photo by Aunt Owwee

As a birthday present, I’m creating a website for my mom (a.k.a Mama Lisa). She’s really excited to have an online home, but unsure of what she wants that home to look like. A living room for close friends to hang out? A study that reveals all her projects and ideas? An art gallery?

This got me thinking about how we build our online platforms. I’m still working on my own, as my inspirations keep evolving. So to help out my mom and myself and anyone interested, I’ve created a little tour through a few online homes I quite like to visit.

I love to visit Matt Blair at Elsewise Media. In his own words, the blog:

…includes exercises that explore our senses and broaden our aesthetic perspective, short essays about my sources of inspiration over the years, quotes about the creative process, the occasional book review, articles that explore the life cycle of ideas, and my still-evolving thoughts on topics such as what we gain from thinking of creativity in terms of agriculture.

He also has an online scrapbook — a collection of the words, images, and ideas that fuel him. Matt’s sites are a constantly growing reflection of his ideas.

Gwen Bell gives us a lovely, intimate reflection of her life and her thoughts. Her blog is honest and welcoming, which inevitably bolsters her position as a consultant/speaker on using social web tools. In this way, her site seems to effortlessly mesh her life and work together into one engaging online home.

Betsey Merkel uses her online platform as a hub that links to all her online spaces — what she has written and said, what she has created, who she has worked with, and where she connects. It’s a map of her online presence, and surely a map of what she does offline as well.

Jeb Dickerson has some cool twists on his blog. A photo gallery that you can use to send e-cards (or actual postcards!). An archive of his older posts, tucked into a tab called “Chapter 1.”

Richard Reeve also makes great use of photos at Catskill Cottage Seed. Alongside his blog, he has some beautiful photo journals. (Incidentally, Jeb has worked wonders on blog design for both Richard and me — he’s responsible for the changes that keep popping up in my design here!).

Amy Sample Ward uses her site for blogging about her work (and passion) with nonprofits and online community-building — and the blog itself serves as a dynamic community of people who want to learn from each other. To complement her blog, she also offers presentations she has made, her publications, and an insight into what she’s reading. Her blog works wonderfully as a really friendly resource+community for anyone who intersects with her line of work.

Marianne Slevin‘s online home is the Secret Gallery’s blog. Here, she shows the paintings she is working on, her thoughts on the process, and the things on her mind. Looking through it makes you feel that you’re watching her work unfold; such thoughtful writing, such lovely photos of her work.

Jump into the comments and let me know about other people using their sites in funky ways…!

photo by ryuuji

As I write this post on a portable keyboard, staying at a flat in London with no internet, I’m becoming sharply aware of how a blog’s flow can be perfectly suited to the flow of life on the move. The willingness to allow ideas and impressions to unfold as they arrive, knowing that they can be reshaped and reconsidered as they enter new contexts and later times. This also made me keenly aware that I am still sometimes scared to allow Essential Prose to move forward in this way. I haven’t updated the blog in nearly two weeks, because every time I began a post, I was too overwhelmed by how much I wanted to say and how little time I had — and so I ended up writing nothing.

I’m reminded of how important it is to accept uncertainty if we want to learn from it — to allow thoughts and ideas to unfold on the page, instead of only simmering inside my mind. To expose them to the eyes and breath of other people, to test the edges of my own mind as the ideas give birth to voice.

In the spirit of respecting this process of unfolding, I’m consciously deciding to allow myself to practice brevity while blogging during this trip. By allowing myself to not say “everything,” I hope that I’ll allow certain details — the small pictures — more time and space to expand. You’ll likely see a mix of posts short and long over the next several weeks — some will be written by me, and some will be guest posts that I’m very excited to share with you. I’m hoping that this trip will allow Essential Prose to try new modes of expression, as my own senses are filled with places new and old.

How do you balance the big picture and the small picture?

How do you think brevity and uncertainty can be allowed, without risking being superficial or neglectful?

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

I’ve been quite busy lately — full days, full brain. Although I’m getting a lot of things done, I’m also getting the nagging feeling that I’m doing them in a distracted way that keeps stunting my momentum. That nagging feeling has been building up for a few weeks, and when I finally stopped to think about where it came from, I knew the culprit immediately: multitasking.

