Category: Creative Inspiration

I’m fascinated with how the mind works and how that ultimately can help understand how to be the best creative. Here you can see all my ideas for creative inspiration and other facets of creativity.

Creative Inspiration

How Buying a Grill Led to an Extraordinary Moment

Over the weekend, I thought I was taking an ordinary trip to Ace Hardware to buy a new grill. As I walked into the store, I was thinking about work and how to overcome a certain obstacle. What happened next was an extraordinary moment that certainly put those obstacles in perspective. 

I had been considering buying a green egg grill, so I asked the employee in the grill aisle his opinion.

“I wouldn’t buy a green egg,” he said. “Not worth it.”

I guessed he was about 72, and he had shoulder-length gray hair, tattoos on his forearm, and a goatee that looked almost as faded as the ink on his arms.

He pointed to a red Weber and convinced me to save the money. He stooped down and removed the price tag, and that’s when I noticed something was wrong.

He began to stumble, and it almost seemed like the computer program that helped him walk had been full of bugs. He lost consciousness and couldn’t stand.

That’s when I held him up, struggling under his weight. The grill hit the ground and sounded like a cymbal crashing. After a few moments of fighting to keep him from hitting the ground, his legs began to operate again. 

As if nothing had just happened, he started talking about the grill. I stopped him and asked him if he was all right, and he said he was fine, but I implored him to take a break.

He was about to respond, but he stopped abruptly. His eye contact became intense, and he was standing taller than I remembered. That’s when his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his body went rigid, and he began to fall backward. It was like watching a Jenga tower fall. I wanted to try and stop him, but there was just too much momentum.

I ended up grabbing him just enough to slow down the impact, but when shoulders hit the ground, his head whipped against the floor, and all I could think about was someone trying to crack an egg against a bowl. 

Now I was holding him in my arms, and I was sure that I had just watched a man die.

Everyone in the store was watching. I pointed at someone and yelled: “You, in the red shirt, call 911.”

I was considering whether or not to conduct CPR. Other employees were rushing over. It was a grim moment. 

Then the man just woke up.

The next few moments went by quickly, and other Ace employees rushed over to carry him into a seat. Later the paramedics burst into the store. Ace employees began to check on me. I watched all of this in slow motion.

As I was about to leave, the man thanked me and said: “I can’t help but go out of the way to get you a discount on the grill.”

Everyone laughed. And he was right. They gave me $75 dollars off. 

But the lesson was priceless. 

It’s funny how the universe can take the most ordinary moments and make them unforgettable, teaching us lessons at the precise time we need to see it. It was a great reminder that marketing is marketing. Business is business. An obstacle is just an obstacle. But being alive and healthy, well, that is everything.

Creative Inspiration, Writing

5 Ways to Find Writing Motivation: Beyond the Obvious Recommendations
Credit: Joseph Lapin, The Man Who Walks Through Walls, Paris, France.

I graduated from my Master of Fine Arts program from Florida International University at 25-years old, which seemed like an impressive feat at the time. When I finished my MFA, I moved from Miami to Los Angeles, and I thought I was a pretty hot-shit writer about to head to one of the most creative cities in the world. In fact, I thought I was moments away from turning my thesis into a best-selling book, and I wasn’t worried about finding writing motivation to finish countless drafts while working long days at many different jobs. Honestly, it felt like I had already arrived.

In fact, I look back on that version of myself, a totally delusional version of myself, and realize that it’s kind of embarrassing. I remember asking one of my professors how long it took her to publish her first book after graduation, and she said, four years. At the time, four years after graduate school felt like such a long time to publish a book.

Now, I just turned 35-years old, and it’s 10 years since I graduated from my MFA program, and I don’t have a book. I have published a decent amount of non fiction and some fiction, and I have a great career where I practice my craft every day, but I know I still have a long way to go to accomplish my life goal: Filling an entire shelf with books I have written, and those books have to be worth the trees that were sacrificed. I want people to actually read the books, not just let them sit there and collect dust.

And even though so much time has passed since I graduated, I know I need to dig deep to still make my dreams come true. It’s hard to stay motivated though, especially with all that is happening in the world.

