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.

Do You Have Regrets?

How we were. (In my case, pale, bloated and sick with terrible migraines. Some things are best left in the past.)

For some reason, I found myself on the New England Literature Program website today, a camp where University of Michigan students can pay eye-watering amounts of money to earn academic credit while studying New England writers in their native habitat and climb a few mountains into the bargain. It sounds like heaven to a writing buff like me, actually. Poetry, rain, typewriters, mountains, literature, and quiet. mmmm My English professor (ironically the one who told me NOT to write fiction, which is what I’m doing now) strongly recommended that I attend NELP after my freshman year as an English major at the University of Michigan. He was disappointed when I told him I couldn’t because I was getting married.

Best.

Decision.

Ever.

And yet, this feels like a regret. Not a big one. Not as big as blowing my chance to work for Automobile Magazine early in my career, which then took several detours before heading back to automotive media in a less glamorous way; and not as big as letting bullying stop me from writing fiction between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. Those are big and bigger regrets.

I’m in a phase of moving on, moving forward, stepping off a new cliff. I’m nearly done writing my first novel, an accomplishment in itself and a huge step for someone once publicly ridiculed for months on end for writing that she wished people could love her the way she was. Yes, that really happened. People suck sometimes–a lot of the time, if I’m honest. And that’s the cliff in front of me. Risking relationship again, when every time I open up the emotional barbs come and take a chunk of flesh out of me.

Do you have regrets? Are you standing at the edge of a new cliff? Tell me about the path that led you to where you are, and where you think you’re headed next. I’ll believe with you for the next step forward. Believe with me, too. We can overcome regrets. After all, I wouldn’t trade where I am today for anything. I hope you feel the same.

Balance: Why Can’t I Get Away From This Issue?

A lake view plus a window and a table and chair equals writing nirvana for me.

There is a theory that I am a raging workaholic. It is an idea my right brain puts to my left brain on a regular basis to tell it to calm the frick down. Why do I insist on pushing myself to the limit so much? And here I am again. Only 3 months after telling my husband I was happier than I had ever been and felt like I had finally achieved balance after having a baby, I am swimming in busyness and searching once again for the proper balance. Here’s the crazy ride I’m taking myself on, and yes I’m fully aware it is all within my control to stop this crazy thing any time. Am I insane not to?

~ 60 hours per week, I’m watching my daughter without my husband present

~ 15-20 hours per week, working as Transportation Editor for Inhabitat

~ 10 hours per week (and that’s not enough), growing 29 Diapers

~ 5 hours per week, working on writing my first novel

Where does free time come into the picture? It doesn’t anymore. That’s spent on the novel and the blog. And the worst thing is my ultimate goal is to transition to a novel writing career as soon as I can support it with income from other projects. But doesn’t this pyramid look totally upside down? I’m eager to stay home with my daughter as much as possible as she is only young once, but why am I spending the most work hours on the projects that are supposed to be funding the start of the stuff I’m spending the least hours on? Ga. Serves me right for trying so hard to start a career no one wants to pay me for–yet.

The good news is that this last week we went on a real vacation, and every morning I got up to write while the sun rose and had absolute peace about my life. Writing equals peace and balance for me, so more than anything my guiding light is that if I will make time for the writing, this transition will come more quickly and my right brain will feel some respect. But I still think it’s bullshit to say that writers like Hemingway thrived under conflict and wouldn’t have written as well otherwise. Starting a writing career is hard, and having it make no economic sense up front only serves to make me value it more–it certainly doesn’t make my writing thrive under stress. My proof? I gave myself a week’s vacation with no non-fiction work to do and wrote the first few chapters not only of part 3 of my novel, which I have been very excited about starting (and it just flowed out of me looking at the lake pictured here!); the first scene of my next novel also just popped into my head on vaca. Idleness is extremely valuable to the writer’s brain, and I need to make more space for it. /> lecture to my left brain.

Now I Believe The Economic Recovery Is Real, But How High Can It Go?

