Category: Creativity

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Creativity

How I Reset My Goals for Fall

Here it comes, the unchallenged Best Season ™ in all it’s glory. If you know anything about me at all, you know I’m a fall person. My novel The Boy Who Called the Foxes is a whole testament to that fact. I love the cool clear air, the wind, the long nights, the changing leaves, the excuse to be quiet and take it all in.

But aside from simply soaking up the beauty of the season, I also like to reset my goals for fall. Actually, I like to reset my goals about quarterly. Preferably at the beginning of each new season. But with autumn being my favorite time of year, I try to go out of my way to make a particular effort to plan for it when the walnut leaves start to yellow in September.

How do I reset my goals for fall?

Typically, this involves a lot of list-making and leafing through notebooks, for me. I take a look at everything I’m currently busy with, the things I’m about to get busy with, and the things I wish I was busy with and start thinking seriously about all of it.

And by “thinking seriously” I mean I try to keep a very open mind about my possibilities. Things tend to get a little overwhelming over the summer. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I take on too much at the beginning and put it off too much due to the summer laziness that usually sets in.

Fall is a good time to make changes. And I find I’m quite ready to do that around the beginning of September. So, what are some steps I like to take?

  • Declutter my to-do list

You mean, give up on things?! Well, kind of. I keep a running list of goals for my year and around autumn, I get a strong urge to cut some nonsense out of it. I don’t like to cram at the end of the year. Often, I get a new burst of energy and a new mindset in January, so I prefer not to be hustling like crazy in November and December if I can help it.

  So, how do I decide what to cut? Usually, I’m able to find things on my list that are both unnecessary and boring to me. Busy work. Social media efforts that aren’t paying back. Projects I don’t find inspiring at all. Just shamelessly cut these things out. You’re not a quitter. You’re prioritizing.

  • Change something

You might want to switch up your main project. You may have one that you’ve been dying to focus on but have been holding back because it isn’t your official WIP. Time to make it official.

  Something I’m changing is my social media strategy. For me, Instagram used to be fun—back before I was trying to be so smart with it. Now it just feels like a lot of pressure, and I’m not seeing the ROI I want. So, I’m relaxing with IG and shifting my attention to what’s actually my favorite social media: Pinterest. (Please follow!)

  • Prioritize rest & family

Fall is the perfect time to get cozy and make a doubled effort to enjoy the people in your life. I may or may not have been working a little too much this year. Too often I find myself shut up in my room headaching at my desk when I can hear my family enjoying downtime together elsewhere in the house. That’s miserable. Why would I do that to myself?

  I’m a massively introverted person. I’m very independent and value solitude and hard work to quite an unusual extent. But too much of that can still be harmful. Humans, no matter how driven and introverted, need to connect with each other just for the sake of talking and laughing and chilling out now and then. You’ll cease to function otherwise. So, take some time for those things this autumn.

  • Find large immersive projects—minimize scattering yourself

I run in a lot of directions and lately I’ve felt like I’m losing touch with my main thing. I’m writing a six-book series right now. I’m supposed to be working on book five.

  Nothing quite beats spending a whole afternoon and evening clicking away at a keyboard, completely immersed in another world. I miss those five-thousand-word days. I miss those ten-thousand-word days. Well, those are a little crazy, but they sure feel awesome now and then. I’m going to make myself some wordcount trackers and focus on my big projects for a while. I want to make some major progress on the things that make me feel the most accomplished at the end of the day.

  • Choose one more thing to finish this year

We’ve only got a few months left at this point. Time to be realistic. What can we finish in that amount of time?

  Try to find a larger goal, but one you’re fairly close to checking off. Put it first. This is the homestretch, and I typically want to finish the year with a bang of some kind. Even if this is the only thing you finish in the next few months, you should feel proud of it. I hope to get the first draft of book five finished before the new year. If that’s all I achieve before January, I will still be pleased with myself.

All this shouldn’t be done in one sitting. Take some time to think about it, pray for direction, take a walk in the woods, etc. There’s no real rush—and that’s a key point to remember. You have to ease into new routines and reorient your mind for new goals. That’s why seasons don’t change all at once.

Take your time. Enjoy the process. Let yourself hope for the best and find the most rewarding ways to get there. Fall is a refreshing and energizing season. If you’re enthusiastic about your goals, you’re not likely to spend it burnt out.

Happy Autumn!

Categories
Creativity

How to Recharge Your Creativity with Hobbies

You know what’s wrong with a lot of people anymore? They don’t have real hobbies. Too many people when I ask them what they do in their spare time say things like “Netflix,” “YouTube,” “Shop online,” “Listen to music.”

