Mary Ellen called it in the comments of the last post: I have my life set up, like it or not, around accountability.

I make appointments and agreements out loud and publicly to keep myself on track and actually producing, rather than just musing about it. It’s why I started this blog four years ago today—to externalize my process, in the hope of getting clear on my own inner workings. And to (hopefully) be helpful by sharing some of this knowledge I gained so, so late in the goddamned game. (No prodigy, I.)

I also did it to become a better writer, by which I mean a writer who is particularly good at it in her own, particular way, and also a writer who actually writes. Because a writer who doesn’t write is just another schmuck who ought to go do something of actual utility, like raising responsible citizens who engage in critical thinking, or scrubbing toilets at a 99-seat theater, or raising money for starving people in ravaged parts of the world.

I’m kind of stuck being a writer—or a communicator, or the communicatrix, rather—because I’m not that all-fire great at being anything else. I’m a decent designer and an okay actress, but the amount of energy I need to expend to do those things at any level of excellence makes them a lousy ROI for me and, I’m feeling more and more, the world. We’ve all of us got to figure out what we’re the very, very best at, and what we’re here to do to make the world a better place, and just do the hell out of that thing. Did I wish I was a genius designer? Oh, yes. Did I hope to change the world from a slightly raised proscenium? Damned straight.

Alas, those were not to be my platforms. They were great training grounds for picking up necessary skills, but they’re not the Big Show.

This is the big show. This—this. For better or for worse, externalizing my process. And, with a little continued good fortune in the right direction, helping other people to discover and disseminate their own fabulosity*.

So in the same way that I use Arno J. to help me in my practice of morning reflection, my shrink to help me in my practice of emotional honesty and my marketing coach to help me in my practice of business, I have decided to engage a little external help to kickstart my writing practice. That’s right, those of you who clicked that last link: I’ve joined the ranks of the NaNoWriMo-heads, and am going to slam out a shitty first draft of a novel I was asked to write over a year ago.

Asked to write. By a major publishing house. On a theme wildly dear to my heart. Over a year ago.

Sometimes, I have to pause to reflect on how truly asinine I can be. Because really, it’s spectacular, albeit in a horrifying way.

I actually turned in sample chapters at the beginning of this year, which were, to my surprise and delight, much beloved by the editorial team. But the people who would actually have had to sell the book? Let’s just say I got a big “yes” on the voice, and a not-so-much on the execution.

I’ve put it off long enough. Now I either do it or dump it off the “to-do” list for the foreseeable future, and move on. And, as Marketing Coach sez, that’s asinine. No one gets asked to write a novel. No one who’s never written a proven one, anyway.

So I will sign off for now, as I have a great deal of writing to do. I will not sign off for a month, though if I write less of substance here, perhaps you will be understanding and forgiving.

I will, of course, continue observing my current writing obligations, including the monthly newsletter (next issue out this Wednesday—subscribe here) and the monthly acting column.

Wish me luck. Stay in touch. Keep on living your life out loud.

xxx
c

Image of a geranium, the fourth-anniversary flower, by Swami Stream via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

*That’s also very much writing-related, but also involves moving increasingly into speaking and consulting. Which I’m doing, but which is not the particular focus of this piece. If you’re interested in either of those things:

• me, coming to speak to your group about how to use marketing and social media to get your message to the Peoples or…
• me, working with you in a consulting-type fashion, to help you sort out what message you’re trying to put out to the world and how to make sure it’s elegant, accessible, “you” and focused like a motherfucking laser beam…

…you should email me. Seriously. All these crazy skillz I picked up during my travels through advertising, performing and graphic-designing are proving extraordinarily useful at helping people sort out their shit in a non-painful, actually-fun sort of way.

TOPICS: change, goals, writing.

I’m all for blogs—clearly.

But there is, when all is said and done, something about a book. You can bring a book on a train! You can read it in bed or on the couch or in the tub. You can love it up and pass it along. And while I’m delighted when people find my online presence, and even more delighted when they pass it along, it’s just not the same. I can’t—you know—sign it with a Sharpie or anything.

Besides, this is not some short-time romance. As a girl, I’d always imagined the books I’d write someday as my offspring. I could see them in my mind’s eye far more clearly than I could some bucket of DNA with a pink or blue bib around its neck. So despite all the very smart things my pal, Michael Blowhard, has to say about the folly of book writing, I’m down with it. Or up for it. Or whatever it is the kids aren’t saying these days.

I have no delusions about the wild fame or fortune that will be mine when I corral the genius that is communicatrix into a 6″x9″ stack of dead tree guts. It’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll be self-publishing, via Lulu, perhaps, or, if I’m feeling particularly daring, ordering up a stack to keep in my garage. Which, since I don’t have a real garage, would be my living room.

