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  1. The Jack-of-all-Trades Conundrum, part II

    February 9, 2012 by katemeadows

    “You can’t be an expert without investing years in one directional effort.” –Hope Clark

    copyright 2008, Kate Meadows

    I read this quote by one of my greatest mentors, Hope Clark (www.fundsforwriters.com), and for a minute I felt paralyzed. As a writer, I am not really moving in one solid direction right now. Must mean I’m not an expert. At anything.

    But wait. I am a writer. Can’t that mean I am at least an expert at writing?

    When it comes to the big umbrella of a profession, I appear to have it down. I am a writer. I write creative nonfiction and journalism. I write essays and newspaper articles. I write for magazines. I am trying to break in to a few literary journals.

    But under that umbrella, things start to get messy. I write essays and articles, sure. But I also dabble in poetry. And photography. I am working on two books. I maintain two blogs, on two completely different subjects (writing and mothering).

    I have a deep interest in life stories: telling my own and encouraging others to get theirs out into the world. I have a soft spot for pregnant women and new mothers and am constantly thinking about ways to channel my gifts into some sort of service that could help that population.  On my work days – my designated writing days when Adorable Toddler Boy is at daycare – I dive under that “writer” umbrella and muck around, submitting pieces to magazines, coming up with new blog topics, learning more about becoming a personal historian. And all the while I fight the urge to ask myself, “Am I accomplishing anything?”

    Here’s what I’m learning, though:

    • Sometimes, it’s okay to not have an immediate answer. Sometimes, the best gift in disguise is that an answer is not readily available when we want it. From the Christian perspective, it’s God challenging us and shaping our character to make us stronger and help us realize our own gifts. Call it what you want – trial, struggle, God working – but I know through this own hard look at myself and my vocation, I am learning, and I am making progress. Ever so slowly, a picture is starting to emerge of my future as a writer.

     

    •  Processing like this takes time. Look at the woman I referenced in The Jack-of-all-Trades Conundrum, part I. Hers was a four-year journey, with a lot of other life responsibilities thrown into the mix: holding down a full time job, being a mother, working on a graduate degree. Her emerging into her true writer’s vocation did not come without talking to a lot of others around her. Which brings me to the next point.

     

    • Discovering your niche requires a community. That is, a community of people, both challengers and supporters, around you. It’s important to talk about your interests, however scary or seemingly out of the blue they are, and receive feedback. Surround yourself with good listeners who care about your future. Some eyes might get wide when you mention that, on top of wanting to be a food blogger with a solid following, you want to pursue a wilderness safety certification and learn how to ride horseback. But who knows? You might find someone who sees a no-nonsense way of combining those interests into something spectacular, a brand for yourself that you never would have found had you not made your passions known.

     

    What interests are you pursuing right now? What interests have been poking at you that might be ignoring?

    Category Creativity, Motherhood, Photography, Writing Life | Tags: , | No Comments

  2. The “Happy Day” Binder

    January 30, 2012 by katemeadows

    I have a little red binder I’ve marked “Happy Day: Stuff in my Life.” It’s a catch-all for those little mementos – letters, feel-good articles, newspaper clippings, etc. – that I want to keep forever but don’t quite know what to do with.

    I tell you this at the risk of sounding corny. A “Happy Day” binder? You might say. “Seriously?”

    But that’s exactly what it is. Because every time I take it out, page through it, glance at old newspaper photos, I smile. My day, in fact, is happier, when I spend time with that binder.

    Here is a sampling of my binder’s current contents:

    • a “just because” card from a longtime friend with a picture of a toy dinosaur lovingly biting a little girl’s nose (I know the little girl is happy because she is smiling)
    • a short piece that outlines the “real meaning” of the 12 days of Christmas (holy cow, is there so much history there I never knew)
    • an email to family and friends about walking in a 2004 Relay for Life, a fundraising walk for cancer research that, in this case, took place overnight. I wrote about how I didn’t want to do it at first, how I wasn’t a “night” person. I wrote about how glad I was I did it anyway, and how I realized through the process that I was walking in honor of so many people (and not just my college girlfriend, a cancer survivor, who had asked me to participate in the first place).
    • an email from a hometown friend of mine, who had to share a can’t-stop-laughing moment with her circle. The story involves a little girl from New Orleans who, while shoe shopping with her mom, is overheard saying, “Hey, Big Tuna, I’m talking to you!” I am not kidding.

    My binder so far contains mementos like these from 2000 up to now. Pretty soon, I will have to start volume 2.

    Why, you might ask, am I telling you all this?

