Tag: inspiration

How do you eat a Universe?

On By taniacreationsIn creations, English Australia, English Australia, passions, PODCAST, publicações, publishings, roaming the earth1 Comment

How do you eat a Universe that contains 50k words + 2 podcasts + a new job + a website + a workshop + a writing mastery mentoring package? One bite of 1667 words at a time.

I have just released my Creative Space Mastery Podcasts in English and Brazilian Portuguese, with my new website: creativespacemastery.com

Somehow, I have also completed the Nanowrimo.org writing marathon, writing fifty thousand words in November.

Finally, I started at a new job. How? I asked myself. It’s a focus strategy, where I prioritised the tasks to secure the new job, got the words for the day (1667 words per day), got through a couple of tasks for the podcasts each day. Following inspiration, always. A phrase from one of the books from my collection of mini books is at the bottom of the principle I follow:

“Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.”

William Cobbett

I use it and expand it… where I follow inspiration for guidance rather than trying to force its hand.

This year was manic-depressive, the old word for bipolar. It was fret with highs and lows, with moments of ecstatic joy, such as my sister and brother-in-law’s wedding, travelling with my parents, and having time for my creativity with a maturity to use it, as I didn’t have in 2010 when I took a sabbatical year for writing (back then, my time was filled with anxiety, while this year was full of joy). On the other hand, I call this year bipolar because if I had some great moments I also had the death of important people around me, uncertainty, dejection and other challenges.

This year, on one of the many occasions when I didn’t get a job, I also decided to stop the suffering and instead of working harder, I decided to work lighter. I concluded that if I spent my savings and finished with no job and just stress to amount for the time I had spent, it wasn’t worth it. But if I had advanced my creative projects, I would have spent it well.

From then on, I would spend half a day job searching and the rest of the day, creating. For guidance, the very next day, I walked the twelve kilometres of the Narrabeen Lagoon by myself, meditating on what was the starting point for my creative projects, where my inspiration wished me to go. What did heart and logic say? 

They said that Point Zero was the Podcasts, they were my heart poured out. 

They were something that I had been working to create for a while, I had been to Toastmasters to learn more about public speaking, I had been writing the content, and they would kick start the other projects. As I walked, and danced by myself, around the lagoon, among cockatoos and ducks, trees, flowers, flies and bees, the plan was set. When I sat down that week, a one-day-workshop for Creative space mastery came out. Fully structured and organised. 

I follow inspiration, faithfully, so I gave it all my dedication and love and the ideas I had been compiling and throwing in a folder gained form, gained order, shape, movement and logic. It is beautiful to see a narrative “become”. And just like that I had the content perfectly set and organised for my podcasts. And as a bonus, a day-workshop was created.

When November came about, a flood of inspiration came through. I had the scripts for the first episodes of the podcasts ready, the content for the related website, and the book about creative writing that is in its second draft was the perfect material for the writing marathon.

It was easy from there. Full creative flow. Never have I experienced so much of it. When you go through a lot of rejection of your abilities and gifts it is easy to forget to see these gifts, these abilities. That’s why having psychological help is invaluable. 

I have 3 angels, I show up for support sessions I set and the help I need, and the people who help me showed me the gift of having a hiatus from work at the prime of one’s life. With gratitude in my heart, creative Muse was generous and this month, it is all being born at creativespacemastery.com.

Weekly Author’s Day

On By taniacreationsIn how, whenLeave a comment

I have recently started working four days a week to write one day. To make it work I have created a few structural strategies and some mental ones.

“If you do not fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, your day will fill up with low priority distractions…” Dr. Demartini

My Structural Strategies:

  • Wednesday Writing Day — it was not only good for the company I work for, as my busiest days are Monday and Friday; it is to signal my mind that my day off the job is still a Working Day.
  • A day for Writing — it is NOT for laundry, for cleaning, buying groceries or lazying on the beach. I can go to the beach, for lunch-and-back, or to write there, or to plot about something I’m writing, but meaningful work has to be achieved.
  • Journaling — a list of writing-related tasks completed — that serves as an antidote to poisonous thoughts and create the proof that I have and am doing enough.
  • Physical Writing Space — a great writing space with a desk that allows for standing or seating, with a beautiful, large monitor and a super cute typewriter (just in case the world ends and the computers stop working, if that happens I can keep writing!).
  • No shoes, no bra — I wake up and make my bed, dress comfortably but in clothes that mean business, make my coffee and setup my computer at my workspace. I do make allowances though, unless I’m going out, no shoes, no bra are allowed.

My Mental Strategies:

  • Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries — nothing is permitted to invade my sacred space, not my shit, not anyone else’s.
  • No limits — I refrain from any commitments on this day, even lunchtime, early mornings or evenings, I never know when creativity will flow best, so I reserve the full day to allow for it to catch me at any time of the day.
  • Clear and achievable goals — keeping them visible and constantly in mind; focusing on them as primary objectives.
  • Flexible discipline —  with a strong commitment to the process. I work first in my primary objectives, if it that isn’t flowing, I do anything related to the writing process: it might be creating ideas, researching characters, taking notes, writing about the process, keeping the admin tasks of the job in check. All work is valid, even napping while considering a narrative plot.
  • Break the resistance — try first, what you most want to achieve, start, put effort, if it flows, you just keep going; if not, do some other useful task; if the flow doesn’t come, it wasn’t resistance, it just wasn’t the best moment to write that part. (Based on Seth Godin’s ideas on “The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?”
  • Allow for changes in environment — make writing and researching excursions; change the writing location when the house is not the right mental space.
  • What takes me closer to my mission? — is the question that saves my sanity every time, whenever I am indecisive about something. Make choices, any choices are better than none, any word count is better than nothing, any writing related activity is valid.
  • Reward good work.