Not that any of that’s bad. Those are nice things to do for entertainment and relaxation when you don’t feel like doing much else. But I wouldn’t really call any of them hobbies. At least, not the type of hobbies I think creatives in particular benefit from.

If you’re like most artists, boredom is a serious issue. Under-stimulation is a villain that can often leave you feeling dull, depressed, and uninspired. But art is a lot of work, and we can’t do it all the time. Rest and downtime are important. Hobbies can be a form of active-rest that can bring fun and variety into your day-to-day life.

The trick is to find one that works for you. Here are a few things to consider when you look for a hobby.

What to look for in a hobby:

  • The right learning curve Everything requires a bit of a learning curve. Acquiring a new skill is part of what makes engaging in hobbies fun. But you have to know how much learning you’re willing to do. Don’t choose something that overwhelms you. That would defeat the purpose. A good option is to start with activities you’ve done in the past. What did you do as a child that might have some slightly more advanced version you would like to try now?
  • Mental engagement Yes, you probably want your hobbies to be fairly easy, but if they take too little brain-power, what’s to keep your mind from wandering to all the other things you think you should be doing when you’re trying to enjoy yourself for once? Look for something that requires you to be mentally present. Let yourself shamelessly focus on something “unimportant” now and then.
  • A chance to connect with others A lot of hobbies are solo pursuits, but not all of them have to be. Sometimes it can help to do something that other people join you in. Weather it’s one-on-one time with friends or family members or joining clubs or groups, hobbies can be a rare chance for us solitary creative types to interact with other humans. And if you have something you actively do with other humans, you can avoid some of the painful small talk, which is a huge bonus.
  • Relaxed expectations Let’s face it: we creatives have extremely high expectations for ourselves. We can get very hung up on our goals and always seem to end up dissatisfied with our own performance. With hobbies, we can actually get some practice in not being so hard on ourselves for a change. Look for something you find enjoyable even if you aren’t any good at it.
  • Fun Yes. Hobbies should be fun. Don’t do anything just because it’s popular or impressive or seems like something you should enjoy when you don’t enjoy it. Find something that’s actually fun for you.

Okay, so you want ideas. Here are my ideas. Feel free to start here.

Hobbies to Consider

  • Gardening

I dove into this one this year and I don’t regret it. It gets you outside, gets you active, and lets you exercise your artistic mind with design and planning for landscaping and plantings. I built a goldfish pond with a mini waterfall earlier this summer. I also planted a couple of flowering cherry trees which will be awesome if they survive the deer.

What if you don’t have that kind of space? Try container gardening or terrariums. Get into houseplants. (Get a snake plant if you’re afraid you’ll kill it. They’re basically immortal.)

  • Art journaling

Every time I think about multimedia art journaling I wish I did a lot more of it. Go get yourself a sketchbook with good heavy paper and start right now. I don’t care if you think you’re visually artistic or not, you have to try it. Look up some inspiration on Pinterest and start ripping things up and gluing things down and splattering paint and writing aesthetic quotes over it all in your messiest hand lettering. Trust me.

  • Inventing games

Have you ever tried this? I feel like everyone makes some ambitious attempts when they’re kids. I certainly made up quite a few. I still do it now and then. If you have a playful side in your creativity at all, you could try inventing a board game a card-game or some active game if you have the energy. (If you have the opportunity to test these on kids, all the better. You can get your hands on free or cheap programs for creating computer games if you have any technical inclination. Both of my younger brothers do this occasionally.

Honestly, what I really want to try someday is writing escape room games. They fascinate me. I love the combination of puzzles, storytelling, and in-person participation. I’ll probably try that someday.

  • Cooking

I’m a bit of a disaster in the kitchen myself, but some people have a lot more patience for cooking and baking than I do. Honestly, if you’re one of these people, or think you could be, please spend some of your free time adventuring in that department. Not only are you doing something creative and fascinating, you’re also doing a service for humanity by bringing more great food into the world. That’s something everyone can appreciate.

  • Photography

I’ve never taken a single photography class. I don’t even have a working camera besides the one on my phone right now. But I love photography. I really enjoy going out on a hunt for subjects, perspectives, and lighting to capture and bring home. Then there’s the editing part which is also quite satisfying even if you’re not a pro. Overall, I feel like photography makes me look at the world differently, which is something I always find exciting and worthwhile.