I spent my weekend among a small sample of the millions who believe they have a book—or two, or seven—in them. Sitting amongst them, I’m even more certain: both of the pointlessness of my writing a book and the absolute necessity of it…

xxx
c

Image by Cade via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicating, reviews/books, writing.

Get your juices going. Get the crap out of your head and onto the page/screen/sand.

To do it anytime is good. To do it often is great. To do it every day (to paraphrase Julia Cameron) is transformative.

What are you looking for?

I have gotten well, gotten happy, gotten love, gotten clarity. Writing is the reason, or one of the big ones.

Stop reading this right now. Go pick up a pen or a pencil or your keyboard and write about how reading this makes you feel, or about how it doesn’t make you feel, or about anything you damn well feel like.

And prepare for your life to change.

xxx
c

See more progress on: Write every day (posted spur-of-the-moment from 43 Things)

TOPICS: creativity, goals, serendipity, writing.

“I think my own addiction to narrow distractions while writing is a hard wire left from my days in advertising; if you aren’t coming up with an idea, you check email to see what other crisis looms. I have found this a terrible and difficult habit to break.”

—former advertising creative director and current novelist Jeff Abbott, in the comments section of Paul Ford’s 43 Folders guest post about “Amish Computing”

TOPICS: creativity, productivity, quotations, writing.

Let me state right up front that I am not anti-television. The fact that I was cable-free for five years post-divorce had more to do with my crack-like addition to television than any moral stance against or disdain for the medium. I just assumed that if more than two and a half channels were viewable on my TV set, I’d do little else save watch it. The good news? I know myself really, really well. The bad news? I know myself really, really well.

Of course, I am now justifying my increased television viewing with my newfound desire to transform #1 & #2, the stage play (with music!) that I wrote with my partner, L.A. Jan, into a television series—a desire born out of a dream to tell our truth to the widest possible audience with the greatest possible efficiency. (When you’re perpetually zonked by chronic illness, you quickly attune yourself to the fine art of maximizing efficiency.)

Given that dream, logic would dictate that, in addition to re-familiarizing myself with the medium as a consumer, I’d also be angling to learn the business from the inside out: i.e., getting a staff job on an existing television show. Any television show.

Only I’m not. And neither is Jan. And if we were on the fence about it before—which maybe I was, since, let’s face it, TV is a really well-paying gig and I really understand the freedom that money provides—all it took was one day in the Quaalude of a sitcom spec-writing class we’re taking to convince me that writing on someone else’s show is not something I can pursue with the laser-like focus one needs to in order to obtain such a cush gig.

Again, please understand: I am no TV snob. I both love my TV—free, basic and premium—and I fully recognize and honor the very real skills required to write for a pre-existing show. I can even understand how it might be fun…sometimes. After all, in addition to fat residual checks, you’re surrounded by smart, funny people all day and usually, there’s really good lunch. It’s a lot like advertising used to be back in the 1980’s, only you’re writing the stuff in between the commercials instead of the commercials themselves.

But it’s just not me; I was in advertising (which I fell into and then fell asleep in) and that wasn’t me, either. Writing copy and shooting commercials—even great copy and terrific commercials—felt like a simulacrum of the life I was supposed to lead—like being alive, versus really living.

If I fell into it—if I was plucked from amongst millions, if the smoked glass window of the limo rolled down and a long, well-manicured finger pointed at me me me to be lifted from obscurity to the high-profile, well-heeled life of a sitcom writer—well, hell, yeah, I’d do it. For a while, anyway. I may be crazy, but I’m not nuts.

But as for what I’ll hurl myself into? What I’ll go out on a limb for, contort myself for, put away childish things for? I’m afraid that for me, I’m looking at the big, nasty enchilada: my Truth. And it’s all—in this case, the creation of my own work, saleable or not—or nothing. You’re in or you’re out. Live free or die.

Because that soporific sitcom spec-writing class? It now follows hard on the heels of a pilot-writing class—the most kick-ass, off-the-charts-caffeinated class it’s been my pleasure to take for a long, long time. Same teacher, same room, totally different vibe. We’re a ragtag crew, this small mess of us with dreams of disseminating our dreams, but we are plugged into the juice and we will not take “no” for an answer. And man, oh, man, is that ever exciting to be around.

Will we all make it? Doubtful. Will any of us make it? Hard to say. The odds are certainly against us; each of us, I’m sure, has had no end of helpful advisors telling us that our time would be better spent traversing the traditional routes. But that’s not for us: the few…the proud…the insane. Keep your overhead low and your sights sky-high.

I may never again know what it’s like to stay in a great hotel or sign a mortgage stub or even order off a menu with impunity. I may be forever relegated to a boho lifestyle of purloined treats consumed off the premises with fellow losers.

But it’s okay. Because I’ve been alive and done those things.

And believe me, living is better…

xxx
c

TOPICS: celebrity, communicatrix, creativity, fame, limo analogy, self-development, Television, TV, writing.