I can’t be authentic with each other, then we can’t grow together. Our relationship will stagnate because it will be built on the superficial, and the superficial provides no foundation if authenticity doesn’t find it’s way into the relationship.
When I write, I bring my authentic self to the page. It’s really all I’ve got to offer the world. Every topic has already been discussed, explored, and dissected in some way or another. The only thing I can do is perhaps provide someone a new perspective, uplift someone’s self-esteem, and encourage people to give one another a chance to become authentic themselves. The more authentic I am in life, the more chance my words have of being authentic on paper.
The most important thing about being authentic isn’t finding who you are. It’s accepting all of who you are - the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. I didn’t feel authentic until I moved past finding my authentic self and accepted my authentic self.This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz talks about clarity. She says “…clarity asks you to get clear on where you stand, how you feel, and what your instincts are prompting you to say and do.”
I see her point. I blogged a week or so ago about “Embracing the “What if…?” as Inspiration”. While this might not seem on point at first glance, it is. For a while I’d been fighting the “What if…?” scenarios my brain was playing. I didn’t realize my brain was searching for clarity. When I did, I also realized that clarity resulted in inspiration. What a revelation! I’d been distracted, befuddled, and guilty because of the thoughts popping into my mind. As I embraced the thoughts and followed them through, clarity followed. I began to feel focused, relieved, and like myself again. That was great!
Clarity to me is that moment when I can see exactly where I stand, how I got there, and where I want to go. When those things are aligned, I can do anything. It may not be easy, but it will be possible. And, possible is great.
Writing poetry often leads me to clarity. When I’m struggling with confusion or lack of direction or emotional distraction, a line will pop in my head and then another and then another. Before long I’ve resolved my confusion, and can get back to where I need to be. The best part is I’ve also created a new writing product in the process.
The process of finding clarity can be as important as living in clarity. If you feel a bit unclear, embrace it and see where it takes you. You just might end up with a new creative writing piece and a bit more clarity on your life for your efforts.
Now, it’s time to give my desk a bit of clarity in order to restore the clarity in my mind.
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz, discussed boundaries. As I understand it, she’s encouraging us to identify our boundaries to see if they fit our writing goals. She discusses the idea of healthy boundaries and unhealthy boundaries in one’s career.
I haven’t really given a lot of thought to the boundaries I set in my career as I tend to use the same ones I set for my life to a degree. Over the years I’ve learned to let people be who they are and to be who I am regardless of the results. As long as a person doesn’t intentially hurt someone I love or me, I let most things slide. If you don’t speak to me for a month or six and suddenly show up on my doorstep, I’m likely to smile, invite you in for a chat, and only mention your absence by inquiring if everything is okay. On the other hand, if you show up and start berating me for not calling, writing, stopping by, etc., I will in no uncertain terms, pull out my Southern charm and in my best drawl tell you exactly what I think of your attitude. I don’t mean this to be direspectful but to let you know exactly where my boundaries are. I take people at face value and until proven otherwise believe you have the best intentions at heart; however, I will never forget it if I’m proven wrong even once. I probably won’t end our relationship - whether we’re friends, colleagues, or whatever - but I will handle you differently from that point forward.
One boundary I’ve learned to set over the years regards my work. I write at home; therefore I work at home. Some people have a hard time understanding what this means. I’m home, so I should have time to help with whatever they need. I’ve learned to set rules. One of those is that when I’m writing, I rarely answer the phone, respond to email, or log on to Facebook. Okay, now that I’ve written that sentence, I realize I’ve been letting that boundary slip. Is my work suffering? Oh, geez, I’ve got to go look at that now. I didn’t think so, but I do have tasks on my task list from April (well one left from March as well.) that should be completed by now. I also have two large writing projects that have been on hold for months while my attention has been on myriad smaller projects.
For many years I had terrible problems with boundaries in my personal life. I either pushed people away or held people too tight. The result was usually the same, people left. Thinking about it, I probably did the same thing with my writing. I hid my writing from the world for fear of being treated like I was “uncool”. Other times I wore it like a shield against facing life. Still other moments in my life found me clinging to writing as if it were my life preserver. None of those produced the results I wanted. As I changed my focus to seeing my writing as not only a part of who I was but as a career, I began to pursue it differently. I still write what I want to write because using my words to influence thought and discussion about the issues we face in the world is important to me. I am now proud of what I create without the need for outside adulation - though I never turn it away - or even validation.
