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The Real Power of Post-Its

February 01, 2019 by Brian Fay in Writing

Quick thoughts:

  • Keep a pad of post-it notes on the bedside table
  • Stick some inside the paper planner
  • Have a pad of them on the desk
  • Get used to scribbling, jotting, and writing ideas on them

It's not just that I'm trying to hold onto an idea, though that's part of it. I'm more forgetful at fifty than I was at twenty and I was already forgetting too many things then. Remembering the one idea I have is good. I can't write every idea passing through my mind but quickly scribbled post-its save ideas for when I can write my way into them. All this is important but not the most important reason to have those post-its available to my whim.

Writing the idea down, capturing it in the confines of that yellow square, allows me to find the two other ideas to which writing the first one down leads. Writing generates new writing because thinking generates new ideas and writing just might be the most eleveated form of thinking. (That's the sort of thought that on paper/screen makes sense but runs circles if left inside my head.)

I can stand to lose the one idea, but those other two that come to being only as a result of writing the first, I can't stand to lose them or the process that brings them about. Ideas written down beget more ideas.

Which has me thinking of a new idea. Let me grab a post-it and jot it down.

February 01, 2019 /Brian Fay
Post-Its, Ideas, Creating, Forgetting
Writing
3 Comments
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Do Less, Extremely Well

January 30, 2019 by Brian Fay in Writing

I listened to an episode of Hurry Slowly on which Jocelyn K. Glei discussed efficiency and creativity, saying they have nothing in common and might stand in opposition. I get what she was saying even as I apply efficiencies to my creative work. Creativity can't be ridden into submission and turned out like widgets. It is a process of going deeply. Efficiencies are mostly about getting stuff done while creative work is about exploring what's there. It's the difference between doing good work and just getting things done.

I need to listen again (inefficient!) because what seemed clear has become muddled. I'm thinking about the paper on which I drafted this in my Morning Pages, the post-it notes stuck to my desk, the ways in which I keep my phone and planner near at hand but closed. These are refinements to the system I use to do good work each morning. Each of them makes me more efficient at getting to the work and leave more room for me to go deeply and be thoughtful. The ideas on the post-its get me to the starting line, no need to warm up. The phone plays music but I'm not checking weather, news, or email. The planner is there for offloading ideas but closed so as not to distract. And the page on which I drafted this has just the right line height, margins, and convenient space for date and page numbers. All of it is designed to get me efficiently into the act of writing.

I refine things for more efficiency but still get what the podcaster is saying. My streamlining is all about getting myself to the creative act and staying there. These efficiencies allow me to devote focus, energy, and time to writing but there isn't any real efficiency applied to the writing of my three pages which takes however long it takes (though I'm pretty speedy and am drafting without revision). I'm not interested in getting my pages done any faster. I'm not interested really in getting them done. I'm devoted to doing Morning Pages. I want more and more of that writing. Why would I rush through writing when there are few things I would rather do? I box my job down to the contract hours, draft my newsletter throughout the week, and do what I can to minimize anxiety because those things all get in the way of writing and I can't have that.

At my day job I'm asked (told) to do more, more, more. I'm to go faster and stretch myself thinner. Be efficient to do more for the organization! There is far too much for me to do because of the shortcomings in the system. I didn't create that system and I would change it were I in management but I'm not so I don't get too worked up about things going undone. There's only so much I can do and besides, working like that gets in the way of teaching well, writing, reading, being healthy, and finding contentment. Screw that.

There's an email waiting for me at the job saying that a whole bunch of kids haven't yet taken a silly reading test. I'm sure that's true. I'm also sure there are too many kids and too many demands on my limited energy. Something has to give. The test is important to management but I would have to really try in order to care less.

Thinking of these things in bed I wrote a post-it reminding myself to, do less and do it extremely well. I added a note the next morning saying do extremely well at choosing to do less. Be deliberate in choices that frame and clear space for good work. Prepare well and refine the processes supporting that work. Choose carefully. There are only so many hours in each day and who knows how many days left in this wondrous life.

The only efficiencies with which I'm concerned are those that allow me to go deeper into the work of creating and farther into the life I want to be living.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, The Art Of Disappearing

January 30, 2019 /Brian Fay
Efficiency, Creativity, Creating, Morning Pages, Work v Job
Writing
2 Comments
Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt (from AustinKleon.com)

Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt (from AustinKleon.com)

Austin Kleon & Creativity

January 20, 2019 by Brian Fay in Writing

I started my blog because of Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work and most of my weekly newsletter is patterned on his which you should go read right now.

The thing I like about Kleon and his work is that he is so inclusive and inviting. I'm not much for the excluding people from creative work. Exclusion has kept non-white, non-male people from having their creativity noticed. Screw that noise. There's plenty of room for everyone and Austin Kleon invites people into that community and shows how to get going.

If I make it as a writer I'll help people starting out. I won't be able to solve everyone's problems, but I like paying back and promoting others. Kleon seems to be all about that.

