Category Archives: creative life

2017 Creative Goals

Posted on by
7

goals17titleFor this upcoming year, I’m keeping things (relatively) simple:

  1. Finish Salt Novel.
  2. Find the soul of Yes Novel.
  3. Read a book a week.
  4. Blog once a week.
  5. Learn something new every day.

We’ll see how this goes. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to keep up with #3 and #4, but I won’t beat myself up if I can’t do it. It’s a standard to shoot for, that’s all.

quick-and-curiousSalt Novel is well underway. Yes Novel has a first draft. I have a mountain of books I want to read. The blog needs some TLC. And I bought this super-cute, extremely relevant journal to keep track of my daily curiosities.

I have a lot of other goals for 2017, but I’ve decided (for now) just to share my creative ones. I will be writing soon about my one word I want to focus on this year.

Five little (ha!) goals. Salt. Yes. Read. Blog. Learn.

How about you? Do you set goals, creative or otherwise, for the new year? I wanna hear!

goals17

 

 

 

 

A Better Question

Posted on by
Reply

Did I ever share this article with you guys? It’s important.

Instead of asking, “What do I want?” ask, “What is worth struggling for?”

I hope you’ll read this and share your thoughts.

It begins:

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

Click here to read the rest.

Processed with VSCOcam with x4 preset

Being a Creator is Uncomfortable

Posted on by
1

Writing a novel is a long, difficult journey full of emotions. Some days I’m thrilled with my work; some days it disgusts me. Sometimes I feel a sort of writer’s high; often I am in a slump.

But amidst all the join and pain of writing, I experience this level of … discomfort. Discomfort is probably the best word for it.

unsplash9

I’ve been thinking a little bit about it, and I have a few random thoughts. Do you care if I use bullet points? Thanks.

  • My discomfort stems from having something incomplete. I understand that the nature of creation is that something is being created and that likely doesn’t happen in a moment. But I hate having messy drafts. I want to know that if I got hit by a bus today, something could still be done with my manuscript. (Gruesome much, Sommers?)
  • I think this discomfort is a huge reason for how driven I am in writing. I go into beast mode as I write and revise. And it’s all because I want to get the manuscript back to a modicum of order.
  • Does this say something about my innate desire for order? Maybe. (Though you would not think that if you looked at my bedroom. #tornado)
  • I’m thinking about God creating– some think he made the world in a literal six days (and rested on the seventh), some think those days are just metaphors, some think there is no God. But I’m intrigued at the idea of him hammering through all this creative work and then finally getting a chance to rest. Sometimes I feel that way too. I have to get this work done before I can properly rest and recover.
  • I understand that I need to learn to live with this discomfort. It’s been the major lesson of my adult life: learning to embrace uncertainty, learning to stay knee-deep in discomfort until I acclimate. I am trying to stretch these lessons to my creative life. I tell myself I only need to revise 1000 words a day … but then I barrel through and do 10k because I can and because it’s uncomfortable and because I want to get things back to good. But how much more will I learn if I stay in the discomfort? I don’t know.

Just some thoughts for you. Would love to hear if these ideas prompted any reaction in you.

Thanks for being lovely.