Craft or Bust weekly: keep on keeping on (& decluttering to free creative energy)

The word count rises apace! Well, okay: not quite apace, but it does rise, anyway. ;) 658 words written this week. So far the word count is going up an average of 160 123* words a session — and I've been thinking more and more frequently of writing in between the necessary "oops, gotta absolutely do this to meet my CoB goal" sessions, which pretty much follows the pattern of last year's Craft or Bust project. The more weeks I met my easy minimum, the more I felt capable of exceeding the minimum; and then I did exceed it regularly and by far. Cross fingers that it works that way this year, too — though I'm not even going to whisper in the back of my mind the words "finished" and "novel" consecutively right now, lest I break the fragile confidence that's trying to build. ;)

Anyway, since I've been thinking more about writing, I've also been thinking about why, if I'm thinking about it, I'm not doing it. And the answer came easily this time: I have unfinished business. I'm like a ghost who can't move on, who stays hanging about places where I should have been done long ago.

Believe me, I can put up with some amount of loose ends, for quite some time — but the thickness of loose ends cluttering up my brain is hugely greater than the amount of loose ends floating around my yarn stash. (Har har.) I've been collecting loose ends longer than yarn, after all. I have a staggering amount of loose-endage; no shock that it makes it hard to move, much less move on. But the way through, I know now, is slowly and step by step, like through quicksand.

So I'm stepping and stepping and stepping.

What about you? Taken any steps toward your creative goals lately? :D Please do share — having company on my slow journey makes it seem less lame. ;)

*Average word count increase revised to include the first week I wrote for CoB 2011 ... which I totally forgot to include because it was on a different project than I'm currently writing on. Doh.

(This post is part of Craft or Bust, a weekly creative endurance challenge with a sense of compassion and fun. Check the Craft or Bust tab at the top of the blog, or read more about it here.)

Craft or Bust weekly: taking small steps

289 words. That's what I managed to write today — but it counts. It counts toward my Craft or Bust 2011 goal of writing a piece of fiction every week.

That sounds to me like a wimpy amount compared to how I used to be — but as I said last year with my "wimpy" sounding goal of crafting just one time every week, it's a vast improvement on nothing, which is what I've been doing for a while. So it's a step in the right direction, and that's all I ask of myself, because right now, treating myself with compassion and understanding works better than treating myself like a mean old boss. All I ask of me right now is a step, and then another, and then another — one step every week, and more than that if I feel like it. Which I very likely will once I get my balance again. :D

So what about you? Did you take any steps this week toward a goal you've been putting off? Did you do anything that was hard for you? Did you work on any crafty goals that gave you a sense of accomplishment?

Tell me about what you did this week that nurtures your creativity, and let's celebrate little steps together. ;D

(If you didn't know already, Craft or Bust is a weekly creative endurance challenge with a sense of compassion and fun. Find more info on the Craft or Bust tab at the top of the blog, or just click here for this year's relaunch post.)

Will you help me do the impossible?

This month is National Novel Writing Month. If by chance the rumor-mill of the Internet hasn't bludgeoned you with that idea till you're sick, and if by chance you don't know what that means, it means this: Those of us who are crazy enough are trying to write 50,000 words of novelish fiction in the 30 days of November.

I've written 3,354. That leaves 46,646 words to go ... in seven days.

Sound crazy? It absolutely is.

But I have another goal — a less crazy one. And you can help me with this one AND with the crazy one at the same time.

This is how: My NaNoWriMo fundraising team needs $65 to reach our fundraising goal for the month. The money we raise goes toward free creative writing programs held all over the world by the people who run NaNoWriMo.

For every dollar donated through my page before December 1, I will absolutely commit to writing 100 more words before the end of the month. The more you donate, the more I write. And the more you donate, the more creative writing gets done out there somewhere in the world.

Your donation will be tax-deductible, because the Office of Letters and Light, NaNoWriMo's parent organization, is a registered nonprofit.

How about it? You can help me, my team, and other people all over the world who dream of being great writers — just make a donation, however small. To donate, go to my page and click the "Sponsor me!" button near the top right.

As a bonus, if you forward me a copy of your donation confirmation e-mail, I will send you a coupon code good toward anything in my Etsy shop. Send your donation confirmation e-mails to crystal at starncrossbones.com (replacing the "at" with the @ sign in your e-mail).

If we reach our fundraising goal — and we can raise $65 in a week, right? ;D That's just 13 people donating $5 each! — before December 1, I'll send an extra surprise to anyone who forwards me their donation confirmation.

So if you're a supporter of creative dreams, of great writing, of having fun, and of challenging limitations — please make a donation, even just a tiny one. Every dollar counts — for 100 words and quite a bit more. ;)

Thank you muchly! ;D

Writing a book with a published author!

That sounds all fancy, doesn't it? ;) And of course I'm full of crap — but not completely.

What's up: I just discovered Holly Lisle's Write a Book With Me project, which reminds me of Craft or Bust, in a way. In Write a Book With Me, you...

• Work on any project you choose.
• Join any time.
• Check in any time.
• Try to write a little bit on a regular basis.
• Don't worry about missing a day, a month, or more.
• Have fun; no guilt.
• Aim to finish your book.

