The Power of Procrastination

Posted in Creativity, TED talks by tjwithersauthor

‘Procrastination cat will do it tomorrow’ from Lolcat Research

Today we talk about the power of procrastination! But wait – how could procrastination possibly be a good thing? I’m so glad you asked!

All you ever hear is that procrastination means putting off important (but difficult) things and doing unimportant (but more fun) things instead. Ecclesiastes says procrastination is for the idle: “If you wait until the wind and weather are just right, you will never plant anything, and never harvest anything.”

And that’s definitely true. But procrastination – if applied in a useful way – is not all bad. In fact, Dave Windass (of the TED talk “The Power of Procrastination” http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxHull-Dave-Windass-The-Power) argues that procrastination is actually the key to being MORE productive, if used *in the right dosage*.

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27Sep2013

Working Creatively Under Pressure

Posted in Creativity by tjwithersauthor

Coming to hang out at GenreCon 2013 on Saturday 18th? Shoot me an email (see my Contact Us section)!

Today is all about being creative under pressure. In the workplace, whether you are a person doing creative work in a non-creative industry, or a person doing creative work in a creative industry, we all work to various deadlines, and you need to know how to harness your creative process in a hurry!

The best example of successfully doing creative work under pressure is fairly ancient. The story of ‘One thousand and one nights’, also known as ‘Arabian nights’, is the story of Scheherezade in Arabia.

A portrait of Princess Dunyazade (‘The Coffee Bearer’) by John Frederick Lewis

When a Persian king, Shahryar, discovers that his wife has been unfaithful to him, he has her executed. He keeps on marrying a bunch of women, but each time, he executes her the morning after their wedding, before she has a chance to be unfaithful to him. It is the vizier’s job to provide these virgins to marry the king, but one day he finds they’ve run out! So his daughter, Scheherezade, convinces her father to let her be the next bride.

On the night of Scheherezade’s marriage to the king, she begins telling the king a tale, but she doesn’t give him the ending. He’s so curious to know how the story ends that he doesn’t execute her the next morning. He figures he’ll just wait until he’s heard the ending, then execute her the next morning. But that night, Scheherezade finishes that story and starts right into a new one. But she doesn’t finish it! So the king is forced to keep her alive for one thousand and one nights.

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27Sep2013

How to put incubation to good use – lessons from the masters

Posted in Creativity, Lessons from the Masters by tjwithersauthor

Coming to hang out at GenreCon 2013 on Saturday 18th? Shoot me an email (see my Contact Us page)!

Today is the continuation of the incubation theory, and how to use it: “How can we use incubation to get past writer’s block, without wasting time?” Examples of famous people who’ve put incubation to good use in their creative process.

If you’ve missed my past posts on incubation theory, and you’re wondering what I’m talking about, here’s the recap…

Young Businessman Thinking and Wondering While Writing a Paper
Image Source: Writing and PR Studio (BigStock Images)

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13Sep2013

Incubation part 3: Why we (should) sleep on it

Posted in Creativity, TED talks by tjwithersauthor

Why should we sleep on it? This post discusses incubation, sleep, and dream theory! My own experience, words from a sleep psychologist, and a wacky experiment examining the creative process.

“sleep and dreams and creativity” by Rachel Olsen: http://rachelolsen.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/dreaming-and-creativity.html

My own experience:

So you remember how I was working on a novel and I just couldn’t finish it? Right, right, that was months ago. Well, I finally had a breakthrough!

I originally envisioned this novel in three parts, but currently only two parts of it work well. So I was thinking that parts one and two combined work as a standalone novel, with some revision.

But the problem that was to be solved was, at the end of part two, the heroine and her lover part on opposite sides of an intergalactic war. As enemies. So sad! And since I’m the kind of person who doesn’t deal well with sad endings (open that box of worms another day), this ending had to be fixed!

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