Do You Treat Your Creative Work Like a Business?

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I talk a lot about “creative work” on this blog, but what does that really mean?  I guess I can loosely describe it as “anything that has to do with making things or getting those things out into the world.”

In that sense, for me as a writer, creative work would be…

That’s just the actual creative part, though.  There’s also:

The things on the first list are purely about creation: the act of making art Continue reading »

May 2022 Novel Update: Outlining —–> Drafting

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It’s been a really good month for novel drafting.  But first, a quick rewind….

Since January 2021 I’ve been working on a Secret New Novel Draft that I’ve wanted to start for literally years.  I knew this novel was going to be big—and for a while, I thought it might be too big.  As in, I wasn’t sure if I could do it.

As such, I tried taking time to research and plan the novel first…which didn’t go well, since my research wasn’t focused and much of the story seemed to exist in a murky haze.  I needed to write the story so I’d know what to research, but I also needed to research to write the story.  Augh!!!

So, I decided to jump right into a rough draft and see where it took me with the seat-of-your pants method of writing.  (Writers who do this are commonly called Pantsers, a name I find somewhat ridiculous…)  This allowed me to move forward, and helped me get quite a ways into the draft. Continue reading »

Freeing Up Your Mental Space is REALLY Important for Creativity

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Sometimes I get burned out or depressed—and when that happens, it’s a whole lot harder to work on a creative project.

I talked about this at length last fall, when a towering workload at my Japanese university job combined with a ninety-minute commute and having to check the final formatting on MFA Thesis Novel left me feeling overwhelmed, constantly pushing myself to the limit, and crashing hard on the weekends when I wanted to work on my secret new novel project.

All told, I felt overwhelmed and too damned busy.

I’ve written about the double downsides of being busy before: the first one’s obvious, but the second one’s something we often forget:
Continue reading »

April 2022 Novel Update: My Writing Hiatus is Almost Over…

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As many of you know, it has NOT been a good few months for writing…

When I last checked in on my novel progress back in November, I was facing an avalanche of pressures at my university teaching job in Japan, not to mention a busy few weeks working with Vine Leaves Press getting MFA Thesis Novel ready for publication.  For all of November to December I felt overworked, exhausted, and in a disconnected state of mind.

Then in January and February I spent a LOT of time prepping for my big move from Japan back to the States—mailing boxes home, cleaning out my apartment, and doing a whole lot of packing…which then turned into a whole lot of unpacking, plus dealing with jet lag and social readjustment when I got back to New Hampshire.

March and April, meanwhile, were REALLY big months for MFA Thesis Novel as I set up the pre-order and prepared for the novel launch.  This was a HUGE project Continue reading »

Patience and the Long Game are REALLY Important for Creative Careers

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Whenever I hear the phrase “Be patient!” I think of The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda and Obi Wan are talking about Luke’s training:

Luke: We’re wasting our time!

Yoda: [looking away] I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience

Obi-Wan’s Voice: He will learn patience.

It’s crazy to think that these lines were written over forty years ago, when my parents’ generation was young, before the internet, Twitter, streaming television, or Amazon two-day delivery.  Instant gratification, it seems, has been a staple of youth for a long time—even in a galaxy far, far away.
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Guest Post: Is Paid Work Legit and Unpaid Creative Work a Hobby?

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Ian here—Martha Engber is a writer and personal trainer whose books include Winter Light from Vine Leaves Press (2021 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Young Adult Fiction), The Wind Thief, and Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up.  Martha and I met during the 2021 Vine Leaves Press online reading for the SMOL Small Press fair, and here she explains how her revelations during the COVID pandemic helped her balance her paid work with her largely unpaid creative work.

In December 2019 I was helping my sister babysit her new granddaughter in Houston, Texas when I received an email acceptance to publish my novel, Winter Light.

I allowed myself a full day of inner quiet to fully enjoy the achievement. At the same time, I’d already had two books published and understood that the moment I signed a contract, I’d spend the next eight months working hard to set up marketing for the book.

Once I signed the contract, the panic set in. I say panic because at the time I was working 45 high-energy hours a week as a fitness instructor and personal trainer at a corporation in Silicon Valley. Continue reading »

Writing and Candy Wrapper Fashion: An Interview with Timothy Schaffert

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Timothy Schaffert is the author of six novels: The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (2002), The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God (2005), Devils in the Sugar Shop (2007), The Coffins of Little Hope (2012), The Swan Gondola (2014), and most recently, The Perfume Thief (2021), in addition to being a professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He’s also an illustrator whose candy wrapper fashion series (selections from which appear throughout this interview) appears regularly on his Instagram and Twitter.