  • Pen-Paling

Why did we have to stop writing letters? Sending and receiving letters is a unique experience. Weather you enjoy it for the chance to improve your handwriting, a way to deepen friendships or an opportunity to create intricate mail-art, getting a pen-pal makes for a unique hobby in this fast-paced Snapchat world. And you know you need to talk to your friends more.

  • Anything that gets you outdoors or active

You’ve got to get away from your desk, you know? Start familiarizing yourself with the area hiking trails. Stargaze, birdwatch, beachcomb. Take square-dancing classes or taekwondo. You get the idea.

Tips on Making and Protecting Free Time

But you’re so busy. I know. You probably have a job, maybe school, maybe kids. Maybe for you, your creative work already fills the need for a hobby. In which case, you’re probably doing fine—as long as you make the time to do the unimportant things now and then.

The whole point is, you can’t always be in survival-mode. Sometimes you need to play and have fun, even as a busy adult driven to accomplish your goals and take your work, creative or otherwise, seriously. Fight for a bit of free time now and then. Artists need it. Actually, all humans need it, but artists particularly will suffer if they can’t get a moment to breathe.

How do you make sure you get free time?

  • Track how you spend your days—find out where you’re losing time
  • Get off your phone
  • Don’t mindlessly consume—don’t waste time on entertainment you don’t even like that much
  • Say “no” to things sometimes
  • Don’t overbook yourself—keep your to-do lists reasonable

Do you have any hobbies? What do you wish you had time for?

Categories
Creativity

How to Find Your Brand as an Artist

Sometimes I’ll admit I don’t know what I am. Sometimes I don’t feel like a whole person—just a creative void that somehow manages to produce art. But nothing can truly come from nothing. The art we create comes from who we are. In less words, you need to find your artist brand.

Art is very much wrapped up in the individuality of the artist. You would never create what you create if you were someone else. But sometimes it’s hard to find the foundation of who you are as an artist. Exactly why do you do what you do? What’s your inspiration? What’s your goal? What’s at the heart of it all?

These questions matter when you are in the process of creating art.

Why is it so important to know who you are as an artist?

Your personality and character will come though and shine if you stay true to who you are, what you want, and what you believe in as you work. To put it simply, to live up to your full potential as an artist, you have to find yourself.

Now you might be a little critical of the idea of “finding yourself.” Maybe it sounds kind of vague or cheesy, or maybe, as a Christian creative, you have a negative reaction to the whole idea. After all, it sounds self-centered. It sounds like you’re focusing too much on yourself instead of on God, who should be the center of your creative life and your mission.

Of course, God should be at the heart of your mission, but here’s what you need to remember: anything you want to do for God with your art he could have done himself with no help from you at all. But he didn’t leave you out. He wants to use you. And he wants to use you specifically—as a unique individual. Exploring and examining the person he made you to be isn’t self-centered at all. It’s a way to find clues to how he wants to use you.

What elements of your identity come into play when you create?

The best of your work will probably lean hard into your personality. When your art grows up from your deepest roots, it will be alive with originality and rare beauty. In order to find your artist brand, you need to find what makes you different and study it. I like to analyze this uniqueness this way:

Your inspirations are the other artists who have influenced your work. Everyone is drawn to different artists for different reasons and as an artist yourself, you have probably picked some things up from other creators you love. This isn’t copying. This is one of the things that makes your work unique.

Your heart—the things you value at the core of your being—will also influence your identity as an artist. What you love and what you consider to be the important things in life will probably show up in your art sooner or later.

Your mission is the reason behind what you do. Why do you create? Who and what do you do it for? You’re bringing art into the world—what value do you want that art to carry with it as it reaches out into the hearts and lives who come in contact with it?

Your aesthetic and your irony or contrast are the more concrete elements in your artistic personality. The aesthetic is your themes, your subject-matter, the genre and tropes and motifs your fall back on. The contrast is the effect that you get from juxtaposing elements of your aesthetic in unexpected ways, and is an often overlooked part of artistic voice. Don’t overlook it. It’s going to help you stand out once you discover and develop it.

How can you pin down what makes you a unique creative artist?

So, that’s a lot to think about and I know I just barely touched on it. That’s why I recommend you sign up to get the key to the Secret Library and grab my Artistic Identity Workbook, where I take you through a simple but thought-provoking questionnaire to help you explore and define all those elements listed above. I designed it as an easy first step on the journey to find your artist brand and explore it.

That’s just a starting point, but I hope it can help you feel more focused and inspired to continue to do what you do best. You are a fantastically unique person—and once you tap into that in your artistic life you’ll never have to worry about being boring or unoriginal.

So go find your artistic identity.

