NaBloPoMo - structure and improv

NaBloPoMo Nov 30, 2007

Yea! It's the last day of NaBloPoMo.

I can say that if nothing else, I have learned how to remember the acronym. hehe
But wait, there is something else. I did actually write every day--my main goal. I did explore various topics and thoughts--a secondary goal. I also explored ways of writing something when no inspiration was forthcoming--a happy rediscovery of using stream-of-consciousness writing to generate writings.

Now I'm almost surprised that somehow the month has gone by.

It's been a good exercise for me. Sometimes one has to "practice your scales and persevere." To make good art, sometimes you have to be willing to make bad art. And it's good for me to start letting go of, not my standards, but of my perfectionism. Such as: everything has to be just right; it has to be worthy of exposure to public air, and all that crap.

Well, the slow and steady approach actually works. Improvisation actually works. Preparation and practice actually works. Revision also works. I can't remember who said that good writing is in the editing. I've found that to be true in my writing process, but good editing was not my goal this month, it's more about letting go of my perfectionistic needs, not being too be hard on myself for not living up to some wildly unrealistic ideals.
Karen Kohlhass (a NY based theater director and teacher, among other things) wrote something about this, too. See? FlyLady works for all kinds of people. ;)

Anyway, it's part of the creative process... not waiting for inspiration to strike, but doing your scales, keeping the skills toned and honed so that when something especially important comes along, one can sweep into position and play it for all its worth.



I've been trying to be more improvisational with my life the last few years. I once took a wild and out-there, movement-mind-voice, not-quite-yoga class that helped me into this idea. One of the exercises we did several times was to practice a single movement until it felt familiar, and then to play with changing it in small ways, moving into larger variations, riding the impulse to see where it took us before coming back to the original movement to see how our feelings had changed about it.

It was way cool, the power I had; I realized I could improvise with almost anything! It's very different than just flailing about, trying to do something completely different, although sometimes that is what you arrive at.

I saw that my life was an improvisational canvas too. I could play with my usual ways of doing something. That's an incredibly valuable perspective when I get caught in trying to do something "perfectly" or worse, not even attempting something because I think I will fail at doing it perfectly. So life improvisation saves my sanity on a regular basis, freeing up energy for trying new things, just seeing what happens.

I can fall into a habit quite easily. Sometimes I find a good fit, and if it feels comfortable, I will stay there, using that same strategy or sequence or habit until it doesn't work any more. Now, when I talk about improvising, I am not talking about changing for the sake of change, necessarily, but I am a big fan of minimizing the time I spend on unimportant decisions.

My thoughts are partElaine St. James
(Inner Simplicity and Simplify Your Life), part Steven Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), and part efficiency expert
a la Frank and Lillian Gilbreths in Cheaper By the Dozen
(the book, not the movie). [Oo, linkies]
and FlyLady again for structures and routines.

If something is non-vital, I want to just find what I like and what works and stick with it. Why make that same decision over and over and over again? Waste of my energy, and it's not as if I don't already have plenty of other stuff clamoring for attention in my head. :) So, I simplify where I can.

Sometimes I will prioritize my decisions. What can be decided upon relatively easily and/or is not that important, and what requires more thought and/or has a weightier import. It's a skill I didn't realize I had, until I noticed other people who seemed to get easily bogged down in what seemed to me to be relatively trivial decisions.

Caveat (of course): sometimes I get bogged down too! Too much detail, too many pieces, too many decisions among many. Oo, bright thing! Oo, another possibility! Whoa, man, that is totally cool! Next thing I know, stuff is whirling around in my head, and I'm stuck trying to make order of it.

So yeah, I can get completely lost in the fragments and bogged down trying to sort through those possibilities at times. Yet, when I CAN manage it, triaging my decisions helps me streamline my thoughts. And wow, that is a great feeling.

Sometimes I DO have a very specific idea of what I want, and that's cool too. Visualizing the outcome clearly is sometimes an even better guide to getting where I want to go. But if I don't know exactly where I want to go, I doodle, perambulate, mull things over, try new variations, improvise a little! And even with the lemons that life hands you, well, one can always make lemon meringue pie, lemon sorbet, lemon-lime palettas, grate a little peel into coffeecake batter, not just make lemonade.

Sometimes it's so freeing to not have the "perfect" outcome in mind, but to throw myself in the general direction and see where it takes me. Having ONLY a perfect image in mind almost guarantees that I will not achieve that thing. Besides, sometimes I can't visualize the perfect thing until I play around enough to know what I want. It really helps me to have my structure and routines in place first (thank you FlyLady), then improvise from that. After all, I do deal with a lot of unstructured and structured time in my life.


... and finally, sometimes, it's good to, know when to stop, let the dough rest. Now that I've done this structure of NaBloPoMo month writing, I can improvise, and see where this blog is taking me. So I'll let this one rest now... let it fluff a little and come back to it. I can't wait to see what happens next!

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