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I make a policy to never cry over broken pots.
I strive to accept the creative disasters, think about what is important in life and move on.

When I was a potter sculptor, I had a policy, of never crying over broken pots.  I had some exhilarating experiences when I opened the kiln door and saw thousands of dollars worth of exquisitely beautiful reduction fired, glazed pots glowing at me.  I also saw the devastation of two months of work, shattered and broken or glued to the kiln shelving on several occasions and once those broken pieces cooled I took them and placed some of the more attractive broken pieces around my garden, arranged like sculptural interest then walked back to the studio and began production again.

You say thanks when the creative work turns out well, you learn to accept the disasters.

I once attended a master class in watercolour with Robert A Wade, OAM and he taught his students that to be a good watercolourist, you needed to have strong wrists.  When we looked at him with wonder at why we required strength for the job, he picked up a quite nice looking watercolour on the expensive 100% pure cotton paper and he tore it in two. ‘That’ he said, ‘is what you need to do, if it isn’t good enough’.  This was another example of accepting what we learn when a creative process goes wrong.

Many oil painters are never happy with the painting they create so they re work and re work it and the painting shows the effects of this pentemento. Pentimento, means, ‘the artist repents’, and in the case of oil paintings, the application of darker paint over light paint usually causes the dark paint to crack and placing light paint over darker paint has the result of the dark pigment eventually bleeding through. Sometimes it is best to learn from our creative mistakes and move on rather than rehashing a work repeatedly.

A code I had inserted into one of my web sites to allow Google search engine to track it, became corrupted.  This made it hard for readers to find my web site and when I checked the site using Google Analyticals  it showed my web site as a dead flat line. It took me several tries over a week to correct the code and get it back to the rising line that reflects the interest level I have from readership in that site.  I could easily have felt distressed that six months of my work was not even showing on the web and stayed up all night obsessively working on trying to fix the problem and increase my Google rating. I just worked at it within my allocated hours of work, slept contented and had a life outside of my fix the problem, web work.  I kept my ‘do not cry over broken pots’, rule in my head, and told myself that while ‘my writing and reputation as a writer is important to me, I must never allow it to become an obsession, the best work is created by healthy minds’.  I have a great deal of belief in the value of positive self-talk messages. J

This morning I logged into Google Analyticals and the flat line of web death, has risen, lol, J, my web site is ALIVE AGAIN JJJ, What a relief JJJ.

I have been a creative artist now for sixty years. Maybe time and experience help me shrug off creative failure. It may help new artists if they know that even the masters made mistakes at every stage of their creative careers.  I can recall digging clay from a ditch, fashioning a teacup by hand and air drying it, as a child. The pot, was strong for an unfired raw clay pot and I adored it, felt intense pride in it and then when I dared to lift it by its handle the inevitable happened and it broke.  I felt intense disappointment.  

I am wondering, if it was my mother who first said to me with a smile, ‘Do not cry over broken pots’?

I am not one for saying, “hold back tears”. Tears can be healing, great therapy. All I am saying is, “to LOVE your creativity but don’t wreck your life with obsession over it, keep a balance of a healthy mind and body along with your joy in being a creative person”.

 
 
 
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The potential to earn your living at writing is enormous, this is how I am doing it. 
This is a long, two page e-how, blog.

A friend I met through my gray-nomad blog, and who is now a facebook friend, asked me to explain to her how I am able to sell my writing. She is hoping to pick up some ideas from me, to help her earn income writing. This blog post is for you and all other aspiring writers. Please feel welcome to comment, I don't consider myself an expert writer, we can all learn from each other, I'm interested in how other writers succeed also.

Since I was a child, I wanted to be a writer, just as I expressed a desire to be a painter, and sculptor and I began to study how to do these things early in my life and I continue to learnt. I was aided by my mother encouraging me to write draw and paint, and begin tuition aside from what I could learn in regular schooling, early in life and I’ve maintained that habit of seeking out information in those areas that interest me and a good practice habit, in my creative arts and I have also been proactive in telling people that this (being a writer, painter or sculptor), ‘what I do’.  You will not be treated with the respect of a professional, if you yourself don’t act professional in the pursuit of your creativity and your public relations surrounding your work.  So let it be known widely that you are ~ a writer, if you want to earn your living writing.

