I Wrote a Book!

On the auspicious occasion of National Author's Day I'm thrilled to announce my new book! The 1-Minute Writer (Adams Media/Simon & Schuster) is a book of creative writing prompts designed to easily bring writing into one's day to day life.

Inside, there are 396 short prompts that can be done in small, spare moments throughout the day. The prompts are divided into three sections (Observation, Imagination, and Memory) and each prompt theme has four variations: a one-minute prompt, a five-minute prompt, a ten-minute prompt, and a twenty-minute prompt. 

If you pre-order the book through Amazon, Indie Bound, and Barnes & Noble before December 31st and send me proof of purchase you’ll receive a free gift of Writer Goodies. To enter please see the details on the bottom of the page here.

AND…. there’s another giveaway too! I’ve put together a super cool Writer’s Toolkit valued at $89. Check out the video for details and instructions for how to enter (No purchase necessary. Open only to U.S. residents). Find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Don't Do What I Did

When I was a budding screenwriter I would do more than 20 revisions on a script before sending it to contests, managers, or production companies. Typically, professional screenwriters do 3 to 5 revisions before sending their work out. So even though I had to tack on some extra work for being a newbie, 20 revisions was total OVERKILL. It's no exaggeration to say that I spent years doing something that should've taken months. Instead of having 10 screenplays in my arsenal, I had 3. Some lessons I've learned in hindsight:

* Trying to make each work perfect is short-sighted. Instead of looking at your creative practice or creative career as a marathon, you're treating like a sprint. In doing so, you sacrifice the big picture for the small.

* The quest for perfection comes from a place of insecurity. We claim that we're only trying to "do our best," when really we're obsessively looking for flaws and missteps and systematically eradicating them in order to avoid the judgement of others.

* The most successful people abide by the rule of, "Done is better than perfect." Instead of giving in to the fear and mistrust of our own abilities, we have to retrain ourselves to do our best within the time, energy and expertise currently available then move on to the next so the work can continue to flow - and grow.

If you find yourself tending toward perfection more than completion take a look at your motivation. Is it driven by love or fear? If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't belabor my work. I'd have released it sooner rather than later and let it live on its own. Too many creative opportunities passed me by while I was searching for "perfection."

All Creativelike: 6 Questions with Children's Book Author Anika Denise

I recently had the great pleasure of producing and directing the above book trailer for Anika Denise, a wonderfully talented and wise children's book author. We had a blast filming her delightful family (and - extra bonus - there was copious amounts of chocolate cake!) Anika wrote about the production experience on her blog here, and I'm thrilled to feature her here today as she answers six questions about creativity and business.

1) Anika, can you tell us a little about the creative work you do? I'm a writer—mainly of children's books, although I also write poetry. Picture books were a first love, and I continue to enjoy reading them, writing them and collecting them. I love the interplay between words and illustrations, the perfectly placed page turn, the wide open wordless spread, the economy of language, the rhythm and pacing. As an art form, picture books are unique to me and endlessly fascinating. I'm not a visual artist, but I think visually—and write that way—so perhaps that's why I'm drawn to the them. I also write early chapter books and middle grade novels.

2) How would you define creativity? Creativity is channeling the gifts within you, outward. It's energy. It's how you enter the world. It can be derived from joy, pain, grief, bliss—whatever, but creativity to me is the essence of an individual, put forth. Something of the person is then recognizable in whatever he or she has created.

Conversely, I think our creations shape us. We understand ourselves a little more. We grow and change through them.

3) What are your daily and weekly habits and practices? I'd love to be able to answer this question with a more assured "this is what I do regularly," but my life doesn't work that way right now. I have three kids, one not yet in pre-school, I'm married to a freelance illustrator whose schedule can be erratic and demanding, so I work when I can, for as much time as I can manage. I have an informal bargain with myself to write at least five days a week (which I routinely break). My writer's life is unbalanced at best, consisting of long stretches of productivity followed by just as long periods of distraction. I think the key is, I understand that this is a temporary situation, that my schedule will normalize as my children grow older, and the time for a more stable writing routine will come. In short, I don't sweat it. I congratulate myself on being able to create among the chaos! If I do anything with regularity it is this: when inspiration strikes, I give over to it entirely and enjoy the process. I get outdoors for a little while every day. I try to get enough sleep. I read. Books are vital. They're the air I breathe.

