A Day for Red Dresses

I remember reading a book whose author referred to something she called the Red Dress project or goal. I can't remember either the title or author (my apologies to whoever you are!) but the term stuck with me. A Red Dress is the project you're so excited about that you wake up & go to bed thinking about it, you have to keep a notepad next to your bed because you're generating so many ideas around it, and you lose all sense of time while you're working on it.

I suppose that the opposite of a Red Dress would be a Gray Suit - something you're doing because there's a lot of demand for it or because Writers Market says it's a hot topic to cover (but it doesn't float your boat) or because everyone else thinks you're good at it and should therefore do it for the rest of your life.

I've worked on my share of Gray Suits, and some of them have paid off. But an entire wardrobe of them leaves me feeling uninspired. And what's the point of "having a life" if the life doesn't feel much different than work sometimes does?

After learning about the Red Dress idea, I decided to always have a Red Dress to work on. I've found that having just one project I'm really jazzed about gives me the energy to tackle the Gray Suit jobs as well. One red piece makes a closet full of gray look just a little better.

Today, celebrate Valentine's Day by giving yourself permission to choose a Red Dress if you don't already have one, or to work on yours if you do.

Making Dreams Real: Trusting Your Own Process

Twenty years ago when I lived in another part of the country, I had a friend who taught English to refugees but whose real passion was acting. She'd lived in New York, played roles in off-Broadway theaters and had even toured Europe & the Soviet Union in a production of The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West. When I met her, her acting career had stalled and despite a decent job, she always felt restless. Her other friends and I urged her to audition for parts in community theater just to get on track again.

Instead, she did what many people with university degrees do during an economic downturn: she cycled back into grad school. For someone else, getting a PhD in theater might have been a smart move but my friend didn't enjoy teaching theater nearly as much as she loved doing theater. She amassed more debt than she could handle, couldn't get enough teaching hours to support herself (we lived in college town where it seemed like half the population had MFAs...sort of like PDX, in fact) and still wasn't doing what she loved most.

During hard times it's still tempting to believe that going "back to school" is the solution to both long-term unemployment and creative doldrums. And sometimes, certain types of group learning under the guidance of an experienced teacher can jump start a stuck career, whether it's a day job or after-hours passion. A weekend intensive or workshop can generate enough ideas to last a year, not to mention mutual support and companionship in the creative process.

Be very careful, however, of mistaking credentials for competence, especially in what's often called "creative" fields (I believe all work done well is creative; I'm just using the term here because it's familiar). Of the five women in my writers' group, I'm the only one who has a four-year degree, and I'm not the best writer among us. That honor goes to a member who left community college after her first semester and currently works in retail management.

In fact, a good percentage of my smartest, most articulate friends are not college graduates. After three decades of being in the workplace full-time & being involved in numerous community music and writing projects, I've seen that going to university is like taking vitamins. It's great for those who already have a good foundation - in the case of college, a good foundation includes common sense, critical thinking skills and a strong sense of purpose; with vitamins, the foundation is a good diet. But without the foundation, getting a degree is almost as useless as gulping 20 supplements a day while subsisting on twinkies and Mountain Dew.

We often distrust our own instincts, including gut feelings about what's right for us, where our greatest talents lie and what we can give the world. I believe that this distrust comes from living in a culture where the smallest decision is often relegated to "experts." Students are expected to specialize in something rather than being good generalists who can handle many types of situations and tasks. I suspect most of us are Renaissance people at heart; excessive specialization does all of us a disservice.

If you're stalled, some good group energy might be just what you need. But don't believe for a moment that you need outside certification to validate your own creativity. Find support but continue to trust your own process.

Making Dreams Real - When it's Time to Stop

Occasionally, when a project isn't working out and I feel like I'm running out of ideas, a block sets in. That's when I know it's time to take a break from whatever I'm working on. Sometimes the break lasts a day, other times it's taken a year to get back to it.

Here are some signs that you might benefit from setting the project aside for awhile:

• You develop this irrational feeling that something terrible will happen if you don't finish now - you'll never write another word again, your self-esteem will suffer irreparable damage, etc.
• You're completely out of ideas, even bad ones.
• You dread working on it. It used to be a dream, now it's a chore.
• You feel like running all the pages through the shredder or tossing them on the compost pile.

At this point, stop. Put the project away. Do something else during your free time - take long walks, go to the beach, read fluffy novels or chat with friends. Taking a complete break can actually save you time and grief in the end - you'll know when it's time to return to your work, and you'll do so with a renewed sense of purpose.