That’s why I put together a list of ways to find writing motivation. When I was researching for this blog, I read a lot of the other posts about finding writing motivation, and I realized the advice was terrible. They give trite advice like “set deadlines” and “commit to writing.” It’s time to actually hear some real advice. Let me keep it real with you.

Continue reading “5 Ways to Find Writing Motivation: Beyond the Obvious Recommendations” →
Book Blogs, Creative Inspiration

How Cal Newport and Digital Minimalism Influenced My Life and Blog

Over the last few months, I have been thinking a lot about what this blog means to me and how it fits into my life, and I hadn’t realized how much Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism has changed my entire perception of my work and digital life. I started this blog when I first began freelancing almost eight years ago, chronicling my journey to building a life around writing. Now, I write every single day, tallying up words for novels, essays, and short stories while working on my craft within my career as a digital marketing professional. I have a great career where I help tell stories for universities.

So, I’ve been thinking, where does this blog fit into my life that I’m no longer a freelancer?

Honestly, my blog exhausted me (in a similar way to my podcast, The Working Poet Radio Show), because it began to seem like a burden rather than a passion. I know that sounds awful, especially to those people who have read or listened, but what I noticed is that the reason these projects were feeling like a burden was: 1. I was really busy at work, writing, and with my family, so something had to give. 2. I was focused on the wrong metrics — organic traffic, shares, page views — and not connecting with an audience.

As a digital marketing professional, I have learned to realize the value and the tools to increasing a digital presence, and I still see the value in this for any writing professional, but they consume me. I dedicate my day to helping our clients achieve these goals, and I thought, well, shouldn’t I be doing the same thing for my own blog? I pursued writing for this blog in the same way I approached my work: SEO optimized blog posts, listicles, social boosting. But it struck me this week: I don’t care about those things anymore for my own personal work. They are exhausting.

My thoughts have really started to change after reading Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism.” It’s a book that explores a lifestyle where you use digital technologies to support value, true value, rather than allowing the behavioral techniques that Silicon Valley — and digital marketing professionals like myself — employ so that a user keeps scrolling, keeps sharing, keeps you on your device. Newport’s book proved to be one of the most useful books I have ever read, and it helped me reorientate myself to what I care about: building a career and a community, writing books, and being there for my family.

Because of this book, I have written six chapters of a new novel and read 18 books in a month and a half, which I will catalogue at the end of this blog and flag the ones I recommend.  During this time, I’ve come to a conclusion: I need to start writing without caring about being read. Well, maybe that’s not right. Clearly, I want to care about an audience. Maybe it’s more on the lines of: Be yourself and your audience will find you. That could be it. I don’t know. Realize what you value and focus on that…maybe. I don’t know.

Books:

  • The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantu (Recommend. Reminded of Kerouac if he was working at the border)
  • The Psychology of Time Travel, Kate Mascareenhas (Don’t recommend)
  • Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport (One of the most useful books I’ve ever read)
  • How Not to Die Alone, Richard Roper (Recommend)
  • Ultralearning, Scott H. Young
  • Churchgoers, Patrick Coleman (Alert, San Diego author)
  • This is Not Propaganda, Pete Pomeranstev (Awesome read)
  • Writing to Persuade, Trish Hall
  • The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (Excellent, party time)
  • The War of Kindness, Jamil Zaki (Pass)
  • The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
  • The Whole Brain Child, Daniel Siegel (Awesome)
  • Neuromancer, William Gibson
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
  • The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker (Incredible style book)
  • Paper Towns, John Green (Amazing!)
  • The Disordered Mind, Eric R. Kandel
  • Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger (Not as good as I remembered)
Creative Inspiration, Personal Stories, Writing

How Not to Write for Money

It’s 10:17 p.m., and I just returned from a walk, where I tried to ignore several meetings in the morning and the conundrum of finding a way to be present in those meetings while balancing projects that need significant brain power to complete. Work takes up a significant amount of space in my mind, and I am grateful that I can use my craft to help in my profession. I tell stories at work, and I have incredibly clear outcomes: Grow our business, please our clients, and pay my bills. There is a sense of satisfaction in that clarity.