4) How do you handle the balance between the creative and business ends of things? That's a very timely question. I'm in the midst of launching a new picture book and doing everything I can think of to publicize it. Publishers' marketing budgets are shrinking, which means more of the promotion falls to the author. So, at this particular moment, it feels like the business end is eclipsing the creative side, but again, it's about acceptance. Giving my book a better chance in the marketplace is a worthy endeavor, and although it pulls me away from writing, it's what I have to do. Also, I feel like marketing is creative work and try to view it that way. The book trailer we did, for instance, felt very much like making art to sell art. I love that.

5) Any advice for aspiring children's book authors? Read as much as you can. Keep writing and finish, even if you feel it's not perfect, or needs work. Finish the draft. Join the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and go to the conferences and local chapter events. Put yourself out there. Be fearless.

Practice, patience and perseverance rule the day in this business.

6) What's next for you? Next up is a picture book with HarperCollins Children's called, "Monster Trucks!" releasing in 2016. Until now, I've exclusively worked on books with my husband Chris. This will be the first one I do with a different illustrator, so it's a new experience for me. Nate Wragg, a visual development artist for Pixar, has signed on to illustrate. I'm excited to see how he brings it to life. Chris and I have another picture book in the works, and I continue to slowly develop longer works of fiction that I hope to have under contract soon. I just need to follow my own advice: be brave, and finish.

Anika Denise is the author of “Baking Day at Grandma’s,” (Philomel, 2014) “Bella and Stella Come Home,” (Philomel, 2010) and “Pigs Love Potatoes” (Philomel, 2007.) In 2016, HarperCollins Children’s Books will release her forthcoming title, “Monster Trucks!” Her books have been praised by Parents’ Choice Foundation, The Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and the Rhode Island Center for the Book. She lives with her husband and three daughters in Barrington, Rhode Island. For more information about Anika’s books, visit her website.

All Creativelike: An Interview with Poet Jennifer Lighty

There is not much I can say about my poet friend Jennifer Lighty that wouldn't be revealed by reading her words below - she is deeply soulful, articulate, dedicated, and a brilliant wordsmith. I thank my lucky stars for being in her bright, celestial orbit.

How do you define creativity? My hands in motion on this keyboard typing letters that signify sounds remembered in my body—that is creativity. And these letters that merge into words that my brain identifies with subjects seen, tasted, touched, smelled and heard, sounds I first heard when I floated in the dark inside my mother’s body.

We invent stories to make sense out of chaos, or to praise it, depending on which archetypal deity calls to our souls. We create. (Eros, the Greek god of desire and creativity was the son of the goddess Chaos.) When we create we reach into the dark, the womb, into this mystery, and manifest what we receive in the physical world.

Creativity is an everyday miracle like being born.

Tell me about the first poem you remember writing, or first experience where you felt you were "on" to something with words. The first poem I remember writing was in 4th grade. I was 10 years old. It was a haiku:

The old dead tree rocked dangerously, and with one last groan fell to the ground.

I remember being very pleased with it. I have no idea where it came from or what I felt like writing it, but I do remember afterwards that I knew I was a poet. I wanted to be a writer even before then, from the time before I could read. I wanted to read so badly I memorized books that my mother read aloud to me and pretended to read them as I turned the pages.

How does a poem get birthed? Are there stages as with a human pregnancy and birth? For me, there is a masculine and feminine element involved in the creation of a poem. It’s a matter of becoming actively receptive, of being open to both what is in my immediate environment and what wants to come through me from other realms.

Words feel so good when they rub together in certain ways! If I have an idea I want to convey without an image, I search for an image until I find one that feels right. It needs to be intelligible and pleasurable, by pleasurable I mean sound good. I do have to be careful of this though, I have such an attraction to beauty that I have sometimes done a disservice to my subjects by making them sound beautiful when they were not at all. In those cases it’s a matter of finding sounds that match the experience, ugly or harsh sounds, or playing with the punctuation or line break to break the rhythm up.

I also pay attention to where silence wants to enter the poem. Sometimes these silences say even more than the words.

I pay attention to all of these things—every word, line break, comma, period, italics, question mark—every mark on the page, in fact. I am getting better at hearing the line—where to break it so that it has the greatest emotional impact, because I have become better at hearing my own voice, and not the voices of all the other poets I’ve read or heard.

