Help Them to Help You

Creative sorts often blog about the many ways to rescue yourself from a creative block, but a great deal of them are hyper-focused on self-care and even a bit too much faking your way through it.

Don't get me wrong--those things do help, but sometimes you exhaust the list, constantly overlooking a really precious experience.

Be a mentor.

I'm not talking about going on group forums and giving sometimes insincere pep talks to everyone brave enough to post their work. Crowd boosting feeds you only the general energy of a crowd, which in turn, actually isolates you from the benefits of real problem solving and learning through a genuine meeting of minds. Pick a passion project. This means to find one person's work who screams at you, no matter how rough, and pursue working with them. No strings attached, no swaps, no fees, no using them to boost or talk about your own work.

It takes serious discipline, to reach out and offer your own expertise without seeking a possible client or fan. You don't have to give it anymore than you're willing to, but make good on whatever you tell them you'd like to help with. Give a brief intro of your experience if you like, but focus on giving them real feedback. Personalized feedback is going to endear them to the idea of sharing, but giving them a piece of your intentions and integrity is a responsibility you can't give lightly. If you agree to take on work outside of what drew you in, don't get squeamish there. Bluntly tell them that that work doesn't interest you, but still commit to telling them why. Even if it's just as simple as not liking the genre or not connecting with the characters, offer something specific, but encourage them to keep offering samples because of that initial connection still keeps you interested.

Remember to set boundaries if they push huge tasks on you that you don't have time for. It often helps to commit to reading only short stories or first chapters. Ask questions that show you've made the effort to pay attention. The more honest you are about how interested you really are, the less you'll corner yourself into reading more work that doesn't grab you, to the point you'll regret and even resent the work and possibly ruin a valuable relationship.

Remember, if you run into the opportunity to genuinely like someone's work when you're hitting blocks with your own, be sure to tell them that their work may inspire you in your own and you may become unavailable. All the same, be prepared to wrap up your obligation to them. They may even happily tell you to postpone it, simply flattered they've given you that spark and send you off to patiently await your availability again.

I've very gladly taken on many beta reading projects without an expected return and I've spoken about this before, but when you take out money or deadlines or expectation, you truly open yourself and your work to amazing new opportunities for personal growth. When asked why I don't charge for it, it's a no-brainer for me: as a professional, I would be paid for work someone wants me to do, but it is not entirely selfless when it's the other way around. I am asking for the privilege to pursue work I enjoy, work that I believe can help me become better at what I do. Through selected experience, I am able to later charge others more.

This isn't the same as working for exposure. As I've said, my offer is extended in the honesty that I am offering only the time I am willing in such a way that doesn't disrupt my own work. I am not looking for a résumé entry, although you can bet your ass that if one of my selected projects gains notable success, I'm attaching my own contribution to it. 

Leading from there, this also why I contribute my expertise to sites like Quora. Even though the platform is crowded with absurdly vague questions, I like to select the ones where I can establish some real solutions. Livelihood is about contribution, not just for myself, but for the benefit of others... And then feeding it back to myself again. I do expect my efforts to come back for my benefit, just not in the exact way some might expect them to.

As always, my choices are about growth and change and when something isn't working, the problem is often with the way I'm approaching it. Am I holding myself back by not proving to be more mentally flexible to the problem? If so, it's time to use my skills to broaden my horizons, acquire new skills or start a new professional relationship.

Since marketing is a weakness, I knew one of those relationships would need to involve that. In return, I offered my own skill set and found a beneficial trade there. 

These things don't exactly fall into your lap just because you want them. Often, months or years have gone by before that opportunity comes along. You can't spend the time in-between anxious, wistful and desperate. Just like it's near impossible to attract a romantic relationship by wallowing in self-pity rather than bettering yourself, you can't expect people to want to work with you when you haven't shown what you are actually doing. My books have been out for a couple of years now and the sales are low and I have no reviews. Rather than letting that get me down, I acknowledged early on that the work had to keep building. More books, more stories, more drawings, more planning. I've had to start investing in new technology and what I'll need to successfully run a convention or trade show booth.

Ahem. So. Essentially, what you sometimes need is a passion project that isn't your own work. Some writers really get mired in their own ego, afraid that liking someone's work more than their own will cripple them. So stop being afraid and lose some ego. Get lost in a new story and remind yourself why you turned to writing. You still get to use some of your expertise and even some degree of empathy, knowing that you're actively working with the author who cares about the work. It's passive yet interactive and a truly wonderful experience in most cases.

This may not be the same for you, but the benefit of using a group to find these projects is that I look at how they are responding to criticism of their work. If they are getting too defensive, wounded or hostile, I back away whether I like it or not. It's important to find some compatibility when it comes to exchanging honesty. If I spot someone who writes well, is interesting AND handles themselves diplomatically, I'm in. I can handle young and inexperienced writers, but diplomacy is very important to inspiring the process that can help both of us.

So don't overlook an often untapped fount for inspiration. The prospect of working with people who I truly believe have a shot at success is thrilling. I'm not looking to hitch my success to that, just to improve the quality and passion of my own.

