Tag Archives: creativity

August 10, 2025 · 12:55 PM

How to Do Everything in One Lifetime

Alright. Confession time.

I’m an atheist.

I know. I know. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. If I lose reader(s) over this, I’ll understand.

The thing is, I don’t think you understand how much I wish, wish, wish I believed in some kind of After. It’s incredibly daunting to be absolutely certain in my belief that This Is It. Along those lines, I would be delighted to be proved wrong after my life on this ball we call Earth is over. Even Hell would be a kind of comfort. Sure, there’s torture. But there’s also a continuation of consciousness, which is a gift Satan/the Devil/Beelzebub/Ben Stein (whoever’s in charge) can’t take away from me.

Side Note: If Hell truly is a burning pit, then the aforementioned Evil Leader wouldn’t have to do much else to ensure my eternal torment. I hate the heat with (heh) a fiery passion. Just leave me in some humidity at a temperature above 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) and I’ll be a sweaty, angry, puddle of misery for the rest of time.

Anyway, what I’m saying is, I wish the term YOLO hadn’t been co-opted by dude-bros and Linked In Lunatics because… it’s kind of true (to me). And if you only have one life to live, well… as Clark Gable once said on the set of Casablanca, “Live, Laugh, Love.”

The way I see it, if you’re waiting for the next incarnation or some kind of After to learn how to drive stick shift, or travel the world, or watch birds through binoculars (colloquially referred to as “bird watching”), then… well… what if there isn’t an After? Maybe it’s better to try some fun stuff out now. Just in case.

As such, I have compiled a handy-dandy list of supplies and to-dos for you to begin your doing-everything journey. It’s fun! Here are the three biggest, most important rules to live by:

  1. Give yourself permission to try as many new things as you want. Don’t hold yourself back because you already have “enough” side projects, or you “never finish anything,” or your boss wants you to work more overtime.
  2. Give yourself permission to drop something the second you lose interest. Don’t think of it as “never finishing” stuff, or you “failing” at something. Think of it as that thing failing you. You’re not bad at graphic design. Graphic design is bad at being interesting and engaging! So there!
  3. Give yourself permission to not be perfect right away, or ever. You can enjoy doing something and be mediocre at it! These things are not mutually exclusive. The key question is: Are you enjoying it? If not, see Rule 2 above.

Recommended Supplies:

  1. (Optional) One (1) ADHD diagnosis
  2. (If possible) Smart Phone
  3. Libby app (and/or library card if you prefer print media)
  4. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
  5. Unmasking Autism by Devon Price
  6. How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis
  7. Modern Dried Flowers by Angela Maynard
  8. Stephen Biesty’s Incredible Cross-Sections of Everything Illustrated by Stephen Biesty, Written by Richard Platt
  9. (For people who plan to procreate or are currently expecting) Expecting Better by Emily Oster
  10. Calendar and/or Calendar App and/or Planner and/or Planner App
  11. Focus Friend, by Hank Green (Your focus friend is a bean that likes to knit.)
I named mine Lyndon Bean Jonson (the character limit necessitated eliminating the H in Johnson)

12. Art Supply Basics (paper, pencils, crayons, markers, ruler, scotch tape, masking tape, sharpies)
13. (If funds allow) An actual digital camera
14. A microphone that hooks up to your phone and/or computer
15. A good set of headphones and/or earbuds
16. A YouTube account
17. At least one musical instrument (marimba, ukulele, concertina, whatever suits your fancy)
18. A good therapist (I wish you the best of luck in your pursuit of this)
19. Water bottle (reusable, washable, etc. You gotta hydrate!)
20. Rain Rain app (for when you need to meditate, relax, and/or sleep more easily)

They have a section called Only Fans. I respect this.

Got all that? Okay. Good. A lot of this stuff is free or reasonably priced. Yay! You can do what you want to do, even in this economy. Feel free to choose your own reading schedule, add or remove books at your discretion. Use the planner or calendar of your choosing to schedule your time and plan out the order of doing things that interest you. Or just go nuts and improvise every day if you enjoy chaos.

