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.

Creativity DOES Spur Creativity!

You may recall that I spent last week on a home-based, DIY sewing retreat. In my sewing/laundry room. In my cellar. In part it was to get rid of some sewing work that was hanging over my head. In part it was due to the weight of run-of-the-mill chaos on my shoulders. In part it was because I thought spending time on one kind of creativity would benefit my writing, because creativity spurs creativity.

This retreat worked on all counts. 

The Benefit To My Writing

Last week I came up with various ideas for my work in progress. I will admit that early most mornings I spent a little time reading a chapter of that. But the bulk of my days involved sewing. The writing "work" that did came about as a side benefit should help a great deal with moving forward on this manuscript.

What we're talking about here are breakout experiences, which occur when you've absorbed material about some project/work problem and then moved away from it. They can happen while driving, showering, walking, or doing anything that either engages your mind minimally or in a different way from the original project. 

I came away from this retreat not only with new work material but with new energy, as if getting back from a vacation that involved some relaxation. 

I can't claim this retreat was modeled on what I think of as traditional writers' retreats--go into a cabin and write. I've never been to one of those. The few writers' retreats I've attended were called retreats but were actually short conferences with all the time committed to presentations of some sort. 

This was modeled more on retreats my sister has attended for rubber stampers. Those appear to be intensive work times, with people sitting at long tables with materials they've brought with them and working all day, into the evening. The photograph I saw of one of those events had a sweatshop quality to it.  Those people generate work.

I will definitely do something like this again, creating a retreat around some kind of necessary creation, when I'm at a struggling point with a project and/or feeling overwhelmed. 

EDITED To Add:

A Sewing/Writing Parallel

Last week's sewing included binding some pieces from a quilt I'd taken apart last year to make wall hangings and using some of my extensive collection of old denim to make shopping bags. The engineer at my house referred to all that as "creative repurposing."

Repurposing is something I've done with writing, too, reworking older pieces. Earlier this month I did it with You Are the Parents of Sixth Graders. Act Like It, humor for adults that began years ago as a short story for middle grade readers. 

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.

Time Management Tuesday: A Creativity Mantra To Stimulate New Work

A little over a week ago, some Facebook friends and I were discussing my mantra "When I am exhausted and overwhelmed from too many tasks, I choose one to complete. One that can be completed." Or, to put it in a less unwieldy manner, "Finish something."  

As a result, friend Susan Barlow--yoga and tai chi instructor, historian, and serious walker--sent me the poem The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley, which appeared on The Writer's Almanac last month. The poem, she felt, reminded her of our discussion, because it dealt with "doing one do-able thing and allowing that to be enough."

In an attempt to respect the holder of the copyright on this poem, I'll just give you some samples and urge you to seek it out yourself for the full reading experience. It begins:

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead      it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft      a poem would have had some
distance to go  

 

Towards the middle Paley says:

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

 

She ends with:

 

I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership      I do not
want to wait a week      a year      a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

From The Poet’s Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley in Begin Again. © Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000

Susan happened to send this to me on a Tuesday when I had no Time Management Tueday post, because I had spent the day with a young man, freeing other family members who were building a playset in his backyard. The day before, when I could have been writing the post, I had made pumpkin custard to bring to him. Because, as Paley said of her pie, pumpkin custard is a sure thing. Time Management Tuesday, not so much. 

Touching, Gail, But What Does It Have To Do With Time Management For Writers?

Here's the thing--cooking for people like Paley and me, who don't cook for a living--falls under the category of "unnecessary creativity," which I first wrote about back in 2013 in relation to an essay by Todd Henry.

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. 

That was certainly the case for Grace Paley, whose pie-making inspired a poem. My custard--and reading Paley's poem--inspired a blog post. One of my objectives for this year was to start some eating essays. I'm inching toward that with this piece. Making that custard was time well spent.

A Creativity Mantra

Knowing that one type of creativity can lead to another,  I now have a second mantra.  "When all else fails, create something."

 

This Weekend's Unnecessary Creativity Is All About Denim

Yeah, I cooked yesterday. For hours. But what else is new, right?

Well, actually, today I got started...barely...on a sewing project I have to do for Christmas. We won't go into what that's about. What's important here is that this project involves denim.

Denim quilt

Back in the early years of this century, I made a denim quilt. Why? Because I am part of a denim-loving generation; also a member of that generation that spent its youth making things out of other things so those other things wouldn't fill up landfills.

