Life is a Strategy Game, Too

Occasionally, I make reference to the fact that I play World of Warcraft. I generally use it as an example—something purely recreational, something I could cut out of my life in order to leave more time for art-making.

Not today though. Today I want to talk about my proclivity for gaming in the context of doing creative work. Don't worry, I'll keep it simple so you won't need to turn in your membership card to the Cool Kids Club at the end of this post.

For those not in the nerd universe, World of Warcraft is an online, multi-player game with more than 12 million subscribers as of this writing. Players create a character and enter into a virtual world where they can interact with various beings/creatures, complete a wide range of missions, join social groups with other players, and progress through a plot and leveling system sort of similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

The game has no end, really—to keep their loyal following addicted and paying their subscription fees, the game developers need to change the playing field from time to time.

Recently they introduced a new system for consuming your character's energy and converting it into abilities and attacks. Players now generate a secondary resource when their character performs certain actions, and consuming that secondary resource provides access to extra abilities.

I've been thinking a lot about this change to my game play, and I've concluded that it really jives with me. It encourages higher-level strategy and decision-making because you need to work out what ability is most appropriate for any given situation (lest you run out of resources before your task is complete), both in terms of short-term gains and long-term investment.

Sound familiar? We're all working with a very finite resource: time. Waking hours. Energy. We need to choose carefully what we do each day so we don't eat through all our time and conclude our evenings feeling exhausted but not having gotten what we needed out of life.

At the same time, we need to know what replenishes our stores in a more profound sense than just sleeping off a long day. We can't just pound away at our hardest, most productive work without a break. We'll burn out. I have to fight the urge to feel guilty every time I watch a movie or fire up a game on my computer. After all, shouldn't I be devoting every spare moment to my novel?

Despite my knee-jerk reaction, the answer is no. To spend creative energy, I have to generate it first. And sometimes unwinding and having a good time loosens my mind, lets me forget about the six stressful things happening at the office, and puts me in a frame of mind where I'm ready to sit down and work. It generates creative energy in the background so I have something to draw from later.

The more I play strategy games, the more I realize I never really stop playing. Life is all strategy, like the old adage says: don't work hard, work smart. We all start out with a unique set of resources, but it's how we invest them that makes all the difference in the world. And sometimes that investment means slipping replenishing activities into the rotation to make sure we have the creative energy to burn when it really matters.

Rituals

This morning I found myself sitting in my office at 10:00, feeling not so great on account of an allergy attack, thinking where am I?

I like my job just fine, but I go back and forth on whether or not it's helping or hurting my personal endeavors. On one hand, balancing a full-time job with a house, relationship, classes, and recreation can provide the perfect excuse to slack off on writing. But my job also grounds me and keeps me productive, in addition to being a great place to learn, grow, and socialize. During the rare times when I've been unemployed, I've gone stir-crazy and halted any sort of productivity.

Life—personal and professional—is all about discovering and playing to your strengths. This morning, as I woke up a half hour later than I like to at 7:30, I felt cheated. See, I'm a morning person. People make disgusted faces when I say this, but it's true: I do my best creative work early in the morning, when the light is pure and the whole day lies ahead of me.

I also enjoy getting to the office by 8:00, securing at least an hour of uninterrupted work time before the rush begins. Then I get home by 4:30 and have all the way until midnight to enjoy my evening.

Lately, though, I'm realizing this is an either-or proposition. I can't get to work at 8:00, continue going to bed at midnight, write for a half hour or so before work, and get home by 4:30. I need to pick and choose. Most of all, I need to stop fighting my nature. The fact that I do my best work in the morning is not about to change, so I need to establish a morning writing ritual. I'm going to try it for the next week or so and see how it goes. Wish me luck!

Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Street Musicians, Video Games, and Wandering Thoughts

This week's creative non-fiction is really meta-writing, a window into a sleepy morning trying to write but continually getting distracted.

Writing Together, But Alone First

I recently got a book from the library called Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups. I have some ideas floating around my head for an urban writers' circle, but I want to do it right. I don't have a particularly vast amount of time to waste on something that's never going to get off the ground.