Categories
Creativity

How to Survive a Creative Dry Spell

Sometimes terrible things happen when you’re barreling through a piano piece. You hit a sudden snag, you’re fingers trip, your hand shifts, your brain scrambles and all of a sudden, you’re literally playing every note on the keyboard except the one you were looking for, and that’s that.

That happens now and then in everyone’s creative life. Something goes wrong somewhere and all of a sudden you can’t hit any of the right notes. Call it burnout. Call it a dry spell. Call it not feeling it anymore. It’s discouraging, but it isn’t permanent and it shouldn’t last as long as it often does.

In this post, I’m going to give you a three-step strategy to survive and escape a dry spell. Keep in mind that none of these steps should be rushed. The most likely cause of your burnout is overwhelm, so trying to check off a lot of boxes too quickly is going to defeat the purpose. So be very patient with yourself and take it easy.

And before you start, you’re going to need to stop.

Step one: stop and assess the situation

It pays to be self-aware, especially as creator. Creativity takes a whole lot out of you and requires your mind to be functioning at capacity. If something’s dragging, it’s going to show up in your ability to create.

Pay attention to your intuition, here. If something feels off, don’t ignore it. Keep an eye on yourself for a few days and note how well things seem to be going. It’s normal to have bad days now and then, but if something is actually going wrong, pay attention. Stop and observe what you’re having trouble with.

At this point, try making a list of your WIPs. You are probably working several projects at once right now. List them on paper. You might be doing a lot more that you realize.

Once you’ve got the list, go through the points one by one and note:

  • Anything that has an absolute deadline
  • the projects you feel most stuck on
  • the ones you still feel excited for
  • anything you are nearly finished with

Step two: refocus and organize

My first piece of advice for anyone experiencing burnout is, give yourself as much extra time as possible. There’s not much you can do about the projects that have actual unmovable deadlines, but you may be surprised how few of them actually do, if you think about it carefully.

But you might be thinking, “aren’t you just suggesting I procrastinate? How in the world is that going to help my overwhelm?” No. It’s not procrastination if you’re doing it intentionally. You are in control of your time. In many cases, as long as you’re not working for someone else directly, you have every right and every reason to choose not to rush something.

Next, you’re probably going to realize you need to re-prioritize your projects. This could be hard, but you need to be really honest about which projects you actually need to finish soon and which ones you really care about. You might find certain projects are simply giving you no joy. As long as they’re personal projects not for someone else, you might want to let them go, or at least set them aside for a while.

Now, you need to think about all angles of your projects. You might be struggling to write your next chapter because you need to go back into the outline and rework some mechanics there. You might even find your brain is ready to do that kind of work, even when you are struggling to write a cohesive sentence.

Redefine what it means to make progress on your WIP. Maybe wordcount should slide to the backburner while you focus on adjusting some plot or character work. Maybe if you’re stuck on a drawing you need to break it down into some studies so that you can clean up the details confidently.

Step three: gradually start working again

The former steps hopefully will have prepared you to approach your projects from a new angle. When you feel like you’re ready, or maybe a little before, try returning to your work.

Start with the easiest task. Something you can do in a day or less. Don’t dive in and try to accomplish something huge right away. Give yourself motivation with small accomplishments and move up.

Try working on different aspects of your larger projects, as you considered in the previous stage. Set small goals within larger goals. Stay patient with yourself and don’t start pushing your limits until the idea of doing that sounds exciting instead of exhausting. You’ll bounce back sooner than you think. Be patient!

So, here’s a quick recap for you:

Step 1: stop and assess

  • notice and acknowledge what you’re struggling with
  • list your WIPs
  • make notes on the status of each, and how motivated you are

Step 2: refocus and organize

  • be realistic about deadlines and give yourself as much extra time as possible
  • reprioritize your projects
  • redefine progress on you WIPs

Step 3: start working again

  • start with your easiest task
  • break larger projects into smaller pieces
  • be patient

And here’s a final note of encouragement from me to you.

Creative dry spells are really difficult. For a lot of artists, our whole being revolves around what we do. Creating is what makes us feel alive and joyful and useful in the world. When something happens and we become too exhausted or dull or overwhelmed to do our thing, it’s easy to start feeling like a walking shadow. I know this.

But it happens from time to time. And when it does, we need to have both a plan to recover and get back to it, and an understanding that, even without our creative powers functioning, there is still beauty and purpose in our day-to-day lives. We have a reason we’re here that goes beyond what we do. I know it’s easy to say when you’re feeling good about your output and energy-levels, but it’s true even in our lowest times.

