Creativity

Think Small!

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

I continue to notice how doing just a little each day can make such a difference. This is true for my writing, it’s true for my coaching business, it’s true for the decluttering process I’ve got underway in my house. I wrote last week about how doing just ten minutes of writing one night made the difference I needed that day.

You might think that doing just a little isn’t enough. But what I’ve learned is that, when we think we need huge blocks of time to get something done, or when we see our project as so big we are overwhelmed, our tendency is to never begin. And then we feel frustrated and defeated.

Start small. Chip away. Make a dent in whatever it is you want to do. You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish by doing a little each day, over time.

On that note, TODAY, Jan. 19, is the last day to sign up for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’ve written here and here about what a wonderful experience I’ve had as a participant in this Circle. (I finished a draft of my novel in the Circle by writing approximately thirty minutes a day, five days a week.) I’m also one of the coaches, and we’d love to have you join us this session, which starts Jan. 23. You can sign up for the Circle here.

Also: Be watching for an announcement from me early next week. I have something fun coming up — and it’s FREE!

To Create or Not to Create? Assessing Your Energy Levels

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

I’m totally committed to working on my novel five days a week. But today, it got a little challenging. We got a decent amount of snow here in Chicagoland, and in the time between two coaching calls — time I’d scheduled as my writing time for today — I realized I was going to need to go out and shovel. It was just one of those practical, mother-nature-induced, daily-life annoyances that I was going to have to deal with.

It ended up taking longer than I’d imagined it would. The car windows were wrapped in ice. The recycling bin fell over as I tried to pull it over a bank of snow. And so on.

“Screw it,” I thought as I trudged back up the steps to the house, my cheeks pink and my forehead clammy with sweat. “No writing today. I’ll just have to chalk it up to a snow day.”

Around 8:30, I wrapped up my last coaching call. I was hungry. I ate some leftover mostaccioli and opened my iPad and started playing the Fluff Pets Rescue game I’ve become addicted to over the past week, my “reward” for doing all the stuff I had on my to-do list. I took it as a given that I was too tired to write. But I felt a little bit hollow; the “to-do” list for the day wasn’t truly complete.

And then I felt a little pull in my stomach: a tingle of excitement. I noticed something: really, I wasn’t too tired to write. I wanted to write. So what if it was almost 9 p.m.? I could sit there rescuing fluffy pets (and who doesn’t want to sit around doing that?) or I could get up, go to the computer, and do a little writing.

And that’s what I did. I didn’t do much — just ten minutes of new writing. That was it. But, tonight, that was what it took to give me that feeling that I’d done enough. I moved the writing to the place where I’d done what I wanted to do with the story, with the language, for today. It felt good. I felt satisfied. I’d kept my commitment to myself, even if it wasn’t as much as I’d planned to write. It was enough.

Now: had I gotten off my last call at 8:30 and realized I was physically depleted, my eyes were starting to close and I truly needed to wind down for the night — had it felt like forcing and pushing and having to literally drag myself to the computer to make myself write — that would have been a different story. Had that been the case, I would have called it a day for today — no writing. I would have chalked it up to a snow day and left it at that. And it would have been good.

Geneen Roth once wrote, “Sometimes doing it looks like not doing it.” Sometimes, when we need to rest, that is exactly what we should be doing. This doesn’t mean that at those times we are not creating. Something in us, I believe, is still at work; our unconscious may be knitting together that impossible story problem while we dream.

And sometimes, like tonight for me, doing it looks just like that: going to the desk, sitting in the chair, typing the words into the computer, or scribbling away in your notebook (I still often love to write the old-fashioned way, in a hard-backed Cambridge notebook).

You can always listen to your body for information as to what you need most in this day, this moment. When you think about creating, do you get a little flicker of “yes!” in your chest, even if you’re tired, even if you’ve had a headache since noon? Then by all means, go for it, even so! If, when you think about creating today, your stomach plummets to your feet, your tired bones feel like they want to be in bed and maybe you’ve tried dragging yourself to the computer and sat there for a while and nothing’s really coming out, then, by all means, call it a day for today. You can, and will, start again tomorrow. Trust that implicitly.