You work is deeply connected to both the earth and spirit. Can you talk about walking between these worlds and what inspires you? It’s not a matter of walking between earth and spirit for me, they are the same world. I am definitely inspired by Earth’s beauty. I want to praise that beauty. I also want to lament what we have lost and are losing as you read these words.

I also want to create a space for people to grieve their personal losses.

I wrote a poem about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown in which the natural world acts as a mirror for the loss of those children and teachers. It takes place on the oyster farm where I was working the day of the shooting and everything I saw that day—egrets, crabs, mud, sun, shells—was so deeply infused with the symbolic the earth became a mirror of what had happened, and a prayer to the spirit world to help us get through such a terrible tragedy.

I am inspired to create something as elegant and simple and gracious as an egret at the edge of a marsh. I want my evocation of that egret to open someone’s heart to a long-suppressed well of grief inside themselves. I want to write poems that help people grieve and become more fully present to the world, more compassionate for having suffered, and I know this is saying a lot—I want my poems, through the process I’ve just described, to inspire people to make choices that don’t harm themselves or Earth. I have a dread of being grandiose (probably because I am), but I agree with William Carlos Williams that, “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

You not only write poems, but also books, blog posts, and articles. How do you determine which form the words want to be? It’s a matter of listening and intention. Sometimes the two merge—those are the best times. With a blog post, I intend. If I’m lucky I may come up with some poetic words, too! The three novels I wrote probably could have been written as short stories or poems, saving me many years worth of labor—I was just really fixated on the idea of being a famous novelist so I kept trying. My articles and essays are lyrical, but are also attempts to convey information or a story. This is also possible in a poem by the way, sometimes I just prefer the art of the sentence over the art of the line.

Poetry, the art of the line, is my greatest love because poetry has taught me to listen, not just to what I want to hear, but to what the Irish poet-hero Finn McCool learned to hear, “the music of what is.” When I listen to what is, I know what form the words want to be.

What's the most exhilarating part of writing? The most exhilarating part of writing is when I enter into a state of being unaware of time.

What's the most challenging part of writing? The most challenging is letting go of my preconceptions, fears, and desires and letting the words tell me what they want. I call it finding the poem within the poem. I think this is easier for a lot of other writers, but for me it takes a lot of digging. Part of this is because I have a fear of being exposed, so it’s difficult for me to be vulnerable, which has led to some dishonest moments in past poems. I still have those dishonest moments, but I am better at catching them and work through them now.

I met the poet Ellen Bass this past winter. She writes with what I would call no filter about her personal life. I asked her what her relationship was like with her inner editor. Did she have to get past this editor to expose so much of herself? Her reply was enlightening and helpful—and humble. She replied that we’re all human and we’re all going through the same things. Those words helped me let go of a lot of ego and write more freely about myself, which ironically has helped me let go of the driving need to write about past personal traumas.

I don’t need to be witnessed in the same way any more, I witnessed myself. My vision has turned outwards.

Any daily or weekly habits and practices? I’m not good with routines, but I do write every day! I live in a stream of words and images that I try to write down as they occur. If I can’t give them my full attention at the moment, I tell them I will soon and ask them to please wait for me. I read all the time—poetry, fiction and non-fiction. And physical movement is an important part of my creative process—walking, dance, riding my bike, and yoga.

Advice for aspiring writers? That’s hard. There’s something about figuring it out for yourself as a writer that is just so important. I have an incredible teacher, a man named Fran Quinn. When I first started working with him it took me two years to finish one poem! This was after writing poems for 15 years or so. I was going crazy thinking I was the worst poet in the world, completely doubting myself. Finally, I started to have breakthroughs where I would understand some simple thing that would help my poems come closer to completion, and I would say to him, “Why didn’t you just tell me that a year ago?” He always laughed, somewhat demonically and certainly with delight.

He wanted me to understand it on my own because he knew then I would really understand it in my bones, the knowledge of where to break a line or when to use a four or three line stanza would come naturally to me because I had also learned how to set boundaries within myself. He was willing to be my guide in getting there, but I had to do the work.

So that, if you could call it advice, is my advice. Do the work on all levels. Let your poems and novels and essays teach you about yourself. What do you need to change within in order to bring them into the world?

If you listen deeply enough, if you are devoted and willing to work, they will not fail you. They want to be heard.

