The Danger of “Should”

It’s been a hectic few days. Things are not going as planned. It’s been up and down. Clients are changing dates, appointments are piling up. Friends are “helping” by saying obvious things with great authority.

As I get grumpy, I start to add “should” to my vocabulary more and more. “I should have seen that coming.” “I should have not booked so many appointments into one day.” “I should have been more assertive.” The list goes on and on. Often, friends add to the “should” list. These shoulds fall into two categories–things that are blindingly obvious that I’ve done weeks ago or thing they wouldn’t take on themselves but will ask others to do.

In the first category, I hear, “Having trouble with that new CD player? You should read the directions first.” “Have you checked your air conditioning filter? You should do that every month, on the 1st or 15th.” That gets a secret smile. If I did all the thing I was supposed to do on the 1st or 15th of the month, I’d have to take two vacation days a month to get them done. I can store that list right next to all the original boxes I “should” keep to return defective appliances.

In the second category, I hear, “Have you gotten the check from the client yet? You should call the CEO and tell him you are going to sit in his office till he hands over the check.” This from someone who hasn’t confronted a client in 10 years. Or, “The loaf of bread grew mold? You should threaten to sue and then take a big cash settlement,” from someone who has no idea of the time, money and effort it takes to work with a lawyer.  It’s a head-shaker.

“Should” is a dangerous word. Slippery. Demanding. Posturing. It turns empathy into passive-aggressive pushing and motivation into negative self-talk. Someone once said, “Stop should-ing all over yourself.” And it was Yoda who wisely counceled, “Do or don’t do. But don’t ‘try’.” The best view of all.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com Image: DC arboretum wall, photograph by Quinn McDonald. (c) 2008-9 All rights reserved.

Noticing (Found Art)

Last weekend, I went to the giant Tempe Art Festival. Lots of tents, lots of people, lots of art, food, sunshine. It was cool, but perfect weather. Hot is not as good as cool for an art festival.

Out of habit, I parked in the shuttle lot and waited in vain for the bus. No shuttle. Cutbacks. I decided to walk the mile and a half to the show. I joined a stranger who looked at her Blackberry most of the time. Meanwhile, I watched planes lining up for landing at nearby Sky Harbor,  noticed you could see Tempe Town Lake from some places and not from others, that an old bridge had been repurposed for the light rail, that the sidewalk changed to blocks that fit together.

The entire walk, I felt like I was picking up information, feeling my internal GPS system adding information, feeling centered and rooted. My walking companion was fussing and texting. Finally she said to me, “This is a long &*%! walk, I should have taken my car.” She was easily 10 years younger, and a good deal slimmer.  She was doing too much work, and it was wearing her out.

It that very act of being OK with doing nothing, with “noticing” that lets you make great discoveries. I call them Found Art, because they are a lot  like found poetry. You notice something, look closely and there it is.

I saw this petrified jelly bean on the sidewalk, worn shiny from being scuffed over by many shoes:

Stepped-on heart. Photo © Quinn McDonald

It looks just like a heart. It IS a heart. And that made me think of all of our hearts, unseen, scuffed over, but made all the more beautiful for the discovery.

I stopped my companion and pointed, but she showed me the hand and continued to talk into her phone.

The moment was exquisite all by itself. I felt happy and light. Over what? Seeing a squished, petrified jelly bean embedded on the sidewalk. Yep. That sums it up.

Taking photographs of perfectly ordinary items helps me create a world I inhabit out of noticing. It is a very different world from the one my walking companion inhabits.

Here is a photo of a block wall with a big, top-heavy climbing plant. I’m interested in the hard-water stain, though. At the bottom of the photo. It’s not a chalk line, it’s chemicals from the water that have been sucked up into the block wall. To me, it looks like a mountain range, the plant could be a big thunder cloud.

Chemicals in the hard water make a mountain range.

This one is even more ephemeral. It’s a spot on the sidewalk–some stain, coffee, maybe, that someone splatted down. At first glance it looked like a dragonfly. Later on, I could see a dove in it. It’s a little hard to describe the dove, so below it, I’m including a drawing of a dove I did. You can sort of see the relation.

Found Art: dragonfly? Dove?

What’s the purpose in all this? Exactly nothing. It’s simply noticing. It doesn’t make money, it simply pleases me. I find it fun, interesting. I find it part of meaning-making. Seeing one thing in another can come in handy some day.

Flight. Reductive charcoal drawing © Quinn McDonald

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–Quinn McDonald is an artist and writer who teaches writing and journaling, including raw-art journals for people who can’t draw.

