I was privileged to teach a class at a recent music conference. The class was called, "You Can Give the Industry What It Wants and Still Be Creative". It was taught by a team of 4 people: Suz Doyle talked about finding inspiration when you are blocked; Chuck Schlacter talked about how he researches opportunities and client requests, and illustrated how he sketches out the plan for a piece of music on a daily basis; John Mazzei talked about what it’s like to work with film directors as a composer, and the challenge of supporting the creative vision of the director while remaining true to one’s own muse.

I choose to talk about creatively managing creative time.

I was on a coaching call a while ago with Debra Russell and Nancy Moran, and Nancy talked about delegating tasks. Not just bookkeeping or web management… but the personal things you need to do around the house, or the errands you run. Her logic was, if you are self-employed, then everything you do is part of running your business. What a sense of relief I got when she said that! I’d been struggling with the house, shopping, laundry, and felt guilty about not being able to keep up with it all. It was huge weight off my shoulders to realize it was ‘ok’ to delegate some of that out. So here’s what I came up with.

1-Make a list of daily, weekly and monthly tasks. That’s everything you need to do. Pay bills, shop for groceries, go to the gym, etc.

2-Set up a calendar. I have mine set up as a table in Word. Preferably you want something where you can see the month at a glance.

3-Now schedule your tasks. Try to be efficient. For example, if you are downtown on Friday afternoons, then you schedule all your downtown errands on Friday afternoon, that’s when you get your photocopies, pick up toner from the office supply store, mail your packages, do your banking. If you set aside time on Saturday morning to clean house, maybe that’s also a good time to do laundry. You can throw a load in and then go clean the kitchen. If, like me, doing laundry means a trip to the Laundromat… well, I have enough towels and clothes to go one month before I need to do laundry. And when I do laundry, I put everything in the washer and then go to the grocery store and/or drug store, do any banking. Sometimes I’ll even call my mom from my cell while I’m sitting in the Laundromat. I can cross ‘call Mom’ off my list ;)

I mentioned in the class that I order my groceries on-line. There is a local company (Spud.ca) that deliver organics. I order those supplies on Mondays and they are delivered Thursdays. I then go to the store once a week (usually Wednesday morning) and get anything I need that they don’t deliver. I order on-line for the convenience, but also because I know that if I get swamped or overwhelmed, the first thing that goes is shopping. That is not good for my health. So ordering on-line is not only time management, it’s health management, to get a box of beautiful fresh veggies and fruit every week, encouraging me to eat sensibly.

Because I work at home, I’m able to manage cooking by preparing veggies for the steamer, and plugging it in before my last session starts, or using the crock pot. I tend to eat pretty much the same things most of the time. I make a meal plan for the week – this is not only good for time management but it’s a good budget measure as well. I always try to cook enough for two meals so I only have to warm things up.

Included in your schedule of ‘tasks’ should also be some daily personal time, just to be… to walk, to dream, to meditate, to be still. And also include, on a weekly basis, time to go over your schedule for the following week, plan your budget, balance your chequebook, make your grocery list & plan your meals. I allow 2 hours for this on Saturday morning.

4-The next step is to make a list of projects you want to work on. This could be musical collaborations, writing for opportunities, working on your album, etc. I have separate project sheets for library composing, co-writing, my album, and listings I plan to submit to. I have a project binder and in each section I put notes & emails for the different projects I’m working on.

5-Now look at your schedule, and plan when you will be in your ‘studio’. On weekends I plan 4-6 hours per day, during the week I plan 3 to 5 hours per day depending on what I have on. Allow time for social events…. Dinner and a movie – one night a week. Overall I schedule about 20 hours studio time as a minimum. Because I work for myself I’m in charge of my schedule. If you work full-time and you have a family, then your obligations are going to be different, and your available time for writing is going to be reduced. That’s life. We make choices and we need to see them through.