Most of the time, multitasking feels pretty unproductive and unsatisfying. It sometimes makes me feel like I’m on a roll, sparking new connections and ideas, but that only works in small doses. If I’m constantly in that mode, a lot of good ideas fizzle into the deluge, drowned by a sea of seemingly fantastic ideas. When you’re doing tasks that don’t require much creative thinking, then it’s not as damaging — but our brains are still not well wired for switching modes. Every time you interrupt the article you’re writing to check how much time is left on that eBay auction, your brain scrambles to recalibrate its settings. All that scramble time takes serious chunks out of our actual doing and creating.

The obvious way to battle multitasking is to work on single tasks in blocks of time. I’m not going to start on a productivity spiel here, ’cause you’ve read it all before. Doing one thing at a time is, sadly, easier said than done — but I’m set on pushing myself back to that work habit, since I’ve wandered astray recently. But today I wanted to bring up my other weapon against mindless multitasking —  pen and paper.

I was going to write a whole post about the glories of pen and paper, but then I remembered that I already did that — about 11 months ago, as the 3rd post on this blog. When I wrote “When to Stick to the Basics,” I was new to blogging and social media in general, so it’s interesting to compare my feelings about technology now and then. Essentially, my feelings haven’t changed. I’m still a faithful lover of pen and paper for capturing the raw flow of ideas, and I’m still a firm believer in the marvels technology has to offer.

So today I am honoring the power of pen and paper to center the mind and build your momentum. As I’m consciously moving back toward old-fashioned “uni-tasking,” I’m taking regular breaks from the computer to map out ideas, take notes by hand, and just write. I’m not promising any immediate epiphanies or life-changing ideas, but it really is a modest wonder to watch your hands unfold the big picture. At the computer, I find that I’m much less likely to take a step back and take stock of where I stand and what I’m really doing. I’m much less likely to flesh out the connections and ideas that pull together the different threads I’m pursuing. But I also can’t ignore that technology provides the tools to push those ideas into the wild — to move forward, fill in the blanks, and collaborate. Both factors are essential to my flow, but I find that it’s too easy to get sucked into technology’s sexy gaze. It’s often only when we get blindsided by technology that we come back crawling to the classic, reliable good looks of pen and paper.

If you’re curious, you can head back in the archives to read “When to Stick to the Basics.” And if you just want to get started, go ahead — put the computer to sleep and let the ink flow reignite your momentum.

So, when do you choose paper over computer screen? Does paper help you uni-task, or are you laser-focused on the screen? Where is technology’s place in your creative flow?

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

photo by laihiu

Creativity on the go comes in a lot of different flavors. There’s the graphic designer parked in a Tokyo café with her Macbook Pro, then there’s the writer crammed into a Parisian metro seat scrawling nearly illegible notes in a journal. Creativity on the go isn’t only for exotic destinations, though — it might mean the comics you draw during the 45-minute train ride to work, or the tools you bring to your parents’ house during the family reunion.

Whether you’re a location-independent freelance writer or an illustrator who likes to travel, the key to getting creative things done on the go is to be clear in advance about what you want to accomplish. If you’re trying to churn out a final draft of an article, you’ll need a different backdrop and different tools than someone aiming to crank out a rough draft. Before traveling, I take some time to review my creative projects and figure out what stage I want to bring them to. I also make sure to pack the tools for recording random ideas and inspiration.

Stages of the Creative Process

Charlie Gilkey at Productive Flourishing has a great post describing the creative process and its four stages. Here’s a brief overview of what each stage involves:

1. Preparation: A painter in preparation mode might sketch in a local park. A photographer might study a photo essay, or review the photos taken during his last shoot.
2. Incubation: This stage requires limited distractions so you can process the ideas stemming from the preparation stage.
   
3. Illumination: This is when that idea — “the one” — bursts in your brain. When all that matters is pouring the idea onto the page.
4. Implementation: That short story starts forming on the page. You start writing the code for that beautiful web design you envisioned. You’re on location finally doing the photo shoot you’ve planned for weeks.

When you’re packing your tools for creating, it’s extremely helpful to understand which phase you’re in. You may not be able to accomplish every stage on the go — a painter may need his studio, for example — but I’m often amazed by what can be created during travels.

