Creativity Has No Medium, Artists Do

As I have documented the recovery of my creativity, I have noticed that even though I consider myself a writer, my creativity doesn’t necessarily pay attention to that label. Creativity doesn’t seem to have a medium; artists choose a medium themselves.

For instance, I played the piano in high school and even wrote a little bit of music at a summer camp I attended my sophomore and junior years. So, when musical themes started popping into my head as I finished my novel, I had the paper on hand to write them out. Today, I got them out of my head and on paper, and what started as just three notes turned into two separate little bits of music I could develop in the future if I wanted to. I think my brain is actually composing a soundtrack for the movie my book could become, in order to help me visualize the scenes completely. Pretty cool, huh? Who knew I could write music? Of course I still don’t consider myself a composer, but this it’s fun to expand my horizons this way. I still want to focus on writing the book, so I’m just writing down the notes that come to mind, not fully developing these snippets. Maybe I can really have some fun with these in a few months when I wrap up the novel.

Poetry has also been washing through my mind like waves, but I haven’t had a pencil handy enough or the presence of mind to write it down. I bet that would help me as well if I could get it down on paper and remember it. Again, poetry is something that takes revision after revision to get just right, but the fact that any stanzas are moving through my mind tells me I’m in a pretty good place creatively right now.

What has your experience been with creativity and the medium of your choice? Do you play music to relax and help you write? Do you sculpt to help you paint? I would love to hear about it in comments.

“Are You Able To Handle Shifting Priorities?”

Can I balance being a SAHM and an editor and a writer and a budding novelist? Well, I can do it today.

“Are you able to handle shifting priorities?”

I think of this common interview question often these days. My answer used to be some mixture of examples from previous work experience and B.S. HR managers want to hear. These days my answer would be more like, “Are you kidding me?” In the last 4 months I have taken a new job, lost my daughter’s morning nap, twice shifted which of my three jobs/projects gets most of my available time, and dealt with sleep deprivation due to baby girl’s molars coming in and working with 3 1/2 hours less time per day to work than 4 months ago. It’s not so much shifting priorities as it is a constant sliding scale these days. But that’s okay.

This morning I had a great time at the lake near our house, talking with some mommy friends of mine about work and balancing career with kids. From our conversations I gathered we all deal with this, and the more kids you have the more often you shift priorities or shift plans on how to balance it all. Because I’m a nerd, I wrote down (again) everything I’m dealing with and some possible solutions to the current unsustainable schedule. I’m happy to say I’m heading back into a phase of focusing my efforts on fewer things as well as starting new phases of current projects. I’m excited about it, and for those of you who follow my posts about my journey to becoming a full-time writer/editor, here is a break-down of the new phase that is taking me one step closer to becoming a full-time novelist.

Inhabitat

This hasn’t turned out as planned, with less pay coming in for more work than I had planned. But, I’m working on ways to offer Inhabitat more value for the limited time I can offer them, so I can hopefully keep bumping the income up while getting that “Transportation Editor” credit on my resume. I’m working on doing more car review features and interviews, plus I’m thinking up other ways I could lend more of my expertise to the blog, rather than running on the treadmill of regurgitating press releases for the morning news feed.

29 Diapers

I was feeling stuck on where to take 29 Diapers for a bit, mostly due to exhaustion. Now I’m planning a new phase of the blog in which I will test homemade natural personal care and cleaning product recipes and not only post them on the blog for my readers but also compile them into a new book. Publishing a new book is just the sort of thing to give me more energy to keep this project going until I know I have exhausted every avenue I want to explore for monetizing my little micro start-up.

The Novel

I wrote 22,000 words in July, woohoo! All it took was shifting 5 hours of work per week from Inhabitat and 29 Diapers to my novel, and I quickly wrote the rough draft to part 3 of my novel. Now I need to polish up the whole thing, adding atmosphere and polishing characterization and plot in part 3 and sprucing up the whole manuscript. Then, I’m off to one Christian fiction writers conference and one mainstream fiction writers conference to meet agents. This WILL happen. Everything else is a hobby compared to my goal of transitioning to literary/spiritual fiction writing as soon as it is workable. And my husband and I have recently defined what workable means in terms of the income I need to bring in. I love boundaries. Thanks, Punkins.

… And Another Project

Okay, so this probably doesn’t sound focused, but I decided to contact a church that has been very formative in my spiritual growth and propose they launch a new online magazine and social media outreach to replace a print magazine they use to publish that I loved and miss since they stopped publishing it two years ago. Turns out they were planning just such a project and may hire me to write some articles and interviews, as well as do some editorial work for them in the future, if the project takes off after launch. I would have to shift some work hours from another project to this, as I literally have no extra time left to give (unless I worked from 2 am-4 am, hmm) but spiritual writing and editing work would fill out my current theme of heading towards work that focuses on eco-friendly living and spirituality. I would love love love it if I could use the green living and spirituality genres of non-fiction to finance my transition into writing fiction about nature and spirituality. How perfect would that be? And just like that, things are coming into focus for the next few years down the road.

A Sneaky Book Marketing Experiment

I did something a little sneaky two weeks ago, as Borders announced it was going out of business for good and closing all its stores–including my hometown original Ann Arbor Borders. I went to the liquidation sale on the first day and took advantage of my last chance to see my book on my hometown bookstore chain’s shelves. Yup, I snuck three copies of my book EcoFrugal Baby onto the shelves of Borders to see if the copies would move, to see if anyone would notice, to see if something as small as having the book on display in one bookstore during a high-traffic week could impact the book’s sales. (Please note that I placed the book in an empty slot on the shelf, so it wouldn’t displace anyone else’s book. This sneaky marketing experiment wasn’t about competing with anyone else’s title.)

Today, I went back to Borders to see if my books were still there. If they sold, I knew I wouldn’t gain any profits, since the books weren’t in Borders’ system. I just wanted to see if they were there, how they had fared compared to books in the same location.

The result?

Nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the liquidation sale, the whole display was gone. I went in search of the books in other parts of the store, finally locating the pregnancy and childbirth section with the help of a staffer and still not seeing my book reshelved there. Were they sold? I hope so. Were they noticed? Someone I know called me and told me they saw my book on the display the first day I placed it on the shelf. I guess we’ll never know. But it was a fun little sneaky experiment, and I do hope those books found good homes.

How is Borders doing 2 weeks into their liquidation sale?

Not so hot. If my books did sell, I take it as a huge compliment as nearly every other book I would have purchased for the mere 10% off the chain offered the first week of its liquidation sale is now gone, with prices only slashed to 20% in most sections of the store. I picked up some lit and poetry that first day as well, more for the sake of nostalgia than any cost savings. After all, anyone can save 10% off a book by purchasing it on Amazon. But as I browsed through the store today, I could see the quality stuff was gone. And so was my book. I hope that’s a sign that it means something to someone.

As you can see above, the poetry section in particular was gutted. I think I may have some kindred spirits around this lit-loving town of Ann Arbor who had the same idea I did: pull the last quality literature and poetry out of the wreckage while there was still time. But did anyone else sneak a book in?

I wonder….