Lastly I keep reminding myself that there are no rights and wrongs in my writing days, there is only what takes me closer to my mission at that moment!

Delayed Achievements

On By taniacreationsIn how, roaming the earth, whenLeave a comment

I have achieved something that has been in my radar for many years. On 1st September 2018, I reduced my day-job journey to four days a week, to give myself one day a week of full time writing.

Right at the beginning I was organising my “Ideas for Writing” folder and found a list of writing goals I had set for 2017 and realised I had accomplished all of them by September 2018, one of them being the weekly author’s day. It was inspiring, even if there was a delay in the completion of the goals and it was a lesson that told me to keep establishing goals and not giving up on them even when they don’t follow my original timeline.

I can’t express how grateful and fulfilled I am feeling. Having one full day of quality time, fresh-brain, undivided attention to dedicate to my passion is unbelievably powerful. I am finding that not only I produce much more efficiently, the inspiration comes more powerfully, and the anxiety I used to feel over not having time to write has lost its grip on me.

I used to feel anxious every time I had an idea, and no energy or time to write it.

Another interesting aspect is that with the writing day in the middle of the week, (I chose Wednesdays for my Writing day) I get more done on weekends too. There is a momentum effect, by the weekend I haven’t forgotten what I have been working on, it just simmers under the surface, boiling new ideas and aspects to focus on…

I will never take this opportunity for granted, I feel grateful to each of the moments and aspects of my life that allowed me to get here.

Inspiration Outside of Me

On By taniacreationsIn howLeave a comment

I have finished a Masters in Arts, Creative Writing, at UTS, in June 2015. At the time I didn’t feel the accomplishment, the excitement in finishing up, just a bit of relief. I loved the course most of the time, I loved almost all classes and felt inspired throughout. At the end I was feeling it was just a bit too much outside input into my writing and I was loosing myself.

When I completed the final assignment I was left with more questions than answers. I started the course to gain technique to write in English, but more specifically, the project I used throughout the course: my non-fiction, written like fiction, comedic, novel, about my friend who is a Brazilian, migrated Australian, who has been a belly dancer in Sydney, performing mostly in the middle Eastern Communities of the city.

As you can notice, it is a complicated project and I needed help to set it up. The inspiration and the stories are not a problem, how to link them, present them and frame them is my challenge.

I had hoped that by the end of the Masters I would have found this structure, but I found only the questions I need to answer in order to find this structure and a bit of a sense of being lost.

I gained a lot of technique and believe I am much better equipped now then before I started. I have a thicker skin and a knowledge of where to look for information too.

By the time the Graduation Ceremony arrived I was able to release the impressions of not getting as far as I wanted and had the most beautiful day  with my sister and my friend (the Muse, the Character).

The following day, it was Elizabeth Gilbert who made me realise why I felt and should feel happy and accomplished. We have TED Tuesdays at work and we watched Elizabeth’s talk that day.  She explained that a valid idea is to think of  divine inspiration as, well, divine, as is coming from outside you.

I remembered that when I was in classes no teacher would say: you chose the voice, the tone, the verbal tense, define the character and then you pray, or talk to your daemons, or to your genius, and ask for guidance. As it would be expected, we are taught to control, to wrestle with our internal intellectual gifts and bend the words into shape.

I realised that was the one thing I forgot during these studies, the thing I lost connection with, the part that lives outside of me: the sudden, potent, and magical inspiration that makes a text become funny with a few twists of words, or that make people love what you wrote even when it is imperfect.

When I heard Elizabeth talking about this part of the creative process that is not my own I was relieved of the responsibility to do it all alone, by myself, with my second language, happen. I was given the solution to all my problems and the certainty that it will come to me, and the book will be able to carry the immense fun that the stories are.

I have a super-power, an intuition capable of seeing through the veil of what is hidden to the naked eye. Sometimes I know things without an explanation and most times, when these things can be confirmed, they are as I predicted. I have an intuition about this book, I think it will be important.

The second thing the talk gave me was a confirmation of why I was feeling accomplished. Elizabeth explains that artists have one responsibility: keep doing what they love, keep sweating and showing up to their art. That is the only way your genius will find you. I also concluded that honing your technique and getting better and better at it will allow you to transmit the divine inspiration into shape. Imagine what would happen if Van Gogh was able to see the sunflowers in his mind but didn’t know how to paint. His genius would have gone somewhere else.

With these two thoughts — that an artist has to show up to her art and that technique allows you to make real your ethereal inspirations — I saw my new testamur as the proof of how much I am so committed to this art and that I am doing my part, I am showing up to my writing.