It’s a challenge isn’t it? To keep your ass in that seat or at the easel …
On the Art Juice podcast (ep 228) author and former writer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Christine Coulson, says she sits and writes for five hours a day. No coffee breaks, no quick change of the washing machine, just writing. She does allow herself a toilet break but other than that it’s just writing.
After years of painting and parenting and then painting and multi-hatted art professional, I learned what I thought were amazing multitasking skills. It’s becoming painfully obvious that what I did was sacrifice my creativity on the pyre of ‘work’. (scroll down or search Art Juice 228 in your pod player)
I thought I was so clever. Even now, writing the draft of this blog, I am supposed to be working on my non-fiction book, for which I have something of a deadline. I’m procrasti-blogging. Yes, the deadline is somewhat self-imposed but still.
Then, on Saturday, when I was supposed to be writing, I drove in the rain and heavy traffic to Pacific Fair, the enormous shopping centre on the Gold Coast that I try to avoid but has an excellent indie bookshop. My copy of Coulson’s book One Woman Show had arrived and I wanted it. Now.
The book doesn’t disappoint. It’s a lovely object and will have pride of place on the shelf. Its dove grey linen hard cover is a thing of beauty, protected by an elegant black slip cover. The story is fascinating the structure experimental. For an art nerd like me, this book is pure heaven. I’ve already read it once and about to read it again. It’s divine.
On another podcast, this time the gorgeous Beautiful Writers podcast, entrepreneur and marketing guru Seth Godin dropped a bomb on me that has been going off in my head and heart since I heard it. I even read it out to the creative group on Monday night.
I’m just going to share it here. He said,
Stop waiting to get picked. you’re waiting to get picked because you’re afraid. you should publish on the Kindle every month even if it’s a short story and you should blog every day even if it’s just a haiku because if you get into the practice of picking yourself, then you develop good taste as an editor, and you will rise to the occasion, but if you’re trying to get a struggling Book publisher who’s going to sell to a struggling bookstore to put your anonymous book in front of masses of people who aren’t going to look at it anyway because you want to say “I got picked” I don’t think that’s the work you should be doing.
Seth Godin Beautiful Writers Podcast
Perhaps I am not procrasti-blogging after all. Maybe this is the work and so are the five other projects I have on the go at any one time. My butt is in the seat (well I’m at my standing desk!) and I’m doing the work Seth. Now I just have to continue to convince my inner critic that the result doesn’t matter as long as I keep picking myself.
