One of the fundamental concepts behind DIY MFA is that the program starts with you.  All the creativity, effort and success comes from and goes back to you.  Sure, I can show you some options or suggest some places to start, but ultimately, you are the driving force behind your DIY MFA.  All I’m doing is helping you get started; the rest is up to you.

And that can be kind of scary.

After all, it’s easy to follow instructions and work within an established framework, but do-it-yourself isn’t like that.  It can be terrifying to forge your own path, and sometimes structure can be comforting, even for us free-spirited creative types. 

So what do we do when there is no structure?  We develop a writing habit.  And how exactly do we develop and nurture this habit?  Here are some easy tips.

1) Take baby steps.  Try not to push yourself too hard at first because if you do, you’ll be more likely to face burnout later on.  The goal is for your writing habit to be sustainable in the long run, so don’t go for a huge overhaul.  Instead try to make a handful of small, significant changes that will make a big impact on your writing down the road.

2) Give yourself permission to make mistakes.  Building a habit is like being a constant newbie at something.  After all, as soon as you get comfortable, you take another baby step toward your goal.  This means resting on your laurels is never an option, which is why it’s so important to allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes.  Remember that mistakes are inevitable; you might as well learn how to bounce back.

3) It’s OK to have fun.  Many of us have had the idea that writing is “work” rammed into our heads.  This is why when we start having fun with writing it’s hard to believe we’re actually working.  But we are; we’re just having fun at it.  It’s OK for writing to be fun and just because it feels more like play than work doesn’t make it any less worthy.

4) Real writers write when it’s hard.  Writing when it’s easy is, well… easy, but when it stops being fun, you still need to write.  The thing that separates true writers from the wannabes is what happens when the writing becomes tough.  Wannabes quit when it stops being fun, true writers work through the pain.
 
5) When you fall off the horse, dust yourself off and try again.  Don’t waste precious energy beating yourself up for missing a few days of writing.  Just tell yourself “it’s a new day” and start fresh.

6) Find out what’s causing writer’s block.  If have a string of bad writing days, take a few moments to reevaluate and figure out why that might be happening.  Maybe you’ve been over-stressed or over-tired.  Maybe you’ve got a lot on your plate right now.  Think about how you can adjust your writing habit to account for the hurdles you’re facing.  Once you’ve come up with a plan, let go of the past and move forward toward your goals.

7) Take the day off, now and then.  And when you do, don’t spend the whole time feeling guilty because you’re not writing.  If you need a day off, make a conscious decision not to write, then go about your life.

In the end, it’s all about being a more mindful writer.  Don’t let the past and future moments dictate whether you’re able to write in the present.  Learn from past experiences or mistakes but don’t let them haunt you.  When you’re writing, write.  When you’re not writing, live your life.

Most new ideas or concepts go through a four-phase process.  The time spent in each phase–along with the order of the phases themselves–can vary depending on the person and the project.  Some phases can even be repeated multiple times throughout the creative process.

Inspiration Phase
This phase is where you get that initial spark of an idea and it’s what most people think of as the creative process (though as you’ll see, the creative process extends beyond this phase).  In DIY MFA 2.O, we’ll be focusing on this phase, talking about some of the techniques writers can use to dig up new ideas for projects.

Incubation Phase
This is when you let the idea sit for a while.  You might feel weird leaving a project hanging–lazy even–but this phase is an important stage in any creative development.  In writing, incubation can occur between drafts, in the middle of a draft, or even before you start the very first draft.  The important thing is being able to recognize when you need to step back from a project and give yourself room to do so.

Illumination Phase
This is the evaluation stage, where you look at the idea or project, tease it apart and figure out its weak points.  This is also where you look at the overall organization of your idea and shuffle things around as needed.  While your inner critic might usually be persona non grata, in this phase, it might be appropriate to let it have its say.  Later on, we’ll talk later about ways to use your inner critic productively without letting it go spastic and take over your project.

Implementation Phase
This phase, which usually comes at the end, is where you stop thinking and start writing.  Funny how that keeps coming up again and again in ORACLE-related posts.  In the end, it all comes down to the same thing: you can plan and think and ponder all you like, but sooner or later you have to sit down and write.

Every writer has at least one phase they love and at least one that makes a root canal sound like fun.  For me, implementation is where I drag my feet but I’m nutso for the other three.  In fact, I have to limit the number of WIPs I have going or else I’d be constantly tempted to start a ton of projects and I’d never finish any.  What phase do you tend to get “stuck” in and never want to leave?  Which phase scares the living daylights out of you?

