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Aug 4

10 Comments

Christine: Sleepless in the Studio

As I get older, I realize just how important getting enough actual sleep is to my creative process.

Long ago, one of my dance professors explained the concept of the personal well of creativity, and how sleep is a key to replenishing it. I thought I understood at the time, I mean, of course you need to get enough sleep in order to dance. Tired dancers get hurt, do not serve the choreographer’s artistic vision, and are not strong.

What she really meant was that the source of your personal artistic stamp on creative work comes from a place that biologically requires rest, but also spiritually requires it. Rest allows the re-ordering of thought processes, the ability to plan and integrate ideas, see various perspectives, make connections, find meaning, and use the tools of your art more skillfully. You reach down into your personal “well” for the tools that make your work your own expression, and you apply them to the project at hand. When you’re tired, it’s harder to reach and there’s less there to grasp.

So, in order to make better work, you have to sleep adequately to refill the well. Read more

Aug 3

1 Comment

Cathy: Writing, Editing, and Not

This post is kind of a way for me to work out hitting a wall in my manuscript.

All I want is to finish it. In my heart, I still love it. But after so many edits, this edit is really a bore to do. In my house, two kids are gone for a month, including the most distracting one. In and around my house is a lot of neglected house stuff, largely due to my trying to focus on the manuscript.

When I try to write at home, even if I have my mother-in-law take the 3-year-old out of the house for a couple of hours, invariably I putz around finding other things to do until, lo and behold, they return, and I haven’t even pulled the critiqued manuscripts out of my tote bag. Like the day last week, when Toots decided waking up throwing up was the way to go that day rather than out of the house with Grandma. I sank her into the couch with Netflix streaming kid videos, and the next thing I knew, I found myself hacking branches in the yard in 100 degree heat, because that apparently was immensely preferable to actually finishing my novel.

And I had a good session on it the day before when I did my usual Tuesday routine of packing everything up and taking it to the library to edit. Okay, so the next day, off to the library I went, and knocked through two chapters in a fairly painless edit session.

As I write this, I look back over this very morning, noting that, yes, I had an early doctor appointment, from which I left a bit upset, mostly just burnt out on doing the specialist shuffle, so I gave myself permission to see another human being, I mean tea chat with a friend, and then another friend who is back in town visiting from far far away showed up, and finally I trotted myself off to the library. I couldn’t settle in as the place was teaming with people, and then the summer camps came tromping through in droves, so I turned right around, having never even opened the laptop. Read more

Aug 1

14 Comments

Monday Post ~ August 1, 2011

“The most productive artists I know have a plan in mind when they get down to work. They know what they want to accomplish, how to do it, and what to do if the process falls off track. But there’s a fine line between good planning and overplanning. You never want the planning to inhibit the natural evolution of your work.” ~Twyla Tharp


What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic goal or a milestone to reach for. A goal as simple as “I will be creative for 10 minutes every day” or “I will gesso three canvases” is what it’s all about. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Jul 28

5 Comments

Christine: The Crooked Path of Creativity

I’m Christine. My path in the creative life is, like most, not very straight.

I have been a trained, professional dancer, and am now a trained, professional speech pathologist.

I used to only view my creativity in terms of my physical and emotional ability to respond to music and choreography, but now I see that my gifts extend far beyond what I could do as a dancer, to encompass all the things I can do with my hands and my mind.

Right now, the majority of my work is in artisan jewelry, but the essence of my soul is one of a teacher and a student. I truly love any creative work I can do with my hands — fabric and metals and glass are my main media at this time. The physicality of swinging a hammer to forge copper, the intense concentration over a flame and melting rod of glass, the feel of textiles that I shape into three-dimensional objects feed my soul and fire up my life. There is really no art or craft I don’t want to try.

I am the lucky mother of three beautiful children — intense creations in their own rights. My eldest daughter is thirteen, my middle daughter is five and a half, and my son is three (“and a half, Mommy!”). When my son was born, I left full-time clinical practice to be home with my children. The creative work I do is not required to maintain our standard of living, and the professional work I do part-time (which does maintain our lives) can be done by telecommuting, by working off-hours, and by setting my own schedule. So, technically, I suppose, I am somewhat of a stay-at-home AND work-at-home mother.