The question I have is what he is creating now. It's as if he has completely moved into helping others be creative, but what else is he creating? It's great that he helps people like me, but it's like the English teacher who doesn't read or write; the coach who can't play the game; the preacher who doesn't read or know the Bible. The work comes first and teaches by example, then comes advice and direct instruction.

Twice last year I was asked why I haven't put together a book about writing. I've written on this blog about writing and even given advice but I feel I need to publish and create a larger body of work before anyone should much listen to my thoughts on the matter.

Or maybe I'm just being chickenshit.

Whatever the case, you should read Austin Kleon almost as much as you read the guy writing bgfay.com. He's a genius!

January 20, 2019 /Brian Fay
Austin Kleon, Creating, Writing
Writing
Comment
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Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back)

January 18, 2019 by Brian Fay in Reading

I picked up Jeff Tweedy's memoir on the advice of Austin Kleon. I was reading Robert Galbraith and then a YA book about the Holocaust and finishing those I looked at Tweedy but set it aside for Dani Shapiro's Hourglass (which is INCREDIBLE!!!) and thought I wouldn't end up reading Tweedy at all. What was a rock and roller going to tell me? Wasn't it probably ghost written anyway? I finished Hourglass and ended up picking up Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) to read myself to sleep until I could find something good.

I read 89 pages and was really tired the next morning, damn it. This book is good. It's really, really good.

Tweedy talks about addiction and music, but that's not what got me. He gets into being creative and how he works. He talks about how to be an artist, how he works on his own, how he has come to believe in himself, how he works with others, his compromises and things on which he won't compromise, the ways in which he balances family and a creative life, and on and on and on.

This book gave me hope and direction as a writer.

Oh, and he is funny too. There's one bit where he says he needs to kill and eat the heart of Dave Grohl that had me laughing for good little while.

Here are some excerpts that worked on me:


That moment was just as important as the day I finally pulled the neglected guitar out of the closet and forced myself to figure out how chords worked, or found the courage to walk onstage and sing in front of a basement full of strangers, or put words and notes together to make a song that hadn't existed before. For any of that to happen, I had to envision what it would feel like to be that person, to be somebody who had accomplished all of these things already. (42)


Learning how to play guitar is the one thing I always look back on with wonderment. I'm reminded of "What ifs?" every time I pick up a guitar. Where would I be? I have sort of a survivor's guilt about it that makes me want it for everyone. Not the "guitar" exactly, but something like it for everybody. Something that would love them back the more they love it. Something that would remind them of how far they've come and provide clear evidence that the future is always unfolding toward some small treasure worth waiting for. At the very least, I wish everyone had a way to kill time without hurting anyone, including themselves. That's what I wish. That's what the guitar became for me that summer and is to me still. (65-66)


Too much ambition gets a bad rap in my line of work. If you grew up in the late twentieth century loving or wanting to be a part of the punk or indie rock scene, you were expected to at least give the appearance of not caring and giving the least possible amount of effort. Of course, it's a lie. Does anyone think Devo just happened with minimum effort?! The Ramones?! Pavement?! I'd be willing to bet every band you've ever heard of worked hard and had crazy ambition. Maybe it went away at some point or they got content to coast, but trust me, at some point they worked their asses off and dreamed grand and triumphant dreams. Listen, it's a cop-out to hid ambition and pretend aspirations are shameful. It's a way to protect yourself. Preemptive sour grapes.

Here's an aspirational thought I've had about what I do that kind of turns Chuck Close's quote inside out. Sometimes I think it's my job to be inspired. I work at it. That's what I do that most resembles work. It seems to me that the only wrong thing I could do with whatever gifts I've been given as a musician or an artist would be to let curiosity die. So I try to keep up with other people's creative output. I read and I listen. I'm lucky that's what I get to do with my time -- keeping myself excited about the world and not being discouraged when it loses its spark. By now I've been doing it long enough to say with some confidence that if you can remain open to it and you're not afraid to call it work sometimes, inspiration is limitless. (169-170)


A band in the nineties wanting to get any attention at all also had to make videos. I wasn't interested in being a visual artist or selling music that way, but I also wasn't a puritan who was adamant abut not selling music that way. The way I looked at it, Bob Dylan and other songwriters far more talented than me had done promotional videos. So who did I think I was, a fucking artist? My line in the sand over what I will and won't do has always been really instinctual, and I've tried to keep it separate from ideology. My goal was to not put any unnecessary impediments in the way of being heard. By refusing to do a video, you're basically telling the people trying to help your band be heard that they don't know what they're doing. From early on, we erred on the side of letting them do their job. As long as their job wasn't interfering with the music, we tried to trust them. We signed a contract to make records and deliver them, that was our job. And their end of the bargain was to sell them, that was theirs. If they were staying out of our way, why would we stand in theirs? (183-184)

(This has me wondering about my stance on social media. Tell you what, when a publisher tells me to get back on Twitter and Facebook to promote our publishing deal, I'll do it. Deal?)

January 18, 2019 /Brian Fay
Jeff Tweedy, Book Review, Creating
Reading
2 Comments
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