Author: Dan Blank

What is it like to begin writing a book again after a 60 year break? Yesterday I ran a small workshop about establishing a writing routine, and one of the writers in the group, Fred Sanborn, told us about how he wrote and published books in the 1950s, and then stopped. He was here today to establish a new writing routine for three books he had in mind. At 90 years old, he was very mindful of both the importance of this work, and how he had to make the most of his time.

Here is the group:

A theme emerged from the day: “I need to claim my creative time.” To make it a priority when so many other responsibilities and distractions keep us from our writing.

As Fred put it: “It’s time to get on with it.”

I loved working with this group of writers so much because we delved into the reality of why, too often, we don’t make writing a priority. Usually it is not because we are binge watching Netflix, but because we are caring for loved ones who are ill, for children who rely on us, attending to jobs that support our families, and coping with a commute that eats up a lot of time.

None of these things that keep us from writing are easy fixes because they are important responsibilities.

So how did we address them in the workshop? Like this:

• Everything I do begins with the idea of Radical Clarity. Of understanding your priorities not just in writing, but life as a whole. You only have so much creative energy every day, you need to put it in the things that matter most to you. (You can read more on Radical Clarity here.)
• Right away we talked about the importance of mindset. There is no secret button that will suddenly give you the time and space to write. Instead, we dug into how to get into the correct mindset to write, to sustain the habit, to meet writing goals, and to celebrate what we achieve.
• We identified the minimum we would each need to write each week to feel that we had established a writing habit that was fulfilling. This idea forces you to reframe writing not as huge milestones, but as a simple practice. It doesn’t sound glamorous to say, “I wrote 150 words today.” But if you did that every day for a year, you would have a manuscript of more than 50,000 words.
• I encouraged each writer do do an Energy Audit, to better understand when they have an easier time writing. We then explored other factors that encourage writing — where they write, preparation for writing, how sound factors in (silence, white noise, music), and then discussed this in the context of their real life. Lives amidst kids, jobs, commutes, dishes, and so much else.
• We identified our Cave Trolls — the things that distract us. The key here is not to try to kill the Cave Trolls, but instead, to learn how to manage them.
• For each writer in the group, we explored their daily schedules and came up with clear ways that they can fit in writing while also feeling fulfilled. That is the key. I didn’t suggest solutions that rob you of sleep — but rather — considered how your writing is an essential part of what it means to feel fulfilled as a person. How attending to your writing makes you a better parent, a better spouse, a better employee, a better friend.
• We created plans for celebrating what they write each week, and brainstormed ways to stay accountable to their writing goals.

I would imagine that challenges you face in attending to your creative work are similar to those in this group. That claiming your creative time each week is a difficult because of the other important responsibilities in your life.

If that is the case, I want you to think of Fred. How, at 90 years old, he is working on a memoir and two nonfiction books. And that he has decided, “It’s time to get on with it.”

To create is a choice. Your choice.

But so is the ability to not create. That is not decided by your boss, your friends or your family. It is your choice.

What will you create today?

-Dan

PS: If you want to be notified of my upcoming workshops, you can join the early interest list for my Creative Shift Mastermind here, and for Studio Time Workshops here.

There is this video I’ve watched a bunch of times this week, where centenarians — those who lived past 100 years old — are interviewed. In the video, they consider what they have created, and wisdom they would share with others. So much of it is about appreciating your connection to others. To spend time with your parents and relatives if you they are still around. To invest in closeness to others. To not be reluctant to ask for help when you need it.

I think I kept watching this video because it reminds me of what I think many writers and artists need in their life.

To consider what matters most to them, and what they create for others in the world.

How true deep connections with real people matters more than faceless “followers.”

How assessing progress allows you to consider where you have been and where you want to go.

This is reflected in an email I received this week from author Dawn Downey. She has been a member of my mastermind group, and she shared an update on what she has been focused on recently:

“Thought I’d give you an update on my creative shift—changing my marketing emphasis from gathering new fans to deepening relationships with current fans.”

