Original Impulse Blog

The Tenth Resource for Creative Geniuses

In my end of the year edition of Impulses, I shared Original Impulse highlights, client highlights, personal highlights, and some goodies. I shared my top ten resources for creative people that I stumbled upon in 2008.

Well, I came up with nine. Here’s the tenth resource.

If you’re a book lover, you may already be enjoying National Public Radio’s (NPR) broadcasts that feature news from the American literary world. Enlightening interviews with authors, reviews of new books, the scoop on what’s happening in publishing…it’s all there.

But you may not be tuned in to the radio on a regular basis. Here’s where the NPR Books podcast is your new friend. Simply go to iTunes and subscribe to NPR Books podcast (yes, that’s what it’s called). Then you can listen to 20-30 minutes of bookish news while you scramble your eggs in the morning, while you sweat it out on the treadmill, while you walk the dog on your daily trek.

There. I feel better now that I’ve given at least ten resources this year. If you missed the first nine, it’s because you’re not in the Original Impulse tribe.

Join us by subscribing to Impulses. It’s free and easy and 2009 will bring a lot more resources to make creating in life, at work and in the studio easier.

Get the first nine resources and subscribe to Impulses.

Psst! This is the 500th Original Impulse blog post! I've been blogging since May, 2005 and loving it. Watch for a new class I'll be teaching in 2009 to help you build and sustain a blog for at least this long!

Creativity Takes Time

A friend was trying one of the recipes I gave her for lentil soup. She said she put all the same things I had used into the pot: lentils, onions, garlic, tomatoes, chile pepper, salt, etc.

“It just tasted like watery tomato sauce,” she complained.

“How long was it cooking?”

“About thirty minutes.”

Voila! There's the problem. Good cooking doesn’t happen in a microwave minute. Good soup needs to burble and bubble on the stove for at least three hours.

It’s the same with the creative process. It takes time. You can’t just throw yourself into the studio or chain yourself to the keyboard and whip something out in thirty minutes.

The creative process needs plenty of stewing time.

Now, I do advocate short periods of time in the creative zone. Many people make no progress on their creative projects because they think they need hours at a time, whole days devoted to the studio, and frankly, not many of us are able to time block that kind of space in our calendars.

So, yes, spend just fifteen or thirty or sixty minutes creating. It’s the time away from the project, stewing, letting the process deepen, that brings your work to a deeper place.

Like writers who whip out a draft of an article, print it up, and set it aside for a day or two before editing it.

Or the sculptor who lets the sculpture sit for awhile before firing it in the kiln.

Or the Scrabble player who looks away from her rack and when she looks back, sees the perfect seven-letter word.

Give your creative process time, both focused on the work and away from the work. Let things stew, let them marinate. Take a walk, take a nap, go to a movie, hang out with your kids.

And for heaven’s sake, always let your soup simmer for at least three hours. That’s where you get the best flavor.

My Gift for You: Sassy Beans

I want to give readers of my blogs an end of the year thank you gift. I want you all to come over for dinner. I’ll make a feast, complete with French wine and cheese and olives, jazz playing softly in the background, and great conversation all around.

I want this, but since I’m in the middle of nowhere in the south of France, I doubt you’ll get here in time for dinner.

So, the next best thing I can do is share a recipe that I invented. I love this recipe and every time I eat it, I think, this has gotta get out to the masses!

I’m sharing my recipe for Sassy Beans, and I want you to make it and share it with everyone you can. Spread the Sassy Bean!

I make a pot of these beans and then serve them with: roasted vegetables and rice or quinoa, on the side of a leafy green salad, or mixed into pasta and vegetables (lasagna or moussaka). Or alongside an omelet. Anything goes.

I don’t use measurements when I cook, so you won’t get precision in this recipe. Just follow my lead, use your cooking sense, and it will be great.

Beans:
I like: black beans, adzuki beans, green or brown lentils. Experiment with different types, but don’t use red lentils for this recipe. Too soggy.

Take a cup or so of uncooked beans and soak them overnight in water. The next day, drain the water and then boil the beans in a pot on the stove for an hour without adding anything. (Especially don’t add salt. It retards the cooking of the beans.)

You may be moaning, can’t I just open a can? Yes, you can open a can of beans. But it’s nearly as easy to do it from scratch, cheaper and with less packaging. It just takes a bit of planning. Do this on the weekend. Honestly, once you chop everything up, it kind of happens on its own.

