BLOOM: Addicted to Change

Hi, folks, yay for all the blooming flowers in my yard!  I feel like blooming too. Next Saturday is the release of Plumb Crazy by Cece Barlow aka me. :) If you have wanted a copy to tuck away in your backpack, purse or the floorboard of your car, that day is about to come for you.

This month my series is about how to make your work bloom. You have all seen it. Those roses by the back fence didn't bloom this year or those bearded irises just didn't show any color,or the dailies that languished with nary a bloom. What is going on?  Conditions just aren't right yet.

Blooming doesn't just happen.  Books don't happen either. If your works in progress keep on fizzling, you need to consider what you are cultivating. The soil of you just isn't allowing whatever you want.

Dang.

What is the creative soul to do?  Hint, the solution requires you be addicted to change.

Here is an idea. Change what you are cultivating. You might not be literary heavy that you have sought to be and instead are really a genre mystery writer. This kind of change takes chutzpah. I mean it is tough to dig out a flowerbed and replant. It is hard to rip out all your grass and shrubbery and put something else in. And it is excruciating to toss all your WIPs out and take a new direction, but this may be the only way you will bloom.

Here is an idea. Listen to what  your counselors are telling you. If they love your work keep with it. If there is no critique love, it may be time to change to something else. This takes humility to adhere to. I mean it is tough to follow someone's advice.  We all have feet of clay and more than one person has steered you wrong before. I have some news for you, creative endeavors involve high risk. Try engineering or something like that if you want a sure thing.

Here is one last idea. You might have to transplant.  The nutrients flowing into your life.  The support, the love, the encouragement, might not be there. You may need less feedback or much more. You may need to rent a cabin in the woods and work as hard as you can for a few days. You may have to start working in a local coffee shop instead of at your house where you keep getting caught up in stuff.

Want to bloom?  Get real about your work to find good success. Let me know how it is going! I will be back next week with more blooming.

Here is a quote for your pocket.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. Leo Tolstoy