I’m not sure this is what Christina meant when she encouraged us to write about what boundaries mean in our life, but it’s where my thoughts took me. At first I thought I didn’t have anything to say, but I now realize that I just didn’t want to face that I’ve let some of my boundaries slip lately. Apparently, I needed the reminder even if I didn’t know it. Thanks, Christina.
This week Christina Katz talked about self-producing in The Prosperous Writer.
Her idea seems to center around the idea that we have to create our own careers. I believe this is true in many ways. As a writer I know the only way I have “product” is if I create it. I must write the words to create the sentences that become the paragraphs that form the story I’m telling.
There are days when I must remind myself I’m in charge of my career. When rejections outnumber acceptances, it can be hard to hold on to the idea that I make my career. It is in my hands. It’s hard to feel in charge of one’s career when someone else’s subjectivity plays a large role in one’s success or failure. I try to remember to read comments given on my work with an open mind and make changes I feel are warranted. I also make it a rule to keep submitting my work. Right now I’m very behind on my submission goals for 2010 due to personal circumstances, but I’m working to correct that. Unsubmitted work will never be accepted, so submissions are key to success as a writer.
Writing a poem, short story, essay, article, or book always reminds me that I’m in charge of my career. When I have moments of doubt about my ability to self-produce my career, I write and/or make another submission.
I create opportunities for myself and I evaluate opportunities that come my way. I take ones that I feel will benefit me in some way. More often than not, I find that if nothing else I learn from an experience even if I don’t find it particularly beneficial to my career. And, learning is always positive.
So, now, I think I’ll go self-produce for a while.
In The Prosperous Writer, Christina talks about building a career on a foundation of happiness.
I believe it goes farther than that. I believe only a life built on a foundation of happiness can bring any sense of success and joy. For life to be sustainable, it must be built on a foundation of happiness. Happiness leads to positive thinking. Positive thinking leads to achievement. When a person drowns in negativity, it’s impossible to even see the lifeline happiness throws one’s way.
When I learned to embrace happiness, I learned to see things through different lenses. Obstacles became challenges. I began to recognize successes instead of always focusing on failures. My relationships with other people improved. I stopped looking for hidden motives and began to accept people just as they were. When I’m genuinely happy, I approach my writing day with enthusiasm and vigor, I shrug off rejections, and I focus on my words instead of other people’s reactions.
I blogged about happiness in November 2009. Because I don’t enjoy repeating myself too much, I suggest you read that post for my thoughts on happiness. It includes a poem. Enjoy!
So, I suggest you embrace happiness. When happiness flows through your life uninhibited, you’ll find life improves.
In The Prosperous Writer this week, Christina Katz talked about groundedness.
Groundedness to me is adhering to reality. As a writer it’s sometimes easy and tempting to live in those scenarios building in my head. I see the people. I hear their voices. I smell their sweat as they exert themselves and their soap as they shower. I feel their pain when they twist and ankle or get punched in the face. I taste the bitterness and the sweetness of their lives.
I find it easy to drift from those scenarios into imagining my own future. For the past few months, I’ve been spending too much time in my own imagination. Multiple story lines merging with memories and thoughts about my future pull me away from daily work of actually putting words on paper. There’s a point where mulling things over in my mind stops being productive - getting me toward writing something - and becomes a distraction. It’s a fine line because much of developing fiction revolves around the stories that come from the imagination. Yet without the act of putting the words on paper, there is no product. No product means nothing to sell. Nothing to sell means no income. No income means that all that ruminating is the equivalent of daydreaming. I’m only grounded when the balance between imagination and product is met.
Time to get grounded again.
I do yoga which forces me to focus on breathing the most essential thing for life. When I take the time to hold a pose, I must be in the moment. I must feel what I’m feeling. I must focus on what my body tells me. I must breath correctly. All this is very grounding.
When I’m feeling like I’m not grounded in reality, I pull out my cookbooks and find a recipe. Just any cooking won’t do though. I must bake. Baking requires exact measurements. It requires precision and focus to get it just right. It allows me to remember the basics of life like caring for loved ones and taking care of myself. Yesterday I baked bread and Mini Cheesecakes both from the South Beach Diet Cookbooks. My writing productivity increased. I finished a short story I’d been struggling with and I typed two poems that I’d jotted rough drafts of over the weekend.
