consistency

Five Ways to Build Creativity into your Daily Life

/ @thatpluckygirl

Life is busy. We have bills to pay. Wouldn’t it be great if we could infuse our daily lives with shots of creativity? Wouldn’t that be amazing? It IS possible and the best news ever is that it pays to start slow and build on good habits you are already doing.

Before we get Started: Some evening prep work can pay off in spades.

Set yourself a glass of water by your bedside (I use a mug with a lid because two kids, two dogs, a cat, and a gecko). Also is anyone else clumsy in the morning? No need to add shattered water glasses to your morning.

Habit One: Waking up. 

(What a great habit! You’re off to an amazing start! Confetti!)

Let’s add a good stretch before crawling out of bed. Even the thought of a leisurely stretch sounds delicious, doesn’t it? I have ‘waking up’ as the first habit because mornings are a freaking miracle. A MIRACLE. Do you know how many people go to sleep and never wake up? You don’t? Really? Okay cool because I looked it up. About one in eight people or about 41 million Americans will die in their sleep. It makes sense, we spend about a third of our lives sleeping. So if you are alive and blinking, count your lucky stars my friend.

Habit Two: Feet on the floor. 

You are really kicking butt at this waking up thing! First thought? Water. Drink some water. Feet on floor – water in body. Excellent. You may need go to the water closet to get rid of some water first. Your organs will thank you. 

Try this for three days – if you made it – celebrate! Confetti! A latte from Starbucks! We’re not writing yet – you’re easing into things here. Carry on with your day.

Habit Three: Grab a cup of hot tea or coffee. 

Whatever makes you happy in the morning. I splurge on Yogi tea first and switch to coffee at mid-morning otherwise I’m as jumpy as a squirrel on meth. If you have a coffee pot with a timer, set that up for right before you wake up. Basically, how can you make things easy for yourself? The best is if you’re living with a morning person and you can ask THEM to make the coffee for you. To find, interview and/or date a morning person to live with, please see my article from 2012,  HOW TO FIND THE WORM FOR YOU. 

Habit Four: Write down your Routine

Writing down your routine gets you one step closer to keeping it. What days do you want to wake up early and write? Don’t say all of them – that’s crazy talk for people like Stephen King. Start with two. (Tuesdays and Thursdays work great for building new habits). Find a cozy corner to write in that is already set up with all the things you love. Your favorite candle, plant, a place to put your mug, a warm blanket. This should feel like a date with yourself, because it is.

NOTE: Not everyone can get on the morning routine train and that is TOTALLY OKAY. Why are you feeling guilty? That’s ridiculous. This is your life. Maybe after dinner is done is the perfect time – maybe after the kids are in bed is that sweet spot for you. Experiment with different times of day to see which one works best – maybe Thursday nights and Monday afternoons is your jam – maybe it’s Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights. Stay flexible and ask yourself, how can I make space for creativity in my life?

Habit Five: Accountability 

Accountability isn’t just for budgets and exercise programs. It isn’t required to have a buddy do this with you but it does make it easier (and more fun!). Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find anyone – if you start the habit and let people know you’re doing it someone will join you I can guarantee it.

Photo by Daria Obymaha on Pexels.com

Angela Yeh is an East Coast Canadian native that lives and works in the great state of Texas. Angela is a black belt wanna-be who loves to garden, write about magic, and eat cake. She lives with her husband, two lovely human children, and three cranky fur babies. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@thatpluckygirl).

Inspiration is for Waiters

/ @thatpluckygirl / Leave a comment
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

I recently heard a writer friend ask another writer friend what she did to get ‘inspired’ to write. The question threw me off guard. Who are these writers who wait for inspiration? In my experience inspiration only happens once I’m warmed up and that only happens when I sit down to write on a consistent basis.

The Secret is Consistency

The secret to finishing a book or a writing project is not a terrifically held secret. The secret is…consistency. As it is the ‘secret’ to success in any endeavor. You make a daily or weekly habit of writing. Not researching, not editing, not staring out the window (although there is a lot of all those things that happen). Not outlining or planning or vision boarding or plotting or structuring your three acts. These can happen at any time.

What you need is a dedicated time that you set aside just to write. Even if it’s noodling in your journal or free writing about that cat you saw in the window you walked by. Taking the time to prioritize your writing over all the other demands in your life will serve you well. Will this make you an instant best seller? Maybe. It will make you a finisher of projects and that is one step closer to authorship.

Angela’s Writing Habit – Better than Wheat Grass

My writing habit needs to be in the morning, before the kids wake up, or at night, after they’re in bed. I can’t write while distracted. It’s not just harder, it’s frustrating to be constantly pulled away from the thought and then I’m being not just a half-assed writer but an inattentive mom and both feel bad.

Writing should be all good. I had to experiment a few different times and days, and I found the best time for me is 5am, five days a week. I don’t recommend this for everyone but for me, with two young kids who are often awake by 6am for the day, and two part time jobs, this is what works. And I carry that satisfied, I admit it, smug-I-got-stuff-done attitude all day. Try it – the feeling is better than eating wheat grass for breakfast and recycling all your plastics.

A Sacred Space

Try making your writing time a sacred meeting with yourself. Light a candle, listen to your favorite music, it isn’t a ‘have-to’, it’s a ‘can’t wait to wake up and do this for myself’ thing.

Everyone who knows me knows I am not with the self-discipline. The only reason I’m not 600 pounds overweight is because my stomach is a delicate flower. Cake is my nemesis. And I love, love, love to sleep. Sleep is my favorite. So what pulls me out of bed and into the chair isn’t sheer will power. It’s that I know I’m going to enjoy this calm, quiet time to indulge in creating something all to myself. It’s my ‘me’ time. Writing isn’t a choice with me it’s a need, and I’ve learned to incorporate it into my life like all the other self-care things I do. It’s okay to need these things girls (and guys).

So, sorry for the dramatic title. But don’t wait for inspiration okay? You’ll be like skeleton guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the arrow of time through your heart. It’s never too late to start writing but life is better if you just give into it now. Right now. Off you get!

“If you wait for inspiration to write you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” Dan Poynter

It’s A Writer’s Life for Me!

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“Writing is a craft, and storytelling is an art, and together they form this nebulous interstice where it’s just clowns juggling medium-sized cats and those cats are juggling little cat-sized chainsaws and the whole place is on fire and did I mention the “place” is actually a blimp and it’s drifting swiftly toward a flickering lighthouse operated by orphans?” Chuck Wendig

Isn’t that quote super fun? Doesn’t it make you feel like a rockstar for putting words to the page? It should. We put squiggly black lines on a white background and people download that into their brains. We create whole worlds and universes, characters we love and love to hate. Writers are weird, wonderful, amazing, MAGIC people.

If you haven’t stopped to appreciate that wild, wonderful, where-does-it-come-from urge to create, I suggest you do so now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay now I want us to put some consistency behind the magic. Consistency is the vehicle that will drive your magic to it’s final destination, in printed (or e-printed form) and into the hands of someone who will be just lit from within, just set ablaze by the words you’ve written.

We are here to change the world – and to do that we need to develop the habit of writing. We need to honor that muse and show up regularly.

Gabriela Pereira at DIYMFA.com is the one that showed me how to do this and it is called iteration.

Iteration: the chance to play around with both the time of day and the set-up of your writing habit. Do you work better in the morning before the kids get up, or at night after they’re in bed? Is there a time during the day, right before lunch, that you usually can commit to a bit of time? How much time can you consistently manage and how much is too overwhelming?​


Keep playing around with when and where and how much until you find the ‘heck, yeah’ moments and commit to those. Then life changes again and you get to ‘play around’ again!