Creativity, Productivity and Organization III

More on creativity, productivitiy and organization:

At Break Into Fiction Writing, there’s an article about valuing your time as a writer, and using your time well. 

Conda’s Creative Center gives tips on organic organization for creative minds.

Bev Walton Porter gives advice about finding time to write.

Finally, check out the free e-book Time Management for Creative People at Wishful Thinking.  Highly useful stuff.

Tomorrow, I’ll post a little more of what I find in my Web-mining, as well as some of my own thoughts on the subject.

New today on Etsy

Another shameless plug! Just uploaded to Etsy:

Multistrand copper, shell, aventurine and lapis necklace

Check it out!

More Creativity, Productivity and Organization

I’ve been doing some more Internet-mining, searching for bits and pieces that might help me become a more creative, organized and productive person.

Here’s a little of what I’ve found:

7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output

Flow Blogging: How to Achieve Writing Productivity

11 Tips to Carve Out More Time to Think

Sadly, it seems to me that there’s little out there about creativity, productivity and organization that doesn’t have to do with running a business.  I’ve read articles directed at managers, etc., and most of them try to teach people who aren’t in creative fields to think creatively, and apply that thinking to business.

I, however, have the opposite problem.  I have very little problem thinking creatively.  It’s the practical considerations (finding time and being being productive) that trip me up.

So, back to mining.  I’ll let you know what I find.

Why Writing is Harder Than. . .

A friend and I were talking the other day about why it’s sometimes so difficult for us to write, even though both of us have grand and glorious dreams of supporting ourselves someday through writing, and both of us are very creative in other areas.

We both admitted to sometimes being terrified when it comes time to put something down on a blank page.  Why?

It’s not hard for me to sing in front of an audience, and I never have a blank when I sit down with a bunch of beads and some wire.  Neither of these things frighten me because if someone were to tell me that my voice sounds like a crow hitting a plate glass window, or that my jewelry looks like it was designed and crafted by a one-handed monkey, I could shrug it off.  It has nothing to do with who I am, merely what I do in my spare time.

But when I write, my words are a reflection of who I am.  I’m not thin-skinned; I can take criticism regarding craft, word choice, characterization, plot, what have you.

But if I were told, “You shouldn’t write.  You’re just no good at it,” I think something inside me would shrivel up and die.

And somewhere inside my head, there’s a voice that tells me I shouldn’t write.  That I’m just no good at it.  And the voice is loudest when the page is blank.

I get a little sick to my stomach, a little dizzy, and my palms get sweaty.

The trick, I guess, is to muscle through the fear.  To know that it’s okay if my first draft sucks.  Because it’s not me; it’s my first draft, and it’s not written in stone.

Some good blogs and articles that might help if you have this problem, too:

Making Creativity Click at Fear of Writing

Creative Writing and Fear at Clarity Works

Battling Yourself: Fighting the Fear of Writing at Brazen Careerist

Enjoy!

Creativity, organization and productivity

I’ve been mining the Internet, looking for bits and pieces that might help me to remain creative, but become productive and perhaps even organized.  So I’m passing on a bit of the wealth to you.

Zenhabits is a site that I absolutely love.  There’s something there every day that helps me to think about my life and my work in a more honest, relevant and positive way. In particular, there’s an article on productivity for creative types, “Seven Productivity Tips for People that Hate GTD.”  It’s a list of simple things that make sense, but that I never would have thought of on my own.  I suppose, like many people, I like to complicate things. 

There’s also “Creativity, Organization and Energy–they go together” at Notes from the Toolshed.  Good, simple ideas that one needs to be reminded of.

And, last for today’s post, there’s a lot of great stuff at Ellen Hankes’ site, including info about the link between disorganization and intense emotion, a right-brain/left-brain assessment, and more.

And speaking of productivity, I’ve got a couple of new things up at my Etsy store:

Red Agate Nuggets

and

Red Roses, Red Roses

Check them out!

