The Effort of Creativity

Making things isn't easy. Sometimes I sit at my desk thinking about the various projects in process that I want to take to the next step, and I can’t seem to make myself do any of them.

My tools are ready, at my fingertips. The curser blinks, pencils are sharpened, digital files of sound waves wait for me to release them from my recorder. Little pieces of art in words and voice lurk in my brain.

I have a few great ideas, I say to myself. Well, they could be. Good ones anyway. Of course I actually have to begin. Or begin again. Or pick up where I left off.

Instead, sometimes I look up and realize I've been staring at my computer for, um, awhile. Why is this so stinking hard? Then it hits me. Every project right now is in a stage that requires creativity.

Beginning to create isn't easy because it requires overcoming mental, physical, and emotional inertia.

Creativity is challenging because of the sheer energy required to make something out of nothing.

But making something out of nothing is worth the effort.

Thinking about this when when it's tough to begin, or sustain, the work I love to do reminds me to speak much kinder to myself. And I’m not sure which is the more important insight: acknowledging the effort of bringing into being something which wasn’t before, or feeling the fruit of being kind to myself.

Brene Brown

"Connection is why we're here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering."

-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

A Motto to Accomplish More This Year

Over-thinking is paralysis to producing and actually getting work out into the world. I’m terribly guilty of this. So here’s what I’m telling myself: Quit planning and contemplating and start doing.

Like the old neighbor told George Bailey standing on the sidewalk under the moon, “You going to kiss her already or talk her to death?” Think about it, or act on the good idea.

At some point, as soon as possible, I have to quit tinkering and do the work I want to do. It isn’t neurosurgery or peace brokering, unless it’s neurosurgery or peace brokering.

To accomplish what I want to achieve, I need to stop over-thinking, over-planning, start somewhere, anywhere, make what I'm trying to make, then get it out the door.

So, to accomplish more here’s my motto for the year:

Plan Less. Produce More. Create and Ship.

I wrote this motto in my Moleskine notebook, and on a sticky note above my desk. I say and look at this motto every day. Then, I do.

4 Things to Love About Radio Stories

1. Radio is the most intimate of all forms of story. There is beauty and uniqueness in the human voice, one person’s human voice, whispering in our ear. Our voices are part of the essence of who we are. The timber, the pace, the rhythm, the pitch, vocal quality, regional accents, and more are all a stamp of identity, our individuality. Stories told live, in print, on film and television are often beautiful, but none has the power and intimacy of that whisper, a voice in our ear.

2. We engage in active listening.

There are no words on the page to reread and no images in front of us to help decipher the story.

We create pictures in our mind from sentences in the air.

That active listening makes us engaged in the story, a part of it as we hold on to the words and the voice and the sounds.

3. We don’t have to take a seat.

They are mobile. Listening on the radio or downloaded to our iPods, iPhones, MP3 players and smart phones, let’s us move. Drive. Walk. Do dishes. Roam about and live our lives.

4. They take us somewhere.

When the storyteller takes us into a scene, the sounds of that place transport us there. Focusing on sounds without visual images or words on a page creates a greater feeling of being with the storyteller in a specific place. Hearing the sounds of a woman in her kitchen laughing with her daughter while the tea kettle softly whistles can make us feel like we’re in the kitchen with them. The sounds of Thai villagers buying food with motorcycles and clucking chickens in the background puts us in the outdoor market. Sound creates a sense of place, and for a few moments we get to be there.

What do you love about radio stories?

True Story Lovers and Storytellers

True story lovers are my people.  My best friends are story lovers. As are lots of acquaintances I want to be my friends, and strangers I want to become acquaintances. We have our noses in a book as often as we can. We share and look for recommendations and discuss great books and wonder what’s wrong with the folks who don’t.

We listen to radio and podcasts that tell true stories and give a look into lives that resonate with ours through the intimacy of the human voice speaking to us.

We consume long-form stories like a dessert to be savored. Memoir, essays, narrative nonfiction, and radio and podcasts with a storyline. Anything with a storyline that is true is the stuff we crave. What keeps us riveted are tales of a real person’s life. We want to know what it’s like to be them. In the best ones we’re inspired to live better or connect with someone else. Or feel less alone.

True storytellers are also my people. We see stories everywhere. We craft them, long to write them and produce them, and love telling them to impact the story lovers.

We create.

To be read and listened to.

To make a little art. To inspire or change or move hearts.

We can be geeks ad infinitum about story structure, and the craft of the telling, which can make us a little odd. A conversation with likeminded storytellers where we can talk about it with people who care, is a joy like candy to a three year old.

And we’ve got to stick together because creating something that didn’t exist before (a book, a radio piece, a documentary, an article, a soufflé) is no easy-bake cake. It’s sometimes crazy hard. But we can’t not do it.

Drop by story drop we can change a speck of the world. Or lots of the world. Or reach one person.

Go read stories.

Go hear stories.

Go make stories.

The world needs you.

