Archive | October, 2011

Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking?

31 Oct Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking? Photo by Tobyotter

It’s Halloween, and tomorrow is a big day for many writers. Why? It’s the kickoff day for NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated. Throughout the month of November, participants take the challenge of writing 50,000 words (about 175 pages) in a novel by 11:59 on November 30.

That’s no mean feat.

According to the organizers (backed by UC Berkeley’s Office of Letters and Light), “Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

And then, the disclaimer: You will be writing a lot of crap.

With such a strict deadline, you are forced to run headlong through your plot, through shaky characters and dialog, through self-questioning and edits that truly stymie you, and into something few writers I know actually accomplish—a finished work.

I compared the feeling of finishing my first, 82,000  word novel Won’t Last Long to a person’s first marathon. You might not finish fast, you might not finish well, but the point is, you’ve finished.

And how many people can say that?

In writing circles, it’s clichéd to say, “Oh, you’re writing a novel? I’m working on a book, too.” And then the question, “Have you finished?” is met with mumbling excuses as they explain why their manuscript has been stuffed in a drawer for years.

Runners, I’m sure, can relate. Marathon finishers probably hear from dozens of other runners who have “trained” for a marathon without actually completing one.

I want to shout from the rooftops, “People! Stop talking about it and just Get.It.Done!”

So, back to NaNoWriMo and writing crap.

You might think that it’s a good thing to write slow, write carefully, edit as you go. But my mom told me a story that changed my tune entirely.

Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking? Photo by Tobyotter

As my mom earned a BFA, one of her ceramics instructors was teaching two of the same pottery classes concurrently. Same assignments, but he gave each group of students a different evaluation criteria.

He told one class: “I’m going to grade you based on the perfection of your work, the polish of each piece.” He told the other class: “I’m going to grade you based on the volume of your work, the sheer output of pieces you create.”

Then something strange happened.

The professor lined up both classes’ work and stood back for evaluation, not knowing which sculptures were submitted from the “most perfect” class and which were from the “most volume” class.

Guess what? As he graded the sculpture, the “most volume” class won—by a landslide.

There was something incredibly freeing for the student artists in the volume classes about just being asked to create, create, create—rather than to slow down and hone, edit, polish.

And so I imagine NaNo inspires writers in the same way. It works for me. Sometimes, as I write a novel, all I have to go on is the spiderweb sketch of the plot and a general sense of what I need to accomplish in the next chapter. I dive in and my characters surprise me. My subconscious connects the dots in unexpected ways.

For more on the idea of inspiration or muse, check out Julie Jordan’s blog post. I tweeted to her @Writers_Cafe that “the writing process itself inspires me.” Just getting in front of a blank page can be intimidating, sure, but with a timer to beat, who needs a muse? Just put words on the page and go.

So that’s it for me, my fifteen minutes are up. Whether your goal is to write or to run, what inspires you? Don’t make it hard, don’t count on a muse. Just lace up your shoes, fire up your laptop and GO.

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Want a reset button? Change lanes.

30 Oct Want a reset button? Change lanes. Photo by Zouny.

It’s 12:01 p.m., and I’ve got fifteen minutes. Let’s get cracking.

Remember the feeling in college at the start of a new term? It was so fresh, so open. You had a nice, thick stack of books, a syllabus and a course schedule. What you didn’t have was a B-minus on a midterm, two missed assignments or a backlog of reading haunting you.

It was as if each term was a chance to hit the reset button. And oh, how I loved that button.

That was college. After nearly seven years with my company and fifteen years in the full-time working world, I notice a key difference about work: there is no reset button.

Sure, you might take a week or two off for vacation, but how hard is that? There are late-night hours spent delivering projects right up until you leave for the break, and stuff that invariably bleeds over into vacation. There’s checking the Blackberry or iPhone until your spouse gives you the stinkeye, and the hundreds of emails that accumulate in your time away.

It’s like being punished for taking a break.

Lesson learned: there is no reset button. And so I often find that energy ebbs and flows—sometimes I’m on a positive high, delivering an exceptional project, or the excitement of brainstorming with smart and passionate colleagues.

Then there’s the low—watching a project get drop-kicked for other priorities, endless do-overs when you’d rather have just done it right the first time, and the frustration the creeps in when you’ve just spent 20 or 40 hours sweating over something that is either not valued, no longer needed or not putting points on the board for your team.

Ebb and flow. And in those times of ebb, I seriously need a reset button.

I love how universities and some companies (such as Intel) offer a sabbatical. That, I think, is the ultimate reset button—a way to so thoroughly disengage from work that you come back refreshed with a new perspective, new research and new skills.

I could put this pipe dream on a wish list, or I could do something about it. And I’m a Firestarter. I make things GO. So I decided to create my own reset button.

Consider that your life is like a wide freeway—maybe four or five lanes, each lane corresponding to part of your life. There’s a work lane, a family lane, a friends lane, a lane for hobbies or for self-improvement. You might have a lane for spirituality or a lane for learning.

Imagine yourself as a driver on that freeway, and each lane is occupied by vehicles moving at various speeds (these could be your boss, your colleagues, friends and family, or a personal goal).

Want a reset button? Change lanes. Photo by Zouny.

How do you navigate through the traffic? How do you get to where you want to be?

My answer is this: when you get stuck or slowed down in one lane, change lanes! Create momentum in another part of your life. If you let yourself get stuck behind obstacles in a single lane, but do nothing to change your focus, you won’t be going anywhere fast.