So far, though, the first portion of the book discusses writing practice for working alone—not unlike Writing Down the Bones, my perennial favorite writing book.

The author, Judy Reeves, points out what many of us know already: the key to become a real and true writer (and one who writes, no less) isn't getting published or writing something great, it's making time to write several times a week. This passage, which draws from prominent psychologists/researchers, gave me a lot to chew on:

The most important talent may be the talent for practice itself...the most important role that innate factors play may be in a person's willingness to engage in sustained training.

 Such a simple concept, but it gives any kind of artist a lot to think about.

Volume

Somehow, in getting to my class website (don't ask how, it's on my bookmarks toolbar!), I get waylaid on an art website for someone with whom I graduated high school.  Both of us went on to earn our BFAs, but in the years since then she has obviously continued producing visual art at an impressive rate.  I haven't maintained this kind of volume.

Mind you, I am writing, but I'm not submitting to literary magazines.  I'm not monitoring Art Deadlines List very closely and I'm not keeping up with Baltimore Art Blogs to see calls for submissions.  In short, I'm not filling out my CV.  The content under my "Exhibitions" and "Collections" headings is decidedly thin.

If I publish a novel that will certainly be a game-changer in terms of my artistic self-image, but for now I'm wondering: am I doing enough?  Art requires ambition above all else, and sometimes I fear I haven't established myself in a community of fellow artists, haven't been creating at the rate I should be.

At some point, just (ha, just) having a fat manuscript sitting in my writing folder won't be enough...will it?

Lately I've met a few artists who are "just sort of living right now," which I've found to be synonymous with being happily unemployed.  And in a state that doesn't ask people to provide proof that they're searching for jobs in order to collect unemployment benefits, why wouldn't they be?  However, there's a disconnect there, too.  A lot of creative people seem to feel art will just come to them, that inspiration is innate.  In truth, one of the best things art school taught me is hard work and ambition are as important as training and talent.

When I come home from deadlines at work only to work toward deadlines for school, I end up feeling like I need down time.  I feel entitled to squeeze in an hour of gaming or television.  Even though it feels like what I need at the moment, it doesn't feel like ambition.  And while we can't be frightfully ambitious 24/7, I'm unsure where to draw the line.

How necessary is downtime to sustain productivity?  How much should we be cutting out in favor of pursuing our dreams?

And, as I've asked myself many times before: do I really have the ambition it takes to pursue a long-term dream?

At the end of the day I think I can answer yes to that last question, but it would involve eliminating some of the more heinous timesucks from my life.  Disorganization is starting to make my life feel like one big ADD adventure again, and it's time to reign it in.

As I keep posting my writing and creative journeys, I think I'm also going to return some focus to the decluttering of life and home.  Simplifying and purifying.  Because time and inspiration aren't things we have innately, they're things we create in our lives.  And I think I need to create a lot more of both.

Singing New Songs

Recently I recorded another song phrase in Evernote with the intention of fleshing it out later.  I did this a few weeks ago with another song, actually wrote down the lyrics to the whole thing shortly after singing a single phrase.  I can feel an organic process developing here, and I like it.  I haven't mandated or structured this, I've just let it happen.  Part of me realized that making songs is sort of like my other writing: lots of rewrites, lots of revision, polishing pieces and making them into a whole later.

It's reassuring to know I can develop a process that feels good when I used to discourage myself so much -- thinking if something wasn't perfect I had to scrap it.  Refusing to believe in rough drafts for songs and poetry.

I've written about relaxing before, and how performers need to know how to relax their bodies to be at the top of their game.  Writers need to relax too, occasionally writing with the whole arm, always letting the words come out uncensored.  After all, tense writing seems an awful lot like strangling your sound with anxiety when your're trying to sing.

At any rate, in the near future I may try to get some of my song ideas off the page.  While wandering an antique store last Sunday I suddenly found myself playing a piano, which shocked me a little.  I didn't realize until I'd already picked out a line or two what I was really doing, what it meant -- small pieces of my life are coming back to me one by one.  If I just relax and forget about all that could be holding me back, things just happen.