Navigating the work, the household responsibilities, my children and their needs, and my own desire (NEED) for time to create is often exhausting on many levels. I admit to feeling a significant amount of stress whenever I considered ALL that I had to do or was responsible for in the course of a day. I often felt like I was running out of time, or that I needed to accomplish EVERYthing EVERY day. Read more

Jul 26

3 Comments

Kelly: Disappointments and Moving Forward


Those Brave Girls…I tell ya, sometimes they really hit the nail on the head. Remember my Surrendering My Superpowers post? Where I told you I was applying for a full-time faculty position? I was a finalist for that faculty position, and I was really hopeful; I felt really good about my chances. Well, I had my final interview with our campus president on Tuesday. This morning, I learned that I was not her choice. Disappointed? Most certainly. Grateful that I still have a job I enjoy anyway? Definitely. When I got back to my office after meeting with the dean this morning, just trying to wrap my head around the fact that I would still be sitting at the same desk when Fall term starts, I tried to come out of the fog by absentmindedly checking my email. And here was my Daily Truth from the Brave Girls Club:

Dear Fantastic Girl,

Just when you think you have things figured out, even in ONE part of your life….life throws you a curveball.

This is a place where you have a wonderful opportunity…many wonderful opportunities, actually. You get to decide right here, right now…what you will do next. You get to test those amazing skills you’ve been learning about concerning the power of your choice.

You have several choices ahead of you when unexpected things happen. Read more

Jul 25

11 Comments

Monday Post ~ July 25, 2011

“Carve out the time. Notice I do not say find the time. That is an absurd and dangerous phrase. Time is never lying around waiting for us to find her. She is elusive. She wants you to sculpt her like clay, to mold her into exactly the form you desire your days to take. If you refuse to do that, if you spend your mornings worrying and your afternoons catering to others, always hoping there will be a few minutes left for you, time will play you like a sucker, making you run harder and faster with each passing week. Time wants you to realize that she is the most precious and irreducible fact in your live. Make her into what you will.”
~Jennifer Louden


What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic goal or a milestone to reach for. A goal as simple as “I will be creative for 10 minutes every day” is what it’s all about. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Jul 22

3 Comments

Alissa: Centered by Creative Practice

My name is Alissa; I am a mom of three kids, and I want you to know that it is worthwhile exploring your creativity no matter how many loads of laundry you have left, or if you have dishes sitting in the sink. That’s the long and the short of it, really. This is the lesson I am learning and I would like others to join me.

I was lucky to grow up in  a family that always encouraged my creativity. I was the kid whose answer for boredom was, “let’s make something!” I drew, sewed, and crafted my way through grade school. I acted and drew in high school, and tried out costuming and dance in college. Even with all this creating in my life I was headed towards stagnation.

Somehow along the way (maybe just from society at large, I don’t really know…) I got the creativity-killing notion that creativity was only worthwhile if I could make money with it. This stymied me for years after college and into my married life. I fumbled with a few “creative type” businesses during my first couple years parenting, but didn’t get very far. I struggled and felt blocked. Read more

Jul 21

New Resource: Eric Maisel’s World Salon

Eric Maisel, prolific writer and creativity coach extraordinaire, has launched a new creativity resource with his wife, Ann Maisel. This new venture is the World Salon, an interactive resource for creatives around the globe. And I’m thrilled to have the inaugural column in the Coach’s Corner! Opportunities to contribute abound, so don’t miss out. More about the World Salon, from Dr. Maisel’s introduction:

Think­ing about writ­ing a mys­tery? Need to raise money to pro­duce your album? Need help as a begin­ning cos­tume designer? Want to give more pow­er­ful audi­tions? Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion as a tex­tile artist?

You’ve come to the right place!

My name is Eric Maisel and I’ve invited cre­ative and per­form­ing artists from around the world to share their expe­ri­ences and their exper­tise with you—for free. Our World Salon is a world­wide com­mu­nity of cre­ative indi­vid­u­als from all walks of life who are look­ing for com­mu­nity, resources, and a place to feel heard and under­stood. We hope that the World Salon will become that place.

Our fea­tures include a library of Ten Tip pdfs that you can down­load imme­di­ately, read, and use. And we’ll be adding more all the time! We have a fea­ture called World­wide Per­spec­tives where more than a hun­dred cre­ative and per­form­ing artists from around the world share their expe­ri­ences in “Let­ter From” columns (for exam­ple, “Let­ter from Los Ange­les,” “Let­ter from Lon­don,” and “Let­ter from Berlin”). We have other fea­tures, too, like an artist’s voice fea­ture, links to great arti­cles, a coach’s cor­ner, a philosopher’s corner—please look around!

I hope that you’ll want to con­tribute to our com­mu­nity. Many of our fea­tures are open to you. Look around, see what inter­ests you, and join our world­wide com­mu­nity of contributors!

Please enjoy your visit.

Check it out!

