Advice

So it’s been done before, so what?

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I wish I thought that. I’ve a project now that I want to do more than anything but it has been done somewhere else before and that is killing me. One of the people backing me points out that it’s also been done in Paris and Vienna and doubtlessly America too so it’s not like I’d be stealing from this particular somewhere else.

You know how when something is on your mind, it’s like the world or at least the internet seems to gather relevant stuff and throw it at you? Usually when you’re trying to avoid thinking about it. But sometimes when you need it too. So today I found this:

Just about every successful initiative and project starts from a place of replication. The chances of being fundamentally out of the box over the top omg original are close to being zero.

A better question to ask is, “have you ever done this before?” Or perhaps, “are the people you are seeking to serve going to be bored by this?”

Originality is local. The internet destroys, at some level, the idea of local, so sure, if we look hard enough we’ll find that turn of a phrase or that unique concept or that app, somewhere else.

But no one is asking you to be original. We’re asking you to be generous and brave and to matter. We’re asking you to step up and take responsibility for the work you do, and to add more value than a mere cut and paste. Give credit, definitely, but reject vemödalen.

Of Course It’s Been Done Before – Seth Godin (18 November 2014)

Find out a touch more – including what vemödalen means – in the full piece.

Don’t be happy, worry

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From a Brain Pickings piece on how trying to be happy all the time is bad for our creativity.

To be clear, I myself am deeply opposed to the Tortured Genius myth of creativity. But I am also of the firm conviction that access to the full spectrum of human experience and the whole psychoemotional range of our inner lives — high and low, light and darkness — is what makes us complete individuals and enables us to create rich, dimensional, meaningful wo

In Praise of Melancholy and How It Enriches Our Capacity for Creativity – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (28 November 2014)

Read the full piece.

Writers’ Notes: when you can and when you can’t link to someone

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Easy. You always can. The end.

By chance, I’ve had several conversations this week with people who either wanted to link to my blog or were asking what I thought of them linking to others. Link away, I said. Always. There’s no permission needed and no endorsement implied.

At least, there isn’t from the site or person you’re linking to. If I were to tell you that Brain Pickings is the most amazingly absorbing site I read – which it is, by the way – then I believe I am actually beholden to give you a link. I don’t have to ask the site’s owner Maria Popova and my linking to her site doesn’t mean she’s happy for me to. It doesn’t mean she even knows about me.

It just means that I am sending you on your way. I have a thing: I can’t write anything online without including a link to take you somewhere else more interesting afterwards. I feel that is my duty and also that if I do it, I’ve earned a bit of your time to do some things with and for you.

The site owner you’re linking to do does find out, by the way. They have to look at their traffic but they can and so if a tonne of people click through you to them, they’ll know about it.

And what are they going to do? Multiple choice answer: a) be pleased, 2) be very pleased or iii) one of the above. I suppose if the Ferguson police force linked to me I might be a bit irked but they never will and nobody would click through there to me if they did.

So link away. You’re doing a service and I think this is actually part of the bedrock of the web, that we share sites amongst ourselves.

Future You

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I got this idea from a woman I’m mentoring in all this creative productivity. That’s a thing now: I do The Blank Screen sessions one to one and it is the most hair-raising fun I’ve had since writing the original book. There are so many great things about getting in so deep with an individual and their work and one of them is that I learn things back.

Such as Future You.

It’s just this:

Do it now so that Future You doesn’t have to.

And maybe:

Do it now so that Future You loves you – or at least thinks you’re okay

My mentoree (is that a word?) says she uses it for simple things like making the beds in the morning rather than leaving it until she gets back from work. She uses it in her work, getting things done while they’re fresh so that her Future You isn’t stressed out with a deadline.

She also says she falls down a bit on that last one.

But the idea is simple and sound and I’m using it right now. I haven’t got a lot on today but they are important to me. And they’re occupying more time than they should: they are events of a certain quite short duration yet the time I’m spending planning and churning and rehearsing means I will lose the whole day to them. Which is fine and even very good, but I wanted to write to you. So right now, rather than holding my head and clutching a hot mug of tea, hello. Future Me will be pleased I did this now because Future Me would be very narked if I missed a chance to chat.

In a mo, I’m off to a school for the last of four sessions about scriptwriting. I was up for hours last night worrying about this, about what we have left to do, what they can get done, what we can make together. And then around 5am – no, wait, I get up at 5am, it was exactly 5am – I went from my bed to my Mac to write down all I needed for the morning.

I wrote that naked at 5am and have you seen how cold it is out there? I was shaking by the time I’d finished. But Future Me then got to stand in a hot shower and let the worries and the plans soak away.

To be replaced by nerves about tonight. For tonight I’m performing at the launch of an anthology of short stories. It was my first commissioned prose fiction and so far it has gone down stormwards. Tonight’s the big presentation, though. It will be the 120th time I’ve presented or spoken or done something with an audience since I moved back to Birmingham two years ago. But it’s a worry.

Future Me is currently discussing with Present Me why in the world Past Me invited my family.