Writing, Among Other Things

It's been a quiet week on the blog, but in a surprising plot twist I've actually been writing more than usual.  A week ago I sat down and struggled through three-quarters of a page in my notebook before getting too tired.  Two days after that, I filled four solid pages and suddenly my writing practice clicked back on course.  A return to my requisite pen and paper exercise usually causes a dip in my blogging, probably because I'm so excited to be funneling my writing energy into that space again. 

Anyhow, this week has been full of sights and sounds, new pens and notebooks, and new and different faces -- all potential distractions I decided to turn into motivation.

I've heard that exposing very young children to new and different environments can speed their development, creating new connections in their brains and pushing them toward early childhood milestones.  As an adult, this effect works its magic on my writing.  I primarily think in words, so catch me staring off into space and my thoughts probably sound a great deal like the scribbles in my journal.  Getting out of my rut and exposing myself to a variety of people and places pulls out phrases that wouldn't have surfaced at my desk -- the world becomes electric, my senses heightened, and small details really pop.

We spent this weekend entertaining my mom and sister, and having out-of-town visitors makes me view the city in a different light.  Not only do I travel outside my usual radius to find the water blowing up in a fine mist off the harbor, a roomful of orchids at the conservatory frozen like dancers in the air -- I see my everyday surroundings through an outsider's eyes.  My perspective on my neighbors setting up a picnic with their two-year-old in the backyard, that belligerent homeless guy in Fells Point Square, a stately brownstone, a boarded-up house, changes completely.  I wonder what it all looks like to my 11-year-old sister who has experienced little outside our town in rural Pennsylvania.  Or my mother, who has lived in the suburbs, the city, and the country, but most recently (and most steadfastly) the country.

Even seeing familiar friends but relocating to a balcony with stars overhead, the Baltimore skyline in the distance, and streetlights in the corners of our eyes left me enamored with the tiny details of life.  I felt uniquely present in a significant moment, even though for all the world it looked like any other day.

Last night I was trying to capture this wide-eyed delight in the perceiving in my notebook before going to bed and realized all my favorite pens were on empty.  Lately I've started running out my pens on a somewhat regular basis, which makes me feel good about the amount of writing I've been getting done.  While replenishing my stock today I found the most adorable notebook and bought it despite two dangers: one, in the past I've had trouble writing in nice notebooks because I feel obligated to fill them with equally nice writing.  Two, I often get antsy and move on from my current notebook long before it's full.  

Today I decided that I'm feeling good enough about my writing practice not to set silly standards for it, and having a fun notebook to move into should motivate me to write a lot in order to fill my current one as quickly as possible.  We'll see how it goes.  I'd love to find myself in a race to the finish, filling page after page with unexpected thoughts.  For now, I will show off some photos and make a note that my new notebook is made from 80% post-consumer recycled paper and 20% banana fiber.  That's right, I'll be writing on banana leaves.  Also, that makes it a "tree-less" notebook, which I think is pretty cool given the many eco-positive arguments for writing on electronic paper.

All in all, what a great week for writing.  Next up: making headway toward a great writing space in my home, or maybe just enjoying a return to my old, good habits.

Bouncing Back

Yesterday I heard some words that hurt a little bit.  No, no one was picking on me.  I'm talking about those people in my life who I can depend on to give the honest (and sometimes obvious) advice I'm not quite ready to hear.

So the truth? If I really, really wanted to be actively productive right now, I probably would be. I'd be stubbornly perfecting the left-hand part on some new songs.  I'd be typing one-handed, wearing out my wrist on my manuscript every day.  Instead, I've been reading and watching movies and eating animal crackers.

As an ADD person, this can be a big sensitive spot when said the wrong way.  After all, we hear a lot of hurtful (read: ignorant) words labeling us lazy, unmotivated, inconsiderate, unconcerned.
        
