fbpx
Browsing Tag

creativity

blogging creativity planning & productivity writing

The Productive Writer: Review

March 13, 2011

Two of my favourite topics are ‘Writing’ and ‘Productivity’ and the planning linked to bringing successful outcomes about. So Sage Cohen’s latest book, ‘The Productive Writer’ is perfectly attuned to my interests and priorities and I’m sure relevant to other writers interested in making the most of their time and creative efforts.

It’s eminently practical and full of tips for anyone interested in being more organised and able to produce outcomes, especially words framed in a meaningful way to make an impact. It’s relevant to all kinds of writing: poetry, fiction, business writing, non-fiction, blogs and freelance approaches. Ultimately it’s about the place of that writing in the context of your life and how to make all this work.

Sage’s key platform is that productivity is a ‘lifestyle choice’ as she outlines in the introduction:

Productivity, then, is your own, personal GPS as you navigate the endless windernesses of your mind, craft, or subject matter and bring the best of what you have to offer to the page – and the world. Productivity is a means of witnessing and steering yourself toward your greatest good and training yourself to weed out the interference along the way.

‘The Productive Writer’ then navigates its own GPS through these wide waters to cut a swathe of practical advice to assist writers to be as productive as they can in every facet of their work. The weave of the book traverses critical themes you can hang onto as signposts for your own journey. These include:

  • building a case for your future as a writer
  • studying your heroes and how they work
  • establishing a platform or organising principle for your work
  • thinking productively & capturing ideas
  • goal-setting and organisational tips
  • managing time and procrastination tendencies
  • revising tips
  • publishing and promoting
  • sustaining relationships around your work
  • celebrating your success

I especially loved Chapter 12, ‘Writing in the Margins of a Full-time Life’ that reminded me that I am not the only one working full-time and trying to write; that it’s not just about balancing work and writing – it’s about balancing life and writing; and the value of my day job to my writing life and the need to remember to acknowledge the skills I learn there. As Sage comments in the context of her own diverse mix of writing commitments:

Each skill I acquire in service to someone else’s goals becomes a part of my own toolbox.’ (p115)

Sage, as her name suggests, is a very wise writer. This book, linked in with her new platform ‘The Path of Possibility’, brings writing and productivity together in a way that amplifies both and clearly sets them in the context of a broader creative life. Like Sage’s previous book, the wonderful ‘Writing the Life Poetic’, ‘The Productive Writer’ has the effect of taking you by the hand and encouraging you, gently and practically, every step of the way from vision to fruition. Committing to writing is not an easy task and we all need all the support and advice we can get to overcome resistance, barriers and excuses. Sage’s book demonstrates that:

…when we see that there are endless ways to establish and sustain a productive writing life – at any age, in any work-family circumstance – we may have an easier time trusting that we will find our own way forward.’

As you can see from the recent gaps here, for a number of reasons, I am having my own struggles with balancing writing in my life. Thankfully, in the meantime, I have also been reading ‘The Productive Writer’. Whilst struggling with the immediate application at present, the ideas contained there will become a critical part of reorienting my own GPS in moving forward to achieve my writing goals.

Share

4 Comments
creativity planning & productivity writing

Planning for the Future Starts with Celebrating the Past

January 16, 2011

A guest post from author Sage Cohen

  A note from Terri:

I am thrilled to have Sage Cohen, pictured left, writing here for my first guest post. Sage’s background and the details of her latest work, including her new book, ‘The Productive Writer‘ are below.  I am indebted to Sage and her work as a gifted writer and teacher who has enriched my writing life.

In this post, Sage encourages us to review our broader writing successes in 2010 in preparation for a productive 2011! 

  

Happy New Year, writers! I believe that there is no better launching pad into the great, blank page of 2011 than a thorough inventory of all that went right in 2010. With this in mind, I’m going to ask a series of questions to guide you in recounting your many successes this past year! I encourage you to take your time and be as thorough as you can in listing every single thing you appreciate about yourself and what you’ve accomplished in each dimension of your writing life–even if the best you can do is admire that you stopped burning your rejection letters. Deal?

  • What was most fun, exhilarating or rewarding in your writing life this year?
  • What obstacles did you face and overcome?
  • What relationships did you build, repair or retire, and how has this contributed to your writing life?
  • What did you let go of (habits, relationships, attitudes, clutter) that was no longer serving you?
  • What did you read that taught you something about your craft, your platform or how to take your writing and publishing forward?
  • What did you earn or what opportunity did you land that felt prosperous?
  • How has your confidence and/or craft improved?
  • What have you learned about social media that is serving your writing life?
  • What strategies worked best for being effective with your time?
  • How did you nurture and sustain your well being–in mind, body, spirit?
  • Who has praised your writing or teaching or facilitating? What did they say and how did it give you a new sense of appreciation for yourself and your work?
  • What did you learn about your writing rhythms: time of day to write, managing procrastination, how and when to revise, making use of slim margins of time, etc.?
  • Who did you help, and who helped you?
  • What did you learn about yourself from rejection, and how has it helped your writing, your confidence or your submissions approach develop?
  • What did you do that terrified you–but you did it any way? And how did that benefit your life and your writing?
  • How were you patient?
  • When and how were you successful at juggling the competing demands of family, writing, work, and everything else in your full life?
  • Who did you forgive? Who forgave you?

