Cynthia Morris's Blog, page 38

She wants to write more…

Daily painting #25 of 100, watercolor and ink on paper, 8″ x 8″. She wants to write what she wants to write. She wants her work to be more meaningful and have a positive impact.

And she wants to play the ukulele, so she bought one.

View all my paintings on Instagram.

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Sunday in my Paris art studio

Some bright sunlight today and my Paris art studio. It’s been a lovely Sunday working on paintings and illustrations and gathering ideas on paper. I hope Sunday is bright with your creativity too!

Photo taken at: Paris, France

View in Instagram ⇒

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So many people

These days I’m practicing drawing people, especially faces. In a class I’m taking at Sketchbook Skool, drawing a face a day was one of the assignments, so I was right on track for getting lots of practice. Sometimes I get very overwhelmed when I think about how many people there are in the world. Every person holds a million stories.

All those stories! All the hopes, dreams, fears and lives that are changing every single minute. It makes my head spin. And my heart break. I will never know all those stories. I can only know my own and the stories and lives of a few people I know.

This piece is for all the people in the world. May we all have peace, love and a sense of home.

Photo taken at: Paris, France

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How to Sell Your Art Online by Cory Huff, illustrated by moi!

It’s a big day here! My advance reading copy of How to Sell Your Art Online arrived!

This book by Cory Huff  shares everything we need to know to make a success of our art online. I was honored and delighted to be the illustrator for this book. It was a great way to silence my inner critic who doubted my ability to make money from my art.

I took it as a sweet nudge from the universe that I was hired to illustrate a book all about how to make money from art.

How to Sell Your Art Online comes out on June 28th from Harper Design.

View in Instagram ⇒

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Living the artist’s life…what does that mean?

Sketching in Rome…out in the world in artist mode.

When people say they want to live ‘the writer’s life’, I suspect it’s a romanticized, abstract concept of what that means. My first book, Create Your Writer’s Life, was my effort to help people actually build a solid structure around writing so that the joy and satisfaction of writing infuses the rest of our lives.

Everyone’s ideal of their artist or writer life will be unique to them. You don’t have to run off to Paris or Bali to achieve your sense of living your writer or artist life. You can access this on a daily or weekly basis.

As I prepare for my upcoming two-month Paris trip, I’m thinking about this a lot. The focus of this trip is to live in Paris as an artist. That sounded a bit pretentious to me. So I challenged myself to go beyond the stereotypes to ask myself what I mean by ‘live as an artist’.

Going beyond the Hemingway/Picasso/Stein fantasy of sitting around in cafes gabbing with fellow artists all day, here’s what I came up with.

Flip the ratio of screen time and real-world time

The focus of my days will be on what I am making. When I am in the home office in Denver, my days are focused on working with my students and clients. I spend the bulk of my day in the office at my computer, and the remainder of my day in the studio or out capturing the WOW in my city.

Living the artist life in Paris means I will spend only a few hours a day online and the bulk of my days making art or exploring.

WAY: What about you? How could you tweak your screen time and real world ratio to feel more satisfaction as a writer or artist?

Shift the input

In the home office, much of the input I take in relates to being a better coach, businesswoman and writer. I seek support to develop better systems and ways to better serve my clients. This is how-to mode.

When I am in artist mode, my input shifts from how-to to inspirational. Input includes visits to museums and galleries, long walks of discovery, visits to boutiques and expos and coffee with friends and acquaintances.

The ratio of ‘known to new’ shifts and I take in a lot more new ideas or insights. This is vital for an artist or writer to keep ‘filling the well’.

WAY: What about you? What new input might serve you this summer?

Emphasize making

Of course, ‘life as an artist’ means that your primary focus is making art. Even if you have other priorities like a day job or family, your extra bandwidth side devoted to making works of art or writing.

As a coach, author and teacher, my emphasis is on serving my people. My activities are geared toward helping them achieve their creative, personal and professional goals.

When I am in artist mode, my emphasis is on making, not serving. I am in maker mode and I take the inspiration I receive and process it in my art. The emphasis is on originality and on developing my art skills.

For my upcoming trip to Paris, I’ve outlined several projects. I will be making daily Paris WOW videos. (Subscribe to my YouTube Channel.)

I’m also participating in The 100 Day Project this year (starts April 19th) and my focus for that is the Daily WOW. I will be painting the things that move me to awe each and every day. My Paris paintings will build on what I’ve learned in the last few years about subject, color, line and emotion.

I will share behind-the-scenes peeks of the daily WOW on my Instagram channel. Follow me there.

I’m pre-selling a handful of these Paris paintings. You can be part of the fun and reserve your Paris painting here.

With these parameters for creating, it’s easier to have an emphasis on making.

WAY: What about you? What creative projects are on your plate now?