The truth is, that has nothing to do with it.  This is just where I am right now.  Maybe I just need to, well, recuperate.  Despite having only one arm, there's not a whole lot I can't do...just some things I shouldn't.  Examples include: hunching over a piano or computer, going on too many long car rides, and dancing around and acting silly.  

Since these things aren't impossible, it's easy to overdo it.  Really, I should be sitting still and watching movies.  Even more, it's okay to let myself want that.  Maybe I feel like that's a wrong thing and I want my old self back, but this takes time.  I've never had a bounce-back period this long before.  More than likely, I need to stop moping, stop sneaking in two-handed typing, and just accept the fact that I want to take some time off.  Because that's the natural -- and most healthy -- way to recover from surgery.


And hey, at least I'll be able to say I watched five seasons of Weeds and all the 2010 Oscar winners when it's all said and done.

Review, Reflect...Reject?

Over the past few weeks I've written a bit less and read a lot.  I tend to operate in phases with my creative work, listening to music nonstop for a couple weeks and then rededicating myself to playing or singing every day, devouring novels one after another before taking out a writing project again, mulling over photography exhibits and waiting for an idea to surface.


Upon coming back from a week-long vacation, the first thing I wanted to do was get my current manuscript out and read over the last half of it with fresh eyes and a good cup of coffee.  This I did, and I discovered exactly what point of the creative process I had entered.


I found myself experiencing considerable distaste for every paragraph.  Had I really created this haphazard story, these preachy chapters full of flat characters?


I always seem to encounter this hump when working on a big project: the no man's land between finishing the foundation work and beginning to see a well-developed product can be brutal.  After spending too much time on something to reasonably turn back, I realize I've brought something utterly mediocre into the world.

This likely happens to every artist, with perfectionists like me experiencing an intensified version thanks to our desire to make everything top-notch material fit to win an award on the first draft.  I know I've felt it looking at half-completed paintings, first batches of photographs, and most recently this manuscript that's taken up weeks (months) of my life.  Suddenly, I'm struck by the question: was this even worth my time?

I suppose what defines the experience -- and the artist -- is the decision to say yeah, it was, and keep moving.  Take the awful last half of that manuscript and make it something to be proud of.  Figure out how to make my characters dynamic and believable people the reader feels invested in.  Plenty of people stop at this point and let that self-doubt get the best of them, let it convince them that they'll never create something amazing.  But some of us don't, and no matter what I think we've got a great accomplishment to look forward to.  Nothing great comes out of an easy task -- otherwise there'd be no reason to feel we'd done anything.

Quelling my self-criticism and deciding to keep developing a project past the tough halfway-point is, to me, one of the most important pieces of the artistic process.  Overcoming frustration and/or disappointment, refusing to feel embarrassed at the quality of a work in progress, and stubbornly coming out with something I'm excited to put on display gives me perhaps the biggest sense of achievement.  It's what -- in my mind -- sets me apart as a professional artist.

Singing With Your Headphones On

Despite having heard some advice to the contrary, I enjoy singing with headphones on.  More accurately, I tend to sing with one earbud in, one earbud out.  I think it's pretty effective as an accompaniment, especially for songs I have no hope of ever being able to play on the piano.

During Hollywood Week on this season of American Idol I caught a glimpse of Mary Powers doing the same thing in rehearsal -- complete with holding the iPod like a microphone -- and I thought, hey, it's catching on!  So naturally I was pretty impressed when I watched a video about the audition process for Disney's American Idol Experience (I'll be in Disney World next week and have half a mind to check it out) and saw they'd done us one better.  They rigged iPods to display the lyrics while the song is playing, kind of like your own personal karaoke.  This is what they give you for rehearsal if you make it through to the performance rounds.

Maybe it follows naturally, maybe it doesn't, but my next question was, I wonder what this looks like when I do it?  Also knowing recording yourself is an effective practice tool, I whipped out my video camera, pressed the YouTube button, and ran through an entire song.

It was...awful.  I watched the entire thing to see if it got better toward the middle (or end), but it just stayed dreadful.  I felt like I was watching one of the American Idol auditions where the judges ask, "has anyone actually ever heard you sing before today?"

