Gearing Up for a New Year - Creativity

Art for your heart from my picture book Magic Carpet Night. 

It's January and folks are outlaying mucho moola on new planners, apps, and coaching classes to get the mojo juice flowing for 2021. We all know that most will fail. How do you keep yourself out of that group? Here's some advice: while everyone else is making new year's resolutions that will ultimately bomb, you can gear up in ways that will ensure success. The road map outlined here will help you energize your creativity and ensure that your work is popping, crackling, and snapping 

Creativity doesn't just happen. Don't listen to anyone who says you are a creative person; a chosen one imbued with this mysterious force. Creativity comes through hard work, experimentation, and vulnerability. These pillars are needed to keep the cauldron from being stagnant. Do you want to kick your production to a higher level? Do you want to do more than you have ever done before? Do you want to be standout original?  I'm going to break down these three pillars to help you on your journey. 

The first pillar is hard work. Sit butt in chair and hustle. You must layer effort with endurance. Ask yourself what is something you have worked hard for. Think about what led to your success and repurpose anything useful. For me, I make my bed every day. It gives me a win every morning and it also shows I can endure for freaking forever as long as I "KISS" it. Yes, you must make sure you keep it simple, Stupid. Endurance depends on small steps with reps. If you sit around saying you going to write that novel, paint that picture, sculpt that sculpture, knit that blanket, but watch TV and drink mimosas instead, you are going to create a big pile of nothing. 

So let's get downright practical. Write down a list of five short term projects that you want to take to completion and that you have the skills and knowledge to do. Be sure these projects are very specific. Write a rough draft, not write a book. Books come in stages: prewriting, rough draft, revision1, revsion2, revision3, final draft. I'm trusting you to list out ten reasonable short term projects. Now, until these five short term projects are complete, don't start anything else. Put any new ideas on the next projects list. (If you don't have a system to shut down distractions, you are going to be distracted.) Now, how to approach each project. Estimate the time it will take you to do it. You may need to do some research to make a good estimate. Block out that time in your schedule. Set a deadline. Now get a partner on board to check in with. Turn off the feeds!!! Finally, work, work, work.  

The next creativity pillar is experimentation. Get out of your comfort zone. I mean it. Think of something absolutely bonkers from your perspective to try. Learn a new language, dip a toe into ballroom dancing, try learning a martial art...whatever seems out of your reach but that you would like to give it a go. Experimentation welcomes failure. Study new methods and try them out. Open up to some new ideas. Put yourself in somebody else's shoes. Let your curiosity run wild. Learn things for the joy of learning them. If you don't block out time for experimentation, you are not going to have ah-ha moments this year, not one. 

Here's some nitty-gritty experimentation implementation. Pull out your calendar and fuel it up. Find the event in the local newspaper, message board, coffee shop...get yourself to any event that interests you and looks like it takes skill to make it happen. Challenge yourself. Watch a show that folks are flocking to that is not your thing,  and then think about why people are interested in it. Cook stuff in the kitchen. Grow stuff in the yard. Paint stuff on the walls. Go for walks and observe and think. Try the road less taken, at least by you. Bottom line. get out there and experiment, at least a few hours of your week need to be dedicated to experimentation. If you don't shake things up, I promise you will be stuck in a rut. 

The last creativity pillar is vulnerability. You must come out of your safety zone into exposed places.  Yes, you must deal. Go to therapy. Attend a self-help group. Join a community of faith. Begin a gratitude journal. Anything that you know will emotionally crack you open is a good idea. Most of us have things festering, and if you are not dealing with them, that stuff will choke your voice. You might need to off-load something in a relatively safe place, i.e. totally anonymous. There are tons of websites out there where you can share secrets. Have that conversation you keep putting off. Face your pain. Be brave, and you will soar. 

Being vulnerable is about knowing your weaknesses. Perhaps it is time to admit a few things about yourself. Are you a lazy one? A mean one? A disorganized one? Whatever. We all have our hangups. You want to change, but the last 4000 things you tried have failed. Feel your feelings, but then dust yourself off and try again. Vulnerability is naming your kryptonite and then keeping away from that stuff. If you are wondering about where to start, choose someone who knows you and loves you, and then ask them what you need to work on.  After you are finished being pissed about what they said, really think about it. One of the most vulnerable things you can do is listen. 

