creativity

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Are You Following Your Dream?

When I was a junior in high school my dad bought a HUGE book that listed all the colleges in the USA and had endless listings about what you could declare as a major. (Actually, I think he bought a couple of these books!) There was a lot of talk around the dinner table about where I was going to go to college and what I’d study.

ONE time flipping through that book and I knew exactly what I wanted:

061416-UofATo study Creative Writing and to do it at the University of Arizona.

(The fact that U of A is in Tucson where I had a family was a plus. The fact that Dad graduated from there and I’d been raised a Wildcat was a huge bonus!)

I went through the last two years of high school knowing exactly where I was going to college and what I was going to study. When my friends were deciding if college was even something on their radar, I knew what I was going to do.

I knew.

I was moving in the direction of my dreams, taking a powerful action to someday become an Author.

Are you moving in the direction of your dreams? Click To Tweet

But here’s the weirdest thing…

All those friends who were undecided majors (or even undecided about college at all) got lots of approval and feedback from adults. Teachers and other adults alike would look at my peers and offer endless encouragement to pursue their dreams; go to college and find out what you want.

You want to know what they told me when they found out I was majoring in Creative Writing?

“What’s your backup plan?”

I kid you not! That’s what they said to me, over and over. Not “Great job to follow your dreams, Kim!” but “What’s your backup plan?”

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How Do You Write when the Story is Hard?

So just how do you write something that is… hard? Something that is hard to explain, it’s complicated, it resists breaking down into the elemental pieces of word, sentence, paragraph?

How do you approach a piece of writing that isn’t about the technical difficulty of a concept – but about the emotional side?

What do you do when the meaning behind the words, the message you want to share, is elusive?

And how do you handle the line between memoir and a how-to? Navigating the muddy channels of revealing the truths from your own story to bring peace, enlightenment, teaching to the readers?

How do you get into that and not walk away?

032916-HardWritingThere was an experience last week that changed me. I knew in the moment that I was being changed – I flung myself into it with open heart and bright-eyed excitement knowing it would happen, welcoming it in, understanding that the initial choice to even start would result in alterations.

But now…

Now I’m in an interesting place, one that is uncomfortable. One that is clearly showing the untaken steps of “Kim the Author” – and highlighting, rather painfully, the miles ahead of me on the writer’s journey. Miles, that frankly, I thought I’d already tread.

Humility isn’t one of my greatest virtues.

I’m working with three clients who are writing “teaching” books – that are really thinly-veiled memoirs. Three clients, three authors, who I’m in awe of as they bravely are unearthing their stories and their demons and laying their bones upon the page. Three people who are staring unflinchingly into the mirror of their message and not only bringing that message forth onto the page, are doing it with a literary aplomb that is enviable.
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What Writing A Book Taught Me About Getting Stuck In A Canyon

Wild and rugged, Wet Beaver Creek, ArizonaTwo weeks ago Ben and I went on a 5-day backpacking trip. You know the drill: load everything into a 35 pound backpack, walk for miles into the back-country, camp, repeat the next day.

I realize that for some (a lot?) of you, that sounds like a mini version of hell. For me, it’s peace, tranquility, freedom. There’s that moment when my body says, “Ahhhh” to the weight of the pack. (By now, that’s usually the second I put it on!) And that second moment where my legs feel like they’re unattached, swinging loose from my hips, like walking is the natural state of being.

Not following me? Think of that moment where you’re doing something you love and suddenly every fiber in your being says, “Yes! I LOVE this! Yes!”

Now about this trip…

It was unlike anything we’d ever done before. It wasn’t a backpacking trip, but a canyoneering trip. I hate giving a rote definition but here’s a great explanation:

Canyoning (known as canyoneering in the U.S.) is traveling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include other outdoor activities such as walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling (rappelling), and swimming.

And this trip had everything except rope-work.

But here’s what I realized, several times, actually.

On a waterfall in Wet Beaver CreekI was DONE. I’d had it, I wanted out, this wasn’t fun.

That time when we were just getting to Wet Beaver Creek, through Waldroup Canyon. It was brutally hot; the rocks were huge, sharp, and hot; I was tired, the puddles to wet my hat weren’t close enough together and DAMNIT! there was yet ANOTHER scramble , this one down a side gulch using a dead Ponderosa pine tree as an over-head scramble hold.

