#creative pilgrimage

Last post was about schedules, where I promised something about the morning routine I've been implementing. It's long -- the steps I take depend on which day of the week it is and when I have to be at my part-time job. But on days with an open schedule, when my only obligations are self-initiated or freelance, I can take lots of time to work through it and think and breathe.

So here it is -- my morning schedule.

When I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for the notebook next to my bed and write morning pages: three pages of handwritten, stream-of-consciousness material to shake the cobwebs out. It's one of the most effective tools for waking up and immediately getting some creative momentum. Usually helps me solve problems I didn't even know I had.

Next, I open up the 8tracks app, put on some music, and unroll my yoga mat. I like stretching and listening to something ambient but energetic. Gets my blood flowing, stretches out the kinks from sleep, and wakes me up the rest of the way.

Then I'll go into the kitchen to make tea. I play brain training games using apps like Lumosity and Elevate while I wait for it to boil and steep.

I'll drink my tea while I head over to coach.me and check through the rest of my habit list. I'll do my daily squats or rest day, read a motivational quote, recite affirmations to myself, and review my weekly or daily plan.

On affirmations -- I have a list of them that I keep on my computer and in a notes app on my phone so I have access to them. I decided to start affirmations while reviewing Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and they turned out to be incredibly effective for boosting self-esteem. I'll talk more about my affirmations in another post.

I'm using Cal Newport's recommendations to create weekly and daily plans -- with a Moleskine daily planner, I mark off blocks of unscheduled time and choose 1-3 projects to focus on during these blocks. So in the morning, I review the plan for that day and whether it requires modification. I may also choose a few specific things to focus on.

On Mondays and Saturdays, I end my routine here and get ready for a mid-morning work shift at the bookstore. Otherwise, I can continue with these optional tasks, depending on what needs to get accomplished.

I do the crossword, which is an activity I've recently started and very much enjoy. Very mentally stimulating. I'll do this fairly leisurely.

Then I'll start my pre-work ritual, getting into the mindset for deep concentration on the task or project for the day. This usually involves shutting down distractions, opening a music playlist, and gathering the resources that I need.

I work part-time outside the house, so only three days of my week have an externally-imposed schedule. As a writer, I NEED a certain amount of structure in order to get my work done.

Up until last week, I was really struggling to get working -- it's all too easy to let good habits lapse, ignore the fact that I have no due dates or deadlines, and fart away my time. It's so easy to let days be consumed with busywork that doesn't actually push me towards my goals.

Last week, I took my own advice and sat down with a copy of my self-published ebook Journaling Your Goals: Prompts, Motivation, and Advice to Help You Achieve Your Dreams.

(You can also access a FREE month-long program of Journaling Your Goals on Coach.me!)

And I opened up Scrivener, made myself a cup of coffee, and worked through almost every single journal prompt and activity in the book.

I made a life wheel, I made lists of short term and long term goals, I revisited my bucket list. I did a brain dump and wrote down all the nagging tasks I've been putting off and how I should deal with them. I identified what I'm currently unsatisfied with in my life and brainstormed how to fix it.

I spilled my thoughts about where I am in life and where I want to go, what's been dragging me down lately, what's been distracting my attention.

I identified some possible role models and mentors, even fictional ones -- anyone whose behavior I would be proud to emulate. How would they deal with my unique circumstances or difficulties? How would they respond to the problems that I face? And how can I motivate myself to confront those problems with the bravery and self-assurance of these role models?

I wrote down my own values. I updated my manifesto. I envisioned myself at the peak, optimum level of achievement -- version 2.0 of me.

I wrote down affirmations that would help me break out of the limited thinking that sometimes traps me -- using mantras to combat fear or a lack of confidence. And I rewrote them in the notes app of my iPod, which I always carry with me, so I can reread whenever I need to.

I identified a lot of concrete ways to make things better, even in small steps. Example: optimizing the flow of my bedroom to make certain things more accessible. I know that I'm more likely to engage in healthy, productive behaviors when the materials I need are EASY TO ACCESS.

So if I want to do yoga, I can't stash my yoga mat away in the closet -- it has to be visible, first thing in the morning. If I want to practice violin when I get home from work, it has to be one of the first things I see when I step in the door. Anything that cuts down the amount of time or effort or steps it takes to START an activity is extremely useful.

I also evaluated my current routine and envisioned how to make it better. Going through my daily planner, I implemented a new structure and plan for scheduling my time. Marking off when I work at the bookstore, I divided the rest into blocks of time, usually separating them into "morning block," "afternoon block," and "evening block."

Since I created a list of "active projects," I now have a small, easy-to-visualize list of what I should be focusing on. On Sunday, I sit down with my list and my daily planner and I block out time for the rest of the week, choosing 1-3 things to focus on for each day, but remaining flexible in case anything arises that requires my immediate attention.

