Tag Archives: Creatives

Quote Monday

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Hi everyone!  I’m back after a crazy week of Gishwhes, and a week of recovery.

I like to do a recap of the week’s events, and as you may have noticed the odd post about Miss Jean Louis, an item for this year’s hunt, it tends to get a bit weird and challenging. Because my memory is so fragmented, this blog has become a resource for me to keep track of things, so I’ll share Team Falkor’s antics later this week.

As for today, it’s time to get back to routine and progress!

CreativityIsContagious

In light of the creativity that abounds during Gish week, and the post I wrote just a few days before it started about how I was feeling burnt out, I am now seeking out alternative means for creativity.  I’m looking to surround myself with people who are passionate and creative, because the above quote is true.

I have found myself inspired by other’s creativity, and I think that is a wonderful side effect to the creative life.  So let’s be a creative force and make beautiful things!

Quote Monday

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I’m going to ramble for a moment, so please bear with me while I vent.

In last week’s Writing Prompt post I mentioned how I was struggling with choices. Before the end of the year, I was doing some hard thinking about plans for the future.  The Sis and I moved back to Las Vegas a little over a year ago for a number of reasons, one being that she finish her undergrad and then we move on.  Unfortunately, she has now found a job she truly enjoys, she’s making friends, and getting herself together.  She’s currently taking the semester off.

It seems unfair to uproot yet again, but I don’t want to stay here.  I don’t like Vegas.  Never have.  I’m tired of moving…we’ve moved so. many. times, but I want to find a place to call “home”.  I’ve only felt that sense of home once, when I traveled to England for the first time.  I felt it before we even landed.  That’s when the obsession began.  And, that’s what I’m looking for.  As much as I’d like to do a final move across the sea, there’s just no way that’s even remotely possible in my current state.

So here’s “the thing”, the thing that’s been lingering at the back of my mind, the thing I never want to say out loud.  I want to be a screenwriter, but all screenwriters know it takes at least 5 years to make any headway (once you legitimately hit the pavement – so I still have about 4 years), and I don’t want to flounder in this state, without purpose, without direction, for upwards of 5 or more years.  I don’t want to hold down a menial job that I loathe until things work out.  Yes, I’m still trying to remain positive, hence the lack of the dangerous “if”.

I want a job I enjoy.  I want to buy a house.  I want to plan for the future but I feel as if I’m destined to remain in this perpetual state of limbo.  It all comes back around to choices.  I’ve made choices that have led me to where I am, but I’m finding it difficult to make choices that will encourage change…in part because I don’t know where to begin.

Do I suck it up and make it work where I am, or do I continue to seek out that thing that I know is out there?  How does one move forward when they’re kind of stuck due to obligation and circumstance?  How do people get their act together?

NewEnding

Any advice from fellow creatives would be greatly appreciated.  How do you make it work, find balance, and stay sane?

In Need of a Proverbial (or Actual) Kick in the Backside

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This Discrepant Writer

Boring

Yesterday I started a blog post that was a little on the bitter side.  Quick version: Bad job = poor wages = self-imposed restrictions = bored.  After writing it, I thought on it for a while and decided to wait on publishing it.  That was a good decision, I think.  I don’t want to put that out into the world, and I know you don’t want to read it.  As creatives, we have to keep hope alive, against insurmountable odds, and often times without the support of those who truly understand what our lives are like.  When I was still living in Los Angeles, I had my writer’s group, but since moving back to Las Vegas, I have lost my writer friends, those who “know”.  I miss them.

Work has got me down, and unfortunately, that’s affecting my creative life, which is usually where I escape.  I’ve been skirting the start of the pilot, but I don’t know why.  I have pages upon pages of notes and ideas, and now they just need to be organized and fluffed, but I’ve lost steam.  Hence, the proverbial kick.

I read this quote today, something about people who are optimistic all the time are delusional.  It made me giggle, because although I try to be as optimistic as I can, especially in this space, as writers we are constantly afflicted with a variety of emotional states and the stress of the balancing act of our multiple lives, so it’s okay to not be happy and perky all the time.

I know this attitude shift is mostly because I’m looking for a new job, again.  There is also a teensy bit of regret that I have so few skills other than food and beverage service.  I feel as if I’ve been perpetually looking for a job for the past 5 years.  I’m ever so tired.  I don’t have high expectations, I just want to make decent money to support The Sis while she finishes school, and I’d kind of like to look forward to it.  That should not be asking too much.