Ouch.  So that left me wondering, is it the headphones thing?  I feel like I can hear myself sing.  Or is it that at a certain age, you just can't just decide you want to start singing?  Well, really?  20 is too old?  What if I should have listened to my fellow instrumental musicians when they said "there's a reason we play instruments and don't sing?"  What about the people who have complimented me in the past, the juries who have given me passing grades?  Does this really need to be an existential crisis, or can I just note the flaws and work them out?

The thing is, this is something find really, really fun.  So fun that if I had my druthers I'd put on my carefree and fun-loving face and audition for the Idol Experience while we're in Disney.  And who knows, that might end up being the moral of the story: just because you have a discouraging experience doesn't mean you need to give up entirely.  And I probably will keep on going like I've been forever, though not without a lot of harumphing along the way.  After all, I eventually got over what was arguably my most frustrating performance moment ever: blowing an audition by messing up a scale.  I missed the cut by one slot, but still scored at the top of every other category (sightreading and a prepared piece, as I remember).  Ugh.

The thing is, no matter what the circumstances I expect all this to come naturally.  If it doesn't, I'm just "bad at it."  But of course, I'm sure my manuscript has shaky passages I'll need to rework.  I play bad notes on the piano all the time.  I sat through some brutal critiques on the path to my BFA in Studio Art.  It all requires work, even when that work involves watching a torturous video that's nothing like what I saw from my own point of view.

Maybe I just need to spend more time walking around the house with one earbud in my ear.

Breaks.

Lately I've been wondering about my creative process, wondering if breaks are a necessary gear keeping the process spinning or whether breaks are just that, a break in character.  A skip, a foible.  Between Christmas and New Year's I took an honest and true break.  Though I carried my notebook to Pennsylvania for Christmas, its pages remained largely undisturbed for the length of the trip.

But now I'm typing this with my laptop on the kitchen counter, reheating the last of the Christmas leftovers, and really telling myself -- it's over.  Break's over.

While I was home from work (lucky us, our office closes between Christmas and New Year's) I stayed up late, mostly slept late, drank champagne and played board games, spent whole days in my pajamas watching movies and playing World of Warcraft.  Occasionally I'd feel a twinge and think, "I should be working on my novel," but then I'd realize I'd let writerfriends take it away, force this break.

By Sunday, though, the last Sunday before returning to the office, I was finished.  Even on Saturday I had an inclination to start planning a zine, got out a sketchpad and some old stuff and laid in my writing room, back on the floor and eyes glued to the ceiling fan.  So much of the creative process can be laying on the floor surrounded by papers and books.

But on Sunday I was full-on done with breaks.  I twisted an incense burner out of tin foil and struck out to the basement to sort through some of the boxes down there, thinking I might find inspiration in purging, sorting, making plans for the space after I empty it of clutter.  I watched Angels in America and relished the way it put my soul through a wringer, lost myself in it as an artist and a human.  I started writing again in earnest, returned to my daily practice.  I had a significant personal revelation.

My question is, did my break pave the way for all this?  Did it prepare me to work again on my novel after I receive it back full of red pen?  Did it leave my heart open for new ideas, new inspiration, did it give me new eyes? Or was it just a delay, a hiccup, a missed opportunity to immerse myself in a project?

We have such a need to create, but I'm feeling oddly guiltless about taking some time away from "real" things, "productive" things.  Accomplishments.  I'm feeling like the past week left me open to realize even after taking so much time out for myself, I still voluntarily return to my words.  I miss them, need them.  I can take a break from them, go on vacation, and know full well I'll be more than happy to come back.

Oh, AND.

I meant to point out in that last post that I won despite only making the daily goal for 11 out of the 30 days. At the same time, my highest daily word count was 4820, so I didn't exactly have to cram either. For me it was all about perseverance and keeping a rhythm even when I knew I hadn't met the previous day's quota -- something I learned from my daily writing practice long before November.

