Quotable Friday: The Pope

There were always people like the pope. They serve a certain function, of course. They subsidize us. But, they don’t create anything and they must never be allowed to stop the artist from creating.

 

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Northern Exposure, Mite Makes Right, 1994

My Thoughts: Stress

With the demands of work and family, our lives are stressful enough.  Our creative journey shouldn’t be.  When you start to approach your creative endeavors with a sense of dread or feel stressed out about them, you need to take a break.

Take a step back.  Get out of the house.  Get out of town, if possible.  Don’t worry about work or anything else.  Recharge.

When you come back to it, if you still feel stressed, you need to evaluate what’s going on.  Are you trying to make money from it too soon?  If so, back off on that and give yourself more time.  It’s also possible it’s not the right form for you.

The good thing about creativity is it’s highly individual.  Even among writers, no two people will do it the same way.  You don’t have to continue with something that isn’t working.

The stress could also be a sign that it’s time to evolve.  When I started writing, I started with poems.  It wasn’t necessarily the form of the poem itself that I thought would be easy — far from it in many cases — but it was that the form was shorter than anything else I knew of at the time.  Later on, I evolved to short stories, then novels, articles, and — now — nonfiction books.

If you’re not changing and growing, you’re stagnating, which is another reason for stress to come up in your creative life.  See if you can find out where it’s coming from and what steps you need to take to change it.

Tuesday Tip: Get Out of the House

Your daily routine, regardless of how comfortable it is, could be hindering your creativity.  You need to shake your routine up some.  Get out of the house.  Perhaps even get out of town.

If you’re doing the same thing every day, you’re not giving yourself any chances to refill your creativity reservoir, your well, your — pardon the obvious analogy — pocket.

Do something you like to do.  Do something only for you.  Spend time with like-minded people (such as at a workshop).

When you get back home, back to your routine, perhaps you’ll have a bit of a spring in your step and be more ready to embark on your creative journey again.

Monday Exercise: Touch

I will be out of town tomorrow, so you get your Monday Exercise a little early.

Last week, remember we talked about listening as a creative exercise.  This week, our focus is touch/tactile feeling.

Have you ever paid attention to the things you touch on a daily basis?  The smooth surface of a CD, the ridges on the “F” and “J” keys on your keyboard, the way a pen or pencil feels as it moves across the paper when you write or draw.

Take some time today and really pay attention to what you feel.  Our fingertips are very sensitive and can give us a world of information if we pay attention.  Here’s what I would like you to do (I’ll do it too after I get back in town on Tuesday):

Gather no fewer than five very different things and put them on a table in front of you.  Close your eyes (or blindfold yourself) and randomly pick something up.  Can you describe it just by feeling it without opening your eyes?

How can you take that into your next creative project?

Saturday Source: Creative Slush

Sorry this is so late.  I had to work again today.  I don’t mind working, it’s the getting up early (5:30) that’s the problem.  I’m not a morning person.  *s*

Creative Slush

Check out the NitWits comic on the main page.  There are various exercises and information about workshops scattered throughout the site.

Quotable Friday: Archaic Furniture

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

-Dee Hock

My Thoughts: About Using Your Senses

Yesterday, in a comment to the Tuesday Tip: Using Your Senses , Auria Cortes said, in part, “It’s not as easy as it seems.”

She’s right.  It isn’t easy.

Like a physical exercise that requires you to stretch in ways you’re not used to, it will be hard for a while. Over time, with consistent practice, it will get easier.

I don’t claim that anything in the Idea Pocket itself or in this blog will be easy.  Sometimes good habits worth keeping are difficult to establish and take some practice.  In the long run, the habit makes it worth the time and difficulty.

Is enhancing/tapping into your creativity important to you?  Did you think it would be something you could do without any work?

Creativity without work is what people sometimes call inspiration or the muse.  Yes, that makes it fun, but it doesn’t necessarily make it consistent or allow you to improve in whatever form of creativity you are working on.

Tuesday Tip: Use Your Senses

Yesterday’s exercise was on listening.  I mentioned how in the coming weeks, we will focus on each of the senses for our exercises.

Hearing
Sight
Smell
Taste
Touch

Using the senses can make your creative endeavors livelier.  Some, of course, cannot be translated directly, depending on what form you prefer to work in, but they can still influence and inform what you do.

Paying attention to your senses and the information they provide will eventually make you a more observant and more creative person.

Monday Exercise: Listen

As creative people, we get ideas from the world around us.  For the next few weeks, we are going to explore each of the senses and use them in our exercises.

Today’s, as you already know, is hearing.

Take a few minutes and sit down with nothing else to do.  Listen.  No, not just casually listen like you do everyday.

Really listen.

What do you hear that catches your attention the most?

After you have gotten up and returned to your routines/chores for an hour,  is that still the thing you remember or does something else stand out now?

How can you use this in your creative expression?

Saturday Source: SoulCollage

Soul Collage Playground

Admittedly, it has been a while since I’ve been to Soul Collage, but I find the concepts there intriguing.  How can you express yourself by making cards?  There are tips on making the cards, using the cards, an art gallery, community, and much more.