What time of day do you do your best work? You hear people claim to be either a night owl or an early bird, but I would like to think that the habit of getting creative work done is something that can be trained to happen – we aren’t necessarily stuck in one mode for our entire life.

If you had asked me a few years ago I would have said NIGHT OWL all the way. I found that later I stayed up drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes the easier the thoughts flowed from pen to paper. Whenever I got stuck I would take a long walk down the hill by my house that leads towards the industrial district. On many nights I am sure I must have walked 3 or 4 miles easily. (I always take a small notebook with me.) Ideas cooked up in the middle of the night often can have a certain wildness, and creativity to them, they are a bit looser and less civilized than morning ideas. I feel that the midnight hour is the best time to write essays and short stories. (Poems are easiest in the afternoon.)

These days I am trying to train myself to become more of a morning person. I suppose this has as much to do with getting older and wanted to be healthier as it does anything else. It’s easy to live a healthy lifestyle if you are asleep by midnight.

I have also found it very easy to be creative in the mornings. As followers of this blog may already know I am writing a YA fantasy novel right now. I have found early mornings to be the perfect time for this. The trick is to get from asleep to the writing desk as quickly as possible. If you don’t let yourself get distracted by anything else you can harness the creativity of the sleeping/dreaming brain and transition directly to dreaming on the page.

But either way, whether writing early in the morning or late at night, I suspect that daytime creativity gets a boost from it’s proximity to sleep.

I believe in being open to methods of all kinds, from the most archaic techniques to the cutting edge. For example I think that mining your dreams is a great source for inspiration. But I also think that plain old brainstorming can be just as effective, and these days there are some great brainstorming software tools out there.

The best that I have found so far is called Workflowy.

It’s a simple to use software that basically let’s you make lists. The lists are stored online and you can add smaller lists inside of the bigger ones. It works kind of like the Dewey Decimal system, in that any given entry is infinitely expandable. The software was designed as a way to keep track of projects, but it also works wonderfully as a creative brainstorming tool.

I have been using it to do the concept design and character design for a YA fantasy novel that I am working on. Here’s how it works. Let’s say I want to write a story using the Norse gods as characters. First I make a list of the Gods I am considering using:

Odin

Loki

Freja

Fenris

etc.

I can then go into each entry and make a list of attributes, or possible story ideas for each character. For example under the character Odin I might list a dozen things about Odin that seem like they could be jumping off points to develop a story. Odin has a 9-legged horse, he has one eye, he has a magic spear which never misses etc. Let’s say I thought of some different scenarios that sound interesting involving his 9-legged horse: I can then go into the entry for his horse – Sleipnir, and make a bunch of notes under that entry. The nice thing about Workflowy is that when I’m done making notes on the 9-legged horse, and I want to work on story ideas for Loki I can then close the Sleipnir entry so it’s out of the way . . . pages and pages of notes can be stored under a single word, so they remain accessible but unobtrusive.

I helped my buddy paint his bar the other day. it seemed the neighborly thing to do. Especially since I go there all the time and I’m a pretty lousy tipper. I felt like I owed him about 3 hours of free labour in unpaid back-tips.I don’t know why I’m such a crummy tipper. I used to be a busboy, and also a barista once, and I know that when you’re working in the service industry you watch how people tip like a hawk. You get so you can smell a good tipper from 5 ft. away, I’m not kidding.

So anyhow, I’m helping him paint his bar and at the same time he had posted an ad on Craigslist that he was looking for a new bar tender, and people were just stopping by every 3 minutes to drop off resumes. I ended up doing all of the painting while my friend just took resumes and talked to hopeful wannabe bar tenders.

As I guy who had literally just quit a decent paying job to focus on writing for 6 months, which doesn’t pay jack-diddly-squat, it was kinda a major bummer to see this steady line of people all trying to beat each other out for a part-time bar-tending gig. One that, I’m guessing doesn’t even tip that well, since I’m a frequent customer and , as I’ve said, a chronically lousy tipper. There was some poor sap who had just been laid off from his job as a middle school teacher and he was trying to get the bartending gig (along with like a 100 other folks in the few hours I was there.)

“Hey man, you should just hire a hot chick. They will make the best tips.” I told the bar owner from a top a ladder while I worked the paint roller back and forth. He just gave me a pained grin like I was talking nonsense.

“Seriously, think about. That’s what all the coffee shops do, hire a smokin’ hottie to run the register.” I said. He was still not really responding, but I realized he was directing the painful grin to somewhere behind me. I turned around. There was a “smokin’ hottie” standing there, awkwardly holding her resume in front of her. I cleared my throat and got really focused on putting a second coat on this one section of the doorframe for awhile.

I hope she gets the job.

Another guy applied who seemed to be pushing 70 years old. He had 45 years of experience. He had the same reply to all of the interview questions.

” . . . . .. What?” he’d say.

There was also a big bro-dude who applied for the job. He seemed kind of desperate. At one point near the end of the interview, when he was listing his positive qualities he actually said ” I know how to fell a tree!”

Like, he used the verb “fell”. As if you never know when you might need to fell some timber during a busy bar shift. You just never know.

So yeah. All those people, a teacher, a guy with more experience than I’ve been alive, a lumberjack all vying for the same job. It got me wondering about the wisdom of quitting my job in this economy. We will see how it goes. it also got me thinking about all of the odd jobs I have worked in my raggedy patchwork career of – doing stuff to make rent while I aspire to be a writer. Other careers you put in the hours, or work up the ladder, or pay your dues. With writing you aspire.

While aspiring I have worked as a high school teacher, a mental health counselor, the night shift guy at Plaid Pantry, a wild fire firefighter, a librarian, a gutter cleaner and a bunch of other stuff. If it pays not very much and is pretty tough work, I’ve probably done it. So, to celebrate my newfound unemployment to focus on writing, I am going to post a series of reviews of the many different odd jobs I have worked on this blog over the next few weeks. Partially because remembering all those differnt jobs makes me really glad to be currently unemployed.

Coming October 19th to Portland . . . a free comix & arts festival. It’s Free! With . . .

Harkham

Hooyman

Terzis

And other terrific artists. More artists than you could fit on a regular sized yellow schoolbus.

If you’re a follower of this blog and you live in Portland you will be interested to hear about the upcoming workshop/exhibition/circus/ruckus/comics multi-headed underground hydra monster that is The Projects. It looks cool. Being put together by Dunja Jankovic, an artist who contributed a really sweet drawing to DIY Magic. As a matter of fact if you liked the art in DIY Magic then this is the comics fest for you. Guests include Sammy Harkham, Kevin Hooyman, Panayotis Terzis and a bunch more. Also they are flying a bunch of international dudes over that I haven’t even heard of, but I bet they are kickass. Also looks like there will probably be some kind of fog-machine-puppet-show-with-laser-lights provided by the Oregon Painting folks and um, Pink Floyd. 

It’s going to be at the IPRC. (Personally I never really understood the IPRC. They pretty much seem to just want you to pay monthly dues in order to use a copy machine that costs more than Kinkos to begin with. I know, I know . . .it’s really about bonding with other zinesters and writers. No thanks. I’m a misanthrope. I think all decent writers were secretly misanthropic at heart. You wouldn’t have to learn to write well if you could just talk to people. But I digress!)

My point is, I may hate talking to other writers about writing. But I love listening to comics-makers talk about comics, and do their thing. It’s inspiring. If you give a shit about REAL comics then check out The Projects. And hey, maybe consider kicking a few bux their way via the kickstarter page, ok? The National Endowment for the Arts sure isn’t going to. This is America!