Too many hats

I’ve worn too many hats this week.  Do you think I’ll go bald?

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I teach labs for ESL students in the afternoons (speaking, listening and writing, respectively), and tutor students who just need help with writing in the university’s writing center in the mornings.  On Wednesday evenings, I take a class on theories of second language acquisition.  (Ooh, fun.  Just what I want to do for three hours when I could be home watching Lost.)  I have Tuesdays and Thursdays largely to myself, but this week I subbed for one of the ESL teachers on Tuesday, and my son didn’t have school on Thursday. Last weekend I had a jewelry show at the local coffee shop, and I had orders to finish up from that.  I met with my writing group last night, with nothing written.  My son had projects due this week; my husband had meetings and interviews this week, and they needed to eat.  And wear clean socks.

I have a hard time coordinating everything; I’m not a very organized person.  That’s an understatement.  What I mean is, I am the least organized person I have ever known.  I have the memory of a ferret on cocaine.  I make plans, and unless I write them down or someone else knows about them, I will forget.  Even if I write them down, I might lose the slip of paper and forget what was written on it.  It’s gotten so bad that the proprietor of my favorite coffee house offered to keep my punch card in the cash drawer, since I constantly forget to bring it with me.

I’m looking for the magic bullet.  The one that will help me organize my life and give me the time that I need to be a good mom, a good wife, a good teacher, a successful writer and a successful artisan.

So, I’m searching.  This week, Wynter Creates will feature articles on organization, time management and creativity.

If I remember.

The economy, and buying and selling handmade

We’ve heard the news, again and again, and again.  The economy’s bad.  We get it.  But what’s an indie artisan to do?

There’s a great post at Kelli’s Craft Studio about selling handmade during tough times.  I highly recommend that anyone who sells crafts check it out.

There’s also an excellent article at indiepublic about how buying handmade could actually help our struggling economy.

The area in which I live has, fortunately, not been hit too hard by the economy just yet.  Here in the rural Northern Plains, we tend not to fluctuate as much as the rest of the country, except, perhaps, in bad harvest years.  I think, though, that a lot of people are waiting for the other shoe to drop, and are therefore clutching their coin purses a little harder, which brings the hard times on a little faster.

But it’s important to support your local crafter, even if it might cost a little more; more of the money that you spend on locally made products makes its way back into the local economy, which can stave off bad times, or lessen them.  And it’s important for crafters to keep in mind how hard times are for everyone, and choose materials that are a little less expensive, or make items that take a little less work, in order to keep costs down and pass the savings onto the buyer.

In that vein, I’ve just finished this, and am planning a whole collection of similar items:

Wire Wrapped Black Stone Necklace

I used inexpensive (but good quality) materials, and am charging $12.00 for it; my average necklace price is around $25.  We’ll see how it goes!

Creating Jewelry Tutorials (?)

I see tutorials these days all over the Internet; I’ve even bought one or two, when they featured techniques I didn’t know and wanted to learn.

So I’ve thought about putting tutorials together, selling them on Etsy or on JewelryLessons.com.

But it always seems to me that I don’t know enough, even after eight-odd years of making jewelry, to teach anyone else how.  Or that what I do know is so obvious that your average fifth grader could look at a picture and figure out how to do it on their own.  For instance:

Copper and Royal Blue Flower Necklace

This was a time-consuming piece, and I’m fairly proud of it.  But I think there’s nothing here that isn’t fairly common knowledge among wire jewelry makers.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

So my question is this:  How do you know when you have something worth teaching to others?

The obligatory introductory post

This is the hardest part of a blog, I think.  Saying hello.  I’m not good at introducing myself.  Just a little about me:  I’m a mom, a wife, a teacher, a fiction writer, and a jewelry artisan.  On some days, like today, I feel like the busiest woman on earth, though I know that isn’t true.

This blog is about writing, about making jewelry, about trying to run a small business, and about general survival.  Not necessarily in that order.