I hope I've stirred you up. Get into gear. This encouragement and right now is a great place to start. I love to jump into the deep end of the pool. The feeling of sinking deep into the water and then clawing my way back to the surface for the big breath. Some like to go into the pool one step at a time, slowly, until they get used to it. Gearing up your year is your journey. Do it your way. Be creative.

Here is a quote for your pocket. 

Creativity is contagious, pass it on. ~Albert Einstein

Dsylexia. Dylesxia. Dylexia. Dyslexia.

I don't know by looking which word in the title is spelled right. Welcome to my life. 

I was the reader in church on Sunday, and suddenly the words turned into a bunch of deconstructed letters. I didn't know my place, and I am suddenly back in my elementary school self. My teacher is asking what the next word is. I don't know. My class is laughing at me. I fold my shoulders in. Tears roll down my face. 

A page of text can become a puzzle to me in a second. The words will reappear if I wait. Sometimes it takes up to a minute for me to see the separate words again, instead of a page of jumbled letters. But this was something that I didn't know how to communicate with my teacher. She never did try to figure out what was wrong with me. She thought I was a subpar student who refused to try. I was sent to remedial reading to fix the unfixable. It's a battle not to think of myself as a failure even to this day. 

After church people came up to me. "We all make mistakes." I'm thinking, I didn't make a mistake. "Were you having a mental breakdown?" You seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time. I said that's what I meant. Long ago, I learned that this is me. I don't apologize for it, even if I am a train wreck. 

I love the written word. Stories are my jam. My first stories were picture books because there had fewer words on the page. I remember being laughed at in the fifth-grade for trying to check out a stack of picture books at the school library. The librarian suggested I put them back for the younger kids. I put some back, but I'm still pissed about it. 

I read every day, and I'm a writer. Dang, my love for stories is a problem. I just send out the emails and manuscripts and know, yeah, there may be a word or two or three or five or more missing. I blow up the text on novels to picture book size and read away. (Thank God for technology).  I'm going to be told that I don't care sometimes, and I don't try sometimes, and that I need to clean up my manuscripts all the time. I won't apologize. 

My dyslexia rips into everything I do. There is no way to avoid it, but, as a human being, I want to do something. So I tell my stories. Some days I can't write. The words are a mess and I can't sort them. I call these stagnant water days.  Other days I have a few problems. The words flow like mountain streams, clear and fast. So my problem is variable. Tricky. 

I am slower than everyone, but I do understand things. I love to learn, but I hate school. Those many Fs for things that I could not help really sucked and have left me with more than a little PTSD. We move forward shattered if we must. Only a few people have really been on the inside of my struggle enough to know what I'm facing daily. I am so grateful when the chose to love me and not fuss when I am continually struggling. 

I consider dyslexia a dent-and-scratch disability. I am serviceable. I can get a job done. Don't expect type-A fervor from me. I'm type keep-my-head-above-water.  

I hope that reading this makes you understand yourself better or see that quirky person in your life in a new light. Perhaps you can see the beauty of how they are dealing with the winds of this world.    

Seize the day!

I close with a doodle for your soul.  My interpretation of petroglyphs from Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico. 

Here is a quote for your pocket. 

I cling to my imperfection as the very essence of my being. Anatole France

The Power of Thankfulness

Hi, folks. Welcome to 2020 on Seize the day. This year has been a gift to my inner introvert.  That extroverted side of me has taken the passenger seat, and the book worm, star gazing gal is doing the driving. I've thought about Issac Newton a lot this year. He was at home during an epidemic when he connected the ideas of an apple falling and the moon being held by the earth, leading to the law of universal gravitation. Whoa!

I feel that Newton has set the success-during-a-pandemic bar high, but I have been giving my creative self the reins in what I am calling my "Magnum Opus" year. I'm grateful for a year to slow down and take time to breathe and write the hardest book I've ever attempted. If you have struggled this year, I hope my journey helps you reframe that rickety house you've built around yourself. 

Thankfulness is a weird sort of thing. So many want to capture it, believing if they pile enough stones on the pile that that will show how thankful they have been. Nothing wrong with listing out what you are thankful for, nothing at all. I particularly like lists, but for me, thankfulness is like an updraft, unseen and moving me along at all times. Along with updraft is this other wind, unthankfulness, the downdraft, that can hold me down like a butterfly pinned to a board.  If I want to soar, I gotta jump into the updraft. 