And in CoB, you:

• Join whenever.
• Stay as long as you like.
• Have fun; be inspired; show off your achievements.
• Try to check in every week, but if you don't, no worries.
• Try to craft regularly, even if it's only a little bit.
• Work on any project or projects you choose.
• Set your own goal(s).

Anyway, if you've checked it out at all (or even if you haven't), the subtitle to my blog reads "One little pirate chick spins yarn, knits, weaves, sews, writes, babbles, runs a crafty business, talks about speculative fiction and reality, and chases dreams."

You may have noticed I haven't done much of the speculative fiction or writing bits, even though they're a large part of why I changed the blog from plain old "Quicksilver Crafter" to "Quicksilver Crafter 2.0." But! I have a Cunning Plan. I just signed up for Holly Lisle's "Crash Revisions" mini-workshop on SavvyAuthors.com, to learn how to revise a novel in seven days — even though I don't have a finished novel. Ha, ha. ;D (Three halves of unrelated novels do not a finished book make.) Can you see my thinking? The mini-workshop is March 28. I have over 50,000 words written already. And if I write every day from now through March 27, I'll be at least 8,000 words closer to finishing my novel. Maybe I'll even be finished.

And that's however much closer to that elusive, decades-old goal: having a novel written! :D :D :D

BTW, I have NaNoWriMo to thank for what I have written so far, but also to thank for the multiple book projects, since I wasn't sure, the first time I did NaNoWriMo, whether I would end up writing complete drivel, so I started a new project rather than work on the one I had going, which I didn't want to derail with drivel. ;)

More later, after I ponder whether I'll really be joining Write a Book With Me. Regardless, I need an attack plan to get That Darn Book (or any one of them) finished. Finally.

To save the world, create

The latest installment of Holly Lisle's TalysMana, a novel draft that she's writing "live" and sending out to subscribers, made me laugh because it mentions fandom, although not by that name. I've wanted to do that in a piece of non-fanfiction since shortly after I learned what fanfiction is, so ... good on Holly for doing yet another thing I've been wanting to do. ;) Aside from writing and publishing books, TalysMana itself is a bit like an idea I've had knocking around in my head for a while — but, you know, it exists. I just had some vague notion of combining writing and jewelrymaking, but she and her daughter are actually doing it. (And soon I'll be launching my knitting+fiction project, which has a similar bent, but that's for another post. While I'm on a tangent, though, go visit TalysMana and subscribe. It's just getting juicy and you have six chapters to enjoy while waiting for the next.)

The main reason I'm writing this post is that in the latest chapter of TalysMana, the talented Ms. Lisle also touches on an idea I once supported (or at least considered reasonable) — but until tonight I'd forgotten why I ever thought the idea made sense. The idea: The universe is locked in a forever battle between entropy and creation, and generally speaking, as creatures of life, for us, entropy = bad.

I know why I forgot how to believe in that idea; I forgot to believe in it because I started thinking of entropy as a purely scientific concept, or more specifically, a thermodynamic concept. Entropy is involved in the melting of ice, to use Wikipedia's example, and ice melting isn't exactly a villainous act. So I forgot why entropy had ever = bad, and the concept started to seem completely melodramatic.

But tonight, Holly Lisle's novel-in-progress reminded me that what we create is part of reality — quite literally. What you think in your head, what you write in your journal ... Those things may be private, but they still exist, and if you think about all the negativity that people nurture in themselves, in others, even in private ... It does start to seem like there must be an enormous amount of negativity out there. Now, if you believe that every act of imagination is contributing to the current reality, then self-help starts to seem like a bigger deal — "Your focus determines your reality" turns into "Your focus helps determine everyone's reality," and goshdarnit if creativity doesn't start to seem like a power to wield with responsibility.

The idea of collective mood isn't that far-fetched, either — MoodViews tracks Livejournal moods and creates a collective mood report, and I seem to recall a collective mood widget for the Mac OS Dashboard, that took the form of a strangely mesmerizing, color-changing glowing dot...

Anyway. Tonight I re-realized that entropy = bad is really the flip side of creativity = good. Creativity, if you mean it in a certain sense, contributes to collective positivity. It adds something good to reality. It makes the world a brighter place. Even if no one sees what you do, your creativity still exists, and if you believe in a higher power of any kind, or if you believe in the Whole in a sort of Zen way, your creativity matters because it's visible from a distance as a building block in the Grand Scheme of Things. If enough people choose to create, then the universe is a more creative place. If enough people choose to destroy, the universe becomes a more destructive place. Heck, don't stop at the universe — all of Existence is built of these wee molecular structures, and to a large extent, you can choose what your addition to the Whole looks like.

So there's a good reason to go ahead and create, even if someone else has been there before you; even if you don't think anyone will care; even if you know no one will ever see it.

Create because it is good. Create because you are giving life to something positive. Create because you choose to give the gift of something beautiful, or meaningful, or fun, to the whole of reality. Create because you live, and your life needs to be spent in some fashion, and when it comes down to it, would you rather have spent it negatively? Or would you rather be able to look back and say, "I brought something good to this place, in my own way, as best I could"?

That's what it means when people say "Only you, of all the people in creation, can do what you do."

You can create, or you can destroy. We all do a little of each, but when you have a chance to shape your little part of the Whole, which one will you choose to do?