Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
As a young writer, I was always looking for advice on how to get my words out. This gem of a book is a classic for writers who need to get over themselves and get to the writing. Lamott’s voice is absolutely inviting and inspiring. She’s one of those bold, heartfelt and real writers who make you want to drop the book and get to your own writing. Bird by Bird is a must-have if you want to be emboldened to just start writing now.
Spring comes around every year, and I find that often, when coaching my clients, that some tidying up is required. It’s usually less the surface stuff, though that’s important, but often the things under the surface that need an update. Old beliefs, self-perceptions and projects may need to be taken to the curb.
This article is a refresh of one I published a few years back. See what needs refreshing in your creative life.
With spring’s arrival, we often feel a sense of newness and vitality. Along with that comes the inevitable spring clean. While I love the idea of dusting my baseboards and refreshing my closet, I get more excited when I think about refreshing my creativity.
You, too, might feel an urge to freshen up your art or writing practice. When we clear our space – our physical, emotional or mental space – we make room for better, fresher ideas and projects. Here are some ideas for how to bring a sense of vitality and vigor into your making process.
Clear out your supplies. What art or writing materials have been sitting around unused for more than a year, waiting for ‘someday’? Assess your stash and consider donating anything you haven’t touched in two years. Hoarding stuff isn’t productive. All that extra stuff/possibility may just be taking up space for the projects that want to be made.
Tidy up your digital files. My photo files from last year’s artist residency in Paris are a mess! I can’t wait to get in and tidy them up. This will reduce the amount of time I spend searching through my Dropbox folders. Do you have multiple, outdated drafts of your writing? Perhaps the images of your art aren’t organized.
Make more space for your dreams. Recently, while watering my succulents, I realized that most of my plants had outgrown their containers. I could see the sweet plants doing their best to thrive despite pots that no longer suited them. Immediately I wondered how that might relate to my creative dreams. Am I holding too small of a space for myself and my dreams? What might it look like if I opened possibility a bit more and gave myself room to dream bigger? What about your creative dreams? Time for new perspectives, perhaps?
Ditch old projects. While I believe in finishing things and following through on my commitments, I also know that some projects aren’t meant to be finished. I once set aside my 365 Cups series so I could work on something that felt more relevant and challenging to me. What projects are on a cold front burner that could be set aside for now to make room for things you really want to work on?
Get current with beliefs. Sometimes we’re operating on old beliefs that no longer suit or serve us. Some beliefs around creativity include:
When you get an exciting idea for a new project, notice the beliefs and fears that arise to meet your idea. Jot down that belief or fear and ask yourself if that’s still true for you. Then choose something else to put in its place.
After reading this list of potential cleaning projects, which area do you feel calls for your attention the most right now? Which area, if you did some spring cleaning there, would make a big difference for your creativity?
I hope you do some spring cleaning for your creativity – it will feel so good!
How will you spring clean your creative life? Leave a comment below!
You know that book idea that’s been simmering in the back of your mind forever? It’s time to bring it off the back burner and into your life now!
Get Started Writing Your Book takes place at Two Hands Paperie in Boulder on Sunday, April 14th. Only a few spots left! Register here.
In this fun and fresh workshop, you will:
From the many workshops I have taught and the coaching I have done with authors over the last twenty years, I know there are women out there with powerful stories to tell. My mission is to inspire and empower women to share their wisdom. Getting their books out provides a path to the kind of change needed in the world, and I view helping them as part of my contribution to peace and healing.
You’ll leave this class with a 30-day, quick start plan and practices that will get you started – and keep you writing! The class is geared toward non-fiction books, but fiction writers can benefit too. I have written and published both.
Get ready to get your book out of your head and onto the page! Register here. Only a few spots left.
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch
It was 1993, and I was working at Capitol Hill Books in Denver. The cool thing about a second-hand bookshop is that any random book can come in and change your life. One day, this book came in. I was in my twenties, clueless about what to do with my life and yearning for adventure.
This biography of Sylvia Beach enthralled me. I decided I would be just like her, living in Paris, running a bookshop and loving life with the literati.
Well, that didn’t happen, but she inspired me to write a novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation is a great read about a great American heroine.
Happy birthday, Sylvia Beach! I’m so glad you were born to be an inspiration to readers and writers across generations.
I devoted a dozen years of my life to writing a novel about Sylvia’s life. I wanted more people to know about this American heroine who founded the legendary Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company.
To honor Sylvia’s legacy, today, March 13th, the Kindle version of my novel is on sale for $1.99. Click here get your copy today. Enjoy this bookish Paris adventure!
At the end of February, there was a confluence of activity here at Original Impulse. I wrote a vulnerable article for you. My web site, that I’ve been working on since October, went live. That caused my email to go down. Also, an RSS feed for my blog got triggered and started sending out blog notices to people who hadn’t heard from the blog since 2014. It had an old image from 2010.