Imagine a pillar of air shooting up out of the Earth with enough force to send you above the clouds. It's not going to be an easy jump. Add to the thought experiment that you stand in a downdraft that will hardly let you stand. The downdraft pins you to the Earth. You can't move much, but you don't have to worry about falling. You're already on rock bottom. It's going to be a battle to get out the downdraft. You will claw and crawl your way to the edge and then, ploop, you are tossed into the updraft. 

Claw and crawl your way out of unthankfulness. Reframe your thoughts. Start with breathing. If you are reading this, you are breathing. Your lungs suck in oxygen all day long without a hint of help from your active brain. Breathe and be grateful. Get into this moment. Meditate. Let go of worrying. Be grateful for the body that holds your brain. Be grateful for the brain that allows you to think thoughts. Think about any mindless repetitive chores you do most days: sleep, brush your teeth, make your bed, sweep your floor. Think about the good people in your life, what gifts they have given you. Note, you are probably going to cry, have revelations about life, and forgive a whole boatload of stuff and write a magnum opus. This is a side effect of thankfulness, as far as I can tell. 

In a bit, you will notice that the gloomy cloud is lifting. You will soar. So here is the drill claw and crawl. Whatever it takes. Then soar.  If you find yourself back in ungratefulness, do the drill. 

I hope this helps you. Check back for the next bit of carpe diem.   

Here is a quote for your pocket.

I've never had a policy, I've just tried to do my best every day. Abraham Lincoln. 

A doodle for your joy. 

Sunday Thoughts: An Unexpected Life

 I've heard crickets from the Pitch Wars contest I entered.  My book about an American Christian cult doesn't seem to have connected. That's life. I still love my book. I love it micro and macro. The joy of a creative life is wonderful. I hope you have spent some of this week pouring out creative energy. 

I didn't expect to be fifty-six years old and be wondering what I was supposed to do with my life.  Have you sought to achieve something but realized you're on the Oregon trail and don't have enough provisions?  I didn't expect to be estranged from certain family members. I didn't expect that making my bed was going to be one of my great achievements. Are you living an unexpected life? 

I do feel that most of my days have been spent putting out fires and then resting till the next fire blows up. Life in Oregon and the rest of the west where the wildfires were raging, I am sure that folks wanted to do so much with their lives this summer but ended up dealing with fires. Or here with the hurricanes, there were plans but instead the aftermath was what happened. There is Covid worldwide, and we are all limping along. Are you living an unexpected life?

I didn't know that I was born with a genetic defect that was going to weigh heavier and heavier as I grew older. I didn't know that I would pass this stuff to my children. But here I am, braver than I ever expected to be. Brave wasn't the word that I thought would dominate my life. But here I am. Are you living an unexpected life? 

Here is the deal. Live. Do your small acts of kindness with great joy. Be merciful. Find the road to forgiveness. Trust that every person is made in the image of God. Celebrate the goodness in people. Forgive everything else. Make a difference. Create your art. Live your life, whatever it is.

A quote for your pocket. 

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. Carl Sandburg

A doodle.

Magic Carpets and other reasons I love to dream

 I love my creative life and the continuing stream of stories and images that spring out of my imagination. This week my newest creative endeavor has released: Magic Carpet Night.  This story started about 30 years ago when my first child was born. I've been shaping and reshaping it for a long time.  I always hated that bedtime is portrayed as a bad thing in books, like somehow if you crawl under the covers and close your eyes you will miss something important or get eaten by a pretend monster. 

Magic Carpet Night is a book about my vision of entering the portal of dreams. I close my eyes and leap and that lead leads to the wildest places imaginable.  I wanted a story that showed that bedtime wasn't something to avoid but something to cherish. For me, I have rarely encountered dragons when I sleep, but mostly I encounter fantastical scenes, full of mysterious questions.  There is a sense of safety in this world of dreams. Of course, magic is a given, and the best kind of magic, the kind that springs from within me. 

My place in the universe is sure when I enter the door to dreams.  Magic Carpet Night is a chance to snuggle up and enter into the place where we each spend 1/3 of our lives. Our dreams are one of the biggest gifts we will ever receive. This will book will open conversations on why bedtime is such a good thing. Dreams don't necessarily make sense. They don't always have a purpose. For me dreams, flood me with feelings of wonder. The meaning of dreams is so often beyond words. What dreams may come? Sleep, so you have the chance to dream. 

I hope you will get a sense that my little book is the tip of the iceberg of the mysteries beyond our waking hours.  Here is the link to the Kindle version for $2.99: https://amzn.to/2CP2oqL