I would love to hear from you, my friends.  How do you survive the daily grind in order to maintain your creative life?  How do you maintain your sanity?

Tips, tricks, and inspiration welcome!

Have a great weekend!

*So, this post isn’t that negative, right?

Quote Monday

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I hope you are all well and ready for another week of creativity crammed within the confines of our “regular” lives, unless your creative life is your regular life, then good for you! 🙂

This week’s quote is something I struggle with…what others may think, in regards to all aspects of my life.  I need to actively fight the urge to be concerned about any and all of it because as RuPaul says, “it’s none of my business”.

NotCaringAboutWhatOtherPeopleThink

Be brave!  Make bold decisions!  And have a great week!

GisHWheS 2015

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The first week of the month was the crazy, creative/inventive, do-gooding time known as the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen aka GisHWheS.  The Sis and I participated again, our third year, although due to a maddening work schedule, I had very little hand in doing much this year.  My only contribution was an item that required we make an evening gown out of construction paper, and a minor role towards the completion of a couple other items.  The rest was all The Sis.

LeiaBreadonPlateShe did an amazing job of making Princess Leia out of bread, an Italian landmark out of food on a pizza, a kale hat, Hoover Dam out of cake, a Winter Soldier arm for our cosplay, and my personal favorite, a dog of mass destruction which we based on an episode of Doctor Who, entitled A Town Called Mercy, and a few other things like doing an impression of June Cleaver vacuuming the lawn, making a video called Tai Chi Breakfast, and writing a Yelp review for the hunt.Loki Cyborg Gunslinger

If you’re interested in finding your creative side and discovering how far you can push yourself in a week to go out side your comfort zone and do things you thought impossible, visit the website to learn how you can become a part of the madness.  The teams consist of 15 people, but if you don’t have 14 friends who are willing to be as crazy as you are, you will be matched with a team, or you can create one with those you do know, and by the end of the registration period, the empty slots will be filled with those other abnosome people around the world who want to be a part of it.

It’s a great time that is really hard to explain.  Here’s my Yelp review for a little insight. 😉 I wrote it with about 15 mins to spare.

GisHWhes RevIEwYou don’t need to wait for this one time of year to be creative or do nice things for others, but you’ll find yourself more inspired to continue to do such for quite sometime afterward.  The event sort of changes your perspective and you’ll make great friends with people you may never meet, but find you have a lot in common with.  You’ll look at mundane objects differently, wondering if you should save them for next year’s hunt, just in case.  You’ll consider buying a stormtrooper costume, want to learn how to sew, and begin stockpiling random information that may prove useful in the future.  Seriously, so much fun and so exhausting.

As next year’s hunt starts registration, I’ll send out the word again, and maybe, we can work together!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Article: Why Creative People Make No Sense

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InsideMyHeadEvery time I come across an article that may be of use to us all, I save it to my computer and mark it with an asterisk so I can find it later.  The other day I decided to take stock of that list, which I then broke down into other lists according to subject matter, some of which require more reading, deleted a bunch that seemed fairly useless after a second go around, and came up with an immediate share list of 15 articles.

Here’s one of them, entitled Why Creative People Make No Sense.  I’ve saved this for some time, actually forgot about it until the other day, then remembered why I saved it in the first place.  It’s a great article, and may settle arguments you’ve had with yourself.  We are definitely a breed unto ourselves.  We are full of contradictions and those who are not creative will never understand what it’s like to be us.  In a way, that’s a reassuring thought.  It also unites those of us that are alike.

I was talking to this person the other day who really has no creative outlet.  They only read non-fiction, usually relevant to their field, they rarely watch tv or films, let alone anything with any sort of “fantastical” or escapist facet, and they have no other source of interest like art or even music.  I find this one of the most perplexing people I’ve ever encountered, because what do you do?  What joy is there in your life?  I may be struggling at times, but I have passion for my work, hobbies and interests, and a desire to enjoy what the creative world has to offer, in addition to my love of history, travel, and all my other little fancies.  I just see this person as incomplete, living a half life.  And this made me even more thankful for my creative tendencies.

So embrace your creative side.  Revel in your weirdness.  Love the things that make you unique.

