Showing posts with label Neil Gaiman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neil Gaiman. Show all posts

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Countless Income Streams




Now now...you might say...she's waaay too cocky. She's out of her league.
Nope..... increase is indeed unlimited. Abundance is unlimited.

It's all about your imagination...It's all about your positive mindset.

When you are a content creator....know that there will always be new multiple platforms upon which you may place your content. New publishers, both for the self published artist and the more traditional publishing houses. They are all growing and learning how to put more good work out into the cosmos. They are morphing to find more work....just like what you create. Someone right now is looking for you....for what you have just the right now to express and put into words, or inventions, or songs, or artworks.

The world needs you. I don't know any other way to say this. You were born into this generation because you have something that needs expression that this generation requires. You were born for a reason. Make it happen. And don't lose faith.

Just as some social media platforms have their time in the sun....so others will be invented and rise up to take their place. Your content can be boosted onto all these spreading platforms....There are only the limits that you place or "refuse" to place upon your content.

Yes, you can create content for one platform....or for 100 platforms.
And then there are the platforms that will hunt you down and pitch and beg you to be on their platform.

Stay original....observe copy right laws and don't allow discouragement to stop your creativity from flowing. Keep creating. Stay artistic. Use your words. Use your colors, use your music. Stay confident. Adapt....learn how to navigate new software as often as possible, or pay people to do this for you.

Believe in your work! Do you know you have quality content? Do you "make good art" as Neil Gaiman would say? Don't stop now....don't slow down.

Do whatever you need to do to get back on that horse and make some more cool stuff.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF BECAUSE GOD BELIEVES IN YOU!

Carla.




Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Lost Your Creative Mojo??

Lost your creative mojo? Painter's block, writer's block....designer's lethargy.....artist's woes.


So many words for the same block....a lack of creative mojo.


I was thinking aloud today, how "ABUNDANCE" can completely obstruct and hinder one's creative flow. Therefore......REDUCING is often the key to my creative blocks. Now don't misunderstand me....I love abundance as much as anyone else....but it can also become a HUGE stumbling block in getting my creativity to flow.


Have you ever waltzed into a modern arts and crafts store or fabric store and been completely overwhelmed by the glitz and multitude of choices? Walked into a paint store and become completely dumbfounded by the thousands of paint choices? Ditto for yarns, ditto for wallpaper.....ditto for canvases.


Does the "STARVING" artist mindset work better for you?


I fall into this latter category. I have discovered that I simply MUST pare down my artistic supplies to the utter BARE BONES in order to pump up my creative Mojo. Nothing else seems to work.


Tim Ferriss, .....yes THAT Tim Ferriss, talks often in his podcast about his fave author Neil Gaiman, who has to make himself completely and utterly BORED before his creative juices flow enough for him to start writing.I can relate to that conundrum.


You see, creativity is not always logical. Creativity has a whimsical flow. One must unravel one's own creative mysteries.


One might be tempted to assume that an abundance of paint choices, or fabric choices, or yarn choices of every texture and pattern would be helpful in creating masterpieces......but I have found the OPPOSITE to be true.


I must find the absolute lowest cost art supplies and START with those and then somehow in a very mysterious fashion, I receive the blessing to begin creating again. And let's face it....it can be MOST frustrating to WANT to CREATE and yet feel somehow UNABLE to start creating.


I must start at a very low place....it is similar to what the missionary Heidi Baker teaches in approaching her ministry from a "lower still" place of humility.


I must feel that my art or music is needed. It is hard for me to feel that need when I am surrounded by an over-abundance of other folk's wealth. I need to feel it in my bones that my art or music
is a vital piece of a world wide puzzle that the earth desperately needs me to form and fill....that the earth will never be complete unless I do my thing.


Heidi Baker, the missionary, speaks sometimes about how she feels and what happens when she comes back to North America after spending months in Mozambique or Malawi. She'll walk into a grocery store in North America and try to buy some bread and she'll stand in front of a towering bread aisle filled with a plethora of bread choices ....and finds that she can't even purchase one loaf. The abundance has stunned her into silence, incapable of moving forward....incapable of making even one choice.


So, in closing..... I just want to say again..........that if you find you feel that you have temporarily met up with a creative block, try the idea of reducing your choices to that of a more "starving" artist mentality. Take away your numerous fabric choices. Choose only one or two colors of fabric with one texture. Reduce and reduce and reduce until you feel like you have a bare bones palette to work with. And then start from there. Build a thing of beauty from something small and stark. It will feed your spirit. It will build up your confidence.


Feel the need for your art. Feel the frustration of the great painters who had to humble themselves to ask relatives to send them more money just to survive on .....so they could continue to afford to buy the paint and canvas to paint on.


Feel the grittiness of the art collective who gathered old curbside cast off furniture and used the sides of these old beat up dressers and desks as the only affordable canvas upon which to express their painted art works. They started in that low place before their collective group gained traction to afford  "better" art supplies. They humbled themselves to start in that low place. They didn't allow a lack of capital to stop them from creating what they felt they simply MUST create.


Start from that low,  and perhaps..... low priced place.  You just might surprise yourself.
Because if you can make a thing of beauty from something that is of little initial financial cost, your creativity may just shine more clearly through as that thing of GREAT worth.