Finding Focus: Managing Your Creativity
AUTHOR: Joyce Ellen Armond

Summer, with its vacations and cookouts and other time-drains, is over. The kids are back in school. We've got a nice stretch of time before the Big Holidays clamp on us. Why not celebrate autumn with a new set of goals, and a better way of managing your time as an author?

Setting Goals

Half the battle of reaching goals is designing them correctly. In my Evil Day Job, I help coordinate a program for entrepreneurship. We teach the SMART goal system, and it works. When you design a goal, make sure it is S-M-A-R-T.

S = Specific. When you aren't sure exactly what you want, you are doomed to failure and disappointment. It's like eating an apple when you are hungry for Fritos and expecting to be satisfied. "Be a best-selling author" is not a goal. It's a dream, and a poorly articulated one at that. Be specific. I want to place in an RWA contest this year. I want to have a novel ready to query agents by Christmas. I want to submit a short story a month. These are goals you can achieve, because they are specific.

M = Measurable. Notice that in each specific goal example there is a quantifiable and tangible outcome. Contest awards won. Novel finished. None of this can happen, of course, unless you write, which is why the most fundamental measure is output. Many authors count pages or words. I count scenes. You need little wins to keep you going. If your goal is to submit a short story a month, you know you have to write a certain amount each day or session. When you measure up and write your share, it motivates you to write again tomorrow.

Measurable goals also give you data to analyze the success of your process. I found nothing but frustration in counting words or pages. Producing 5,000 words a week was just a trial. Worse yet, I discovered that even if I set my weekly goal at 5,000 words, I wasn't happy unless I wrote more. (If only my goal were to polish and perfect self-sabotage, I'd be quite the success.) So I switched to making a scene every three days my goal. I discovered that by thinking in story terms not math terms, I could just write what I needed in those three days. Whether the scene was 1,000 words or 10,000 words, I got it done it three days.

A = Attainable. This is why "get published" is a crappy goal. Publication is not entirely within our control. We are, to some extent, at the mercy of tastes and schedules of editors. So why set yourself up for disappointment? Just fashion a more attainable goal, based on measurable output that you can control. Like a scene every three days. Even if your dream is a juicy three-book contract with St. Martin's Press, leading to riches and fame beyond wildest imaginings, you will never find fulfillment without writing that scene every three days, or 5,000 words a week, or whatever your measurable output might be. So focus on the attainable, and save yourself some grief.

R = Rewarding. In our class we say "R" is for "reasonable," but that isn't going to mean much to people who tell stories about having sex with monsters. If what you're writing doesn't fulfill you, ignite your passion, reward that drive inside to tell the stories that haunt you, why even bother? I am not driven to write overly erotic stories, which is disappointing because it's such a great sell right now. If I would try to force myself to write to the market, I'd never be able to set a rewarding goal. However, if you match sex with the scary, Eros with Thanatos, I'm as passionate as I can get. So my current goal is to write sexy, scary stories: attainable AND rewarding.

T = Time-sensitive. Don't think deadlines. Deadlines will just freeze you up and, even worse, activate any instinct for self-sabotage you may have. A few paragraphs from now you'll be reading about the importance of structure. A creative process works best with a structure, and time is a natural structure of our lives. While a deadline might induce you to self-sabotage (oh, gee, I'm late, I'm no good, I'll just quit), time-sensitive deadlines help stave off the ultimate self-sabotage of perfectionism (I'll rewrite and revise and rewrite until this story is perfect.)

SMART goals will help you set up a situation that can lead to real success. But before you go SMARTING off, you have to recognize who you are, how you think, and how to manage yourself as a creative person.

We Aren't Like Them.

The rules that govern the lives of the left brainers do not work with us. Yes, a part of me envies the perfect grid of their lives, with their bills in order and paid on time, their day planners and palm pilots guiding their efficient march. Then I go back to reading, writing, playing or the all important creative process step: staring idly into space. Since I've stopped trying to function like one of them, I've found both success and peace of mind. You can, too.