Best wishes, my friends!

GISHWHES Is Coming!

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WoosterLast year I participated in something unlike anything I ever had before, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, fondly known as GISHWHES, and it is upon us once again as of August 2nd.  If you’re unfamiliar with this madness, here’s the link to the site, although that probably won’t give you any further insight…it didn’t for me last year.  So here’s a little overview without spoiling the unknown:

It was created by the ingenious mind of Misha Collins, Castiel from Supernatural, who I knew nothing about until this event.  I only watched Supernatural this past year.  Fellow geeks are mocking me.  I can hear it.  As the title reveals, it is a team oriented international scavenger hunt; a list of items with corresponding values to accomplish in one week’s time is the goal.  The quest items are a mix of creative ingenuity, random acts of kindness, and everything in between.  You take pictures or video, depending on what is specified, to prove the tasks have been completed.

Last year my sister and I participated with our friends in Arizona, and as we hadn’t made many friends in LA yet who could offer their support both emotionally and/or physically, we were left to our own devices.  We accomplished 20 items.  Not too shabby.  Here are a few pictures of what we did – Commemorate a fictional location (we chose this location as the Entrance to Hades) by placing a historical landmark plaque, create a teddy bear hostage situation, place a purple GISHWHES sweater on the statue of a famous person (that was the best we could do), and “release the Kraken”.

Hades(totheEntrance)BearHostagesBeethoven2Kraken2

Why I am I sharing this with you, you might ask?  As a forewarning. 🙂  Firstly, I may be absent for the week because it takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish the tasks, but it is so worth it.  Secondly, because now that I have a small group of international friends at my fingertips, you could offer your support by aiding with items I would otherwise not have access to, i.e. last year one of the items was a specific task photographed in front of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.  And finally, if you’re looking for something to jumpstart your creative juices, this will do it.  So if you’re up for the challenge you can join and start your own team, or be added to one randomly.  If you’d like to offer your support, that would be appreciated as well.

And as a bonus, if you are on the winning team, this year’s prize is a trip to King’s Landing (Game of Thrones) in Croatia.  Awesome!!  And I want it!  I better get my passport in order.

*Oh, and that strange creature above was last year’s mascot, the wooster.

Have a great week everyone!

A Message for All Creatives

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So last night I realized my perspective was off.  While looking for feedback on my last post about finding ideas, a fellow writer suggested I watch this TED Talk from author Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love.  It’s an interesting take on the creative process, and a lesson we should probably all take to heart, at least in some regard.  *I won’t spoil any of it by delving into it further, for the moment, but really, give it a watch.  It’s less than 20 mins.

My thoughts yesterday were only that I needed to find more ideas, that I didn’t have enough in my “stockpile”, or the more accurate term I like, due to its deep, dark imagery, “vault”.  Then last night while at my writer’s group, I listened to the twenty other writers in the room discuss their projects, and realized how different we all are from each other.  Everyone in that room was working on something different; novels, screenplays, short stories, poems, the genres differed, the perspectives were biased from personal experience, and the writing styles were all different.  One of my novelist friends cringed when she heard a few of us talking about screenwriting and moved away to find a conversation more suited to her.  We support each other’s work, but don’t talk about it much when we’re together, in part, because of the differences.  So I laughed as she turned away because it reiterated to me that although we share a common passion, writing, we are not in the same boat.

NeverForgetWhyYouStartedI was looking at the work of others and comparing myself to them.  This is where I went wrong.  My life is not the same as a writer at the turn of the last century.  I’m not spending my time in an opium den, allowing lucid hallucinations to dictate my work.  My life isn’t even similar to the majority of the people I was in the room with last night, so why would I ever consider to compare my work with theirs?  Foolish notion…and hence, the perspective change.  As a screenwriter, hearing that someone has written twenty-five scripts should not make me rise to the challenge, because in all honesty, how many of those stories were worth telling?  I don’t want to be a writer that just spews out scripts for the sake of quantity.  I write a story because I have a passion for it, not just to bolster my numbers.

We each do what we can with what we’re given, or hopefully try to.  We all hope to achieve some part of the greatness that others have, but comparing ourselves to them is not only counterproductive, but unnecessary.  We each have our own stories to tell, we each have lived a different life, and it is this variety that makes us unique and incomparable.

I wish you all the best!