My latest effort to earn money at my writing, was last Monday, when I arrived at gym and needed to pay for a course on top of my already several hundred dollar gym membership, I asked if I could speak to the manager of the gym, first, before I made my payment. This request was met with a troubled look and I beamed in pleasure and reassured them that it was not a complaint. They offered to get me a fitness trainer to speak to and I insisted that, ‘No thank you, I do need to speak to the manager of the gym’.

I was asked to sit down in the lobby the manager, a  young woman,  greeted me warmly and I explained to her that I was a motivational speaker and writer with an interest in fitness, health slimming  and nutrition and I planned to do the 8 week Extreme Measures course beginning the following Monday and that “if I was to blog about it, on their web site as well as mine, it would bring them many new customers for the following Extreme Measures  course and I could bring their web site up to date “ which I told her, “was always months out of date”.   I paused, and then mentioned that “the eight week Extreme Measures course was being advertised on their web site as a 6 week course and this was one of my skills, writing web sites”.  I paused again to allow this to sink it.  Then I said, “and I do not even want payment to do this, I would be very happy to do it in return for my doing the Extreme Measures course fee free”.

Then I stopped and let her think about her reply and answer me. She said ‘they had a very good motivational writer for their web site. That Aquamoves was not a private gym it was run by the city of Shepparton and that she as a manager had no powers whatever and therefore would not be able to do any such thing’, but she thanked me for my offer, I thanked her for listening, smiled and we shook hands and parted.  I paid for my Extreme measures course and decided that this example of how I ask for work, was simply the best explanation to anyone of how I have been able to earn my living in the arts. I look for areas where my services could be put to good use and without being pushy, I let it be known, what service I can provide, how this would assist the business to whom I offer the service and how I would like to be paid.  I do not go door to door to private homes but I do make a business to business approach, that is how it is done, in business.

A more subtle form of advertising is that I also wear a T shirt, carry business cards have a car sticker all stating my name and that I am an Artist, Author. If people do not know, then how you consider yourself skilled in a field and seek work, you will not receive work. Most creative work jobs are never advertised, they are created for someone whose skills are seen to benefit a business. Whatever your creative skills are, be assertive and let others know you are eager to provide a service for a fee and don’t be too proud to offer your skills for free as this can be an enormous learning tool and a way to be out there doing the job and having your work seen by potential employers.

As a writer I look for a need, I offer to fill it, sometimes even voluntarily, I train for positions, again, many voluntary ones, I counsel where I have the skills to do this, I promote other businesses  and organizations I think are worthy of promotion, such as the we are slimming forum below.   I have ghost written for no fee, as a stand in editor of a magazine, for a Doctor not knowing how to word his research paper for a medical journal, and co written self help  booklets published by an organization aimed at helping people overcome problems. I gave voluntary  telephone counselling for almost a decade written  gardening info for free on an online chat forum, for years and then I’ve both learned and shared on weight release forums during the almost three years I have been slimming and this all counts as writing experience gained.  Any professional writer will advise you to write every day, at least 1,000 words, just keep the flow of words up, practice and learn, keep letting people know you are a writer and look for and grasp those opportunities that will suit your interests and style of writing.

During the decades that I have done all that free writing, learning, sharing of info just for the love of it. In doing voluntary writing.  I have had examples of my writing 'out there', where it can be seen by people who might offer me work so that when I do make an approach to someone, such as I did, when I spoke to the manager of Aquamoves Gym, and ask them for some form of remuneration for my writing and explaining what I'm prepared to  do and how they will benefit, I know I will get a lot of refusals, but I will also be accepted, sometimes straight away, sometimes after a 24 hour thinking think it over period and occasionally out of the blue I am offered a paid writing assignment many months later.

You first of all need to love what you are doing, let people know you want payment to do it, ask for work, create your own work. And if you want to write for a living, almost any writers will tell, you must write every day, at least 1,000 words.  There has to be the love of the art form within your core.

What should you write about?

Lots of web sites on how to make money writing will tell you to search for popular key words and subjects and write about those, that is not me. How can I write about things I know nothing about, just because it’s selling?