Avoiding a Narrative Nonfiction Writing Shipwreck

I’m going to tell you about a book writing screw-up I made. A quasi-catastrophe. Don’t you hate it when you realize you should have done something differently and now it’s going to cost oodles of sweat equity to go back to the task and try again? Mental sweat and untold work. It feels a lot like failure.

When I wrote my memoir I wanted to intertwine factual information into the narrative. I did some of this as I wrote, but I got so focused on telling and structuring the story, that I started just making notes of where I wanted to add my researched information and kept writing the narrative with the intention of going back later to add the bulk of the “hard info.” Um, big mistake.

A carpet pounding, self-loathing, three-boxes-of-Kleenex mistake.

The task of facing all the journalism threads I wanted to include and trying to figure out how to weave them into the narrative afterwards was daunting. The hard information needed to be seamless within the story, unobtrusive, folded in, like whipped egg whites into angel food cake batter. Writing the draft and reworking the theme and dramatic narrative structure was hard enough. Trying to do this at this point in the writing was overwhelming, adding the egg whites after the cake had begun to bake. Which overwhelmed me. Made me grab the three boxes of Kleenex.

It seems so clear now. I think the best method would have been to have the hard info, the research, as well as the narrative reporting done very early and married them as I wrote. Why, oh why, didn’t I do this?

At some point though, you have to stop pounding carpet and get on with things.

I reminded myself that my nonfiction narrative involved extensive interviewing skills, meticulous organizing, a dedication to journalistic integrity and veracity by comparing facts and dialogue against different people interviewed, and so on. I also reminded myself there’s no “right” way of writing anything. Methods and work flow vastly differ.

In fact one of the most interesting books about how literary journalists do what they do and the myriad ways they do it is called The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft. Just reading how Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and Ted Conover attack their work encourages me to learn better ways of approaching my own writing while giving myself permission to work the way that’s best for me.

We have to work with what we’ve got at the time. Maybe a more journalistic work is for another book. Maybe part of the answer lies in leaving out much of what I thought I wanted to include and only putting in what’s absolutely necessary to the theme and resolution going with just enough hard info to make the dramatic narrative work. Um, duh.

Maybe this was the best route after all.

And maybe, no absolutely, in the future I’ll try to adopt lessons from those whose craft and methods I admire, and give myself lots and lots of grace.

10 Reasons to Write in Your Books

Do you write in the books you own? Some people feel that marking up a book or horrors—dog-earing it— is heresy, but here are 10 reasons why I can’t imagine reading a physical book without a pen or highlighter in hand.

For most of us with average memories underlining passages that inspire or facts we want to retain increases the odds of remembering more of what we read.

Combining the tactile act of writing with the cerebral act of reading helps engage more deeply with the material.

Tangibly connecting with the ideas and mind of the author sharpens our thinking.

A beautiful sentence or paragraph deserves to be honored with yellow highlighter, pencil marks, and ballpoint under typeface.

Writing in the margin makes reading become a conversation we have with the author.

We leave a remnant of our interaction with the book. For us to return to later, for those who come after us to have a glimpse of how we thought.

It’ part of the map of our becoming. Coming back to sections or lines we’ve highlighted or notes we’ve made in margins reminds us of the point in our journey that we were at when we read that book.

It makes a book ours alone; every mark says “this is what mattered to me.”

We have a visual, thumb-through-it record of what was important to us that can be pulled off a shelf now or in 30 years, regardless of tech developments.

Our interaction with a book is more valuable than a pristine page.

So highlight, underline, bracket, circle, star.

Use exclamation marks, draw happy faces and sad faces and open mouth circle faces on parts that jazz you, make you smile or frown or shock you.

Sass back to the author in pencil when you disagree. Even better, love on the author with your pen when you think they’re brilliant.

Leave a record of what moves you.

Ink the questions that the ideas raise.

Writing in my books is a pleasure, the gift of thinking given back to the author, a little love letter in the margins.

This Blog and Such

This is a blog about true story. It’s for story lovers and storytellers. It’s a home for those of us in the true story tribe who love memoir, narrative nonfiction, public radio, literary journalism.

It’s a place for people who want to find, produce, talk about and tell stories that are true. Stories that are artful and factual. Nonfiction that reads or sounds like fiction. Ones that have both the deliciousness of story and the knowledge that it exists in the real world.

Here’s what I have to give: a passion for true story.

I hope this blog gives you some inspiration to create and suggestions for great reads and great radio. I love to share what I’m learning that’s practical and useful about living a creative life, productivity and tech for creatives and storytellers. I want to share interviews with interesting people and give backstory to some pieces--the process, tips, the whys, and extra material that didn’t make it in. Yes, we learn and get inspired and all those good things, but also it’s just plain fun.

They are more than entertainment or information, they are a little art that has the power to move and inspire us, make us feel less alone, contribute to the culture, resonate with things that matter and help us think larger about the world. We learn about others’ lives so we can live better ones and do a little good.

I created this blog because, well, I’m an author. I write. I promise not to talk about my dog or cat because I got rid of them due to their being crazy, but I can’t promise I won’t talk about my family or my life sometimes (you know, memoir and all that).

Let’s create and consume true stories.

Let’s make something.

Let’s do good.

Ready, set, go.