When you walk into your studio at the scheduled time, then you look at your list of projects and ask, ‘what is the best use of my time right now’, or ‘what is the most urgent thing to work on,’ or ‘what would I like to play with today’. Guard this time, don’t let other things eat into it. Use your weekly planning time to assess how well you are figuring out how to deal with your needs, and adjust accordingly.

It only makes sense to me that we should set reasonable goals, figure out what we need to get or to know, and then set out to save for that software, or set aside time to learn/practice, and use available resources (like songwriting forums) to get feedback on what we are doing, or even to share our process and ask for advice. We assess progress by looking back and asking… did I move forward over the past few months? Am I writing better, more consistently, did I finish what I set out to do?

I recommend these books:
“Getting Things Done” by David Allen
“The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron

The handout I distributed at the class is available here:
http://www.islandnet.com/~vflawith/Creative_Time_Handout

-------------------
Just as an example, then... my overall schedule might look like this:

Sunday-
1 hr - clean hse/organize
(walk)
4-6 hrs - studio

Monday-
3 hrs - work
(lunch, walk)
4 hrs - work
(dinner)
2 hrs - studio
order on-line groc

Tuesday-
3 hrs - work morning
1 hr - rehearse with trio
(lunch, walk)
4 hrs work
(dinner)
2 hrs studio

Wednesday-
2 hrs - studio
shopping/banking/laundry/walk
(lunch)
4 hrs - work
(dinner)
2 hrs - studio

Thursday-
3 hrs - work morning
1 hr - studio
(lunch, walk, groc delivered)
4 hrs work
(dinner)
2 hrs studio

Friday-
3 hrs - work morning
1 hr - rehearse with trio
weekly appt
run errands
dinner/movie

Saturday-
2 hrs - scheduling/planning
(lunch, walk)
4-6 hrs - studio
-------------------

Ah well what to report, what to report. Big Brothers came and took away a big bag of clothes and a box of shoes. The junk van came and took away old beat-up furniture, old junk, old carpet, et al. Feels good.

Been working hard to get prepared for the music conference I go to every November. Burned some CDs with examples of my composing in case I get close to a music library representative... and a few CDs with worktapes of songs to get feedback on.

Have any number of projects to work on when I get back. Three more instrumental demos to pitch, and then 21 instrumental cues to lengthen and do final mixes for. Also a number of collaborations need finishing up, and I have a few listings I'd like to write for. Also, 2010 is going to be the year of the album. I figure now I'm getting broadcast quality tracks signed by music libraries, I'm ready to produce the album I've been dreaming of the past couple years.

Am also playing a gig on December 11th that's a mix of original and traditional songs of the season, we'll have to kick up the rehearsal schedule when I return.

I'm on a 'tips and techniques for film/tv composing' panel at the conference, and I'm also one of a team teaching a class in how to give the music industry what it wants while still being creative. A little nervous about that, but hope I can remain calm and say something useful, lol.

T'was a nice day today, and weather reports are good for the week :)

What is it in me that looks at an empty box and deeply desires to keep it? Walk into my bathroom, and on the top shelf there are empty boxes that once contained a toaster or a mixer. Walk into my bedroom and on top of my cupboard are empty boxes that once had a VCR or a IBM tower. Get into my closet and start sorting things out, and there are boxes with boxes in them.

Is it the ghost of Christmas past? For mother and grandmother would exclaim, on receiving a beautifully wrapped parcel, that it was a shame to ruin the wrapping. So they would carefully carefully remove the coloured paper, never tearing. And then they would put the wrapping and the gift tag and the ribbon or bow in the box with the gift. Did they actually use that paper again, I wonder? Did they actually find another occasion to reuse that ribbon? Or did they, like me, find it months later when they were looking for something else… and then finally discard it?

I find myself thinking, when I receive something in a box… 'oh… this might be good to put something in if I have to mail things… or if I have a gift to give.' But invariably I never need them. And even if I do…. I don’t mail 100 parcels a year. Maybe just one small box. At that rate it will take me 20 years to use up the ones I’m hoarding… and I’d be sending some big boxes with very little in them.