All of this vulnerability and technical glitches caused a profound mortification in me. You know the type, the visceral, “Where can I hide?” feeling.
Luckily, I had the good fortune to speak with a dear friend the day of the clusterfluff. She said, This is true imperfection. This is not you having an experience and writing about it later. It’s real time, real imperfection.
This was the best thing she could say to me. She asked what was I had imagined would happen or what would it mean if the world saw that I am not perfect.
In theory, I know I am not perfect. But in business, I seek to execute my actions at a high level of, well, perfection. No typos, no glitches. I do what I say I will do and seek to do it well.
But this need for perfection is a joy killer and a creativity crusher. In my writing groups, and with my clients, I help them wrestle down the need to be perfect. To write or say things perfectly. To make sure their work is ‘good enough’.
While I understand and share this hope for ‘good’, I also know that perfection is the enemy of beginning. We don’t start that essay because we know we don’t have the words figured out exactly. We don’t initiate that difficult conversation because we don’t know what to say. We don’t start our business because we don’t know how to do all the steps well.
The act of making anything is deeply humbling. We bump up against our limits. We face our ignorance – our not knowing how to do something. We find that we need help.
But isn’t that all the best? Dumping the idea of perfection allows us to tap into our truest and richest humanity. We become someone who is trying something – how cool is that?! Someone connected to everyone else who has braved something! Someone who embraces their humanness by reaching out and asking for help.
If you only dare something that you can do perfectly, I invite you to try anyway. Write that imperfect story. Have that messy conversation. Make that completely wonky drawing.
Use me if you’d like as a reminder that you can and will survive the imperfections. Even if you put it out there and omg make a mistake, you will survive. I survived my launch glitches, and was even able to laugh about it.
What about you? Have you survived imperfect creative efforts? Share your experience below.
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
This is one of the true cornerstones for my life, writing and work. In it, Natalie popularised the concept of free-writing. This practice allows people to get their words out more easily. I have written every single thing using this method.
I’ve also taught this method to thousands of writers since 1996. Natalie’s writing is real, refreshing and a great example of how free-writing can release what’s good and true inside each of us.
I can’t find my original copy of Writing Down the Bones; I must have gifted it. This is a copy that also contains her book Wild Mind.
If you haven’t read Writing Down the Bones, and you want to get started writing your stories, this is the book to get you going.
Women’s History Month seems like the perfect time to begin my World-Changing Books by Women series. In March, I will share books by women I consider to be my creative ancestors. These books gave me the courage to access my creativity. I became a writer and an artist because of the books I will share this month.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron This book truly changed my world in 1994. I was working at the bookstore, wondering how to live my most creative life.
This book, with its in-depth exercises, gave me permission to identify and go for my writing dreams. It’s a guide to getting to know your true self, and I’ve recommended it thousands of times.
A recent re-read of The Artist’s Way showed me how many of my beliefs about creating and writing come from this book. This book is one of my creative ancestors, and I salute Julia Cameron. She’s written many more books, but this is the best one.
Did The Artist’s Way change your world?
As a girl, every week I visited the library. My parents would drop me off and pick me up later. I’d come home loaded down with a stack of books that I would devour and chronicle in my book ledger.
Well, not much has changed! I still go to the library and bring home more books than I can read. In my twenties, I worked at a bookstore here in Denver where I got the best kind of graduate school education – real world lessons sprinkled through with bookish insights. I still love sharing books that matter to me.
[Read more…] about World-Changing Books by Women Book Review Series
Since I’ve stopped watching TV, I have been back to my original love: reading BOOKS! I’m launching a new series later this week, where I will share a world-changing book by women every Friday. More on that soon.
For now, here’s what I’m reading and enjoying.
The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. I read this memoir cover to cover. I relished how the author’s experiment in letting life lead the way made for the most magnificent life. Instead of having his own ideas of how things should go, he surrendered to what life had in store for him.
Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds by Dr. Kelly Turner. A dear friend of mine has been clearing cancer from her body in the last nine months. She has been relentlessly positive, trying all kinds of modalities to return her health. She mentioned this book, describing the nine things that people who have reversed their health have done to bring about healing.
Only two of the practices are physical (diet, and herbs and supplements). The others all relate to a mental and emotional health and how important that is to healing. When De told me about it, I realized that I could work on things like releasing negative emotions and connecting to a sense of meaning now. Why wait until illness appears to focus more on my health?
Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness Ingrid Fetel Lee This is a pick in the Next Big Idea Book Club. I’ve been reading the chapter on magic and I love the author’s approach.
Exit West by Moshin Hamid I read this for my book group. It’s a story of a couple who flee their country for safety and become immigrants in London. There’s a bit of magical realism and a high dose of optimism. The writing is stellar and the story touching.
My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley – For next month’s book group. I’d heard about this last year on NPR. The commentator talked about how funny it is. So far, I’ve had a chuckle or two. Who doesn’t need a laugh?