Being mobile during the preparation stage can be particularly valuable. When you’re absorbing new environments and new experiences, it’s almost inevitable that they’ll seep into your creative work. The incubation stage is a little trickier. If you’re on a train or strolling along the beach, it can be quite easy to be alone with your ideas and brainstorms. But if you’re dodging motorbikes and rushing through malls in Bangkok, you might have a tough time focusing on your ideas.

The illumination stage has a mind of its own — it’ll swoop down on you when you least expect it. I actually find that it nearly always hits me when I’m away from my computer and not sitting in front of a notepad. This is why it’s so important to pack your tools for recording these unexpected moments of illumination.

The implementation stage may include several phases, each one requiring a different mindset. For writers, this stage includes the various drafts of a text. For a photographer, there’s the actual snapping of photos and then there’s the editing. I think we can safely say that the implementation stage is usually followed by revisions and reworkings. The beginning of the implementation stage can often be accomplished on the move. There are exceptions, of course, but there are also many options for mobility. The later stages, including revision, often require more tools. They can be done while traveling, but require more preparation.

My Creative Toolbox

To give you an idea of how you can pack for creativity, here’s an explanation of my creative kit. Keep in mind that writing is my primary medium, enhanced by multimedia like photography, video, and audio recording.

iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard and Nokia 6600

This is the ultimate pair for freewriting and rough drafts when it’s too much to do by hand. The keyboard unfolds to a full-size keyboard (minus the row of number keys), and then you prop up a phone in the little attached stand. Type pages and pages of notes, then you can bluetooth it to a computer later. The iGo keyboard works with most phones or PDAs that have Palm OS or Symbian OS. I chose the old, chunky Nokia 6600 because it was affordable — and indestructible. You can check if your phone is compatible here. These tools are handy for different stages of the creative writing process, though not very useful for revision and final drafts. 

Canon Powershot G10

OK, this is really my boyfriend’s backup camera, but I steal it every chance I get. When I look at photos I’ve taken with the G10, I sometimes wonder if photography is my true calling — the quality of the camera is that good. You can set it up with automatic settings, or go manual. It even does RAW format, for you serious photographers out there.

MacBook Pro

I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said before — there’s a reason Macs have a cult following of creatives. This laptop can serve as my word processor, photo editor, audio studio, and video editing lab. I bring my laptop on trips when I need to do research, complete articles, or do frequent blog posts.

Lowepro Camera Bag

This bag is the perfect size when I’m not carrying my laptop. I can hold a camera, my bluetooth keyboard and notebooks, all without getting too bulky.

Ziploc® bags for books, notebooks, and electronics

These keep my notebooks from getting completely battered around in my bag. They also keep my notebooks and electronics dry — a crucial thing during rainy season in Thailand!

Scrivener

I won’t get deep into the software I use, but I want to point Mac users to Scrivener, which is excellent for undistracted writing. It works for novels, short stories, articles, books — you name it.

M-Audio Portable Recorder

This audio recorder is very good in most respects, but the battery’s endurance is not too impressive.

Edirol R-09 WAVE/MP3 Recorder

This is the audio recorder on my wish list…

Panasonic HDC-SD9 Camcorder

I’m super excited about the imminent arrival of my new camcorder. I won this camcorder in Melissa Pierce’s Life in Perpetual Beta contest. It’s very light but also high quality, so it’ll be perfect for traveling.

Moleskine plain notebook

I like the unruled pages so I can do mind maps and indulge my poor drawing skills. And write, of course.

Cheap Notebooks

Cheap notebooks are great for brainstorms and uncensored idea recording. Sometimes the Moleskine makes you feel that it should only contain worthy ideas — the cheap notebook, on the other hand, doesn’t care what kinda crap goes into it.

Pencil Case

My pencil case holds a couple ballpoints, gel pens, Sharpies, pencils, and markers.

Mini All-in-1 Memory Card Reader and USB Flash Drive

These are important for being able to upload and store photos and documents.

Last but not least, don’t forget your chargers!

I asked people on Twitter what tools were essential for mobile creativity. Cameras were a top choice:

What creative tools do you use when you’re on the move? I’d love to hear how your creative process plays out on the road.