New Class: Explore Your Creativity in 2010

Thinking about New Year’s Resolutions? Nope, me either. There are still a ton of holidays to bake for, shop for, decorate for. New Year’s seems a loooong way off.

New Year’s Day is 26 days away. Less than four weeks. New Year’s usually means resolutions. I’ve been against that idea for a long time. Written about it several times.

Julia Cameron's book "Walking In This World"

No sense complaining unless you come up with a solution. What I don’t like about New Year’s resolutions is that they are too vague, too general, aren’t planned with support, and are forgotten in a week. I also think that when we make a resolution we fear the change. Change is hard. Change alone is even harder. So here’s my plan:

1. Do something to explore your creativity. Something focused. Something that gives you support.

2. If you’ve heard of Julia Cameron, you know that she wrote a book called The Artist’s Way–the beginning of creativity coaching. Cameron also wrote a book called Walking in This World–The Practical Art of Creativity. Like The Artist’s Way, it is a support guide for creativity. You don’t need to have read one to get something from the other.

3. I’m going to run an online reading group on Walking In This World. The book has 12 chapters. We will cover one chapter a week, starting on January 12. We’ll read the chapter, do the exercise at the end, and discuss what happened, what we thought, how we progressed each week.  As a creativity coach, I can also tell you that it’s a good way to experience one kind of creativity coaching. It’s a group coaching, but you’ll discover the kind of support for change you’ll find. You don’t have to be an artist, simply want to explore your creativity. Or your fear of your own creativity.

4. I’ll form a Yahoo Group for the class and open a PayPal window so you can pay on my website. The class will meet through the Yahoo Group. You’ll be able to discuss,  post images, ask questions. The class will cost $30, but I’m donating $10 of each registration to the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, a fund for artists who have met with some disaster and need help getting back on their feet. Everyone benefits.

5. After you pay, I’ll send you an invitation to join the group. Be prepared for 13 weeks of work. If your first reaction is that you don’t have time, it’s a perfectly normal. We don’t want to do things for ourselves. We don’t want to commit. But this is not about a grinding class. This is about your creativity and finding some support for it.

The only thing you need to do is buy the book–there is a link to amazon.com on my website. (Or borrow it from the library, but you’ll want to write in it.)  Still think it’s too hard? It’s your gremlin or negative self-talk. Gremlins kick up and tell you what not to do for yourself. You’ll come up with a thousand reasons not to do this for yourself. There is only one reason to do it: it will help you make meaning in your life.

This class also makes an excellent holiday gift. Combined with the purchase of the book, it’s a wonderful jump start gift for a friend’s  creativity.  (To keep it simple, give them the check or cash and the link to join.)

Please join us starting January 12 for this exciting, meaningful work that honors and supports your creativity.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach who trains businesses how to communicate effectively with their clients and helps people who don’t draw or write to keep art journals.

Painting Christmas on the Windows

Store windows are turning to the holidays. Here in Phoenix that means Christmas. This isn’t a big Chanukkah or Kwaanza town. Most windows are sprayed with stencils.

This afternoon, walking to pick up my repaired car, I saw a man arranging paint cans on the back of his truck. The shopping center was brick, so I wondered what he was painting.

A strip mall on a mild December afternoon, and an artist ready to paint.

What he was painting was the windows. Of the entire strip mall. First he painted houses with snow on them. Then he added pine trees. He worked with brushes and paints, quickly. Amazingly quickly. A tree took under a minute.  He didn’t want me to photograph him, but he agreed to have his hand shown. Here is a tree that he was just starting.

The aritst painted around the information already in the window.

This is a tree about a minute later.

The artist worked steadily and quickly.

And here is the completed window. All done by hand on a cool December afternoon by a man who has never seen snow.

If you are comparing windows, this was a set of four, these were the first two.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach. © 2009. All rights reserved.

Beat Insomnia without a TV

A long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, most people got ready for bed, got into bed, maybe read for a bit, and then turned out the light and went to sleep. The vast majority of people did this without a TV, radio, CD, white noise maker, or nature sounds other than those happening outside their window.

It might soothe, but it's not a good nights sleep

A large number of people cannot go to sleep without an artificial device or a pill. It’s not that we aren’t tired, we are exhausted. It’s that we can’t be alone with our thoughts. The idea of spending even five minutes awake and in silence terrifies us. We are afraid of our thoughts. They come rampaging in at night, with demands and fears. So we reach for a pill, leave the TV on and get. . .a crummy night’s sleep.

Sleeping with the TV or radio on interrupts natural sleep patterns. We don’t get the rest we need and feel cranky the next day. Pills can leave you groggy, sleepy and not rested. And that’s the least of it.