This isn’t an easy thing to grasp. I certainly don’t have it figured out, yet. But you have to fight the mental demons that come around when you’re dealing with burnout. It’s one of the many unique spiritual and emotional struggles artists face.

If you’re in a dry spell right now, I hope this post is helpful to you. It will get better, so don’t give up. The world needs your art.

P.S.

This post was actually written as a bonus for my prompt journal, The Burnout Journal for Artists and Creatives. The Burnout Journal contains 101 prompts that could be used for art, poetry, or writing and space for you to explore each one.

The prompts are richly detailed with a lot of opportunity to take them each your own unique direction. Plus, the limits of the two-page spread, and the comforts of the journal format are designed to take the pressure off your creative process and encourage you to have fun.

Check it out if you want a little extra help recovering from burnout.

Categories
Creativity Writing

Strange Ways I Fight Writer’s Block

Writer’s block does happen. I have heard people rant about how it’s just your imagination and how “real” writers don’t get writer’s block. “Just keep writing,” they say. “It’s an excuse for laziness,” they say. Oh, okay, if that’s your philosophy, fine, be a snob about it. But for the rest of us, something’s got to be done to get out of the rut.
  I know the feeling. Your mind gets all clouded and dull and drifty. You can’t look at the screen. You can’t remember how anything is spelled. Your vocabulary is down to like, five words. If you start writing, sawdust and dead moths start piling up inside your word document somehow. Maybe it comes from physical exhaustion, maybe it’s lowkey depression, maybe you feel harried by all life’s other demands on your mental energy.
   These are real problems that are going to affect your creative output. It’s only natural. If you know there are practical things you need to fix before you can write—hey, do them. If you don’t know what needs fixed…try doing it my way.
·         Read really bad writing. I know, this is not something most author blogs encourage aspiring authors to do, but it can fire me up. I suggest hitting a fanfiction site and finding a story from a fandom you care about with some really sloppy writing in which the author makes some decisions you really hate. Be angry, be very angry. Then crack your knuckles and open your manuscript. Show ‘em what realwriting looks like.
·         Start writing your scenes as dialogue only.Writing dialogue fills up a page fast, and it’s encouraging. It also narrows your focus to one element of your writing so that you’re not grappling with so much at once. Writing fiction involves balancing so many skills at once, it’s no wonder it gets overwhelming. Just focus on making the dialogue work. Come back and write the narrative in later, and feel free to alter it then.
·         Use really weird words and expressions. Don’t worry about your readers. You can edit all you want later. The idea here is to loosen up and get your brain into play mode. One thing that’s sure to cause writer’s block is taking yourself and your work way too seriously. There’s a very fine line between genius and crazy—forget it until you make yourself laugh. Laughing is good for your artist’s mind.
·         Move to a completely different project. Don’t get tunnel-vision on your main project. Always have several other ideas on standby to stimulate your creative circulation. These can be writing projects (probably at least a few should be), visual art or a craft, if that’s your thing, writing a song, building a model, remodeling a room, teaching your cat to sing the entire Ring Cycle—whatever. Just try channeling some serious energy into some other interesting activity.
·         Start a notebooking challenge. I’ll probably end up doing a whole post on this in the near future. I don’t know if this is a thing, or if I invented it, but it involves making a list of prompts for yourself in a notebook. (I know how many creatives are obsessed with notebooks.) The prompts I write typically involve a combination of writing and drawing. Some examples I’ve done are: Draw islands that represent emotions, find random words in the dictionary and write new definitions for them, draw a creature that looks the way you feel…things like that. It’s a great exercise if your creative muscles are stiff.
·         Talk to somebody about your project. If you can find a friend or family member sympathetic to your cause, it can be very helpful to have someone to talk to about what might be stalling your progress. If you have someone in your life who has read some of your work, all the better, you’ll have less to explain. They may have some interesting insights about your project that you yourself were blind to. Other people can be very helpful, even if they have no advice. It’s just good to let somebody else in your creative world now and then.
·         Do something completely out of the norm. Adventure is a great cure-all. Just get up and go somewhere strange, do something unique. The rhythms of everyday life can make you feel trapped sometimes. You have freewill. Go ahead and break them. Remind yourself you’re not a robot from time to time. Robots rarely write great stories.
  So, there’s my advice to those suffering with writer’s block. I like to think I’m a pretty good example of a hyperactive idea-generating dynamo, but I won’t pretend even I don’t get burned-out on occasion. I definitely do. But I’m doing better now. I can feel the change writing this post has made to my brain chemistry. I’ll get some novel-writing done today.

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