In the Beginning, Obscurity is Good

Yet another installment from Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon (you can find him and his awesome book here).

This chapter falls under Rule 6: The Secret: Do Good Work and Share It With People. I find it a particular comfort and inspiration:

In the Beginning, Obscurity is Good.

I get a lot of e-mails from young people who ask, "How do I get discovered?"

I sympathize with them. There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.

Soon after, you learn that most of the world doesn't necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it's true. As the writer Steven Pressfield says, "It's not that people are mean or cruel, they're just busy."

This is actually a good thing, because you want attention only after you're doing really good work. There's no pressure when you're unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you're unknown, there's nothing to distract you from getting better. No public image to manage. No huge paycheck on the line. No stockholders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.

You'll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.

Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it.

Practice Productive Procrastination

I'm still busy toiling away on Project P, and while I plan to give you an update on my progress this three-day weekend (don't hold your breath, though), for now I offer you another piece from Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon (you can find him and his awesome book here). This book has been nothing but an inspiration and comfort to me, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Today's excerpt falls under Rule 5: Side Projects and Hobbies are Important:

Practice Productive Procrastination.

Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, "When I get busy, I get stupid." Ain't that the truth. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I'm bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts - it's so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you're out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, "Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind."

Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander. You never know where it's going to lead you.

My "boring creative time" is in the shower, the ride to/from work (I don't do the driving), and the hour it takes for me to fall asleep. What's yours?

Nothing Is Original

I am elbow-deep in Project P right now, but I hate to leave you, my wonderful readership, in silence! Therefore, I offer you this piece from Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon. If you have never heard of him, or read this book, you have now and I highly recommend not only the amazing read but the author himself (check him out on his website here). His book has been inspirational to me, and I'm only on #2!

To inspire you today, I offer a comforting excerpt from the book, entitled Nothing Is Original:

The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something "original," nine out of ten times they just don't know the references or the original sources involved.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

It's right there in the Bible: "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Some people find this idea depressing, but it fills me with hope. As the French writer André Gide put it, "Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again."

If we're free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

"What is originality? Undetected plagiarism."
- William Ralph Inge

Flying Books @ the Oscars!

Cirque acrobats weren't the only thing flying around the Oscars last night: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morrie Lessmore won Best Animated Short Film! *throws confetti* It's a fantastical "silent" story about a love of books and rediscovering one's passion and drive for writing. Every writer should watch it.

If you haven't seen it yet, give it a watch:

Building a World To Be

Have you ever heard World by Five For Fighting? Starting a story is exactly like the song. You sit down, pick up your pen, and create a whole world. It may have some of the same rules as your own, but no matter the genre - from mainstream to fantasy - you will make something out of nothing but your own imagination. You will decide if there "should be people or peoples." You will "raise your army" and "choose your steeple." And no matter what you do, "the satellites can look the other way." ;)

And it all begins with a simple idea, sparked by anything - an overheard sentence, a scene in a movie, the latest book you're reading, or simply life in general. Something sets off your imagination, and suddenly the package arrives: "A.C.M.E.'s Build-a-World-To-Be." There are "no instructions or commandments," just a whole universe of possibilities for your story to blossom from if you just "take a chance."

As a writer, you are god. You can do anything. Especially at the beginning, when only infinite possibilities are at your fingertips. You can "lose the earthquakes" and "keep the faults," maybe even "fill the oceans without the salt." Nothing is impossible to you.

So give the song a listen, be inspired and emboldened, and create. It is your world - you make it, you control it.

And in November, go forth and write it.

Sparkfest: Doom Goes the Writer

"What book made you realize you were doomed to be a writer?"

This is a question often put to writers. Most have a definitive answer - I do not.

I "officially" began writing in my early teens (although my mother claims I was creating pictorial stories even before I could write - and has very embarrassing proof). This was a time of ravenous reading and little notice where one book ended and another began, and since I can barely recall what I read last month, I cannot even fathom what title or author could've sparked my passion to write.

The vague memories I have of my first stories are those of slavery and Star Wars (not in the same story, mind you - although, actually, maybe a little...). I recall being quite fascinated by historical novels at one point, mostly in the form of Dear America journals. I began writing one of my own, about the unlikely friendship of a plantation owner's daughter and a young slave girl who worked the fields (original, I know). So I guess a Dear America book could've started me down the writerly road.

