So I’m standing in front of the washing machine on Sunday afternoon, not really thinking about anything besides putting in a load of shirts. It’s a dark day with heavy clouds hanging low. That is all right because I don’t have to go anywhere. It seems like a calm, quiet day with no distractions going on. But when I look a bit deeper, I realize that I’ve got two conflicting lines of subconscious thought running through my head.

#1: What a nice, quiet, peaceful day for relaxing. Just what a Sunday ought to be. No worries. I’m just standing here being myself in the moment. It’s all good.

#2: So where’s all the productive work today? That blog isn’t going to write itself, now is it? And when was the last time anything got done on a story? Writers are supposed to bubble over with fountains of spontaneous creative energy. None of that seems to be around today, so there must be something wrong.

I close the washer door, start the cycle running, and step out of the laundry room. The vertical blinds have been drawn back from the sliding glass door in the kitchen, showing a view of the backyard where the slender branches of the willow hedge are whipping around in the breeze. Pale white catkins are just starting to open.
 

View of my backyard fence and willow branches through the kitchen door. 

Meanwhile, the inner dialogue continues.

#1: This would be a perfect day to curl up on the couch with a good book and a cup of hot tea. Mmm, vanilla caramel tea…

#2: Why waste a quiet day that would be just right for writing? Tomorrow is another busy Monday—always a lot going on. Time is precious! Nothing will get done without seizing the moment!

Walking into the kitchen, out of habit I find myself trying to mediate the internal conflict—how about drinking that cup of vanilla caramel tea while composing a blog post? But then I decide it might be more useful to drag my subconscious assumptions up into the light of day (what light there is on this dark winter afternoon) and take a good look at them.

The first line of thought seems pretty simple—it assumes that I’m not in a hurry today, which the empirical evidence of being in a quiet house on a Sunday afternoon would tend to support. The second line of thought assumes that the time available for creative pursuits is scarce and must be snatched whenever it is found. There is some historical evidence in its favor; in past years when I let myself get too busy, my writing suffered as a result.

But at present I’m just standing in my kitchen with nothing in particular to do, and I can’t see any good reason to hoard time as if it’s a scarce resource. Like anything else, creative energy gets harder to hold when one grabs at it desperately, rather than just letting it flow gently along its natural course. I ought to be able to read a book on a quiet Sunday, while trusting that I’ll find inspiration for stories and blog posts later.

“We’ll see about that,” scoffs Voice #2, “it just sounds like an excuse for laziness. What’s to be done when no inspiration shows up?”

That’s when the muse peeks out and settles the matter by deciding to turn this entire internal conversation into a blog post—but not right away. Truth be told, she’s feeling just a tad miffed about being hurried. Writing the post later will work just as well. At present, there’s a nice comfy couch and a cup of vanilla caramel tea calling my name!

It’s in the air. We can taste it on every breath—all that restless energy flowing through the culture, dancing wildly into the future, calling us to expand into infinite possibilities and create all the beautiful things in our minds that are just waiting for us to make them real. Life is supposed to be joyful, it tells us. There is so much more we can create and become. We only have to imagine it.

So we meditate, we visualize, we say affirmations, and we believe it’s within our grasp. We try to harness that wonderful creative energy to run before us like the chariot horses of the Roman arena, hooves pounding in a glorious cloud of dust as the finish line nears. We read self-help books that encourage us to follow our passions, whatever they may be, and trust that the Universe will reward our devotion—by sending a big fat bank account our way.

And I’m left wondering just how the passionate desire to create beautiful things got tangled up in our minds with Wall Street-style greed. Why are we so tempted to visualize ourselves quitting our jobs and effortlessly raking in a gazillion dollars from the books we haven’t written yet, the songs we haven’t composed yet, or the movies we haven’t produced yet? Why does everything have to be monetized on a grand scale? Seriously, are those sparkling joyful surges of creative energy telling us to grab the most toys? What’s going on here?

