February 2012
10 posts
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Information Diet | 500 Words before 8am →
minimalmac:
Starting your day as a producer means that your information consumption has meaning: the rest of the day means consuming information that is relevant to what it is that you’re producing. Waking up as a producer frames the rest of your habits. You’re not mindlessly grazing on everyone’s facebook’s statuses. You’re out getting what it is you need to get in order to produce. Waking up...
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Pushing through to completion
Author Neil Gaiman (who’s on Tumblr, in case you’d like to follow him) offers advice on pushing through the hard part of fiction writing to get to completion. Good stuff.
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January 2012
26 posts
1 tag
The Makearoo Newsletter No. 2
Is up on the Makearoo blog - This week, I talk about ‘happycacheing.’ Check it out!
Sign up to receive the newsletter here.
I’ll post shorter content later each week but early on, it’s all about the newsletter, babies! I’d like to do some video/podcast interviews with creative people. If you’re interested in being interviewed, email me or hit up the askbox.
...
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Sign up for the Makearoo Newsletter
The first weekly Makearoo Newsletter lands in the inboxes of my brave and beautiful subscribers this week. Subscribers are privy to occasional exclusive offers and inside scoop for a few days before the newsletter posts to the blog, and will also receive occasional emails about Camp Makearoo and other special offers.
So what are you waiting for? Mondays are boring, so give yourself something to...
"For the first time I know what love is..."
sniffyjenkins:
In 1937, as photographer Ansel Adams recovered from a nervous breakdown, he wrote this beautiful letter to his best friend, Cedric Wright:
“Dear Cedric,
A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me;...
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Upon arrival.
An addendum to my last post:
While I was editing that post, great news came through about one of the things I was worried about. I think that’s kind of cool.
I got what I wanted! What I worried and fretted wouldn’t come, but I worked toward anyway! Awesome, right?
Well, yes. But still: achieving that dearly held goal opened up the floodgates to a whole new series of worries:
...
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Money: How does it work?
The answer is often far easier than we make it out to be.
I have more than one post in the works about money. It’s an emotional issue. A complicated issue. One many of us struggle with. One many of us were raised to avoid discussing directly. It’s an easy reason to say yes to the wrong things we want as much as it is to say no to the things we want or maybe even need.
I’m not a...
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Reset Button.
I had a rough morning dealing with my 9-year-old son, who has sensory processing issues (falling somewhere on the autism spectrum) that create social-emotional issues. All that therapy-speak to say: Managing his daily routine can be difficult. Today, he took difficult to eleven and I did not handle it with as much grace as I’d have liked. Very low score on the grace-o-meter.
Before...
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Workout Thoughts
I knew who I wanted to be when I was a kid. I was a healthy weight, I loved to run and ride my bike and play in the water and walk in nature. I read voraciously, I loved capturing moments with my Kodak 120 camera and my Polaroid, and I wrote stories. I really loved comedy and making people laugh.
I knew who I was all along. Did you?
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All that to say: As of this month, I’m quitting freelancing after I submit my last handful of assignments. No more ‘fallback’ gigs ‘just in case.’ No more safety net; I’m going to make this work and dive deeply into my dreams and live and breathe where I was meant to be.
Damn, that feels great to say.
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Is pursuing your creative dreams an indulgence?
Do you believe we each have a purpose in life? Maybe several? I do. But I didn’t always believe this.
A couple of years ago, my freelance writer’s block was in full swing. I wasn’t willing to acknowledge it consciously yet, but my pursuit of new gigs was stalling and the joy in my work had evaporated. A family medical crisis took my time and energy at the tail end of the year,...
resolutions and anti-resolutions
marleymarley:
This was my first week of unadulterated time off in over two years, and I found the time to reflect and cogitate and come up with ideas about how I want to improve my life. This could have been September or July, but it happened to be now. I think this is true for a lot of people - as a culture, the end of the year marks the traditional time for people to be off work, watch the...
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I'm still working on the structure for this
thingamonth:
But I’m going to go ahead and say what my project for January will be.
(I’m sure you’re all breathless with anticipation.)
I’m going to cover “My Ride’s Here” by Warren Zevon. This is something that’s in my wheelhouse, or was 10 years ago at least.
More to come as I figure out an arrangement.
My friend Jamie started a cool project for 2012 — make one thing every month....
December 2011
15 posts
1 tag
How hating my fingernails led me to love New...
About a month ago, I decided to file and paint my nails. Exciting, right? Except the thing is, I hadn’t painted my nails since my wedding day in 1997. And while there are some very good reasons why I don’t wear nail polish, one of which was immediately revealed 20 minutes later when I’d already chipped the polish, the real reason I hadn’t done this was that I hated my...
Life: It's what you make it.
escapereality:
I will be honest. After writing that post yesterday I put my mind into over drive in an effort to be more aware of the world around me. “Be aware of the world around you” is a phrase my parents used to tell me all of the time. I used to brush it off as passe and, frankly, unimportant. Of course I was paying attention to the world around me!
I think I have had my peaks and...
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This is why market research matters.
In my last post asking to hear from people who make cool stuff, at least two people who make cool stuff or want to make cool stuff thought I was looking for experts or professionals to interview. Nope. I want to talk to everyday creatives — wannabes, newbies, people working day jobs who write or knit or paint at night, business owners looking for new ways to get the word out. I want to have...
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If you make cool stuff
can we do a brief phone call this week?
I’m doing some intensive market research and prep for the first Camp Makearoo and I’d love to talk to people to gather insight into how you approach your work, what you’re struggling with, and what you’d like more of in 2012. This is just a phone chat, not a formal interview for the site.
Doesn’t matter what you make or...
nolagrrlnyc asked: I attended the Presentations Summit this year as a creative retreat of sorts and think they hit on some fabulous elements. They had sessions by experts, they had an expert lounge where you could just hang with peeps and pick their brains which also helped the experts see what things were of most interest to people. It was kept relatively small by conference standards so you had a chance, if you...
anindependentguinevere asked: I needed more room to answer your retreat questions. My ideal retreat would be in the woods, in cabins or a big lodge. There would be both planned workshops and plenty of free time to create and just soak in all the magic, because a gathering of creative souls is going to be magical. I think it should be lead by someone with both infinite patience & the ability to inspire people. I would hope...
Your ideal creativity retreat
What happens there? Where is it set? Who leads it? What do you work on? What do you discover? What do you bring home with you when it’s done?
How I'm spending today.
*Bringing the kids to grandma’s for an overnight visit.
*Scheduling blocks of time to work on current freelance writing assignments.
*Mapping out the schedule for Camp Makearoo.
*Speaking with a potential Camp Makearoo sponsor.
*Going over a contract. I really dislike reading and drafting and dealing with contracts.
*Writing the next Makearoo blog entry.
*Taking a long walk outdoors.
...
Lessons Learned in 2011
fightwithknives:
Just like you didn’t see 27 Dresses when it came out, begin avoiding 95% of writing that uses personal pronouns, which means almost everything online. It doesn’t matter if it’s written by someone you’ve met in real life, or in a publication you’ve read any liked before. If it’s someone who claims “my ‘I’ gives me transparency,” they are playing football and you want to be...
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If you're reading this, you're part of an...
Thanks for playing.
‘I believe in what works’ is a phrase I use often.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to engage with the creative band of weirdos I’m gathering for Makearoo. I started a Makearoo Tumblr despite having a blog at Makearoo.com because I know there is a huge creative community here, some of whom prefer reading through the Tumblr dash than a feed...