Monday Morning Motivators to Slay Your Creative Dragons

PASSION by CJ Lyons

I'm one of the many people who are spending a month with Eric talking about our Obsessions--and making those obsessions productive.

To me, a productive obsession is a passion. I've long believed that the keys to any successful creative endeavor are three ingrediants: Passion, Vision, and Commitment.

Passion--it's what gets you out of bed in the morning, what excites you, what gives you the energy to push through the hard parts, it keeps you alive….


Vision--gives you direction, a star to steer by, guides you into tomorrow, gives you a glimpse of the big picture, of what your simple words on the page could mean to someone else, how what we struggle with inside ourselves can help us connect with others, help them to find their own passion and vision, by sharing ours….Without either a writer fails.

It takes passion to endure, to provide the strength and stamina to finish a book, to give you the courage to share it with others.

Vision guides you through the book and beyond, helps you see the "more" that most people miss, too immersed in their own lives and problems, never bothering to look up.

Where's your passion? What's your vision? Why are you writing this piece, right here and now?

And, for the final piece of the puzzle: commitment.

Commitment is how you get the job done. Finish this page, this scene, this chapter, this book. Find the courage to submit it and go on to the next.

If you're lacking any one of the three--from yourself or the team you're working with--then you're going to have to struggle so much harder to achieve any kind of success. You may still fulfill your creative vision, but it will be much more difficult.

But, combine all three ingredients--Passion, Vision, and Commitment--and it's a perfect storm!

Think what you could accomplish if everyone on your team had the Passion, Vision, and Commitment to make your project a success! How could you fail?

Thanks for reading,
CJ

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a national bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller." The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, is due out January, 2009. Contact her at http://www.cjlyons.net

Margie Lawson -- presenter, psychotherapist, writer -- lives at the top of a Colorado mountain west of Denver. Margie merged her two worlds, psychology and writing, to develop psychologically anchored editing systems and techniques that teach writers how to write page turners. A former college professor, Margie works as a psychotherapist, writes fiction and nonfiction, and presents full day master classes for writers internationally. Go to http://www.margielawson.com for more information.