So here is a simple way to get the rest you need and drift off to sleep peacefully:

1. Create a ritual about going to bed. Start it about 45 minutes before you want to go to sleep. It can be perfectly easy–make sure the dog or cat is in or out, the doors locked, lunch packed, clothes put out. So you don’t have to worry the morning routine.

2. Make a list of things you need to get done the next day. If you don’t make the list, you will start making it once you are in bed and the three things you have to get done will turn into an endless list of failure and regret. Making a list of  chores, goals, or things that have to get done allow you to relax.

3. Get ready for bed. Brush and floss your teeth, wash your face, get into your nightclothes. Whatever else you do to get into bed. If you are addicted to the TV, turn it on, but have the volume so you can barely hear it. If you have a timer on it, set it for the smallest possible time–five, 10 minutes. If you don’t have a timer, turn off the light and the TV.

4. Take control of your thoughts. When unwanted worries show up, imagine holding a hand up, palm forward, and ask them to step aside. Then create a different thought pattern. One of the following works well:

–You have won a huge lottery. Millions. Your family is taken care of, your retirement is set, taxes are paid. Now what? How will you spend the rest of the money?

–You can have any house you want. Design it. What have you always wanted in a house? Where would it be? What kind of roof? What kind of landscaping? Add all the details you can imagine for every room.

–You don’t need to work anymore. You can do whatever you want. Be the CEO of a huge organization, a cab driver, a musician, an artist. You can change the world in any way you want. What would you do? What does your first day look like–from breakfast on?

These thoughts are challenging enough to make you want to add details, but not stressful enough to keep you awake. You’ll go to sleep in the middle of planning something fun. You may start to have interesting dreams and creative ideas. Not a bad result for a good night’s sleep.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She teaches communication skills, including writing and giving presentations as well as how to make and use an art journal, even if you can’t draw.

Raw-Art Journal Cover-to-Cover

After years of keeping a journal, I decided to try something new–to make an art journal from the ideas, sketches, and fun parts of my journals. Instead of keeping notes, images, sketches as I do in my journal, I made this one deliberately, cover to cover.

Here are some of the images.

The front cover is made by covering Arches Text Wove with gesso, writing in it with a corner of a credit card, then adding India Inks in black and brown. After drying, I used purple pastels and another coat of gesso. When it was completely dry, I rubbed it–hard–with a cloth. It looks like leather. I’ve never been able to make purple come out well with a camera, and this is no exception–the band looks blue, although it is the same purple as in the cover, which is a good deal more subtle than it looks.

Book Cover with buttoning closure band © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved, 2009

Found Art starts as a photograph. It’s of something ordinary, that I can see something in. I then print the photograph and alter it using colored pencils or watercolor pencils. You can see the after and before right under it. On the right is a great way to keep your journal writing secret, if you aren’t keeping a journal for fear someone will find it. Write, cut into strips, weave the strips into a design.

Found Art ©Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved 2008-9

This is what the original photo looked like.

Photo of vine on brick wall, © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved, 2009

The second spread has raw art on the left that serves as a pocket for an accordion journal. The opposite page has found poetry on it.

Raw art on left, Found Poetry on right © Quinn McDonald, all rights reserved 2009

The next spread has found poetry on the left and a gate-fold page on the right.

Found poetry on left, gate-fold mountain page on right, pierced and inked

The gate-fold is pierced so there are patterns on the front and back. It is also inked, raw-art style and one of the lines serves as a guideline for journaling. The image is done on both sides.

The next spread is another version of found poetry. I cut a page from a book, circled the words that created the poem, colored in the rest of the page. I then cut holes in the page and applied it to an inked and painted journal page.

Found poetry on left, Rorschach on right. © Quinn McDonald, all righs reserved 2009

The right side is a Rorschach-like paint blot. I cut out the sides and placed them next to each other. There is a fire-like design in the interference gold and the blue part.

The closing band is held onto the back with a button that I attached while sewing the binding into place. There are two buttons sewn into the paper of the band. To keep them from pulling out, I lined the ends of the band in Tyvek–an polypropylene paper used in Fed-Ex envelopes and house insulation.

The fun parts were the gate-fold and the accordion-fold book that make up the entire book. The whole book isn’t shown, but you can see it on Flickr.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and artist who works at the intersection of words and illustration to create raw-art, available to people who think they can’t draw but want to create art journals.

Happy Thanksgiving–Alone or in a Crowd

Whether you are alone, in a crowd (but not part of it) or loving a lot of company and noise, Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s also Theme Thursday, a day of links to fun and interesting place. So I’m combining the day of listing things I’m grateful for, and links to find them.

