Other Perspectives Pro and Con

This is my s.o. Bruce, with a different perspective.

This subject seems to be in the blogging air. And it occurred to me while my niece, Katey, was visiting. Now Katey is a intelligent, engaged with life and engaging, passionate young woman of 22. And as such, she has her own unique perspectives, different from my own, on many things.

Then Beth of Beth's Adventures mentioned in her post about a piece of artwork painted on the wall of her new home. Very personal to the people living there before--and no doubt delightful to them. And Kathy of Well Placed Words in her post about Ambidextrous Writers discussed switching genres. When a writer does that, another perspective is created.

What are the pros and cons of different perspectives?

The pros are strong and an excellent reminder to keep the mind open. How many times have you've been brought to an epiphany by a different perspective: "Whoa, I never thought of it that way before?" Or "hey, that would work." Often, new vistas, new ideas, new paths open up with a different perspective: "Wow, I never saw it that way--that'd work."

The cons: well, a different perspective can be too personal. See Beth's Adventures above. It can be confusing and even dangerous to get too many or too diverse of different perspectives. For an example: a writer friend of mine always listens to other's opinions of her work. But open-minded willingness can go too far--as a consequence she never finishes anything, continually re-writing the same w.i.p.

So, what are some new perspectives you've noticed lately? And where have they led?

My blog about Short Story Writing

Just a quick entry to let you know I have a blog entry on Murder in the Grove's My Space titled: Writing Short Stories: A Quick and Easy Primer.

Check it out!

Glorious Distractions

Some delightful birthday flowers from my great friend Kathy of Well Placed Words.

Ah, glorious distractions of the summer! Glorious because they are so much fun. Some of mine include: birthday parties (many friends and relatives and myself), a niece's graduation, a different niece's visit, a convention, Fandemonium, where I taught a workshop on storyboarding, a film conference, my first, an upcoming workshop on writing manga and new fitness classes for mid-lifers to teach (my other day job, check out Delightfit for more).

Whew! All fun events/activities that I wanted to do and enjoyed doing. However, all distractions from the w.i.p. Distractions that sometimes assisted my current work, more about that in the next post--but also created a struggle to "stay in the work."

No time. No energy. The one thing I found helped, a bit, was to make certain I worked for 10-15 minutes a day, every day on my w.i.p. Not necessarily turning out pages, notes (even on scraps of paper if I was away from my laptop) worked as well.

Still difficult. So, dear readers, what do you do when awash with glorious distractions? How do you avoid getting possibly remote from a current and now uncurrent work? And what have your glorious distractions been this summer?

A test

I've been losing posts and comments on this blog (i.e. not being posted and disappearing) so this is a test.

With a pretty picture.

Organizing and Organic Organization

An example of organic organizing.

Organizing can be the bane of the creative person. We all generate a lot of ideas and with those ideas comes a lot of--stuff. Writers are awash in paper, artists too and musician's and photographer's and film maker's and dancer's lives are overflowing with the tools of their trade.

How to organize? Here's one way that works for a lot of creative people because it is organic. It grows with materials. Which is why daisies are a good example of organic organizing: they cluster. They grow out from the clusters, adding flowers from the central bed.

Organic organizing is putting like with like, associated with associated, clustering the items together. All paint brushes together in cans in a group. All scenes in one w.i.p. in files that are in the same group. All cameras together in one area or box. It's a more relaxed way of organizing that often works for creative people.

One main drawback: like daisies, organic organizing can overrun everything else. By adding and adding the organization can lose all meaning. (In daisies, they get too tight together and begin to die at the center.) So this is a loose and general organizing method than will need "thinning" from time to time.

What do you think? Would this type of organizing work for you? Or just add to the mess? Do you have a system that does work? If so, please share!

Maass Intensive, Switching Formats, Marketing and Contests

These seems like a lot of subjects. It isn't. It's the same subject. And it goes like this:

Donald Maass' High Tension Workshop was for novel writing. That doesn't matter. Why? Because it translates to all kinds of writing.

It's useful to switch formats. Trying something new and different can increase your ability in your regular writing. It's a challenge. It's also a way to re-energize your regular writing.

Writing for good contests (real prizes/awards, no entry or low entry fee, with a reputable publisher/group) can be another way to challenge and stimulate your writing.

If you pick a good contest to submit to and win a prize, this can help the marketing of your other work. And sometimes your other endeavors.

Which all brings me to a touch of BSP: I entered Tokyopop's "The Dreaming Writing Competition" and won First Prize! This is useful for a couple of reasons. First, my new w.i.p. is for YA Fantasy and writing a Manga style short story is related. Second, I'm teaching a class at the True North Creative Learning Center in August about--you guessed it--writing manga. Again for the YA market. Plus, I get cool artwork!

So readers, what do you think? About switching formats? About contests, pro or con?

Happy Fourth!!

Happy Fourth of July!

Okay, what are photos of wildflowers doing on a post about the Fourth of July?

These photos are of wildflowers growing on the Oregon Trail, where pioneers walked, lived and died in order to realize their dreams.

The flowers grow wild and free.

What better way to wish everyone a wild and free day?