A Creativity Challenge: Looking Back and Looking Forward

As July winds down and I finish up this months Creativity Challenge, I can only say that I'm so thankful I decided to do it.  This challenge has been such a great experience, and the last 28 days have allowed me to get back into a mindset that I've missed and struggled to find for years now.

In all honesty, the challenge itself hasn't exactly gone the way I thought it would.  I'm not writing every day, and I still haven't made any sort of visible progress on the story I began a while back.  But I am writing more.  In fact, I'm writing nearly every day, and the fact that I've been doing it more and more often makes me want to continue doing it more and more often.  I'm thinking about writing all the time.  I'm looking forward to it.  And while my story is still stuck stubbornly in its conception stage, I'm not frustrated or upset anymore.

In fact, a funny thing is happening to me: the act of writing so much, of thinking so much of writing, and of looking at everything in terms of how it can inspire me has sort of caused this domino effect in my life.  I'm being creative again.  It sounds silly, I know, but I'm being perfectly serious when I say that this is monumental in my life right now.  I may not be able to get to chapter 2 in that story, but I've got ideas again.  Tons and tons of ideas.  In those years when writing was not just a want but a need, when I needed it to be my crutch, my filter and my repository, I used to come up with ideas in daydreams, in classes, in car rides and in the middle of conversations.  Dialogue would just come together like magic and it seemed so effortless to me that I couldn't imagine that those ideas would someday stop.  And then they did, and I thought I'd lost something.  I realize now that I was just...rusty.

This Creativity Challenge is bringing it all back to me.  I now spend about an hour and half each night before bed writing something.  Most of the time its just a stray scene that played across my mind sometime throughout the day, but a few times that idea has resulted in 3-4 pages of conversation and story.  I don't know where or if any of it will ever be used in a larger sense, but the fact that it's becoming a wonderful, fulfilling habit for me to think them up and get them down is a reward in and of itself.

And for the first time I can offer this excuse for not having written a blog post in nearly a week: I've been busy writing something else!

So thank-you, Ashley, for issuing your challenge, and I'm so excited to continue it long after July comes to a close.

A Creativity Challenge: Side Effects

Perhaps what I'm loving most about tackling this Creativity Challenge (currently in week three!) is all of the side benefits its seemed to have.  I thought and intended to use this month to concentrate solely on my writing, and I've been doing more writing this month than in maybe the last few years combined.  But tapping that aspect of whatever creativity I seem to have has also tapped others.

I've started playing music again.  When I was a kid, I played a bunch of instruments; I played the piano, the violin, the clarinet, the ukulele.  I stopped somewhere along the way when my interest died out or to keep playing seemed like too much to put on my plate at the time, but I've begun picking some of it up again.  Specifically, the piano.  N. is a jazz pianist and has always been in a band of some sort.  He doesn't currently play or go to gigs, but he did a lot of that when we first began dating, and when I figured out just how talented he was, it made me proportionally intimidated to do anything musical in front of him.  Who wants to look like an amateur loser in front of this guy she's into, right?  This is a ridiculous reaction since, as I've learned lately, he absolutely loves the fact that I'm showing an interest in the piano again.  This in turn has given birth to a whole new goal of mine: I'm hoping one day to consider myself good enough to play in front of him.

The other side benefit of the Creativity Challenge has been that I'm learning to be a little easier on myself when it comes to my writing.  As I mentioned in my last update, my story is giving me trouble (in that I can't get passed the first 10 pages).  And I've been stuck behind this monumental wall that is Chapter 1 for the past few months, not willing to move on until I've made the necessary transition seamless.  This Challenge, like NaNoWriMo, is forcing me to get something down on paper no matter where it fits into this story or any other for that matter.  As a result, I'm learning that maybe this story isn't one that I'm ready to tell just yet; maybe I need to work on something else, something more...on the surface of my mind...before trying my hand at this one.  I would never have gotten here without this month.

An Indoor/Outdoor Experience

What I did this weekend:

 Went thrifting.

Went on a hike in the Marin Headlands.

(Photos by: Adam Paul and Pappy V.)

Had a picnic with N. here:

And took a long, lovely nap with Finn.

Now, I'm ready to face the world.  Or, if not the world then at least the week.

