dar williams

Caffeine Naps

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There’s a bit in The Blank Screen book where I quote songwriter Dar Williams. I’m prone to quoting her a lot but in this case it was to do with inspiration and specifically to do with caffeine.

Asked by someone about getting into the mood to write and create, she said:

You have to walk around a lot of museums, a lot of sculpture parks.
And time your caffeine so that you are in an open, wide, contemplative space for when it takes hold.

I like that and I like it a lot and I intend to do it more, but I’ve not connected it with another caffeine option before. The Caffeine Nap. When you’re tired and have to press on, drink some strong coffee, set your alarm for twenty minutes and have a nap.

Twenty minutes later, you’re woken by the alarm and the caffeine is in your bloodstream doing its wonderful job.

End of the Summer

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I refuse to accept that it is already autumn – or the Fall, I love that Americans call it the Fall, it’s such a perfect poetic word for it – and instead I am going to insist to you that this is really an album recommendation.

It is. End of the Summer is a Dar Williams album and I love it. I remember buying it on CD in Tower Records in London. I don’t think the store is even there now.

But while you’re listening to it, I admit there might be some people who might think that this might be the end of the summer, a bit. And these people have opinions about what you should do about it:

After a summer holiday slipping back into work mode can be a challenge.

Being greeted by an overflowing inbox and a hectic meeting schedule may cause you to suffer from the back-to-work blues, making it difficult to focus on that mountain of work in front of you. Business coach Robyn McLeod, says succumbing to the pressure to speed back into work can undo any benefits you may have received from taking a break.

Follow these tips to re-integrate to work after your holiday and avoid the post-vacation hangover

Summer Vacation is Officially Over, How to Ease Back into Work – Lisa Evans, Fast Company (2 September 2014)

The tips centre on taking time before you go on holiday to plan what you’ll do when you come back. Block out time the first day to talk to people, catch up on what you’ve missed and handle your email better.

Read Evans’s full feature for some practical, good steps.

And then listen to Dar Williams.

My favourite entry on The Blank Screen

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Well, it’s my favourite today. As we approach the 1,000th article on The Blank Screen – and as we have exceeded 250,000 words – I’ve been compiling a book. You’ve nominated articles, I’ve studied the statistics and I’ve just re-read everything. It’s been rather fun but sometimes you read something now in a very different way to how you saw it at the time.

That’s happened with one particular piece and right now this is one reason I’m calling it my favourite.

Originally, I wrote this short piece about how writer Dar Williams basically disagrees with everything I say:

I’ve said this before: I wouldn’t kill to write like songwriter Dar Williams, but I’d maim. She has a fine and long body of work, a now substantial discography but interestingly, she’s against being disciplined and productive.

Dar Williams: I don’t force lines, and I don’t force myself to write every day, and somehow out of that came seven albums that don’t, to me, feel forced. And that’s the only thing I’ll boast about is that there’s nothing about it that to me sounds like I said, “I have to write for 2 hours a day,” with lines where there were no inspiration.

Dar Williams on Productivity and Creativity – William Gallagher, The Blank Screen (15 July 2014)

That did and that still does tickle me: a woman whose writing I admire and rate, an artist who has produced a considerable body of work, fundamentally disagrees with what I say about getting on with it.

Except now, just five weeks later, I re-read that and instead what has had me thinking all day is this other quote from her in the same piece:

Dar Williams: Well, when I was in college, I put a stick-it on my computer, which was huge, that said, “Whatever you do is enough.” I had totally lost my mind, and I was coming back from that. So I would say to myself, you know, you’re supposed to do a ten-page paper, if you do one page you’ll get a D+. If you do two pages, you’ll get a C-, or if you do three pages you’ll get a C-. So that’s all better than an F, so why don’t you do a page?

At times I don’t do anything because I don’t think I can finish it or because I don’t think I can do it well enough. But she’s right, isn’t she? Doing something, it’s always better than not doing anything.

Dar Williams on productivity and creativity

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I’ve said this before: I wouldn’t kill to write like songwriter Dar Williams, but I’d maim. She has a fine and long body of work, a now substantial discography but interestingly, she’s against being disciplined and productive. I’m obviously paying more attention and notice because I rate her so much but I think she makes these points particularly persuasively.