I would recommend writing about the things you know about, your interests, never mind trying to please everyone, you can’t, there will be others who have similar interests to yourself, these are the people you become interested in and write for, find out what their needs are and offer them a service through your writing, write for the love of writing, not for the money, but let people whom your writing could benefit, know you are interested in being paid.

Other than that, just be yourself.  I was reading someone’s blog today and she intersperses her blog with her beautiful fabric crafts, her family and shared her life’s ups and downs openly and sometimes with humour and sometimes in frustration and even swearing.  I felt I knew this woman, and liked her, she was real, her writing wasn’t fake, and it exuded with her personality.  She is a good writer.  It was obvious that she was not writing about this week’s hot topic, she was writing about the dog going to the vet or the kids to the dentist, and it was all real life, filled with real people’s emotions and highly readable, and she had a large reader base. That’s what I mean by “allowing your personality to move into your writing and writing about your interests and what you know”. Just be yourself.

I write about those things that interest me, that are my life, I do this mostly through my blogs, and occasional ‘how to’ booklet, a little reporter work or magazine article, and yes I do have files containing potential chapters of novels, filed away.

I have written and had published self help booklets, over thirty years ago and I’m proud these are still in publication because the self help style information I write does not tend to date a great deal. This is the style of writing I enjoy best and I could write about  any phase of life I’ve lived and therefore been interested in and I just  wish I had the tremendous gift of humour and because I still consider I am learning my craft, I do a great deal of free writing, I study writing, I practice writing, I have ghost written for voluntary organizations all in the name of improving my skills and the sheer love of writing about subjects that interest me.

I have a passion for travel, see my http://www.gray-nomad.com  blog Then there is my love of motivational quotes and humour over at http://www.fridgemagnetart.com  and my interest in healthy lifestyle and weight loss at http://www.artslim.org  I have been recommending anyone Looking for Online Weight Loss Support? Then why don't you pop by and check out www.weareslimming.com.au/forum as my blog is all about what is working for me and reporting of health and weight loss news, it isn’t formatted into a how to do it, work book at this stage, my own slimming journey is not complete yet.

When I read magazines I usually find typos and poorly quoted passages, like the teacher offering a ten day course to be held on Monday the 19th. If you see things like this, that’s a perfect opportunity to seek employment at that magazine as a writer because you can see they need a good proof reader’s skills.

Could you be a travel writer, a music critique, a gourmet food writer?

If you travel through various countries and use the services of different companies, have you considered offering a story about your trip to a travel magazine and also in turn telling the travel agent that you are a travel writer, showing them an example of a published article, and asking for a discount or even free accommodation to review a service.

My sister visiting from California and my family received free passes to Sovereign Hill at Ballarat and also to their sight and sound show, during the evening, on the basis that she was visiting Australia as a travel writer and she has visited Malaysia entirely at the expense of the Malaysian air lines just as I too visited California and stayed at Yosemite, dined in San Francisco and went to the Metropolitan Opera with tickets provided free for the music critic, (no not me J ) in the family.

In our family my sister was always considered the writer who also painted and I was the painter who also wrote. lol, strange thing is that in retirement she now paints more than writes and I write more than I paint, lol J.

My sister, the more gifted and natural writer of the two of us, writes with a sharp wit, I greatly admire and a flowery style,(which I don’t desire for myself), one way with words that’s become so embroidered with musical terminology, I barely know what she is saying now. I can’t read her style of highbrow writing any more than she would consider I could write a shopping list, J.. lol J The thing is, we have each found our own style and our readers find us. Her readers and mine would rarely have anything in common.

The friend who asked me to write this blog entry is approaching retirement age, and I have to say, don’t ever think it’s too late to take up writing for a living as while you might be a has been on the professional tennis circuit at retirement age, in writing, you have a wealth more experience to draw on, so you are never too old to write. Youth and lack of experience and knowledge of varied surroundings is not a deterrent to writing either, if you write from the heart about what you know, Anne Frank, wrote from her heart, about the world she knew, a small attic. The Diary of Anne Frank shows how readers what honest writing, not writing that has been contrived to earn money. It is easy to read the difference.