Ditch efficiency mode

When I am in the home office, I am focused on getting a ton of stuff done. My orientation is toward efficiency and on maximizing my time and efforts. I LOVE this work mode. Full work days that feel like I’ve accomplished something give me great satisfaction.

Artist mode is much less about getting stuff done. When I am away from the home office, I am removed from a lot of my usual obligations. I have fewer appointments and thus more space. With more space, I am able to reduce my agenda for effectiveness and open to serendipity more. When I am in Europe, I feel a shift away from my usual American drive. This is one of the reasons I like to go to Europe.

WAY: What about you? Where in your week can you make some space to be less efficient and more open?

Slow down

Related to more space is pace. When in the home office, I am often moving from task to task at a brisk clip. There’s a sense of urgency and engagement that I really love.

Outside the home office, this sense of urgency is reduced. I can slow down. I can wander. I remove the efficiency imperative. This is when serendipity happens and really fell the magic in life.

WAY: What about you? Which pace does your artist appreciate most?

Your artist’s life

Your idea of your creative life could look very different than mine. Here’s some homework for you if you choose to explore this. Free-write on this prompt:

These days, my writer/artist life looks like….

Free-write for 15 minutes, including as much detail as possible. What will you make? Who will you hang out with? What fuels you?

Wherever you are, whether it’s on an extended trip or sailing along the routine of your life at home, you can feel like you are living the artist or writer life you have dreamed of. It doesn’t have to an escape from the life you live now, but an integration of your artist and writer into your daily rhythms.

Paris painting sales

This trip will be different than any other I’ve taken. I will be with my friend Carl and we will focus our days on our art-making and well-filling.

I’m at a new creative edge where I want to push my painting further. I will challenge myself and be open to new associations and ways of making art. I’m excited and I admit, a bit nervous.

To bring you along and to challenge myself even more, I’m pre-selling a series of Paris paintings. I’ve done this several times and love how it pushes me further and connects me with my collectors.

These are available for pre-sale for a limited time. If you’d like to be part of the Paris joy, pre-order your painting now. Be sure to select the category you want, and if you have a suggestion for me leave a note in the order form. I can’t guarantee I will incorporate your suggestion, but I will enjoy hearing your thoughts.

Get your Paris painting now, because there are a limited number of paintings available and sales close soon.

 

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Try this approach for a solid writing habit

This Blue Bottle cappuccino in San Francisco is just right and gorgeous too!

A perfect cappuccino has an equal proportion of espresso, milk and foam. Some American coffee shops don’t understand the importance of this ratio and they serve cappuccino in larger sizes. Once you add more milk, it’s no longer a cappuccino. It’s a latte. Not. The. Same.

Our creative work can get out of proportion, too. Some of us love to plan and we can spend too much time (over)thinking our project. We outline, we flesh out the outline, we research. We think we can ‘think’ our way to the writing. Our big, beautiful minds trick us into thinking that the writing is happening in the planning.

The problem with over-planning: it can rob the joy of our writing and when we go to draft the book or the blog post, we have lost interest. We’ve spent all our creative energy in the planning phase and feel done with it. Writing becomes a real drag and we resist it and procrastinate and end up miserable.

On the flip side, sometimes we don’t plan enough. We sit down to write and….nothing. We haven’t thought through our idea enough, so we’re faced with the blank page and its attendant insecurities and fears. We may get out a few meandering lines, but we quickly forget what inspired us to write in the first place.

Like the cappuccino, it’s all about proportion. I love planning and I love flowing. In my 22 years of writing, I have figured out the perfect blend so that I can get my books, proposals and articles done with a sense of focus and ease.

What about you? Do you feel a good blend of planning and flow? If so, hooray! If not, read on for a few suggestions on how to perfect the plan/flow balance.

Plan

You can plan along any number of structures. Types of writing and deadlines are two common ways we plan.

Types of writing could include:

blog posts
newsletter articles
book chapters
short stories
poems

Deadlines could include:

your publishing schedule
a challenge series (writing daily for 30 days)

When I plan my newsletter articles (which also serve as blog posts), here’s how I plan:

I know when I need to send out my newsletters. By using the calendar to lay out several months’ worth of articles, I am able to see how the pieces I write align with the season and with what I want to share with you.

Having these rough ideas planned out gives me a sense of ease and trust. I know what I want to write, I know when I need to write it, and I feel a sense of focus.

Does your current planning model work for you? Do you plan your writing by deadline, by subject or type of writing?

Flow 

Flow feels great

Once the planning is done, it’s time to actually get the writing down.

When I have my ideas in a list, the seeds are germinating. The initial idea is there, and in the back of my mind, I massage the seed. I think about specific stories I can tell to illustrate my point. I look for usefulness, to make sure the ideas are relevant to you. I dig deep to make sure the pieces are meaningful to me.

I call this time ‘off keyboard time’. We’re gently considering what we will write when we’re away from the keyboard. It’s very organic and as you have probably experienced, doesn’t require much focused thought.