Remember this list is variable! Maybe you are tone deaf or just have no interest in creating music. Strike number 17 off the list. You just got really into embroidery? Time to add needles and thread to the list. You just realized you actually hate embroidery? Time to take needles and thread right back off the list.

How do you explore your interests? How do you find out all the things you potentially love to do? It’s hard to do in a country (in a world?) where the first thing we ask kids of a certain age is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I hate this question. Please replace it with something like, “What do you like doing?”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question that says:

  • Hello, small child. Have you started thinking yet about how you will contribute in a meaningful way to the capitalist machine that is our society?
  • Think only of the future. Childhood is meaningless. You’re not even a person yet. You will only have value when you are an adult.
  • You can only ever be one thing.
  • Once you decide on what to “be,” you are stuck with that. You can never quit, change your mind, or add another thing. (At least not without years of therapy to help you overcome the shame and feelings of inadequacy.)
  • Work/Career = Life. Hobbies are for sissies.

You can be and do many things! Try looking up a university course catalog and reading through the offerings, just to give yourself an idea of all the interests that exist out there. Ask your friends what they do in their free time. (“Video games” IS a valid answer!) Take a class. Watch random tutorials on YouTube with that YouTube account you have thanks to item 16 on the above list.

Look things up. Go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. Sit on a park bench and people watch. Start writing a novel. Start writing fifteen novels and never finish any of them. Buy a fancy journal, write three entries in it, then never add another entry. Go to your local game/comic shop and see if you can learn how to play DnD or Magic: The Gathering, maybe even join a regularly scheduled game night.

You may or may not only live once, but this is the life you happen to have right now. There’s no need to waste it, no need to confine or limit yourself based on societal expectations for how adults act, or the promise of another even better life after this one.

I have flowers drying in my craft room. Are they already dry? I don’t know! Maybe they’re drying improperly. Or I cut them wrong. But they’re there!

I have a bag of oyster shells!

The booth next to mine at the annual street fair last month was one of those pick-your-own-oyster-get-a-pearl dealios. Not only did they give me a vendor discount to pick an oyster, but they sent me home with a bag of shells. I combined two of my random hobbies to make this necklace I adore.

Blown glass pendant + Resin + Pearl + Oyster Shell Pieces

I made zines! Why did I make zines? Because adults deserve arts and crafts, too!

I made sourdough starter and named it Jeffrey Dough Morgan.

I tried to start a little garden in my backyard and failed SPECTACULARLY. I now have a “garden” of invasive weeds, two zinnias that managed to survive the weed invasion, and four sunflowers I didn’t plant.

My site header is a mess of tabs because I keep adding on new hobbies that I feel the need to share somewhere.

They talk about “Jack of all trades, master of none.” But they never ask what is, to me, the most important question:

Is Jack happy?

Jack deserves to live a happy life. And so do you.

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April 17, 2024 · 1:59 PM

Strong Concepts

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the term “strong concept.” It is at once easily definable and as inscrutable as Big Foot’s daily schedule. What makes an idea a strong concept? I hope everyone will agree with me when I say: Every strong concept is an idea; not every idea is a strong concept.

Lately, due to developments that I can’t talk about yet (but OH BOY get ready!), I have been mentally poring through my seemingly unending list of book ideas and trying to figure out which ones can actually be made into a solid story with a beginning, a middle, and even an end.

Something I’ve come to understand is that I often have ideas for scenes that really rock my socks, but just because I have a good scene in mind does not mean that there is a world outside of that moment. It doesn’t mean the characters in the scene are three-dimensional. One good scene certainly can’t carry an entire book. (Unless, I guess, that book was written by Stephenie Meyer. Even then, if I had been given the chance to edit Twilight, it would have turned out differently.)

For example, I have this one scene in my head. A woman walks into a PI’s office and enlists his help to find the man who is going to kill her… at some point in the future.