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

[Note: Some of the links above are affiliate links. Given all the time I put into writing this article, I don't think that's unreasonable. If you're not cool with it, no pressure to click!]

photo by thejourney1972

This is the final part of a series on making your own creative mini-retreat. Today I will describe different ways to create tangible reminders of your vision and inspirations.

1. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Introduction

2. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Exploring a New Medium

3. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Journaling and Visioning

4. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Creating Tangible Inspiration

Exploring your values and your vision takes a lot of deep concentration and effort. When you gain certain insights, you feel pretty incredible afterwards — but how long does that feeling last? For some people, the feeling lingers strong. But for others, epiphanies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. A flash of insight, a rush when you think your life will deeply change, and then a whole lotta nothing the next morning.

So how do you make these insights linger? How do you make them wedge their way deep inside your chest?

One option is to follow up the visioning, journaling, or experimenting with an exercise in capturing those insights. By making a conscious effort to capture them, you’ll reinforce your awareness of the ideas and they will begin to seep into different areas of your life. The two methods that we’ll focus on for capturing those insights are vision boards and maps.

Vision Boards

Most of you have probably heard of vision boards — I believe The Secret had a strong hand in popularizing them. They were actually around long before The Secret, and since I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, I can’t promise my explanation will match up completely. But no matter, as my first rule for vision boards is that they can work however you want them to. These are the very basic instructions:

1. Find a piece of poster board, large paper, or whatever surface you choose.

2. Decide whether you’ll focus on a specific goal, a certain theme, or a broad, undefined vision. Don’t worry, you can change your mind as you go.

3. Glue on things that vividly represent your insights, goals, or vision.

All three steps are very flexible. For Step 1, you can choose a conventional surface, or you can choose to make a small vision booklet that fits in your purse. Whatever excites you most.

For Step 2, you may want to work with insights you gained from journaling or visioning exercises. For example, after I devoted time to making a list of my values, I used those values as the centerpiece of my vision board. If you want to focus on a certain theme, you could do a whole vision board about fitness, or about your various creative outlets. To do a broad, undefined vision, you can simply start gluing on things that evoke positive feelings and visions for you.

For Step 3, you can look in magazines, newspapers, old birthday cards, photos — any inspiring words and images you have lying around. The images can be literal (such as a photo of someone doing yoga to paste on your health & fitness board), or they can have a very specific connotation just for you. Gather a pile of clippings, then go through them again and decide which ones you still feel strongly about. You may also want to add your own artistic touches and writing. If you have a theme or goal in mind, put something at the center of the board that represents it. As for placing the rest of the images and words, just move things around until they feel right. This is your vision board, so it only has to speak to you.

Maps

Another option for making your insights tangible is to draw a map. Collage Diva has an in-depth post about personal map-making, which is worth checking out if you choose this route. I love the concept of drawing a map of your vision, because it seems like a perfectly sensible solution when you’re figuring out how to get to a new place. You can draw a map with landforms and bodies of water that represent different people, events, or ideas in your life. You can sketch your own silhouette and map out the things that you do, hear, feel, say… You can map out where you want to go, who you want to be — your options are vast.

If you choose to do a map, you’ll want to have a selection of arts and crafts tools at your side. I used handmade paper, oil pastels, markers and tissue paper for mine, but the Collage Diva post has ample supply ideas to choose from.

Again, you can be as literal or as abstract as you want. I ended up doing a map + vision board during my creative mini-retreat, because the combination suited me perfectly. Here’s what my creative process looked like:

And here’s a blurry photo of my map + vision board (even though I’m shy to show it in detail, I think it helps to get an idea of how it turned out):

Diving into Your Own Mini-Retreat

On a final note, before you dive into your own creative mini-retreat, remember that this day (or 5 hours, or 8 hours) is solely devoted to explorations within yourself. If that means cooking banana pancakes between exercises or dancing around the room to the Gipsy Kings for inspiration, by all means go ahead. Just make sure that you are fully engaged in whatever activity you’re doing — after all, this mini-retreat is about breaking free of the scattered mindset.

I’d love to hear about your ideas and plans for your own creative mini-retreat. How will you indulge your creativity?

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

photo by L_Joy

This is the third part in a series about making your own creative mini-retreat. Today we’ll explore another exercise you can try during your retreat — journaling and visioning projects.

1. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Introduction

2. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Exploring a New Medium

3. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Journaling and Visioning

4. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Creating Tangible Inspiration

Although many of us keep journals when we’re young, we sometimes ignore the therapeutic power of journaling. Sometimes it’s because we’re struggling just to keep up with all the things we have to write. Or maybe we forget that allowing your thoughts to form on the page has a surprisingly strong power to clarify. Whatever the reasons, if you haven’t indulged your journaling and visioning forces lately, this creative mini-retreat might be the time.

What is Visioning, Anyway?

Visioning is imagining. It’s imagining what you can create and where you can go. We tend to discredit the realm of imagination as we shed youth in favor of being “grown-ups.” And As Richard suggested in this insightful post on the imaginal, our society has not always subscribed to this discrediting.

Visioning allows you to imagine the future you want, and thereby create a foundation for later building a strategy. Visioning is also useful for understanding your values, which is crucial in accessing what truly matters to you. Instead of focusing on what is wrong with the present or what you lack, visioning puts you in an abundant mindset where you can imagine what could and can be.

What can I get out of this?

There are many areas you can explore with journaling and visioning. Some people prefer to start with no goal in mind, and some prefer to dive into a specific question. These questions are often seemingly simple, yet they are questions that many of us never ask ourselves directly — instead, we assume that we know that answers. It’s actually quite true that we often know the answers, but the problem is that they can be so buried that we never quite have a hold on them. Being aware of these answers is the point of journaling and visioning.

Now, I want to make a little disclaimer before I give you some question ideas. I hesitated to use the word “answers” in the paragraph above, because answers imply final, “right” answers — truths. I think the value in these exercises is to be constantly asking and challenging “truths,” because that is how we remain intensely aware of the directions we need to take. Through journaling and visioning, we can be honest with ourselves. When I say “answers,” I mean our strong, honest perspectives on that question. Instead of focusing on divine truths, we can focus on being aware of what matters most to us.

How to Imagine

Journaling and visioning don’t have fixed rules. It’s most important that you choose a mode of expression that feels organic, so there is no blockage when you’re trying to let those honest perspectives flood out. You can choose to do journaling, which simply means writing in a journal. Another option is Extreme Journaling, which is a no-holds-barred freewriting approach to journaling.

Visioning can take on a variety of forms. Today we’ll talk about forms that are conducive to accessing your visions and allowing your imagination to create freely. Although many of you may be thinking about “vision boards,” we’ll cover that tomorrow in a post about creating tangible inspiration. Today we’ll cover the organic process that allows you to create raw visioning.

Here are some ways to start visioning:

- Do a brainstorm of words and ideas: fill up a page or two just scribbling whatever comes to mind in response to your questions. You don’t have to write in sentences — feel free to scatter words all over the page.

- Make a mindmap (more on that here).

- Sketch out the visions that come to mind. Don’t worry about what the sketch looks like — if this medium feels natural, just go for it.

- Make lists: write as fast as you can, not stopping to censor the ideas and words you write. The editing can come later.

Questions You Can Ask Yourself

- What are my values? Not to go to an obvious source, but Steve Pavlina has straightforward exercises on this.

- If I were on the cover of a magazine one day, what would I want the feature article to say? Who would I be?

- How do I want to be remembered when I die? (Morbid and effective, but you can thank Jonathan Mead for that one, in Reclaim Your Dreams!)

- Who do I want to be deeply connected with?

- What drives me crazy — in the best possible way? What can I talk about for 45 minutes straight without running out of things to say?

- What could put me into a state of flow? What makes me forget about time?

- How do I define success?

- What deserves my focus and energy?

This list is by no means exhaustive, but these are some pretty big questions that can keep you going for a while. Ultimately, these exercises are about imagining and creating through vision. Tomorrow I’ll talk about different ways to create tangible, accessible reminders of your inspiration and visions.

When is the last time you appreciated your imagination? What are some hard, valuable questions you ask yourself?

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

photo by laurenmanning

This is the second part of a series on how to set up a mini-retreat that indulges and focuses your creativity. Today we’ll talk about exploring a new medium, which is a valuable exercise you can choose to do during your creative mini-retreat.

1. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Introduction

2. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Exploring a New Medium

3. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Journaling and Visioning

4. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Creating Tangible Inspiration

I’ve written before about consuming outside your normal medium in order to inspire new ideas. If you’re a photographer, for example, try reading fiction for inspiration. Today’s post is about creating outside your normal medium.

Exploring a new medium often feels exciting, awkward, or both. The combination of a need to perform well and a lack of experience leads to paralysis, leading a lot of people to drop the exercise after a first attempt. This post will walk you through it so you can keep the excitement and drop the awkwardness.

What Medium Should You Try?

Here are some two-dimensional visual media for all you writers and craftsy types to try:

- sketching

- painting

- collage-making

Those of you who regularly work in the media above should try crafting with your hands:

- clay

- papier mâché

- finger painting

And for those who normally shy away from the written word, here are some ideas:

- freewriting (writing without pausing to censor, edit, or rephrase yourself)

- journal writing

- poetry and writing exercises (see below)

If you choose to do poetry and writing exercises, here are a few ideas:

- Choose an object and begin to describe it for someone who has absolutely no idea what it is. If you choose a chair, describe its contours, its color, its feel, and how it’s used.

- Write a poem with alliteration: the loose luscious lions leapt leisurely to the left. Remember to focus on the sound and feel of the words, not whether or not you’re writing a masterpiece.

- Check out this resource for more ideas.

You certainly don’t have to choose one of the media listed above, but make sure that whatever you choose allows you to create something immediately, and allows you to create freely even without talent or prior experience. For example, photography doesn’t allow you to immediately build on what you’re creating (Polaroids are expensive, and we don’t want to be creating on Photoshop!), and knitting requires training and doesn’t allow you to improvise freely.

Stop Trying to Create Something Beautiful

This is the number one rule to keep in mind. You are exercising different muscles of your creativity — not trying to create something beautiful. If you do create something beautiful, that’s wonderful, but we’re going to concentrate on the act of creating more than the resulting creation.

Let me tell you the story of my own awkward-turned-exciting venture into a new medium.

I sat down to sketch with a couple different pencils and a little sketchpad, and I immediately felt really stilted. I was embarrassed by the juvenile sketches appearing on the page, and my pencil strokes felt wrong. I was about to abandon the exercise and go back to my laptop, but then I thought, “Who cares? No one’s watching.” The trick is to just let yourself feel stupid. No one else is going to see this, so who cares what shows up on the page? Once I adopted this attitude, my pencil flowed much more easily. This doesn’t mean I thought my drawings were any good, but they began to follow thought patterns.

I decided to sketch a path through wilderness that would reflect where I am and the directions I choose — if you think that sounds unbearably corny, bear with me. It was a basic drawing with fields, a hill, and a really big mountain that turned into a tree. Next to the tree there was an ocean, immensely full but that I hadn’t dared to jump in yet. The little figure that represented me was standing in the tree’s branches. As I continued drawing, the roots of the tree started pulling sideways, and I found myself drawing them under the ocean. I continued with the sketch and let it flow, all the while realizing that I’ve been intimidated by a certain vastness of possibilities for my future, when I really need to just jump in and find those roots. A mini-epiphany on a mini-retreat.

But it doesn’t have to be about epiphanies. Sometimes when I sketch, I end up with a few pages of mediocre drawings but a mind full of captivating ideas for writing. Exercising new muscles of your creativity is the whole point.

If you choose to explore a new medium as part of your creative mini-retreat, you may feel inspired to work in your normal medium after some time — let yourself make that transition. The mini-retreat aims to expand your creativity in a flowing manner, so allowing your creativity to glide from one intensive activity into another might just feel right.

photo by miketually

This is the introduction to a series on planning your own creative mini-retreat.

1. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Introduction

2. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Exploring a New Medium

3. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Journaling and Visioning

4. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Creating Tangible Inspiration

Free time is a strange thing.

Some of us struggle for a mere 20 minutes we can call free time. Some of us have flexible schedules that allow us ample free time. Yet whether you identify with the former, the latter, or somewhere in between, the free time somehow never seems long or satisfying enough.

It doesn’t feel like “me time.”

