Lateral Thinking to Earn Cash

How many times have you sighed with despair at your bank statement because not enough money is coming in from your main creative job? How many times have you also had little wacky ideas that you have brushed aside as, “silly” or, “too distracting”?

I’m going to suggest you recall these little ideas and put them into perspective - then a little time spent on thinking of things you haven’t thought about before.

The most effective way to do this is with a kind of mind map – this can be fun and most revealing!

Start with a small circle in the centre of a piece of A4 paper. In the centre of this circle write, “Ways to Earn Cash around {my Creative Job}”. Then proceed with adding arms that hold ideas, which then split again into related ideas and so on.

It’s a brain drain first, then the details can be added on further stems.

To find an online resource to further help you with this, try Tony Buzan's site.

Brighten up your page with colours and symbols too :)
To help convince you, I already know of people who do reviews, make key rings, small prints, CD covers, teach, coach, and take photos, to supplement their professional artist’s income. I can also vouch for the unexpected joy and satisfaction that is possible by spending a bit of time away from the easel / computer/ sewing machine / craft table etc. Sometimes we get too close to our work, and this is ideal to make you take a break, but still earn some money.

Let your brain run away with you and get creative with new ideas. When you have written it down, get researching on the net for what you might need. For example, you may be surprised to know that you can make 100 fridge magnets for £39 (sterling). Selling them at £2 for example would be a profit of £160. At your exhibition, local craft shop, online shop etc. selling these could quickly earn you extra income. Another much more lucrative example would be giving demonstrations or running workshops – you can earn several hundred pounds a day! We all have skills we should make the most of besides our creative job.

Good luck and I wish you all the best with your ideas.

Above photograph and contents © 2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

Being Resourceful

Last time we looked at the definition and personal perception of success. This time I’m going to talk about resources and how important it is to our journey.

The successful creative person is reliant on a pool of resources. These will be wide and varied, including inner resources of talent, determination and discipline, and external resources of tutors, family and internet. Wherever you are in your life, you will always have resources to draw upon. Sometimes these will be obvious and sometimes they’ll be ones you hadn’t considered before. In order to get in touch with all of the resources available, try out this exercise to bring them together. This will be eye-opening and also useful for future reference.

Using a spider diagram, or in a list, write down the resources available in your life. Consider the following life areas where those resources might be:

• Health & Fitness
• Home & Family
• Career / Work / Business
• Wealth
• Relationships / Romance
• Friends
• Leisure
• Spiritual

Once you have completed this exercise, which may incidentally take one or more sittings, go through your groups of resources to highlight the most important. There will be one or two major resources that are critical to your success and enjoyment of your creative pursuit. To give these major ones priority, write them out on a card and pin them to your dreamboard, or notice board. They will help you continue your journey with peace of mind, and will be there when you’re faced with a challenge and need to know where to go for advice. A visual reminder of your resources will always help you feel supported and connected. Perhaps you could extend this to adding photographs – people, places, books, computer etc etc. Be as creative as you want!

All the best with getting creatively resourceful. :)

Above painting: Permanent Bright Connections © 2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

Next time I'll be looking at practical issues of earning cash while working on your bigger projects...

A Different Perspective

The article this week is inspired by a chat I had with a fellow creative, self-employed person. It’s all about work and how we view it. As a creative person we can find it hard to adjust to our creative jobs on many different levels. The two main symptoms are where the person feels that being paid for something they love doing is fraudulent, and where the person becomes a workaholic because they just can’t get let up on the drive to be perfect. Sometimes there’s a convoluted mix of both of these issues. These issues are often deep seated and can sometimes be detrimental to our overall success. Basically though, most of this comes down to our personal definition of success and what it means to us.

Today I invite you to see it from a different perspective, and work on defining your meaning of success in your career and life. I am confident that this will help a lot on your way to achieving your ultimate goal. Our perceptions can be changed to work better for us.

The Encarta Dictionary definition of success is:

• The achievement of something planned or attempted
• Impressive achievement, especially the attainment of fame, wealth or power
  

Does this ring true with you? Of course it does - it does with me too. But, what distorts the path of success is how the prospect of being successful sits with us emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually and environmentally.