Here's a chart showing how I did (note how it predicted I'd fall 5,000 words short according to my pace). You can also view it on the NaNoWriMo site for more info on what all the columns mean.

NaNoWriMo at one week

It hasn't always been easy, but I've managed to stay in the game thus far. I am proud to say I wrapped up NaNoWriMo week 1 with 14,110 words (more than my goal of 13,000 by the end of the weekend).

So, a little recap:

Before it all began, I felt good. I sat down with a close friend and talked over the practical points of my plot with him. I watched Across the Universe. I dug into the first day with all the "fun" parts. I figured out immediately that writing a plot about a character usually means writing it out of order, gradually fitting the pieces together. I took the Myers-Briggs test for my main character and wrote about her flaws.

During the first few days I feel behind on my word count. Perfectionism and overthinking slowed me down until Wednesday or Thursday, when I broke into a place where I could write freely, like I do for my daily writing practice. During this time I also wondered how to keep up my daily practice while writing my novel. I feel like the novel suffers when it becomes everything I'm thinking and writing about. After all, the little observations make it real. The funny experience I had in a cab last week makes it real.

I've promised myself I'll start a new zine project when my current notebook is full down to the last page, and this has kept me going with my daily writing. This weekend I discovered a new NaNo incentive in this: at the end of 30 days, I will really have something. I'll have the bare bones of a real live novel, something I can sink my editing teeth into. And that's when the real writing starts. I love editing far more than writing from scratch much of the time, love watching my mind work through problems and produce a final draft I never could have imagined from the outset.

Thinking about that -- the final product and what it means for me -- provides a light at the end of the tunnel. Writing 1700 words of fiction per day has gotten easier. Hell, I wrote over 7000 words this weekend. But sustaining that pace will require more than nimble wrists and kernels of plot ideas. It's going to take some big-time perseverance. But I've told my family and friends I will do this, can do this, and I've promised myself a draft of a novel by the end of the month. So I'm really just going to do it.

Here's to literary abandon! I'll try to keep up at least weekly updates here, and I'm currently chatting about my progress on Twitter (check the mini-blog in the sidebar).

Coming Back

So, over the past two months I've managed to break the template for this blog (hence its current bare-bones appearance) while posting no updates and going through an astoundingly busy and stressful time in my life. Most of the busy part has evaporated (I hope) with last night's culmination of a major project at the office: our organization's 40th anniversary celebration. Having seen my first major fundraising event come and go, I finally have a spare moment to breathe.

Normally, today I would be attempting to get back on track, jump-start a creative project, figure out where I can go from here. But I'm not. Why? Because even though I didn't keep my blog up to date or work on any big creative projects, I managed to keep up my daily writing practice. Since my last post here I have nearly filled a looseleaf notebook and used my writing to keep tabs on myself, even when I felt I didn't have enough time to think and feel an appropriate amount, didn't have energy to process some major shifts happening in my life.

So while I've been absent from the internet, I've kept working. And I'm ready to jump into National Novel Writing Month next week. I'm ready to start work on the projects I've been cooking over the past couple months. And that's a major victory. I sacrificed a lot when the going got tough, but I didn't give up my creative practice -- that hasn't always been true for me, and I'm sure there are many more of us creative folk in the same boat. For that, I'm willing to give myself a pat on the back.

Discipline

Today I talked to a friend about writing for a little while, and at some point he casually mentioned that he dislikes working on deadlines because they interfere with his creative process. This took me by surprise and made me realize just how many of my processes -- creative and otherwise -- are shaped by my ADD. I haven't worked with deadlines for my creative work at all since college, and I responded to my friend's comment by wondering to myself, what must that be like?

Deadlines fuel my productivity almost exclusively, since the adrenaline, stress, and/or fear induced by an impending deadline stimulate production of the brain chemicals ADD people run short on. Without knowing others expect something from me on a specific timeline, I usually spin my wheels. Surprisingly to some, I don't discriminate between tedious projects and those I truly want to do for my own benefit and fulfillment. That is the essence of the ADD mind, though: prioritization and productivity independent of outside stress/stimulus is often virtually unheard of.