Daniel Patterson's image of wild Mexican turkeys in the Tucson, AZ area.

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, one without presents but not without stress. But we all have much to be thankful for, from big blessings to tiny flashes of insight.

Two years ago, I was alone on Thanksgiving. It felt strange, but not unpleasant. I spent the entire day in silence, working on art projects, feeling what it is like to be alone with just your thoughts. It wasn’t an exciting day, but it was memorable. I didn’t eat turkey, I wasn’t part of the imagined vision of national celebration. I felt removed from the mainstream, but intensely happy to have a day to sink into my art.

In that time, I thought of things I was grateful for. Non-traditional things–the ability to make it through a day alone, without a TV, with just my own meager art supplies.

Today, I’m presenting a list of links that are also reasons to be grateful. I had a rocky start with gratitude journals, but I’m a fan now.

I’m grateful that there are still wild animals on the face of the earth, and that the internet makes it possible for someone on one end of the earth to watch a pond at the other end.

I’m grateful that I found the intersection of art and words as my heart’s delight. If you are a book artist, enjoy pages of inspiration. Don’t miss the Pittsburgh Art Collective books. Beautiful!

I’m grateful that I can see the works of a lot of other artists–of all skill levels. And participate in showing mine, if I like. You can display your art on Illustration Friday, too. It’s great to see what others are doing.

Chris Dunmire runs the Creativity Portal. No matter what your outlet, the portal will help you find more and more interesting articles, projects, and interviews with creative folks.

Five Most Recent  Theme Thursdays: * * *  Creative Play 11. 19.09 * * * Creative Play 11.5.09 * * * Creative Play 10.29.09 * * * Creative Play 10.22.09 * * *  Creative Play 10.15.09 * * * Creative Play 10.8.09 * * * Creative Play 10.1.09* * *  Creative Play 9.24.09 * * * Creative Play 9.17.09* * * Creative Play 9.10.09 * * *

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also wonders what you would like to say that you didn’t?

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See You at Art Unraveled 2010

Art Unraveled is an art retreat held every August in Phoenix.

In 2010, it’s going to be August 3 to 10, and I’m teaching two classes! (See the whole Art Unraveled schedule)

Phoenix Sunrise

Coming to AU is exciting! I’d like to make it easier for you if you are taking my class. I’ll provide most of the supplies. All you need is what you are already bringing for other classes–a variety of pens or pencils, your journal, a pair of scissors or X-acto knife. Aren’t bringing any of that? Then show up with a big heart, a sense of adventure, and your imagination.

I’m a creativity coach, so there is a lot of that going on in class. It’s deep, meaning-making work with fun and sharing.

Raw-Art Journaling For Perfectionists
August 4, 6:30 – 9:30p.m.
Started 50 journals and never filled a single one? This is the class for you.

If you are a perfectionist, you know how hard it is to work deeply and playfully. Perfectionists start with high hopes, and then get discouraged because their work is not exactly what they had imagined.

Notorious procrastinators, perfectionists start 50 journals and finish none of them. You will make many journal pages, and keep the ones you like. No one will know about the rest.

You will learn how to choose a journal that suits your needs, how to use your own ideas to write in and create abstract designs of your own invention in your journal. You’ll feel better about yourself and your prefectionism, while laughing and working.

No previous art experience needed.

Raw-Art One-Sentence Journaling
Monday, August 9, 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Keeping a journal doesn’t have to be a time drain. Learn to keep a journal with just one sentence a day, two if you are ambitious. In this technique class, you will learn how to keep an interesting journal that you look forward to working in.

We’ll play word games, make magic word tickets, invent new names for our many different selves. You’ll learn Haiku writing and how to fight negative self-talk. You’ll also learn how to use words and abstract designs of your own invention to turn a regular journal into a raw-art-journal. This is a technique class, so you will experiment on different size sheets of paper.

No experience needed.

See more information on my website, Raw-Art-Journals.

Creativity Whisperer

Cesar Millan may be the Dog Whisperer, but his method works pretty well for the unruly, leash-tugging creative urge. You know that creative muse–the one you desperately want in your life, but that disappears around the corner and won’t come when called. When it does show up, it runs you ragged. You are off to buy materials and supplies, while your muse stays at home, piling choices on your studio table, and running you ragged with ideas, projects and commitments that you can’t manage.

You are in charge of your own creative output.

The Dog Whisperer has a formula. If you’ve watched the show, you already know what it is. It’s on his website: “Through my fulfillment formula exercise, then discipline, and finally, affection.  As the human pack leader, you must set rules, boundaries, and limitations and always project a calm-assertive energy.”