But I'm gonna brag on them every chance I get, with every milestone they achieve. Isn't it always a bit more gratifying when your favorite garage band becomes an international sensation? Being that day one believer is always a bragging right!

Idea Factory

There are times where I wish I could just pound out lists and lists of my ideas, that I could just be content to know I'm an influencer and let them roam free. Yet, alas, I cannot trust it and I hoard it like filthy, dirty treasure.

MY treasure

Influencers often monetize their ability to collect followers (and thereby justifying the ridiculous amount of time they spend on social media). Nothing wrong with that, but it is more like aggressive and often insincere consumerism. I wouldn't say that influencers are below integrity either-- I'm sure many will only influence something they believe in, yet with all rises in success, the temptation would also exist to lower their standards to collect on things they don't really care about. The creator in me just can't be satisfied with this passivity towards the production either way.

It's important to me that my ideas do go through some creative control. Maybe it's the obsession with being first. I don't want to be the sharing type only to decide I want to do it, yet they beat me to it. Then suddenly I look like the copycat, the fanfic hack, and the idea slams my heart into my feet. Perhaps it's possible to be an influencer and an author, but no matter how I think about it, it seems like a cycle too open to paranoia, wondering which idea I should have kept or released to the sharks.

MY tail

Having already touched on the writers that seem to want their book written for them and people who pretend to have an idea but are really farming, I won't do that again, but ideas are still, at least in the sense of the creative process, somewhat precious. (No. No Gollum picture here!) While some people get excited by an idea they can borrow or steal to carry their scene, more often than not, I find it too influential, too tragic a miss in working out the problem in a unique way (if not unique, at least organic to my own critical thought process).

In a previous post, I brought up impostor syndrome. If you're not hip to this, it's a condition that gives you the sense that your accomplishments are fraudulent, even when they are valid. Because I run into this feeling more than I'd like to admit, I try to avoid any practice that might give the negative loop grounds for feeling like a thief, a hack, a fraud. I do have an ample history with fantasy as is and often I can pinpoint some of my plots as being derivative, but I keep those influences as far from vivid as possible. I know those sorts of people who almost exclusively copy-paste or take credit for other people's work and have no shame for it. To me, it's disgusting. You won't often see a heavy bias from me, but this is one I'm unbending on.

It's not lost on me, the irony being these people almost never get a taste of impostor syndrome.

Maybe there will be a lot of my ideas lost when my life comes to a close. It's a shame, but I've never asked much from this life and ideas are one place where I tread carefully. I love to share methods, techniques, slices of life, mood management practices, fitness updates, patterns, but the times when I hoard ideas or put a price on them-- please believe that this is where artists need to assert the value of their contribution. We do give a lot away for free. I've shared crochet patterns I've made from scratch, short stories, pictures-- many of them even of quality I should be charging for. It doesn't always make perfect sense what I choose to make free and what I insist contributes to my wallet. Because so many artists do make stunning works available free, there's almost an expectation, an entitlement that something comparably better is free so yours should be too.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Look at all the free books!

Also, MY books.

The idea that only the best should be allowed to have value is a falsehood. A free market doesn't mean nothing has value. It gives the consumer the ability to discern what to consume and the producer to decide what its worth. They often do put things out there, simply out of the need to share, their own measure of what might give them exposure and sell more of their work, but it doesn't exist to give consumers permission to undercut the value of all art. You are perfectly within your right to decide it's not worth your hard-earned money, but you are not within your right to decide its value. And yes, piracy will murder some dreams, and it will always be a problem. Your ideas exist in some form already. Your sense of humor is even dependent on someone else's ability to enjoy it (and you can just as well be the only one to enjoy it-- go, you!).

Everything is trash, everything is treasure, and you don't have to be right about which way that leans for you.

FYI: Treasure. You don't have to agree. You don't have to understand why I spent months bingeing on Homestar Runner games and toons. Strongbad, King of Town... Still my spiritual BFFs. Also, where I learned the word 'chiaroscuro'.

You've probably noticed, but I find popular authors game for examples, both positive and negative. The main reason for this is that is that their success no longer hinges on anything short of massive boycotting. Which never happens. You can hate Seeetepheeniee Meyeeer and E.L. Fudge all you want, but lack of taste will sustain them forever. Authors like Anne Rice, Stephen King, JK Rowling-- they're safely out of reach. It's much trickier either being positive or negative about the rest of us peons because I neither want to seem suspiciously undercritical nor do I have a desire to be the weed in their garden (or the wildfire-- some analogy for killing their career). When I do find time to read their work, sometimes I don't want to immediately be the critic. Sometimes I do enjoy being the consumer.

And sure, writers are SUPPOSED to look at everything with a writer's eye. We're supposed to do a lot of things, but I find most of them to be pretentious and counterproductive if you take them as gospel. Yes, take a little advice concerning the growth and cultivation of ideas, but you're doing yourself a favor sometimes just by not taking every aspect of it and turning it into work. Look, you're in a creative career. It's still about conveying emotion and passion. It's not all or nothing and your work benefits most from the balance-- be a passionate emotional person with a sharp rational brain.