I'm glad to have had this conversation, though, because just last night I sat down to rework some old, old writing I thought I could make into something useful. After giving it some thought, I felt energized and eager to get working. That is, I felt that way until I actually set out to work. The blinking cursor taunted me, daring me to fill even one page, and I couldn't bring myself to get started.

The reality of my working style and needs add another dimension of challenges to my creative process. I struggle to apply myself, even (maybe especially) in arenas where skills come easily and naturally to me.

Knowing it's useless to fight an intrinsic part of who I am, I need to find a way to accept and work with it. I need to discover and use external motivators and get started on a major project I feel I can see through to completion. For starters, I really want to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year. Maybe I can even gather some friends to do it with me. But the concept of NaNoWriMo is nothing new to me. My dear friend Oli and I used to have "writing marathons" together in grade school, tearing through hours of timed writing and reading aloud. We just wrote and wrote, not stopping to edit or tear down our work, just creating and worrying about the finer details later. That's what I need to do now. I need to ask for support, find a few friends I can count on to share my struggles and triumphs and keep me honest about my commitments to myself.

No matter what, the way I work will not change. I will never, ever be able to say "I'd rather work without a deadline hanging over my head. I produce better final pieces that way." I just isn't true. My mind doesn't work that way. I need to figure out how I work best and what structure I can put in place to make sure I do right by myself and my craft.

Writing Down the Bones

Lately, for not much reason at all, I have begun to consider grad school again. I suppose I could pick reasons out of an imaginary hat: after two years in AmeriCorps, I have nearly $10,000 in education money waiting for me to take advantage of it; my husband and a few friends are going back to school; I feel others expect it of me; I feel myself getting older, I can extrapolate to see my wandering, self-absorbed years coming to an end.

Society holds an overriding sentiment that grad school should be functional, tied to promotions and salary renegotiations. I just want to delve into a practice or a field, devour it down to the rind and come out a more well-rounded person.

Lately (read: over the past few days) I have wondered about a program at University of Baltimore called Creative Writing & Publishing Arts. Lately I have renewed my love of writing, my desire to write outside of what I do at work every day.

Yesterday I got out an old book, one that Oli and I read in early high school, if not middle school. It's called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and I still feel like it speaks to the kind of writing practice I value.

I feel this could apply to far more than just writing -- it certainly has for my life:

There was no great answer outside ourselves that would get us an A in school anymore. It was the very beginning of learning to trust my own mind.

Or:

To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

I also appreciate any artist willing to lay out their struggles with practice and motivation. Here, Goldberg compares writing to running:

Like running, the more you [write] , the better you get at it. Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It'll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time.

Yesterday I went out and bought a new big notebook and filled the first page, even though I hate the first page and I didn't know what to write.

Ebb and flow.

Seeing art spaces, taking in art and music, and generally challenging myself in a community of other artists inspires me to no end. Give me an artist's studio, an empty stage, a karaoke bar, a darkroom...I just want to CREATE.

The problem is, sometimes everyday life doesn't inspire at quite that level. I can easily put off a trip to the BMA, buying tickets to a show, entering my work in a juried exhibition, or setting up a date to play piano and sing with a friend. And by easily, I mean it's easier than challenging myself -- even though I love to challenge myself. And inspiration can be so fleeting, it can slip away so fast that by the time I get home and decide to sit down an act on it...it's gone. Playing World of Warcraft after a long day at work seems SO much easier than looking up exhibitions or putting choir practice on my calendar.

It's so tough to strike that balance, to know when to push and when to sit back and cut myself a break. Because after all, as creative people we feel all the time like we should be divinely inspired, that we should never have to force or cajole ourselves into creating. It's just WHAT WE DO. But it's not. Creating art is a habit, and just like any good habit, it takes some maintenance.

My trouble is, when life gets too busy and stressful, how can I maintain my creativity when it's tough just to get dinner on the table? And if I didn't have any stress or busybusy in my life, would I still find excuses to slack off?