My cats also help me stay grounded. They remind me to take a break and even to eat. When I take care of them, I remember to take care of me. Taking care of me helps me to balance the imagination and the product.
I can always count on my husband to remind me the Earth awaits when I get too wrapped up in my imagination. He firmly pulls me back to Earth with love and patience when I forget to come out of the clouds. He’s a person grounded in the logic and reason of things. He has no problem pointing out the reality in front of me even when I don’t want to see it. Forget about accept it.
Lastly, I stay grounded by performing the daily chores involved in writing. It’s not glamorous. It’s hard work. It requires putting yourself in front of the world and saying “Okay, judge me. You have my permission to criticize me, pick me apart, and reject me.” If that’s not humbling enough to keep one grounded, I’m not sure what is.
This week Christina Katz talks about bravery in The Prosperous Writer. In particular she discusses the difference in bravery and bravado. As I read it, I kept thinking that sometimes people have to fake it until they find it because they don’t know what bravery feels like. If a person doesn’t know the difference in bravado and bravery, when they find bravery it’s a bit of a relief. When one is truly brave, one no longer needs to put up a brave front - bravado. Bravado takes a lot more energy than bravery.
I agree with her assessment that people who are truly brave are those who say “Yeah, it’s scary, but I’m doing it anyway.” This can come in any aspect of your life, so everyone has the opportunity to be brave. To me being truly brave is being who you are no matter who is sitting across the table from you. It’s embracing yourself with all your faults and never pretending you’re perfect. It’s looking in the mirror in the morning and asking yourself “How can I be a better me today?” It’s that moment when you look out at a crowd and you smile not because it’s expected but because you love where you’re standing. You love the energy you’re sharing with the crowd and you know that if you flub the speech, you can all laugh and move through it. True bravery is looking someone in the eye and telling them they mean the world to you or conversely looking someone in the eye and telling them in the nicest way possible they just aren’t bringing anything meaningful to your life. When you are brave enough to find, know, and accept yourself in all your glory, misery, and malaise, your authentic self can’t help but be brave and bravado disappears - or at least takes a nap. Bravery always starts with the self.
Christina asks “How did you find yours [bravery]?” In many ways, my bravery has waxed and waned my entire life. Periods of bravery lead me to pursue challenges and set goals. Periods of bravado forced me to put up a good front when my life was falling apart. Becoming reacquainted with my authentic self brought me full circle to bravery again. This hasn’t been a straight line process in any way. Sometimes bravery and bravado mixed together becoming indistinguishable from one another. Sometimes I felt brave only to realize later it was bravado. Sometimes bravado reminded me how to define bravery allowing me to be brave again. One of the bravest things I’ve ever done was to accept myself with all my complexities. That took more courage, in some ways, than allowing the world to see my authentic self because once I’d accepted myself - the good and the bad - I had no choice but to allow my authenticity to flow through my work and into the world. That’s when I realized that my writing often betrayed me by allowing slivers of my authentic self through to the world - the very me I was trying to convince the world didn’t exist. Those were the things that made me real and approachable. Those were the things that allowed me to love myself. Those were the things that made me unique in some ways but relatable in others. That’s a betrayal I can appreciate to the fullest.
So, am I brave? Today I feel brave. I don’t need your love in order to love myself. I don’t need your trust in order to know I’m trustworthy. I don’t need your acceptance in order to accept myself. I don’t need it, but I won’t turn it away. I can welcome love, trust and acceptance in my life. And, to me, that’s brave.
Tomorrow may be a different story, and I’ll be able to acknowledge that. And, that’s brave.
Bravery is authenticity and authenticity is bravery. So be authentic! Be brave!
This week Christina wrote about experience in The Prosperous Writer.
She asked, “How did you get yours? How do you keep learning new things to expand and improve on what you already know?”
I’m going to approach this from a slightly different angle. Experience writing - aka practicing and polishing skill - is very important. That skill allows us take the life’s moments and use them to create the written works that inspire other people. That’s very important.
As writers though, we sometimes forget to experience life. We get so caught up in capturing the moment, reporting on it, and thinking how we can use it, we miss it. John Mayer has a line his song, Clarity that goes ”By the the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone…” Every time I hear this line it reminds me to stop thinking how I can use the moments of my life in my writing and just enjoy them. When I enjoy them fully, they are more memorable and in turn better inform my work.
