Given the restrictions here’s some further reading. Some of these I encountered while I was preparing my talk and was sad not to be able to include them.

Creative Process

• The Artists Way – will get a brief mention in the talk.
• How to Get Things Done, by Robert Benchley – oh it is a delight, thank you Sara Ryan for introducing me to him.

Streams of Information

There is so much cool stuff out there. I find most of my new distractions I mean interesting links to articles and creative fuel via interesting twitter people, especially:

• Jason Thibault - a really interesting mix of writing, freelancing, comics and art process. The interstitial space is most satisfying.
• Meanjin – literary fuel and keeps me appraised of creative goings on in Australia
• SFWA - Science Fiction Writers of America. Interesting from links around the place and publishes a lot of free to all blog posts, touching on all aspects of the creative process. A SF and American bent to nicely round things out.

There’s a multitude of other fine people who post links to interesting places, but these three manage to syndicate a lot of interesting stuff on a regular basis.

Inspiring sources – eating good food

Nutrition for brain as well as body. I love my local library. Wandering the aisles, checking out books recommended by friends and slowly getting through my Clarion reading list. Reading good, better yet great, prose is important. Go for the good stuff, the stuff that inspires you and reminds you of why words are important.

Getting Stuff Done

I love these two tools to bits… though I am tempted to move my to do list into Basecamp, as I’ve been using Basecamp a lot with clients recently and I like things living together.

• Joe’s Goals – love it love it love it. Free habit development (or habit breaking) software, get a smiley face every time you do something. Easy and fast to tailor to whatever regular stuff you’re trying to do. Common goals I use, phasing in and out depending on my focus, create, creator logistics/paperwork, go to gym, read, eat regularly, drink water. I also use sad red faces to track my menstrual cycle! And a log book to note all sorts of variables.
• OnLine CEO – simple to do list with the added bonus you have to note how important each to do is and it provides a handy chart to make the decision making easy. To do lists free and having a clear sense of priorities clears up so much head-space.
• 750 words – I’ve just heard about it, an online journaling space and challenge. Looks pretty nifty if pen and paper do not appeal and you want that peer support. Thanks Mike for telling me about this one.

So that’s me, did I miss anything fantabulous? What are the tools and spaces you use?

It’s now 3am. Oh sleep, you mock me. May the words flow free and easy.

Liz

William Shunn and Geoffrey A. Landis have been added to the collection.

Other news

The skribit question (see right hand side of the webpage): How to find a comics artist? has been buzzing around in my head a lot. I’ve composed about 20 zillion answers, generally while trying to fall asleep or not wanting to get out of bed. I have finally found an approach that pleases me and a very rough draft has been written longhand (yep, I’m old school). I have a few other things I have to write before I’m allowed to indulge in finishing it off, but it is coming.

Italo Calvino talks engages with writing on a higher (and fundamental) level and writes about Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. He died before he was able to write the final memo, Consistency.

He makes me want to read Lucretius and Ovid, he makes me want to reread Dante’s inferno. He inspires a kind of aspirational approach that is also humble. It is about striving, but not about ego. Five memos, five different lenses to apply to our craft, to improve the way in which we are servants to story.

I took a long time to read Six Memos. Although not literate in Italian I read the sections in Italian slowly for the sounds and rhythms of another language and to see how translation shapes that rhythm. Calvino quotes German authors, Italian authors, English authors as well as authors from ‘classical times’ (which might mean Greek into Latin into Arabic into Latin for all I know), convincing me yet again the doors to the mind that are opened when a person speaks more than one language.

Reading Six Memos felt like such a lively, personal experience that I feel a pang of sadness now as I read Cosmicomics, also by Italo Calvino. Now that I read Cosmicomics I feel the loss of this lovely author, that I am reading from a finite collection of his works of imagination. Calvino does not feel dead to me, he is too alive in his writing.

Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and infer what he might have said on Consistency. Read, read the writers with big ideas, the writers that have grappled with the cosmos. Go forth and grapple.

Italo Calvino came up with his six phrases, six keywords to unlock deeper layers in his own work and the work of others. I wonder what my six phrases are. I think I’ll have to throw the ideas around for a while as I try different words on for size.

What are your six keywords today? What are your six keywords tomorrow?