In general, whenever a narrative spreads so widely through the culture, it reflects something that already exists in present-day reality. I don’t mean to say that we’re all ruled by greed, but that we live in a time of vastly expanding possibilities. Modern technologies and cultural changes have empowered us to pursue careers we couldn’t have imagined in the past. So naturally we’re not willing to resign ourselves to a lifetime of soul-numbing drudgery just because people once thought there was nothing better. That, I believe, is what’s at the root of the “financial freedom” narrative—it’s not so much about old-fashioned greed, but about seizing those shiny new potential-filled moments and making the most of them. Money represents possibility.

And that’s all very well in itself; but the downside of equating money with possibility is that when the gazillion dollars never actually show up, it can feel like a personal failure, rather than simply reflecting the fact of a sputtering global economy that still needs time to expand. All that amazing creative energy takes a backseat to obsessively visualizing the big fat bank account and wondering what went wrong.

There is also a subtler trap, which is that we have been culturally conditioned to use the word “dream” to describe doing what we enjoy on a regular basis. That language puts it into the realm of distant fantasy, rather than within reach in everyday life. As a result, we can’t just be happy writing a blog or a novel or whatever because that’s what the creative energy calls us to do in this moment—no, that’s not good enough, we’ve got to have the glittering fantasy of being a super-wealthy celebrity. Otherwise, the culture might always dismiss our efforts as insignificant and leave us stuck forever in a dismal wage-slave existence.

Of course, we don’t really need that big fat bank account before we can take control of our lives. Nor is there any requirement to be a glitzy celebrity before anyone appreciates our creative projects. In fact, there are many celebrities and rich people who are notorious for their totally messed-up lives and always get laughed at in the tabloids. So if wealth and fame aren’t really where control, possibility, and respect come from—then how do we go about getting them?

Simply put, it’s all in the details. Not so much in those bright gleaming visualized details of future grand accomplishments, but in the words and images we use to frame our everyday acts—the details in present tense. I don’t, for example, dream of being a writer. I write stories. Fact. I write a blog. Fact. I control what I write and what I publish. Fact. These aren’t dreams—they are options I have chosen from among the many possibilities open to me in the here and now.

And though I can’t control what other people think of my writing, I have a fairly good idea of how to find readers who appreciate my work. First of all, I need to be consistently kind and courteous, showing others the same respect I’d like to get from them. It’s also important to take the time to put together quality work, free of careless errors. I need to be open to learning from constructive criticism and improving myself and my writing. And last but not least, I just need to get into the flow, relax, and have fun! If I became rich and famous, I still would need to do these things to earn genuine respect. There are no shortcuts to be bought.

I set up my blog on Kindle two weeks ago—not because I had any expectation of making money from it, but just because it seemed like a fun thing to do, as well as a convenience for any readers who might prefer following blogs on Kindle. Here’s a partial screenshot of my page on Amazon, which itself has a screenshot of my blog. I decided to put it into this post because the recursive effect looks cool.
 

Screenshot of my blog subscription page on Amazon.com. 

So far nobody has subscribed to it, but that’s okay because it is just a fun present-tense detail of the intentional life I’m in the process of creating. If I had been seriously planning to monetize my blog, I probably would’ve felt disappointed about not becoming an overnight gazillionaire. And we all know what we attract when we feel disappointed and unsuccessful—yup, more of the same. Simply enjoying the small details may not be as glamorous as the rich celebrity fantasy, but I believe it works out better as time goes by and more of those details fall into place.

Generally, leaving tasks undone sucks up a lot more mental energy than taking care of them promptly. But this time of year, when the days are cold and the nights are long, sometimes a lack of energy feels as if it comes from the season instead. That can lead to excusing procrastination with an internal narrative along the lines of, “I’m too tired to do a good job on that now, but I’ll work on it later when I feel more refreshed.” Too much of that, and the tiredness persists while the more refreshed feeling never comes. Creative projects, in particular, end up getting stalled.

So I’ve decided to give myself an attitude adjustment whenever I catch myself thinking like that, by changing my self-talk to convince myself that I have plenty of creative energy. Even if I don’t feel energetic, I take a few minutes to imagine myself working on the project and zipping easily through it. I tell myself something like, “I have lots of creative energy to put toward this, and it’s going to be so much fun and turn out great! I’m feeling fresh as a field of daisies!”
 