I am one of those people with a flexible schedule. I am usually quite busy with my own projects and working with others, but the flexibility of my schedule gives me a certain level of freedom. Yet whenever I find myself with an hour or two to do as I please, I somehow end up doing nothing. And I don’t mean the intentional, relaxing kind of nothing — I’m talking about the irritating mess of scattered somethings that ultimately make for a completely unfulfilling hour.

Our creative endeavors often suffer at the hands of this scattered mindset. Although we may start making interesting connections among these scattered tangents, it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll create something fulfilling. So how do you center your mind and bring your creativity to a space where it can flourish?

Book Yourself a Mini-Retreat

It would be great to hop on a plane and spend a week at some eco-detox-yoga retreat in Costa Rica. But for many of us, that’s time and money we don’t have. Fortunately, you can reap many of the same effects with a small, concentrated dose of “me time.”

When you create your own creative mini-retreat, the focus is on the quality and intensity of time, rather than the quantity. When you spend two hours intensely focused on a single meaningful purpose, the focus and inspiration of those two hours will spill over into the rest of your day. If you create a regular practice of mini-retreats, this focus and inspiration will echo throughout your daily life.

Finding the Right Time

It’s important to choose a day that you know will be relatively obligation-free. If you have a few client calls to make in the morning, or a swimming lesson with your kids, you can just block off the rest of the day for your mini-retreat — it doesn’t need to be an entire day.

For some of you, this will mean a Saturday or Sunday. But if you are a freelancer or someone with a flexible schedule, consider choosing a weekday so that you don’t have people calling to invite you to brunch or stopping by your house for a coffee. Choose a six- to eight-hour block of time that will be free of interruptions.

Choosing the Place

When deciding where to do your mini-retreat, size is not terribly important. But it is important that you choose a spot that you’ll enjoy for long chunks of time. Consider noise, lighting, and seating options. If you can claim your entire house or apartment for this block of time, that’s great. If not, consider staking claim to your bedroom, the living room, a patch of grass at the park, or a table in your own backyard. You can choose to do the mini-retreat with a friend, but make sure you are in tune with each other about the space you want to create and your expectations. If you’re doing the mini-retreat with a partner, decide whether you need separate spaces for the times of intense concentration, or whether you are capable of retreating into your own world in each other’s presence.

Choosing Your Focus

There’s a broad range of things your mini-retreat can focus on. Some ideas include:

- Exploring a new creative medium: If you’re a writer, try spending the day with sketchpads, colored pencils, charcoal, and the works. If you tend to sit in front of a computer all day, make sure you spend this mini-retreat using your hands.

- Doing journaling and visioning exercises: Use a series of prompts to do some free-flowing journal writing. Explore your values, your goals, and your motivations. Envision scenarios and futures that exhilarate you, and explore what you need to get there.

- Creating tangible reminders of your inspiration: Make a vision board of words and images that inspire you. Make a slideshow of photos that elicit strong emotions and inspiration. Draw a map of the things that cultivate and stimulate your past, present and future.

The next three installments of this series will explore the three areas of focus above. Check in tomorrow to read more about exploring a new creative medium.

If you want to join in and plan your own mini-retreat, jump into the conversation and tell us about it in the comments!

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible.

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

photo by Barnaby

Sometimes I get an idea in my head, and it’s feisty. So feisty, in fact, that I’m not quite sure what to do with it. It feels so big and so unknown that I convince myself it needs to simmer for a while.

And so its simmers. And the more it simmers, the less it feels unknown. Slowly, I begin to accept that this idea may actually be within reach — that I’ll need to stretch, sure, but the possibility is firmly there. At this point, I normally voice the idea to someone close to me, or brainstorm the possibilities on the page.

But sometimes, when the idea is really feisty, my voice shuts down. My page remains blank. The idea remains inside, simmering and swirling, because I don’t want to admit that I believe its within my reach.

It took me a while to understand this pattern, but it’s so much easier to work with now that I see where it comes from. My solution — or at least my first steps toward one — is Extreme Journaling.

And what is Extreme Journaling, you might ask?

It’s writing so quickly and so honestly that you can’t even read the scribbles on the page. And because you can’t read them, your writing will be all the more open. You can admit things that you can’t yet admit “out loud” because they’re safely tucked inside illegible handwriting. This may initially sound like a useless exercise, because why would you write something down if no one — yourself included — could read it?

