Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Update: 2011 Ideas for Year 2011

Unexpected success cropped up from my 2011 Ideas Project:  I am feeling more creative, and I am coming up with more ideas all the time.  Before I used to get so focused on my current project that I was lucky to come up with one or two new viable ideas a year for any kind of writing project.  Now, I'm coming up with a couple a week!  And I no longer fear not being able to write them.  Why?  In part because of two inspirational people:  Dean Wesley Smith and Dan Miller.


Dean Wesley Smith's blog always provides great inspiration, a boost to my confidence rather than a drain some blogs do on writing.  In particular, I like to re-read his posts on Speed and Time (to write).

In the Time post, he wrote:
For the two weeks of the class, [Kris Kathryn Rusch and I] kept [the student writers] in actual class, not writing,  just over 40 hours per week. We also forced them to write and hit deadlines. And to read the other writer’s work. They all produced almost 60,000 words of fiction each in two weeks. And it wasn’t until the end of every master class that I stood in front of them and showed them that they had produced 60,000 words of fiction in two weeks, while reading, while working (attending class) basically a forty-hour-a-week job.   (bold emphasis is mine; also the bracketed clarifications)

In general, Dan Miller of 48 Days to Work You Love fame is an inspiration.  He wants you to change the way you look at things.  He wrote:
On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile in recorded history. Doctors said it could not be done--that the human heart would explode with such exertion. Six weeks later an Australian runner duplicated that feat. Approximately one year later, 8 college runners at one ACAA track meet all broke the four-minute mile. What changed? What was believed to be impossible was proven to be possible. Most of us operate under clear beliefs about what we are able to accomplish. If those beliefs are changed, the results change as well.

Many people are living their lives within boundaries that exist only in their minds.

After reading both of these people, I've been struck by the impression that you get what you are used to expecting.  If you become accustomed to thinking of producing a book a year and only a book a year, you produce only that book a year.  If you change your thinking, you can do more.  I want to do more.  And with self-published ebooks, I can.  That is why even though I am counting the 2011 Idea Project a success already.

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