On the other hand, my creative work doesn’t have as clear outcomes. I don’t have deadlines; I don’t get paid (at least very much); and I don’t have any true metrics to evaluate performance outside of the arbitrary ones I set for myself. After I returned from the walk, where I wondered how many days after Christmas it would take some of the neighbors to remove their holiday lights, I saw my desk calling to me: Hey, Joe. You can get a couple hours of writing in before bed. You don’t need those 30 extra minutes of sleep. At this time of night, I find myself negotiating with the desk: But I can get the work done in the morning. How about this: 10 minutes on the story and 20 minutes continuing to build the framework for the novel after I make coffee? That should satisfy you, right? The desk is cold: Shut your mouth when you’re talking to me and sit your ass down. 

The desk always wins, however. It looks at me with those black eyes and coffee-stained freckles that look like constellations, a road map to the creative journey I build in my mind, and it guilts me into submission. Whether I engage or I don’t, the desk is on my mind, taking me out of whatever moment I’m trying to exist within…And I catch myself wondering: Why the hell am I doing this? Why am I negotiating with a desk? 

Many years ago, I would have been able to tell you clearly why I write creatively. I would have said: When I was in college, I read George Orwell’s Why I Write, and I felt a duty to speak truth, to say something meaningful, to throw a cog in the endless machine of soothsayers and reality-shapers. In high school, I would have said I write because I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five during a summer vacation in Myrtle Beach, and when I finished, I couldn’t imagine that life would ever be the same. I would have said that I write because I feel that the only way my life has meaning is if I’m remembered after I’m dead, and leaving a legacy of writing can help. I would have said because nobody thinks a kid from Clinton, Mass, can grow up and write novels. I would have said anything that I thought I needed to hear me say.

But why do I do it now? Why Do I spend the time after a hard day’s work to write stories and novels that I’m not sure anyone will ever read? Why do I take hours out of my day to think about sentences, paragraphs, characters, verisimilitude, the authenticity of act two?

I don’t get paid for this work. I don’t get recognized every day when I come home. I don’t have a boss that can provide a performance evaluation and tell me that I’m doing a great job…here is a raise. I don’t have clients to please.

It’s 10:31 now, and my wife wants to go to bed. I have a copy of Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: Space Odyssey on my nightstand that I can’t wait to read. I hear the sink in the bathroom turning on. I hear the traffic on the highway several streets over. But still, why do I do this? Why do I spend the time to brave rejections and acceptances, to fail and succeed (mostly fail), to wait for other people’s evaluations of my work, to publish blogs that I’m never positive people will read or ignore?

These questions have been running through my head over the last month, and I realized that I was struggling to answer them. That was until it hit me: I write because I want to connect with people. I want to build a conversation. I want to hear people tell me about their stories that, perhaps, my story inspired. I want to speak to the people who don’t feel like anyone is willing to talk. I want to write stories that force people to think twice about how they perceive mental illness. I want to write stories that illuminate the power of the imagination and how sometimes our realities are not as objective as we believe.

I want to communicate. It’s as simple as that. That’s such a basic want, and somewhere along the line, I forgot the power of that, and I began to force my work to fit expectations, marketplaces, genres that might not have been me. But I have to learn in 2018 to accept that I do not have control over creative work. I can’t bend it into the shape I want. I can’t force the genre of my work to reflect the perception I want others to have of me.

I write now because I want to connect with people, and the only way I believe I can  connect with them is to find a way to bleed on these pages, to use them as a mirror to the self, to share something authentic and true. That is my goal. That is why I write. To share and know the authentic self.

Creative Inspiration, Personal Stories

Graduation Advice: 17 Things I Wish I Could Have Said to My Seventeen-Year-Old Self

In May of last year, my former principal at my high school in Clinton, Massachusetts, asked if I would give the speech at the 2017 baccalaureate and give graduation advice. It was an honor to have been asked, and I gladly accepted. The offer was extended, perhaps, in November the year prior, and I had plenty of time to think about what I was going to say. I racked my brain for creative ways to inspire high schoolers, but I really didn’t know what it was like to be a high schooler in 2017. I only knew what it was like to be a high schooler in 1999 to 2003. So, I imagined what I would say to a seventeen-year-old version of myself, and I simply pretended I was in the audience, with the hopes of inspiring others. Watch the video below and let me know what you would say to your 17-year-old self.