Here comes the sun. photo, Jon Sullivan

For the last year, economists have been saying the U.S. is now digging itself out of the Great Recession. That’s obvious if you look at stocks (bailout discussions aside), and of course Silicon Valley is enjoying another heyday, but so far it has been a jobless recovery for most of the country. I have tracked right along with this trend, having been laid off from full-time work in 2008 just before the market tanked. Of course I can’t sit still, so I founded 29 Diapers, started writing a novel, and did freelance editorial work where I could find it. Oh yeah, and had a baby. It was a busy recession for me.

But today I saw signs of real recovery.

LinkedIn: hiring.

Oxford Press: hiring.

Time Magazine: hiring.

Wall Street Journal: hiring.

The gutted Conde Nast, of all companies: hiring.

The help wanted signs are back, all over the Interwebs!

And me? Hired. Well, sort of. Right now ideal gainful employment for me means freelance writing and editorial work while I stay home to raise my daughter. Last month I was brought on board Inhabitat as the new Transportation Editor. Huzzah!

But how high can it go? The U.S. has enormous debt problems, has outsourced nearly all manufacturing, and faces stiff global competition for jobs that just aren’t coming back. I think we’re seeing signs of real recovery now, but at some point it will plateau and we will start the conversation about a new reality in America. Do you think we will innovate our way out of this economic mire? Move upstream to a creative economy and leave the information economy to the developing world? I’d love to hear your thoughts in comments.

Passing the Pen to the Next Generation of Writers

I had a tornado dream recently. In it, I sat outside a farm house with a family that was not my own and waited for a storm to approach. I have had tornado dreams before, always warning me of coming turbulence in my life: the last ones warned me of an impending layoff, the first of the dissolution of my church family in a traumatic church split that ripped my family and new in-laws apart days after my wedding. So, suffice it to say that I pay attention to tornado dreams, and I have been chewing on this new one for several weeks. I believe its significance is deep and two-fold, and even extends beyond me to some of you.

The odd things about this dream were that:

1) this was not my family–a first for my tornado dreams that always warn of swift changes coming in my life (i.e. the winds of change)

2) I knew before the dream even began that the older man in the family was going to die, that there was nothing I could do about it, and that my job was to protect the young girl of the family

3) when the tornado came at us, it had four funnels instead of one, which I believe refers to 4 events coming in quick succession to disrupt my life

I woke up with a strong sense that the little girl represented my writing, specifically my novel.

Then I had a second dream, in which I found myself swimming in the Pacific Ocean while toxic waste and industrial trash washed past me in two warm waves. This was one week before the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear meltdown, but I don’t think this deals with anything so literal.

THE DREAMS’ INTERPRETATION

Funnel #1 & Wave #1) I discussed my dreams with a few friends, who both told me they felt the dreams were actually about boundaries. Setting boundaries with a negative person in my life who is jealous of my writing lifestyle so I could focus on my writing, specifically. But that didn’t feel like a complete interpretation.

Funnel #2) Then my mentor passed away, and the dream took on a second meaning: I believe the fact that there was nothing I could do to save the man’s life in my dream meant that I was also to set boundaries on worrying about what happened to Mr. Davis and again to focus on my writing.

Funnel #3) Then I suddenly found myself the new Transportation Editor for Inhabitat, a great job that again challenges me to set healthy boundaries to make sure my writing doesn’t get shelved in all the busyness.

Funnel #4 & Wave #2) I’m still waiting on event number four, which I expect to be represented by the fourth tornado spout and the second toxic wave and relate to setting boundaries with a negative person again, but something occurred to me regarding the second meaning of the dream….

THE DEEPER MEANING

David E. was a professional mentor to me, who gave me a foot in the door in the magazine/online media world and who gave me great advice about how to live a writing life. One sense I had about my dream was that the timing was no accident. I grieved the fact that he couldn’t see my success with Inhabitat because he passed away just a week before I got the job–the day I applied, in fact. In a sense, I believe he passed a baton–shall I say pen–to me to carry on his love of quality writing. He told me I was one of the best fact-checkers and copy editors he had ever known, and I felt that if there was a mantle there to pick up, I wanted to carry on David’s legacy of writing craft and storytelling. It would honor his memory. I don’t think I’m the only one of his employees or friends who could pick up this job and run with it, but I am one of many who have that choice.