The “calm-assertive energy” comes first. It’s not about being a control freak, it’s knowing that you are the calm leader of your creative energy and your studio. If you are in control, the studio is not running you and you aren’t searching for pieces of a project. You aren’t forever using the excuse that you have a coupon and heading out to the craft store. You are centered and know what your project is.

You set the rules, boundaries and limitations for your studio. Here are some good ones to start with:

• Know what your project is.
• Know what your project is not. If you are going to create a journal page, don’t worry about creating the whole journal.
• Leave the studio set up so you can begin. Nothing saps energy faster than having to spend an hour cleaning the studio and another finding what you want to work on.
• Put extra materials away. It’s distracting to see unfinished project lying around.
• Set a time to start and be there to start the project.
• If you have an appointment, set a timer to remind you when to stop. You can’t work deeply if you keep having to check on the clock.
• Keep a paper and pencil around to take notes as you work. Once you get to the studio, you will immediately think of “work” that needs to get done before you start. Stay in the studio, make a to-do list. The laundry will still be there when you leave.

The rest of Millan’s ideas work just as well: exercise, discipline, affection.

Exercise is a way to burn off tension in your body. It makes room for creative ideas. While you are exercising, a part of your brain is problem solving. That’s good for your brain and your body. Allow that to happen often, and you will approach a project with eagerness, without a lot of the adrenaline energy that’s exhausting.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline allows space and time for deep, meaningful work. Discipline allows you to turn off the phone, shut the computer off and head for the studio. Discipline is a set time to work without guilt or fear. Discipline is consistency–knowing what is going to happen. It’s not a wild streak of cleaning the studio one day and spending three hours looking for just the right piece of paper. Discipline is an approach to creative time that includes knowing what will happen–you will work meaningfully, for a set amount of time, on a regular basis.

Affection is allowing yourself to feel good about yourself and your work. Affection is allowing yourself to try and fail, to try something different, to follow a thought or idea until it works or until you know why it doesn’t. Affection for yourself is allowing your growth at your own rate, not at your best friend’s rate. It’s taking the “just” out of your vocabulary, as in, “I just painted this scene.”

Just as Cesar Millan projects a calm, assertive pack-leader image to his dogs, you can project a calm, assertive creative leader image to your muse and your studio. You’ll be surprised at how well it works.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who works with visual and performing  artists to help them find, manage and develop their creativity.

Don’t Write for Free: Your Talent Deserves Pay

More and more often, I’m seeing writing jobs that pay so little it would take three assignments and two months to buy a pack of gum.

Part of the reason that those ads work is that there are desperate people who want to be writers. They buy into the idea that not getting paid is an “industry standard for beginners,” and give up their work for nothing.

I’ve never met a plumber, grocery store or car lot that does that. If I asked for a car for free to “prove their worth” they’d laugh at me. They can go bankrupt in different, more inventive ways.

Yet writers agree to write for free for experience and exposure every day. Stop doing this. The more writers offer to write for next to nothing, the harder it makes it for the rest of us. Many people don’t know good writing from bad, so it comes down to a matter of money. Anyone who can click a keyboard and is willing to get paid per view is offered a job. I know about supply and demand, but I also know that the internet is still largely words, and if you want to stand out, you have to know how to write well.

The same companies that tell advertisers that they get millions of views and that the Internet was the next big market for their products, calmly turned around and tell writers that there isn’t any proof that writing works, and the person to take the hit for doubt had to be writers.

I’ve answered several internet ads for writers, but have yet to find one that pays decently, let alone well. One wanted me to produce a series of restaurant reviews, 8 per week (who eats out that much?) and write a 200-word review, with picture. The pay? I get to be published. I can publish myself and not pay myself, neatly cutting out the middleman.

Now my articles are getting picked up all the time, to fill the blogs of other writers, who are desperate to meet their goals. One such place offered to pay $0.12 per day, but they own the copyright. That was based on click-throughs per article, so I’d have to write a huge amount to make minimum wage.

As a writer, who has made a living from writing for most of my adult life, I’d like to pass on encouragement and a warning. Get paid for your work. Do not work for free. When you give it away, no one will respect you in the morning.

And the warning: Writing well is hard. You have to know grammar. You have to be able to think analytically. You have to be able to reason logically. Just because you can keyboard your thoughts doesn’t make you a good writer. Get paid what you are worth. Walk away from scams, underpayment and empty promises. You’ll respect yourself in the morning.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2007-9 All rights reserved.