A Mile High

If you follow me on Twitter (lets be Twitter friends!), then you know by now that I was in Denver this past weekend for a beautiful wedding (and that I randomly met a dude who dated Lady Gaga).  Aside from the insane heat that permeated the city while I was there, I thought Denver was a great place to be.  It (like most of Colorado, I assume) is incredibly outdoorsy, pedestrian- and bike-friendly, and getting out of the city is as easy as getting to a Safeway here in the Bay.  A half hour drive and you're in the mountains with a view (see above) of The Rockies.

Now if only there was an ocean nearby.

Anyhow, Denver and my friends there have re-inspired me to get outside more, and that's the plan this weekend.  So I hope you all also have a great weekend and a chance to get outdoors, go for a hike, do whatever it is you do to reconnect with the world away from concrete and steel.

Enjoy!

A Creativity Challenge: My Biggest Writing Fear

We are two weeks into this Creativity Challenge and I have yet to write enough to fill up a single page in the story I'm working on.  I have ideas jotted down here and there, on napkins and in notebooks, on scrap pieces of paper floating around in my purse, even on the jacket of last weekend's Southwest Airlines boarding pass.  But none of it's cohesive, and none of it gets me over this mental block I'm facing right now.  In fact, I'm not sure any of it actually even applies to the story I'm writing now, they're all just little scenes that play out in short paragraphs and spurts of dialogue, half-baked conversations (or the outline of conversations) that have yet to find a plot to belong to.

I feel like the only thing left to do is to lock myself in a room with my laptop and some music and not let myself out until I'm at least a chapter in.  I'm too easily distracted otherwise.

Or I could just abandon this story altogether.

But that would be giving up, and I feel like I've given up too many times, discarded too many drafts and left too many stories unfinished.  Aside from my desperate fear of plagiarizing something I've read and loved and internalized, this fear is my constant companion these days: the incomplete story belonging to the writer who doesn't write.

I think I'll try option #1 first.

The Inevitable Evolution

Confession: I don't do well with change.  Not all change, necessarily, but definitely the important kind.  For example, I find it necessary to rearrange my apartment every few months because I can't stand having the rooms remain stagnant for too long, but I don't know what to do with myself when I hear that my sister and her family may be moving out of Hawaii (which, thankfully, didn't happen after all).  I also look forward to and need my own life's big changes whether they be moving states, starting school, making a lifestyle change, etc., but when changes happen that are out of my control I sort of freak out a little bit.  I didn't know this about myself until it was pointed out to me by a therapist when I was 14 (see my post on being brave), after I'd created a miniature world devoid of humans who, inevitably, "just mess everything up."

Given all of this, it comes as a big surprise to me to realize that, sometime over the course of the last eight years, I did some quiet, unsolicited changing of my own.  Up until now, I'd always been that naive girl who said things like, "I don't think I've changed at all since xyz.  I'm still the same person."  Well, as it turns out, I'm not, and nothing points that out more than a visit with those who know/knew you best.

It isn't the easiest thing to deal with, realizing that you're no longer a child and your parents are no longer invincible or all-knowing.  It's harder still when the values you now hold to be important no longer line up with the values of your family.  And it's even worse when neither side knows how to cope with that and instead end up either criticizing, or trying to knock the other down a peg or two.  Simple questions and statements can become landmines: When did you start caring about the environment?  Don't you have normal food, what's with all this fancy stuff?  If I had it my way, we'd just use our nuclear weapons and get out of there already.  So, what, are you ever going to use that law degree or was that all for nothing?

I'm not saying that my views are the right views and theirs are wrong, because I realize that different experiences, different worries go into shaping those views.  It just makes you feel very far away from those you're supposed to feel closest to, and it makes you almost hate the changes you've gone through over the years that have created that distance between you.  Being an adult and a child at the same time isn't the easiest position to navigate, particularly when that child has grown into that adult away from home and away from family.  It's then that those changes seem to rise up and slap you in the face once you're together again.

I don't mean to sound like I think that these changes are insurmountable, or that they're even unique to me and my life.  I'm betting that most people go through some variation of this experience in the course of their lives, especially if the life they're building for themselves takes a path far different from the one they were raised on.

I'm just saying that it isn't easy.  Change, apparently, rarely is.

Eclipse Review!

 Hi, preeeetty.