This week I ripped up several boxes and put them in recycle. But I still have more. Even writing this I feel a great reluctance to give away that VCR box… even though the VCR is more than two years old and the warranty has expired. I need to reassure myself that boxes will be available to me if I should ever decide to move… which will likely be never as I can’t face trying to pack all this stuff up and move it anyway.

But I am proud to announce that I actually (once I moved some boxes) was able to get into my walk-in closet today. I have several boxes of stuff to go through… but Big Brothers is coming Tuesday to pick up donations… and the junk van is coming Wednesday for the stuff that can’t be recycled or given away. So I am making progress on my goal to reduce, reuse, recycle and throw away.

But… I happen to know a friend is sending me something in the mail. It should arrive this week. It will be in a box.

Uh oh.

I am trying to clean my bedroom - a Herculean task of mammoth porportions. If you don't hear from me, bring a tractor over & dig me out. Seriously. But I did find the abstract I painted in August - it's good, I like it. And I found piles of music I'd forgotten I had, in a box.

Anyway, I wonder how I managed to get all this stufffffffffff in one room and still breathe. No more, I say! The junk men are coming and taking it all away, soon!!! (Don't worry, I recycle or give away anything remotely useful.) But first I must have a lie down. Just looking at all those boxes makes me exhausted.

You know, somewhere along the line, after waffling for years, never finishing anything I started… something changed. I actually began something that didn’t end. I certainly thought about quitting - a lot. I procrastinated. I didn’t follow through sometimes. But I never stopped totally. I kept going.

I kept going to voice lessons even when nothing felt good, even when I was making no progress in spite of excellent instruction. Every time I thought about stopping – and I often thought about stopping – something in me said, even if I never sing anywhere… there’s something I need to overcome just for myself, and this is helping. Of course, I love music, and that passion helped me to stick to my guns as well.

I was so tangled up inside with old programming. I had no trust in myself at all. But on some intuitive level, I must have understood that evolution comes from struggling to move forward against the odds.

If you ever go into my kitchen, you’ll see something on my fridge. It’s a little list of goals. And at the bottom, in big large letters, I typed “I promise myself I’ll never give up.”

Yep, slow and steady wins.

Eh? What’s that you say? I should strive to be other than perfect? What’s the point of that?

Well… you see, we’re caught in this terrible bind.

We do need to learn something about what we are doing. As artists, we know we have to have craft, or skill, in order to produce our work effectively. We need to work hard to understand what is required, and practice doing it, so that we will become more expert at performing, or writing, or composing, or painting, etc.

And yet, at the same time, we want to express, we want to explore, we want to be organically in-the-moment feeling what we are doing.

If we focus too much on the mechanics, we run the danger of becoming mechanical, seized up, trying too hard.

If we let everything go and just perform organically, we lose something because we are not engaged in the act in the most effective way we could be - and our art suffers from our lack of craft.

So do we sacrifice craft for expression? Or do we forget feeling and work on precise execution?

Neither.

When we bring our work to our mentors to be assessed, we bring it knowing it is imperfect. We present it with humility and presence. We say, “this is the best I can do right now.” Accepting where we are is the first step to moving beyond it.

If we resist where we are ('I can’t sing a note on key, even if you paid me'), then our whole instrument is bound up in hiding that state from everyone. We may consciously be willing to step into the light and give it a go, but our whole body rebels against it. And no wonder, because many of us have been traumatized in the past by unkind remarks and unrealistic expectations.

So we come into the studio, longing to sing, but afraid. We have been programmed to believe that we are not capable. Perhaps we were told that we had no talent, perhaps we were told never to make a loud noise, perhaps we were told by a teacher not to sing with the rest of the class. Even if it was forty years ago, that embarrassment and that hurt still lives in us. But it can be overcome, with time and patience.

We begin by allowing ourselves to be precisely where we are, warts and all. We allow ourselves to sing off key. We allow ourselves to not be able to coordinate things effectively. We allow ourselves to attempt to do what we are asked, knowing that we will indeed fail.