By the way: Watch for a special announcement from me in the coming days — I have a cool gift for my readers that I’ll be writing about very soon!

Moving Through the Fear

/ Jill Winski

In early September, I had two unfinished novels sitting around, and I’d built up a huge amount of fear, resistance, and guilt in relation to them. I was ready to just trash both of them and start afresh, pretend they’d never existed. And that would have been okay, if it was what I genuinely wanted to do. But it wasn’t. I felt like I’d left parts of myself in those unfinished pieces. And I had a deep desire to go back and complete what I’d begun.

Enter Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, a.k.a. The Writer’s Circle. I joined the group, started logging in my daily writing progress on the website, got support from group members, and, as I wrote about here, I completed a draft of one of my novels in late October. Now, I’ve gone back to my other unfinished novel and I’m working on that one.

This stuff felt too scary for me to touch as recently as four months ago. But I’ve been able to get to it with the help of this group, and by taking small, manageable, daily steps. And I have to tell you, it feels pretty darned powerful.

I’ll be one of the coaches for the next session of the Writer’s Circle, which starts Dec. 26. The last day to sign up is Thursday, Dec. 22. If you have a languishing creative project, or would like to start writing again, or write for the first time ever, this can be a great gift to give yourself. And it’s not a bad way to start the New Year, either.

You can sign up for the Writer’s Circle here. I’d love to see you there!

There’s Enough Time. Really.

/ Jill Winski / 8 Comments

This week, I had quite a few conversations with creators around the idea of time. The general consensus seemed to be: There’s not enough. I have too much to do — which, by the way, I wish I’d done ten years ago — and there’s too little time in which to do it. Frequently when I hear people say this, I want to agree with them, so they know that I sympathize. “Oh, I know, isn’t it true? There’s just not enough. There’s too much to do. No wonder I can’t get to my (fill in the blank — novel, artwork, yoga, relationship).”

Here’s the thing, though: It’s not true that there isn’t enough. Whether we’re talking about time or money or love.

What we really mean when we say “There’s not enough time” is: I’m trying to outrun my painful thoughts about not accomplishing enough. I’ve got to hurry up. So let me add more and more to my to-do list, so I don’t see more evidence for what I haven’t accomplished. If I can get it ALL DONE, I’ll feel better.

Do you see how backwards this kind of thinking really is? (Because, fellow creators, it doesn’t come down to time — it comes down to our thinking. Always.) The thought “There isn’t enough” creates feelings of urgency, anxiety, sadness, regret. In a nutshell, fear. Then we take desperate, urgent, anxious actions based on these feelings. And no matter what results we get, they don’t feel like enough, because all of these results have, as their backdrop, the belief that there just isn’t enough. We’ve cycled right back into our original thought, and it all continues — no matter what we have, no matter what we’ve created, it isn’t enough, because our belief is that there isn’t enough.

Unless: We look at our thoughts about time. Is it true that there isn’t enough? How much time do I need to feel good about creating today? To feel good about anything today?

I’m going to suggest that the “time issue” is not about time at all. It’s really about our stressful thought that, at some point, our lives will be over and we won’t have done what we wanted to do with them. It’s really about our lack of self-acceptance, about the fact that we’re afraid to meet ourselves, to accept ourselves, exactly where we are. It’s about a belief that there’s a finish line we should have crossed years ago, and we haven’t even made our way to the starting gate.

What if we were to believe that what we need more of is not time, but acceptance — of ourselves, of our lives, of where we are, who we are, now? How would we move forward from that belief? If we are okay exactly as we are, my hunch is that we are more likely to create for thirty minutes today and celebrate that, rather than wait two years for the day when we have a block of six hours to create.

As my awesome mentor Jenna Avery says, “Start small and start now.” What we really fear is not that there isn’t enough time, but that we won’t accept ourselves if we don’t live up to our perfectionistic standards, if we don’t do more, more, more. Do me a favor: do less. Write for fifteen minutes. Sketch for fifteen minutes. Dance for fifteen minutes. And do it today. It takes no time to accept yourself exactly where you are, right now.

A couple of announcements, & gratitude!

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

A while ago, a coaching buddy of mine and I were talking about how it’s difficult to experience a feeling of abundance in our lives when we don’t take time to really feel it, don’t slow down enough to be with it, don’t take a moment to say “thank you.”