Here lies and exercise for us – to do some serious thinking and balancing of our ideas of success. Write down on a big piece of paper these 5 life element headings - Physical, Mental, Emotional, Environmental and Spiritual. Under each heading, write down a list of words or sentences that describe the effect that success would have or does have on that area of your life. When you have done this, have a good look at what you have written. The aim is to have a good balance of things – and mostly positive. You may however discover some imbalances and negative effects. These will need to be dealt with.

I strongly believe we can find answers to any arising issues ourselves, but we may need to enlist the help of family, friends and even a coach to overcome any problems.

I know I have only touched on this subject, but a different perspective is all I wanted to prompt in you. From here I know you can go forward and make progress and realise that fighting with yourself is disadvantageous to your success. Hold on to the fact that even at rest your contribution is undiminished – your creative works still exist, and if you’re a professional, your work is still out there working for you all the time.

Next time, in 2 weeks, I'll be talking about Being Resourceful. In the meantime, feel free to comment, and or share your experiences.

Above painting: Creation Continues 1 © 2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

Overcoming Avoidance

Creative Avoidance is a normal part of the creative person’s life. It presents itself in many ways, and until we get to know ourselves well in the creative process, we may not recognise it very well as it can be quite subtle! Mostly though, we can identify our avoidance tactics by realising that we haven’t got on with our project as we planned and we can’t see a good reason why.

But it’s ok because once we are aware of our tactics, we can choose to say no to them, and get on with our plan. By the way, these tactics can range from re-sharpening your entire colour pencil set to taking up a job you said you’d never do!

This main thing to remember is that avoidance in creativity exists, and we should allow it to exist because from time to time you will be able to analyse it to find out what exactly you are avoiding. That reason could be anything from boredom to a particularly difficult problem. Once the self awareness is switched on, you can take steps to resolve the avoidance issue. Things that help are:

• Patience with yourself
• Allowing, not forcing the project to grow
• Nurturing your creative side
• Keeping attentive to your environment
• Keeping in touch with other creative people
• Understanding your personal concept of success
• Allowing yourself free time
• Walking through the experience
• Feeling the fear and doing it anyway
  

Whatever happens, be resourceful so that you can find solutions to problems at every stage. Often the life of a creative person can be isolating and it’s important to remain connected to the community of your speciality. Remember, most of all, we all have the answers to our difficulties at our fingertips and it’s up to us to choose the path of solution. Working SMART (previous blog) will help you to self-coach your way to the answers and method to achieve your goal.

Good luck, and I'll see you in 2 weeks, where we'll tackle a tricky subject - the perception of success.

Express Yourself!

This week I draw upon artist Ian Roberts’s wisdom and vision. I can’t put it better than this so I'll use direct quotes. Enjoy his words of truth and encouragement.

In a great book entitled Creative Authenticity, artist Ian Roberts (Ian Roberts website) talks about just jumping in, fears and all, to express ourselves.
"Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the world whether you paint or dance or write," says Roberts. "The world will probably get by without the product of your efforts. But that is not the point. The point is what the inner process of following your creative impulses will do to you. It is clearly about process. Love the work, love the process. Our fascination will pull our attention forward. That, also, will fascinate the viewer."
Roberts explores a number of principles essential for creative authenticity.

• Searching for beauty. Beauty is something that seizes your attention, stops you in your tracks, and silences you. It can be the way light filters through the trees in your backyard or the magnificence of a fifteenth century Italian painting. The subject is irrelevant; it is only a vehicle for your attention, to engage the intensity of your feelings. That intensity is what viewers ultimately respond to.
• Communication. Creativity fundamentally involves expressive power; it is the catching of the "gleams of light" that flash across our mind and forming that vision into something.
• Your home turf. It could be a garden. Or a studio. But you need a creative home base that always stays open for your arrival and bestows on you a readiness to begin your work.
• The Van Gogh syndrome. Don't buy into the myth that creativity is the province of tortured geniuses.
• Your craft, your voice. Practice, practice, practice your craft. It gives you fluency in the creative process and in technique. It's technique that gives life to your creative ideas. Learning your craft opens the channel for your voice to flow.
  