But around the same time I also created an entire family tree of force-strong, darkside-tempted smugglers in the Star Wars universe, spawned by Episode 1 and a subsequent obsession to chronologically read every Star Wars book ever written by man and alien. So one could say Star Wars brought out my passion for writing as well.

Which came first? I'm not entirely sure. Whenever I think back, I recall being crouched in front of an ancient Apple, handwritten notes beside the keyboard and a floppy grinding in the drive. Exactly which story I had been writing, I do not know. I was probably too busy trying to stay focused and not wander off to read my latest inspiration from the library.

This post is brought to you by Sparkfest.
Visit http://www.christinetyler.net/p/sparkfest.html to find out more.

Imagination Words

Owl City's new CD, All Things Bright and Beautiful, just came out a few weeks ago, and this song... I can picture myself trapped, exploring this wonderful old house with a ghost... What an amazing story...

I saw a ghost on the stairs
And sheets on the tables and chairs
The silverware swam with the sharks in the sink
Even so, I don't know what to think

I've been longing for
Daises to push through the floor
And I wish plant life would grow all around me
So I won't feel dead anymore

I saw a bear in the den
Reading my textbooks again
And bats flowed like traffic
As they poured from the attic
Heaven knows, I could really use a friend

I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
A quartet of crickets chime for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings would you strum on mine

Your spirit is sweet
So pull off your sheet
And give me a ghost of a smile
Show me your teeth
Cause you're a teddy beneath
So just grin and bear it a while

If that was all about nothing at all
A new leaf turns over, unwilling to fall

Tonight I'm busting out
Of this old haunted house
Cause I'm sick of waiting for
All those spiderwebs to grow all around me
Cause I don't feel dead anymore
And I'm not afraid anymore

Check out the whole song: Plant Life by Owl City - totally worth it, especially if you need some inspiration. And while you're at it, there are several other brilliant imagination songs on the album as well.

Project Updates: Inspiration can be a bad, bad thing...

Remember when I wrote last month on inspiration, and how it was okay to run with it as long as you go back to your current story once you're done? Well, there can be a flaw in this plan: what happens if the inspiration becomes the current story?

I have become so fascinated by Project V that it is dominating my attention right now. Even though I still don't have a clear picture of the world, I came up with a good beginning (after several false starts) and am now on Chapter 3, making it up as I go along (which is really what I do best). It's just so interesting, I can't stop!

That said, Project ID has been put on the back burner. I have been under the weather for the past few weeks and, mostly unable to write, lost my momentum. Although I know what to do for the next scene, after that I am completely lost as to where the story is going. This is why I don't normally write mysteries - too much to keep track of! I will have to go back and re-read what I have so far (again) and re-structure my plot points before I can go any further.

As for Project BW, being under the weather has made research difficult, and any I can do has gone towards Project V. So not much is happening.

I hope to get back to Project ID and ultimately finish before really diving into Project V, but until then writing is writing, so I'm not kicking myself too much.

When Inspiration Strikes

Never fear inspiration. "Of course not!" you say. "What writer would fear such a blessing?" Well, "they" can sometimes tell you that, while you are working diligently on one story, you should not work on any others. And if inspiration strikes you on another story? Well, just jot down a few notes and ignore it.

With no respect to "them," this is insane. Inspiration, no matter which of your stories it concerns, should never be ignored! Take a break from your current story and let your inspiration take you where it will.

But there's a catch: once the inspiration ends, you must go back to your current story.

This is where I always had trouble. I would get so caught up in the new story that I would put the old story completely out of my mind. And by the time inspiration died on the new story, the old story was a boredom best left until inspiration struck for it. And normally, it never did.

So if inspiration strikes you, run with it. But no matter if it's for a day or a week, make sure you always keep your current story at the front of your imagination, directly behind that shining inspiration. That way, when the inspiration finally vanishes (as it always will), your current story can step right back into front position (where it belongs). Always strive to finish what you start!

Some Imagination Words

These lyrics from "Gone In the Morning" by Newton Faulkner describe how I feel when I sit down to write:

Off to a land where no one’s been before

I’m going to take my shoes off at the door

I’m going to go where dreams like rivers flow

When the alarm goes off I just won’t know

Won’t you come with me

And what the vastness of writing feels like:

I’m going to master all kinds of kung-fu

I’m going to live inside a tiny zoo

I’m going to grow myself a giant afro

When the alarm goes off I just won’t know

Won’t you come with me

Fortunately, it's never "gone in the morning." (Incredible.)