Field of white daisies.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Of course, there are days when I haven’t gotten enough sleep and honestly can’t focus on a creative project enough to do much with it. I’m certainly not suggesting that we should all force ourselves to check off tasks on the to-do list when we’re half asleep! But even on days when going to bed early is the best choice, we can cultivate creative energy by picturing how things ideally would go, instead of reinforcing a lack of energy with thoughts of feeling tired.

If we’re always telling ourselves that we feel too tired to do anything, sure enough that’s what happens! But when our self-image shifts to having lots of joyful energy, then we’re likely to feel more inspired the next day and get much more accomplished, after catching up on sleep.

I had in mind to write a post for today about the concept of an authentic self, and put together a few paragraphs on that topic yesterday. But then I got busy with other things, never got back to it, and put my partial draft in a folder with other half-finished stuff. That wouldn’t have been a problem except that I started worrying about whether I’d have time to finish the post today, and how it would mess up my planned schedule for the blog if I didn’t, and I had some work to catch up on, so maybe I wouldn’t be able to get anything written for Thursday either…

And then I thought, whoa! What’s going on with all these pointless worries! First of all, a personal blog is supposed to be fun, rather than just another chore to get done. If I didn’t enjoy it, there wouldn’t be much reason to keep writing it, would there? So there’s no sense in taking the fun out of it with self-imposed production schedules; my job gives me enough of those already! And second, to the extent that I write for insight and sharing rather than just for fun, I can accomplish those goals much more effectively when I set aside the time I need for meaningful reflection. Hurrying through a task never gets the best results, even when it’s just a blog post!

So, I took a few minutes just now to refresh my mind by browsing through photos of peaceful nature scenes to put myself in a reflective mood. Here’s one that I enjoyed:
 

Photo of trees reflecting on water at sunset.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

That was definitely more fun than worrying about whether I’d have time to finish writing yesterday’s draft. Hope you enjoy it too!

Sometimes my husband, who is a software developer, says that he doesn’t think of himself as creative. But I beg to differ—there is a lot of creativity involved in building things that didn’t exist before, no matter what their genre. Software programs and DIY home projects can be just as creative as novels or artwork.

Over the weekend he set up this blog so it can be followed (yay!) in WordPress. That wasn’t just a simple matter of installing a plugin. Although WordPress provides follow capability and other features for self-hosted blogs, they’re all in a big bloated package called Jetpack, which wouldn’t run properly until my husband wrote additional code to turn off some unnecessary and incompatible stuff. There were also style sheet issues he had to fix. It looks like everything is working well now (if you happen to spot any glitches, please let me know).

Another weekend project was a dog gate to keep our daughter’s new puppy in the kitchen. The puppy will be moving to Cleveland with her, but that’s not for another three weeks, and we’d rather not have to clean up surprises on the carpet in the meanwhile. My husband built the gate out of PVC pipe, two strips of plastic lattice, some pieces of wood at the bottom, and plastic feet to make it slide easily without scuffing the linoleum.
 

DIY dog gate in my kitchen. 

And here’s a photo of the pooch—she’s four months old, a mix of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Bichon Frise. She has learned how to sit on command, but still needs some work when it comes to housebreaking.
 

Puppy sitting in the kitchen, looking up at the camera. 

She’s a cute little thing, and very affectionate too—she loves being around people.

My goal for this year is to clear away the clutter that has accumulated in my life, both external and internal. I want to free up plenty of room in my home and in my thoughts for cultivating peace, beauty, and joy. I don’t need dusty old junk taking up space in my home, and I don’t need depressing negative thoughts taking up space in my head either. All that stuff has to go!

Looking back over my blog entries at the year’s halfway point, I see that I’ve posted much more often recently. I feel that the work I’ve done toward de-cluttering both my environment and my thoughts has made space for creative energy to come out and play! More often now, ideas pop into my head for future posts, and I jot them down without feeling obligated to follow through with any particular one.

In the past when I kept a page of notes about things I had in mind to write, I felt a sense of pressure. It was like looking at a to-do list. The fewer items on the list at any given time, the more pressure there was. In the back of my mind, I worried that I might run out of ideas or that it might take forever to turn any of them into worthwhile entries. To some extent, I’m sure that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t fully trust that there would be more ideas where they came from. I also didn’t fully appreciate that a blog is mainly just supposed to be FUN.

