March 10, 2004
Of the thousands of emails I’ve received, the most common is someone asking, ‘Tell me the steps to be creative.’
I understand where that question comes from because when you’re not living creatively and want to, the task seems so daunting that you think you don’t even know where to begin.
But you do.
When I first started all I knew is that I wanted to write. Write what? Well, that was an entirely different matter. I had no idea if I would write for magazines or newspapers, books or web sites. I didn’t know if I’d write fiction or non-fiction. I didn’t know how to query (or what a query was) and I certainly didn’t know how to be a writer.
In fact, my first day on the job as a writer I was completely overwhelmed and confused. I didn’t know about books on writing, I didn’t have writer or creative friends. Nobody wrote online about personal creativity at the time so my resources were nil. I didn’t know where to turn to, so I did what any confused person should do: I just did.
I started typing a journal online. I started to write down things I noticed on a walk. I went to the bookstore and found books on writing. I surfed the web and came across someone who I admired (she was an artist), wrote her, formed a friendship and began to meet other creative women. The more I learned the more I did but it was all trial and error as I was completely naive to the whole process. I didn’t have expectations or deadlines because I just wanted to live as a writer, whatever that meant.
Over time I understood more and more what I wanted and my needs and desires changed. The writing I began doing was something I didn’t want to continue so I found a different niche to write in. I expanded to art projects, photography and building web sites dedicated to helping others get creative. Above all, I just did.
I understand the want people have of being told the steps to take to being creative or successful but what people are really asking for is for a guarantee that their dream will turn out OK. There is no such guarantee. You can’t read a book that will give you ten steps and expect to have a dream at the end of it. You can’t read a book that will give you a 12 month program and expect to have everything at the end of it. You can’t mimic someone else and have what they have. Why? Because you are you. Your circumstances, responsibilities, talents, desires and work style are going to be different. And they should be – you’re creative after all, aren’t you? Why follow a linear path when you have it in you to create you own.
People always ask me for advice and I never give it because I cannot tell someone else how to live. I can tell people that feeling scared is normal, that worrying when you first start is normal, that being overwhelmed is normal, that having lots of rocky patches is normal. But I can’t tell anyone how to get past that because each of those things is personal and I promise you that people already know how to survive those things. They just don’t trust it.
Somehow I sat down to write without any knowledge whatsoever and 3 years later, I’m thriving. Oh, there are still worries and doubts and days when I flail my limbs upon the floor but I’m living the life I want to live authentically. There’s no mimicking someone else or wondering if I’m doing it right. However I do it, is how I do it and if it feels right for me, it’s right.
And that goes for you, too.
April 11, 2002
On April 27th, I’m attending my high school reunion. When I first decided to go, I didn’t give much thought as to why. Saying yes was just an automatic response, like I’d go to hell if I didn’t attend. I thought it would be the same for everyone else.
It turns out, however, that a lot of people aren’t going to attend – more than half the class. The reasons were varied of course, but the main one was people were embarrassed to show up. They weren’t quite where they wanted to be and didn’t consider themselves successful enough to show up.
I thought about this for awhile, because I don’t think life is about proving something, or besting someone. I think you do what you have to do, and hopefully it’s what you love.
When I heard how many people didn’t consider themselves successful, I began to question the validity of considering myself so.
I’m not famous by any means and am not actually striving to be a household name. I have yet to be paid so I’m definitely not on the millionaire’s track. There are just a few credits under my belt, and so far I have not heard from the Pulitzer Committee.
The effort I’ve put into my work and myself, might not have materialised into big awards but they have done something. They’ve made me happy and love who I am. And although that might sound new agey and cliché, it’s the simplest truth I have.
I don’t fit the standard definition of success because titles and money aren’t important to me – I’ve been there and felt like a failure. The years I spent in Corporate America, I hated myself. Looking in the mirror I felt like an old, cranky nobody who was living a life they didn’t want on automatic pilot. If I had to go to my reunion being an Executive, I would have felt like a failure, despite the fact I worked for an impressive company, made lots of money and had all the titles you could want.
But now that I’m living as who I want to be, and doing what I want to do, I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment I haven’t felt before. Each day I get up and begin a life that I love. I get to do what I am passionate about. At the end of each day I am satisfied – I feel solid.
I’m not perfect, I’m not finished, and I don’t have it all figured out, but I know who I am and I like it. Everyday. And that, to me, is success.
March 29, 2002
Tonight in the video store my husband and I were debating over which movie to rent.