I started to wonder if my recent post about the changing of the guard in media was actually occurring as I pondered the subject. I found this article about the best-paid mystery writers in America and discovered that several of them had already passed away. Ditto for sound and media pioneer Sidney Harman, who just passed. In fact, it seems that many giants of the last media age are retiring or passing away. So, beyond the idea of setting boundaries to protect my own writing during this time of swift change, I am also wondering how many mantles are out there to be picked up. Do you want to place your feet solidly in the center of the New York book publishing scene or become a pioneer of new media? I say go for it. I am. Whether you honor someone’s legacy or take back territory for quality writing and integrity in the business world, there are posts standing empty that need to be filled and will be. Which one will you claim as your own?

Don’t Despise The Day of Small Things

Just a quick post today. A lot has been happening lately with the book, the blog, and my novel in progress (more on that later!) but through all the little steps forward and the big steps forward I have felt in my spirit a repeated reminder:

“Don’t despise the day of small things.”

Big things are coming, and they’re coming soon. I could write so many posts on how I know that, but you’d think me even crazier than you already do, so I’ll skip that part and just tell you that I’m looking forward to an AMAZING year in 2011. But all that success had to start with a seed. And that seed has to sprout before it can bloom. We’re at the sprout stage now. And when I start to get angsty about things not moving forward fast enough, I remind myself to enjoy what may possibly be the last days of the seed stage: I have time to relax. I have relative anonymity (yes, at some point that may go out the window, and I’m feeling good and bad about that).

If you are on your way to big successes, or you hope you are, take the time to enjoy the little steps forward as part of the journey. Someday you’ll look back and remember this time as the last time you had time to relax before the big time hit and your world changed. Your day is coming. Don’t despise the day of small things, which is when you are tested to see if you’re ready to handle more.

Peace!

–Laura

A Look Back at 2010, The Year of Acceleration

Look out 2011! We are coming in hot!

I tend to focus on my goals obsessively, so it’s good for me to take a moment to look back and enjoy what I have experienced and accomplished in 2010, the year in which my dreams began to come true. Will you celebrate with me? If only you knew how far I’ve come!

1) I launched my first blog. I have known I could run my own blog for several years, and I finally found my niche! (Cloth diapers, of all things, lol.) Not only that, but I figured out how to promote it on a dime, and as of this posting have 18,000 monthly hits. Next year I think I can easily increase this 10-fold.

2) I published my first book. Could end the list right here and be happy. HUGE step for someone claiming to want to write for a living long-term.

3) I wrote my first novel/fiction book. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was, like, 8 years old. In 2009 I started putting it together, and in 2010 it’s coming together nicely! In fact, I’m turning it into a 3-part novel or trilogy, and I have written the first 10 chapters of the second book in the last 2 weeks. Talk about acceleration!

4) I called myself a writer. In public. At parties. On my email signature. We’re getting there in my head too.

Survey Says…

The feedback for my nonfiction book has been incredibly positive. “A must-have for new parents!” “Packed with useful information.” “Really delivers on its title.” “I LOVE Ecofrugal Baby! It has been such a life-saver (MONEY-saver!)!”

My novel made the two people critiquing it cry. Given its difficult but non-sensationalist subject matter, I’ll take that as a hearty two thumbs up! My mother, a ghost writer and book editor, will be reviewing it on the plane to Austin next week. On first perusal she assures me it looks neither bizarre nor boring (and this mother does not sugar coat). Fingers crossed I can find a publisher next year once I finish the whole trilogy.

29Diapers.com’s popularity just landed it its first advertiser, hooray! I may make money at this thing yet, lol. But I am also trying to separate income from my idea of success, since many of these projects are just seeds for future success that will take time. But here’s an email I received yesterday: “I am so excited to have the chance to tell you just how GREAT this website is. I am new to cloth diapering and have learned just about everything from this site! From how big my “stash” should be to what all the different words mean!” That’s exactly the mission of this website, fulfilled.

