Category: writing

books, child, children, writing

Inspired: Free your writing and write for children

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

I’m outlining the draft of my first novel that I’ll write in November during National Novel Writing Month. It’s for a young adult audience and at one point last week I worried that the story was getting too complicated for that age range. Then I saw this quote by Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if that book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” Children understand so much that adults have forgotten. Once I really understood this, the story opened back up to all these wonderful possibilities that my adult mind had closed off. Writing’s funny that way. It makes us wonder. It makes us young again.  

art, business, work, writer, writing

Inspired: The difference between business and art

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

As someone who moves between the worlds of business and art, a business woman with an MBA and a full-time writer, I see them both as creative acts. Both require inspiration and perspiration to build something of value. The difference is where each begins. In business, we assess the market early on in the process. It is largely an act of educated calculation and we try to mitigate risk. In art, market assessment is messy, if not impossible. We have to create art before we know if there’s an audience for it. Art is an act of faith. And the more we risk in art, the better. To have impact, business and art need an audience. They just go about finding their audiences is very different (and wonderful) ways. I do know this: I love them and need them both because together, they make my life richer. In this next chapter of my career, my art, my writing, is also the center my business.

art, books, writer, writing

Inspired: When the reader is ready, the writer will appear

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

I love bookstores though sometimes when wandering through them I catch myself thinking, “What else could I possibly have to say that’s interesting and worthwhile?” A split second later I’m reminded that with 6 billion people in the world, there’s a lot of people doing almost the same thing: doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, painters, teachers, chefs, scientists, and yes, writers. But not one single person practices his or her craft in exactly the same way. No one exactly like you has ever existed before or will ever exist again. We are each a unique makeup of circumstances, skills, beliefs, experiences, and ways of seeing, hearing, doing, and being. When the reader is ready, the writer will appear. And we never know when that will be. All we can do is get the story down, put it out into the world in as big a way as possible, and the people who need our story will eventually find it.

creativity, simplicity, writing

Inspired: A carpenter’s approach to writing

Christa Avampato

A few weeks ago Seth Godin wrote a blog post about the two questions we should ask before we build anything. I also think they’re worth asking before we begin any creative project and before we start any piece of writing.

What’s it for and how will we know if it worked?

Think of a carpenter. He or she builds a house to provide shelter from the elements. If it keeps out the rain, sleet, or snow, it works. Simple. Elegant. Understandable.

Imagine if we began everything we do with these two questions. Everything we create would have a reason for being and a usefulness that’s clear. Don’t make it any more complicated than that.

books, creative process, writing

Inspired: Write from the ending

Christa Avampato

Last night I worked out the ending to the novel that I plan to draft in November as part of National Novel Writing Month. While we live and write nonfiction from the beginning, I’m finding that fiction is best started from the end. I tried to write it from the beginning and I kept getting lost. Now that I know the destination, the path to it is easier (and more fun!) to construct. And this makes me wonder: should I take this novel writing approach to living, too?

art, creative process, creativity, discovery, imagination, sleep, writing

Inspired: The magic of sleep and its impact on creativity, clarity, and writing

Christa Avampato

Dan Levitin’s latest research on the power of sleep to bolster and ignite creativity is fascinating. For writers, this research is especially valuable because one of our chief tasks is to connect disparate dots of information to create a cohesive story.

Levitin reveals a number of actionable pieces of advice on how to make our sleep cycles most beneficial to our imagination. The brain prioritizes the thoughts we have right before going to sleep and spends a good deal of its sleep time working on them. I’ve been spending time before bed working on my most important personal projects and challenges. The results of this practice have been amazing for me. I’m waking up with insights and connections in my work that I haven’t been able to see in my waking hours. I’ve also been going to bed and waking up hours earlier than usual and that’s tripped a powerful switch, too.

While we often think of creativity as elusive and unexplainable, I’m fascinated to learn how we can engineer it at least to some extent. At the very least there is much we can do to make room for its arrival and help it to feel welcomed and valued. Sometimes all we need is awareness and openness. Sometimes all magic needs is a space to happen. Get some shut-eye and create.

art, choices, creativity, decision-making, home, writer, writing

Inspired: Cities—other than New York—that are good for writers

Christa Avampato

My friends are leaving New York City by the truckload. Some by choice and some because financially they had no choice. And I get it. This city can chew you up, spit you out, and then look at you like you’re the crazy one for wanting to be treated better. New York City is a crotchety old man.