My morning block is almost always taken by my morning routine, which can be shorter or longer depending on what is required for the day (more on my morning routine in the next blog post) -- this routine is optimized for me to be productive, focus on small essential tasks, and get ready to start the day.

After I finished my Journaling Your Goals project (it only took an afternoon, since I was typing like a maniac and just trying to get all my thoughts out of my head and into Scrivener), I IMMEDIATELY felt so much calmer.

There was this immediate sense of peace, confidence, and security -- I felt re-aligned with my goals and dreams, motivated to pursue them, and confident that I was giving myself the tools to succeed.

I had been floundering and wasting time for several weeks, but this one afternoon exercise grounded me, helped me remember what's really important, and come up with solutions to solve the problems I've been experiencing.

I don't usually undertake New Year's Resolutions -- I prefer instead to adopt New Year's Projects.

Rather than making a single change or modifying a habit, I use the structure and benchmark of a year to push and challenge myself in new and interesting ways.

In past years, I split my goals into 12, focusing on one each month. But this year, I've decided to commit to goals-on-overdrive -- one new project or challenge or goal each week.

This works well for me because I'm the definition of a "three-day-monk" -- someone who takes on new projects and pursues them with enthusiasm...but for only a few days before moving onto the next cool thing. And because I have so many hobbies and interests and passions, I often find myself overwhelmed by all the opportunities and choices available to me whenever I have free time.

This is why timed artistic challenges like NaNoWriMo work so well for me -- I can sustain great energy for short bursts on cool projects. But on the other hand, I'm impatient, quick to get bored and move on to other pursuits, and it's hard to sustain small amounts of energy over the long term.

So I'm going to try to let this short-term enthusiasm work for me, instead of against me. I'm not going to worry about sustaining long-term projects, but give myself a 7-day deadline within which to accomplish as much as I possibly can. If I don't get to everything, it's too bad -- I move on to the next project only a few days later. I'm hoping an immediate deadline will prompt me to accomplish more than I would if the deadline stretched out 30 days in the future.

The first part of the year is going to focus on education -- filling in essential gaps of knowledge, reading relevant nonfiction, watching documentaries I've always wanted to see, etc. In general, the goal is to make myself a more well-rounded, compassionate, educated citizen of the world -- and to expose myself to more non-Eurocentric perspectives.

I'm going to start with general overviews of various subjects: world history, space, earth science, philosophy, psychology, etc.

For February, which is Black History Month here, my goal is to thoroughly educate myself beyond the pitiful amount of black history I learned in school, which was limited to:

- a very small section on African history in the 9th grade (of course, it focused only on Africa once Europe took a vested interest in it and I learned almost nothing about pre-colonialist Africa)

- a small segment on Africa and African literature in the 12th grade (during which I read Things Fall Apart, Fiela's Child, and Heart of Darkness)

- a tiny nod to Afro-Caribbean history

- a slightly-more-cohesive overview of black history in America, i.e. slavery and the fight for civil rights

- slightly more studied understanding of the Harlem Renaissance in college

So February will be my month to learn more about pre-colonialist Africa and its history, filling in gaps in my education, reading more Afrocentric literature, biographies of relevant personages, etc. If anyone has any book or documentary recommendations in particular, please let me know!

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE FOR YOUNG WRITERS (PART ONE)

Not sure what to get that young/budding/amateur writer in your life? Here are my top recommendations.

On Technique (Resources, Lessons, and Prompts)

The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (Expanded Second Edition)

The dictionary uses a unique reverse definition-to-term format that makes it easy to zero in on the term you're seeking. Turn to the new section on sensory impressions, for example, to find vivid terms for "loud or jarring."

And at the end of each section dozens of illustrative passages by notable fiction and nonfiction authors—including Donna Tartt, Michael Lewis, Zadie Smith, Khaled Hosseini, and Paul Theroux—bring the terminology to life.

Story Engineering

Story Engineering starts with the criteria and the architecture of storytelling, the engineering and design of a story--and uses it as the basis for narrative.

The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises that Transform Your Fiction

The 3 A.M. Epiphany offers more than 200 intriguing writing exercises designed to help you think, write, and revise like never before - without having to wait for creative inspiration.

The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

From classic poetry to pop lyrics, from Charles Dickens to Dolly Parton, even from Jesus to James Bond, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase—such as “O Captain! My Captain!” or “To be or not to be”—memorable.

How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times

Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services. With examples from the long tradition of short-form writing in Western culture, HOW TO WRITE SHORT guides writers to crafting brilliant prose, even in 140 characters.

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered.