Now my thoughts are flowing much more smoothly—or at least, I am having an easier time composing everyday life and stream-of-consciousness posts. I don’t know why I haven’t been writing much fiction, though. When I started this blog, I planned to post a well-balanced mix of stories and essays on the general theme of modern life. Before that I’d been posting stories to creative writers’ private lists, whose members gave me good constructive feedback, and writing nonfiction articles for various projects. A blog combining both types of writing seemed like a natural progression; but this year, for whatever reason, there hasn’t been much fiction coming to mind.

The conventional advice would be to set aside some time every day for writing stories, even if I didn’t feel inspired. As with any other activity, regular practice would help with getting back in the flow. I haven’t done it, though, because I feel as if there ought to be some other approach that does not require turning my fiction into a daily chore. Yes, keeping to a regular schedule improves focus, both in writing and in other areas of life—but all too often, people force themselves to do something and it just feels like drudgery.  By way of comparison, we all know people who run on a treadmill regularly and hate it, but they never take the time to try other kinds of exercise that they might actually enjoy.  Put simply, I want to be more creative when it comes to nurturing my creativity. I want to invite abundant energy into my life, so that the stories spontaneously bubble over. And I feel that I’d benefit from looking at it in the same way as finding the right physical exercise—that is, experiment with different ways of going about it, and discover what brings me the most joy.

Have you ever had a time when writing prose seemed easy, but you just couldn’t get your fiction flowing? If so, how did you deal with it?

Edited on July 4: On reflection, I suspect I’m overthinking it. I probably should just do the same as with the nonfiction posts—that is, write down ideas for stories as they come to mind, without putting pressure on myself to complete them in any particular order.

‘Tis the season when many of us start thinking about changes we want to make in the coming year. We talk over potential New Year’s resolutions with our friends and family. Perhaps we focus on improving our personal lives, such as by resolving to eat healthier, get more exercise, and clean up a cluttered house. Or we plan to get involved in volunteer work—serving meals at the homeless shelter, for example, or teaching adult literacy classes at the library. By talking about our plans with others, we give the details more clarity in our own minds and become more determined to follow through.

But the idea of making long-term changes can be discouraging to us, especially in today’s busy and complicated society. It’s hard enough to keep up with everything that’s changing around us—advances in technology, reorganizations at work, and so forth. When we consider how many things need improvement, both in our personal lives and the world in general, we’re likely to feel overwhelmed. It seems like there’s just too much going on that we can’t control. Why even try? It’s easier just to fall back on our familiar comforting habits, even though they may not be good for us in the long run.

I recently had an email conversation along these lines with a friend who described her perspective on changing one’s own life and the world:

Sometimes I feel like all I can do—in a world that can sometimes seem so filled with strife—is continue to be positive in my own life and with my own situation, and then hope that my positivity can radiate out to others and uplift them as well (even if it’s just a smile I might share with a stranger). Lately when I meditate, I’ve been sending bright energies out to envelop Mother Earth. I wish there was something I could do to make everything okay for everybody. And that thought always leads me back to the saying “If you want to save the world, all you need do is save yourself.”

After I’d had a few days to reflect on her words, I thought more about positivity in the context of the Internet—and blogging in particular. There are plenty of blogs whose authors write cheerful, kind, uplifting material, but they don’t get much traffic. Although we may browse their blogs on occasion, we may feel that we haven’t got the time to visit more regularly or to write meaningful comments. Meanwhile, political bloggers stir up anger and often have long comment threads full of arguments. This skews the Internet toward negativity, even though most blog owners just write about everyday life.

So—my New Year’s resolution for 2014 is to radiate positivity by making time, for an entire year, to visit a different blog each day that focuses on random acts of kindness or other positive themes. I’ll write a detailed comment on each of these blogs, describing why I enjoyed it and thanking the author for creating it. At the least, this will make 365 blog authors happier, as well as improving my own mood by giving me positive reading material daily. And I’m hoping other bloggers will join in, which would magnify the effects exponentially! If you’re interested in participating, please visit my new Random Kindness Blog Tour page.

When I enjoy a free or low-cost ebook, I’ll often write a review. I consider it a way of showing appreciation for the author’s time, effort, and willingness to share creative energy with the world. It’s chiefly meant as encouragement, like posting a comment on a thoughtful blog entry or giving feedback to a friend in a writers’ group.