I first met Timothy in 2014 when I took his graduate-level fiction workshop at UNL and attended the Omaha Lit Fest, which he founded in 2005, and directed until 2015.  More recently, his candy wrapper fashion drawings caught my attention, so we sat down over Zoom to talk about MFA fiction workshops, finding the time to write, and how exactly he gets those candy wrappers to stick to the page.

[Cover photo: Candy Wrapper Fashion #356: The Ladies of Beverly Hills 90210] Continue reading »

November 2021 Novel Update: Or Not…

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Warning: Vaguely self-pitying ramble ahead, though I end on some pretty kick-ass news.

It has not been a good few weeks for working on my secret new novel project—at all.  In fact, November was absolutely my slowest writing month since I got back to Japan in September full of energy and productivity.  So what happened?

Well, on one level, preparing MFA Thesis Novel for publication happened.  November is the big month for manuscript prep, and I’ve been going back and forth with Vine Leaves publishers Jessica Bell and Amie McCracken, answering proofreading questions, sending materials like back cover copy and Acknowledgements, and even updating some images that appear in the text. MFA Thesis Novel is complex and has a lot of special formatting in it Continue reading »

The Developmental Edit for MFA Thesis Novel is Done!

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A lot of work goes into a novel before it hits bookshelves: it needs a cover, ISBN info, back cover copy, reviews from more established authors, and a whole lot of checking for mistakes.  The biggest of those steps, though, is the developmental edit.

I last talked about my own developmental edit back in June, when I went through the manuscript of MFA Thesis Novel one more time doing word tweaks, trims, and making a few small additions.  This was a solo run in preparation for sending the new draft to my awesome editor, Melanie Faith, who’s been INCREDIBLY supportive throughout the entire process starting from when my novel first got signed with Vine Leaves Press.  I wanted to make sure that Melanie got the best draft possible, so I made this final pre-developmental edit part of my summer plans.

My actual developmental edit was slated to run from June 15th to September 21st—three months where Melanie and I could go back and forth getting the manuscript into the best shape possible.  I sent her the new draft on the morning of June 15th, and we made a plan for moving forward. Continue reading »

October 2021 Novel Update: Back in the Saddle After a Break

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As I mentioned a few weeks back, leaving my old Day Job and moving to Yokohama has put me in a clearer headspace for doing creative work.  This is partly because of my new surroundings, partly because of the mandatory Japanese 14-day isolation period that kept me in my apartment for two weeks, and partly because, well, there are just plain fewer distractions here.

This has translated into more novel-writing time.

To be fair, it hasn’t been a LOT more novel-writing time—rather, the conditions I’ve been working under have made going back to the novel easier. Continue reading »

I Chose a Cool Opening Quote for MFA Thesis Novel!

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I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with opening quotes on books—on the one hand, some of my favorite books start with them, and they can set the stage for the story to follow and give the background on the novel name or the author’s other thematic choices.  For example, here’s the opening of my favorite Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises, which includes not one, but two quotes:

You are all a lost generation.
– Gertrude Stein in conversation

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.
– Ecclesiastes Continue reading »

There Are Other Weird People Out There Like Me: An Interview with Krissy Diggs

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Krissy Diggs posts illustrations on Instagram, where she has a lot of followers but doesn’t make a big deal about it.  She first achieved internet fame in the late 2000s making videos as That Chick With the Goggles for what would become Channel Awesome, and briefly produced her own Youtube show, Challenge Accepted!!!  Her art has been featured in exhibitions, on concert posters, a novel cover, and a Japanese beer label, and she’s worked as a waitress, an art director for a major cellular company, and an English teacher in Kanazawa, Japan.

Krissy and I first collaborated in 2019 when she shared some of her drawings with the TRAM zine in nearby Toyama.  When pandemic restrictions eased up I took the train out to meet her in Kanazawa, where we enjoyed a lunch of hanton rice and she shared her insights on the Day Job life.

 

I. I Just Thought of It as Fun

 

But I Also Have a Day Job: So when did you join Instagram?

Krissy Diggs: I was an early adapter, so I joined when it was a new thing.  When I first started I never took it seriously as a platform to share art or anything.  I was kind of using it the way everyone else was—sharing pictures of food, etc.  I tend to have my name on all of my handles because I get in early enough.  I have that for Twitter, Instagram, and I think TikTok too.  I don’t know how to do TikTok, but I’m trying to learn. Continue reading »