Jul 18

20 Comments

Monday Post ~ July 18, 2011

“Nurturing your own creative spirit will not only bring more peace, satisfaction, and joy into your life and the lives of those around you, but it will also serve as a guide and model to your children on finding their creative lives.”
~Amanda Blake Soule


What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic goal or a milestone to reach for. A goal as simple as “I will be creative for 10 minutes every day” is what it’s all about. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Jul 13

6 Comments

Filling the Well with Well-Being

Mothers take care of other people. It’s what we do. And we don’t get sick days. You’re so tired you can barely move, but you still have to scrape yourself off the floor and go change that poopy diaper or drive your teenager to ice hockey practice at some ungodly hour.

With so many non-negotiable tasks at hand, it’s easy to slip into an abyss without even realizing you’re in free-fall. Everything seems fine on the surface: you’re taking care of home and family, getting your work done, and nothing unusually stressful is going on — and yet something isn’t right. You’re vaguely aware that you aren’t spending much — if any — time being creative, except you’re too busy to think about it. But you start getting irritated with your spouse and children. Even the dog starts bothering you with her constant shedding and slobbery ways. Your beautiful home morphs into a giant pair of shackles, and you’re suddenly only the laundress, cook, scullery maid, assistant, chauffer, accountant, and charwoman — and likely also earning a paycheck. No one appreciates what you do, or the fact that between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. you have about five minutes of downtime. You get resentful, sometimes even angry, which may mean you stop talking and perhaps drop each loaded dinner plate onto the table a little less graciously than you’d intended.

When you spend your life careening from one responsibility to the next — even if you enjoy those responsibilities — it’s easy to lose sight of yourself and start resenting the people you live with, which doesn’t work for anyone. Consider the aphorism “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” If you’re feeling grim, all the little sponges in your house are going to pick up on that vibe, even if they don’t verbalize it.

When you’re already doing so much that you can’t imagine doing more, how can you find time to reconnect with yourself? Start small and simple. Reconnecting may or may not involve “art,” per se. Chose something that makes you feel good. The feeling of ease is what restores your center. This spills over into your creative process.

When are you at your happiest? Interestingly, some mothers aren’t able to answer this seemingly straightforward question. Can you? Grab an index card or a notebook and write down everything you can think of that makes you feel good. Is there a way to integrate some of those conditions or activities into daily life? What can you do every day to help ensure that the present moment feels like the gift that it really is? Are there three small things you can commit to doing every day that might impact your sense of well-being? This is really about developing a few new habits, rather than about heaping more “shoulds” onto the pile. (Goodness knows, the last thing we need is more shoulds.) With a bit of intention and some new routines, you may find yourself living more fully — in art and motherhood — than you ever thought possible.

What works for you?

This piece was reprinted from the last issue of the Creative Times, our monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe!

Jul 11

8 Comments

Monday Post ~ July 11, 2011

“Many women have said to me that they could never have reached the creative heights they have when their children were young. Still others say that having children actually sparked new creative cycles for them. No one can say what’s true for you — we are all individuals with our own unique reactions to life events.” ~Gail McMeekin



What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic goal or a milestone to reach for. A goal as simple as “I will be creative for 10 minutes every day” is what it’s all about. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Jul 8

Writer Mother Interview: Laura Wilkinson

Editor’s note: This interview is generously cross-posted from Alison Wells’s Head Above Water.

Laura Wilkinson grew up in a Welsh market town and as a child was a voracious reader. She has a BA in literature and worked as a freelance journalist, editor and copywriter. Her first novel, BloodMining, the story of a young woman’s quest to uncover the truth about her origins to save her son’s life, will be published in autumn 2011 by Bridge House. She currently lives and works in Brighton, England.

Tell us about your children, Laura.

I’ve two boys: Morgan, twelve, and Cameron, seven. They’re glorious redheads; I call them Ginger1 and Ginger2, and people comment on their extraordinary hair colour all the time, especially as both their parents are brunettes. You can imagine the comments!

When did your writing begin?

As a journalist, copywriter and editor for many years before the children came along, and then alongside them. Fiction came later, around five and a half years ago, once I was out of the totally sleepless nights period with my youngest. Both my boys were horrendous sleepers! My routine has always been fixed around the major needs of the kids and, so far, it seems to work for all of us.

What impact has having children had on your writing career?

Having the boys focused me. I’d harboured a desire to write fiction for years, but work and other stuff (like going out, partying, and other hedonistic activities) got in the way. As well as fear. After the children came along I became more aware, more centered, and the brevity and preciousness of life hit me, hard. I knew that if I didn’t at least try to write I’d have let myself down, and the boys somehow. Now I use the little free time I have doing something that stretches me, challenges me, surprises me, and I find that really, really exciting.

How do you organise your writing time and space? Read more

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