Life experience is where all writing begins. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a letter to your best friend, writing a serial killer thriller, a coming of age novel, a poem, or simply updating your Facebook/My Space/Twitter or whatever status. Without life experience, there’s nothing to say. So when you get the chance to learn something new, take it. Don’t hesitate. You may fail at it or hate it, but if you don’t try, you’ll never have the experience.
A few years ago I took a motorcycle class at my husband’s insistence. He’d recently started riding and wouldn’t let me ride on the motorcycle with him until I took the class. I had no desire to learn to ride a motorcycle, but I figured if I got nothing else out of it, it might help me with my writing at some point. I took the class. The written part was a breeze. From the moment I sat on the bike, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t keep my mind on the process. I understood the techniques, but I was bored. I kept daydreaming. Focus is important when you’re on a motorcycle especially when you’re learning. At some point on the first morning I managed to “lay the bike down”. I received a few cuts and bruises but nothing serious. I insisted on getting right back on the motorcycle because I knew if I didn’t I never would. I finished the class, but I failed. The instructor said that while my scores on the final technique test would’ve barely passed me, the teaching team thought I demonstrated too much hesitancy after my accident. He encouraged me to retake the class saying he thought I’d pass it easily the second time through. I thanked him and even said maybe, but I knew I wouldn’t be back. I just didn’t enjoy it enough to concentrate on the techniques. I’m glad I took the class though. I learned how it felt. I learned I didn’t like it. And, I learned enough to write about a character riding a motorcycle in a short story.
Last year I learned how to make a glass paperweight. Granted it was a one project “class” and the instructor did much of the work, but I learned a lot, and I really enjoyed it. This year I hope to go back and experience the process of making a vase - that actually involves blowing the glass. I still don’t know how I’ll use the experience in my work, but I’ve learned to always take advantage of the opportunities to learn new things because I never know when they’ll be useful for a character.
I doubt I’ll ever go as far as writers like David Morrell, who actually took survival training to better inform his thrillers, but then again I don’t write that kind of book. There are many things I’d like to learn and/or experience hands-on, but there are many others I have no desire to know anything more than I can read about in a book.
Experience in life as well as experience with different types of writing are both important to keep writing fresh and alive. When people open themselves up to all the experiences before them, they’ll find life gives to them and inspiration comes almost without effort.
Experience life to its fullest, the good and the bad, because you never know what experience is going to inspire you to write the best thing you’ve ever written.
Experience is life and life is experience. Embrace it!
In Issue 13 of The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz discussed creativity and asked what creativity means to her readers.
What does creativity mean to me?
Okay, I thought this one would be easy, but I’ve drawn a complete blank every time I’ve started to write it the past few days. Now, that’s not very creative.
Creativity makes us stop and think. It gives us a different perspective on an old topic. It creates an image we can’t deny or replace. Artists are always creating new ways to present old ideas, and this is creativity. I think however creativity is much more than that. It’s that moment when the words, the image, the concept becomes so clear there’s no mistaking it for something else. And, one doesn’t have to be an artist to be creative. It can be as simple as a sentence in an email if we’re open to seeing it. Creativity comes in many forms and from everyone at some time or the other.
Sometimes I feel the most creative when I go to the kitchen and discover that we don’t have all the ingredients to make something. In that moment, looking through the pantry and the refrigerator to find alternatives sparks my creative juices. And, sometimes I discover putting things together that are seemingly incompatible can result in some wonderful flavors. Sometimes, it fails miserably, but that’s just part of the creative process.
As a fiction writer and a poet, I embrace creativity on a daily basis. Often stringing together the words to create the image in my mind doesn’t feel particularly creative. Maybe this comes from exercising those muscles so often I forget that creativity is involved. It becomes rote. And, that’s a way to kill creativity because I lose sight of what makes the work live in my reader’s imagination. As with cooking, sometimes writing works best when we bring together ideas and concepts we haven’t considered combining before. This brings a new approach and potentially new insight. And sometimes creativity fails, but one never knows without trying. So creativity is experimenting, is trying new combinations, is exploring new ideas.
Being creative for creativity’s sake in a work of fiction, or sometimes even poetry, makes the work flowery and sometimes stilted resulting in the work being beautifully written but not transformative.
As a writer I view creativity as playing with words to create just the right image and just the emotion at any given time. There’s a delicate balance between allowing creativity to flow and directing the flow in the right direction with skill.