Though like so many crotchety old men, it is an incredible teacher and good lord has it taught me. I grew up in the dirt of rural America (to this day there is a tractor crossing sign across from my childhood home) but I came of age in New York City. This great gorgeous place changed me and changed my life for the better. I showed me what matters. On these streets I figured out what matters to me and why. It gave me passion and heart and confidence. It gave me and put me through fire (literally and figuratively) but I emerged from the other side polished and transformed in ways I never imagined. New York City showed me what was possible by showing me my potential and daring me to take it.

Like so many of my friends, I am beginning to hear the exit music, or at least the exit music to this New York chapter of my life. And let’s be clear, I want to stay in New York. I fiercely love this city and its people and myself among them. There’s a part of me that will always be Christa in New York. Always. But, as life has shown me so many times before, what I want and what I need are often two very different things. And what I need now, in this moment, may be a change of scene. At least for a little while. At least for right now. Even Joan Didion, a towering figure in the literary world who famously penned her essay “Goodbye to All That” when she left New York for LA, eventually found her way back to Gotham. But she did need to take that journey. She needed to go away to come home again.

There’s a lot of New York in New York, and it may be time for more of us to spread our New York-ness to other places that need inspiration and courage to follow a less traveled, less conventional path. This world can’t stay on its current path of self-destruction and quiet desperation. We have to carve a better way forward.

New York doesn’t need another writer like me, but plenty of other places do. Friends, there’s a lot of blank canvas out there, a lot of stories that need telling, and they’re not coming to us. We have to go to them. We have to get out on the road, discover them, and then get it all down as faithfully and as honestly as we can.

If you’re a writer, or someone who likes to hang around with writers and other creatives, then New York City isn’t your only option to call home. Heck, it’s not even your best option. I recently found two lists (backed up by plenty of data) of cities in the U.S. that are great for writers and New York City isn’t anywhere on them:

This one lists: St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Orlando, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Another lists: Chicago, Charleston, Austin, Bellingham, Asheville, Washington, D.C., St. Paul, Seattle, Great Barrington, New Orleans, Miami, both Portlands, Ann Arbor, Savannah, Pittsburgh, Jersey City, Iowa City, Portsmouth, and Cambridge.

I have no idea (yet) if any of these cities are right for me. Maybe you don’t either. What they do reveal is that we have options. We always have options. Now, it’s about choices.

writer, writing

Inspired: Join Me for National Novel Writing Month

Christa Avampato
Join National Novel Writing Month in November
Join National Novel Writing Month in November

This November, I am taking up the challenge to write the first draft of my first novel. With the help of National Novel Writing Month, I’ll write 50,000 words in 30 days to tell a story that’s been brewing in my mind for almost 5 years. It’s not doing anyone any good in my head so better to have it on digital paper. If you plan to participate, please let me know so that we can encourage each other along the path. I’ll be blogging about my progress as well sharing insights from my writer brain as the process unfolds.

National Novel Writing Month is an online community that provides support and a platform to get and give support as writers barrel through the process of a first draft. Last year over 600,000 writers took part in the event.

child, children, creative process, writer, writing

Inspired: Write for one person

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

Over the weekend, I started reading Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview. He believed all writers should write for an audience of one to give writing intimacy and immediacy.

It took me about half a second to realize who is in my audience of one: it’s me as a child. I write every word to help her be brave. To help her know that a better, freer, happier, more fulfilling life awaits her. That all things and all dreams are possible. And yes, it will be difficult and there will be many times when she will want to quit. She will lose a lot of sleep and she will be very afraid, but it will all be worth it. I write to entertain her, to help her escape, to give her the courage to keep going. And I know there are lots of people out there, the tall and the small, who still need that encouragement and support.

Sadly, as much as the world has changed since I was a kid, this fact hasn’t: we spend too many days afraid. Reading helped me press on despite fear. Now as an adult, writing helps me do that. So I write – for me, for her, and for all the people like us who need to know that we can create our own bright future one day at a time.

blogging, communication, creative, creativity, design, health, innovation, media, product development, stress, technology, work, writer, writing

Inspired: Check out my magazines on Flipboard for travel, stress-busting, product design, and office design

Christa Avampato

Check out my Flipboard profile: http://flip.it/tfH1RI’m now on Flipboard as @christanyc and created 4 magazines to curate content in travel, product design, workspace design, and stress reduction. I hope you’ll stop by and check them out:
Travel on Purpose – use your travels and vacations to build a better world

Insanely Cool New Products – the coolest new product innovations and the awesome people who make them

Crazy Creative Workspaces – interior design inspirations for the places where we work

Stress Sucks – the science of stress and how to bust it