Jennifer Lighty is a poet and teacher living on Block Island, RI. Her poems and essays have been published in many journals such as The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Island Review, The North American Review, and Poet Lore. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the Beloit and for the Best New Poets 2014 anthology, and is the 2014 Merit Fellow in Poetry for the State of Rhode Island. Read more of her work and about her upcoming e-course developed to connect those on a creative path with earth-based spirituality on her website here.

All Creativelike: An Interview with Writer Daisy Abreu

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a fun, witty, talented college roommate who can rattle off the titles, actors, and songs from classic movies of the 1940's and 50's like nobody's business, but I was. That person is my friend and fellow writer Daisy Abreu, who has gone on to pursue writing with dogged determination and great passion, becoming published along the way. Below she doles out some solid wisdom about the act of putting pen to paper, and tells us how she's been exploring her Cuban-American roots in the process. How do you define creativity? I struggled with this one. For me, creativity is having a vision and figuring out how to make it work. I love to brainstorm because it pushes me to focus and everything else is out of my mind but the subject at hand.

When do you feel at your creative peak (whether it's times of day, seasons of the year, or otherwise)? Having time and space to work while I was at the Vermont Studio Center in October allowed me to look at my writing time as a full 24-hour period. I didn’t have outside obligations to use as excuses for not writing. During those four weeks, I found I was most productive in the late morning and early afternoon. That said, my favorite time to work is late at night. I feel more focused when everything outside my window is quiet.

Last we spoke you were writing about your Cuban heritage. I've heard some people say all storytelling is a search for identity. Does that ring true to you or not? Absolutely true. When I started working on my essay collection, I was working solely from my memories. I wrote what I remembered from my childhood, stories about being around my family and community. The deeper I went into those stories, the more I discovered about my family and myself. Even though I grew up in a community largely made up of families similar to my own, I uncovered so much working on the collection. Not just from research and reading and looking at old photos, but from talking to my peers about how we grew up. I did a series of interviews with former classmates for my third semester project (part of the requirement for graduation from the MFA program) and was surprised to learn how similar and dissimilar our experiences had been. The men and women I interviewed were all my age, and I assumed they had the same experience I did. I assumed they had all been born in the United States, all had siblings that were much older than they were, and that their parents had all fled Cuba in the same way. Only one person out of the four had an experience that was remotely similar to mine. I also believed I was the only one whose parents had been reluctant to share the stories of their journeys, but every person I spoke to said they had not been able to get their parents to talk until they were much older.

The essays also gave me an opportunity to go deeper in conversation with my siblings and my mother about their personal histories. My siblings helped me get my mom to talk about her life in Cuba. My sister sent me copies of documents I didn’t know existed: a telegram my father sent to an aunt who was already living in America, paperwork from their stay in Florida, all of this ephemera that made their story—my story—so much more real.

You received a master's degree in writing a few years ago. What were the pros and cons of that experience? Pros: spending time with other writers and being full-on word nerds for ten days at a time, learning how to talk about the work, learning how to give and accept constructive criticism, professors who pushed as much as they praised, being introduced to writers whose work I might not have discovered on my own, developing the discipline to come home and read and write after a full day at work.

Cons (challenges): trying to balance a full-time job with full-time schoolwork, pushing through the writing of difficult scenes (lots of writing and crying), getting past feeling like an imposter “Why am I doing this? What makes me think I can?”

What do you find to be the most exhilarating part of writing? Two things. First, reading a great sentence. The kind of sentence that makes you reach for a pen and a notecard so you can copy it down. There is a sense of possibility in that for me. It inspires me. Well, it makes me want to give up. But then it makes me want to work even harder.

I write in longhand when I am trying to sort out an idea or a scene. When I’m typing things up later, I sometimes come across a sentence I don’t remember writing, and I think it’s a good sentence. Not a great one necessarily, but a good one. That is exhilarating.

What do you find to be the most challenging part of writing? Not knowing where or how to start a piece, and allowing the not knowing to keep me from starting to work.

What are your goals this year with your creative work? To say “I’m a writer,” when people ask me what I do.  To get back to writing every day for more than one hour at a stretch. To send my work out and collect an awesome stack of rejections (and hopefully a few acceptances).

I’m also leaving my full-time job in two months to pursue freelance and contract work. Ultimately, I want to create a space for writers in New Haven that provides studios, opportunities for collaborations with other writers, workshops and classes, readings, and tutoring for students. That’s the big dream.