So if you’re stuck at work, look to your hobbies or your family. Sign up for a class. Plan a vacation. Kick off a kickass project. Call a handful of friends and throw a party for no other reason than to create more positive energy in your life.

Creating this momentum won’t make the work problems go away, but it will add perspective and release the pent-up energy you feel in that lane of life. And with some of the energy released (remember that reset button?), you might feel refreshed enough to regroup and tackle the traffic jam.

GO.

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The mission statement

30 Oct

Hi. I’m Heidi. At work and in life, people know me as a “firestarter.” Why? More on that in a bit.

I’ve been thinking about creating a blog for quite a while, but one thing that stops me—really, stops me in my tracks—is the question of what my blog should be about.

I’ve dug into social media over the past year and realized the one key piece of advice for blogs, tweets, posts and shares is that you must have a clear sense of why you’re there.

Advice for bloggers: be consistent, be authentic, be purposeful. Photo by Visualpanic

Sounds simple? It’s not. Consider how many careers have imploded when people make disparaging comments about their bosses or companies on their Facebook pages, only to have that come back to haunt them.

I’ve seen public MySpace pages that literally throw a candidate’s professionalism out the window. I’ve seen one successful candidate post that he’d secured a role OTHER than the one actually offered to him on Facebook—and his job offer was promptly revoked. And I’ve seen a woman post Facebook status updates about going out of town for fun when she was supposed to be at a family funeral.

That’s a sure-fire way to get yourself in deep doo-doo. Facebook friends (who were also colleagues) reported her, and she’s no longer with that company.

So, why are you here? Why are you on social media? Why are you blogging, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting?

These are the questions I had to answer before I felt confident that I could start a blog.

For example, on Twitter in 2008 and 2009, I developed a presence that helped me connect to marketing professionals in 47 of my company’s offices throughout North America, talking about projects  and marketing tips. When my role changed, I quit tweeting for nearly 18 months because I was stymied by this question: If I wasn’t tweeting for them, why was I on Twitter?

Ultimately, I realized that you must have a kind of charter, a mission statement for each social platform. The charter says why you’re sharing, your target audience and the boundaries you have for letting people into your network.

I’ve got some answers.

I think of Facebook as my “personal life online,” so I fill posts with cute pictures of my kids and family, what we’re up to on the weekend, personal projects, recipes and little things that happened in my day that made me smile.

I refuse to be negative. I don’t often talk about work, and only then in positive, general terms. I don’t say anything that would offend my grandmother or CEO. And I keep the circle of friends relatively tight. If I bumped into you in a coffee shop and would immediately want to hug you and sit down for a 15-minute chat, I’d add you to my circle of friends. If not, I don’t connect.

Twitter is an entirely different animal. Now that I’m back to tweeting, I’ve made my account public because I want to use it as a way to create new relationships and source information, both about work and other personal interests. I don’t talk about my family or my weekend. Instead, I think of Twitter as my “intellectual life online,” running the gamut from social media and marketing strategy, which I do for work, to tips about writing and publishing, which I do in my (laughably small) spare time.

LinkedIn is my “professional profile online.” I don’t use it to post daily status updates, but it’s the authority on my career history and what I have to offer in business.

And then there’s a blog. Why do that as well?

For starters, sometimes I want to post more than can fit in 140 or 450 characters. I’m a writer. I write a LOT. And as an unabashed extrovert, I love to share.

Also, a blog is a way to build identity within a chosen area of interest, be it commercial real estate, books and writing or culinary arts.

Ah, but there’s the rub: I like a lot of different things. I go in a lot of different directions. And maybe I’m not willing to commit to a singular subject. (Maybe? Ha. It’s just not in my DNA.)

Blogs aren’t only about commitment to a subject, though. They’re about commitment to creating content, to consistently posting from day to day, week to week, month to month. And with a full-time job, a full-time family and a full-time passion for writing novels, well, what’s left of me to commit?

My brother Alan helped answer that. He recently moved to Indiana for a full-ride scholarship to pursue a master’s degree at Notre Dame. He’s a smart cookie. And one of the things I love about our relationship is that he often seeks me out for advice despite our ten-year age gap.

It might be about work or relating to a challenging colleague, about school or about dating. And as a businesswoman, a person who is passionate about teaching and coaching, and, ahem, a woman, I offer the advice I can.

Recently, he made my day by thanking me publicly (well, in front of about 1,000 of his Facebook friends) for being a great mentor. And then it hit me: a mentor. That’s what I can be. That’s what I can blog about.

I can offer advice about business, marketing, media. I can offer guidance on parenting and work-life balance (and perhaps I should take that advice sometimes!). I can offer suggestions on recipes and cooking, tips to tighten up your writing, ideas for planning and event or getting any idea off the ground.

This is the firestarter's blog. I'm a creative catalyst. I make things GO. Photo by Herval

At the beginning of this post, I told you I was a firestarter. And that’s my true talent—more than any of the functional things I do, marketing and communications, writing, cooking, parenting, crafting—the best thing I do in life is creating momentum for projects or people. I’m a creative catalyst. I make things GO.

So this is the Firestarter’s blog.

But there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?) While I’m great at starting, it’s often a challenge to finish. There will always be an interruption, a meeting, a project that’s hair-on-fire to finish. So my challenge to myself is how do I make this happen—how do I not only start, but continue? I’m giving myself 15 minutes. Just that long to communicate one core thought, one small piece of advice, one story that inspires you to start.

So here’s my Fifteen-minute Firestarter, entry #1: Have a mission statement, a charter, a reason to engage. Then, GO!

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