The backstory for the scene is in my head, too, so I guess it’s really two scenes. See, the woman has a very specific psychic ability–the first time (and only the first time) she touches someone, she gets a brief glimpse into that person’s future. She can’t control what she sees, how long the vision is, or even how far into the future she sees (could be a day, a year, ten years, or any other length of time). One day, she bumps into someone at a coffee shop and the glimpse she gets of his future is terrifying because she sees herself from his perspective as he’s about to stab her. By the time she recovers from this vision, the guy is long gone, and she only has a vague idea of what he looks like. Even worse, she can’t help but shake the feeling that he’d orchestrated that contact, like he’d known exactly what would happen to her and exactly what she’d see. Hence, hiring a PI to help her find him before he finds her.

But… then what? Who is this woman? Who is the PI? Do I even know how PIs work? I mean… I watched Jessica Jones and read The Dresden Files as well as Nora Roberts’ Hidden Star. So… no. No, I don’t know how PIs work. Do I know how to write a competent mystery? I mean… Hellbound has one. But I can’t say I went about constructing that particular mystery in a structured and logical way. Plus, the building blocks of that one were relatively simple. A mystery for adults? One that has to carry an entire novel and involves psychic phenomena? That might be out of my wheelhouse.

Is this a Strong Concept? Hmm… no. I don’t think so. Could it be? Okay, yes. It certainly could be. With some real work put into the setting, the characters (including the villain!), and the plot, I think it could transform into a Strong Concept. But right now, it’s an idea. And I’m not sure it’s an idea that merits the work it would take to make it into a Strong Concept.

Here are some questions I ask myself when I’m trying to determine if I have an Idea or a Good Idea:

  • Why do I want to tell this story? Is there a message the events and characters I’m toying around with will send? Is there something that a stranger could gain from reading about these people and events? Some sort of anchor in the real world and the Human Condition? Along similar lines…
  • Whom am I telling this story for? (It’s tempting to write an entire book just for myself that speaks to my own needs and grievances and hopes and dreams. But my biggest goal is to write for an audience, so if I find myself saying, “I want to write this for me”, I shelve the idea.)
  • What are the characters’ personalities like? Are they more than just cardboard cutouts that I’m moving around from scene to scene?
  • Can I write this book? Do I have enough knowledge and experience to make this story believable? Or will I come off as ignorant and incompetent as I attempt to play in a space I’m completely unfamiliar with?

Feel free to weigh in. What makes an idea a Strong Concept? And what makes you hit Pause and go back to the drawing board?

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January 31, 2024 · 9:03 AM

Not Special Enough

I wrote this book recently. It’s called Falling for the Protagonist. I had a great time writing it. The premise is that a woman gets transported into a romance novel and sends the male protagonist spiraling into an existential crisis when he realizes he’s a book character. It’s funny but emotional (Big ups to me for making myself cry at one point during a reread!), satirical of the romance genre but also an homage to it. I’m quite proud of it. I’ll copy and paste the first few paragraphs at the bottom of this post for those who are interested.

I’ve been querying this book. Got a couple rejections. No big. Except for this one that stuck out to me. Short but sweet, it said:

Hello Bex,

Thank you so much for sending your materials for our review. We really enjoyed this and can see the potential in your writing.

Unfortunately, however, despite all that we liked, we didn’t quite fall in love with this as we had hoped, so we will not be offering representation at this time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. A response–any response–from an agency is a good thing. There are many who say that you just have to wait six to eight weeks and if you don’t hear from them, that’s a rejection. The ambiguity and the… I suppose anticlimax of it… can be frustrating. Not that I blame them one bit. Can you imagine taking the time to send out what must be hundreds of rejection emails every week? No thank you. I’m just saying, when I get a negative response, I appreciate it.

But being me, I started to close-read this thing a little. What it boils down to is: Your writing is great. We don’t like it anyway. (Yes, I’m putting words in their mouth. My writing might have come across to them as merely good or adequate, but allow me the paraphrase here for the sake of my ego.)

