Time Management Tuesday: Everything You Do Speaks to Everything You Didn't Do

This is one of those flash essays that begins with something that seems totally unrelated to the topic but is in reality a hooky lead-in to what the writer wants to address. You have been warned.

I spent two-and-a-half days of Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my basement. By myself, though I found out yesterday that someone I know would have come sewed with me, if I'd thought to ask her. I hadn't done a sewing retreat since 2022. This time I was making shopping bags out of blue jeans and cloth Christmas bags out of remnants of Christmas material from years gone by, as well as some new fabric. I also mended Donkey.

This is what I believe is called unnecessary creation, which I read about in an essay by Todd Henry in a book called Manage Your Day-to-Day. Unnecessary creation involves creative activity engaged in by people who work in some other creative area. An example would be a writer who normally writes regularly who spends some time doing some sewing, a different type of creativity. The theory is that involvement in some other kind of creativity will spur your regular, daily creativity.

I have found this to be the case, particularly while playing with journals and reading during vacations. Or binge cooking. Something else happened with this sewing retreat, though.

But Unnecessary Creation Takes So Much Time!

My sewing retreat was a terrific experience. However, by Sunday I was dwelling on something I once read..."Everything you do speaks to everything you didn't do." There were other things, at least one of them being work-related, that I didn't do that weekend, and by midafternoon Sunday they were beginning to hang over me like death and taxes. I got a couple of them done that evening, but still I was very aware that there had been an opportunity cost for my weekend.

You can read about opportunity cost in an interview with Dan Ariely, also in Manage Your Day-to-Day. (Ariely's work, by the way, is the inspiration for the TV show The Irrational.) When you spend time on Activity 1, you no longer have the opportunity to use it on Activity 2. While I was spending time in my basement creating shopping bags out of old blue jeans, I couldn't spend that time on something else. 

What I Really Want to Write About is My Holiday Hell Projects

What this all is leading to is the Advent/Holiday Hell Projects I've been doing since 2021. You know, the project that involves me starting a different piece of short-form writing every day between December 1 and December 25. The idea being that these were all starts I could pick up and run with the next year.

This year I've been revisiting the starts from earlier years. Anything I like I do some more work on and move to the 2024 file. There have been quite a number of them. I only just started looking at the 2022 starts.

While I did finish, submit, and publish 8 of the 31 pieces from 2021, I did nothing with the other 23. Some of them I think were good and I could have gone somewhere with them. At least 1 I might have tried submitting somewhere as is. Instead, I forgot about them. I did even less with the starts from 2022 and 2023.

Why?

I can tell you why. During those years...years...I was working on an adult novel, 143 Canterbury Road. I was working on it even though I hadn't been able to sell a novel since before 2008, and I've never sold an adult novel. 

I was desperate to finish that book, though, and paid a very high opportunity opportunity cost for it. The time it took me to write that book I couldn't spend on short-form work, even though the last few years short-form work is the only writing I've been able to publish. 

In a lecture last week, author Steve Almond said, "You write about what you can't get rid of by other means." That was certainly the case with 143 Canterbury Road. The setting and some secondary characters were torn from the headlines of my life and writing about them was a sort of therapy. 

But therapy isn't free. My therapy had a hefty opportunity cost, because it kept me from other kinds of writing that I would almost certainly have been more successful with.

I'm out of therapy now, and 2025 is another year.

Unnecessary Creation

Ready To Go

Today I'm starting a week-long DIY sewing retreat in my basement. I have a deadline on three projects, because they're birthday presents. There are also some things I started last year and haven't finished. Some mending. I have something in mind I'd like to do that involves denim. I have some other plans for leftover material, if I can get to it. 

I've tried doing sewing retreat weekends and only managed a few hours on Sunday afternoons, so I know this week of sewing isn't really going to be a week of sewing. I'll be at one family member's house all day Monday. I'll be visiting another for an hour on Friday. I'll be grocery shopping Wednesday morning. Those are just the time I'm going to lose that I know about and explains why I'm going Sunday to Saturday and not just Monday to Friday. 

Why A Sewing Retreat?

• I've been feeling the effects of chaos a little more than usual the last couple of months and this will allow me to fall back on my mantra, Finish Something. In fact, just preparing for this week of sewing has forced me to impose some order on my office area, as I get it organized so I can get back to work easily next week.
• I believe in the value of Unnecessary Creation. Creativity spurs creativity.

As part of this year's twentieth blog anniversary I am republishing my first post on unnecessary creation, which I've often referred to as unnecessary creativity.