I know creatives get a bad rap for being flighty and irrational. I can't tell you how relieved I am that this is totally wannabe bullshit. I ran into so many try-hard hipsters that talked a big game and produced jackshit. The productive artists, digital artists especially, are people who work with computers, technology, numbers and logic too. Some of us are ridiculously literal, critical, intolerant, stubborn. There's no political barrier either-- a mix of liberal, moderate and conservatives in many degrees. Because of this, creatives also don't have a 'type'. It's sort of just human nature to notice the loudest try-hards of any stereotype.

Kicking my ass back onto the main track though...

He's going to kick my butt.

No matter how you feel about ideas, I can always recommend plastering your existence with them. I have several apps on my tablets and computers, emails to myself, notebooks, post-its, scribbled and typed remnants of the big and small processes of ideas. Get them out. You may have a project in mind, or just want to put out the pieces that may lead to one. It doesn't really matter. Catharsis comes from release. Even when you're blocked, sometimes you're still feeding some beast that probably needs attention. Some people fear that they'll just end up starting and not finishing too much so they do nothing if not the big project. This is why I designate specific programs, ones I give myself permission to treat as generic. Sometimes, it does lead to ideas for the main project(s), but the point of an idea phase is to free it into being. Not to completion, but to some visual or tangible medium.

Which is why many idea-makers are still traditional. Pen and paper is still a good way to cheat yourself into a sense of making something, a boost in the right direction. It turns a secret into a promise, a promise into a project.

I've said this before too, but word count is trivial. While I've had spells where word count was the goal, it was only something I allowed myself if I was certain that the story was planned well enough or simple enough to be pantsed. Produce ideas first, worry about categorizing them when the need presents. Preparation is a good thing, but sometimes you do need to throw a few logs on the fire to shed some light on what comes next.

I'm going to wander off a bit since I've finished covering the branches of this topic for now. I do want to say that, despite the amount of time I spend blogging, I also spend gobs of time writing and planning and editing. I try to put update posts up so you can see accurate progression towards my projects. There are some slower spells where... well, ideas. Outlines. Planning. The word count is a nice little package, but it hardly delves into the process of accumulating it. It's not a mark of confidence. People do attach bragging rights to it and it IS exciting, but it's not the greatest measure of your effort. Connecting your ideas will be the silent victor and one that you work to share eventually.

Happy manufacturing, my word engineers!

Sharing is Caring!

As promised, I'm sharing what mischief I was up to in making a gift for my friend's birthday.

You may or may not recognize the hat from Dramatical Murder, specifically belonging to a character known as Noiz. I always feel odd when I admit I'm not a modern anime fan. I haven't watched anything that's come out in the past ten years, my entire influence in the style dating from between my freshman year of high school up to my mid-twenties. I simply stopped being an avid consumer and switched to being a creator. Likewise, I have never seen this anime, but anime costumes are still among the most inventive so they're great fodder for my creative pursuits still.

The crochet version, since I don't knit. I realize it is a ridiculously busy picture, but such is the nature of my sanctuary.

There is also another issue I face and a confession to be made: I absolutely suck at wrapping gifts. My friend Emily must have inherited the superhuman ability from her mom because she is amazing at it. In fact, most people I know are at least decent at it but my attempts look more like a hostage situation. Instead...

 My motto is 'If you can't wrap, rap.' In this case, I whip up some whimsical poetry to slap on the boxes.

Boxes, giftbags, shoving ribbons and stickers on things is my go-to for avoiding the failed origami I produce.

Now, baking, I can do baking! Baking and cooking are something of a superpower. My dad used to flip out because, even on boxed meals, I didn't follow the directions. After surprising the hell out of people that it was just my version of Hamburger Helper, even my dad adopted my way of bumping up the quick meals with some winging it.

And yes, cooking from scratch is not excluded. I'm definitely not one of those crock-pot chefs that congratulates themselves on their ability to swipe a recipe from social media.

So that's my gift-giving share! Feel free to swipe the idea whether wrapping is something you dread or not!

I love sharing so writing novels is always going to make me squirm with impatience. I'm very guarded about how I share my unpublished work. In any case, I want to offer up something a little different. Even though I started a short story on here that hangs in limbo for now, I am thinking of working on some short pieces branching off of UnNamed. Because I had once entertained trad-publishing it, I kept the word count low, but I really felt like I would have liked to stretch some things out a bit like I have been for UnSung. It's very difficult to sell agents and publishers on big manuscripts, which is one of the main reasons the first Harry Potter book was so small in comparison. Since I've decided this series needs creative control more than the industry standard offered, it was a real breath of fresh air being able to expand the idea without staring a word count. It grows or shrinks depending on the story's need, not the market.

So keep an eye out for a short story scene branching off of UnNamed. Might be a bit of a spoiler if you haven't read UnNamed, but I'm actually going to build these scenes around his life prior to events in the book so while you'll recognize the mention if you have read it, it doesn't actually overlap the book itself or spoil the main plots.