creativity

do you know why you do what you do?

October 28, 2012 by gloria marie in creativity, inspiration, videos | Leave a comment

yesterday morning i watched a TED talk by eddie obeng (smart failure for a fast-changing world), had no idea who the guy was so i googled him and the following youtube video came up!


eddie obeng tells five monkeys fable

the video is less than 3 minutes. we often do things because it is what others tell us we should do. we often do things because it is the way it has always been done.

society has taught us to follow “the rules” and most of them are illogical and restricting. but what if we break away from the way it has always been done? imagine what you could do with your life! imagine what you could create.

3 things about creativity i learned from scottish sculptor karla black

October 20, 2012 by gloria marie in creativity | Leave a comment

last night i attended an event at the dallas museum of art. the scottish sculptor karla black spoke about her two pieces at the dma. as a creative person i am always interested in the creative process of others, and it doesn’t matter what medium they are working in. if they are into making paper airplanes i want to know their thought process of how they create their airplanes. it’s all about learning from others!

karla black at the dma

here are 3 things i learned from karla black:

1. work from the desires of what you want

one of her two pieces at the dma has pink sand on the floor with “tape” around the perimeters extending from the ceiling to the floor. someone from the audience asked her why she chose pink. she said that she doesn’t like working with primary colors, but part of her answer was that she likes pink. if she desires pink she will use it. she said she works out of the desires of what she wants.

creating is an expression of who you are. infuse yourself into your art.

karla black at the dma

2. everything doesn’t have to be defined

she describes some of her work as “almost a sculpture”, it’s not one thing or another. then she emphasized maintaining potential within your work. the potential for it to be better.

“nothing is ever good enough to be finished.” – karla black

the following picture shows her piece that appears unfinished. she describes the response the piece elicits as a cerebral response of wanting to move/touch the piece.

karla black at the dma

3. be careful of self indulgence

while she works from her desires, she also mentioned “self indulgence” and “compromise”. she said the joy of it, of creating art, is the interaction she has with her art but the compromise is making something that has a consequence for others. how does it make a person feel or think?

personally i equate this to the concept of using your gift (for the benefit of others!), creating things that have impact on others. for example, i love writing and will write if no one reads it, but if i want to use my gift to help others i have to stop and think is this beneficial to others? or am i being completely selfish with what i am creating? create because you love creating, express yourself (point 1), but think about the consequences your work could have on others. it’s a balance.

this is post 1000th! my best advice for blogging!

July 14, 2012 by gloria marie in blogging & social networking, creativity, my life | 1 Comment

so what is a blogger to say on their blog’s 1,000th post? THANKS!

i’ve been sharing online since 1997, back on aol pages. i’ve kept journals on diaryland.com and livejournal.com, and then i discovered wordpress in it’s infancy and made my own dot com. and i’ve been wordpressin’ it every since! thanks to the thousands of people who work on wordpress.

as someone who has published 1,000 blog posts i think i have a little something to say on the topic of blogging, so here are 1,000 tips on blogging! okay, i kid! but i do have two: don’t worry about being perfect and be consistent.

1. don’t worry about being perfect

i write because it’s just who i am. i started the blog to do something i love. i don’t put a lot of pressure on myself to be a perfect writer on my blog. i’ve given myself the freedom just to write. write and share what’s on my mind and heart.

i break tons of rules, some on purpose and some not on purpose. haha. i know it’s bad to start sentences off with prepositions, but do i do it? yep, all the time. i am aggressive with my periods, split infinitives, lack capitalization, and a ton of other things that make english teachers just die. part of it is my personal style, and part of it is being okay with not being perfect.

more than worrying about perfect grammar i am more concerned with overall flow and structure of the piece. i often move chunks of sentences around, and put a lot of thought into if my thoughts are sequential.

i preach that perfection is overrated all the time because i really believe it is! perfection will stop you from doing what you love to do…if you let it. give yourself the freedom to do what you love. focus on what is important to you, you can’t always control it all.