You can also do this in a crock pot, which is a great addition to any busy person’s kitchen.

Once the beans are almost cooked, add:

One chopped onion
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons grated or chopped fresh ginger (Don’t even think of using powdered ginger. Just don’t.)
1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
salt and pepper to taste

It’s the fennel and ginger that make the beans sassy, and so tasty. You may wish to add a vegetable bouillon cube to the cooking beans, or some vegetable broth.

You can also add some fresh chopped cilantro or parsley when serving if you want to be fancy.

Cook the beans for another hour or so on low, stirring occasionally. Adjust the seasonings for taste and enjoy in the aforementioned manner or in your own way.

Let me know how it goes, or tell me about your bean recipes!

Leaping Out of Bed in the Morning is Bad for Creative People

                                 There’s a common myth out there: if you love your life, you’re leaping out of bed every morning, buoyed by enthusiasm to go for your day with gusto!

Show of hands. How many of you (loving life or not) are springing fresh from bed on a daily (or even regular) basis?

I thought so. If you’re like me, the day starts slowly. You wake up straddling the dream world and the real world. You want to relish the dreams, take a peek at them with your conscious mind, see what’s been churning around in the unconscious all night.

You want to stretch your body, ease out the creaks from staying prone in one position for hours.

And best, you want to lie there awhile, capturing new ideas like dandelion fluff before they disappear in the whirl of your busy day. Because this part of the day can be your best time for generating new ideas.

This is precious creative time. Often it’s the only part of the day you have to yourself. It’s precious time when your mind isn’t in high gear, zooming in a million directions. This morning time can provide you with your best insights.

And sometimes, you just want to enjoy lying in the comfort of your bed for a little longer. I confess that being cozy in bed is one of my favorite things in life, and springing from bed upon awakening is not a sign of how much I love my life. Lingering under the covers is my way of expressing my authentic love for the way I live. I’m fortunate to not awaken to an alarm clock, and to set my own schedule so I can stay up late and wake up late. I like starting the day with a bit of reflection and idea generation.

So if you have been gauging your zest for life by the vigor with which you launch out of bed in the morning, you can shed that myth. Use another metric to know whether you’re really engaged in life. What would it be? How do you know you love your life?

*Photo by Amskie23

Making Your Creative 2009 Now

Last week I wrote about assessing the year to acknowledge your ups and downs as a writer. This week I   invite you to begin thinking about your future creative successes. This is a great time to set an intention for your creative life in the upcoming year.

Intention or Goal?

An intention is different than a goal. Goals are actions that have specific, measurable results. Intentions act more as markers for how you want to be, or areas you wish to focus on. For instance, last year my intention was to work on the revision process of writing. Over the year I got more comfortable and more familiar with second, third and fourth drafts of items I was writing. This taught me patience and schooled me further in the craft of writing. It paid off with several publications and a better sense of my writing style.

What would you like to focus on for yourself next year? It could be to hone your research skills. You may wish to delve into an element of writing, such as characterization, setting, or how to write powerful transitions. Writing is a vast pool to dive into and you will never run out of places to grow and improve.

Begin to brainstorm your intentions for your writing life next year. What would you like for yourself? With the learning from last week’s exercise, what will you do differently?

Go Ahead, Set Some Goals

You may also wish to set specific goals. If publishing in magazines is one of your big goals, you can set smaller goals. Set goals that are working goals, that is, goals that reduce to actions that you can control. For instance, if my big picture goal is to publish at least four magazine articles, I would break that down into working goals. They might look like:

• Revise and polish the articles I have already written
• Brainstorm two new articles
• Research and target 3 markets per piece
• Write and revise queries for each
• Gather any clips, SASES and other materials
• Begin sending out queries
• Enter queries into tracking system

I can’t control whether someone will publish my articles. But I can control how much effort I put into it, and the quality of my effort. My working goals reflect that.

Can you see the difference between intentions and goals? Take some time now or the beginning of January to envision what you want for your creative life in 2009. Think big and bold!

Serious Juju for My Novel

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how synchronicities happen all the time when you're on the right creative path. I mentioned how I had wanted to see les Halles in Paris back in the 30s. And how that Sunday there was an article in the NY Times about a contest for architects to develop a new project for les Halles. That article led me to a FILM of les Halles in the 30s. A film! It was amazing to see that place alive and moving, and completely informed a scene in my novel.

I'm experiencing an even bigger synchronicity and I'm jumping up and down and had to share it with you. Get this.