Effective Time Management for Creative People.

Structure is Your Friend

While we all know that our muse does not show up for work every day at eight, as a creative person you must impose some structure on your process. Don't think rules. Rules imply right and wrong, and nothing strangles creativity like the garrote of judgment. Think maximizing process. Because the more efficient you make your creative process, the more time you'll have for playing that video game or watching Serenity for the eleventh time.

Remember that scene in Armageddon when the snotty British scientist explains why the nuke has to be put down a hole to destroy the asteroid? Light a firecracker in your open hand, you burn your hand. Light a firecracker and close your first around it, your wife will be cutting your meat for the rest of your life. THAT is the power of structure in your creative process. If creative energy is confined by a set of parameters, the intellectual equivalent of a closed fist, it will cause a greater change. It will have more punch. It will blow your fingers off.

Identify what you need your muse to do. (Muse, I need a magical system that compliments my novel's theme of illusion versus reality.) State the problem specifically. (This romantic relationship lacks sexual tension.) Create the structure. (In the next hour I'm going to brainstorm ideas for villains.) Think of lighting the firecracker and closing your first. Or creating the cup which you can then fill up with creative ideas and solutions for problems.

A maximized creative process then becomes the actual goal, and not a finished or published work. Attainability is key! If your goal is to have a great creative process, you have something you can control much more precisely than the goal of publication.

Failure Is Necessary

Repeat after me: Perfectionism is the Personification of Evil.

Bad ideas, scenes that end up in the cut file, stories that live under the bed, wrong turns in plot, boring turns in characterization -- all of these are required steps in the creative process. You must free yourself from the editor's voice, the temptation to judge, the demands of perfection, or no matter how tightly you close your fist, your creative firecracker will be a dud.

In his splendid craft book The Comic Toolbox, by John Vorhaus, the author gives this liberating insight: nine out of ten ideas you have are going to be total crap. In order to find the one good idea, it is absolutely necessary that you think of nine bad ideas. In her splendid craft book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott demands that we give ourselves permission to write the Shitty First Draft. Convince yourself using whatever works.

I comfort myself with a sculpting metaphor. I've read that a sculptor looks at a big block of ugly, rough stone and sees the lovely form inside. The sculptor's job is to chip away the unnecessary stone imprisoning the lovely form. The first draft I write creates the big block of ugly, rough stone. In my subsequent drafts, I chip away all the unnecessary stone (i.e., crap writing) to find the lovely sculpture hidden inside.

For left-brained people, getting it right the first time is a sign of competence and aptitude. For creative people, getting it right the first time is self-delusion and arrogance. Time spent producing bad prose or time spent evaluating bad ideas is not time wasted, but an essential step in the successful creative process.

You Aren't Wasting Time By Staring At the Wall

A successful creative process requires periods of incubation. Left-brained people often mistake periods of incubation for goofing off, slacking and wasting time. But cakes have to bake. Bread dough must rise. Premature action just gets you sticky cake and flat bread.

Knowing and accepting this valuable part of the process, learn to schedule incubation time. Release any guilt you might have for that block of unscheduled time in your planner. Take responsibility for your creative process and learn what incubates you best. For some lucky people, its doing household chores like laundry. For others, it's taking walks or other physical distraction. For me, it's long soaky baths. Find what bakes your cake, recognize how vital it is, and treat it with the respect it deserves.

Divert the left-brained heathen's misguided criticism in whatever way you can. For years I let my mother believe that bath time was an autoerotic experience, just so she'd leave me alone and let me incubate. Subvert a sexist standby and develop chronic Writer's Headache. But don't deny yourself the incubation time you need. Your success depends on it.

With tools like these, and goals that are SMART, you are more likely to achieves your dream. Whatever they may be. (And if you want to share, stop in at The Blog and let me know.)