planning for creativity

The toughest things to plan for the ones that you really don't have much control over, especially when they are difficult.

For instance how could you plan to win a million on the lottery?

I have decided to get a bit more serious about blogging, and freelance writing, and coming up with ideas, and jokes, and whatever other vaguely creative or useful things I write about. But how on earth can I plan the unplannable?

Basically I seem to be tackling this in stages.

1 For the past year or two I have been keeping this blog, and from time to time following up on ideas that I have had, but without much dedication. I now have a fairly substantial blog of writing. I also keep a notebook of creative ideas, with various degrees of dedication, and then transfer the stuff from there onto Voodoopad, which is so loose and freeform, that it suits creative thinking. On the other hand Devonthink is a bit more business-like, and suits stuff that requires a little more discipline. Though truth be told, I use both of them in pretty much the same way.

2 I have now recognised that there are two activities in creativity. There is the creative one, of coming up with genius ideas and typing them out. Then there is the drudgery one, of trying to get someone to publish them, customising them for publications that might have an interest, trawling for likely periodicals, sending stuff off for consideration. They fit together like ying and yang, when I'm inspired, write something, when I'm not, attend to the drudgery. So far there seems to be more drudgery to do, than inspiration required, which suits fine, as I don't feel very inspired most of the time.

3 In particular I am now keeping a log of material submitted, but I am working on the principle that the likelihood of anything getting published is pretty low. So I just constantly brainstorm ideas, possible outlets, pitching anything I think might be of interest. As long as the idea is worked up to a reasonable standard, I just pitch and forget. I don't imagine anything will come of the vast bulk, but over time, some are bound to get published, and I can always use that to inform where it is most productive to put my efforts.

I will probably carry on with this exploratory approach for a while, and if I start getting paid for freelancing, I can always start to specialise a bit more.

I really have no idea what will come of any of this, probably nothing of any note, but I like to write, and I like to bat around ideas, so if some of it manages to find itself in front of a larger audience then I have succeeded in a modest way.