But here’s the thing… I was halfway to Wet Beaver Creek. And the only thing I could do was go on.

What do you do when you can't stop halfway? Click To Tweet

I didn’t have the luxury of being done. I couldn’t climb back out. I couldn’t stay there. If I wanted to refill my water bottle, I’d have to get to the creek. The three liters I’d brought with me were gone.

I couldn’t stay halfway.

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Guest Post: Flex Your Creativity Muscle

Every so often, I want to bring you a fresh, new perspective – especially to jump-start your creativity. Please enjoy this guest post from Kaylee White from BrightColorsHappyThings.com

 

061615-CreativityMuscleAs someone who considers herself a pretty creative person, it was actually really difficult to start “flexing” my creativity muscle. I can’t imagine how overwhelming and difficult it must be to try to start being creative. One of the best exercises that I did when I first started was to find out what type of creativity I wanted to become involved in. There’s photography, drawing, sketching, painting, scrapbooking, and even journaling. I was fortunate enough to find a creative outlet that fit my organizational nature. I love to plan things and make lists about everything. I found the Planner Community by accident and have just started decorating my planner and making embellished lists that I can save for years to come.

Being creative is often associated with adolescence. It can be locked down upon by many who have forgotten the therapeutic effects being creative can have. Creativity is not considered a skill, not is it one of the prominent characteristics individuals think about when describing themselves.

As Nick Skillicorn states in his TEDx talk at TEDx Durham University, “Everyone is creative… There is this myth going around popular culture about left-brain people versus right-brain people… What inside surround functional brain-imaging and structural brain-imaging are showing us is that all of the brain is actually used when creative inspiration moments take place.”

Translation: There is no reason for you to believe that you aren’t creative. Creativity can help you cultivate a better life.
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Guest Post: Unlocking Your Creativity

It’s a crazy week around here so I wanted to bring you some expert advice on creativity. Huge thanks to Michelle Hamelin of MichelleHamelin.ca for this article!

This was me, just the other day:

I am unclear as to what I want. It is like trying to get the fog off a bathroom mirror. The more desperate I am about wiping off the fog, the bigger mess I make. The reality is that the mirror will defog itself if I leave it in peace.

051915-4TipsCreativityHave you ever felt like that? You are trying to be creative and innovative and unique and you see what everyone else is doing. Then you try to force yourself to be even more creative and you end up spinning around in circles and possibly wrecking that which you have already created? I know a little bit about that feeling. It happens to me from time to time.

There are two types of creativity: artistic and conceptual. Artistic creativity is what you think it is: food, art, music, dance, theatre, jewellery, crafts, writing. The wonderful thing about it is that it doesn’t have to be relevant to anyone else. You can create for yourself. Conceptual creativity is solving problems, filling a need, and is usually goal-oriented. As a writer, you might fall into both categories. Maybe you are writing your story of growing up in an alcoholic household with the artistic aim of getting it out of yourself and the conceptual aim of helping someone who has gone through the same thing.

What do you do when you are stuck? The ideas aren’t flowing. You have misplaced your motivation. That unwanted guest called perfectionism has reared its ugly head. Here are some of my favorite ideas to get myself kick-started:

4 tips for #creativity from @MichelleHamelin Click To Tweet

Morning Pages: This is right out of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. In its easiest form, you grab some paper (whatever is handy: spiral bound notebook, refill paper, leather bound journal) and a pen and write out three full pages of long hand stream of consciousness. Do it first thing in the morning. It helps get the clutter out of your mind.

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How to feed your soul and your writing: Have an adventure

Pssst… Can I tell you a secret?

Adventures feed your creativity.
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More than reading, more than exercise, more than practicing writing, ADVENTURES feed your creativity and makes your writing sparkle.

There’s a REASON I’m always off having adventures – hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, camping, geocaching. It’s not just because it’s fun (although it is) but it’s because it feeds my creativity.

Adventures give ideas.
Adventures expand your soul.
Adventures make it easier to sit at the keyboard, day after day, and write.

Just so we’re crystal clear, I’m not only talking about the type of adventures I have where you get dirty, sweaty, and rattled at by snakes. (Don’t get me wrong, this is what works for me!)

But any type of adventure will do.

Maybe that’s exploring a new city.
Or trying a new food.
Or taking a quantum leap.

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