She makes them in an old interview on Songfacts where am unnamed interviewer presses on the point thisaway:

Songfacts: When you look at this collection, does it amaze you that you’ve accomplished what you have? I don’t want to ask you to brag, but there must be some moment of pride to be able to look at all these songs and re-visit some of your accomplishments over the years. How does it make you feel when you look at the songs that make up this collection?

Dar: Well, when I was in college, I put a stick-it on my computer, which was huge, that said, “Whatever you do is enough.” I had totally lost my mind, and I was coming back from that. So I would say to myself, you know, you’re supposed to do a ten-page paper, if you do one page you’ll get a D+. If you do two pages, you’ll get a C-, or if you do three pages you’ll get a C-. So that’s all better than an F, so why don’t you do a page?

And it was really, enormously helpful to me. And then a friend of mind was kind of coming back from her lost moment, and I put the stick-it on her computer, and she took a very playful approach to this paper, really appreciating the fact that she wasn’t writing about something very tangible, and just giving it a very playful approach. And she got an A. Her professor said he read it for his wife. It was like, by letting the pressure go and allowing herself to do what she could in that moment, she released a sort of joy in the meaning of the whole assignment.

So it’s like I have a little stick-it on my inner computer that says “Whatever you do is enough.” And I don’t force lines, and I don’t force myself to write every day, and somehow out of that came seven albums that don’t, to me, feel forced. And that’s the only thing I’ll boast about is that there’s nothing about it that to me sounds like I said, “I have to write for 2 hours a day,” with lines where there were no inspiration. I felt it when I wrote it. And I think that experience coming back from being totally insane and putting that stick-it on my computer was a good beginning to a less forced work ethic.

Dar Williams – Songfacts (3 November 2010)

Be sure to read the whole piece: this is all she says on productivity but it’s a wide-ranging interview and she’s smart across it all.

Thanks to @groggy for pointing me at this.

When is it over?

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There’s not going to be some great life-changing Hallmark-Card-like slice of advice here, I’m just wondering about something I have wondered about a lot.

I wonder when things are over.

There must be a day when something is done. This first popped into my noggin some years ago when I read a line somewhere about how Dar Williams‘s new album was coming out soon. (I think it was Many Great Companions, which is so good that when a friend asked what I liked about Dar Williams, I just bought her the album. It’s cheaper to write reviews, but I wanted her to have it. I want you to have it too, but I’m a little short today.)

I can’t remember when this was but I was surprised because up to then, her previous CD had been the new one. My own Doctor Who releases go through a similar thing.

Actually, Doctor Who, there’s a thing. I go through various processes writing those, there are the same types of deadlines to the same types of timescales and in theory I could say my involvement ends when I deliver the last draft. Well, you don’t know there won’t be more to do then. So call it when the scripts are in studio, that’s definitely the end for me. Well, sometimes I’m in studio and working on scenes. Okay, post production. Definitely no involvement there, so that Doctor Who is over and I’m looking for the next one.

Except there are liner notes to write for the CD. Quite often there are interviews to do.

So okay, when it goes on sale. But that’s when I start talking about it all, I suppose officially because that’s marketing and promotion, but really it’s because now I can FINALLY talk to you about it.

I don’t put “Tweet about Doctor Who” in my OmniFocus To Do list. It isn’t a task, it’s what I do for fun. So by the time we reach the tweeting stage, you can bet that my OmniFocus Doctor Who project is long completed. So that’s definitely it, that’s definitely over. I have ticked off everything I have to do, everything I have to deliver, I can mark the entire project as done.

That seems very satisfying.

And that’s why this is on my mind today. I did an event yesterday that has been some preposterous number of months in the making and this morning I’m doing my OmniFocus review, I’m getting to that project and I am about to grandly click on Done, when I don’t.

Because I’ve thought of some more tasks. Well, call them tasks because it would be bad if I didn’t do them. Just wrapping up stuff, there are so many people I want to thank for getting this done for me, for instance. That could go in the fun pile, that needn’t be a task To Do per se, except I’ll feel very bad if I forget someone in the rush. So I jotted down who it is. And okay, I know it’d be handiest for this person if I phoned and for that person if I texted, and so on.

Then there’s the money to do with the event. That truly is a task. That is several tasks in a row.

When that’s all done, then, that’s when this event is over.

Okay.

Sorted.

I just need to keep the event details around because I’ve had a lot of praise for it that might help in the pitching for the new one.