Aug.13, 2013 Time Management Tuesday: Summer Reading--Spending Time On Any Kind Of Creativity

I  know that many people probably perceive focusing on managing time as very noncreative. What about art? What about literature and music and those fields that are, I think, rather stereotypically considered creative? Shouldn't we be focusing on something like that?

I have a very practical attitude toward creativity. Creativity is simply the act of making something that did not exist before. Whether we're talking painting a landscape or baking a cake or writing a novel or building a house, we are talking creativity. Making something that did not exist before takes time. Big, big connection between time and creativity, in my humble opinion.

Manage Your Day-to-Day 's section on creativity includes an essay by Todd Henry called Creating for You, and You Alone. Now, remember, Manage Your Day-to-Day doesn't deal specifically with writers or artists but with all types of "creatives," people who need to come up with something that didn't exist before as part of their work This particular essay deals with people who work creatively in their jobs, but need to stay on a particular creative task. Exercising other aspects of their creativity is difficult for them, though doing so might be good for their day job, in addition to anything else they want to do with their lives.

Why am I interested in this essay when I write here for writers who presumably create for themselves all the time? Well, actually, we don't. Many writers have traditional day jobs that require creativity of them quite apart from the creative work they want to do for publication. Creating for themselves has to happen in addition to that. I also know writers who do work-for-hire, writing specific nonfiction books, for instance, for a particular publisher or writing volumes for series fiction. Earlier this year I met an illustrator who had "auditioned" for and won a rather nice assignment illustrating some children's books for a known cable chef. She expects to be tied up with that job for two years. For  many working writers and illustrators, this really is an issue.

Todd writes about what he calls "Unnecessary Creation," which he believes "is essential for anyone who works with his or her mind." He's talking about creative acts--making something, anything, that didn't exist  before--that are unrelated to an individual's work. "...something about engaging in the creative act on our own terms seems to unleash latent passions and insights." In other words, creativity spurs creativity.

He suggests creating a list of creative projects to work on in spare time, (I know. What's that?) then setting aside a specific time each week or day (Hell, I'd be happy with time each month) to make progress on it. The point of Unnecessary Creation is that any kind of creativity has value. For those writers I know who are trying to get to other types of creative work, that might be what goes into their spare time set asides. Or maybe not. Maybe simply engaging in any creative act will unleash the insights they need to get to the Unnecessary Creation they really want to move on. Creativity encourages creativity.

Uni The Unicorn Is A Thing

Once again, my writers' group colleagues are being all creative. At Christmas one of them made several pocket pillows for children in her family. Basically, they are pillows with a pocket for carrying things, primarily books. I thought, Hey, I can do that. I should be able to do that. Can I do that? 

It turns out, I can. In two and a half months, I've made one pocket pillow, purchased three more pillow forms, and material for one more pillow. If you do the math, you might be able to figure out that I plan to make four pillows. And I want to have them done by the end of the summer. That's another five and a half months. In two and a half months, I've only made one. If you do the math, well...don't.

Why Are You Telling Us About This, Gail? Oh! A Book Connection!

Anyway, the first pillow was for a very young woman who is  fond of unicorns. Being an extremely open-minded person who doesn't impose her will on others, I went looking on-line for unicorn fabric instead of using some of the little girl scientist fabric I'd bought just to have on hand, for sewing emergencies, I guess. I found some material at my go-to-fabric spot, and it was called Uni the Unicorn. What's more, the site had other Uni the Unicorn fabric that coordinated with the first item I wanted. So I bought a yard of three different types.

Thus I knew I was buying Uni the Unicorn material, I just didn't know what it meant until I was pressing it after washing it. (Always wash your material before sewing, people.) That's when I noticed that the border was stamped with a 2020 copyright "Estate of Amy Krouse Rosenthal Art/Illustrations c 2020 Brigette Barrager" Also "Published by Random House Children's Books."

Well, it didn't take much sleuthing to find that Uni the Unicorn is a character in  a series of books written by the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Brigette Barrager 

I got very excited when I found out about this, because that meant my pocket pillow was going in my blog!

The Results

The pocket pillow wasn't that difficult or time-consuming to make, once I had a Saturday to do it. Finding the material, the pillow form, and iron-on interfacing actually took more effort.

I'm including two books with each of these pillow gifts. For this one I chose A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, because I'd read it with another family member and liked it.

I also took a look at the first Uni the Unicorn book. Though I'm not a fan of those fantasy creatures, this story had a twist I liked, so that book will be part of this gift, as well.

I have the material for the next pillow (theme--cats) and am still looking for rainbow material for the third one. Don't have a clue what the fourth pillow theme will be.

If it's related to a book, you'll hear about it.