Making Dreams Real - The Power of Two (or More)

You're working hard at work, working hard at home and probably volunteering at the kids' school. You have a great idea for a community event, a book or a class, but planning it and putting it all together will take time...of which you don't have much. Furthermore, you've never tried to sell an idea to anyone and don't know how to approach it. Come to think of it, you don't know where to start.

You can try to do it all on your own but it'd be almost impossible. Or you can get a group together.

Groups made up of members who offer each other mutual support go by many different names but a good group will have several qualities:

• The support is reciprocal. Each member gives and receives.
• It's run like a business meeting; participants save any socializing for after business.
  
• The group provides a way for participants to be accountable: if someone says she'll draft a business plan that week, a good group will ask her about it at the next meeting.
• Attendance is fairly consistent. It's hard for this type of group to function well on a drop-in basis.

If this sounds like the kind of support you're looking for, start a word-of-mouth campaign among friends and family to see if anyone among your acquaintances is on the same page. Even having one other person to partner with greatly increases the likelihood that you'll follow up on your plans.

Making Dreams Real: Too Many Rubber Chickens

A friend once remarked to me, "My problem is that I'm juggling too many balls. Or maybe rubber chickens." She and I met while working as staff assistants at an elementary school. We both had full-time jobs, young children, spouses who also worked as school assistants (read: forget about "staying home" or even cutting back to part-time), and were, against all odds, persistently trying to further our far-off dreams. She was an actress in community theater and circus productions (hence the juggling metaphor) before having kids. I'd given up trying to keep a writing & editing business afloat. Both of us acutely felt the absence of something crucial in our lives, something that no amount of work or family satisfaction could replace.

I decided to start writing again even if I couldn't find markets for my material. She decided to start teaching acting classes for neighborhood children in her basement. We agreed to be each others' cheerleaders. Over the course of the year, we encouraged each other to keep at it. Neither of us made enormous strides towards our goals that year but it was the keeping up that counted.

When you have too many rubber chickens in the air, you might have to scale down on personal projects for awhile but it's critical that you don't give them up entirely. Even if you can only write for 20 minutes on Saturday night just before falling into bed, or you can only sing in the car as you drive to work, or you only take one decent photo a week, it's vital to keep your passion alive. Having even a tiny bit of time that you look forward to every week can keep you slogging along through work, bills and obligations. And the stronger the connection to the passion inside you, the more energy you'll have for every other area of life.

Making Dreams Real - "Just Because" is Good Enough

Somewhere along the line, doing something just for the love of it got a bad rap. At writers' conferences and other events, most people I've met assume that we're all trying for a big best-seller so we can quit our jobs. For some participants it's true. For many of us, however, it's not. That doesn't make us any less committed to our writing. This holds true for any activity.

It took me awhile to realize that money isn't my best motivator. For some of my fellow writers it works well. I've met others, however, who become so emotionally invested in achieving the dream of earning a living via writing (or designing or acting) that they freeze up. They're afraid to experiment for fear they'll make a "mistake" and lose potential readers or waste valuable time. Every rejection notice feel like a stab wound. And after awhile, even a job that was reasonably satisfying turns sour.

It seems to me that even if you want to earn a living doing what you love, it's more likely to happen if you hold the dream lightly, not tightly. As much as possible in this economy, find a day job that suits you so you don't feel desperate. And remember that if you're not doing what you do for love, it'll show.

Making Dreams Real - Start Anywhere

When facing the start of a big or complicated project, I used to waste a lot of time dithering over where to begin. I'd make lists of steps, consult friends or procrastinate. This probably came from the superstition that if a venture doesn't have an auspicious beginning, it's doomed.

This superstition (I think a lot of us hold it to some degree) inspired me to make countless new starts, especially in my writing. When I first attempted fiction I rewrote Chapter 1 so many times that I often didn't get around to Chapter 2.

Over the years I figured out that beginnings often have nothing to with how well the finished work turns out. It's the steadiness and quality of day-by-day work that counts. And sometimes it doesn't even make sense to start at the beginning. For example, it works better for me to draft scenes of the major turning points in a story, then write the transitional scenes later.

The next time you feel stuck, try going on to the next step if your project doesn't require that you do certain steps in specific order. If you haven't come up with an inspired beginning, skip it and work on the next part. Eventually it'll all fall into place.