I might actually be alone in this feeling since it seems like every other person on the face of the planet who's seen this movie thought it was amazing (as far as Twilight movie standards go, anyway), but I honestly have to say that I just...didn't.  I didn't think it was bad, and maybe I was let down somewhat because of all the hype surrounding the movie (this was the first time I waited a few days after the premiere to go and see it, so I was getting unsolicited reviews from everyone I know), but at the end I left feeling that it was just sort of okay.  Am I the only Twilight fan who thought so?  

In any case, here are my points of interest (be prepared for a lot of New Moon comparisons):

• It has to be said that Robert Pattinson looked amazing throughout the entire movie.  A.  Ma.  Zing.  Even if it looks like he was wearing the same blue shirt -- see picture above -- the whole time.  He also has this way of talking (that soft, sort of low, breathy tone) that just melts your bones.  Still a perfect Edward in my eyes.
• With such an amazing soundtrack (you can see I've warmed up to it and now love it), they could have done a lot more with the music.  There are only a few points where I really felt the music added to the scene, one of which was definitely Sia's "My Love" during Edward and Bella's bedroom scene, another was Band of Horses.  But for the most part, New Moon's use of music was much better.
• I didn't really get an overall mood from this movie.  For example, in New Moon there was a tone for the entire movie, a look.  For the most part, the coloring was in earth tones and the feel was very melancholy.  I didn't get a cohesive feeling from Eclipse and that was disappointing.  In fact, I often felt that scenes from the books were sort of haphazardly cut together, rather than flowing from one to the next.
• I desperately want to find the Eclipse stylists and beat them to death with Bella's wig.  It's horrible, especially after she looked so ethereal and beautiful previously.
• Jackson Rathbone was a very nice surprise (his hair isn't nearly as bad as the pictures make it look).  I really loved that he had more screen time, more dialogue.  It helped him to not be so...awkward  And I obviously loved the Jasper/Alice moments (I'm a fan of their relationship almost as much as I am of Edward and Bella's).
• I thought I'd dislike Edward more, given my feelings toward him in this book.  On the page, he came across as very possessive for the entire first half, but I think they tampered that down somewhat in the movie.
• The training scene was hands down the best.  It sort of seemed like a harken back to the baseball scene from Twilight and I loved it!
• Some other great scenes: Edward and Bella in his bedroom.  Edward and Jacob going toe-to-toe over Jacob and Bella's kiss.  Bella and Charlie's sex talk.  Any scene where I got to look at Riley.  The few seconds of screen time that Seth got (because he's adorable).
• I enjoyed the whole bit about Jessica's graduation speech and how it paralleled Bella's big decision.  Predictable, but still good.
• Even though she looked slightly kabuki, Nikki Reed's portrayal of Rosalie during the conversation with Bella was beautiful.  And when she talked about her revenge, she had this...satisfied look in her eye that gave me shivers, even while her story broke my heart.
• I like Bryce Dallas Howard.  Generally, I think she's a good actress and I enjoy watching her movies, and I also love that she's a hardcore Twilight fan.  I just didn't feel that she was the best person to play Victoria.  I think Rachelle Lefevre was.  Bryce Dallas Howard just didn't have that edge that I wanted Victoria to have (and that Rachelle Lefevre brought to the character); she's too sweet looking, too wide-eyed and innocent.  It didn't sit well.
• Um...hello, Riley and the Australian accent you have in real life.
• So this isn't a flaw with the movie, and it's actually probably a testament to it, but I hated the mountain scene.  It was the worst part of the books for me because it made me completely hate Bella and Jacob and everything about them.  And the same was true when I watched it on screen.  It's stupid and immature, but I wanted to yell at Bella on Edward's behalf, "How could you do this to him?!  You love him more?  That's the best you can do?!  What's wrong with you?!"  I generally don't begin liking Bella again until more than halfway through Breaking Dawn, after the conversion takes place.  And I never really warm up to Jacob after this.

Alright, that's it.  Bring on Breaking Dawn.

A Creativity Challenge: Music to Write By

With Ashley's Creativity Challenge a week underway, I thought it would be a good time to write my first update.  As mentioned previously, the challenge I've issued myself for the month of July is to write.  Write habitually, write unabashedly, just write.  My only requirements were that the writing be done daily, and that its subject matter be creative.

It sounds easy enough, doesn't it?

Enter: Me.

