Mary Richert – in her first Internet video ever – talks about some of her favourite books. In these pages she finds a lot of encouragement and inspiration. I really want to emphasise three points Mary makes in this video.
Everybody struggles. This was a fact that I needed to be reminded of today. [I saw a "Quitting smoking is hard" ad earlier and a part of me scoffed and said, "Really? You should try writing a novel some time, buddy!"] It can really help your perspective to realise that even the people you admire have struggled. It really helps me to come back to John A. Keel talking about the Blank Page and to realise even Annie Lennox has moments of great doubt.
If you want to be creative you have to have input. Quite removed from the romantic notion of the artist as an aloof loner, the truth is creativity is enriched by collecting experiences and ideas. Julia Cameron talks in terms of filling the artist’s well. Australia playwright Michael Gow suggested that when you use your imagination you literally empty your mind. This is a resource that can be depleted. As an artist you need to acknowledge that and work to rectify it.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture. Mary’s work is predominantly in the field of creative non-fiction. Sometimes it is hard to make sense of history while it is happening, especially if it is happening to you. This was something I found working on a memoir project. I was always secretly waiting for a point in my personal life that would lend itself to a satisfactory conclusion for the work. What I concluded was that it was difficult to understand the moment you’re having while you’re having it.
I want to take this opportunity to really applaud Mary on her first video. I’ve been making online videos for several years now and I think a lot of people sit back and think that it is such an easy thing to do. I have very distinct memories early on of being completely unnerved by the prospect and just staring into the lens of the camera, hoping desperately for something intelligent to come from my mouth. I hope she makes more! It is a wonderful extension to the great work she does on her blog.
It’s February, which, for me, means getting back to work. (In more ways than one.) I made a conscious decision to not produce online content throughout January. Infact during January I did a number of things that were completely novel for me. I actually went on a holiday. And what really struck me when I reflect upon that holiday is how much I actually wanted to create things. It’s funny because when I compare that with most of 2009, I would be sitting in my little home office scolding myself for not having done enough. I decided to resign from my dayjob and become a serious artist or a serious writer, or a serious… something. That was probably my mistake. I mean – don’t get me wrong, I became very serious indeed. (Some might say neurotic.) But I wasn’t producing very much. And despite my very open schedule I wasn’t having much fun either.
In the process of doing all of this I made myself quite isolated. My life lacks the kind of structure it had when I was working for someone else. I miss the social interaction of my coworkers. I don’t have a lot of friends here locally and – surprise, surprise – most of the time they are working anyway. I love the Internet’s ability to bring people together, people from all around the world. I love that you are not confined by your geographical reality. But even this is a double edged sword. And in some ways the things I love about social media are also the things I hate about it. It seems at times perversely unfair when you find a sincere and heartfelt connection with someone and can’t do something as seemingly straightforward as sit down and have a cup of coffee with them.
When I resigned from my job, I was tired. I was physically exhausted. My work life was consuming my entire life and I was feeling the effects. I knew I needed more balance in my life. But what I did didn’t create more balance. I just swung to the opposite end of the same spectrum. It was reactionary, I suppose, and equally unsatisfying. So that, more than anything in 2010, is what I’m after. Balance.
I seem to always be coming back to Julia Cameron’s work. It just seems to be something I can lean on when I am lost and fearful. She talks in terms of ‘artist dates’ – about making the time to do things you enjoy, to indulge your curiosity, to fill your artistic well. It seemed too easy to me. I didn’t think it would work or help. But in 2010 I’ve noted such a change within myself. There is a certain lightness and optimism that I secretly never thought I would feel again. And I can’t trace it back to any one thing. But, in a funny way, I can trace it back to a lot of things. I can trace it back to watching old television shows that remind me of my childhood – things like Alf and Full House. I can trace it back to that CD of traditional Chinese music that I bought in Sydney’s Chinatown from the musicians themselves who were performing there in the street on a starry night. I can trace it back to finally putting that paintbrush on the canvas and dragging it across the surface just to see what would happen. These are small indulgences that somehow inspire great personal change. They seem to make what had been a lacklustre life somehow shine again. They seem to make me think the world might be a magical place after all.
I’ve often griped about Facebook. But the truth is once you deny access to 90% of the Facebook applications and hide anything ending with ‘Ville’ from your news feed, it gets back to being friends sharing thoughts and images with each other. And that is something I can appreciate.
Hide Annoying Facebook Applications In Your News Feed
You can’t control which applications your friends are using. But that doesn’t mean you should be notified every time they find a sad virtual animal walking across their virtual farm…
Simply move over the offending item in your news feed. You will see in the top right hand corner the word “Hide” will appear. Click on “Hide”. You will then be given the opportunity to either hide items from a particular person or those that relate to a particular application. Simply do this for each application you wish to remove from your news feed.
Check Your Application Settings
With a new year upon us it is worthwhile doing a quick spring clean of the Facebook applications that have access to your account.
Go to the “Settings” menu at the top of the screen and click on “Application Settings.” From here you are given the ability to sort the applications in different ways.
If there are any applications that you tried out for 30 seconds before deciding they weren’t for you, simply hit the little ‘x’ beside the application name. You will be prompted to confirm this action or cancel. (You are also given an opportunity to give the application a rating out of five stars to let other people know what you thought of it. This is optional.)
I sometimes get disappointed when something I produce doesn’t get much of a reception. You hope that a project is worthwhile and that somebody somewhere is getting something out of it, and as much as I look for some intrinsic merit to the things I do, I am still sometimes left wondering.
But what if no one caring was actually a good thing?
In the last week I’ve heard two writers explore this issue on separate podcasts. I Should Be Writing’s Mur Lafferty explores the freedom to be found in this condition, while Seth Godin points out that the cost of failing has fallen to nothing at all.
Being interviewed on podcasts, I mention one thing I love about podcast fiction is I can write whatever the hell I want. Whatever I want. And I can give it to my listeners and they can listen or not. I can write zombie humour audio dramas. I can write a series of novellas about mythology and the afterlife. I can write about superheroes. I could turn around and write chicklit tomorrow. I could write mysteries. I mean, no one is going to pigeonhole me. I can write whatever I want to. And that, I realise is not only the Internet, but it’s also just I am so new that no one cares!
You know, I’ve talked about not caring before, the fact that no one cares that you’re a writer and how that can be a wonderful thing. Because when no one cares you can do whatever you want. They’re not noticing you, they’re not judging you. And if they do notice, then someone cares – and that’s good. But on the other hand, you might be kinda getting yourself into the hole where you’ll be for the rest of your career.
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But your freedom is no one is telling you you can’t. And I think, newbies and wannabes – all of us amateurs – we don’t recognize and appreciate that more often. We don’t say, “You know what, it’s fantastic that no one gives a crap about what I write. I can write whatever I want!”
The cost of failing has dropped by faster than the cost of a chip. You know, my Dad owns a factory in Buffalo, New York, that bends steel and makes hospital cribs and has union organized labor. The cost of getting that factory was really high and if he screws up it’s going to be really expensive. The cost of getting a blog is $12 and if you screw up no one’s going to notice because they weren’t reading in the first place. What we’ve discovered in the last ten years is that it’s easier than ever to record an album, to treat a customer with respect, to put a new idea out there, to write a book and publish it for free. All these things cost almost nothing and the lizard brain hasn’t caught up to that yet. The lizard brain doesn’t realize that the cost of failure is not that a sabre tooth tiger eats you, but that the cost of failure is nothing. So what 43 Folders people ought to do, I think, is do something that people will ridicule, do something where you will fail, do something that’s a little bit nutty and see what happens. Because the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll fail and no one will notice.
