Author: Neera

Your Day Job

Neera

Austin Kleon talks about it in his book “How to Steal Like an Artist,” Elizabeth Gilbert has a chapter about it in her book “The Big Magic,” Hugh MacLeod explains it with a beautiful example in his book “How to Be Creative.”

Basically, the message is the same.

It will take time for your art to make you enough money so that you can live off it. In the meantime, you need a day job.

“A day job is which pays you well enough and doesn’t rob you off the all energy so that you can’t even create. It gives you connection to the world and a routine. A day job puts you in the path of other human beings. Learn from them, steal from them.” – Austin Kleon

Hugh Macleod has Sex and Cash theory.

“The creative person basically has two kind of jobs, one is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bill. One year John Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction (“Sex”), the next he will be in some dumb spy thriller (“Cash”).

Soon you accept it, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career start moving ahead faster. I don’t know why this happens. It’s the people who refuse to clean their lives this way – who just want to start Day one by quitting current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author … well they never make it.” – Hugh Macleod

Elizabeth Gilbert takes it one step further.

“I have always felt like this is so cruel to your work – to demand a regular paycheck from it, as if creativity were a government job, or a trust fund. If you can manage to live comfortably off your inspiration forever, that’s fantastic. That’s everyone’s dream, right? But don’t let that dream turn into a nightmare. Financial demands can put so much pressure on the delicacies and vagaries of inspiration. You must be smart about providing for yourself. To claim that you are too creative to think about financial questions is to infantilize yourself – and I be you not to infantilize yourself, because it’s demeaning to your soul. (While it is lovely to be childlike in your pursuit of creativity, in other words, it’s dangerous to be childish.)”

Many creative souls murder their creativity by making it their prime source of living too soon.

Many artists go broke or crazy because they have this idea that they can’t create unless they dedicate themselves exclusively to their creativity.

And when they can’t pay their bills and they have to take a “job” they descend into resentment, anxiety, and aversion to art. That is when they say goodbye to creativity forever living a life of resentment

Elizabeth Gilbert kept her day jobs until her fourth book got published, way after the insane success of Eat Pray and Love.

J. K. Rowling worked when she was an impoverished single mother while writing the Harry Potter series.

Toni Morrison used to get up at five o’clock in the morning in order to work on her novels before going off to her work in the publishing industry.

I had to wait till my financial responsibilities were over and I had access to my superannuation before I took the plunge into my creative life.

What you can do is to find a job that can pay you well enough to pay your bills and leave you with enough time and energy to invest in your creative pursuits.

You can also look for a job that can teach you certain skills you need towards your creative endeavors.

A library job can teach you how to do research, graphic design job can teach you how to make your website look pretty and copywriting job can teach you how to sell things with words.

The worst thing a day job does is take time away from you, but it makes up for that by giving you a daily routine in which you can schedule a regular time for your creative pursuits.

Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can and stick to your routine. Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.


Two Lists

Neera

Make a list of all your excuses and then put them on your pin-board.

Then make a list of all the reasons why you want to be creative and put it next to your Excuses List.

Whenever you feel disheartened read the Excuses List first. If the reason for your dismay is something new, add it to the list.

If it is something already on the list, read the Reasons for Being Creative List and get back to work.

The lists could look something like this.

Excuses List

  • I am not good enough.
  • I will never be good enough.
  • I don’t get time; housework and family take up all my time.
  • Holidays break my routine.
  • It is so hard to get back to routine.
  • There is so much to learn. I will never be able to learn it all.
  • Until I know a substantial amount I can’t become an authority on it.
  • Unless I am an authority I can’t share/publish/write.
  • Other people know so much more and are better writers.
  • No one will ever want to pay for what I write.
  • I am good for nothing.
  • I can’t keep up a simple routine.
  • My work is not original. So many others have already written about it.
  • My body is not the same. My eyes get tired looking at the computer. I am getting old.

Reasons for Being Creative List

  • My creativity gives me a purpose in life.
  • It is the reason I live.
  • I am happy when I am creating.
  • I write for myself. I am writing a book I want to read.
  • My creative projects are better than mindless TV, endless cleaning and unnecessary shopping.
  • I know I am getting better each day.
  • I can see that, over time, I have written so much and some of it is really good.
  • I am learning new things every day.
  • Creativity keeps my mind active.
  • I am meeting like-minded people through my creative pursuits. They are the kind of people I want to be friends with. They are the best assets I have.
  • Creativity is my second nature. It is god-given and I have it as much as any celebrated artist does. All I need is to practice more.
  • I could write, I could draw and I could paint like a child. I can do them all as well as an adult.
  • With my creativity, I am bringing the best out of me and the best out of others.

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

What would you read to someone who is dying?

Neera

This is what Annie Dillard had asked Alexander Chee’s class (writer of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel). She wanted this to be the standard for their work.

What a great question to test the quality of your work. The ultimate goal to strive for.

When I think of a dying person I think of my mother. I sat by her side the whole night, alone, holding her hand. We didn’t say much because she was drugged, but if she was awake what would I have read her. What would she like to hear?