In order to progress, we must accept our own state of imperfection. We don’t know how to do it, that’s why we’re in the studio with a teacher. We can’t keep all the balls in the air – we’re not expected to.

We are challenged to sing, knowing that we won’t achieve everything that is being asked of us. And then we’re asked to repeat the act, keeping what happened right, and attempting to add what was missed. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can’t. But either way, the roof never caves in. If we missed something, we simply try again. If we managed to get it all… guess what, the next thing we do is sing another scale… and the whole thing starts again.

In songwriting, composing, writing, singing, acting, dancing, painting, etc…. feedback is how we learn. Effective critique gives us understanding, gives us tools, gives us support. It never criticizes. We need to accept feedback as part of the process, knowing that whatever state of ability we demonstrated in the moment is separate from our worth as a human being. We have to try to be emotionally detached from our work. And it is the responsibility of the teacher/mentor to ensure that our process is supported.

So lessons aren’t just about performing the mechanical tasks of the artform. Lessons are also about understanding our Self. How do I think? How do I view feedback? How negatively do I think about myself and my abilities? How patient am I with myself? Hmmm…

The true challenge of walking the path of discovering the artist within, is embracing your own imperfection… and shining a light on it… and saying “Look at that. So, I have more to learn. That’s okay. Keeps life interesting. Now I know what to work on for next time.”

I’ll be talking to a student and whatever we’re talking about is so interesting I think I should write a blog about it. But then the moment passes and a few days later I sit down to write a blog without the inspiration of that person in front of me. I did jot down a phrase during one discussion this week. “How 2 practice,” I wrote.

That’s an interesting thought. How do you “practice” creativity? I can tell you how I do it. I practice it by doing what I’m doing right now. I’m sitting here without one idea in my head, writing. I’m starting by telling you I don’t have any ideas. My brain feels all foggy, and I feel reluctant to write. But I’m writing anyway. After a quick ‘save as’, I’m back looking at the mostly blank page. But because I’ve started, something starts to happen. It’s like the act of actually doing something… even if it’s as mundane as writing “I have nothing to say” … is a spark.

So I think about the songwriting (February is Album Writing Month (FAWM), 50 songs in 90 days), script writing (Script Frenzy) and novel writing (National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenges that I do. I think about how people react when I tell them I’m participating in this or that challenge. Usually the reaction is negative.

“Fifty songs in ninety days? What’s the point of that? Isn’t it better to hone one song than rush to write a bunch of tunes? What publisher would be interested in that?”

My reply is… when participating in challenges I’m not writing for the commercial market, per se. Some of the things I write during FAWM and 50-90 do end up getting signed. But I write, to write. To push myself. To look for ideas and get them down on the page, recorded in a worktape. I am exercising my muse. To keep it toned, in shape, ready to work.

“Write an album’s worth of songs in one month? Fourteen songs in 28 days? I’m lucky if I write one song in six months.”

My reply is… perhaps if you did a challenge like this you might find yourself writing more than that. If you wait for inspiration, if you wait to be in the mood, if you wait for an idea… you could be waiting a long time. What if you just down and write?

Okay, so maybe one of the issues is looking for ideas. Hello, let me introduce you to Google. Google is the songwriter’s friend. No ideas? Follow this process:

Open up your web browser and go to http://www.google.com

Type in something about no ideas. How about “nothing”. So I type in ‘nothing’ and I get 543 million results. There’s a few million ideas, huh? On the first page is a blog about nothing, a website about workers who believe in nothing, Wikipedia’s page on nothing, some videos, ‘the natural history of zero’, and several other things I could follow. Let’s pick one. Hmmm… workers who believe in nothing. They have nothing to do and do nothing all day. They are good for nothing. My brain starts playing with ideas. I could now go and write a quirky song about nothing.

I tell my students I think it’s more important for them to practice than to practice well. I mean, if they are able to incorporate everything we’ve talked about in a lesson, that’s great. But if not, that’s okay. Do it anyway. Because then they are keeping their commitment to themselves, and this is the most vital element of creative growth.