Any daily habits or routines? I carry index cards and a pen to write down questions I can use as prompts or passages from things I’m reading that I think are beautiful. I am not writing every day (yet), but I am reading every day, usually before bed, which is something I’ve done since I was very young.

Advice for aspiring writers? Share your work with other writers and be open to giving and receiving constructive criticism. Read your work in public every chance you get. Keep reading. Keep writing.

DCA photo by Chris Randall

Daisy Christina Abreu is a first generation Cuban-American born and raised in West New York, New Jersey. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Hartford, and an MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University where she served as co-editor of creative non-fiction for the online literary journal, Mason's Road. Her work has been published in the online journal Label Me Latina and The Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Arts Paper. Daisy lives in New Haven, Connecticut. She can be reached by email at daisycabreu@gmail.com or via her blog here. Top photo by Matthew J. Feiner. Bio pic by Chris Randall.

Eleven Things I Know About Writing

It occurred to me this week that I haven't said nearly enough about writers and writing on the blog.

Perhaps that's because I find the how's and what's of the writing process a tricky thing to identify and nail down. How each one of us engages with this strange human act of trying to accurately convey our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas with written language is as varied as our own backgrounds. That said, I've been stringing words together for almost as long as I've been alive, and there are a few things I've learned about the process.

1) It's much more than crafting words into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages. The writing process is akin to the birthing process. There are stages of conception, gestation and birth. As with actual pregnancy, writing must first be conceived then be given time to grow. That time of growth includes note-taking, outlining, having imaginary conversations with characters, cultivating ideas, mulling over theme, and more. Though there's often not much tangible output during the gestation phase, it must be considered as important as the actual writing. In fact, I consider that stage to be part of the writing process. Allow your creative writing the time and space it needs on the front end and you'll have a more fruitful writing experience overall.

2) The inner editor is the ultimate frenemy. Having a solid inner editor is hugely important for crafting a tight work, but if you can't turn that voice off while you're writing, your work's in danger. The editor should always be in service to the writer, not the other way around. That means, most importantly, when you're writing a first draft, don't re-read and tweak as you go along. Allow the work to be birthed in all of its messy glory before trying to fix it. Do your best to be a writer when you're writing and an editor when you're editing.

3) Everything has a beginning, middle, and end. We all know that stories have a beginning, middle and end, but so do chapters, paragraphs and sentences. When you keep this in mind at every stage of writing you can craft work that feels whole and solid to the readers. Rereading and editing with beginnings, middles and ends in mind also helps you identify where there may be holes or flaws in the work.

4)  It will cause pain. There are many famous quotes about the pain of writing. Dorothy Parker's is among my favorites, "I hate writing, I love having written." I don't know why writing can cause us so much pain at times, I just know that it does. The pain is not an indication of a person's ability as a writer. It's merely a by-product of the process. Don't let pain stop you if you have something to say.

5) Let it be bad when it's bad.  We've all been there, that place where we reread what we've written and think, "God, that's bad." One of the worst things you can do as a writer is to allow bad writing to stop you in your tracks or derail your project. The more you do this the more you know that bad writing is inevitable. Since, as they say, "all writing is rewriting," there is no need to concern yourself with bad writing. Let it be. It will get weeded out later. For now, just be glad that you're savvy enough to know when something's bad. The real problem occurs when you don't.

6) Passion requires protection. Passion is the engine that drives good writing, whether it be passion for a particular subject matter, for the story or for the act of writing itself. When we spend too much time doing things like looking at industry statistics, studying a publishing model, comparing ourselves to others, trying to get more money, etc. we can cause our passion to dwindle. And when our passion starts to dwindle, we're on a slippery slope because this is hard work and, oftentimes, we're not getting compensated for it. What else do we have then but passion? So, do whatever you can to protect it even, and especially, if that means shutting the outside world out for periods of time.

7) Know the destination at the beginning of the journey. For those who want to make a living as a writer it's important to think about what that end game looks like. Do you want to be published in a literary magazine or have your trade paperbacks in bookstores? Do you want to be respected by a small niche of peers in your area of expertise or sell a million copies of an e-book? Probably it's a combination of many of those things. The trick is to have an idea of what you want going into to it. Why? Because writing is hard, time-consuming work and when you do it you actively disregard other things in life that you could be doing like, you know, crocheting, or cooking, or sleeping, or hanging out with friends. When you know the destination on the front end it will save you time and energy along the way and keep you focused on what projects, bodies of work, themes and opportunities are important. Simply put, the destination informs the journey.