I’ve contended with this frustration for many years. I’m not saying I think they should have accepted my book. Quite the opposite, actually. There are some people who write back or get angry or try to argue with these agents (I know; I used to intern for one). And all I want to ask them is: Do you really want someone representing your work who feels anything less than enthusiastic about it? How are they going to sell it to others if they can’t even sell it to themselves?

This also ties into the age-old question that agents and editors get asked time and time again: What do you look for in a book? I understand why people ask this question as they’re hoping to get an edge on how to find representation, but it’s unfortunately just not possible to answer as this industry is entirely subjective. The usual answer is something along the lines of, “I need a really strong voice.” This translates to what I see as a universal truth:

Sometimes I pick up a book and I like it. Sometimes I pick up a book and I don’t like it.

Happens to me all the time. I’ll start reading something and the writing will be perfectly sound, but it doesn’t “grab me” as they say. And I can’t always put my finger on why. The truth is, an agent (or editor) has to pick up your book and feel the click. No click, no contract. They can’t say “I didn’t like your book, but I don’t know why” because writers would riot. But that’s the gist.

This all brings me back to the aforementioned frustration I’ve been contending with. I think my writing is good. Some of my books are better than others, and I always have room for growth, but I’ve crafted some solid stories. I believe my writing is special and unique. The problem is, and I’ve just started to wrap my head around this, everyone is special and unique. It’s true! You are unique! But in a world that celebrates only a select few special people, that only works if everyone else fails to be recognized for their specialness. There would be no Many to worship the Few otherwise. There are thousands of good writers out there who will never get a publishing contract, actors worthy of every award in the book who will never see a stage or the front end of a camera, singers with voices like angels who won’t get a recording contract. You get it.

I know there is a very good chance that I will never see my work published (the traditional way). It’s just the way it goes. I’m special. I believe that. But I’m not special enough. LEST YOU THINK I AM GOING TO END THIS POST ON A MAJOR DOWNER…

It’s not my job to be the motivational poster on your wall. I’d suck at it anyway. Although… I did make this one.

But only because I thought it was funny!

The point is, I see no harm in trying again and again. If I lost track of Why (with a capital W) I write (i.e. because I enjoy it), that would be the real downer. As long as I’m writing, and I don’t see myself stopping, why not query? Why not put myself out there? A thousand rejections hurt, but I firmly believe you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So go for it. If you don’t believe in your own specialness, how can anyone else?

Huh. I guess I became a motivation poster anyway.

Here’s a teaser of Falling for the Protagonist:

Chapter One

The back corner of the bar known as Bonne Nuit echoed with the jovial, slightly manic, titters and squeals that could only belong to a group of women who were two hours into a bachelorette party. Emmy Miura kept smiling as the feminine chaos surrounded her and tried to tamp down on the deep, heartfelt longing she felt for her comfy pants. They were at home all alone, probably missing her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d left them for so long on a Saturday night. Trying not to sulk, she shifted around until the strapless cocktail dress she’d bought for the occasion—at her sister’s subtle insistence—settled a little more comfortably around her.

“Deep breaths,” her best friend of a million years, Sarah, murmured to her.

“I am a bad person for wanting to leave.”

“You are a good sister for staying.”

That was one way to look at it, and Emmy did enjoy seeing May’s happiness, which was flowing more readily than the happy hour specials. Her sister, adorned with a sparkling headband that was coated in curlicues of metallic ribbon, was leaning over to listen to one of her friends. Whatever the friend said lit up May’s face.

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, absolutely. I have to tell the story. I don’t even care if everyone’s already heard it a million times. Emmy, cover your ears.”

Emmy immediately went on alert. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to tell—shh seriously, guys, this is good—I’m going to tell the story of how me and Luis met. Emmy hates this because she is a cynic and a nonbeliever, but I’m telling it anyway because it is my party!”

“Oh Jesus.”

“How did they meet?” Sarah asked.

“She went to a sex psychic,” Emmy muttered under her breath.

“Sorry. Run that by me one more time?”

Emmy gestured to her sister, indicating Sarah should listen to May, and repeated, “She went to a sex psychic.”

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