Monthly Musings Newsletter

Fall Back So You Can Spring Forward…

We think of the phrase “fall back, spring forward” to reset our clocks to gain or lose an hour, depending on the season. Why not think about the words in a new way? Fall back to the comfort of structured routines, so you can spring forward in new creative directions. New possibilities. Open ourselves to surprises. One surprise for me this week was discovering More Than Words. It’s a non-profit organization that sells used books online and in their Berkeley Street store, where I donated boxes of books.

Standing amid the multiple kiosks of books in their Berkeley Street store, I remembered those pre-pandemic days when people gathered in person in bookstores and libraries to hear writers share their work. Lightbulb moment: now that the pandemic seems to be waning, why not create a live reading for my writer friends and workshop participants? Part of me wanted to stay in my comfort zone with my current routines, but a more daring voice challenged me, “Will I let fear hold me back, or will I spring forward in 2023 with this new challenge?”

I decided to say yes to the challenge! I’ve contacted writer friends and students to plan an evening in 2023 that we’ll call “Prompted to Tell.” We’ll read unpublished, unpolished first-draft writings created from writing prompts. You’ll listen to everything from novel excerpts, poems, flash fiction, essays, and free-form gibberish! As these plans solidify, we’ll keep you posted about the place, date, and time in the winter newsletter.

Read the full newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/24bc8f1d31a2/get-your-creative-juices-flowing-in-2021its-good-for-your-health-9073373

Procrastinate Before It’s Too Late!

I’ve been procrastinating about writing an intro for this month’s newsletter topic: procrastination. The word carries a negative cloud as though all procrastinating is a weakness to be deleted from a productive life. Oscar Wilde said, “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” In contrast, Picasso said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

We often put our creative projects on the bottom of our to-do lists if they make it there at all. Indefinitely delaying our creative impulses leads to remorse and regret. Sometimes we are so used to postponing the most important actions (read: personally meaningful) that when we finally have time to pursue them, we don’t. By then, we are so out of the habit of giving them time we fill the hours with other meaningless ones. Days pass. Years. And what we said was most important fades under the rubble of what had masqueraded as urgent. Put your creative ideas back high on the list. The kitchen floor can wait. The sheets don’t need to be changed this minute. Will watching one more newscast of the world imploding save a life? Why watch one more episode of a show you’re not likely to remember in a month? Are you alphabetizing your bookshelf instead of writing your own book—a book that might make a difference to someone? Consider positive procrastination. Postpone the tasks that are not urgent or important and that, if left undone, might fall off the list altogether. Polish your procrastinating style to make time for what you’ve been missing.

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Let Your Creativity Blossom

When it’s the middle of winter and everything is bleak and bare and cold, I remind myself of a Buddhist saying, “When the conditions are right, the blossoms appear.” Creative work requires a belief in the invisible, especially when working on a long project like a novel when all the parts are in a jumble. It feels like I’m never going to find a way to bring it together. That’s when I’ve got to keep on with feeble daily attempts, trusting that someday they will blossom into a finished piece, never perfect, but whole. The question is, what makes the conditions “right”? The answer is time and patience. Not giving up. Trust. Trust that the invisible will become visible. The courage to begin is the first step. And there are never perfect conditions to start, just enough desire, enough curiosity about the outcome, enough determination to feed them and not the fear.

View the full newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/c1bea67fbd3e/get-your-creative-juices-flowing-in-2021its-good-for-your-health-9009257

Hug a Hobby!

Over the pandemic, which seems waning, we lost many things from our “normal life,” but nothing as much as hugging our friends and loved ones. In pre-Covid times, if I should catch my foot on a loose brick and tumble, passersby would leap to my aid within seconds. Once lockdown hit, fear trumped empathy. If I fall, people will scatter away from me! Contamination fear was more potent than the impulse to help. During this love month of February, air hugs over Zoom don’t have the power to pump up the oxytocin—the feel-good chemical and lower the cortisol—the stress chemical. But hugging a hobby—embracing creative impulses and passions can carry us over the dark patches.

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Thinking Outside the Gift Box

There are many ways to give gifts that are not store-bought. Even though gift cards and gift return receipts enable the receiver to select something they want, receiving something from the heart and hands of the giver has its place.

Recycling possessions that no longer serve us as re-gifts is another option. Jewelry, a nick knack, a book that you have treasured over the years—items long admired by a friend or family member are legitimate gifts. In the interests of downsizing and decluttering, why not pass this item on to someone who might want it more than you do? Someone who can give it a more loving home. Someone who will wear that necklace, treasure that sculpture, read that book.

My six-year-old granddaughter Raquel gifted me with a hand-made bookmark (pictured here), and I will treasure it. Hand-made and recycled gifts are ways to show caring while also helping the environment without depleting your pocketbook.

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364 Un-Thanksgiving Days a Year to Say Thanks

In Walt Disney’s version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice crashes the un-birthday day party at the Mad Hatter’s table. This goofy host goes on to say that each person has 364 days in the year to celebrate their un-birthdays which are just as important as the one birthday day. Since it’s Alice’s un-birthday too, she is invited to stay and celebrate.

Trick or Treat: Unexpected Inspiration

Trick or Treat: A great time to savor the treats of unexpected breakthroughs. As we shed our regular routines and disguise the everyday self, inspiration, Aha! moments, epiphanies, and surprising creative solutions often creep up on us like friendly ghosts.

Hippos gestate for 18 months, fruit flies for twenty-four hours. Everything has its growth process from conception to completion. Leonard Cohen often took years to complete a song, just waiting for the right word to be found, while Duke Ellington wrote the melody for “It Don’t Mean a Thing” during an intermission at Chicago’s Lincoln Tavern in 1931. Nineteenth-century German chemist August Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail.

Italian playwright Dario Fo painted in between writing projects, John Lennon drew cartoons. Everyone and everything has a timetable and can’t be rushed. Patience, perseverance and plain stick-to-itiveness, though necessary ingredients for completing creative work, aren’t always enough.

Sometimes taking a conscious break from the project is the only way to let the unconscious surface to offer the elusive creative solution. “Chance favors the prepared mind” is the case for not quitting a project when you’ve reached an obstacle. The chance of unexpected inspiration bubbles up because you’ve been working on something intensely and the brain needs a rest in order to receive the “treat.”

In addition to Linda’s story of her unexpected inspiration that led to the mystery novel she’s currently writing, we’re including excerpts from books and articles about how important it is to trick ourselves away from our work to create the conditions for the treat of inspiration to appear.

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Curiosity = Lifelong Learning

Adding to cosmic questions “Is there life on another planet?” or “What is the meaning of our existence?” I have plenty of mundane ones. YouTube helps answer “How do I cut a box spring in half so I can bring it up a narrow staircase then put it back together?” or “How do I remove water stains from my antique library table, untangle techno mysteries so I can get my computer to do what I want it to do, or create a podcast? (Thanks to YouTube, this week I learned how to do the visual mashup you see here.) Curiosity led me to pursue an MFA in creative writing 30 years after receiving my undergraduate degree. It leads me to research my novels. After watching a movie, curiosity leads me to figure out what I loved or hated about it.

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