8) Don't share until your ready. I never share a project when it's in the first draft phase. Ever. Feedback in the first draft stage can very easily derail a project since first drafts, by their very nature, need a lot of work. Do what you can to get the work to a solid point before sharing with others. Feedback should always only move you forward, never prevent you from moving ahead.

9) Share as much as you can. Once the work is ready, however, share it far and wide. The best way to revise and tighten your work is to find the commonality between the voices giving you feedback. The more voices you have, the better. Beyond that sharing oneself in this way is a brave thing to do, and bravery requires practice. Plus, you're writing this work for others to enjoy, aren't you? So don't be shy. Get it out there and let them enjoy it!

10) The more you write the less precious your work becomes. It's easy to get crushed when someone doesn't respond enthusiastically to something you've written, particularly when you don't have many works under your belt. When you write a lot and often each piece becomes slightly less precious. When the work is beloved but not precious it's easier to look at it more objectively.

11) Not everything is meant to live on and on. This goes hand in hand with #10. The more you write the more you realize (usually in hindsight) that some works are practice works, some are writing samples, and others, if we're lucky, are meant to live on as published works. It takes time and space to fully realize a work's destiny, but the more you do it the more you'll make peace with the fact that some of your babies were born only for your own pleasure and enjoyment. Embrace this fact and keep on writing.

Photo by E. Streit.

Guest Post: How an Artist and Her Typewriter Got National Media Attention

So happy to have this lovely guest post today from writer, artist and blogger Anja Notanja. Anja is not only talented, but exceedingly clever. Read on to find out how a simple Facebook post kicked off a chain of events that got Anja national media attention.After graduating with a degree in printmaking and creative writing, I spent a year as a puppet. When I say 'puppet,' I mean I worked at a puppet theater executing ideas that were not my own. When I say 'executing,' I mean consistently maiming my duties: carving too much foam off and getting malnourished horse legs, wasting yards of expensive theater tape, and failing to halt a riot of 5-year-olds before they knocked over the set during a production featuring a bath scene with real soap bubbles. My complete lack of competence and my repressed contrary opinions on what should be done made me miserable in spite of the exciting papier-mâché atmosphere and its many drawers jammed with eyeballs. I quit, moved back to my hometown and passed the next two years crocheting gnome hats and nose warmers while feeling as bland as a plain baked potato, cold from the fridge.

This time last year I was ready to toss all my yarn down the laundry chute and never visit the basement ever again. I had an urge to do solo improv in front of a live audience. So, like most troubled souls of this era I went to Facebook and composed a post: "Hire me to come to your birthday parties to write on-the-spot love letters, insult letters, letters of recommendation, stories, poetry and other requests from my typewriter." Somehow a local journalist came across it and asked me about my business. What business?! I swiftly invented a description and she published it online. I got a gig. I got a gig from a gig. I got a pig from another gig (no, I didn't really), and soon enough the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel slapped me on their front page.

This July I released an online store for my "prosettes," something I did not even know would exist half a year earlier, but for which I was getting an overwhelming amount of orders. Weeks ago, I appeared on live television and insulted the Minnesota Vikings on behalf of the Packers even though I don't give the slightest fig about football. The Associated Press released a video of what is now called "La Prosette" that made its way to the front page of MSN, Yahoo, AOL and USA Today. And my grandma even clipped a hardcopy of it from her small town's newspaper.

For years I've been making and promoting projects, so I've been wondering why people seem to especially dig this one. I've figured that I am doing a creative writing-based project and so journalists have an intrinsic interest in it. If you do something the press wishes they could be doing, they will likely cover you. In fact, the first journalist who covered me was so interested, that she's begun typing custom haikus for patrons from a typewriter. Another of these journalists has ordered a prosette from me four times in the past month.

This project is something I've had to invent from nothing but a wisp of my own desire. Yes, there are other "performing typists" out there, but none of them write "prosettes," or write exactly what I do. It's required equal persistence and foolishness to put myself out where strangers can find me and commission me to insult their ex-lover, or compose a letter from someone dear to them who's died. Serving the public as artist, spokesperson and therapist, it seems I'm constantly needed. Yesterday my grocer asked me to write a polite reminder for her neighbors to shovel their walks.

I am useful and I am peculiar; and I am at last fully employed as me.