Okay, I’m going to address two issues of The Prosperous Writer in this blog. This seems to be becoming a habit. I rarely seem to have time to address the issues in the week they’re presented, but that’s the way life goes sometimes.
Issue 11 was about Health. The question: How do you stay healthy? Have you always been healthy or is good health something that you have had to cultivate for yourself?
I stay healthy by doing yoga, weights, and aerobics. Mostly doing yoga. I find the yoga stengthens my body and allows me to focus better. Lately though I’ve been unable to work out at all due to a torn meniscus in my knee, so I’m looking forward to getting that taken care of, so I can return to my workouts. I eat a low carb, mostly vegetarian diet. That seems to work best for me. I take vitamins when I remember. Other than that I drink lots of water, green tea, and fruit juices. I avoid soda. I eat treats, like dark chocolate or ice cream, when I feel like it but don’t overindulge. Mostly, I try to enjoy life on the good days and the bad. This seems to keep me in a healthy frame of mind and my body tags along for the most part. Oddly, part of the reason I’m so late answering this is I’ve been sick, so I guess I slipped on a few of these things lately. Well, back to it now.
Issue 12 was about Imbalance/Balance.
Christina talks about how a temporary imbalance helped her shake things up and feel more balanced. For the most part, I’m pretty balanced these days, so this one took a bit of thought for me. I can see how that might work. A move a few years ago forced my hand on some activities in my life that took time away from my writing projects and my family life. I’d been reluctant to let these activities go even though I’d known for some time my life was out of balance. On the other hand, the activities helped me tap into other parts of myself that helped me focus when I let them go. I appreciate having balance in my life more after a period of imbalance. We have the opportunity to learn from every experience we have. If we open ourselves to the lessons, both balance and imbalance can teach us about ourselves, our needs, and our place in the world around us.
Christina’s question this week:
What’s your take on humility? And does yours make you more prosperous?
Christina says humility to her means “understanding that even though confident is a good way to be, humble is an even better way to be.”
I believe humility is the feeling that creeps in when we feel like someone is giving us too much credit. This doesn’t mean we’re not proud of our accomplishments and/or what it took to make them. It means we’re aware that all isn’t necessarily as it appears to be. Speaking only for myself, I find that when people start complimenting me I start thinking of all the flaws I know exist. It’s my brain’s way of reminding me I’m not perfect. To me humility is that moment in your life when you stop striving to be perfect and can simply shrug and say “I’m not perfect” or as I recently put it on my Facebook page. “I may not always succeed. I’m not perfect and don’t pretend to be. But if you can forgive my faults, I’ll forgive yours. We’ll just enjoy each other’s company on this ride we call life.”
So does this make me more prosperous? Now that’s the million dollar question. I think my approach of seeing humility as meaning I don’t have to be perfect makes me less rigid and more approachable. I’m more willing to accept the small successes and let go of the judgments of others. In a recent poem, I wrote about the temptation to change one’s self to meet other expectations and the impending resentments that creep into the relationship when this happens. I believe we are most prosperous when we accept who we are, accept others for themselves, and realize none of us are perfect. So, while I can’t answer whether it makes me more prosperous from a monetary standpoint - this approach is still too new for me - I can say that I feel more prosperous as a human being.
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Last week was quite busy and I never got around to answering the question posed in The Prosperous Writer by Christina Katz. Christina asked writers to discuss if they could be both passionate and keep their wits.
I write from a passionate place and edit with my wits firmly in place. That’s the perfect marriage of passion and intellect for me. I dump all the silly, gushy, overly emotional, passionate stuff on the page first. Just get it out there. Then I go back and prepare it for readers. Sometimes I find restraint has leaked in and squashed the passion that brings sizzle to the page during my initial mind and heart dump, but that’s rare. Usually, I find gems to keep in the initial work and rework things that seem melodramatic or overly flowery.
Anyway, that’s what works for me to keep my passion for my subject and my work in check. I think we each have to find our own way to balance the passion with the message in our work.