Conversely, when a book doesn’t suit me at all, I move on to something else without reviewing it. Everyone has different tastes, and I have better things to do with my time than complain. Besides, it strikes me as mean-spirited to post a review saying that a book sucks, even if that is my honest opinion. It’s not like commenting on a shoddy product where a company has been deliberately cutting corners to save money. Authors of ebooks usually aren’t weighing cost-benefit considerations when they dream up their stories. They’re just ordinary people.

And when I read a book by a celebrity author, I generally don’t feel motivated to write a review. Not even if I believe it’s a great book, recommend it to someone I know, or buy it as a gift. That’s because I put celebrity authors in the category of businesspeople selling a commercial product, rather than online acquaintances creating stories for the pleasure of sharing them. As such, my encouragement isn’t needed.

For the past century or so, we’ve had an entertainment industry whose business model has been to create glamorous stars for the masses’ adoration. They’ve made it such an ingrained part of our culture that it seems like the natural way of things. We expect to see tabloids full of celebrity gossip in the grocery checkout line. Most of us take for granted that a career in the creative arts is only available to a lucky few, and that for everyone else it’s just a daydream. When our kids say that they want to be actors, novelists, or singers, we tell them it might be a fun hobby, but they’d better keep up their math and science grades because they’ll have to get a real job.

Of course, today’s technology-driven society really does need a lot of engineers, and I am not suggesting we shouldn’t inform our young people of that fact. On the contrary, I’m very much in favor of programs that encourage high school students to take a rigorous schedule of math and science courses in preparation for careers such as engineering and nursing, which are facing major labor shortages in the near future. That’s wise public policy in a world of rapidly falling birthrates and increasingly specialized jobs. But at the same time, our technological advances have created more space for artistic pursuits than we ever had before.

In the early days of our celebrity culture, real physical constraints made it impracticable for any significant number of people to pursue creative careers. We still had a mostly agrarian society, and manufacturing was low-tech and labor intensive. Most people had to be farmers or factory workers because the economy didn’t generate enough surplus production to support more than a few entertainers. Also, the low level of technology meant that films, printed books, and vinyl records were expensive to produce and distribute.

What a difference a century makes. Today’s cheap technology and the Internet have made it possible for anyone to create indie movies, songs, and books. Although our culture still has its celebrities and all the hype that goes along with them, I expect that paradigm will fade quickly as we move toward a decentralized entertainment industry. The corporate winners will be companies like Amazon that provide a low-cost platform for individuals to market their creative works.

While indie artists won’t make millions or have paparazzi following them around, there is enough money in today’s economy that they should be able to earn a respectable living, while also enjoying a close relationship with audiences who look upon them as friends.

When I first read Little Women as a child, I had no appreciation for the scene where Jo March burns all her creepy stories about crime and monsters, which she wrote for a tabloid called the Weekly Volcano. I thought it was ridiculously old-fashioned to say that such stories harmed the public morals; and I felt sure that if I had been in Jo’s place, I wouldn’t have meekly burned up my own creations, no matter who disapproved of them.

It wasn’t until many years later that I began to understand what the scene was about. The Volcano isn’t just a clever name for a fictional tabloid; it’s a metaphor that represents all the anger, fear, and other molten-lava emotions bubbling away under the surface of the human consciousness. Because stories first create a dramatic conflict and then resolve it, they can’t be effective without touching the reader’s emotions in one way or another. Thus, an author has to consider what sort of emotional response a story is likely to get. Will the story take its audience for a harrowing stroll on the volcano’s edge? If we choose to dwell on sordid or gruesome material, then we bear some responsibility for the unhealthy feelings we stir up in our readers.

Of course, that doesn’t mean stories should have nothing in them but sunshine and joy; nor are we obligated to preach sermons to our readers. Rather, reading a good book can be like making a good friend. Fictional characters can give us comfort, inspiration, and helpful advice, just as our real-life friends do. Like real people, our fictional friends may have to deal with crime, death, and other less than pleasant aspects of the real world. As authors, we wouldn’t be honest with our readers if we pretended such things didn’t exist. And although monsters and the paranormal may not be literally real, they give us an opportunity to exercise our imagination and gain insight into our society’s collective psyche. Plus, they’re just fun to read.

