… two conditions I grapple with daily, if not hourly. Although, I hadn’t really assigned any kind of specific name to them until reading this article on the Accidental Creative blog, which conveniently provided them for me! Once again, I’ve included an excerpt below, but the actual article can be found here. Sometimes reading that other people suffer with this kind of stuff too, makes it seem just a little bit better (which ties in nicely to my daily take-away from the IdeaXchange community).

How many of us, as creatives, are regularly paralyzed by the seemingly overwhelming tasks in front of us? The biggest obstacle to surmount is also the biggest asset we have - our conceptual nature! We tend to see the greatness of the finished product in our minds, but we’re unable to understand or deal with the smaller chunks of tasks required to get there. Its this inability to define the “next thing” that causes us to shut down, completely discouraged by how impossible it is to do anything worthwhile. I call it “expectation escalation” - comparing everything we do to the best thing we’ve ever done - and “comparisonitis” - comparing everything we do to the best things anyone has ever done. (I’m guilty of both on a regular basis and it freezes my creative possibilities when I allow it.)

Because the world tends to be driven by results, we are pulled right along with it. Process loses all value and we get swept up into the current of “what have you done for me lately?” We want greatness, but we’re not always willing to pay the price for it.

So what is the price of greatness?

Patience.

We forget that nothing happens all at once. No great work of art, entrepreneurial venture or feat of architecture appears spontaneously out of thin air. Each required months or even years of experimentation, learning, crafting and even blood, sweat and tears. This is in addition to the years of training each artist had to forego and undergo in order to simply begin such a project.

The thing to remember is that we are not going for the quick pay off. If the goal is to use your creativity as a means to get rich quick or to be famous—best wishes! But please know that you will eventually find yourself right back in the place of the beginner, desperately looking for meaning in what you make. If, however, you pay the price to develop disciplines and discover who you truly are as an artist, then you have something sustainable and meaningful to say.

Here’s a site that includes resources to help in various aspects of freelance work. The Freelancer Forum is described as “the resource for self-employed creative industry professionals and small businesses.” That sure sounds like us!

http://www.thefreelancerfoum.com

I’ve hired Guiding Rights founder Mark V. Partridge to speak at a couple of writers’ events, and his web site is excellent - especially the free newsletter with tips (which I received today). His key product, Guiding Rights, is an excellent resource on copyright and intellectual property issues. Happy reading!

Hi all, this week’s theme: How do you use your email signature?

There’s lots of good advice out on the web about using your email signature to market your business (or blog or website or whatever). It’s pretty basic: add a signature that sells to all of your emails. You never know who will read it and become a client or reader of your blog.

How do I know this? When I first started ChronicBabe, I was shy about promoting it to my freelance writing clients, most of whom were in the construction industry. But once I started adding my promotional signature to client-related emails, the response was HUGE. Almost every day, one of my clients or colleagues would respond with things like, “I’m so proud of you for doing this!” or “My sister is sick, and she’s going to love this!” or, my favorite, “I didn’t know you write about health. I know a magazine editor you should meet…”

Talk about easy. And free!

Here are a few articles on writing great email signatures: (And one on annoying email signatures.)

Is your email signature losing you sales?
Nonprofits’ most missed marketing tool - email signatures
Turn your email sign-off into results: seven-step checklist for success

So, I’ll throw my signature out first:

* sign up for our f r e e enewsletter at www.chronicbabe.com and get a f r e e eBook: How to Be a ChronicBabe: A Beginner’s Toolkit! *
******************
Jenni Prokopy
Editrix and Founder - www.ChronicBabe.com
773.935.9246 - jenni@chronicbabe.com
- a resource for young women with chronic illness who strive to be their best… to be Babes!
3712 N. Broadway, #628 - Chicago, IL 60613
…check out my other writing work at www.orangegrovemedia.com

Feel free to critique - and I look forward to seeing yours posted, too!

I apologize in advance to the Web designers in the group for this one, but this resource is too good not to mention. If you’ve got a client who needs a Web presence, but who doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, you may want to consider Squarespace.

