Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected – this week with a focus on being accountable to ourselves and others!
Here’s a round-up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms with a focus on being accountable especially for our long haul creative projects like writing a novel.
Podcasts on being accountable
The Secret Library Podcast – Dal Kular on being at the beginning of the writing process
This podcast was such a treat! It’s a chat between host, Caroline Donahue, and Dal Kular about the beginnings and process of writing. Dal is a special Instagram creative buddy and Caroline is a fabulous coach who works with writers who I happen to be working with right now. So just to be able to hear these two special people, who also have a connection between them, riffing on the writing process together was pure joy!
They talk about the novels they are both writing – the initial ideas, the inspiration, the incubation and the getting down to writing. I loved hearing how their novel ideas were conceived and how they evolved.
The key points for me were all about accountability to ourselves in our bigger and longer creative work.
This includes:
- how we can often put this accountability to ourselves around long haul creativity last. As Caroline says in the podcast, she is not late for appointments with others but can be late for writing appointments with herself.
- remembering our deep work and those special inspirations that we may lose touch with but that are so important to honour and get back to.
- that the process of writing something like a novel has its own special joys like travelling to experience details and being able to shape characters based on your experiences, including negative ones.
As a result of listening to the podcast and a coaching session, I am now aiming to get two larger creative projects including a novel, higher up the order of time priorities!
The Creative Penn – Discipline and Practice in Writing and Swordfighting with Guy Windsor
This podcast is an excellent one about writing discipline and practice using links between martial arts and writing as its basis. Guy Windsor is a swordsman, author and entrepreneur. He chats with Joanna about what writing and martial arts have in common including skill building and dealing with fears.
They focus on practices and tools to create accountability in writing. These include:
- starting with achievable goals
- using tools to create accountability like word count
- making mental adjustments about how we are categorising our writing.
The last one is powerful and involves seeing something like writing a novel as play rather than work. I think this sort of flipping the identity and shifting our mindset is a really great strategy for enjoying those longer engagements that can feel a little daunting. Bring them into the arena of fun!!
Books and reading notes
Reading-wise this week, I started David Whyte’s ‘Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity’. This is a special read and one I’ve been savouring. It’s been such a deep pleasure to enjoy David Whyte’s beautiful poetic prose about work and identity, a theme I have been reflecting on:
Taking any step that is courageous, however small, is a way of bringing any gifts we have to the surface, where they can be received. For that we have to come out of hiding, out from behind the insulation. In a way, we have to come to an understanding of ourselves in our work according to where we have established our edge.
I love this book for how it strives for and celebrates finding wholeness in our identity in the workplace. There will be a special focus on this book later in July here on Quiet Writing, so stay tuned!
I also had the pleasure of reading Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership through Solitude by Raymond M. Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin. I absolutely loved this book on solitude and self-leadership as the heart of leadership. It was a rich experience to reflect on its pages whilst reading. I will be writing about this special book further soon.
Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:
I’ve been reading Ellen Bard’s post: How to Set Up an Accountability Group and Get Serious Results and thinking about setting up an accountability group.
I connected with Ellen on social media after listening to her great Creative Penn podcast chat with Joanna Penn on ‘Self-care and Productivity for Authors’ last year. Through our connection, we had a conversation about accountability and the role of accountability groups in helping us be more productive. The blog post spells this out in more detail: the how to’s, the advantages, the guidelines, the results.
Ellen has set up and led accountability groups as a form of inspiration to drive accountability and productivity. It’s also a way of ensuring support for both the good days and the bad days as creatives working in isolation.
As Ellen says in her post, Who’s in your corner? 7 ways to connect with kindred spirits:
I ended up with a group of ten amazing people who have inspired and pushed me to much greater efforts than I would have made alone.
Being held and holding others to be accountable for their actions is powerful and inspiring, and is another way to build connections.
So do read Ellen’s post on setting up an accountability group. And I would love to hear of any of your experiences with accountability groups or partners or if anyone is interested in exploring this further with me! Let me know via the comments or social media. Or you can email me at terri@quietwriting.com
Through Twitter, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Content Creator and Social Media Strategist, Bree. A fellow INTJ, she is just awesome with blogging tips. Wait til you see 3 of the best tips for the most successful blog post ever is fabulous is excellent, especially the headline tips and tools that she shares, available free via CoSchedule. I followed her tips and – yes, I had the most successful blog post ever in the past week with 10 Amazing Life Lessons from Swimming in the Sea. Thanks, Bree and a recommended follow on Twitter for you all.
In 7 ways to identify your uniqueness, Business and Life Coach, Naomi Arnold, reminds us that identifying our uniqueness is an important part of our accountability to ourselves in living a wholehearted life. This is a theme that is woven into the heart of Quiet Writing and something I love to write about and work on in my Life Coaching with women.
There’s been some awesome transformational energy around this week. Have you felt it? I wrote about it in my post, Transforming into the new with my Capricorn Full Moon tarot reading. The energies this week have been about embracing our uniqueness as a springboard at this time, especially the threads that tie our unique story together and give it coherence.
My Tarot Narratives on Instagram have been a rich source of inspiration and insight for me and I hope they are connecting with you too. This has been a consistent daily intuitive practice since 1 June now and I haven’t missed a day! It’s so true that as Danielle LaPorte says in White Hot Truth:
And you can keep flexing your intuition (because it’s like a muscle) to feel into the next right step.
Each day deepens my creative connection with tarot and spirit. The messages this week have been around creative order, organising principles things coming together and making sense. And today, there was a beautiful message about manifesting and finding a form for creative inspirations. Love to hear what’s happening for you in finding the form for your creativity!
There was also a fabulously fun chat on Instagram based on this picture about sleep rituals and Sleepytime Tea. This tea is a nightly habit of mine, combined with Rescue Remedy Sleep Spray. Both work wonders for restful sleep! Anyway, pop onto IG to learn more and share your story about restful sleep solutions or chat in the comments.
Response to guest posting on Quiet Writing
I want to thank everyone for their fabulous responses to the opportunity to guest post on Quiet Writing in last week’s Creative and Connected!
I am excited to say we have five very special confirmed guest bloggers lined up for the next months. I can’t wait to share the voices of the Quiet Writing community here to celebrate wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity.
There is one special spot for 18 December left if there is anyone called to write for Quiet Writing just in time for Christmas. I’d love to hear from you, special person!!
I am hoping that we can also consider a regular or one-off publication or online magazine as well.
Feel free to provide any thoughts on the concept of ‘My Wholehearted Story’ – see the previous Creative and Connected post – in the comments or via email. I’d love to hear your thoughts and can’t wait to receive your responses!
Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.
Have a fabulous creative weekend!
Writing pic via pexels.com
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You might also enjoy:
6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers
Creative and Connected #4 – the wholehearted edition
Creative and Connected #3 – on self-care
