Inspiration Comes Unannounced

Scott Ginsberg is fast becoming one of my new favorite bloggers. Yesterday I started reading his book Make A Name For Yourself and loved one of his quotes that stated “If you’re not holding a pen right now, go get one. Inspiration comes unannounced.” Now today I am reading a post that Scott wrote a few days ago titled “38 Random Thoughts About Creativity” in which he says, “… Thomas Edison carried a 200-page notebook wherever he went, just for his ideas. At the end of his life, he’d filled up more than 3,400 of them. He also obtained more patents than any person in history. What does THAT tell you?”

Well, it tells me a lot! Granted, Edison was an inventor and not a copywriter but I don’t really think that matters one iota when it comes to inspiration and creativity. I’m just wondering what kind of system he used to keep his thoughts all organized. I, too, have years worth of thoughts written down (on every kind of paper imaginable — hotel notepads, napkins, grocery store receipts, and of course stenopads, spirals notebooks and legal pads!) and I am now in the process of trying to sort through all this “brilliance” and get it into subject-labeled folders.

This is no small task. I’ve been working on this little project an hour at a time for days now. Sadly, I have nothing much to show for all my hard work except piles of folders stuffed full of paper which are now sitting where the piles of paper used to be. I confess I’ve been entertaining rather tempting thoughts about calling it quits and ruthlessly tossing every bit of it, but this quote about Thomas Edison has, at least temporarily, spared my trash collectors a backache that surely would have followed the pickup at my curb this morning.

I am certainly inspired by Edison’s perseverence and dutiful recording of this ideas and thoughts. I wonder whether he was organized and had some sort of system to keep track of it all. I’m trying, but memories of an old saying I embroidered and hung in my bedroom as a teenager keeps coming to mind — “Creative minds are seldom tidy.”

Does that give me permission to ditch the office organization project this afternoon and go enjoy the sunshine? I think — YES!

Until next time …

Simple Yet Profound

I’m just going to quickly put this thought down so I can

• Go hop in the shower
• Keep reading this book and not worry about forgetting this statement.

The thought is this — “If you’re not holding a pen right now, go get one. Inspiration comes unannounced.”

It’s found in the opening pages of a book by Scott Ginsberg (That Guy with a Nametag) called “Make a Name for Yourself”. I’m just starting to read the book after finding his blog on a blogroll somewhere and being entranced by it (Note: You can access Scott’s blog from my blogroll which is in the right column of the page.)

I just found this statement to be so completely true. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a fantastic idea while in the middle of a class at RIT or standing in the checkout line at Wegmans, wishing I had some way to capture it before it would be replaced by the task at hand and be gone forever.

I’m not suggesting that I become the woman with the pad and pen (although that might get me some publicity …) but I do want to keep that statement emblazoned on my brain because it just resonated with me.

Ok, thought recorded. On to shower and church.

Until the next post …

How Many Hours Before I Yell “UNCLE!”?

This might seem like a very silly post but I said right from the git go that one of my goals with starting this blog was to become familiar with the WordPress blogging program since I have a couple other projects I’d like to use it for. Well, I hit my first roadblock last night.

I’ve got a couple of blogs on Blogger that I try to keep up with and it just seemed like the program was so easy to learn. When I wanted to learn how to add an image to my post it was a snap. When I wanted to add links — even easier. And when I decided it was time to figure out how to add an RSS feed, I was able to add it to all my sites within an hour (maybe two, but no more than that!)

Since I’m about as non-technical as you can get, that’s really saying something. Even more impressive (at least to me, I’m sure no one else probably cares) is the fact that I figured it out myself. No calling the PCWT (Personal Computer Whiz Team –a.k.a. my kids) or sweet-talking my husband into doing it for me or even walking me through it. Nope, I did it myself.

I figured that all blogging programs were the same, maybe a few minor differences, but overall it would be same old, same old.

Not true. I started out pretty good, creating this blog , getting my sidebar set up, listing a few categories and so on. I was feeling pretty good. I liked this new blogging program. The templates are great; it certainly seemed simple enough. And then last night I decided to add a picture to one of the posts I had written. It did not go well.

Actually, if you bother to look, you’ll see there are no images in any of my posts (at least not at this writing.) I just couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t get the picture to load, then when I finally did get it to load, I couldn’t get it to insert where I wanted it. I finally gave up in frustration. Time invested: 1.5 hours (and no picture.)

Later I decided to do a little reading and add the RSS link. I found instructions and finally figured out how to access a “text widget” as the instructions stated, but damn … no little RSS icon was showing up. Finally I sent a desperate request for help to the support desk and called it a night. Time invested: 2.5 hours (and no RSS feed.)

When I got up this morning, I was happy to see a reply from the support desk with instructions on what to do. Actually it contained a link to where I could go for more help. Guess what? It was the same page I’d spent the better part of my evening with last night. Arrghh… I’m fairly certain that I mentioned this particular page in my email — mentioning that I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong since I was following the sketchy directions on this page as best I could. So I was back to being frustrated.

But then I went and looked at the blog and saw the RSS feed had miraculously appeared. I don’t know how and I don’t know why. And at this point, I don’t really care either. Maybe the Blogging Fairy showed up after I went to bed and tapped her magic wand on my sidebar. Who knows? The point is that it was there. Still, I needed to make a few changes (I had just a little icon and I wanted it to be a little bigger) but they were easy and done very quickly. So maybe this isn’t going to be so tough after all.

This morning I decided to try to figure out how to add links. It took a couple of minutes but I considered myself an old pro after only about 15 minutes of focused attention. I think this is starting to get a bit easier.

What’s left? Figuring out how to add images. Adding a Blogroll. Trying to decide the best way to add tags that can be picked up by Technorati (I have no idea if that is what I actually want to do but I think I’m using the right terms!) … I know this will all take time. I know there will be a learning curve. I know that once I get it all figured out it will all make sense and I’ll look back wondering what the big deal was. But I’m not there yet.

In the meantime I hope the Blogging Fairy continues to do a fly by of my computer at night.

Until the next post …