I'm writing about Paris just before World War II, and books, and how...well, I'm not telling any juicy details yet. But I needed to find information about how the Nazis were with books. I knew they burned piles of books in 1933, and I knew they launched a massive campaign against 'degenerate art'. I've even seen books about the stolen art and how people lost their collections to the Nazis.

But nothing about books. I searched online. I Googled it. I'm not the best (most thorough) research hound, and I was discouraged. I figured I'd just have to make stuff up. It is a novel, after all.

Listen to this! In the Carcassonne train station in November, I was looking at a French literary magazine. I found a page that talked about three new books dealing with the control of culture and information under the Occupation.

One of the books just published deals with exactly what I am looking for:

Livres pillés, lectures surveillées: Une histoire des biblioteques françaises sous l'Occupation by Martine Poulain

The translation of the title is, roughly: Looted Books, Reading Surveilled: The Story of French Libraries during the Occupation.

I've been reading several reviews of the book (translated online). I have to get it. I have to read it. I happen to be in France and can hopefully get it easily.

I'm so excited. This is going to add immensely to the historical flavor of my novel.

So, if you, too, are at a crossroads or a rut with a creative project, call on some juju (synchronicity, magic!) to help. It's there, waiting to aid your creative process.

NY Times Shares Vision of Bailing Out Writers

Check out this hilarious article about bailing out writers financially. Okay, maybe not hilarious, but I thought it was funny. Imagine trying to stop people who want to write from writing. The determined will only keep tapping away at the keyboard and generating new book ideas.

Where Have You Been? Assessing Your Creative Year

The end of the year provides us with the perfect opportunity to assess our progress over the past months. Why not do this with a focus on your creativity? Take some time to look at where you have been. This will help you to acknowledge the progress you have made. Taking this step is incredibly empowering.

Whether you have done all that you wanted or not, your actions can show you where your commitment is, what got in the way if you didn’t write as much as you wanted to.

Be kind as you look at what you have given to your creative life. This is not an opportunity to beat yourself up for what you have not done. Take into account the other obligations you have committed yourself to. Be honest about where you could have done something differently, given your circumstances. Be grateful for what you did do.

Use the following questions to guide your inquiry, and jot your answers down in your notebook.

• What are the major accomplishments of your creative year?
• What are the minor accomplishments?
• What happened that you didn’t expect?
• What are you most proud of?
• What did it take to have this kind of progress?
• What have you learned?
• What was missing from your creative life this year?

Now that you have a sense of where you have been, next Monday I’ll share ideas on how to set powerful intentions for next year.

Writers' Success Group

Ready to make 2009 your best writing year yet? Join a group of committed and focused writers in my Writer's Success Group.

This group is for people who are working on one specific writing project, and who want to have extra support and accountability to stay on track. It's also a bonus to enter a community of positive people, led by a certified coach, to enjoy the writing process that much more.

We meet once a month, on Friday mornings, via telephone. You have the option of sending weekly check-ins to which I respond.

The best thing? It's so easy, completely affordable and after four months, you'll see progress on your writing.

Read all the details on my website. To apply, send me an email telling me about your project and what you want to get out of the Writers' Success Group.

Don't hesitate if you feel this is for you. There are only three spots open.

You Gotta Check This Out: TED

I think I heard about TED conference a few years ago from Copyblogger. Exclusive, invitation only, expensive. Of course I wanted to go.

So when I was watching Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen give a presentation to the people at Google on how to give presentations, and he mentioned TED videocasts as a great resource, I rushed over to check it out.

Inspiring, informative, thought-provoking, these videos are a great way to stimulate your creative thinking. They also stimulate your social consciousness, causing you to think about what you’re doing to make a difference.

The TED tag line is Ideas Worth Spreading, so I’m spreading theirs. Some of my favorite podcasts so far:

Isabel Allende gives a taste of what it was like to walk in the Olympic ceremony in Turin with Sophia Loren (and much, much more)

Dave Eggers (my hero) shares the story of how he and a group of writers, editors and teachers are helping kids one-one in a wacky, creative and effective way.

Ursus Wehrli Tidies Up Art – Just watch this if you are in the need of a really good laugh.

Jill Bolte Taylor had a major life shift and lived to tell about it. Completely inspiring and moving.

Ken Robinson on why schools kill creativity. Funny and inspiring.

There are tons more, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself. You can find all of these and more at Ted.com. Check it out. Subscribe. Listen, watch and enjoy!