I hung out with my friend, Jeremy, yesterday. He’s getting ready to head to New York City next week for a month (he is the recipient of the Dozier Travel Grant). During lunch, we talked about how when you’re a writer or artist, people seem to love trying to give you ideas.
Or I should say, an idea, because many people seem to think one idea is plenty, and that if you as a writer or artist use their one little idea and make money, that they might be nice enough to give you maybe 10% – 20% of the guaranteed fortune that will follow; after all, it’s the least they can do since you did all the work!
I’m not being too facetious, here–I’ve received more than my share of offers like that.
I’m sure I’ll die with a pile of ideas that will never be finished. I think most writers and artists will.
One idea is never enough, and a pile of ideas doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t do anything with them.
This week, I sat down to come up with ideas for The Juggling Writer. My wife and I like to occasionally go out for lunch or coffee with a couple notebooks and work on blog ideas. When it comes to story ideas, I find that I’m never at a loss when sitting at my desk or driving. But when it comes to ideas for blogs or other planning, I seem to do some of my best thinking at the La Madeleine in Grapevine, Texas.
Monday, my wife and I went to La Madeleine and I came up with a pile of ideas for The Juggling Writer.
Now to sit down at my desk and get busy writing!
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It seems that when I plan to attend a conference, I lose a job.
Shortly after registering for the Writers’ League of Austin Agents Conference last year, I was laid off from a job of 5 years just before Christmas.
In July, I found a new job. When I started planning to register for Open Camp, I got laid off.
The good thing about the writer’s conference in June? A job offer came the week after attending the conference. And it looks like there are some possibilities for some good news next week, after Open Camp.
I’m all for better things coming along after conferences, but I could do without being laid off before them.
* * *
One of the things I’m really looking forward to at Open Camp is attending some of the podcasting panels and chatting with podcasters.
I’ve been doing some recording, trying to figure out the best settings to get good sound quality for the podcasts I want to do.
I’m sure I’ll walk away from this weekend ready to jump right in!
* * *
It’s not going to be 109 degrees outside today. In fact, we’re not even expected to reach 90.
Not that 88 is fall-like weather by any stretch of the imagination (it usually cools down in north Texas sometime in November), but looking at the calendar and the clouds, I can at least pretend that soon the leaves will change color and my favorite season will come spilling down from the north.
Every year, I get even more excited than usual about writing in September. October makes me even more excited than September, and by the time November and December roll around, I’m always in the midst of some very inspired writing.
I don’t know if I can say I do my best writing in the fall, but there’s not a time of the year when I enjoy writing more!
When the calendar hits September 1st, it’s like a starter’s gun at the beginning of a race.
I can’t wait to shoot out of the blocks and get to some new writing this fall.
* * *
Hmmm…I thought I had more random thoughts this morning, but I’m ready to work on some other writing and run a few errands.
I hope you’re all having a great week of writing!
It’s funny… that autumn feeling you were talking about. I get really excited about sewing in September, usually. I think it’s the cooler weather and fun holidays lined up that always gets me going.
It was a nice date, coming up with ideas. I have a blog entry about that too, but I have one other to post before that one 😉
I sure hope things work smoothly with a new job. No idea what’s in store for us, but we’ll see. Fingers crossed… it’s been so nice! I agree though, I enjoy conferences, but I can do without bad things happening when we register for them!
Evidently, autumn is indelibly tied to introspection and goal-seeking, since the change of seasons from fun, pretty summer, to barren, monochromatic winter makes people assess. Maybe leaves falling off trees reminds people of their own mortality and thus, deadline to get stuff done?
Do you think that having different jobs has been beneficial to your general life-perspective? Maybe having different views/roles/etc broadened something? Or is it just, as you look back, an annoyance?
Cynthia,
It’s always nice getting out and focusing on just ideas when we have our little brainstorming meetings. When I’m at my desk, I think of tasks and projects–not ideas. That’s not to say I can’t sit at my desk and fill a couple pages with ideas, but sometimes it’s nice to go someplace else to focus.
So thanks for always being game for our little idea meetings.
Tammy,
I’m sure it’s all those aspects of autumn that get me. The biggest things, though, is I like cool weather, so when it finally cools down, it just leaves me feeling energetic.
Granted, it takes much longer to cool down in Texas than it did living north of Chicago when I was younger, but sometimes just knowing there’s relief from the heat of summer is recharging.
As far as different jobs: the couple layoffs this year did affect my perspective. The layoffs were a reminder that traditional jobs no longer offer the security they once did; when I tell people I want to figure out ways to make it on my own, I no longer get the strange looks I did when I was younger. Even people who totally bought into, “Even if you don’t like it, you go to work everyday and retire with something,” see that wasn’t always the case, and is definitely not the case anymore.
Having different views and responsibilities at jobs hasn’t really broadened things, especially with writing. If anything, some of the technical writing opportunities I made for myself could have had a negative effect on the writing I enjoy more because I became so engrossed in all these little rules and for awhile, had a hard time separating technical writing rules from what I do when I write fiction.
One of the biggest things I do as a technical writer and definitely as a technical editor is try to make the voice of a manual sound the same throughout. If 5 different writers worked on a manual, one of my jobs editing has always been to make it sound like there’s one voice.
When writing fiction, I want a reader to read dialogue and know right away which character is speaking. In fiction, I don’t want that single voice throughout; I want the characters to all sound different.
It takes a lot more effort to turn off that, “Everything must sound the same,” switch in my head caused by 8 hours a day of technical writing and editing and make things sound different in the 1 hour of fiction writing I may get to each day.
I don’t know if I’d say looking back that the jobs I’ve had recently have been an annoyance, but there are times I think they made the writing I really want to do a little harder.
Christopher: Yeah, I’m the same way… end up thinking of everything I need to do and having way too much going on in my head to focus. Also, the change of scenery is refreshing and really gets me excited about ideas. Just about the time I start thinking again “why do I keep a blog? I can’t possibly come up with enough stuff to post about, and I’m not even doing something that’s supposed to come across as remotely professional or helpful,” we’ll go on one of our little working dates and I remember why I started the blog in the first place. To have fun! 😉