“Why don’t we get that movie that our friends recommended to us called Office Space,” I said.
“I don’t think you’d like it.” he replied.
“Why not?”
“Well, you wouldn’t understand it, you wouldn’t get the jokes. It has to do with office stuff.”
I just looked at him for a moment and then said with a grin, “I used to work in an office you know.”
He just looked at me for a moment, slightly dumbfounded and said, “I totally forgot. I don’t even think of you as an Office Girl at all. To me, you’re just the writer and you always have been. I forget that you were once in the 9-5 grind.”
“Thank you,” I said as I hugged him.
“For what?” he asked.
“For giving me the nicest compliment I’ve heard in a long time.”
March 18, 2002
It’s time to weed out my book collection, which has grown by leaps and bounds this past year. It’s time to choose which books I want to keep and which ones will be sold to the second-hand bookstore down the street. Most of the books I decided to sell were the ones that were so crucial and biblical to me last year when I began my journey from Corporate dropout to freelance writer – the ones on how to write.
When I first began to write for a living, I wasn’t sure of the steps I needed to take to be a writer, sell my work and make money. I believed there had to be a right way to write and a wrong way to write, the way it was in my corporate days, when there were certain times I showed up to work, certain times I took lunch, specific ways I could write reports, and specific ways I could took notes.
At first, I needed direction, badly. I was certain that I didn’t know the right way to go about “being a writer.” I was so insecure and needed reassurance and I believed that I would find support from the voices of experienced writers who wouldn’t just offer me advice, but tell me how to do it. And so, my trips to bookstores became less for pleasure and more for work. I became obsessed with biographies, how to’s and self help books on writing and dug endlessly around bookstore shelves for answers.
One of the first books I read on writing was Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. In her book, she offered the advice of writing several pages about anything on large blank sheets of paper each morning. Her idea was planted into my brain as a surefire way to help me grow as a writer and so each morning I began to write my “morning pages.” I was a dedicated morning page writer for about two days until I failed at it because writing on three blank pages at 8am does not work for me. I once heard a famous writer declare that she broke for tea at 9am every morning and then so did I, until would realise that 3pm works better for me.
After hearing the success of first time author J.K. Rowling, I immediately researched how she wrote. I found that she wrote in several large blank books of which I bought a dozen and she also mentioned how she wrote almost every page of each of her novels in a café. Of course, I had to try this despite the fact I knew I wrote better in solitude. I was afraid my writing wouldn’t be as good as hers if I couldn’t hack the romance of writing in a cafe.
Any author who gave advice on writing, I would take it. I thought if they were able to write a book about it, they had to know how to do it, and the only way I too could be a writer was if I wrote just like them. So instead of trying to find my own voice, I listened to those of others which made me feel less like a writer and more of copycat. By trying to write as others did, I began to feel like a failure because none of their methods fit me.
I couldn’t write with glitter pens, I couldn’t write in bed, I couldn’t write in cafés and I couldn’t write three large pages about nothing every day.
After eight months of little writing and lots of frustration I threw my hands in the air and tossed all the books to the back of the closet and gave up on trying to fit some image that I felt I couldn’t be.
When I did that, a strange thing happened – I started to find my voice.
I wrote as I needed to – in front of a computer screen, in silence with a small idea planted in my mind. I would begin to type out my thoughts out and nurture them along until they grew into words that would become an article. Then I would submit the article to magazines and to my surprise, some of my articles were accepted for publication.
By simple writing as I needed to, doing what worked for me, and seeing results from doing that, I was able to stop feeling as though I was doing it all wrong but in fact, doing something right.
The more I worked, the more comfortable I became with how I worked. And slowly I realised that the simplest, easiest way to “officially” be a writer was just to write.
Despite the fact I had been brave enough last April to declare myself a writer and leave my corporate job to pursue writing full time, I had been so insecure in the beginning that I forgot to trust myself enough to know how to write. I looked outside of myself for the answers and the knowledge on how to write, when the truth is, I knew it all along.
The schedule I currently keep isn’t found in any book. I start around 8am and finish up around 4pm. I break for tea at 3 o’clock without fail, and I actually take weekends off. I scribble haphazardly in fifteen million different notebooks – some blank, some with lines, some cheap, and some coloured marvelously. I don’t do morning pages and I stay out of cafés except for late night dates with my husband.
That’s what works for me and I no longer question if that’s how a real writer would do it because I’m a real writer, and that is how I do it.