Denim keeps happening. I've been collecting denim since the day I finished that quilt. I have a family member who gives me his cast off blue jeans. I have denim. So when I had to come up with a homemade Christmas gift, of course I thought of denim.

What I needed for today's project was long strips of denim. So I was working on cutting up some pairs of pants I had not yet done anything with when I thought, Why don't you look at the denim you've already prepared? Maybe you have some denim pant legs that have been cut from pants but haven't yet been cut into squares. That would cut down on the amount of work you have to do.

Surely everyone has a denim bag. Right?

You know how you used to hear about scrap bags? Oh, come on. Bags of scrap material belonging to women who sew? Well, I have a denim bag. There's rather a lot of denim in it. And, sure enough, I have a lot of pant legs in there that I could use for today's project.

A Denim And Writing Connection

A LOT of denim

Today's experience was very similar to starting a new writing project and then remembering that you'd tried something similar sometime in the past. So you go looking through your filing cabinet or your hard drive (depending on how far back the original writing goes) and, sure enough, you find something you can use. And you start pulling everything together and something from the past gets started again.

It has happened.

Another Weekend Of Unnecessary Creativity And Podcasts

This past week, I discovered the In The Telling podcast from Slice Magazine. Since I'm interested in spending time on short stories and essays over the next couple of months and these podcasts focus on writers reading those very things, that's what I listened to this afternoon while creating away in the kitchen. What did I hear?

The Wedding Stairs by Helen Phillips. I can't say I got the ending, but this story is definitely atmospheric. It made me feel that I should avoid weddings.

More Encounters in Publishing by Liz Mathews. This piece wasn't hysterically funny, as was promised, but it was real. This stuff happens!

The Mechanicals by C.J. Hauser  This is the kind of story that makes every woman (and probably man) who didn't have a teenage romance really grateful. Because who needs this?

To be honest, I chose all the above podcasts because they were short.

I also listened to part of a talk by Jennifer Weiner on the necessity of social media for writers. I got knocked off the Internet on this one, but I'd heard it before. It's good on several levels, one of them being that few writers can afford the luxury of saying no to social media.

Tomorrow I plan to go hiking.

What I Do In The Kitchen

As my legions of Facebook friends know, I am prone to binge cooking on weekends. I consider cooking unnecessary creativity. It's creative work unrelated to my writing work. I indulge myself with it in the belief that creativity will spur creativity.

I am not one of those people who wants her cooking space open to the whole neighborhood. I am very happy in the kitchen by myself. But I do like sound when I'm cooking, either music or, the last couple of years, podcasts. I horde podcast links in my bookmarks. Quite honestly, I am never going to sit for a half hour, staring at my computer screen and listening to someone talk. (Though I did sit for more than 15 minutes staring at my computer screen and listening to Mindy Kaling give this speech.) So I try to multi-task with podcasts while I'm being unnecessarily creative, even though by doing so I am risking brain damage and my already shaky career, because I'm never going to listen to these things otherwise and the links will just pile up and up on my hard drive.

The Longform Podcast

So on Saturday afternoon, I listened to the Longform guys' podcast with Meghan Daum because I recognized her name, and she's an essayist, a type of writing I'm interested in. Daum had some interesting things to say about the personal essay and whether writers refine them enough before publishing. The Longform podcast deals with nonfiction writers and editors. I'll definitely check it out again.

I also started to listen to Longform's interview with Kurt Andersen because I liked his book, Turn of the Century, which isn't nonfiction, and I've heard him on Studio 360. But someone came into the kitchen, and since I could get him to help with the chicken parm, I gave up on the podcast.

That's the risk you take with podcasts.

A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment

I had to cook again on Sunday afternoon because I got such a late start with my Saturday binge. So that day I listened to the first A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment podcast, hosted by Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter. I almost listened to this on Saturday, because I like Alexie's work. But in the description of the program it said these two might discuss professional basketball. I took that as a warning. But when I tried A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment out on Sunday, they talked about kids' recreational sports instead. And not until the end of the show.

The really great section of this podcast was Alexie and Walter talking about dire author appearances they've made. Maybe you have to be a writer to enjoy that kind of thing, because when I repeated the stories to my husband at dinner, he said things like, "So he didn't get paid?" Which totally missed the point.

I'll be listening to A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment again, too.