“Last year at one of my readings, a woman named Janet fell in love with my writing. She insisted if I were ever in her hometown, I should stay with her. A year later there’s a book fair in her hometown, a two-hour drive from mine. I emailed her and asked if I could spend a couple nights with her. She gave me a wildly enthusiastic yes.”

“Janet lives on several hundred acres down a gravel road, about fifteen minutes from town. Because she wasn’t attending the book festival, I had planned to drive back into town for the kick-off event (mingle and munch), but she drove me there. She then introduced me to the woman who’d organized the festival and to the editor of an anthology produced to raise money for it. (Small town, they all know each other.) While I was talking with someone else, I overheard Janet lobbying for me to be recruited as a speaker for next year’s festival.”

“Saturday morning I got up to drive to the day-long festival. Janet had already packed me a lunch, snacks and a bottle of water, because she’d noticed the schedule had no lunch break. She drove me there in the morning and picked me up at the end of the day. Instead of asking how she could help, she simply helped. She was a combination mom and publicist!”

“I was encouraged by the weekend. Letting go of marketing and sales outcomes, focusing on relationships. What’s hard is this: I’ve not found other writers in my community who encourage me down this path or understand what the heck I’m doing. I certainly have no quantifiable measures for success. But my gut is saying keep going.”

I love what Dawn shares here! This is the type of stuff I talk about in my book Be the Gateway, and in my Creative Shift Mastermind. To me, there are two huge insights to what she shares:

• Creative work should lead to personal fulfillment, and connection to others. Your work changes you, and changes others. That is clearly what is happening here with Dawn, with Janet, with the festival.
• More people know of Dawn and her writing, and in the best possible context: not as a “promoted Tweet,” but as a true human connection, an introduction to her art in a supportive community. There are probably dozens of others that Dawn engaged with that weekend who appreciated meeting her and were introduced to her writing in the best possible way.

But beyond this is that Dawn has established a practice to share her work, to connect with readers.

Last week I shared a phrase that I use a lot with writers and artists I work with: RADICAL CLARITY. I was astounded at the positive reaction that people had to that, so I began creating something of a manifesto around it:

To get RADICAL CLARITY, you need:

To acknowledge that you are a creator, and you have permission to create. Not only that, but you have to accept that the world needs what you create. That you are ready to be seen and heard as a creator.

To know exactly what you create and why. You have to answer this because without it, you will stop when things get hard. You have to be able to explain why this work means so much to you, and why someone will love it. Don’t cop out with an answer such as “I just want to entertain people!” Writing and art changes lives. Be clear how it is changing yours, and the potential it has to change someone else’s.

To understand the ideal person who you hope to reach. This is not some vague demographic. It is a real person with a name, a face, a lifetime of experiences, and someone searching for what you create.

To show up for your creative work. To establish the practices and processes that ensure you show up day in and day out, even when things feel difficult.

To put craft first,  always improve your skills. Your growth as a writer and artist relies on the mastery of your skills, and seeking personal growth through honing them.

To understand that success requires collaboration. Your work dies in isolation. When you collaborate, you are no longer swayed by the winds of trends, of negative anxiety that may drive you, of making incorrect assumptions about process. If you don’t have colleagues to help you along the way, you are destined to always be an amateur.

To have a safe place to work through challenges. This is a support system of coaches, colleagues, and collaborators who hold you accountable to your creative vision.

To connect with others on a one-to-one human level. Connecting your work to others should be a process of deep connection, not one of trying to amass faceless followers, judging your success on likes and reshares. It is about connecting through writing and art, and how that changes someone.

To extend this, I have also been sharing daily reflections on how to double-down on your creative work on my Instagram feed:

I want to encourage you to consider how you invest in your own creative process and how you connect your work to others in a deeply human way. How can RADICAL CLARITY give you greater fulfillment in your writing and art?