Because it’s so easy to keep our minds trained to the loop of an unsolvable problem or two, you may be surprised at how many triumphs are revealed as you answer these questions. Every risk you took, skill you fortified and skin you shed in the service of your writing life is a foothold in the future you are aspiring to create. Nice work!

 About Sage Cohen

Sage Cohen is the author of The Productive Writer (just released from Writer’s Digest Books);Writing the Life Poetic and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. She blogs about all that is possible in the writing life at pathofpossibility.com, where you can: Download a FREE “Productivity Power Tools” workbook companion to The Productive Writer. Get the FREE, 10-week email series, “10 Ways to Boost Writing Productivity” when you sign up to receive email updates. Sign up for the FREE, Writing the Life Poetic e-zine. Plus, check out the events page for the latest free teleclasses, scholarships and more.

Share

2 Comments
creativity planning & productivity transcending writing

Gems #12 Planning and Productivity

January 6, 2011

 

Happy New Year!

It’s great to be reading all my favourite blogging writers reflecting on 2010 and plans for 2011. It’s an exciting time for planning to be productive in whatever priority areas are critical for you. I thought I’d share some gems on planning and productivity that might be of interest for setting your agenda for 2011. They will certainly be part of my own personal planning.

Chris Guillebeau is something of a guru of personal planning. With a successful track record of setting and reviewing yearly goals, Chris shares his processes and goals with his readers generously. Chris has recently been working on his annual review of 2010 to inform planning for 2011. It starts with two simple questions:

What went well in 2010?

What did not go well in 2010?

From there, Chris reflects on 2010 and builds his plan for 2011, including setting the metrics for checking the achievement of his goals. I love his process and have found it personally rewarding over the last two years. Here are a couple of links to Chris’s recent writing on his annual review process:

2010 Annual Review – The Beginning

2010 Annual Review – Looking Forward

All of Chris’s recent posts on his annual review process are excellent and I will be revisiting them in full soon when I sit down to do my own reflection and planning process for 2011.

Charlie Gilkey has some excellent planning tools also at Productive Flourishing on his Free Planners page. There are all kinds of planning tools: ones for planning blog posts and daily, weekly and monthly action planners. There are also tools for identifying your most productive times. I will be looking to apply these in 2011. Highly recommended and again, shared generously which is appreciated.

In the writing field, Sage Cohen’s new book The Productive Writer provides strategies and systems for writers looking to maximise their time with all types of writing. Sage’s background crosses a broad range of writing areas including being a writer of strategic marketing content as well as a successful published poet. She is also a skilled and sensitive teacher; I have been an avid and appreciative student of her ‘Poetry for the People’ online courses. She is the author of one of my favourite books on writing, ‘Writing the Life Poetic: an Invitation to Read and Write Poetry’.  

I’ll write a fuller review of ‘The Productive Writer’ soon and Sage will also visit here soon for a guest post, so stay tuned. Sage’s writing is always clear, heartfelt and grounded in practicality and this book will be of great value to writers in getting organised and maximising their creative time. Sage’s new Path of Possibility site offers advice and resources for productivity in writing and in life.

What tips do you have for planning and productivity for 2011?

Share

5 Comments
blogging family history writing

Transitioning

December 11, 2010

There has been something of a hiatus here. Not for lack of things happening. I have been incredibly busy and it’s a time of change. Something about the end of one year and the beginning of another always means being busy but this year has been an extra busy time with much transitioning.

I have been finalising a challenging work role that has been the focus of my energy for much of this year. I was heartened to read Danielle LaPorte’s recent post on entrepreneurial spirit inside and outside the 9 to 5. Whilst my job recently was much more than 9 to 5, it was very much carried out in the spirit of entrepreneurship, of change and of creativity in solving problems with heart and courage.

I read this year about being a linchpin and a career renegade; more about the art of non-conformity and about being a fire-starter whilst in this work role over the past nine months. This spirit very much pervaded the way I tackled some long-standing issues. The feedback was positive and I appreciate how much my reading and engagement with social entrepreneurship has guided my leadership work this year. In fact, I don’t know what I would have done without it at times. It was fascinating how many times I became stuck or was trying to solve a crucial problem when a critical post from Chris Guillebeau, Colleen Wainwright, Danielle LaPorte or Jonathan Field, amongst others, came through to light the way.