I will not try to give tips on proof reading and editing, these are not my greatest skills, and others can explain these writer's tools better than I can.  Use all the proof reading skills you can learn.  At the same time, don’t aim for perfection before submitting your work, as perfection is never likely to be achieved in a creative work, and you need to balance proof reading, editing with being forgiving and not too harsh a judge of your own work, or you never will submit your finished work for publishing. So when you think your writing is OK, (not perfect), submit it. If it is not picked up and accepted by others, it is not a rejection of you as a person or a writer, it simply was not what they were looking for, or they have another writer or they are like aquamoves, run by city council and you have submitted your work to the wrong person and need to go further to find the top of the chain and submit again.

Remember, it isn’t personal if your work, your approach, does not sell, there is a lot of work available for writers, just keep looking for the needs you think you can fill and keep asking. J.

I knew no short cut way to comunicate how much it is up to the individual to write about those things that they feel a writters passion for.  This post isn't meant to be about me, it's about YOU, taking your creative passions and being able to express them and even being able to earn a living doing what you love most, by simply being yourself.
Happy writing, happy creating J 
 
 
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Guest blogger, Tina from Mummified TIMES FIVE

Photography is my passion. Being a busy mum of 5 meant that extending my photographic training had to be put on hold for a number of years but now that the kids are older and I am able to take some time for me, I've finally started working on achieving my goal - which is to become a professional photographer, specialising in portraiture and landscape - by enrolling into photo imaging courses through TAFE.

Practise makes perfect and practise means taking lots of photos. Having lots of photos means needs an efficient way to store them on your computer. I've tried a few different methods but this way seems to work for me.
Click here to read more-> Organising my photos

Another creative posts by Tina, I got some Cloning skills

                                  by Tina, autor of -Mummified TIMES FIVE blog.

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Check out Tina’s Mummified TIMES FIVE, blog for more, creative photography ideas.  I think Tina  (see photo above),has a great artist’s ‘eye’, behind the camera. J.

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How I organize my photos, by Kathy Shell.

I also download a day’s photo shoot, at the end of each day. I love digital photography as I usually take about 100 to 200 photos on a day out with the camera. I file these under the day’s date.

When I am ready to edit these pictures, I rarely use more than 2% from a day’s shoot and I delete the remainder.

My edited photos are filed according to the picture quality I am saving the image as. The highest being my print quality images and I save these off my computer where they cannot be lost nor take up excessive space in my computer memory. I back this up with a second copy stored on line in a password protected area; I value my print quality images too much to lose them in a computer crash.

All web ready images are saved according to whether it is a photo of a subject I might use as it is or if it is a photo of my own art works.  Then within these two groupings, I will have a portrait folder that has sub folders of bears, birds, dogs, flowers, horses, people, etc and a landscapes folder with sub folders of regions, for example, ‘top end’, ‘outback WA’.

However you store your images, try to make time to back up copies of your most important ones and delete those you will not be using, to save space on your computer, and happy photographing J

                                                                                         by  Kathy Shell Author of  Fridge magnet art-Words and works blog,
gray-nomad-Gone Bush blog, 
Artslim-The art of healthy living and natural slimming blog,
Art of kathy Shell- A Creative Life, blog
and through the eyes of a dog, Indigo’s dog blog
 
 
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Reviewing my goals to becoming a better blogger.
Reviewing my action plans to share my creative skills though this blog.
Reviewing my action plan and ‘to do list’, to become a better blogger.

My work course on how to become a better blogger in 31 days has been met with some frustration as my server weebly was hit by a death ping attack and they were several days working around the clock bringing in experts and purchasing new servers, trying to overcome a denial of service attack.  Eventually they were forced to go to a great deal of expense providing a more powerful new server to counter this problem.  This threw me out of my late night work on the web routine and I began sitting inactively at the computer during what was previously, may be active afternoons.  Here i am today, mid afternoon and still at my computer.  How quickly do we slip back into non constructive bad habits?  What’s the point of trying to write a creative lifestyle blog, (this one), and two active lifestyle blogs, and becoming a sloth?