On Inspiration (Memoir, Motivation, and Leading by Example)

Letters to a Young Poet

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the 20th century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers.

Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

This is a book written by artists, for artists -— it's about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do.

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery

Beginning with the metaphor of the archer’s arrow that cannot travel in a direct line but must rise and fall before it hits its target, Lewis deftly weaves together theories on failure from hundreds of sources. Moving smoothly from Wynton Marsalis’ thoughts on jazz improvisation to Al Gore’s reflection on presidential loss, Lewis’ chapters profile those who have achieved mastery in their field by following the indirect path, often moving backwards, losing out, experimenting, and playing the amateur.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, 2nd Edition

For more than twenty years Natalie Goldberg has been challenging and cheering on writers with her books and workshops. In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice —"it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind." 

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Though aimed at writers, this book is full of sage advice and razor-edged honesty for the average joe. If you're a writer--and I claim to be one--it's more than a few anecdotes and good advice; it's a lifeline in the thrashing seas of rough-draftdom, a foothold on the sands of jealousy and vain ambition. Anne makes it clear that writing must be pursued for something other than mere publication.

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life.

Make Good Art

In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman delivered the commencement address at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, in which he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength. He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged them to make good art.

The bookMake Good Art, designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman’s inspiring speech.

The Artist's Way

With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.

Journaling Your Goals: Prompts, Motivation, and Advice to Help You Achieve Your Dreams

Journaling Your Goals is a self-help book which introduces writing and journaling techniques for dreamers to help set, track, and follow through with personal goals and development. 

Week One: Here and Now  -evaluate the current balance of your life  -realize your values  -start implementing small changes to make you more productive  -learn how to track your productivity  Week Two: Reflect:  -look carefully at what you've accomplished  -how your current behavior could bring you joy...or regret  -how to overcome paralyzing doubt  -how to combat fear  -how to become a better you  Week Three: Act On It:  -associate hard work with good things  -visualize your goals  -automate your routines  -use various techniques to "hack" your brain to respond positively to your efforts at productivity.  Week Four: Moving Forward:  -create your own manifesto  -start a spiritual routine  -celebrate your achievements  -support yourself with self-care and healing techniques 

On Getting Work Done (Discipline, Habit, and Ritual)

Make It Mighty Ugly: Exercises & Advice for Getting Creative Even When It Ain't Pretty

The number one fear of all creative types—crafters, DIYers, makers, artists—is that failure lurks right around the corner. Crafty blogger and creativity guru Kim Piper Werker urges everyone to pick up their pen or paintbrush or scissors and make something mighty ugly: get that “failure” out of the way. This friendly book offers up a multi-pronged approach to overcoming creative fears through inspiring essays and anecdotes, interviews, exercises and prompts, and sage advice from all over the creative spectrum to help individuals slay their creative demons.

No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days

Chris Baty, founder of the wildly successful literary marathon known as National Novel Writing Month, has completely revised and expanded his definitive handbook for extreme noveling.

Write: 10 Days to Overcome Writer's Block. Period.

In this revolutionary book, psychologist and novelist Karen E. Peterson presents an easy, effective way to beat writer's block in only ten days. Based on new brain research and sound psychological principles, this innovative program shows writers how to conquer writer's block using a variety of exercises.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”   Kafka is one of 161 inspired—and inspiring—minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, 

Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives.   So if habits are a key to change, then what we really need to know is: How do we change our habits?   Better than Before answers that question.

2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

So when I feel unmotivated to write...when I can't muster up the energy to make progress on my own desires...it's hard to resist toxic and nihilistic thoughts, which just spins me into the whole loop again.

If I think I want to write -- that it's more important than anything else in the world to me -- and then I can't bring myself to write, what does that say about me? I don't have the discipline to work towards my own dreams? If I can't even sit down and try to accomplish something this important and significant, then what the hell is the point? How can I ever trust myself to stay true to what my soul needs?

I recently read Sarah Lewis' book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery and recommend it whole-heartedly to all creative types. Here are a few of the interesting takeaways from my first read, plus some observations of my own:

Creative improvisation can turn off the self-judgment centers of the brain

While this study was focused on improv musicians, specifically jazz, it could have implications for other modes of creative production. Which is that if you are approaching your creative work with the open-ended free-form of something like play instead of labor, you can suppress your inner critic, a malicious force that many writers strive to quiet so they can get some damn work done.

"No haven, room, or back-turned painting is required to shield work from premature critique in the improv of jazz. There, it happens naturally. In this state of play, the brain generates a barricade from self-judgment. [Allen Braun and Charles Limb] invited musicians to the National Institutes of Health, asked them to memorize a piece of music, and then to improv to the same exact chord changes while hooked up to an fMRI imaging scanner.