I have also been travelling and busy getting organised to leave a warm Sydney to visit a very cold UK and Europe. I have enjoyed again the feeling of transitioning across countries, being in the air suspended between and the arriving. I have been visiting East Sussex and the place where some of my ancestors lived for hundreds of years before part of the family broke itself off and moved to Australia for warmer climes and a new life of opportunity in the 1830s.

I am especially interested in one ancestor: my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Honeysett, and her journey. In the end, it was not a happy one but I am inspired by her transition, her hope, what she left behind, where she went and why and what it was like living in Sydney as an early woman settler. The female migration experience is not much written about it seems. I am keen to find her voice and that’s why I have been visiting East Sussex and listening to the voices and the accents; feeling the icy weather; walking around the church where she was married in 1825; driving through lanes with their high hedges, the worn and ancient stone homes with moss on the roof; and visiting the castles, inns and abbeys that were the centrepieces of life in East Sussex then and now.

I am also beginning to write that story now. That is my goal: to write a novel that is the story of Jane’s life and the female migration experience. Visiting the land of my ancestors seems to have enabled me to start to write finally, breaking through that invisible line of resistance. I am grateful for The Writers Cafe software by Dr Julian and Harriet Smart, which I found through Joanna Penn and her podcast conversation with Harriet. The software really is very good. After all my procrastinations about starting to write, it really was as simple as blocking out some scenes already lined up in my head and filling them out.

This transition to actually starting to write seemed to need to occur in the location. I’m not sure why but I had a keen sense in arriving of returning to the place where Jane could not return after she left. Maybe she is my guardian angel, some ancestral support, helping me. I know she could not read or write so maybe I am her voice, her writing, her words and her song and being in her birthplace and her home was a catalyst for beginning.

I have also been Unravelling this past few months, working through the online experience Susannah Conway creates that is very deep and unlocks so much.  Through creating a supportive environment focused on images and words and enabling an online network of participants, Susannah successfully creates connection between people and within souls that is magical. It’s hard to describe and the unravelling is still occurring, but I suspect this experience has also been the backbone of much of this transitioning. I’m comfortable in my own skin and its various guises of leader, researcher, writer, reader and blogger and enjoying the connections and cross-fertilisations this year has brought, most recently culminating in so much arrival.

What transitioning is happening for you at the end of this year?

 Share

6 Comments
blogging creativity transcending work life

The one clear thing Part 2

November 10, 2010

 

In  The one clear thing Part 1, I talked about the complexity and challenge around me and how the writing of this blog has emerged as one clear thing I can focus on at present. 

Finding ‘the one clear thing’ is the message emerging from all the complexity and multiplicity around me. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed and do the wrong thing or nothing. There is an almost innate tendency to make things more complex than they need to be.

What does it mean to ‘find the one clear thing’? It means keeping the complex simple. It means providing a cut-through to moving on and solution. The one clear thing is emerging for me as:

1. Identifying the key question(s)

2. Beginning the essential work

3. Making the daily steps

 

 1. Identifying the key question(s)

What key question(s) can you focus on, ask, that if answered carefully and consciously, would enable all the rest to fall into place?

This approach enables you to:

  • focus energy and effort 
  • avoid resistance and distraction
  • avoid the allure of complexity

As an example, in a workshop recently, we were working to resolve a complex business issue. The workshop was focused around a single, powerful question honed from a previous workshop of senior managers. It was our task to answer it. It was incredibly hard to keep the group focused but with the aid of a very skilled and dogged external facilitator, at the end, we were able to clearly and succinctly answer the question. We will use these principles to drive future business directions, structure and staff capability development now that we are clear.

Chris Guillebeau also uses the key question approach in his World Domination work to guide goal-setting for individuals and the difference they can make.  In ‘A Brief Guide to World Domination – How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world’, Chris talks about personal goals, ordinary people pursuing big ideas and also through this, making a difference in the lives of others. The key questions he asks you to consider, ‘the two most important questions in the universe’ are:

#1 What do you really want to get out of life?

#2 What can you offer the world that no-one else can?

I have written about this in an early post, ‘Why Transcending?’ and shown how answering these questions helped me to develop my focus here. Read Chris’s Art of Non-Conformity blog to see many examples of people who have used this technique to get them focused on the one clear thing that matters to them in their life’s work. For me now, the key question is reviewing ‘How can my blog work here bring my answers to those two key questions to life?’

Jonathan Fields in a recent post, The Bucket List Lie on his blog, Awake at the Wheel, also encourages us to keep it simple by making a list of one:

A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest. 

