Solitude

1.

Leo Babauta:

The No. 1 Creativity Habit

In a word: solitude.

Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.

Of course, there are lots of ways to find this solitude.

Via @ThereseWalsh.

2.

Only when one is alone can one find quiet. Silence.

Without which, you cannot truly hear or see or feel. Take your pick.

The story you want to tell cannot reveal itself to you until you are ready to listen.

3.

This ties in with the idea of deliberate practice, or whatever you want to call it.

It is easier to write, to practice the musical instrument of your choice, to draw, to sculpt, you name it, when you are alone.

But people are not the only distractions. The internet, for instance, now that nearly every writer seems to work mostly from a computer. Twitter is a useful tool, to be certain, but it could just as easily have been called Distraction Central.

4.

I consider the distractions to be separate from the procrastinations.

The procrastinations are things you do to avoid seeking out that solitude. Cleaning seems to be rather popular, which I don't understand, but I suppose if you're desperately avoiding something, cleaning's probably better than TV.

I admit my favorite procrastination is reading, as I always have a crazy amount of reading to catch up on anyway.

5.

Either way, there are things out there that try to prevent us from reaching that space.

The trick is to rise above it. Because it is necessary.

Sheer, desperate desire helps, though it can also hinder.

It's easy enough to lock yourself into a room. It's much harder to find true solitude, to find the space where you can create.

Sometimes, one can go crazy trying to find that space, and yet, without that space, we'd probably be crazier.

1.

I really should write up the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition I went to at the Victoria & Albert.

2.

I've never felt this defeated.

Not even with my novels, not even the ones that I have consigned to a place so deep, that they may never see the light of day.

I can't even bring myself to think about it any more.

3.

Writing was never an escape for me, not the way it seems to have been for so many of my fellow writers.

It was just something I did. I wanted to be a writer, enough to earn the discipline.

Now it feels like all I have left, and I don't even know how I got here.

Breathe

1.

Or why so many writers/artists are addicted to one thing or another.

2.

As I write this, I have just finish somewhat more than a third of a bottle of wine.

I currently weigh little more than 40kg, 6.3 stone or 89 pounds.

One third of a bottle of wine is quite a lot for me. My record stands at three-quarters, but I weighed at least 5-6 -- and probably more -- kilograms then.

3.

The conversation went...

Guy: Wait a minute! If the both of you had a small glass, then it must mean she's had something like three-quarters of the bottle!

Me: Yup! I'm feeling really happy right now!

4.

Today's the first day in many, many days that I've felt like I could breathe.

Just breathe, and not worry about anything else. I feel almost weightless, and I haven't felt like this in I-don't-know-how-long.

5.

I know it's a slippery path I'm on, the path to addiction.

But some days, I just can't help myself.

1.

I am uncertain as to whether I'm madder at my body or my mind right now.

2.

I'm taking a trip back in time in Hurricane Forever.

It's kind of nice. I think I'm going to have another one of those 'OH! So that's why....' moments after I finish.

3.

I'm thinking of taking another trip back in time.

I have a few vignettes that happen before my magnum opus's timeline. I'm thinking of expanding them with a more erotic flavor.

I blame Nadia Lee for erotic flavor bit.

4.

I'm moving my stuff to DropBox. For one reason or another but primarily because Ovi Files kept giving me fits. :P Do sign up via my link so we both get an extra 250mb, though why I need the extra space, I don't know.

5.

I have started Sampler Cove's Thriller.

If you don't click on the link, here's the verse on the sampler:

Moonlight casts an eerie glow
in shadows terror hides
Searching for the haunted souls
On wicked wings she rides

It is definitely not what I planned to start this month, but I did kit it up completely from stash. I used up the remaining Spyro Aida I had, and the floss is from the mountain of silk I ordered with a bunch of pals a few months back, which is quite the accomplishment. More so than actually starting it.

1.

I've updated my synopsis some. Re-worked some key points.

I think the storyline could work as things stand, but I'm sure things will change.

2.

I've just hit the 20k mark, which is a nice little milestone.

In terms of plot, I'm just about hit the meat of the book. Which will be nice because I haven't gotten this far before with a first draft. Which is a more significant milestone, if you ask me.

3.

It's May. I need to contemplate The Year of Starts again. Thinking of starting Rhoda Morley, unless I get my act together enough to find a decent pair of scissors in this house to cut the fabric for Metta Putfarckens.

I hardly stitched last month. I doubt this month will be much better.

4.

The war of being is not going so well.

Sometimes I wish I could take out a piece of my psyche, swap it out for a better, less dented version made of titanium that will not rust or corrode and is sturdy enough to take a few hits.

Introversion

1.

I think that a writer complaining about having to promote oneself despite being an introvert is a cop out.

2.