• Showing up. "Nothing determines your creative life more than doing it," says Roberts.
• The dance of avoidance. Starting is always a psychologically messy process, because there are no rules surrounding what you want to do. Setting up a dedicated space for the practice of your craft helps you shift gears directly into your creative process.
• Full-time or part-time. You can't expect to fly consistently at a high level of inspiration.
• Follow something along. If you are going to say something authentic, you need to stick with an idea for a while, an idea that has personal resonance.
• Wagon train and scout. Creativity involves the interplay between where you are and where you see yourself going to keep your expression growing. Always be on the lookout for new paths, and observe how others solve the problems you face.
• Working method. Creativity is in the process, not in the finished results.
• Limits yield intensity. Unrestrained freedom is a myth, and it's not productive.
• Being ready to show. Don't spend your time marketing your creations. If you spend it creating, you are investing your work with the authenticity that will draw others to your efforts...
• You are more than creative enough. The question is not whether you are creative enough but whether you will free yourself to express it.
• Finding poetry in the everyday. Develop the power to see the ordinary as poetic.
• Holding the big picture. Always keep a sense of the whole. That commits you to making the moves that will ultimately represent what you see.

Expansion Not Distraction

Ok, so now you’ve taken a fancy to something extra to your usual creative projects and a sense of guilt or confusion sets in…Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Be reassured that you are expanding your creativity, not being distracted from your main focus.

Today’s blog comes in response to something Richard, my hubby, said this morning that rang a bell in me, and I know it will strike a chord with many people reading this. He is a very talented man - he is a great bass player, sound engineer and IT project manager/coach. He recently left the IT world to concentrate on being a live recording sound engineer, but also got into 2 cracking live bands and is also interested in teaching bass. Now he’s concerned that not focussing on one of these activities will be a detriment to the others. NOT TRUE! Some people are best at living a highly varied life, and some are better concentrating on just one thing. Unfortunately, we are ALL socialised to concentrate on one thing!!! We are encouraged in school to streamline and become the best in that field. That is just fine of course, but we have to be open to being just as able to do more than one thing and do them all really well too.

While you are doing something else you are expanding on your current expertise and natural talents. Other types of creativity and studies will almost certainly rub off and even help you solve problems better in your main centre of attention. It can really help encourage a sense of wholesome satisfaction in your life when you expand your horizons.

The key is the understanding and being honest with own self. Creating a sensible life balance, time management system, and realistic goal setting is also essential of course.

Next time you take a fancy to trying out something new remember to say to yourself, “This is expansion, not distraction.” You are then giving yourself permission to explore this area freely and without guilt.

Go for it!

Have a good week :)

PS....now this is taking a risk!!!

Scratching the Itch

When something we desire keeps reminding, demanding attention, of us on a frequent basis, we often say, “I’m itching to do so and so,” Often we will put barriers up to scratching this itch by making excuses – many of them perfectly legitimate. But if we really analysed the reasons not to do something, we will find that a large percentage are to do with fear, insecurity and lack of confidence. The power of the mind is great and works in many positive and negative ways. Sometimes we can easily rationalise reasons for not pursuing something, even if it’s dear to our hearts. When it comes to creativity, we often deny ourselves of something really special without realising it.

So my message today is to really think about scratching the itch to do something. Put aside the reasons not to do it, and just do it. No-one has to know that you’ve just taken up knitting, patchwork, painting with oils, clay modelling, paper mache or anything else creative. It may be that you’ve been a watercolour artist for years and years and fancy taking up sculpture – there’s never a good time as the present! We are never too old, too silly, too uneducated, too busy or too scared to try something new or even re-take up something old. If you need practical inspiration, read some of my older posts for some ideas about how to get in the right frame of mind. Research some of your deeper questions on the internet or from valuable books (I have listed a few in the right hand column).

You deserve to scratch that itch and make yourself feel better. Adventure on out of your bubble to experience new enthusiasm, creativity, happiness, satisfaction and peace of mind.

So go on – Scratch that Itch!

Creative Blessings

Above pebble painting: Autumn Sumac © 2007 Deborah Eileen Burrow