Anja Notanja received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2009. She is currently an artist-in-resident at In Tandem Theatre and a writer-in-residence at Renaissance Theaterworks, both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can order a custom "prosette" from her on her website, La Prosette.

All Creativelike: Interview with Author Bianca Turetsky

Back when I was a local arts and culture reporter, my editor asked me to cover a book signing. The author had just published her first novel, and was going to be talking about it at a little restaurant down the street, popular with the so-called "blue hair" crowd. I had expected an older, self-published Sunday afternoon writer. Instead I found a gorgeous, hip, young New York writer who just happened to have local roots. Truthfully, it's not hard to be taken with Bianca's style, charm and genuine nature, all of which are evident in her delightful series about young Louise Lambert.

Three books later, Bianca has just quit her day job (as, oh, Julian Schnabel's assistant) and she continues to forge a solid path in the world of middle grade fiction.

Bianca, how do you define creativity? To me creativity is taking your own odd and unique outlook of the world and making something new and truly your own from it. It could be a poem or a pie. It’s being open to new things; it’s the opposite of fear.

How did you get started as a writer? I think, as is the case with many writers, I’ve just always written. Whether it was a diary or short little stories and poems when I was younger, to finally a full-length novel. I studied English Literature at Tufts, and have always had my head in a book from before I could even read. I remember specifically being about 4 years old and pretending to read books to impress my parents' friends. Pretty sure they were upside down half the time.

What's your relationship to inspiration? Some writers say it's a must; some say, "Write regardless." Oh wow, I think the image of the inspired writer is such a myth!  Most of my writer friends actually find the process of writing to be really painful and slow, but you just have to do it every day regardless. Although there are really beautiful moments where inspiration strikes and an hour or two will go by, and you’ll look down and wonder how those words got on the page. That’s what I live for. That happens about 2% of the time.

Tell me briefly about the journey from scribbled manuscript to published book. My journey at the time felt very unique, but I guess it’s a pretty typical story. I wrote the first Time-Traveling Fashionista book out of love with no guarantee it would become anything more than a Word doc. Then, I found a really lovely agent, and they ultimately sold the book (which had gone through several rounds of revisions at this point) to a wonderful editor at Little, Brown named Cindy Eagan.

Fashion plays a big role in your work. What is it about fashion you love so much? I love the escape and fantasy element of it. Growing up in a small suburban town I devoured fashion magazines and loved imagining these glamorous other worlds that seemed so different from my own reality. And more simply, I like the way putting on a really beautiful dress can totally transform your day.

You do a lot of research for each book. Where do you go? How do you keep track of it all? The research part has been really fun. I got to go to Versailles to study Marie Antoinette! I went to a lot of museums, libraries, read history books and watched a ton of documentaries. I’m super organized with my notes and sources. I’m one of those people who actually enjoys making lists for fun. One of the good traits of being a Virgo, I guess!

You just quit your job to be a full-time writer. Congrats! How does it feel? It’s exhilarating and a bit terrifying to not have the safety net of a full-time job. But I finally (after 3 books!) have been able to call myself a writer, and to give myself the space and time to just write. It’s something I’ve wanted my whole life, and I sometimes have to pinch myself that it’s actually happened.

Any daily habits or practices? To be honest, I’m still figuring it out. When I had a job, I had a much shorter window to write (about 2 hours before work), so I was in a very strict routine. Now I feel like I have all day, so it’s a lot easier to procrastinate and get distracted. My apartment has never been cleaner! But I do feel like it’s vital to write every day. It’s a job, and you have to show up. You’re not accountable to anyone but yourself, and that’s a huge responsibility and blessing.

Lastly, any advice for aspiring authors? It sounds so boring, but read and write as much as you can. Growing up, I read every type of book I could get my hands on, fiction, biographies, mysteries, poetry… And it’s good to get into the practice of writing every day, whether it’s the book you’re working on or a journal or blog post. Also, one thing that helped me finish my manuscript was taking a class with local writers (or you can form your own writer’s group). It’s great to have deadlines and get constructive feedback on your work.

Bianca Turetsky is the author of the Time-Traveling Fashionista series, which has been translated into nine languages. After graduating from Tufts University, Bianca began working for artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel. She managed his studio for the past 11 years and was his assistant on the Academy Award-nominated film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. She lives in a cozy studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York, that houses her very extensive and much-loved vintage collection. More info about Bianca and her books can be found on her website.