This isn't nearly as straight-forward and simple as I thought it was going to be, but I guess that's why I issued it as a challenge to myself.  It's extremely hard for me to focus long enough to write something worth writing, or to even gauge what that "worth" means.  It's difficult to stay inspired, or to not focus on the ideas I've had and then forgotten instead of creating new ones.  And though I've written something down everyday so far, sometimes it was just a single, measly sentence that was hastily deleted before my laptop even had time to process and auto-save.  I don't know whether this is a lack of commitment or just a genuine lack of ideas on my part.

Given all of this, my mini-challenge for the coming week is to write more.  No more one-sentence-and-delete.  Write to keep.

To help with this, I've resurrected my "Music to Write By" playlist.  It's always been easiest for me to write with mood music.  Like many authors I've read interviews of, I tend to think in movie scenes complete with soundtracks and, in fact, most of my ideas come when I'm on a long drive somewhere, listening to music that just makes me see what's happening.  I usually have an idea for the general story line in my head already, but the music helps me to create scenes and dialogue, environment and emotion.  It's the only time that I can honestly say my characters have told me what they'd like to say instead of the other way around.  Unfortunately, by the time the drive is over, I've forgotten the details of that scene and spend the next few days mourning that loss and trying [unsuccessfully] to recreate it.  This discourages me, and I stop trying.

It's an unproductive cycle, but it's one that I'm hopeful can be broken.

And so, though it desperately needs updating, my current "Music to Write By" playlist looks like this:

1. Lydia - "Fate"
2. Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson - "Winter Song"
3. Maria Taylor - "Clean Getaway"
4. A Fine Frenzy - "Elements"
5. Eisley - "Plenty of Paper"
6. Snow Patrol & Martha Wainwright - "Set the Fire to the Third Bar"
7. Kat Tingey - "Undone"
8. The Temper Trap - "Sweet Disposition"
9. Sea Wolf - "The Violet Hour"
10. Editors - "No Sound But the Wind"
11. Lydia - "This is Twice Now"
12. Deas Vail - "Atlantis"
13. Ray LaMontagne - "Hannah"
14. The Fray - "Look After You"
15. Death Cab for Cutie - "I Will Follow You into the Dark"
16. Lydia - "Now the One You Once Loved is Leaving"
17. Eisley - "Brightly Wound"
18. Death Cab for Cutie - "The Ice is Getting Thinner"
19. Lydia - "One More Day"
20. Grizzly Bear & Victoria Legrand - "Slow Life"
21. Leona Lewis - "Run"
22. Lydia - "All I See"
23. Poe - "Haunted"

Blogging Through My Debt: Mistakes I've Made

In keeping with one of the points I listed last week, I wanted to write a little about my debt struggle as it stands as well as what I did to put myself in this position.  Currently, my situation is a little worse than where it was the last time I wrote a "Blogging Through My Debt" post.  While one of my credit cards remains paid off, and I've managed to both maintain my emergency fund and start a teeny-tiny miscellaneous savings fund, things aren't looking so great for my other two credit cards.  In regards to my Platinum card (which is the one I'm concentrating on paying off at the moment), while the balance may be less than what it was when I began this journey a few months ago, that's only because I managed to pay down that balance to a somewhat respectable amount before putting more purchases on the card in the past month.  My efforts, in the end, just canceled each other out.  And in regards to my Miles card, well on that I just spent more.  Plane tickets were purchased, household goods were bought, my balance skyrockets.

When the smoke cleared and I was forced to look at the damage I'd done, I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't upsetting.  This was a complete blow to my morale and I began thinking, "What's the point?  If all I'm ever going to do is continue to spend, why even bother trying to stop?  Why stress out about it and work overtime?  Why punish myself over this?  Why not just keep going on as I've been going on and just worry about it later?"

Obviously, I was having myself a big, whopping, self-denial-inducing, pity-party.

But that's passed and now I'm just trying to get back into the habit of not spending what I don't have.  It sounds simple enough until you actually get on with it, and then it's all, "Wait, why can't I buy those books again?  I could just pay it off later and, after all, payday is only a week away..."  And along with not spending all that "fake money" comes tackling the larger issues (who knew that there were larger issues here?): the actions and mistakes that have led me to where I am today.