2. be consistent

i am as much distracted by glittery things as the next person, there are so many things competing for our time. however, if you want to grow your skills, your art, your audience, your business, whatever it is you do, YOU HAVE TO BE CONSISTENT. you have to set other things aside, all the distractions, and keep shipping. it’s really simple, you don’t get anywhere if you don’t do anything. the more consistent you are the bigger your return. through consistency is how you get to 1,000 blog posts!

being consistent is challenging, especially when things are not magically happening. and as a blogger i sometimes will spend a lot of time working on a piece only to look at my stats and see that not many people actually clicked on it, but that doesn’t discourage me from writing my next post. don’t let setbacks keep you from being consistent.

so there you have it! my two blogging tips! i apologize if these two aren’t good enough, and you actually need 998 more!

but thank you all so much for reading gloriamarie.com. it means a lot! learn more about me here.

33 ways to stay creative

May 16, 2012 by gloria marie in creativity | Leave a comment

i have pinned over 1200 items on pinterest yet i rarely go back and look at any of the stuff. i am just a pinning machine! but i recently browsed some of my boards, and i have pinned the following image 3 times! apparently i don’t even care if i’ve pinned an item before, if it comes up in my feed and i like it i will pin it…again! yes, i am a dork.

33 ways to stay creative

i really desire to do number 15. collaborate! but before i can collaborate i really need to do number 13. surround myself with creative people. and the whole framework thing, i need to do that too!

stay focused and keep shipping

May 8, 2012 by gloria marie in creativity, productivity | 7 Comments

it is really hard going from a-z with creative projects. a = the idea and z = the completed project. so many challenges get in the way of reaching point z. it’s always something you can change, tweak, improve, and the list goes on.

all this working, or procrastinating, on your project could go on for a very long time. however, you must ship. and ship often. exactly what does “shipping” mean? you can think about it in its most basic terms, when you ship something/a product it leaves one location and goes to another. when you are working on a project/product the goal is to ship it from your hands into the hands of the consumer. and the more you ship the better.

real artist ship

steve jobs, the founder of apple, said it best when he said, “real artist ship.” it is important to deliver the goods…at some point! better sooner than later. as an artist you have to finish your project and ship it. ship. ship. ship!

mark zuckerberg posted this stay focused and keep shipping picture of his desk the day facebook filed their ipo.

reasons why you don’t ship

“You – everyone in fact – have all it takes to be a brilliant designer, creator, or author. All that’s holding you back is the lizard. It’s that little voice in the back of your head, the “but” or the “what if” that speaks up at the crucial moment and defeats the joy and insight you brought to the project in the first place. It’s the lizard that ruins your career, stunts your projects, and hinders your organization.” – Seth Godin (in The Truth About Shipping)

i follow seth godin because he is a genius, and in the following video he pinpoints the “lizard brain” as one of the reasons why you end up not shipping.

click here to watch quieting the lizard brain if you can’t view the video. the video is a little over 18 minutes, but it’s really worth investing the time in.

perfection is overrated

everything that i do i feel like it could be better. i think most creative people suffer with this. in the start series i referred to this as “the perfectionist curse”. like this current post on shipping? it could be so much better but i am going to press publish and ship it! and the more i ship the better i will become at what i am shipping. i can’t afford to wait to become better at what i do in order to ship.

so what are you currently working on? stop the procrastinating, stop the thrashing, all the tweaking, and move your project to a shipped status.

here is a pinnable image i made for you!

real artist ship

so what is your experience with shipping or not shipping?

to live a creative life

March 21, 2012 by gloria marie in creativity, quotes | Leave a comment

“to live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
- joseph chilton pearce

abandon perfection. you are not a machine. thankfully you are more complex than a machine, and because of your complexity you won’t always have it right. but that’s perfectly fine! don’t be afraid to live a creative life.

Source: madamecupcake.tumblr.com via gloria on Pinterest