I can forget. I can get so focused on what I don’t have that I get into “lack” mode. And then I see evidence of lack, everywhere. When I remember, when I notice what I have been given — often with no conscious effort on my part –I see evidence of this in my life, everywhere.

We can practice this. We can practice by noticing. Yesterday I noticed I was a little bit tired, and although I felt a tremendous urge to rush over to the computer to respond to email, I decided to sit quietly on my couch. My cat woke up from his nap, looked at me, and immediately came over and jumped into lap. I listened to his purr and felt it reverberate through my hands, my chest, my abdomen.

I breathed in the abundance of this moment. I was sitting on a soft down throw my mother gave me for Christmas last year. My living room felt warm, even though it’s in the 40s outside. The sun was sneaking out, after a clouded-over, gray morning. It felt good, to just be, to realize I had all I needed in that moment. And in this one.

Here’s to noticing what we have. Here’s to saying “thank you.”

And here’s to more abundance — a couple of announcements:

* Last week, I officially became a Martha Beck Certified Life Coach (woo-hoo!).  In celebration, I’m offering four FREE half-hour coaching sessions — first come, first-served. Bring me any issue (it doesn’t have to be related to creativity, but it certainly can be) and we’ll do a little exploring and get you a little less stuck. To get your free session, email me at jillwinskicoaching@gmail.com and mention “free session” in the subject line.

* Also, I am super-excited to announce that I will be a coach for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, which begins Nov. 28. I’d love for you to join us — it was the amazing encouragement of this circle that helped me finish a first draft of my novel last session, which I wrote about here. To sign up for the Writer’s Circle, click here. The last day to register is tomorrow, Nov. 23, so don’t wait!

Wishing you the gift of noticing what’s beautiful, good and right in your life.

Image is PUMPKINS © Paul-andré Belle-isle | Dreamstime.com

How’s it Helping?

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

A lot of times when I’m coaching someone, there’s some behavior they just hate that they’re dying to get rid of, because it’s ruining everything. Or so they say. (And when I say “they”, I mean, equally, me.)

When it comes to creativity, this behavior is almost always what the client calls “procrastinating.” Or being “stuck.” Or maybe they’re feeling hesitant about submitting a piece of work somewhere, and they’re beating themselves up for not doing it.

If it’s a person who wants to lose weight, the behavior is “snacking too much.” Or “not exercising enough.” Or tearing the doors off the kitchen cupboards and emptying them one by one.

I get it. In my teens and early twenties, I had an eating disorder. At the time, I couldn’t have told you that: I thought it was “normal.” I thought I had about ten pounds to lose, so I would starve myself until I lost it. I couldn’t stay on my crazy extremely-low-calorie diets, so the pressure would build and finally one day I’d crack and I’d binge. Then I’d feel I’d failed, and what was the use anyway, and I’d binge and binge until I gained the ten pounds back.

I tried to rid myself of this bingeing behavior by more dieting. Then I tried to rid myself of the dieting behavior by “eating normally.” But I had no idea how to do that. One day I didn’t show up for one of my classes in college because I’d eaten so much I felt like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Woman, and I didn’t want anyone to see me.

I was in enough pain by this point that while I was supposed to be in class, I walked to the bookstore down the street and found a book by Geneen Roth called Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating. I had deep skepticism about books with titles like that. But I knew I’d hit bottom. With great shame, I trudged up to the counter to purchase it.

This book changed my life (I still have my little dog-eared, yellowed, paperback copy, in which about half of each page is underlined in red ballpoint pen). Geneen suggested that behavior that appears to be hurting us on first glance actually has a purpose. It’s helping us in some way that we don’t, or won’t, acknowledge.

When we change our question from “How can I get rid of this behavior?” to “How might this behavior be helping me?”, we change the story we’re telling ourselves. I was no longer “woman hell-bent on self-destruction”; I became “woman who’s trying to take care of herself the best she can.”

When I saw how my behavior took care of me, I was able to thank it and gradually let go of it. When I saw that “feeling fat” gave me a good reason to say no, I realized I didn’t have to feel fat in order to say no. I could actually say no just because I wanted to say no. I could actually choose not to attend class just because I didn’t want to attend class. I didn’t have to binge on lasagna and make myself sick so I’d have a “good excuse.”