During improvisation, areas of the musician's brain involved in self-expression lit up and parts that control self-judgment were suppressed, freeing up all generative impulses. Neuroscientists describe this permissive state where the mind allows for failure without self-condemnation as disassociation in the frontal lobe. The rest of us call it a basic tenet of improvsation in jazz--not to negate, but to accept all that comes and add to it, the foibles, the mistakes, the exquisite beauty and joy." -- Sarah Lewis, from The Rise

Pressure and time constraints actually liberate, not suppress, creativity

This is one that many people already understand -- that if you want something done, give it to a busy person -- but did you know that Oliver Sacks once pledged, during an especially horrible bout of writer's block, that he would write his book within 10 days or else commit suicide?

He finished his book a day ahead of schedule.

PAIN IS NOT A PUNISHMENT. PLEASURE IS NOT A REWARD.

Lewis writes this fantastic bit about aikido, about the notion of leaning in or surrendering, of making yourself pliant rather than tense. Aikido is all about learning to fight against the typical survival reactions you experience under duress, with this fantastic example -- if you hold a full glass of water in one hand and an empty glass in the other, you can easily feel the difference in weight between them. But if you tense your arm muscles, that difference is less easy to discern. If you're rigid in a fight, you will be less able to anticipate, observe, and respond appropriately to certain stimuli.

When I was in Bhutan, I heard a sad story about someone -- I think it was a distant member of the royal family, a cousin or someone several steps removed from the throne -- who got in a terrible car crash with several other passengers. Drove right off or into a mountain, or maybe both...there's a lot of mountains. And the only person in the car who survived was a sleeping passenger. His limp, unresisting body survived the impact precisely because he was unresisting. The same thing happens with drunk drivers all the time, who, even if they kill everyone else in the accident, often survive.

This pliancy, whether of body or of mind, can help you understand and work with your own creative struggles. Are you feeling extreme resistance against your own work? Does it feel excruciating just to sit down and produce, when you know it should feel joyful?

Don't resist those feelings, but lean into them. Explore them. Understand them. Unravel them. Allow yourself to experience them, to recognize exactly why you're tensing so you can learn how to relax.

This is also a tenet applied in meditation, identifiable under the handy RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Non-identification) acronym. If you're sitting on the meditation cushion and you have a sudden itch, a sore muscle, a headache, illness or pain, the idea is that you don't resist it. You don't think, "Oh great, another headache, now my day is ruined. How can I meditate when I've got this pain?"

Instead, you recognize that the pain exists, without judgment. "There it is. A headache." You allow yourself to experience the headache without pushing back against it, without wishing it gone.

Then you investigate it. "Where is the pain localized? What are my bodily reactions? How am I responding to it? Is the pain dull, throbbing, stabbing, achy? What does it feel like?" Funny thing is, once you stop identifying it as a bad sensation, then it just becomes a sensation. It lessens in severity. It doesn't particularly hurt.

And then you don't identify with it. "This is just a reaction my body is having. Just because I have a headache doesn't mean I AM a headache. It may hurt. But just that area does. It could be painful. That doesn't mean my life is pain. It is just one feeling that doesn't control me."

When you take away your initial, knee-jerk reaction ("This is a headache. This is pain. Pain is bad"), then you allow yourself to experience the sensation without recognizing any inherent badness. And in fact, the pain diminishes. Meditation has been acknowledged by scientists and mediators alike as a legitimate method of pain relief.

When you allow yourself to fully experience a thing -- even an unpleasant thing -- and experience it free of judgment, it actually becomes less unpleasant. It's only when we actively push back against something hateful that it seems to fill us even more.

So, when experiencing writer's block, don't PUSH against it. When your inner critic won't shut up, don't try to repress it. Allow yourself to experience it, understanding that it is only as bad as you feel it is, and that you can actually get to the root of a real issue by exploring these feelings. Otherwise you're taking medicine to suppress the symptoms of the disease, not treating the disease itself.

Before reacting to something, you must take a moment to understand it. If you've ever heard of the French parenting technique of pausing -- "la pause" -- before rushing to care for a young child, you may recognize a certain similarity here. If a child cries, instead of picking him/her up immediately, you wait for a moment, observing why the child may be crying before you act. Not only does it help parents better respond to the needs of their children, but it gives the child a little bit of space in which to learn how to first deal with the problem on her own. If a child falls and is crying out of surprise rather than pain, immediate parental cooing is going to only teach the child to cry more when that happens. Otherwise, she will realize very quickly that she is fine, and grow into a more confident person who learns how to take care of herself.

Likewise, if you indulge your inner child by rushing to satisfy every petulant demand, you train yourself to create more demands. Instead, explore that feeling and try to understand it, rather than automatically responding.