But I have big dreams! The website is expanding next year, I’m already working on a fundraiser and two huge giveaway events, figuring out where to take Ecofrugal Baby from here in the third edition of the book, and aiming to finish the whole fiction series I’m working on and decide on the next project.

What are you proud of that you accomplished in 2010? What are your goals for 2011? I have found in the last few years that it really does make a big difference to write it all down (no pun intended!).

Many blessings in the new year.

–Laura

 

I Came So Close To Never Writing Again

I would like to save this post for when I am a famous author being interviewed on NPR, but I’m going to share it with you now, despite my embarrassment, in the hopes that it encourages someone who is afraid to write–or that it helps you encourage someone.

There has been a lot of commentary and response lately to the recent student suicides that were the result of vicious bullying. I also just found out that my 16-year-old brother-in-law, who has aspergers, has been bullied at school and hit his limit last week. Thank God he knows how to flip out or reach out for help without hurting other people. He is a smart, sweet kid, and I hope things get better for him now that everyone is taking the situation seriously.

What most people in my life don’t know is that I was on the receiving end of persistent bullying in junior high. And it almost stopped me from writing for good. What happened to me was so painful to me that even though I wanted to write so badly that it hurt, I just couldn’t trust paper with my inner thoughts again for many years. Fifteen years, to be exact. Bullying made a mess of me. If you’ve ever known me to be prickly or reserved or arrogant or snide or perfectionistic or defensive, this is the root of it all. I am still climbing out of this self-protective hole. But I’m not writing this to get your pity. I’m telling you my story to tell you two ways you can do something about bullying and keep other kids from going through everything I had to to get back to my center and start writing again.

It doesn’t really take much to convince a twelve-year-old girl that she’s ugly and worthless. Being ignored, purposely excluded from groups, or mercilessly teased on a daily basis will definitely do the trick. And unlike my brother-in-law, I didn’t know how to ask for help, because I was embarrassed that the bullying was going on at all. After a while it sank into me, became a part of my identity. I remember a time when I told myself to memorize the appearance of my hands, because they were the only thing about myself that I didn’t hate. But one day my mom’s friend paid me a compliment about my skin, which meant a lot to me because she could see that I had a lovely peachy skin tone even though my skin was broken out. And that was what I wanted most of all–for the people around me to see through my glasses and bad haircut and bad skin and value the person I was inside. Taking a giant leap of faith, I wrote down these thoughts in my binder one night. And a few days later, I took another leap of faith and threw this writing out in the trash can at school along with some old homework. I told myself it was paranoid to think that the mean girls in my class would go through the trash to see what I had thrown away. I mean, come on! I decided I just wasn’t going to be that paranoid person, and I went ahead and cleaned out my binder, threw the papers in the trash.

The mean girls pawed through the trash and found my inner thoughts. And then they shared them with the twelve-year-old boys (what could be worse?). And the boys read them in front of their math class (oh, that is worse). And then they passed the note around and read it in front of other classes, none of which I was in (still worse: I was oblivious to why boys were jokingly flirting with me in the halls for two days). And then when I found out what was going on, on March fifteenth (beware the Ides of March, right? Of course I remember the day. I remember what I was wearing. I remember everything.), they passed the paper on to other schools in town. I asked for it back. They said they didn’t know where it had gone. They were lying. It’s still out there somewhere.

To my creative openness, this was a near death blow. And some kid out there is going through the exact same thing right now, and maybe they are supposed to be a writer too, just like me. I want you to do what you can to help them, so they don’t wait fifteen years to start writing again.

Here is what you can do:

1) When you see the bullying, don’t turn away in embarrassment. Speak up. It will make all the difference. Where were the teachers in the classes where the boys read my note? Did they briefly step out of the classroom when this happened? Did they stand by? I don’t know. But if the first teacher had taken the note away from the first boy who read it, things would have been different for me. If the second teacher had taken away the note, and so on, it would have helped. If one other kid in the entire school had said, “Hey guys, this is really mean and immature. Let’s give Laura her paper back,” it might have made a difference. Even the kids who clearly cared were silent. Be anything but silent.