This is why Julia Cameron recommends writing ‘morning pages’ in “The Artist’s Way” (three pages, first thing after you get up, of stream of consciousness writing, no stopping, no editing). It’s why visual artists go to life drawing classes where they are given 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes to complete a drawing. Try drawing something in 2 minutes. Nothing frees you faster from the details. But it’s interesting how whatever you drew in that little amount of time actually works.

If I wanted to run a four minute mile but I only ran a mile once every six months, I could do myself an injury. I need to train my body and my mind in order to achieve that goal. I need to run 3 or 4 times a week at least. I might even get a coach, make sure I have the right shoes, lift weights to tone, swim to increase lung capacity and avoid stress to my legs & ankles. I should learn how to warm up and cool down.

Doesn’t it follow, then, as a creative person, that you need to practice creativity? I consider it my job to write a lot of crap on the road to writing things that make sense. I consider it my job to play at music, play with words, play with sounds. I play myself into writing a blog, into writing a track, into making words sing. My shelves are piled with notebooks filed with scribbles and journaling and morning pages. I have files full of ideas written on scraps of paper, napkins, receipts, even bus tickets. My hard drive is littered with tracks I sketched out with whatever was around. Bits of orchestral, bits of electronica, worktapes of songs, drum beats, improvisations with piano, with voice, with sounds. These are all signs an artist lives here. Disorganized, committed, successful, and, most importantly, playful.

So there you have it. Absolutely no idea what to write about, 937 words later. Go play.

As I speak to my students with the voice that has blossomed in me, I speak from the spirit that was healed through song. I see with the eyes of experience. I hear with ears that have heard many voices sing over the past dozen years. And with ears that had to be taught to catch the soft spoken voice within.

For many years I lived my life from the outside in. In many ways I was asleep. I went with the flow of those around me, sure they knew better than me. I needed their approval, without it I felt worthless… so my days were filled with crises, my nights were spent angrily counting up the wrongs done me the day before, imagining what I should of said, and anticipating the problems that would occur the next day. Guilt, worry, frustration and anger were my friends.

If we were to travel back in time to those days, and you asked me what I truly wanted… I don’t think I would have a real answer. I longed for a loving relationship but I pushed people away. I worked hard at my job, was considered to be responsible and efficient and organized… but my personal life was full of broken relationships. I tried many things, signed up for classes and lessons or other activities, but didn’t stay committed to anything. Except theatre. And, eventually, music.

I was hard on the people around me, and even harder on myself. Not that there weren’t some happy things, of course there were. Life is multi-coloured and full of variety. But often, when something good happened, I waited for the axe to fall, sure I’d have to ‘pay’ for anything positive.

But I think back to my childhood, before all the angst. I remember, at 8 years old, being so struck with the beauty of the sky that I cried. I remember looking out my bedroom window at night, amazed at the light of faraway suns that I saw as stars and feeling small in the vastness of the universe. I remember feeling confused by what people said and how it differed from what they did. I remember feeling unsafe and unsure around the meanness that other kids seemed to delight in. And I remember becoming the target of their derision. Perhaps because I was so gentle inside, so frightened of life, so big-eyed in wonder… I was the perfect victim for their ‘Lord of the Flies’ type energies.

So I closed down, over time. I tried to be small in my own way. I built armor around myself. I developed an eating disorder. I longed to be invisible. I read as many books as I could get my hands on to escape from the world. Hundreds of books. Sometimes I’d read a book a day. At 13, I was given a reading comprehension test. I read at the level of a first year university student, 6 years my senior. I was highly intelligent, probably bored in school, socially inept, but more than that, a social outcast. I read historical novels and Harlequin romances, and was often off in my own dreams of knights and warriors and winners. I longed to be strong like Ivanhoe, King Arthur, Merlin, Frodo, Eowyn.

How I would have survived without music, I don’t know. I sang in the school choir and the director was like a second Dad to me. After surviving another day at school I’d come home, go up to my room, and play my guitar. I wrote songs. I sang. I poured my heart out in the words and the music… the only way I felt safe to express what was inside.