First of all, I'm an emotional spender.  Some people are emotional eaters, some are just emotional period.  I am an emotional spender, meaning that when things get tough, I generally go shopping.  I've written on variations of this admission before, often saying that I shop when I'm stressed, and that's very true.  But I also shop when I'm upset or unhappy, and sometimes even when I'm bored.  I've been trying to find ways to redirect this energy, like going for a walk with my dog, or tackling more creative pursuits, but since this is one of the biggest hurdles I'm facing in my attempts to get out of debt, I felt it needed to be mentioned here. 

My second problem seems to be that I see travel as an excuse to commit murder.  I'd probably go so far as to say that more than half of my total credit card debt can be traced to travel of some sort.  Some of my more recent travel-related purchases have been trips home to Hawaii a few times a year, tickets I bought for my sister to come and visit me, trips back up to Seattle to visit friends (or to drive up to Vancouver for the Olympics...), our 2008 Ireland vacation, and our 2009 Pacific Northwest road trip.  And while I know that I can't really afford these trips, I've somehow convinced myself that they're not only necessary, but they're worth it because experiences gained through travel are invaluable.  It's a strange sense of entitlement I feel and it's something that I need to address now.

And finally, it's become my habit recently to use the fact that I'm "too busy" as a reason an excuse to stop budgeting.  I seemed to be doing great through April, but when work began spiraling out of control during May and through the beginning of June, budgeting was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about when I got home.  Because of that, I spent indiscriminately, checked my bank account infrequently, neglected to pay my bills on time, and began living (once again) paycheck to paycheck.  "I'm busy" can no longer be an excuse because, soon, "I'm busy" turns into "I'm broke" and then where will I be?  I got paid on Friday and, since it was the start of a new month, I began budgeting once again.  Hopefully this will be the start of getting back on the right track again.

A Creativity Challenge

As the month of June comes to a close and the month of July begins, I can't help but think that it's the perfect time to start a project.  And as I mentioned earlier this week, I'm gearing up to take part in Ashley's Creativity Challenge and couldn't be more excited!

Now, I'm actually planning on doing two creative projects this coming month (a big one and a small one), but the small one is sort of a secret, possible surprise project and, because I'm not actually sure I'll be able to deliver it by the end of the month, I'm not going to talk about it (hehe).  The big one on the other hand, that I'll probably talk about ad nauseum by the time July ends and you'll be glad the month is over.

For this project, I plan on writing.  A lot.  I'm not going to give myself any sort of parameters on what that writing must be, save that it has to be creative writing of some sort.  This can include blog entries, writing parts of the story I began a few months ago, taking a stab at freelance writing, writing poetry (though I'm definitely not known for being poetic), hell, even writing a song if I feel like it.  What it does not include, however, is academic writing, writing for work, writing emails, and anything of that sort.  The only other parameter I will set for myself is that I must write every day.  It doesn't have to be a lengthy writing session (so "not having time" will no longer be a viable excuse), but I think just the exercise of writing something creative so habitually will be such a great thing for me and such a great thing for my writing.  I'm also hoping it will serve as the beginning of a good habit that will carry over even after this Challenge is done.

Like I said, I'm really excited about this and I think that dedicating a month to a creative endeaver was a fantastic idea!  So if you feel like your own creativity has been put on the back burner lately, I encourage you take part in this Challenge as well.

Below are the details, and you can read more about it here.

If you're interested in participating, here’s what you should do (taken from Writing to Reach You): 

1. Email Ashley at writetoreach@gmail.com letting her know you want to participate.  She will list everyone participating here.  Help spread the word to other people you think might be interested. 
2. Decide on your project and write a post on your own blog sometime this week letting us know what you’ll be working on.  Feel free to apply whatever additional rules or parameters you want to be part of your challenge.  If you think your readers might be interested, try to get your post up earlier so that they’ll have to time to prepare as well.  Please send them over to Ashley's blog so that she knows everyone who is participating. 
3. Periodically throughout the month, blog about your project and the progress you’re making.  You may choose to share what you’ve been working on or just talk about the process.  There is no precise schedule, so you can share as much or as little as you want.  Like any challenge, you’ll get as much out of it as you put into it. 
4. Connect with other creative people participating in the challenge.  Cheer people on, ask them how it’s going, and give them feedback if they ask for it. 
5. Write a post at the end of July with your thoughts on the project, whether you judge it a success or failure, whether you will be continuing with your project or not.

Wish me luck!