2) Encourage a bullied kid in their gifts. Most bullied kids are kind of nerdy, which means they’re usually pretty brilliant at something. I had created my own language for secret communication with my friends by sixth grade and written a thick folder full of poetry by seventh grade. I got straight A+s in English grammar and Spanish. Clearly I had a thing for languages. If someone had said something to me, encouraged me to write more, I would have held on to that scrap of hope like a life raft. If someone said anything to me like this, I don’t remember. Of course it was more obvious that I was talented at playing the piano, since I did that in public, so it’s possible people encouraged me in this instead. But you get my point, right? It never hurts to encourage kids that they are talented, and bullied kids really need to hear this.

Also, keep in mind that a negative statement carries ten times the power of a positive one. One well-meaning English professor in college told me NOT to write fiction but to teach grammar instead. Guess which part of that statement burned into my brain and kept me from taking the plunge for a few more years? I’m doing it anyway, now that I have my confidence back, but it took a while to pull myself up out of self-doubt and fear.

None of us is perfect about encouraging others, or even avoiding saying hurtful things–certainly not me. But we all can do more to help kids who are being picked on. I know it. Will you keep your eyes open for someone who needs encouragement this week? My twelve-year-old self would be forever grateful to you.

 

My Very First Rejection Slip!

I checked another box off my bucket list last week–sending out my first book proposal to a publisher–and then this week received my very first rejection “slip” (in quotes because it was an email, not a slip of paper I could frame on my wall and throw spitballs at). All things considered, it was a very nice rejection letter, listing two problems with my book:

1) the book spends too much time referring readers to my website, which, even though I’m not selling anything on my site, makes it sound like a sales pitch and reduces my perceived objectivity.

2) the book relies heavily on information sources such as Twitter, Facebook, flash sale sites, and other online resources for saving money that are very modern, which made the publisher doubt that a book–even and ebook like the ones he publishes–would be the right format for my content since it might need to be updated quickly.

As far as number one, I am extremely grateful to this publisher for pointing out that problem, and I will revise the book to cut out that tone. That will get me one step closer to a “yes” from a publisher, or if not that, to creating a better book for myself.

Number two? Well, I still think that a book or ebook would be a good format for this info (which is already on my blog) because it should be in one place so busy parents can read through it and learn what I can teach them (and revisit the info) without having to scroll through the backlogs of my website. I thought an ebook would solve the problem of needing quick updates when website info changes or companies went out of business, but this guy doesn’t think so.

So, should I consider another format for this content or just forge ahead? Until I can come up with an answer, I forge ahead, after a little revision work.

Just thought you might like a little peek into this side of the publishing process, which is brand new to me as well. Blessings!

There Is A Pile of Book Proposals on the Table!

So, I don’t suppose this is on everyone’s bucket list, but submitting a book proposal (as well as having it accepted, lol) is definitely on mine–and I just checked it off! Yes. I wrote a book about saving money on baby gear, because when I was pregnant I got just a teeny bit obsessive about finding ways NOT to spend the $10,000 the average parent plunks down for baby gear, clothes, and food. I found so many ways to save (without sacrificing quality or safety) it became a game to me, motivated by my goal to put whatever money I saved into a college fund for baby girl.

So, after saving 70% off baby’s first year and finding myself the resident expert among my friends for all things FREE, I started a baby blog about cloth diapers (29Diapers.com) and started writing a Friday segment that went through my money-saving tips for buying baby gear, one at a time. It was actually my way of scheduling in writing time so I could compile these tips into a book to share with other parents. And. It’s. Done.

Today I finally found time to put together a book proposal and prepare the submissions to three publishers, and the envelopes are sitting on my dining room table ready to go out tomorrow. omg. Happy day. I’m considering self-publishing it, too, with Amazon, but their upload requirements were harder to figure out in my limited free time than a book proposal, so I started with the traditional route. I’m thinking by the time I get the self-published thing figured out, I may be starting to hear back from the first publishers. We’ll see. I don’t want to steal sales from a publisher, but I’m also not going to wait forever to get this book out there when I know lots of parents would be happy to pay $15 for a book that saves them $7000. Wish me luck! I’ll be posting pics of my first rejection slip–a milestone to treasure!–here as well.