Category Archives: Bravery

How To Accept That Some People Will Never Understand Your Creative Life #MondayBlogs #writer

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This is a tough one to accept and it has taken me a long time to get my head around this.

If you are a creative person there will be some people in your life who will never:

  • Understand why you spend hours creating stuff that is unlikely to go anywhere.
  • Share your creative enthusiasm for your creative projects.
  • Understand why you are cartwheeling around the garden after receiving one tiny bit of positive feedback.
  • Ask to read or listen to your work.
  • Get your weird and wonderful creative ways.
  • Be able to relate to the buzz you get inside when your creative work is being shared or liked.

These are the ones who say stuff like “I don’t understand why you do all that writing!” or “have you just spent your whole day writing…why….are you depressed?”

Just because they don’t get your creative life doesn’t mean they are bad or cruel. They just don’t understand.

No matter how many hours you spend trying to explain your creative tendencies or excitedly telling them about your latest project, they will still cast you that puzzled or horrified look.

It can sting a bit when you realise that not everyone is as goofy happy as you about your creative projects. 

The important thing to remember is that it’s actually ok for people to not understand your creative ways. If we were all the same life would be pretty dull.

Here are some things to consider when accepting that some people will never understand your creative life:

  • As a creative person you will always be a mystery to some people. This is actually a good thing and you should always strive to remain a mystery. Keeps people guessing about what you will do next. 
  • Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. You can’t force others to like what you are doing or have created.
  • Each one of us has different talents and skills to offer the world. As Walt Whitman said we are all here to ‘contribute a verse’.  Being creative (either through writing, blogging, podcasting etc) is your way of contributing a verse. These people are also contributing a verse in their own special way.
  • If you are a true creative person (i.e. not doing it for the money or future fame) then you will know that your creative side is a huge part of who you are as a person. It’s not something you can change or switch off and anyway why would you?
  • According to this article Neuroscience confirms that highly creative people think and act differently than the average person. Our brains are hardwired in a unique way! This means that some people are going to think we are from another planet.
  • We are addicted to the thrill of creating stuff and its a hard addiction to break. To the outsider our creative addiction can look pretty scary.
  • Being misunderstood comes with the territory of leading a creative life.
  • There is a place in the world for all of us.

The sooner you accept that not everyone in your life is going to understand your creative life the better!

So, stop wasting time on trying to make them understand why you spent the entire day rewriting your fourth chapter with only a couple of breaks for coffee and biscuits.

Move on and focus your energies on creating!

Have a fabulous day creative people! 

Thought I would finish with a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic. 

 

 

 

 

Things To Do Before Leaping Out Of Your Comfort Zone #MondayBlogs #Podcasting #Writers

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In the next few weeks I will be leaping out of my comfort zone with the launch of my comedy fictional podcast.

I have never done anything like this before. It took me a long time to share my writing on my blog and when I did it felt like a leap out of my comfort zone. Then I took another jump outside my warm and coxy comfort zone by sticking my stuff on Wattpad. Now it feels like I am going to be flinging myself into the air yet again by taking my work onto iTunes and putting my own voice to it, as opposed to hiding behind a blog post.

So I thought it would be a good idea to do a preparation style blog post, which will run through all the things you need to do before leaping outside of your comfort zone.

Things to do before leaping out of your comfort zone:

  1. Focus on the why. Think about why you are leaping out of your comfort zone and the benefits that it will bring. These benefits will help you fight your way through fear. Ok so I am just running through my reasons for this…I am nuts, deluded and have a screw loose. There is one reason and that it is – I want to perform a bit of magic. I want to see whether I can lift my Roxy Collins comedy off the page and bring my character and her world to life via a weekly podcast. This for me is what being a writer is really about; making people, worlds and stories come alive.
  2. Enjoy the build up experience. Have some fun along the way and the enjoy the build up to leaping out of your comfort zone. I can’t say that listening to my own voice again and again has been fun but teaching myself how to use GarageBand has been really enjoyable. Celebrating my success on joining up the podcast intro music, the voice intro, the narration and end music in GarageBand resulted in me doing an energetic celebratory dance around the kitchen. I know some of you out there will be now eye rolling your laptop / tablet screen whilst muttering “that is soooo easy!” I struggle with simple things. Rewriting parts of Roxy and adapting it for a podcast has brought me closer to my characters. I feel like I am starting to get under the skin of Roxy and hearing her talk, in the voice that I am using, is quite surreal.
  3. Start a diary. Use a diary to record your feelings as you prepare to journey into the unknown. A diary is useful for working through the huge bouts of self-doubt which go hand in hand with taking a leap out of your comfort zone. A diary takes away some of the pressure from friends and family as you can turn to it day or night.
  4. Listen to upbeat and motivational music. Do everything you can to remain positive.  I have created a new playlist full of pop classics and 80’s movie soundtracks.
  5. Embrace the idea of making a fool of yourself. Ditch the perfect image of yourself!  In order to bring my character Roxy to life I am going to have to make a fool of myself. But the urge to do something magical is stronger than the fear of people laughing at me.
  6. Create a list of powerful quotes for the final days before you jump out of your comfort zone. Steven Pressfield in his book ‘The War of Art’ talks about how the fight against resistance is worse at the end of a project when your energy levels are low and you are vulnerable.  So here are the quotes that are keeping me going:

 

More often than not, being brave means doing it scared – Michael Hyatt.

 

The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it – the more fear you will feel – Steven Pressfield

 

Until you are ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great – Cher

 

Wish me luck readers!

Stay tuned for news of my gigantic leap into the unknown; the world of podcasting!

Have a fabulous day and virtual hugs to all those currently thinking about taking a leap out of their comfort zone!

5 Stages: Overcoming Writer Perfectionism #SundayBlogShare #writers

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  1. Newbie. You start out writing as a fresh-faced and enthusiastic newbie writer. You merrily send out your work into the world with a smile on your face. In your head it is simply a matter of time before you get spotted by a literary agent or publisher. During this early stage you don’t seem to worry too much about your work because it’s amazing and perfect!  Yay!
  2. Realisation of Weaknesses. This stage is where you realise that your writing has weaknesses. It is one of the most emotional and tear jerking stages for any writer. You reach this stage via some stinging feedback, followed by a period of comparing your work to a load of successful high-profile authors, followed by some more painful feedback. The literary penny drops and you realise your writing is not perfect! Aghhhh!
  3. Pursuit of Perfectionism. This is an exhausting stage. As I write this part of the blog post I am feeling tired just thinking about it. You pursue being a perfectionist at writing. You start to read every book on writing technique, you read every blog post on improving your writing, you write thousands of words and come up with hundreds of plot ideas, all of which you delete. You see, during this frenzied state you set an unachievable level of writing perfection in your head. Gasp!  If what you write does not match the level of perfection in your head you bin it. You are ruthless, frantic and exhausting. Nothing is finished because you don’t deem it to be perfect. You never question the ridiculous level of quality that you are expecting yourself to attain.
  4. Writer’s Block. The pursuit for writing perfection leaves you frustrated, tearful and suffering from the worst ever period of Writer’s Blog. No progress is made during this stage. Your writing doesn’t develop and you experience no breakthroughs. It is a dark time for any writer. The Writer’s Block is so severe that you end up thinking about quitting. The sad thing is that this episode has been created in your head.
  5. Imperfection Bliss. This is the stage where you realise that being imperfect is good. It slowly dawns on you that learning and growth only happens when you fail. Each time you fail you assess the reasons why things didn’t work out and ask yourself what you can do to change it. Suddenly you are not scared of not being perfect anymore. It is not that bad to fail at writing, no one dies or starves as a result of your sagging plot or lifeless characters. Don’t ask me how you reach this stage. I have somehow got to this stage. The fear of not being a perfect writer has finally left me after months of trying to achieve some ridiculous level of quality in my head. I think last year I spent so long writing, deleting and then crying about it that my brain eventually just gave up on trying to be perfect. I am cool with who I am now as a writer. I have faults, weaknesses and annoying habits, just like any other writer, but I know that the only way I am going to become a better writer is through not being afraid to fail.  It is actually something very valuable because failure not only makes you work out why it didn’t go to plan, what you can do to make it work but it also tests your commitment.

Let me know whether you have been through this or whether you have managed to avoid it?

Have a great day folks!

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