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The Writing Life

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Celebration Is Vital to Creative Success

When you’ve hauled yourself over the line of your deadline, when you’ve gotten the news that your story has been accepted, when a gallery finally sees your brilliance and puts your work on the walls, there’s only one thing to do: celebrate.

Of course. This may seem obvious but we often forgo celebrating, forging ahead to the next goal or project. And when we do, we’re missing out on something that’s vital to the creative process.

Celebrating sends the message to yourself that the time and effort you put toward creating is acknowledged and rewarded. It’s a message of respect and of joy. Celebrating makes you stop and reflect upon what you did to arrive at your goal.

Yet most of us blow past this vital and loving part of the creative cycle. Almost every one of my clients and students needs nudging toward making celebrating part of the creative life. To make it easier for you to bring celebration into your life, here’s a baker’s dozen of simple, inexpensive and fun ways to celebrate your successes.
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Ten Creative Sinkholes and How to Paddle Past Them

I received a note from a former client the other day and asked her to frame it as a testimonial. She wrote this:
“Cynthia doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to writing and creativity…she walks the walk.”

I like to think that whatever success I have is because I completely relate to the thrilling white water rapids ride my clients experience when they want to bring a book or blog or art or business to life.

When I coach my clients, I remind them that I am paddling alongside them. I constantly push my creative edge by riding the waves of new projects. E-books, blog posts, creative excursions and videos all provide me with my class IV rapids.

I navigate these thrills by being willing to learn, willing to ask for help, and willing to go beyond perfection in order to complete and launch initiatives. I know the sinkholes in the creative process and I know how to paddle past them.
But I confess that while I do walk the talk, I’m not telling all. I’ve been operating under the premise that I need to have everything figured out before I present it to you.  And that my own creative paddling isn’t interesting to anyone but myself.

I feel it’s wrong to give the illusion that I have everything figured out.  Being able to live with an imperfect process is essential to making anything. So I’ll share a peek into what I am working on to share how I paddle past common sinkholes in my creative ride.

My hope is to show you how I get a big idea and paddle past the common inner and outer sinkholes  to launch. Hopefully my process will illuminate something about your own creative path so you can ride the creative wave and launch more easily.
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Writers and Artists: Pay Yourself First

You might not be used to depositing checks earned by the sweat of your pen or paintbrush (yet). That doesn’t mean you can’t start becoming financially savvy with your art. One of the top tips for becoming financially empowered is to pay yourself first.
How can you do that without incoming cash? Set your intention, and take a little action. Here are eight fun steps to make money a part of your creative life, even before you get paid from others.
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Free Writing Will Revolutionize Your Writing

In the writing workshops I lead, students rave about the power of the free writing method. I use free writing for everything I write, including my novel, all my e-books and every blog post you read here.

How can such a simple method revolutionize your writing? In a free write, all you do is put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and write without stop for a set period of time, say 10 minutes.

What comes out is part of the mystery of writing – unpredictable, fresh and timely. Free writing is a way to explore your mind and to see how words coalesce from your brain.

If you haven’t tried free writing, you are making any writing project way more difficult than it needs to be. Students and clients have reported that both personal and professional writing are much more enjoyable using the free write method.

I believe it’s the number one key to writing well, and that taking up the practice will revolutionize your writing. Here’s how.
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Earning Your A

Writers and other creative types are often notoriously hard on ourselves. Yes, I got published, but they didn’t pay much, you’ll hear. Or, sure I got a show, but it isn’t a solo show. Dissatisfaction is the bane of the creative’s existence.

It could be said that dissatisfaction drives the creative type to keep creating. If we were perfectly content with the world, we wouldn’t have to make anything new, would we?

Yet, this cranky perspective can also keep us from really enjoying the process of producing art. In The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander shares this exercise for banishing the ‘not good enough’ demons that haunt us. It’s called Earning Your A.
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