A few Great Bloggers

Summertime and Time for Celebration!

First, welcome back to Nancy of Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to the blogger world. And Beth of Beth's Adventures inspired this post with her post about some excellent agent's blogs.

There is such a wealth of great information, great entertainment and fun reading in the blogosphere.

Here's a few of my favorites in no particular order:

Kathy has words to share and more at her blog Well Placed Words.

Swubird's stories will make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time at Swubird's Nest.

Dave King of Pics and Poems has fabulous pics and poems.

The Muse of Inspired Day by Day is inspiring.

Jim Murdoch of The Truth About Lies is known to tell insightful truths.

Rebecca with her Cornish Dreamer, makes it clear through her photographs why she dreams of Cornwall.

These are just a few of my favorites, blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis. Not all, just a taste. They are all different, fun and informative in their own unique ways.

What are some of your favorites?

Be a Switcher: Switch Creative Endeavors

Switch creative endeavors? Why? Why, when you work so hard to improve your writing, painting, photography or whatever, would you switch?

For a couple of reasons:

It's a mini-vacation, one that doesn't take you out of creative focus. A break that is refreshing and renewing and still keeps the juice flowing. Creativity is the same, no matter what you're creating.

The major benefit is creativity begets more creativity. Doing something different ramps up what you were doing before. Weird, huh? But think about it. I know that for myself, when I take photographs or make jewelry or write a film script instead of working on my novel, I get tons more inspiration for my w.i.p.! I suspect that working on something else frees up the subconscious to work on the main project.

Have you tried this? Do you have more than one creative passion? If so, what's been your experience?

Taking a Vacation: the Cons

My b.f. at the airport

In the previous post I discussed the pros of taking a break. Now for the other side.

One con of going on vacation should be obvious from the photo. Vacations can be fun but exhausting. Travel often requires a lot of attention and energy. It is sometimes hard on the body. So there can be a "recovery period" from rejuvenating! Odd but true.

The major con of vacationing: taking a break can remove you from the "creative space" you were in while working on your current project. It's more than a distraction sometimes, it can be a destruction of your focus. Sometimes it takes a while to "get back into" the work. To return to the creative state. Time and effort lost.

Worst effect of a vacation: Loss of the passion. If you return and then set aside the w.i.p. for no other reason than you've lost the energy to re-focus...ugh.

Have you had any of this happen to you after a break or vacation? If so, what did you do/not do to solve the problems?

Taking a break: the Pros

A Vacation View

Creative people often never want to take a vacation. Or take a vacation. Or if they do take a vacation, they make certain to drag along the work. But leaving the work behind and going on vacation or even taking a break of time away from creating has some gifts and benefits.

Some of these include: Gaining a perspective on the w.i.p. When we are always working, any ounce, any hope, any hint of objectivity is often lost. Getting away from it can refresh and renew our editing ability. Doing something completely different (i.e. a true vacation) enhances this ability.

Refilling the Well: When we're always working, we're always drawing from the well of our creativity. It can run dry. Taking a break helps refill the well. Having new experiences away from home can stimulate the creative process.

But the main thing that I noticed when I was returning from a week's vacation (having gone to my niece's graduation) was a renewal of my passion for my writing. I didn't expect to miss it so much and had forgotten how writing is my true life's passion. I wanted and needed to write by the end of the vacation--so much so that I ended up writing longhand in a notebook in the airports coming home! I returned to work with renewed enthusiasm and optimism.

Do you know of any other benefits of taking a break? Anything you've noticed during/after a vacation about your creative process?

Next: the cons.

Graduation

The hyacinth are in bloom which means...

...that it's time for graduation ceremonies. Okay, maybe that was a weak link to a pretty photo, but certainly the color is celebratory. Which is what I'll be doing for the next week, celebrating my niece's graduation!

So, I'll be back to blogging around June 6, no doubt with a post about what taking a short break from creative endeavors does for the creator.

Anybody else celebrating a transition?

Ownership

This post is inspired by my good friends and fellow bloggers posts, Kathy's post at Well Placed Words about Letting go is hard to do and the Muse's post at Inspired day by day on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

It also follows the previous posting about knowing when to stop editing. The comments by Jim Murdoch and Swubird got me to thinking about "ownership." What is ownership? In writing, it's "owning" every word--in other words, it's being too engaged, too close, too much owning your writing. Every word is your hard won baby. It's tough, ownership--and not useful overall.

How to get rid of the dreaded "owning"? One way: write lots more. Hard to care about a word or sentence or paragraph when you've got thousands and thousands of them. Another: put a piece aside for at least 3 weeks (or more). Or perhaps the best way is exemplified by my mom's words (who was the wife of an artist and the mother of a writer): "Once you create it, it isn't yours anymore. It belongs to the reader, viewer, etc."

Do you catch yourself "owning" some of your work? If so, why?

When to stop editing

What Does this photo have to do with when to stop editing? Read on...

This is a photo that I took with my cell phone. This is the third attempt to get something because the light was bad and it was a cell phone. As you can tell--still not perfectly focused or centered, although the best of the bunch. I stopped after this attempt. Why?

Because after a certain point it's not worth the time to repeat and tweak a simple photo taken by a cell phone. Deciding when to stop editing can be the same decision process. When is it no longer worth the time or effort? How much importance does the creative piece possess? A poem may require more going over than a short story and a short story more than a novel. Or perhaps not.

Editing is necessary, essential, critical. But after several go-throughs far too often we can get caught in endless editing. A tweak here a tiny change there and at best we are creating a minor improvement. At worst, all the energy and freshness gets stripped out of the work.

So take a pause and ask, "How many times have I gone over this? Am I improving or only changing? Does this piece need another go-round or not?"

When do you stop editing? Never? Or do you have a fixed number of editing attempts?