The work load to do my assignments in the 31 days to becoming a better blogger, has escalated and I find myself still striving to complete some of the preliminary work that is to get my own domain, for this blog pointing to the correct location and striving to get a google ranking for my new owned domain name artslim.org.   In the mean while I struggle to find time to exercise and keep up with my house work and I think it’s time to remind myself not to become obsessed in my creative work(in this instance, learning to have better blogs), to the extent where I fall back into a pattern of self physical neglect, and become sedentary again.    Keeping myself ‘in check’, staying motivated to self care as well as trying to help influence and motivate others not to make the same, becoming too inactive, mistakes I made in the past, due to a creative life, is why I started my http://www.artslim.org  blog.

So ‘I am here’, I’m just taking a step back from writing actual blog content while I learn more about how to improve how I do this and keep my time management principles  and slimming goals in mind.

A lot of the work I am doing at the moment is a once off effort that will be well rewarded in the future.  Like returning to studies, it’s worthwhile as long as I keep aware of maintaining a balanced lifestyle and make myself a definite, ‘clock on and off’ time.

I have completed 4 hours in studying how to be a better blogger so far today.  4 hours is the total time frame a day x 6 days a week,  I have set up in my action plan to have better blogs. As my set up phase, this initial 31 days is a 1/ priority of importance and urgency for me, I am prepared to double my allocated time now, and go back on line from 8pm till 12mn in the evening during the month of October, and this will then allow me two days a week off from writing for the remainder of the year which will bring me back to this job that I love, refreshed and eager to write.

Now having planned why I believe it will be OK to increase my computer study time and how I will credit myself with this extra time spent and made allowanced for how I will still fit in my physical activity and the bare bones of scaled back home maintenance, I’m happy with a new action plan with a definite upper cap, on how long a day I will allow myself to be sedentary, and a definite slotted in bed time.

Tips for creative people:-

*Make definite working hours, self employed creative work is never finished, you need to know in advance, when you intend to knock f, then ‘do it’.

*Decide in advance when you will go to bed and get up.  Self employed creative people can work around the clock on an adrenaline high, Bi Polar disorder is common amongst creative people and even can be mimicked in behaviour.  The highs associated with Bipolar can even be managed by pre setting obsessive tendency restraints in place.  If you don’t have ‘a boss’, when you are not ‘on a creative high’, set yourself restraints you believe will be in the interest of your own, physical and emotional health, while still allowing yourself to be highly creative.  Then when you are ‘on a creative high’, keep that action plan you have made, where you can see it, and ‘stick to it’.

Note:-  I come from a family of eccentric, highly creative people, believe me I know what I’m talking about here, obsessive creativity out of control, can be very self and family destructive, make reasonable limits and you will live longer, create more and enjoy the fruits of loving supporting relationships. It is worth curbing the extremes of our creative desires and your creations will not suffer, if you live a decade longer by caring for yourself, you will get more work completed than if you never clock off for proper meals, exercise, balanced lifestyle or sleep.

LOL, spoken by one who had a stroke at 32 because I thought I could live on 5 hours sleep a night, work late at night then hike up a mountain to look at the view, with a 7 year old child on my back.  Believe me; I know about excessive, creative, enthusiastic, self destructive behaviour.  Please LOVE YOURSELF MORE than your creations, and hold it in check with pre planning. J.
 
 
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Today’s task in learning to be a better blogger is to write and elevator pitch for my blogs so I can quickly explain the content of each to people and stay focused on my purpose for each one as I develop the contents.

 I have done this and added it to the side bars of my four blogs and as the signature on my email.
 
 
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I have begun a 31 days to build a better blog challenge.

Today I am working through the preliminary information before starting the daily tasks.  As I bought the entire 31 day work book, being me, I may take the tasks out of sequence, and do them within my own time frame, along with a few ideas of my own, within these 31 days and I will share these under my ‘Blogging’ tab, so other learning to blog, users can read ‘how I am doing it’, and I hope they also will head over to the problogger.com web site and read up as they are the experts at this, not me, I am just the beginner at this, sharing my  learning curve.  