She would have like to hear stories from her past. Nostalgic stories. Of good days. Maybe of a bad one too. Because they always ended in something good. I have written some of those stories but they wouldn’t have cut it. They lacked emotion and they lacked hope. Writing for a specific reader help bring more life to your writing.

I would have read her Helen Garner’s, The Spare Room, Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie and John Green’s The Fault in our stars.

I would have read her poetry too. Poems she liked and used to recite to me. Then there were songs. Songs I heard her sing when I was a little girl. There is something in songs and poetry. They touch your heart.

She would have enjoyed Dylan Thomas’s poem “Don’t go gentle into that good night.” She was a fighter after all. She fought till her last breath.


This Pin is from Gregg-Graniteville Library

Walking

Neera

A lot can happen when you go walking. You see the autumn colors in its full glory – crimson, yellow, orange, pastel green splattered in the backdrop of suburbs.

You see amazing sights, sights you have not seen before, just around the corner from your home.

You stop to admire a tree at a distance that has just shed its bark. It looks majestic in the sunlight, its strong and shapely limbs hold the foliage proudly. You say to yourself, my god, what a beautiful tree! Suddenly you feel the urge to go near it, to touch it, to sit in its shade. Just as you walk towards it three kangaroos go past it, hopping in full flight.

You start walking in their direction hoping for a photo opportunity with them. You find them half an hour later, resting at the cozy spot. They hear you coming close, they stand erect, their ear straight, listening to the crunch of your shoes on the gravel. You take a picture and then walk away somewhat scared that if they decide to come to you, you have no chance to outrun them.

You hear the sound of the wind, whispering. Sometimes howling. Birds call you. If you stop long enough they start talking to you. You can’t understand of course, but they are telling you something. But you are certain that with time and practice you can learn their language, just as a seasoned wanderer does when he ventures a foreign land.

You see wild rabbits racing across the ground. You see the sun radiating its glow in all directions. You see treetops, drifting clouds, the shape of the distant hills. You reach the foot of a quarry which you didn’t know exist just a few kilometers from your home.

You notice the path you have been walking so far was the horse track.

A story starts taking shape in your head. You pull out the notebook you brought with you and start scribbling. You capture the thoughts before they vanish. Words come faster than you could write them. You have never been this clear and eloquent at your desk.

You find a rock to sit and write. No, you don’t write. You receive. You receive what the creator himself is giving you, in the middle of its own creation, nature. That’s why he summoned you here.

You sit there until there is no more to receive. You feel complete. Your soul is content. Sun has gone down. Birds are returning to their nests. Ants are coming back too. You get up and start walking back to your home. A little differently though. As if you not walking on the ground but just a little above it.

You are happy. Really happy.

You don’t have to worry what to write about…

Neera

Recently, Austin Kleon, author of How to Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going, said in the interview with Madeleine Dore (Extraordinary Routines), “I think routine is so important, especially when you’re getting started creatively, but for me right now, I almost need checkboxes and rituals more than I need routine.”

Currently, his daily checkboxes include:

  • writing in his diary,
  • publishing a blog post,
  • taking a walk, and
  • reading a book.

Austin goes on to say, “I always keep a pocket notebook on me, I diary in the morning, and then create a blog post. Those blog posts will become talks, which then become books. You don’t have to worry what to write about, you just write every day and things begin to develop.”

What a great advice! No brainer! Yes. Do the actions (write, blog, walk, read) and you will become the noun (writer).

I added one more checkbox to it and adopted it as my daily ritual.

Lie to me!

Neera

There is so much to like about the Sydney Writers Festival this year. First of all this year’s theme – “Lie to me”.

This is what the artistic director Michaela McGuire has to say about the theme:

“In the second season of the greatest television show ever made, Buffy the Vampire Slayer learns a hard lesson about who she can really trust. At the end of the episode, as she’s standing bereft and betrayed over a friend’s fresh grave, her most trusted confidant asks Buffy how he can possibly reassure her. She responds simply: “Lie to me”.

How powerful!

“These three words,” says Michaela, “convey so much. They’re an admission of helplessness and complicity; a plea; a dare; a request for a bedtime story in a world full of monsters.”

In four days, hundreds of the world’s most exciting writers will gather in Sydney to examine the white lies and deceptions that are necessary for survival, and malicious lies that are spun with a darker intent. They’ll explore the ways that writing can be used to deceive others in an increasingly post-truth world, look at the lies that we tell ourselves and each other, and those we collectively tell as a country. 

There is an impressive line-up of writers – Markus Zusak of The Book Thief, Leigh Sales of Any Ordinary Day, Graeme Simsion of The Rosie Project (and now of The Rosie Result) and George Saunders the author of nine books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize.

I am particularly interested in Fatima Bhutto (niece of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto), who is doing the closing address and Alexander Chee of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.

The festival is on from Monday, 29 April till Sunday, 5 May a must-go event on any aspiring writer’s calendar.