Creativity Tips: Try, Try Again

Creative Inspiration: After Years, by Ted Kooser

And, if you like that, listen to the wonderful Ted Kooser read The Beaded Purse. His description at the start of the reading -- of hearing the story and wanting to write it on the tablecloth -- that's it. That's it exactly. Listen, and the poems come to you. 

#Creativity Tips: Lose the Fear

One of my favorite artists is Laura Bolter -- you can check out her beautiful work here. While I don't know many of the artists and writers and other creative folk I admire, I have the good fortune of calling Laura a friend. So when she posted this pic -- and comment -- on Facebook, I was all over it:

"This has always been a struggle for me. So in an effort to stop striving for constant perfection, I'm sharing this with filled in counters, blobs of dried paint and other imperfections." -- Laura Bolter

Laura, you're not alone. When it comes to creativity, fear is the big stumbling block. We're afraid of being wrong, of being misunderstood, of not being appreciated. We're afraid of hurting someone with truth in our writing. We're afraid we'll choose the wrong words, use the wrong colors.

The first step in losing the fear is acknowledging it. Only then can we deal with it. .

By the by, if Laura hadn't pointed out the imperfections, would you have noticed them?

Fabulous Phrases: Stolen from the NY Times

As promised long ago, I will periodically share fabulous phrases. And if you see a line you love, send it my way!

Today's phrase comes from Louis Bayard, plucked from his New York Times' summary of the Downton Abbey finale:

“For better or for worse,” 

my grandmother used to say, 

“but not for lunch.”

Tom, my dear retired husband ... if you read this, don't take it personally. ;-)

#Creative Community: Want to be in my book?

Think he'd buy one? It could happen!

Shhhhhh. I'm going to tell you a sorta-kinda secret: I'm working on a book proposal about creativity in business -- basically, my creativity presentation in book form, with a ton of fun exercises and quotes and more.

If you like the blog, you'll like the book.

I'll babble more about it in the days ahead, but right now the agent has me hard at work on the marketing section. This, my friends, is where you come in. I need to demonstrate that I can sell books. And I'm not above bribing you to do that:

Tell me you'll buy a book, 

and you'll be named in the acknowledgement section!

That's right! You too can be published. Post a comment here, send an email, Tweet at me, whatever. Tell me if you expect to buy one for yourself, two for gifts, or 50 for the office. (Ooh. Promise to buy 50 and you'll get extra goodies. I might even make you a sock monkey.)

P.S. Ya'll deserve to be in the acknowledgement section anyway. Such a gift to have you along on the ride!
P.P.S. Have you read the free Creative Chai ebook yet? 

The True Story of Dr. Seuss

This could fall under the "day late and dollar short" category, since we celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday yesterday, but the info is too good to pass up ...

• Do you know what drinking gin has to do with his now-famous name?  
• Did you know a random encounter led to his first book deal?
• Can you tell me why he liked nonsense?

You'll find all the answers in yesterday's Writer's Almanac, under the poem. Enjoy!

#Creativity Exercise: Name Your Book

Truth: I write while I drive. Now, I should hasten to say that I write in my head -- if I need to make a note, I pull over and park.* And I do that fairly often.

What do I brain-write? Most often, titles for stories or books or poems or whatever. So I'm driving along and I think, "Floating Goldfish. That would be a cool title."

Yeah, it's probably a sickness. Oh well. My quirk provides the prompt for today's creativity exercise. If you were going to write the story of your life, what title would be on the cover?

*You do carry pen and paper with you everywhere, right? OK, good. Just checking.