This was only one way my behavior helped me, of course; it was complex, and I needed to do some digging and some looking around for me to understand all the ways it served me. And it took some time before I was able to truly thank it for its service, and let it go.

When it comes to our creativity, too, our “counterproductive” behavior is serving us in some way. If I’ve stopped writing in the middle of my draft, there’s a good reason for it. I can plow through, force myself to write, but in the long run, it’s probably more helpful to look for the good reason and see how it’s helping me.

That doesn’t mean I will stay stopped. It means I trust that there’s a wisdom within me that wants to be listened to, if I’ll only give it a chance to be heard. This wisdom wants all good things for me — and when I don’t listen to it, it acts out in ways that seem destructive to get my attention. The sooner I listen, the sooner I can discover what it is I really want, and move forward in the way that serves me best.

If you think you are “stuck,” I guarantee you there’s a good reason for it. But you don’t have to stay stuck. Check out my Free Creativity Consultations — I’ll help you find your good reason and we’ll figure out how you can move forward.

The Gift of Finishing

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

This weekend I finished a first draft of my novel about a forty-year-old unemployed woman obsessed with the musical Cats who leaves her seemingly pretty awesome husband and rekindles a relationship with the crazy artist who made her life hell in her twenties. Whewwww. That was a mouthful.

Finishing the draft was a big deal. I wanted to pour champagne for my fellow participants in Jenna Avery’s Writer’s Circle, who encouraged me through the last ninety pages of this draft. I glowed to my boyfriend. I’m still trying to figure out how to reward myself (can Crystal the Monkey come over and play Galaga with me?).

I started writing this draft in October of 2009, exactly two years ago. I worked on it pretty regularly — okay, more off and on — for a few months. And then I started losing faith in it. I wasn’t sure what the story was about. This is really bad, I thought. And so it sat. And then I went back to it. And then it sat again. And so on. Until I started to worry it was “on the pile” — the pile of my unfinished novels. (This would have been the third.)

I don’t believe we need to finish everything we start. That’s a thought that can definitely be questioned. We can’t imagine every twist and turn our lives will take, how our experiences will shape us internally so that we may not want or need what seemed so vital five years ago. It’s okay to let go.

But I wasn’t happy that these last two novels had been abandoned about two-thirds of the way through. I was starting to think it was a pattern that didn’t feel good: When I feel stuck, I stop. I talked to Jenna in a coaching session and it came out that this last novel, I was kinda bored with. The voice didn’t seem quite right. I didn’t think I cared about the subject matter. The earlier novel, the second to last one, well, as I told Jenna, it scares me. It’s been sitting so long. I don’t even want to look at it. “That’s the one you need to finish!” Jenna said. And I suspect she is dead right.

So I resolved to let this last novel go and get back to work on the scary one, the earlier one. Only, the thing was, this last novel didn’t want to be let go. Hey you, it whispered to me while I was trying to fall asleep one night. I’m not letting you off so easy!

So when the opportunity to join Jenna’s Writer’s Circle arose, I decided I would use it to finish this not-quite-right, kinda boring book. I embraced Anne Lamott’s terminology, “shitty first drafts,” wholeheartedly.

And I learned something: This novel was also the scary one. My boredom with the book, my seeming apathy toward it, was a cover-up for fear. I didn’t want to go where the story wanted to go. I didn’t want bad things to happen to my characters. I wasn’t sure my writing muscles were in very good shape. And I wanted it to be good, dammit.

It was overwhelming.

So, with the daily structure put into place by Jenna’s group, I made my goals feel eminently doable: I’d write at least fifteen minutes a day, five days a week. Often, when I filled out my daily comments for the group, my negative thoughts were something like: I don’t know where to go next. It isn’t very good. And the killer: It’s not dynamic enough. I replaced them with: I just need to write the next sentence. It isn’t bad. And: Who am I to say what’s dynamic? I’ll figure that out in the next draft.

In noticing the thoughts that keep me from moving forward, I take the charge out of them. They are just thoughts. In doing this with a group, I saw that we ALL have roughly the same negative thoughts about our writing. The same fears. That took the charge out of it all a little more.