During this preliminary phase of the challenge, I purchased my own domain name for my artslim, ‘The art of living and slimming blog and I chose, artslim.org  and I contacted Melbourne IT the company I purchased  my kathy-shell.com domain from many years back when I was a professional artist, and I’ve so far succeeded in having my weebly,  kathy-shell web site redirected to Melbourne IT, and I am now going through the paper work and need to go out today to fax a request for my Registry Key recovery so I can redirect this Kathy-shell.com domain name to my pro weebly  account, domain.   I now own three of my own domain names outright, artslim.org, gray-nomad.com and Kathy-shell.com and the remainder, are all free domains with .weebly.com as the ending.  I own each of these purchased domains for the next 5 years, I’m all for the discounted special priceJ.

LOL, if you are ‘lost’ with that talk, just attempt to understand Technorati blog geek jargon. I tried very hard to do this yesterday as part of my focused 31 days to improve my blogs, and I have today decided after achieving a part way success with inserting Technorati tags, to put it all in the ‘too hard basket, at this stage and to make faster advancement in areas that speak in language where you do not need to know ‘how to do it’ in order to understand the directions on ‘how to do it’.  I have always preferred the KISS Principle.

So getting into areas that I do understand and with the assistance of the easy to use click on and drop into place, interface within my weebly pro web and blog hosting account, I have been able to put in an easy to use and gain weekly reports from, free web site hits counter, using sitemeter . I have no idea if this is the best one, I was recommended it by a friend, I found the weekly emailed to me reports of how many people are looking at my web sites and how long they look and how many pages are viewed is all I need to know, I find it easy for me to use and non invasive of my readers privacy.  I simply placed this meter in the side bar of each of my web site-blogs using the html, click on and drop tool in my weebly  hosted web site and blog.  You can try out a weebly web site and or blog for free.  If you tried it once before, months ago, take another look, I am a very happy user, I paid for a 2 year pro subscription that gives me 10 professionally hosted web sites or blogs for ‘coffee money, and when I think of the almost a thousand dollars a year I paid each year for the professional hosting by Web Central, before I understood about these lower cost, US based web and blog sites, I am laughing.    OK, to Web Central’s credit they have an excellent 24 hour/7 days a week, technical problems help line.  The shopping cart add on was expensive and weebly has made shopping carts available as an extra, included in the cost I have already paid for my pro weebly account.  

 Before I found weebly, liked it, got used to it being slower to work in, than the high priced web sites, I also tried the US based godaddy , using WordPress, but again I found that system too complicated for my simple minded where computer speak is concerned, ability.  Weebly is simple to use and effective, J, Go weebly.   Now in WordPress’s favour, I do realize that if I was using WordPress I might not be finding it so difficult to learn how to insert Technorati tags in the form I had hoped to.  LOL, well one of my friends tells me that Technorati is ‘on the way out’, LOL, I can’t find any evidence to that effect  and I should not get too hopeful, it will possibly be replaced by   super blog geek speak TechnorKathycan’tunderstandorati J, LOL.

Back once more to what is within my KISS understanding range. 

OAs part of the preliminary actions for my 31 days to build a better blog challenge I have been advised to insert Google Analytics into each of my blogs.  In weebly, this is easy, I simply go to my Settings tab at the top of the page and there is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tab to click on and in that there is a box where you drop in the code that Google analytics, makes for each of your blogs, and you simply drop that into this box, made for this purpose, within your weebly blog or web site.  Easypeasy J, the way I like it.

Now I have no idea if weebly is the best blog site out there, I suspect it might not be as it’s far from the most commonly used one.  I wanted more than what I could get on a free blog site and something that was easy to use yet looked good and provided what I needed at the time I started blogging, which was only back in Autumn this year ~ 2009.  There will no doubt be many ore great blog sites, it’s best to look around, ask and search for a few opinions and try the free versions before you commit because once your sure of your site, it is usually cheaper to pay for several years hosting, I got my monthly hosting cost down to the cost of a cup of one coffee a month to run four predominately blog sites and four shopping cart based web sites, from the one pro weebly account, per month and I think that that was the best web bargain I‘ve ever come across.

Back to the preliminary tasks for this 31 day challenge:
It is suggested that you enrol yourself as a member of the forum and use it.  That’s always great advice when you’re learning anything.  I looked for advice on how to insert those Technorati tabs but haven’t found that information in the forum, I’m hoping it will be explained within my work book I have purchased.