After I left school it took me a long long time to dig through the baggage of those years and decide what to keep and what to lose. I’m still in the process in some ways. The spirit of the young girl moved by the beauty of the blueness above is still within me. I try to express that spirit in the words and the melodies I write and produce. I try to open my heart to my students and inspire them to explore their own capacities with wonder, knowing they are always much more capable than they think they are. Just like I was, just like I am, just like you are.

One of my followers asked me recently if I have any wisdom to pass along about giving up full-time work as a ‘wage slave’ so they would have more time to pursue their passion. A rosy future writing music for a living is the dream, huh?

Simplify your life.
We live in a climate of instant gratification and lustful consumerism. We have too much stuff. We need to downsize, organize, clear out, sort. Find simple (and cheap) ways to entertain, to play. Get rid of the junk, tidy the closets, set-up your office/studio. A great resource for this is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. Also look at where you live, how much you are paying in rent/mortgage, and assess whether you could live more simply and cheaply elsewhere.

Get serious about your finances.
-pay off your debts: One of the biggest mistakes I made in my journey from full-time to part-time to fully self-employed was… I didn’t pay off my debts first. Don’t even think of resigning your job until you’ve paid off (and cut up) all your credit cards, paid back any family members, sorted out that bank loan, etc. If you have more than one credit card, save the one with the lowest interest rate, only use it for travel or business expenses, and pay it off monthly.

-set up and maintain a monthly budget: you need to set yourself up to win. That means getting control of your spending, paying off debts, and saving for business trips, music conferences, new instruments, repairs, vacations, etc. As a self-employed person you are not going to be getting a bi-weekly paycheque. If you don’t know how to manage your cash flow effectively, you’re going to run into trouble, fast.

-don’t forget insurance. You’ll need home insurance, business insurance (if folks are coming to your studio), can you access some sort of health insurance. You might also think of life insurance and/or crisis insurance. Who will pay your bills if you get ill and can’t work for any length of time? You get no sick pay or holiday pay as a self-employed person.

-save. Include savings as part of your budget, not just for yearly expenses like vacation or attending a music conference, but, they say, we all need to have a minimum of 3 months wages in the bank to support us should something go wrong. Put this in a separate account that you don’t touch.

-think about what you need to support your business. Business cards? Computer? Recording equipment? External back-up? Get yourself set-up with the basics before you lose the paycheque. Remember to keep it simple, though.

Plan your transition.
Unless you have another sources of income that can sustain you, my best suggestion is to move slowly from full-time to half-time to part-time to occasional contract work. I went from 40 hours to 20 hours, then dropped to about 12 hours a week, over the course of 6 years. The part-time jobs paid my rent while I grew my studio.

Get educated.
You’ll be running a business. It’s not a corporation, but you will need to keep your books, file your taxes, market yourself effectively. Write yourself up a business plan with goals, read the books, attend the classes – whatever you need to do to get yourself ready to manage your studio.

Flex your marketing gene.
Sign up for the newsletters put out by folks like Ariel Hyatt & Bob Baker. Figure out who you are, what your niche market is, how you are going to attract clients.

Grow your network.
This is part of marketing, I suppose, but for me it’s more about community, about having a ‘tribe’. I enjoy meeting and connecting with other creative people on the same path. We share intel, we commiserate about things that don’t go well, and celebrate each other’s successes.

Get real.
Don’t assume that not working a ‘day job’ is going to be easy. You are going to have to be chief cook and bottlewasher. You are going to have to organize your own schedule, manage your own time, plan your financial life around intermittent income, buy the groceries, cook the food, clean the place, get the business cards, answer the emails. You will be head composer and CEO of housekeeping and general dogsbody. You will have days with little do followed by til-three-in-the-morning franticness.

You will go from working 40 hours a week with a steady paycheque for someone else, to working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for an income that ebbs & flows, and for the most disorganized, irritating but talented boss you’ve ever had: you.