The thirty-minute quick win

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When I say go, I’m going to set a timer for thirty minutes and make a pitch. I don’t know what yet. But a friend has sent me a bundle of things that are so interesting, I want to do them all. And I’ve felt a bit blinded by which to pitch to first. Plus I’ve been a wee bit busy. So the result is that I’ve had the list for few days now and nothing is happening.

Let’s make something happen. Especially as today was a rubbish day. Got barely anything done and if I can whack out a pitch now, in front of you, I’ll feel better. I like feeling better.

So, here goes:

ME: Set a timer, thirty minutes
SIRI: Okay, your timer is set for thirty minutes. Remember, a watched iPhone never boils.

(It really said that.)

Go.

And… stop.

With 15 minutes and 28 seconds to go, I’m done. Read the pitch list, found one I fancied – it didn’t have to be the best, it just had to be there and be one I liked. No selection, or at least as little selection as I could manage. (There was one about poetry, for instance. Nice opportunity, lovely idea, completely outside my capabilities. So I moved on. But only a bit.)

Read the detail, did a swift email to them, gone.

And it worked, I feel better.

I didn’t see your message, sorry

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It is handy when you know that someone has seen your email or your text or your update or your anything, but actually it is never handy. You’re a writer, you know they’ve seen it, why aren’t they saying anything?

Worse, you’re wrong. They haven’t seen it. They really haven’t seen it. I’ve had this come up with people who tell me they know so-and-so read their email DAYS AGO and so is being rude not replying. Or they NEVER OPENED IT ONCE, same thing. In each case, you don’t know. Maybe they saw the three-line preview on their iPhone and didn’t bother to open the message. Maybe they got eleventy-billion emails that morning and simply didn’t see yours in there.

But none of that matters when the person in question is you. And when the question in question is whether you have read something or you haven’t. You could just let the online world go on its little way, sending out read receipt acknowledgements wherever it may, or you could fight back. Stop it happening.

Lifehacker’s got your back. Read its full feature on how to switch off bleedin’ read receipts in the most popular software around.

E-cigarettes can be bad for the health – of your computer

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It’s fair to say that the first person to stick leaves in their mouth and set fire to it wasn’t really thinking ahead. But who could’ve foreseen this? It is reportedly possible that your e-cigarette is just waiting for you to plug it into your PC or Mac so that it can do some damage. Deliberate, malicious, profitable damage:

Many e-cigarettes can be charged over USB, either with a special cable, or by plugging the cigarette itself directly into a USB port. That might be a USB port plugged into a wall socket or the port on a computer – but, if so, that means that a cheap e-cigarette from an untrustworthy supplier gains physical access to a device.

A report on social news site Reddit suggests that at least one “vaper” has suffered the downside of trusting their cigarette manufacturer. “One particular executive had a malware infection on his computer from which the source could not be determined,” the user writes. “After all traditional means of infection were covered, IT started looking into other possibilities.

“The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system.”

Health warning: Now e-cigarettes can give you malware | Technology | The Guardian

If this were chocolate, I’d be talking about having some perspective and how this is surely a tiny proportion of all e-chocolate systems. But since it’s just smoking, what the hell? Go crazy, panic, stop smoking, it’s fine. Read the full piece.

Metaphors are like, um, er

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Metaphors can help by tapping what learning theorists call prior knowledge to make a connection between what people already understand through experience and what they have yet to discover. We do this naturally in conversation — for instance, “The news hit her like a freight train.” By comparing the situation to something people already know or can at least imagine, we convey its intensity and urgency. But when explaining our ideas in presentations, we’re sometimes reluctant to use verbal or visual metaphors to relate to audiences. I’ve heard people say that metaphors are “off topic,” or worse, “cheap.” Though using a cheesy one can elicit groans, more often than not, metaphors offer a shortcut to understanding.

Finding the Right Metaphor for Your Presentation

Read the full piece. Its specifically about searching for the right metaphor in a presentation but so long as you don’t lurch into cliché, it’s surely going to be valid until the cows come home.

Avoiding seasonal depression when you work alone

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There’s no doubt that life as a freelancer has its perks. We get to structure our days as we wish, work with clients we like, and don’t have to sell eight-hour blocks of our day to an employer. But when working from home or at the local coffee shop, we face social isolation, which puts us at risk for anxiety and depression. And as winter approaches, it comes with a heightened risk of seasonal depression.

3 Ways Freelancers Can Avoid Isolation—and the Seasonal Depression That Comes With It – Michael Tunney, Contently (19 November 2014)

Read the full piece for advice.

Ten Rules for the Creative Sandbox

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10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox
1. There is no “wrong.”
Which also means there is no “right.” This is play, remember. The point is simply that you’re having fun. 2. Think process, not product.
In other words, It doesn’t matter if you like or hate the product; all that matters is that you’re having fun.
There’s time enough later for editing and crafting. Creative Sandbox time is all about letting your 4-year-old out, and 4-year-olds are much more interested in the experience of creating than in what they make.

How to Bust a Creative Block: Rules for the Creative Sandbox – Melissa Dinwiddie (undated)

Read the full piece for the other eight and rather a lot more.