So I wouldn’t say that any particular genre of fiction is harmful, in itself. What makes the difference is how the characters and images affect the readers’ emotions—and to some extent, the author’s as well. In Little Women, Jo’s quest to produce thrills by ‘harrowing up the souls of the readers’ left her feeling disturbed by morbid thoughts because she spent so much time focused on the world’s grimmer aspects: ‘She was living in bad society, and imaginary though it was, its influence affected her…’

If we’re honest with ourselves, both as authors and readers, we know what sort of emotions a story stirs up. If the main characters were real people, would we invite them into our homes for a visit, or would we nervously close the blinds and make sure all the doors were locked? If the latter, then we may find that we would benefit from choosing our fictional acquaintances more carefully.

Because our society has become so competitive, we’re often advised to focus on doing our best, rather than worrying about whether we have accomplished as much as others. Many people find this advice helpful because it frees them from the stress of always comparing themselves to others and falling short in some way. In a world of more than seven billion human beings, interconnected by modern technology, we are bound to find others who have accomplished more in almost any endeavor. Striving to outdo everyone is likely to be an impossible goal. Even those who manage to set a world record, through great effort, often find that someone else surpasses it in a matter of months.

In general, I agree that it makes good sense not to be overly concerned about measuring up to others’ accomplishments. But there is also a perfectionist trap in “do your best” because no matter what we do, there is probably something we could have done better. By definition, our best can’t be sustained as a long-term steady state. When we’re having a good day, we can do our best; but there will be other days when we’re distracted, or we didn’t get enough sleep, or we haven’t adequately processed a complex task and don’t feel able to deal with everything it involves. That happens to all of us, and we shouldn’t feel guilty because we’re not doing our best at a particular moment.

My preference, rather than always striving to do my best, is simply to do what needs to be done. By nature I’m picky anyway; in my writing, I often change a lot of words until it’s flowing just the way I want it. I don’t need the additional stress of always worrying about whether I’m doing the best possible work. Instead of obsessing all day about the small details, it’s generally more useful just to get the task finished and move on to something else.

Of course, that does not mean rushing through things with only the bare minimum of effort. Doing what needs to be done requires allowing enough time to do it properly. That way, if a task isn’t going well for whatever reason, we can just set it aside for a while and come back to it later, when we’re feeling more focused. And then if we’re still having problems with it, we have enough time to ask for help. Our hyper-competitive modern culture has left some people feeling that they always have to do everything by themselves, or else they’ll be incompetent failures; but in fact, there’s no shame in asking for help when we need it, and we may discover that those we ask are glad to help.

I’ve learned from participating in online creative writing groups that everyone has different perspectives on what makes good work, and usually they’re not shy about sharing their opinions. Of course, what one person prefers is not necessarily going to suit someone else; but if we can get past our defensiveness about being told that there’s room for improvement in our work, we are likely to find others’ views at least somewhat useful.

A corollary of the observation that everyone has different perspectives is that when we try to do our best, it’s not a clearly defined goal. What is our best, anyway? Do we really know? All of us have had the experience of being proud of an accomplishment, only to realize later that we made an embarrassing mistake. As we go through life and learn more about our world, we see many things differently. What we consider our best work at age 50 is not what we thought at age 25, for instance. And by that I don’t just mean we develop more skills; we also gain more insight into the social context and consequences of our acts. Are we at our best when we outperform our coworkers, or when we take a little time that might have gone into our work and help them to improve theirs? When we put huge amounts of effort into accomplishing a very ambitious task, at the cost of stressing ourselves out and spending very little time with family and friends, is that our best? Does the highest salary automatically equate to the best career choice, and if not, what other factors are important to consider?

Although striving to put our best efforts into everything we do may sound like a noble goal, in practice it’s highly likely to cause us to suboptimize—that is, to accomplish things that look good in themselves, but that actually detract from our well-being because we haven’t fully understood how they fit into the big picture. Instead of feeling obligated to work as hard as we can on each particular task, we should consider how the task fits into our long-term goals, and then set our priorities accordingly.