So now, the books that were so vital to me in the beginning will be finding a new home this weekend. They weren’t all bad because they sprouted a few ideas that I’ve incorporated into my writing routine. This was the best way for me to use those books, instead of as gospel. Because the answers I seek, the reassurance I need, and bravery I crave will never be completely found in someone else’s book. Only mine.
March 06, 2002
When I first began all this, I thought all I had to do was simply quit my job and declare myself a writer and that was that. The only work I’d have to do would be that of putting pen to paper and writing up some stories.
If only it was that easy.
The truth is, there are several battles you have to face when you begin a journey and I found out that the first one was against myself.
I had to battle my insecurities, my fears, and my ideas. I had to challenge what I believed in and if I was strong enough to continue with those beliefs. I battled my ideas of what a writer was, and how I fit into to the writing life. I quickly learned that my journey wasn’t just about putting words on the page but about really finding out who I was and how to move forward. That was a very hard battle that took me over eight months to sort through.
Once I began to feel comfortable with using the word “Writer” as my title, and I had had works published and made some amazing contacts, I thought everything would be smooth sailing. I wasn’t aware that there would be a battle number two just around the corner.
But there was. This time it was against the outside world.
Because I had so much support in the beginning, I figured that I wouldn’t have to battle anyone. I was wrong. Since I’ve worked through so much of my insecurities and fears and become comfortable with who I am and what I’m doing, I have been getting less and less feedback from others. The connection I seemed to have with so many people was all of a sudden lost. The more together I got, the more success I had, the less people were likely to respond. And those who had become my friends and supporters in the beginning were no longer willing to be around.
At first I was completely confused by this. Why were people leaving now that I was just getting somewhere? Wasn’t that the whole point of my story? Of my journey? To start at the beginning with nothing but fear, insecurity and one little dream and make it happen? Why did people have a hard time with that now that it was all working out?
I took it very personal at first until other artists confirmed to me that this was in fact, the second battle, and that almost every artist will at some point go through it.
It happens when people see you as starting to “make it.” Some people tend to become hostile, jealous, bitter or just dismiss you altogether because they think that life is easy for you now and what could you possibly know about fear or stepping in a new direction. Some see you as no longer “one of them” when you start to get happy and move forward at a rapid pace. They think you’re unrelatable, they can’t have anything to say to you and you probably don’t care what they’d have to say anyway. Some offer less support because they assume that you must be getting a tonne of it because of “who you’ve become.”
Julia Cameron states it perfectly in The Artists Way
It was hard for me at first to realise that people might be jealous or angry with me and have some think that the dream I’m living out is actually meant for them. My intention with this site was never to take away from anyone, but to give power to people. I wanted to show that if I can do this, anyone can and that yes, there is more than enough room for each of us to live out our own dreams – whatever they may be.
I understand how easy it is to come here and read the last couple of months and think that I’ve got it all figured out, when the truth is I still have fear like last year. The only difference is I’ve had some experience and achieved a little more confidence so I handle the fear a little better. I’ve also realised after almost one year of struggling that there is no such thing as “making it” or finishing line or place to level off at. There is medal to win, no person to beat, and nothing that can keep me down except myself. I’ve learned that as a human being in an uncertain field, I will always have fear, down days and boughts of unproductivity and that’s perfectly normal. I’ve also learned that I can only do what I need to do, and the reaction I get is out of my control, and not always personal. It just sometimes goes with the territory. I learned that sometimes the more we grow, the less support we get, even though sometimes we need it more.
Now I’m learning to let go of the negativity and move forward to the positive. I’m learning not to take it all so personally. Sometimes it’s hard, however, when you’re doing something you love and believe in to not have others feel so wonderful about it. It’s a battle, that’s for sure.
Maybe that’s the third one?
Feb. 16, 2002
One thing I think is really important to share, is that since I made the decision last April to be a freelance writer, I no longer suffer.
The closest to suffering I’ve come was several weeks ago when I looked through the want ads. Now I know better than to go back.
I suffered all those years I was in a job I hated and a field I had no passion for. I suffered when I chose to be something I wasn’t for reasons I didn’t believe in. I suffered every one of those days, but not anymore.
Sometimes there are moments when I’m filled with self doubt and all my inspiration has run dry and I’m left wondering what to do. I still have fears and insecurities and sometimes I still double guess myself. Some days are harder than others, but there biggest difference between now and then is that now there is no suffering.
That, is important to know.