In forty-five days, I wrote ninety pages. I still have no idea if the draft is good. But by writing, by moving forward step by tiny step, I learned what the story was about. I got a clearer idea of what my characters wanted. And it wasn’t overwhelming because I didn’t have to do it all at once.

Most importantly (and this part makes me plain old tear up), I remembered the joy of disappearing into my story because I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

We can put so much pressure on ourselves when we create. As if, through our creating, we make the world turn. We can be easier on ourselves. We can show up, write for a while — take it sentence by sentence if we need to — and let the writing come through us. It knows what it wants to be. (“Listen to your broccoli,” says Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, referencing Mel Brooks’ line, “Your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.”)

But we can also be gently firm with ourselves: by committing to a regular habit of creating. And we can get the support we need to keep that commitment.

If you are feeling massively stuck on a creative project — if you’re terrified to go near the thing or even to speak of it — you are exactly the kind of person I looooove working with. Check out my Free Creativity Consultations — I have some openings coming up.

 

Image is CONTROLLING THE WORLD… © Radu Razvan Gheorghe | Dreamstime.com

Make Your Journaling Legit

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

For years and years and years, I’ve been a journaler. I can remember little diaries with locks and keys that my parents gave me when I was a child, with the words My Diary written in gold on their covers. At six or so, I filled the pages with sentences like “Today was good.” “I am sad.” “I love Rosie.” “Rosie loves me.” (Rosie was our dog and the subject of many of my — thankfully brief — early diary entries.)

When I was thirteen, though, I really started to journal. That is, I wasn’t just recording what happened that day — I was delving inward, trying to understand myself.

I have never, ever, had to force myself to journal. It comes to me as naturally as breathing. Anything goes in my journal, so I’m never concerned with whether or not what I write there is “good” or “right.” I have a compulsion to record, to notice, to reflect, to make connections. It’s a practice that grounds me and reveals me to myself.

It is different than, say, working on my novel. When I write fiction, I’m not delving into myself. When I write fiction, “I” disappear. Sure, all my experiences are there for me to draw upon, and they feed the fiction. But my novel is not concerned with my own self. It’s a story coming through me, filtered through my self, but really, I’m not creating it. I’m just the channel.

With journaling, I sometimes get to the place where I feel like a channel too. These are the sessions I call hardcore. As I wrote previously, I can get to a place where I know that if I allow myself to sit down with the journal, the floodgates will open. All the other days of showing up to the journal — maybe a lot of the time I’m just writing something like “I’m not sure what’s going on with me today, but I feel like crap” and going from there — allow for these glorious hardcore journaling sessions, where something I really need to know is moving through me, but I’m not controlling it. It’s usually the culmination of a lot of struggle, a lot of wondering, and a lot of surrendering — having to admit, hey, I don’t know. And then it comes through on the page and I do know.

When I was in grad school, in the awesome writing program at Columbia College Chicago, we used our journals to write about what we noticed in the published work we read, and what we noticed as we worked on our own stuff. There, too, I can remember connections being forged in a particular way on a particular day, and suddenly something I really needed to know about what I was writing would be apparent to me.

But in order to get to this place of connection, of that really cool thing opening up and coming through onto the page, I had to show up for all the days when nothing much seemed to be coming through. “I’m sad.” “I love Rosie and she loves me.” A lot of days, I don’t feel so different from that six-year-old. But it’s still important to show up, to fill the pages.

Sometimes I hear writers (including me) say, “Well, I didn’t do any real writing today. I mean, I only wrote in my journal.” Guess what? That means you did some real writing today. Recognize your journaling for what it is: It’s legit. It’s real writing, and connected to all the other writing you do. Make room for it, learn from it, be totally in love with it. It’s you.

Image is DESERT © Loredana Marchesin | Dreamstime.com

Defining Creativity

/ Jill Winski / 6 Comments

Yesterday I was chatting with my coaching buddy and awesome fellow coach Marte Gehlken and she mentioned how often she hears people say this: “I’m not creative.”

I hear this a lot too. Or, “I used to be creative, back when I did a lot of artwork.” Or, “I would be creative if I had more time.”