Julie Kay of JK Leadership Development and the wonderful Developing Leaders Online encourages businesses to focus on The single most effective question you can ask in the context of customer service and feedback from clients. It’s a great question because it’s solution focused and provides some metrics for knowing when improvement has taken place.

You can see that the first step identifying the key question is:

  • action oriented
  • solution focused
  • resistance averse

So what’s the key question for you right now, the one clear thing that can take you forward?

I’ll explore the next step ‘The essential work to be done’ in a follow-up post very soon.

Image, The base of Looking Glass Falls near Asheville, North Carolina by Alaskan Dude from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Share

4 Comments
blogging creativity transcending

The one clear thing Part 1

October 31, 2010

It’s been quiet here. You may have noticed. Quiet from my side and also the readers’ side. No surprises that the two are linked. There’s been a lot happening. There is a lot of complexity around me at present.

I am doing the Unravelling e-course with Susannah Conway and a wonderful group of women from across the world and there is much delving into deep layers in that space.

At work, there are challenging issues to solve, multiplicity, new systems being implemented, many projects on the boil and a constant search for streamlining and solutions.

At home, there is much change currently and on the horizon as my daughter finishes school. The effects of grief and chronic illness in the lives of my immediate family weave a web of constant challenge. And the dog is suddenly quite disabled and has to be carried from one place to the other.

So yes, it has been quiet here but I do so love this blog, what it means to me and how it tracks my progress and development, my thoughts on transcending issues like I am experiencing now: the cut through, the coping, the methods, the strategy, the passions. I am loving Unravelling at present for also taking me through this in another way; mainly through images, photos, but also writing, connecting with others and a supported environment for creativity and expression.

So to the blog. I have been wondering if I am on the right track. Have I lost my way here? Is ‘Transcending’ the right focus? Am I connecting? Am I lost? I have been thinking about starting a second blog about my work on reading as it doesn’t seem to connect. Whenever I post on reading and book voyeurs, my stats seem to dive and take a while to pick up. But this is important to me – reading as a form of transcending and riding above, crossing over, connecting. Reading has kept me focused for much of my life on the present, what could be in the future and how to get there.

Fortunately today I came across a couple of great posts from Penelope Trunk, originally via the communicatrix and her fantastic Friday round-up which led me to Penelope’s post ‘Being a snob creates too many limits’ about books, love of books, book sorting, reading and many things I am also passionate about. Then at the end, I read these words as if written for me:

You will notice there are not any work-related books. Anywhere. Which is odd because I receive at least one in the mail every day. I don’t save those books because they bore me. I wish I didn’t have to write that. But I think they bore you, too. That’s why you read this blog.

The best advice about how to conduct yourself at work is to know yourself, and get new information—from outside your own experience—about what is possible in the world. And that is what fiction, and plays, and poetry, and this blog, are about.

Hola! Fantastic and that is truly why I write this blog also. I know I am in another place altogether with far, far fewer readers than Penelope with her thousands of subscribers that she has built up, but I recognise the essence and motivation. I also try to connect what I know from work, from reading, from experience and distil it here. ‘The one clear thing’ was the title I planned to write about today and I have my draft of notes around that. It will need to be part 2. The one clear thing at the moment here, part 1, is to keep focus here in moving forward.

So I read some more of Penelope’s blog. I read:

Penelope’s Guide to Blogging which is excellent – great summary advice and links to previous articles Penelope has written that delve into each topic in more depth.

The one of course that attracted me: Don’t Start a New Blog: Stick with the one you have  How come this woman is inside my mind and talking straight to me today? I think she has been talking for a while and I just haven’t been in hearing range. The words that jump out at me are:

But each of us has multiple aspects to our personality. This doesn’t mean you need to start a new blog. It means you need to understand how your changing self integrates with your old self. Your blog is a way to watch yourself change. Your topic is a way to ground yourself. Write at the edge of your topic. That is where things are most interesting, anyway.

So thanks to Penelope Trunk and Colleen Wainwright, the communicatrix for the leads (do so love the communicatrix’s Frrrrriday rrrrround up. It often seems to get me back on track somehow) and to Susannah Conway for the Unravelling experience which is one of deep change right now. I will:

  • write at the edge of my topic
  • explore my topic as a way of grounding myself
  • understand how my changing self integrates with my old self
  • know myself and get new information about what is possible: at work, at home, in creativity, in writing and through blogs, twitter and other connections

That is the one clear thing for today: the writing of this blog as the way forward and the steps it might take from here.

Do you have any other thoughts on blogging and keeping clear on your focus there and elsewhere?

Image, Glass of Water by gfrphoto from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Share

2 Comments

PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy Policy

COOKIE POLICY

Cookie Policy