Thanks.

-Dan

PS: Here is the link to the video on those who lived past 100.

One year ago, I began writing my next book. I added a daily commitment to my calendar at 5:30am, seven days a week; it said simply: “Write.”

Here I am, nearly 365 days later, having written every day.

The results? Both ordinary and astounding. I want to share what I have learned in this past year:

#1: Keep Your Creative Vision on Life Support

In truth, I feel like every day, I wrote the minimum amount of words. Some days, inspiration would hit and I would write more. Other days I pushed through resistance — these were the days that I didn’t feel an ounce of inspiration, and writing was more an obligation. Many days, I wrote a paragraph then moved on to other things.

I remember hearing this expression from someone in my mastermind group: “life support” as a way of valuing small actions of creating. The idea is that when you do a small amount of writing each day, you keep your writing alive.

The result of small steps every day? Okay, I was blown away when I added this up. From what I can tell, I have written:

• 38,000 words for the next book
• 25,000 words for the book after that
• Plus: 41,000 words in blog posts.

The prompt to “WRITE” first thing each morning only applied to writing my books, never to blogs, but it was still astounding to include that number.

Honestly, there were many days where it felt like I was failing at writing. Failing at putting words on the page. Days where I wrote the bare minimum, and felt like maybe I was an impostor.

Yet, taking a small creative action every day really adds up.

#2 The Act of Creating Can be a Boring Rote Exercise, and That’s Fine

Every day when I sat down to write, I took a photo of myself:

I have 365 of these, but I’ll spare you having to look at them all! Do you know what this looks like to me? A nightmare. It looks like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, where every day is exactly the same.

Now, in truth, I love routine. But I took these photos and shared them each day on social media to make a point: creative work isn’t always exhilarating, beautiful, and fun. Very often, it is work.

Many of the days where I wrote, I may have felt completely unmotivated to write, yet the time of day, the context, the expression on my face was the same as the day before.

I was showing up for my creative vision. Period.

#3 It Was Just As Easy to Create, As It Was to Not Create

This is perhaps the biggest revelation in looking back on a year of writing every day. It was as easy to have created as it would have been to not create.

I can easily remember one year ago as if it was yesterday. It is easy to consider that a year would pass without making a dent in my biggest creative goals: writing. Why? Because life is busy. Looking back, if I didn’t have all the photos, I may easily overlook that writing every day was a wonderful accomplishment. That I easily could have spent those early morning hours checking email instead.

But I wrote.

And really, how difficult was it to write every day? Not very difficult at all.

#4 Progress is Better than Perfect

Beyond sheer word count, what progress did I make in my writing? Well, midway through the year I realized that I was actually writing two books, not one. That insight gave me a lot of clarity. I aligned the books to form a series:

1. Book #1: Which I am writing now and will hopefully publish this year.
2. Book #2: Be the Gateway which I published in 2017.
3. Book #3: Which I will publish in 2019 or 2020.

This clarity felt huge for me. It allowed me to clearly understand how to dive deep into certain topics, and then zoom out to see how everything fits together.

When I work with people in my mastermind, we begin with this concept of Radical Clarity. To have found it for my writing feels like a big achievement. Making progress, even if it doesn’t quote feel like perfection.

#5 One Habit Encourages Another

I used the daily habit of writing to start another creative daily habit: properly learning how to play the guitar. I started this late last year, and have now practiced the guitar every day since mid-December.

To make it easy, I keep a guitar in my studio as well as one in my home office. I just added a third one to my living room.

For 25 years, I dabbled with the guitar, but never properly learned how to play it. In the past few months, I’ve made more progress in truly building my skills and understanding of the instrument than I did in the previous quarter century.

Wow, just writing that feels unbelievable. But it’s true. That is the power of a small daily creative habit.

If you could establish one creative habit for a year, what would it be?

-Dan