Because illegible or not, the act of writing gives the idea voice. It allows that feisty idea to stretch its legs and ease its way into your confidence.

When we’re youngsters, we understand the immense value of a locked diary. We understand that writing is therapeutic. But as we get older, we often think that deep conversations are an adequate substitute, and there’s always a good therapist when the conversations fail. Now, I’m a die-hard advocate of openness and honesty, and I cherish the deep conversations I share with others. But as much as we think we’re being an open book, there are parts of our selves that will not spill out in conversation. Those are the parts that go in a diary under lock and key — or into a therapist’s ear.

If you’re one of the many people who outgrew the locked diary, you’re left with the very expensive option of therapy. I used to be a faithful journal writer, but my daily scribbles these days tend to be more centered on story and project ideas, rather than chunks of my secret selves.

What got me started with Extreme Journaling was the idea of “morning pages” in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. You wake up, take out a notebook, and write 3 pages of whatever spills out of your mind. Because our minds are so soft and open upon waking, I easily fell back into the honesty of diary-writing. I also found that I was writing so quickly, I couldn’t read anything I wrote. Perfect, I thought, no need for a lock and key.

Extreme Journaling is now my magic wand when I am overwhelmed with possibilities, intimidated, or upset. It’s also my magic wand every day when I wake up.

In the end, it’s just a much cheaper option than therapy.

Do you use writing as therapy? What allows you to let it all out?

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).

Those of you who have been reading Essential Prose for a while know that I love mind maps. I use them both to brainstorm and to organize my ideas. In the spirit of revitalization that I spoke of in my last post, today I sat on the floor with my markers and whipped up a new mind map. For those of you who don’t blog, feel free to insert the word project in place of the word blog throughout this post — it will be just as useful!

Why bother with a blog mind map?

Last November, I posted a mind map that explored where I wanted to go with this blog. The process helped me see what I was actually doing with my blog, and the directions I could use to expand it. Since awareness of where you stand and where you’re going is never a bad thing, I decided to do a new mind map of this blog. The result is at the top of this post.

Mind mapping your blog can be helpful for a few different situations:

1. When you are beginning a new blog.

2. When your blog starts to feel stale and you’re seeking some changes.

3. When you want to see a broad picture of what your blog is accomplishing.

Questions to ask while making your mind map

I take a very loose approach to the process, because mind mapping is only engaging if you customize it to your flow. You could read dozens of books on proper ways to mind map and which colors and shapes to use, etc… but that would make many people run away screaming from the page.

One important point is that you should make the mind map only for yourself. Don’t make the initial mind map with intentions of showing it to others — you can always clean it up and make a second version if you need to. With the mind map you see above, I happened to decide after making it that I’d like to share it with all of you. But if you begin with an audience in mind, you’ll likely censor yourself more.

When you sit down on the floor with your markers, I’d recommend keeping two things in mind: what you’ve done, and what you want to do. It’s completely fine to merge both categories onto the same mind map, or you can choose to make separate ones.

Once you’ve finished sketching out the mind map, you’ll have a very valuable tool in your hands. Look at the ideas that came out and ask yourself questions:

Have I addressed all these ideas?

Do I want to include all these clouds of thought?

Are there underlying threads I can use to make new connections?

What next steps can I take to act on these new ideas?

Since I highly respect your perspectives on this blog, I’d like to invite you to answer any questions that my mind map brings to mind. Tell me what you’d love to see, what you think isn’t accurate, what you think is relevant, or what you think is irrelevant — whatever comes to mind!

To start the discussion, here are a couple things I noticed.

I noticed that this mind map was a much expanded version of my first blog mind map. Am I trying to cover too much? Or is the common thread strong enough?

I also noticed that “travel” appears on both lists, yet I rarely write posts focused on travels. I’ve had several requests via Twitter asking me to write more about my travels, which got me thinking about how much those experiences form and shift my ways of thinking. Would you be interested in hearing more about my travels, or do you think that belongs in a separate venue?

I can’t wait to read your feedback, and hear your thoughts on the mind mapping process.

Add your comments below, or click the title of this post if no comment form is visible!

If you enjoy this blog, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS reader (links are near the top of the sidebar).