One Big Way Artists Fail at Self-Care

My friend writes a column for a quarterly newsletter. The column profiles a notable member of the organization she's writing for. To prep for it she interviews the person by phone, emails with them and extensively researches their background. It takes hours of work, and that's all before getting down to the nitty-gritty of writing. The last time I called, it took a few days for her to get back to me. When she finally did, she was decompressing from the frantic scramble of submitting the column just before deadline. Turns out the subject had only scheduled their interview two days before her own deadline. Something, my friend, noted was typical.

"I give them a five-week time period to connect with me and they always wait until the last day."

So I asked the question that I felt was most obvious, "Why would you give them a deadline that ends just two days before your own?"

She laughed when I asked her that. In fact, she'd never thought about it doing it differently.

You see, my friend wasn't thinking about herself and her own deadline. She was focused on giving each person the most amount of time possible to get their materials to her. In doing so, she neglected to honor her own needs that would allow her to write the column without being rushed.

This is one of the biggest ways artists fail at taking care of themselves, by being overly accommodating to others.

What's worse is that most often the other person doesn't even realize you are accommodating them. Nothing like bending over backwards for someone who isn't aware of it!

So why is this a big deal? Because time after time I've seen artists get burnt out by over-giving. I've been there myself. There are a number of reasons we do this - from learned behavior to fear of potential conflict - and all those reasons end up ultimately coming back to bite us in the proverbial butt.

In the instance of my friend, this was to be the last column she wrote for the organization. The process exasperated her. Oh, and did I mention that this was volunteer work? OUCH.

Friends, please value your time and create boundaries that allow you to flourish. It will serve everyone in the long run. We need our artists more than ever on the planet. Self-care starts with the individual. The better we get at honoring our own creative needs, the more ultimate good we can do for the world.

The Book That's Been with Me Since Childhood

I woke up thinking about this book today. I haven't read it in a while, but "Could Be Worse!" is the only surviving book of my wee childhood years. My copy of is yellowed, stained and crinkled, as many beloved books end up being. The story is about two kids whose grandfather has a standard one-liner, "Could be worse." No matter what they say, his response is, "Could be worse."

One day Grandpa overhears the kids talking about how he never has anything interesting to say, so the next morning he breaks their ho-hum routine to tell them an outrageous story of what happened to him the night before, how he got carried off by a giant bird, dropped in the snowy mountains, became stuck in a giant snowball, hitched a ride on a piece of toast, and other fantastical things. The punchline, of course, when he's done telling the story is the kids' response: "Could be worse!"

This was the first book I ever read that had a clear set-up and pay-off. Probably also the first book I read with a circular narrative. Both of those literary constructs still intrigue me as a writer to this day. More than anything, though, what stuck with me over the years about "Could be Worse!" is the message. It's really almost always true in life that things could actually be worse. And, keeping that in mind allows us a more joyful perspective on life. There's a sort of built-in gratitude that comes with that sentiment.

The Most Important Thing I Know About Creativity

One time, many years ago, my friend's seven year-old son was taking a bath and began to scream for his mother. She ran in to find him with a frantic look on his face. "Mom, I need paper and a pen! I feel a poem coming on!"

Understanding the importance of this request, my friend dashed to the other room, grabbed the requested materials, and began to transcribe the poem as it tumbled from her son's lips.

I've always loved this story. Not just for the characters involved - and, trust me, they are characters - but for the truth it tells about the creative process. Our creations are not made by us, so much as they come through us.

I had a similar experience when I was five years-old. My first poem came out of me in one solid lump, transcribed onto a white pad with a sky blue crayon. I can remember staring at it for a long time, feeling surprised. I remember thinking, "I didn't write this." And, I remember also thinking, "This is really good." I still have it memorized:

Oh, so high in the sky the birds fly.Down to the ground, and up with a bound, Oh, so high in the sky.

Not bad for a five year-old who had never taken a writing class, right?

I feel fortunate that this happened at such a young age. That experience holds a valuable lesson, one I return to again and again. It is the single most important thing I know about creativity: that if we step aside and allow ourselves to become a clear channel the work will flow through us. The act of creation will be more like watching a film unfold and less like a wrestling match where two opponents beat the hell out of one another and no one's quite sure who's going to win.

If you find yourself feeling frustrated, stuck or joyless in the creative process, return to this simple place of allowing. Let the creation reveal itself.