Then comes the real flow.

I use the free-writing method to get into the flow of writing my ideas down. I set a timer for 15 minutes, grab one of my ideas as a prompt, and let rip.

You’ve heard me talk about free-writing before, but to remind you, at this point, it’s about getting your words out on the page. No worries about orderliness, correctness or even if the writing is good.

If you do this consistently, say, every day, you will have accrued a good amount of writing. You will have mastered your perfect blend of planning and flowing.

And that feels as good as the perfect cappuccino with the right blend of milk and coffee. I think I’ll go have one right now….

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Happy Monday from the Original Impulse office!

Because it’s Monday and I am working in the home office, I thought it might be fun to share a peek into where I work. Working on my newsletter, enrolling students into my online writing class, Free-Write Fling and prepping my upcoming Paris art trip. I love variety! What are you working in this fine Monday?

View in Instagram ⇒

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Book Recommendation: Clearing Emotional Clutter

We all know what clutter is – the random stuff in our environment that may not be serving any purpose but to…well, distract us from our purpose. The popularity of Marie Kendo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, indicates how much we recognize this need to clean up our act.

But what about our inner clutter? Donald Altman’s book, Clearing Emotional Clutter, shows us that often our internal world is fraught with old emotional patterns that prevent us from enjoying the present.

We know that we’re often ‘stuck’. We like to cite what I call ‘fake excuses’ – lack of time, money and energy – for the reasons we aren’t creating as much as we’d like. But as a coach, I’ve seen that these are just surface issues, and it’s deeper things – old thought patterns and beliefs – that really prevent us from being the creative dynamos we want to be.

Clearing Emotional Clutter shows us Buddhist-based steps toward mindfully clearing old stuff so we can get unstuck. It’s not a quick all-in-one fix like Marie’s Tidying Up method, but Altman points us to a process we can use to free ourselves up from inner clutter.

Hooray for that!

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Creative Quickie: Why bother?

Creativity: Why bother? It’s much easier to be a consumer than a creator. What do you get from making things?

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You CAN write the tough stuff

Do you avoid your writing? Maybe you have a long-standing project that’s been sitting on your shelf, making you feel stuck and frightened. Or perhaps you don’t have a project in mind but know you want to write…but you’re scared.

I get it! There are certain kinds of writing – proposals, requests, deeply honest personal writing – that are tough.

These days, there’s a lot of tough stuff on my writing plate. Sponsorship proposals. A book proposal for my illustrated book, Capture the WOW. This is scary stuff.

When I look at these to-write items, I tend to freeze up. I’ve seen this in my clients and students. We try too hard to look ‘professional’. We get all jargon-y and stiff. We lose the very vibrancy and authenticity that makes us and our ideas so compelling when we speak them.

This happened to me the other day. I was trying to incorporate the feedback my coach had given me on one of my proposals. Reading her words, my body drooped in despair and my stomach clenched with fear. My mind began doing mental flips as it sought escape…any escape. It was clearly time to check email and Facebook. Get another snack. Randomly re-pot a plant in the kitchen.

It sounds laughable but I suspect you have been there too! We often put this in the category of ‘lack of focus’ but it’s not really focus that’s the issue. It’s fear. We’re afraid, so we let our focus and commitment dissipate in the fog of insecurity and anxiety.

Luckily, I have an ally at the ready for when I get into this fear fog. My inner wise writer came to my rescue and set me straight.

“Just free-write it,” she said. “You know what to do.”

What a relief! I do know how to drive past these fears. I opened up a new document and just let my thoughts flow freely about the topic. It didn’t take long before I got the raw essence out onto the page and was able to sculpt it into something meaningful and good.

I took all the feedback she and my mastermind partners had given me and put it through this free-writing process. A few more design touches and I had sent the proposal out before 9 am Monday morning. What a relief!

For years, I have sworn by this free-writing process because I use it for every single thing I write. It saves my bacon when I am afraid, confused or simply unsure of what I really want to say.

I have been teaching this method since the mid-nineties and love how it helps people get into their writing groove. The students in my Free-Write Fling class experience so much freedom. When they write every day for 15 minutes, they learn a solid approach to overcome fear and. It’s a real joy to see them triumph over their inner critic in this way.

If you’re still held captive by your fear, I say it’s time to set yourself free and finally write what you want.

We’re gathering in the Free-Write Fling classroom in April. We won’t be doing this again until later in the year, so if you want to experience the freedom of free-writing in a group, consider joining us. This class makes the difficult – and the fun – writing much easier.

“I had been unable to write consistently in the past. In the Free-Write Fling, I felt supported in a way that allowed me to tap into the creativity and clarity within that was waiting to be released! Now I look forward to writing every day as a reward. I recommend the Free-Write Fling to anyone longing to explore their untapped potential.” – Lorna

Join us now for a sweet April full of your writing.

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