Archives: Learning

Starting a debate is a great way to engage your creative muscles. Not only does it force you to examine your own perspectives, it also opens you up to taking on board new ideas.

Great debates create new angles to examine problems and new ways to solve them.

As a writer, stirring debate can also help you to write both sides of an argument. I frequently start writing scenes between two characters and realise that it’s totally one-sided because I agree strongly with one of the characters. By entering a debate with my friends and Twitter buddies, I can get different views and arguments that help me round out my characters in a much more successful way.

What debates have you used to aid your writing or creativity? How did you get them started – is the interactivity of Twitter the best way to go, or the public discussion of Facebook?

This weekend, I caught up on the BBC’s awesome BTS doc on COME FLY WITH ME, the new series from LITTLE BRITAIN creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

One thought from an interview with Matt Lucas really struck me. Inevitably, there was a question about how you follow up a series as successful as LB was ((and love it or hate it, you can’t deny its success)). Lucas commented, on topping LB:

Can we do something as big as that? No. Can we do something better than that? Certainly.

And there’s the rub: whatever we’re setting out to create, the aim should never be about creating something bigger, simply creating something better.

Striving for size and reach will bring pressures and compromises; striving for quality will not only better ensure excellence, but also come with its own–much wider–rewards and may end up being both bigger and better.

Everyone has bad days. It’s a natural thing; life can’t always be sunshine and popping candy.  The trick is not to let bad days absorb you and pull you down into a spiral of bad mood, bad attitude and – as a result – more bad days.

One of the purposes of my original blog (archived here) was to constantly remind myself of the good things in life; the simple things that happen every day to make you smile. ((hence the title: Smile Through It))

Getting through bad days is all about finding that kernel of goodness, that moment of levity, that scrap of positivity and grabbing hold of it with both hands. It’s not always going to make your bad day go swimmingly, but by looking for the good in every bad day, though, you’re opening yourself up to the positive experiences, rather than closing yourself off: that road leads to wallowing.

Don’t sweat the bad days, just try to find the good that you can carry forward into tomorrow so you don’t let the day that’s gone before rule the next day, or the next, or the next.

Psychology Today ran this article last week suggesting that acknowledging other people’s unhappiness is the key to making them feel happier. Sounds odd – backwards, even – since our usual response to someone telling us they’re unhappy or stressed is to be positive and encourage them.

When you think about it, though, how annoying is it when you’re feeling gloomy and someone tells you to “cheer up”? It certainly doesn’t cheer you up, does it?

I’ve found, too, that when other people deny or ignore my feelings, I tend to keep repeating myself (i.e., whining), because I think my feelings haven’t registered.

Have you found that acknowledging bad feelings allows them to dissipate better?

Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project Blog (Psychology Today)

The full post is a fascinating read. Check it out.

Thanks to LifeHacker for tipping me to the post with their original link here.

This week I discovered the many pros and the major curse of staying regular.

Since re-branding my blog ((and myself, to a certain extent)), I’ve been blogging to a steady schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday for new, authored content, with Pick of the Web linked-content on a Tuesday and Thursday.

Last week, I didn’t blog on Thursday and Friday as I was busy taking stock of things in my life. In those two days, my readership on the blog halved. Just three days when the blog was devoid of new content.

But worse than that, it’s stayed at a lower ebb and is only now (after 3 days back on the regular schedule) starting to pick back up towards its previous numbers.

Blogging regularly is great in terms of building an audience; if people know when you’re posting, they know when to come looking and they know what to expect from your blog. But beware of committing yourself to a schedule of posts you can’t sustain.

Much better to follow a simple, one-post-a-week formula (such as that employed brilliantly by Clive Davies-Frayne on Film Utopia), than it is to attempt daily posts that you can’t keep up, or to release new blog content in a scattershot manner whenever you feel like or are able to write it.

Work out what you can realistically achieve, define your schedule and stick to it. Staying regular is the key to creating value for the people who read your blog as religiously as you write it.

I opened up my TweetDeck this morning to find a tweet from Jon Reiss who, you’ll remember, featured in this PotW post a couple of weeks ago.  His linked through to a TechDirt article about building audiences and why those who think it’s too much time and effort are misguided at best.

The salient point, for me, is the following:

while building a loyal audience and community may take time and effort, in the long run, they provide you with the ability to actually focus more on creativity.

Mike Masnick, techdirt.com

Read the full article here.

Are you working on cultivating an audience right now? Is it too much work, or can you see the payoff on the horizon?

Sometimes things run smoothly and beautifully and you feel like there’s a little monkey automatically greasing your wheels as you trundle along without having to think about it.

Sometimes you discover that the monkey’s been somewhat lackadaisical in its commitment to keeping the running smooth and things start to crunch and grind and slow you to a halt.

At times like these, it’s important to take a couple of days to pause and reflect on why things feel that way. While the answers may not always be simple, you’re always better to face them head-on than try to ignore them and plough on regardless.

Sooner or later, that monkey’s going to bite you in the butt. Pay attention, take regular stock and be honest with yourself and you’ll be able to get out of the way before it really sinks its teeth in.

Writer/Director ((and London Screenwriters’ Festival Hollywood Hookup guest)) John August has put this post up on his blog today (or probably yesterday, US-time) linking through to an original pitch document from Gene Roddenberry for STAR TREK.

The document itself is well worth a read, for insight if nothing else, but JA’s comments and thoughts are equally valuable. More than that, though, he once again shows his generosity in helping writers understand the process by linking through to three similar documents he created for un-produced TV shows.

Not many writers would have the confidence to share what is, essentially, rejected work with a wider audience. JA’s willingness to open his work to writers across the world shows not only his confidence and talent, but perhaps that we all could be a little more open in order to learn more about ourselves and others.

Read his full post here.

My most productive periods tend to be first thing in the morning and late afternoon/early evening ((although I have to say, when I’m writing I’m rather prone to pulling hyper-productive all-nighters)). I suffer terribly – like many people – with a post-lunch/early afternoon slump.

Having battled it, ignored it, slept through it, worked through it and, frequently, failed to do anything with it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to beat the slump is to embrace it.

Whenever your slump may come, using it wisely is the key to keeping productive all day. My slump is spent catching up on the blogs and websites that I like to read every day, a bit of conversation on Twitter and back-and-forthing on Facebook.

Finding something that’s useful and productive as well as being light on the brain is key to avoiding the loss of two hours of your day to your dip.