When it comes to generating ideas there are basically two ways you can do it: the easy way and the hard way.  Neither one is necessarily better than the other, but the easy way will definitely save you a lot of time, stress and agony, while the hard way… well, it’s just hard.

This is where the ORACLE comes in.  The ORACLE is all about making life easier for you, especially when it comes to generating ideas.  Here are a few principles that I’ve learned from my ORACLE that have helped make my writing life a lot easier.

•  Leave some things to chance.  Let’s face it, part of what makes writing so challenging isn’t that we don’t have enough choices, it’s that we have too many.  Sometimes having to make so many decisions can be paralyzing and limiting your options can actually be liberating.  This is when I turn to the ORACLE.  With the flip of a coin or roll of the die, I can take a decision out of my hands and put it in the hands of chance.  Today, try letting chance decide one small detail in your writing.

•  Engage the five senses.  When I’m at a loss for ideas, I go back to the basics.  I focus on the five senses, particularly senses other than sight (since that one tends to be the one I use most often).  I make a soundtrack for the story I’m working on.  I burn a candle and focus on the scent.  I eat jelly beans in weird flavors.  I go to my knitting stash and pet the yarn.  The latter is how I got the idea for one of my projects.  Try to draw on one of your lesser-used senses.

•  Embrace the unexpected.  I still remember the first time a character of mine hijacked the story from me.  I was writing a short story with an eleven-year-old boy protagonist and suddenly the kid is standing in the living room with his mom measuring him for a party dress and I realized that my character was really a girl.  I spent some time trying to rework the story, to keep with my original vision but the story only came to life the minute I let go of my own personal agenda and let the character be who she wanted to be.  Have you ever had something unexpected come up in a project?  How did you handle it?

•  Step beyond your comfort zone.  It’s easy for writers to get into a routine and sometimes rituals can help us prepare for a writing session.  At the same time, though, too much routine can hinder more than help, and it’s up to us to do something to shake things up.  For me, a great way to break a humdrum routine is to try an new environment.  Sometimes that means just moving to a different room in the apartment; sometimes I have to pack up my notebook and take a subway to a different part of the city.  Do one small thing this week to push you outside your comfort zone.

•  Practice, practice, practice.  One of the most important parts of DIY MFA is the actual doing of it.  We can talk about writing in the abstract forever but the writing won’t do itself.  Sooner or later we have to grit our teeth and do the work and this is where practice comes in.  A friend recently recommended an app for the computer called Pomodoro.  I tried it and now I swear by it.  Seriously.  It keeps me accountable and forces me to focus for short spurts, rather than letting me sit at my desk for hours, zoning out and checking twitter.  What kinds of techniques can you use to help get you in the zone?

How you can apply these five principles to your writing this week?

You’ve heard me mention the ORACLE in the past, but today I thought I would give you a more detailed look at what the ORACLE really is. First things first; the ORACLE stands for:

Outrageous
Ridiculous
Absurdly
Creative
Literary 
Exercises

I store my ORACLE in a treasure chest because every time I visit, I like thinking that I’m going to discover a little piece of treasure.  What’s inside this box of tricks?  I’ll show you:

These are just a few things that live in (or near) the ORACLE.  The box is so jam-packed with stuff that some things no longer fit in the ORACLE proper and have been moved to various annex locations.  There are also some additional items not show in the picture, including: mood playlists on my iPod, a deck of cards (for playing solitaire), and of course the Idea Bank.

Because the ORACLE will be central to the structure of DIY MFA 2.O.  Just like DIY MFA is about giving you the tools to build a satisfying and productive writing life, the ORACLE is about building a diverse skill set for generating ideas.  Sure, I could give you prompts or exercises from my own ORACLE, but at the end of April, where would that leave you?  Instead, I’d rather give you tools and tricks I’ve developed that will help you come up with your own infinite bank of ideas.  That way, you’ll always have somewhere to turn if your creative well goes temporarily dry.

But before get carried away, we need to talk about some ORACLE basics.  This week, in preparation for DIY MFA 2.O, I’ll be doing a post series on the ORACLE.  Posts will include:

• 5 Principles for Generating Ideas
• 4 Results You Can Expect from the ORACLE (and I’ll let you in on which one will be especially important to DIY MFA 2.O)
• The DIY MFA 2.O Schedule

In the meantime, I want to hear from you.  I showed you what’s in my writing toolbox, now show me yours, ‘k?  What are some things in your writing toolbox that you simply cannot do without?