    Because I wonder what we all might have in our own lives we could contribute to our own “Happy Day” binders. I draw so much inspiration from mine – writing projects, historical artifacts, pictures worth 2,000 words. Have you ever considered it?

    What mementos from your own life might be worth preserving, to propel your own outlook into a happier, more energized state? What memories and pieces of your life might be worth holding onto, to better inform your present, your future?

     

    Category Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, Photography, Writing Life | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. 10 Simple Ways to Harness the Creative Spirit

    January 27, 2012 by katemeadows

    Yesterday I wrote about the spectrum of creativity, how creative abundance arrives to us in seasons so that sometimes we are overflowing with ideas and other times our wells are dry. Regardless of what season you find yourself in right now, I think it is crucial that we always remain on the look for ways to tap into our creativity. Here are 10 ways to harness your creative spirit, whether you are in the blooming summer of the creative mind or the dead of winter:

    1)      Take a walk. Keep your pace slow, if possible, and allow yourself to notice every small detail around you. In what direction are the flowers pointing, and how is the light hitting them? What makes that dog across the street unique? Do you pass anyone speaking in a language other than English? Allow your mind to wander as you walk, and see what surfaces.

    2)      Go for a drive. In California, where I live, we have the luxury of being surrounded by such varying geographical features it is easy to be at the beach in 20 minutes or the mountains in 30. While not every place is as geographically diverse, the landscape – city or country, residential or rural – always promises new sites and perspectives, if you’re willing to look. Has a silo recently been painted? Someone’s Christmas decorations finally taken down? What do you notice, and how does what you notice inform the way you see the world?

    3)      Listen to music from your past. Recently, my husband and I (on a trip in which our young was absent) put in a CD of songs from high school and had a blast belting out the lyrics. Okay, maybe that’s not being creative exactly, but listening to those songs unearthed so many memories for me: standing in the high school parking lot after school talking about the afternoon football game, lunches with girlfriends at the deli in the local grocery store (because our town didn’t actually have a fast food restaurant), long-ago crushes and moments that made my heart speed toward space. All from one little song by L.I.T.

    4)      Take pictures. Not a photographer? So what? You never know what unique angle you might capture if you allow your camera to tag along with you wherever you go. What sorts of stories or poetry could you make up with the preserved images of a little boy playing with a red ball in the park? An old man sitting on the curb? A park bench that advertises for divorce lawyers?

    5)      Schedule a coffee date with a friend just to chat, and see what topics come up. If you feel absolutely useless when it comes to generating new ideas, get out of your own head for a while and allow someone else to do the talking, or at least to take the reins of a conversation. Recently I was talking to two women about deals at craft stores – a sort of hum-drum topic for me, until one woman mentioned a stash of assemble-yourself toy corvettes she had snatched up at 80 percent off and was looking for ways to get them into the hands of children who might use them. Genuine conversations are made of stuff you can’t make up.

    6)      Visit an art museum. Take a notebook or sketchpad with you. Take your time going from room to room, and see what speaks to you and even what doesn’t. When something moves you, ask yourself why. When something turns you off, ask yourself why. Art museums promise the potential of whole new discoveries.

    7)      Keep a notebook/sketchbook with you at all times, so you can scribble any idea that pops into your head at any given moment. Inevitably, the best ideas seem to strike during those moments when we are completely unable to follow and develop them. Having some sort of tablet to capture those gems when they show their first flash is one solid way to keep them preserved in that raw form until you have time to come back to them. (Note: I have started using my iPhone for this, too, whipping out the “Notepad” feature whenever inspiration bites.)

    8)       Allow your mind to wander. If you find yourself thinking about a particular project you’re working on or want to work on, allow that act of thinking to take its own shape. I have composed whole paragraphs of essays in my head while in the shower or out for a walk. If the idea is solid enough, I can come back to my computer or notebook and watch my hands fly through the words that have already been created. Man, is it empowering.

    9)      Read a lot. Writers, and history itself, have proven over and over that reading stimulates the brain in a way that nothing else quite can. By opening yourself up to the words and ideas of others, you open yourself up to new ways of seeing the world. You give yourself a chance at experiencing an energized perspective, and that’s always fun. See my post about Reading Resolutions here.

    10)   Do something new. Push yourself out of your comfort zone to see the world in new ways. Last fall, a friend of mine invited me to go kayaking along the beach. I could pass, explain to her my lack of fondness for the ocean or my complete weakness when it comes to water that is any way, shape or form cold. Or, I could say, “Count me in,” and see what adventure awaits. Even if I get wet, at least I’ll have a story to tell.

    Category Books, Creativity, Ideas, Photography, Place, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: , | 2 Comments