We need to expand what we typically define as creative. Marte said during our conversation, oh so wisely, “Creating your own reality is creative.” Yeah, it is! But we tend not to see creativity this way. We think it is something outside of us, something we “should” be doing, but (frequently) aren’t.

I remember the summer of 2008, which was a very low, “dark night of the soul” place for me. Now I realize it was what we coaches who went through Martha Beck Life Coach Training call a “liminal period”, or Square One. You’ve shifted out of a place that felt really good for quite a while, because it no longer fits. But you don’t know where you’re going yet, nothing new and solid has emerged in you to guide you on your way, and it kind of sucks.

So one day in 2008 I was feeling crappy and uncreative and I was on one of my very early morning walks and pretty soon, lo and behold, I got into The Zone. I became unattached to my thoughts and was just kind of watching them and my body moved me along and I felt my breath coming in and out. And I looked down and saw this little house sparrow hop into a puddle, in which he dipped the ends of his wings and the underside of his tiny body and then shook himself off.

I felt actively engaged in my observation of this sparrow. I could feel what it was like to be the sparrow, the warmth of the water that had been sitting out in the sun on my feathers, and what it must feel like to know you’re going to take off and — fly! — in a moment.

And a message bubbled up in my chest and translated itself this way: This is creativity! Actively observing this sparrow, I had the exact same sensation I do when I write, when I paint, when I do all the things we typically label “creative.”

Creativity is a way of being in the world. It’s a way of interacting with our surroundings. We’re soaking it up. We’re actively engaged. We’re feeling it.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t write, paint, act, dance, or do whatever it is we typically label “creative.” Absolutely you should, and you must, if it calls to you. But don’t say, “I’m not creative” just because you are not doing these things. Notice where you ARE creative — which, my friend,  can be everywhere — and then do whatever you’re inspired to do.

On that note, on my walk this morning I came upon some birdseed the neighbors one street over regularly scatter on a square of sidewalk. Except today, mixed in with the birdseed, were some large cheese curls. You know, the big fat puffy Cheetos. That, I thought, is creativity.

 

What’s the Essence of What You Want?

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Lately, I’m feeling really excited about things. There’s a lot I want to do, a lot I want to create. The thing is, the more I’m in “doing mode,” the more I see that needs to be done. It’s kinda like when you tell yourself to look for all the red things in a room, you suddenly see a ton of red.

So on Tuesday, I was feeling frustrated because I hadn’t done a lot of what I’d planned to get done. I sat at my desk at the end of the day wondering where the day had gone. My cat jumped up into my lap, and I began breathe more slowly. I began to relax. (Ever noticed how cats tend to have that effect?)

I asked myself, why am I so upset that I haven’t accomplished what I wanted to accomplish today? The answer was, because I’m really excited about my writing, my coaching, and all my projects. And I want to get them out there, I want to share them with people.

I asked myself, why do you want to share them? The answer was, because I want to connect with my peeps. I want the feeling state of sharing myself with, and giving to, my right people. And I don’t feel like I did that today.

I asked myself, Really? What did you do today?

And then I started laughing. I’d spent the morning with one of my very favorite people, talking and laughing and feeling very connected. Then I’d spent the afternoon with another of my very favorite people, talking and laughing and feeling very connected. Then I’d rushed home for a coaching call with another of my very favorite people. We talked and laughed and I felt very connected. Then I got an email from another of my very favorite people who asked for some coaching.

At that very appropriate moment, my cat dug his claws into my thigh. You’ve already got it, silly, he said. You’re already very connected to your right peeps. And you forgot about me! You’re so worried about not being connected you forgot that your most favorite, er, person, is sitting right here in your lap! He looked up at me, as he so often does, as if I were the most astonishing, frustrating alien creature.

The more I’m able to get a little distance from myself, the more I’m able to be the observer of me, the more I see how much I fret about not having what I already have. This realization doesn’t mean that I’m not open to more good stuff, to more connection with my right people. It just means that it’s not “out there” somewhere, something I need to try to grasp. It’s in here. I already have the essence of it in my life, in spades.

What’s the essence of what you want? Is it possible you already have it in your life? Try noticing.