From the Web site: Squarespace is an exceptionally tuned publishing system for managing websites and blogs. Need to create a blog? Build a website? Our software helps discerning individuals build stylish, easy to manage websites complete with state-of-the-art blogging tools.

Squarespace is super full-featured. There are tons of well-designed templates, content is ridiculously easy to load and serious functionality can be added with the click of a button. In fact, I’m thinking of ditching my existing static Web site, and ponying up for one myself.

To see one example of what it can do right out of the box, check out the site I did for one of my clients, who I thought needed a place to aggregate her thought leadership in the form of articles she’s had published, her blog and book recommendations, along with any buzz we’ve generated for her.

Designers, rejoice: Pantone has added 56 new spot colors to their color library. Get a fan book with new colors when you buy updated Formula Guides (unfortunately, you can’t buy it separately). Even if you’re not ready to buy, it’s nice to browse the new color palettes they’ve put together at InspireME 2007.

For fun, look up your birthday in the Colorstrology section of the website. I’m a Pantone 16-1442 (Melon): creative, affectionate, sensual. What are you?

Mac users: Did you know that you can use your Mac to share one Internet connection with others — wirelessly? Check out the how to from lifehacker.com.

Amid feasting and dog barking at our July meeting, our creative group came up with the following tips for successful blogging.

*Why blog?*

# Increase traffic to your site, through links on the ideaXchange blog.
# It’s food for “Google”:http://www.google.com/. You’ll rank higher, which will get you more traffic.
# Establish credibility. Show yourself to be an expert.
# Practice makes you a better writer.
# Network with other people in your field.

*Getting involved*

# Comment elsewhere. Include a link back to your site (or this blog). Traffic increases. Rinse, repeat.
# Set up “Google Alerts”:http://www.google.com/alerts, so you know what blogs are talking about your interests. Then you can go and comment on them.

*Post-worthiness*

# Websites that you read that help you with your creativity
# Books/resources that help you, that you like
# Business issues that have affected you. (Be careful to not malign or speak too privately.)
# Tips about your craft
# Most important: is it of value to others. This includes comments. Speak only if it’s valuable.

*Writing tips*

# Brevity
# Proper spelling (OS X tip: type beginning of word, hit option-escape, and recommendations will pop up.)
# Good grammar
# Clarity. Don’t vomit onto the screen.
# Be conversational. Use your own voice.

*Tips*

# Well-crafted link text. Put your links within the context of the sentence (instead of writing “click here”). If blogs that link to you don’t do this, it’s okay to write to them and ask them to change it to something more descriptive.
# Use links when you can. More you link, the more attention you’ll get.
# “Well-crafted titles”:http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/11/good-blog-titles-are-short-still.html. It helps with search results, and it grabs people’s attention. In pages of similar search results, yours will stand out.
# Subheads. Break up your posts into sections, and Google will understand the context of your post better.
# Tag your post with categories.

*Formatting*

# You can use “Textile”:http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/, a simple markup syntax, for adding bold, italic, lists and links.
# Or, you can use the visual editor. Turn it on by going to “your profile”:http://www.idea-xchange.com/wp-admin/profile.php.

*Images*

# Only use images you have the rights to use. Or give really excellent credit.
# Don’t make it too big. An inch or two is big enough (150 pixels wide or so.)
# Images should be 72 dpi.

Here’s a good “all in one place” resource for those of us who write.

Bob Bly is a copywriter whose newsletter I get (I think Jenni does too). He has a “special” on his e-book, The Copywriters’s Toolkit.
It includes, among other things, forms (contracts, kill fees, NDAs, etc.) and fees for various writing projects.

I’ve just skimmed it since I downloaded it last night, but I think I’ve gotten more than my $39 worth. Plus, you get a free pdf: 17 Secrets Successful Marketers Know (this I haven’t looked at yet).

If anyone’s interested, here’s the link to his site.

This looks like an up+comer! Check out pica+pixel, where I especially enjoyed the bit about condom wrapper design from the 30s and 40s. Sexy!