I’m not surprised that most writers are introverted. It is a job where one spends a great deal of time alone. In the long-run, it’s probably a benefit.

3.

But I see being a people-person as being more of a facet of one’s personality. It’s almost like a  muscle. It must be stretched and worked and then you’ll end up with something more.

4.

My greatest achievement in my three years of university isn’t learning to live on my own, much less my degree – such as things stand at the moment.

It’s strengthening my people-person muscle to the point where most of the people I know think I’m pretty extroverted.

After all, I’m always out and about, and the first to accept an invitation to head out with people.

Sometimes, I over-extend myself. In which case, I grit my teeth and get on with it if I have to, and cancel if I can. 

5.

I wasn’t going to post this today. I had something else in mind.

Then I came across this post on Jay Lake’s blog, which sent me to this post by Jessica Reisman.

I think Reisman has a point. I think on average, it’s better to be an extrovert than an introvert if you want to achieve something that requires a great deal of public (defined as other than friends & family) approval.

At least, it just might be easier.

Immersion

1.

I’m a write-every-day kind of writer.

It took me three years to earn that kind of discipline, and I’ll be damned if I let it disintegrate now.

2.

But I think it’s not really about writing-every-day.

It’s about Thinking About The Work every day, because it’s what keeps you ‘plugged into your work’. Sort of, if your novel’s a ‘flow,’ then it’s just easier to tap into it if you do it every day.

Pretty sure some people can do it without writing every day, but I’m also pretty sure it’s easier just to write every day – barring time constraints, of course.

3.

I started one of my old blogs to keep my hand in, so to speak. Just to make sure that I wrote something every day.

It kind of worked. I wrote every day, though I didn’t post usually post what I wrote the same day – it got to a point where I was writing my posts up to a week or more in advance because I just blogged, blogged, blogged.

On the other hand, it was the perfect procrastination-from-fiction tool*, because I could tell myself ‘I’m still writing.’

But I wasn’t.

4.

If there’s anything similar to blogging, it might be writing vignettes and other types of short-form fiction. They are like doing the hundred meter dash every day, just on different athletic tracks – somebody will probably want to smack me for this analogy, but I don’t write short-form at all so forgive me.

Novels are marathons. Plod plod plod.

5.

Actually, strike that.

Novels are more like obstacle courses. Sometimes you run into a wall, a mud pit, something you have to climb over, or crawl under…

You need to deal with them, and you need to deal with each of them intelligently. You don’t want to expend more effort than necessary, but sometimes, you gotta bring out the bulldozers.

But here’s the thing. Books are organic objects, whether you’re a plotter or not.

If you dig up something to dump it and you dig it up by the roots? It’ll jostle the foundations of the rest of your constructions.

I think only if you’re truly immersed in your book can you see the rough edges, sand them off, and put the pieces back together to form a new pattern.

6.

So breathe your work. Dream of it. Wallow in it. Hold it deep within your heart.

Immerse yourself.

Commitment

1.

Starting a book is a commitment.

It’s a commitment to telling a story.

2.

And it’s like getting married.

You work at it, you cry over it, and you scream at it. You fight with it, you love it, and you want to kill it.

You don’t give up, unless the alternative is a billion times worse.

3.

If you do quit, if you do decide that it’s not worth it any more, you may feel guilty.

But you also feel incredibly relieved. Which possibly makes you feel even more guilty.

4.

Whether you quit or not, your self-worth takes a hit, because you must have done so many/everything wrong otherwise it would have been much easier…right?

*Inspired by Nadia’s recent marriage to Evil Hero Material, henceforth known as her better half. *g*

Focus

1.

Some people call it in the zone. Writers like Justine Lee Musk call it ‘writing deep.’

In one of my favourite books, S.L. Viehl’s Blade Dancer, a trainer at the assassin school the protagonists are studying at comments that Sajora (I don’t have the book with me, so it might be Jakol instead) has found the ‘sword within herself’ (again, the book’s not with me, so this is most probably a paraphrase.

For me, it boils down to this: Don’t Think, Just Do.

2.

This latest exam period, I discovered just how difficult some people find it to reach that state of mind, and how much more difficult many people find it to stay there.

3.

You need to push.

For some people, it’s all rather Zen.

I think of it as The Push – I suspect this I stole from Lilith Saintcrow’s The Society series, because one of the protagonists is able to ‘push’ people into doing stuff.

Having said all that, I tend to think of life as a war rather than a path, etc.

4.

You can learn how to Push yourself.

Successful creative people aren’t just creative people. They do things that help support what they create.

For a writer, this might include PR, web design, networking and bookkeeping.

I think something that successful people often are able to do, but is rarely talked about, is the ability to direct creative energy outside their preferred outlet of expression.

5.

You can do wonders if you just have the energy and the willpower to get it done.

And if you can commit that much for writing, you can do the same for the rest of your life.