If you’re like me, you enjoy a good film that moves you emotionally. I particularly like the ones that make me cry. There just aren’t enough opportunities to open up and bawl like a baby. A good flick can do that for you!
I also refer to movies a lot when coaching my writing clients. Movies are a great way to see story and drama writ large. This makes it easier to infuse our own writing with emotion and depth.
I posted a note on Facebook recently asking friends for their suggestions of good ‘sobbers’. I compiled them into a document.
Download the list here and add the movies to your queue. Next time you’re feeling moody, check one of these out.
What movies move you to tears? Feel free to add them in the comments below. I won’t be able to amend the list but would love to see more titles if you’ve got them!
In The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book, I talk about how to commit to a monogamous relationship with your book while writing it. Framing it as a relationship seems to help my clients.
We all know how exciting and fun the initial phases of a project is. Early ideation is thrilling. There’s often such a sense of rightness, of things clicking into place in our minds. It’s almost like we can see and feel the whole thing. Like the book already exists and our job is to pull it into form, one word, one sentence at a time.
These early days are heady, and the sense of possibility is intoxicating. This thrill is something we come to expect as the norm. But like any relationship, the honeymoon phase does end.
Drafting the book turns into revising the book. And here’s where it gets a little less fun. Editing is a different process than drafting. We confront our limitations as writers. We bump into confusion, and feel awkward as we wend our way toward clarity. Doubt seeps into the process, turning something we loved into something we may dread.
I remember this roller coaster of love for every book I have written. I remember being in the tub at the time I was writing my first book, thinking, oh, I need to put that thing in the book. But when I went to the manuscript, I had already put that in there. All the ideas I wanted to share felt like a swirly, jumbled mess.
Writing my novel took twelve years and seventeen drafts. It wasn’t all love and roses. It was humbling as I learned how to write a novel by actually doing it.
What I have learned, and what I teach my clients, is to look for the love in all the phases of the process. What’s to love about getting feedback and realizing there’s more work to do than you anticipated? Where’s the love in revising something so it truly speaks to what and how you want to communicate?
These phases of the process call us forth. They challenge is. It might not feel as thrilling as the initial idea, but there’s plenty to love there. When you find yourself bumping up against your limitations, ask yourself this: What’s to love here?
What helps you keep the love alive throughout all the phases of a project? Share your thoughts below.
We’ve heard the usual advice: write a certain amount of words daily. Keep a notebook to capture your ideas in one place. Write what you know. But what if some of the simplest things made for the best writing practice?
All this is good advice. And over time, I’ve seen that it’s the simplest practices that help make writing easy. I have used these myself and have witness students in my classes feel great success with these simple approaches.
Always apply my Adopt/Adapt approach. Adopt my suggestions and adapt them to suit you. If it’s not working, drop it and try something else.
Set a timer. You have probably sat down to write and found yourself bopping all around your email and the internet. A timer is the simplest thing of all but the best way to hold your focus. Set a timer for 10-15 minutes to get focused bursts of writing in.
Use a reflection process. At the end of each writing session, jot three words to describe your experience of writing. Don’t overthink it; just free-associate your experience quickly and briefly. Keep a list of these to see what your writing gives to you.
Give your words critical distance. After you’ve written something, set it aside for a day or so. Give it space to breathe and for you to step out of writing mode and into reader mode. You will see much more with space between you and the writing.
Write early. We all have our biorhythms that work for us. Knowing when to do things is key, as Dan Pink describes in his book When. No matter what your preferred time of day, I suggest getting your writing in as early as possible. Most of the people I work with report that they have more focus and energy earlier in the day. The later in the day the writing happens, the more it feels like a chore. Do your writing early in the day and enjoy the victorious feeling that gives you all day long.
Keep it together. If you haven’t already, create a container for your writing. It could be a notebook or a digital file. Gather notes, drafts, ideas and images in one place for easy reference. It doesn’t matter how messy the contents are, just that you have one container for your work. Ideally, it will be portable so you can access it everywhere.
You can also use the notebook as a progress log or way to capture your process. Sometimes we need to hash out our thoughts about our process or record information about our writing sessions—yay, gold star! Or add up our word count. We can log our ups and downs and have a record of what works and what doesn’t for the next book we write.
I prefer to use a notebook, and one of my favorites is the Diary Flex by Hahnemühle, which is refillable. There is also the cool Make My Notebook, which allows you to customize your cover and interior pages, seen above.
This is excerpted from my book, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book. Subscribe to Impulses for sneak peeks and insider insights.
Join me and Denver authors Eleanor Brown and Cynthia Swanson for the League of Women Voters of Jefferson County Authors’ Luncheon. I’ll be sharing stories about a passion for reading and writing books. This is going to be fun!
The event is on Saturday, February 23rd; tickets available here through February 18th. Reserve your spot today here.
Want to write but have a hard time capturing your ideas and knowing where to start? Make it easy peasy to free-write from your own prompts with a mind map.
