Creativity Run Wild: Permission to make crap

One of the most important lessons I learned from my drawing teacher, Phil Sylvester, was the importance of giving ourselves permission to make crap. He always talks about Picasso when he's giving this lecture. How Picasso made tons of crap all through his career. Of course, he got so famous that people paid a lot of money for that crappy work if he signed it and he was most generous about signing it.

If you're not willing to make crap, Phil says, then you're stuck with pretty and precious. And while that may be satisfying for a while, it's not a very long while and it's not very satisfying as we tend to just make the safe things, which is about product and not as much about creative self-expression.

Recently I was painting a landscape with pastels and tried an experiment with deep purples and blues in the sky. It seemed like a good idea at the time and they were all lovely colors, but when I got up and stepped back, I didn't much like it. I was tempted to stop and start over on a clean piece of paper. Instead, I just kept going, trying various things with the trees and the rod and the foliage.
Did it turn out well? Not so great. But it's interesting. And I learned a lot in the doing of it and painting is always fun for me, no matter what.

So give yourself permission to make crap. Something new and interesting might come of it.

Creativity Run Wild

Hi everybody. It's been quite a few months since I posted there but I'm back. I had some difficulties with the Blogger folks when I changed the name of the blog from The Writing Wheel to Jill Kelly Creative. Because I'm passionate about so many aspects of creativity, I wanted my blog title to reflect that. So watch for some great creativity posts coming up. Best, Jill

Testing my Email Subscription Feature

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Wise words for us creatives from Leo Babauta

The Brain’s Fast Mode

Posted: 05 Dec 2014 11:26 AM PST

By Leo Babauta

On a typical day, I’ll be in a work mode that looks something like this:

• I’ll check my email and process it as quickly as possible.
• Then I’ll open a document to write something.
• I’ll quickly switch to one of my favorite sites for finding well-written or useful online articles.
• Then I’ll switch back to the writing.
• Then I’ll go do some cleaning.
• Then back to the writing.

The problem is that my mind isn’t in a mode for focusing on the writing. It’s in Fast Mode, brought on by the processing of email, where I will make quick decisions on emails, take quick action, and quickly dispose of them.
Even in this quick email processing, I have trouble dealing with the two or three emails that require longer thought or action. The ones that require me to deliberate usually end up sitting in my inbox for a few days, because my mind is in Fast Mode whenever I’m in my inbox.
Writing or otherwise creating when your brain is in Fast Mode is nearly impossible, until you switch to Slow Mode. You’ll just switch from the writing to some smaller, faster task, or go to distractions.
Considering a tough decision long enough to weigh the various factors and make a good decision is also pretty near impossible while you’re in Fast Mode. So you put off the decisions until later, even if it would only take a few minutes to make a decision.
Any task that isn’t a quick click or two also gets pushed back while you’re in Fast Mode. You don’t have time to spend five minutes on a single task, because you’re so busy!
You can’t really exercise or meditate in Fast Mode, either, because those take longer than a minute. They take a block of time that isn’t just a minute or two that you can do in Fast Mode.
You can watch TV, because TV has learned to appeal to Fast Mode, switching constantly to new things every few seconds. But you won’t watch a slower film that requires your mind to pay attention and give it consideration for longer than a few minutes.
Being in Fast Mode leads to constant switching, and constant busy-ness. It leads to overwork, because when do you switch it off? It leads to exhaustion, because we never give ourselves breathing room.
Learn to recognize when you’re in Fast Mode, and practice switching to Slow Mode now and then. It’s essential to doing all the things that are really important.

My interview with Jody Seay is live

In late March, I had an interview with Jody Seay, a good ole girl from Texas, who has a cable access show called Back Page, where she interviews Northwest writers. I interviewed with Jody four years ago after my memoir was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. This time she and I talked about writing and recovery, and my two new books: Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery and my first novel, The Color of Longing.

Jody's a great interviewer and I so appreciate the help she gives us local writers. You can watch the interview here: http://media.oregonstate.edu/tag/back%20page

Eric Maisel's new Making Your Creative Mark

I've been a reader, fan, and student of creativity coach Eric Maisel for quite a long time. I got my first Maisel book, The Creativity Book, about 10 years or so ago. It opened up a whole new world of ideas for me. Since then I've read a number of the others and taken a half-dozen online courses with him. His honest teachings about the creative life have been both encouraging and grounding as I move my way further into a life in the arts.

His new book, Making Your Creative Mark, takes the same honest and practical approach to creating a life in the arts: things to know, things to do, things to consider, things to sort out. He addresses some of the most hidden issues for creatives: confidence, passion, empathy, stress, and managing our minds, our self-talk. I think you will find this book of great value.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book:

1. There is almost nothing that we are free to control. By the same token, there is almost nothing that we aren't free to influence.

2. Complete projects for the sake of making progress.

3. Remember that passion isn't optional.

4. You need to be a calmly confident seller.

I also want to put in a plug for Eric's book Natural Psychology, which changed my life. It's an articulated philosophy for those of us who are concerned with finding meaning in life. Happy reading!

New blog name, expanded blog focus

When I started The Writing Wheel blog in 2008, my interest in the creative process was pretty confined to helping writers do better work. Over the last five years, while I have continued to work as an editor and have spent a lot of time working on my own fiction writing and writing about that here, I've become more and more committed to my visual art practice. I've also written and published a book on the creative process called Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery.

I'm really fascinated by all aspects of the creative process and want to expand my discussions in this blog to more aspects of the creative process, both for artists and for everyday creatives. I'm also linking this blog to my Jill Kelly Creative Facebook page where I'll be posting as well.

I've got lots to stay about creativity: tips, suggestions, musings and amusings. For today, here's a new piece from my studio and a quote from Luciano Pavarotti: "People think I'm disciplined. It's not discipline, it's devotion, and there's a great difference."

How can you turn your devotion to your creative life?