This week, Christina talked about containment in The Prosperous Writer. The question she asked writers to examine whether their inner wealth was overflowing or run dry. First, in discussing containment she talks about filling and maintaining our well of inner wealth in order to share it. What is my take on containment? Right now I wouldn’t say my inner well is overflowing, because for me giving and taking is a part of every day. I’m learning to give when it’s appropriate and to hold back when I need to for myself. I recently blogged about leaving a listserv where I felt I gave and wasn’t appreciated leading me to feel drained. I think we all need to evaluate where we’re giving and change it if the source is draining us dry and never giving back. I’ve kept a pretty good check on what works for me to keep my writing, my life, and my inner being in balance for a couple of years now. Or, at least, I like to think I have. I can positively say I notice now when my inner bank has suffered to many withdrawals. Then I set about finding a way to fill the account again. Learning to say “no” - still a struggle at times - has helped tremendously with the balance I need for my life.
If you’re interested in Christina’s newsletter, The Prosperous Writer, visit http://christinakatz.com/.
I subscribe to Christina Katz’s new newsletter, The Prosperous Writer. She gives interesting assignments each week. They revolve around answering questions to put you on the path to finding prosperity in your writing. As my calendar has been, and still is, completely full, I’ve not had a chance to participate. So I thought I’d get caught up in this one blog. I’m not sure I’ll address all 52 of the blog assignments coming this year because I’ve decided to put MY work first and make things that are related but don’t create direct results lower on my priority list. Sorry Christina, I think your newsletter serves a great purpose, and I hope others will find it helpful, but I must pay attention to my priority list first.
The first issue asked “Who do you dedicate your writing to in 2010? “
I thought about this a long time. I write fiction and essays to spark discussion through the exploration of issues - social, political, interpersonal, cultural, etc. I write poetry mostly for my own self-expression but I’m finding my need to explore issues bleeds into my poetry more frequently lately. So when it comes right down to it, I dedicate my writing to anyone who is dedicated to making the world a better place for all of us. As generic as they may sound, it isn’t really. I admire people who are willing to help others. I think it’s something we don’t do enough. Sure we step up to the plate in a time of crisis, but what about the people who suffer on a daily basis. They deserve to be noticed as well.
The second week Christina wrote about self-respect. She asked some questions to spur her readers to examine their level of self-respect.
On a scale of one to ten, how’s your self-respect? Can you say no? Do you say yes to yield to social pressure and supposed-tos and then suffer for it? Are you catering to too many other people’s needs but burning out in the process? Do you listen to and trust your instincts about what is and isn’t the best way to proceed?
Generally, I rank my self-respect around an 8 if placed on a scale from one to ten. I still struggle with saying no to people but I’m getting better at it every day. No is a very powerful word. I’ve seen it stop people dead in their tracks. Last year I wrote about my struggle with the writers groups in which I have memberships. I now realize that blog entry was about self-respect. The question I asked was “Am I staying in these writers groups because they benefit me? If not, why am I staying?” I even discussed how the online listserv of one of the groups made me feel bad about myself based on the comments posted by group members. As for trusting my instincts, as a general rule, I do. There are only a few people in this world who can convince me to question my instincts. Even with them, I won’t abandon my instincts, but I will hear them out and see if their input affects my initial assessment.
The third week examined focus.
So, what does it feel like to be focused? Pause for a second and think about it, those of you who have felt focused before. Can you put being focused into words? And how does being focused create different results than a time in your life when you were unfocused?
Ah, this is a biggie for me. I tend to try to take on too much at at time leading to a lack of focus. I always think I can do more than humanly possible in a given amount of time. When I’m truly focused on my writing, the words flow from my mind to my fingers onto the paper/screen without effort. I can’t be pulled away from the work, and I’m almost always pleased with the outcome when I’m finished. To be focused is for the project I’m working on to be in tune with my body, my mind, and my soul. Yoga helps me to find that focus in other areas of my life like my writing because it requires such focus to hold the poses correctly and continue to breath. I often stop and take a few yoga breaths in the middle of unfocused moments to help me focus again. When I’m unfocused, I start a lot of projects and have a lot going on without reaching completion of anything. A lack of focus leaves me feeling unfulfilled and unsuccessful but busy nonetheless. Busy with focus produces results while busy without focus creates chaos in my mind, my body, my soul, and my life.
So, there, I’ve completed the questions for the first three issues. I feel like I’ve done an activity similar to this before but not in such a public manner…
If these exercises help me to focus on my work, accomplish results, and publish my work, they just may serve to be worth adding to my schedule though I’m still not going to promise to do every one or to do them on time. I’ve fallen into that trap with other things, and my work suffered for it. I can’t allow that to happen.
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