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Why Buy a Macbook Pro When a Macbook Is Almost Identical?

Hans 18 Comments »

Remember when low-end Macs were not as good as high end Macs? With Apple’s quiet announcement of their new updated Macbook line I continue to be astounded that people continue to buy Macbook Pros.

This started a year ago when my wife announced that after years of using a PC she wanted to buy a Macbook Pro. So I started researching for her. I looked at graphs and charts on AnandTech and compared specs on Apple’s own website. What amazed me was that the important specifications between the regular Macbooks and the Macbook Pros were nearly identical. At least in most of the ways that would effect performance for a casual user. Granted, there were differences, the Pros had the option to put in one more gigabyte of RAM, slightly better video cards, and were bigger in size, but these slight improvements didn’t, in my mind, justify a nearly 100% increase in price between the models. So I advised my wife to buy a regular Macbook and we haven’t looked back.

So now Apple has quietly upgraded the regular Macbook line to my continued astonishment. The processors are nearly the same as the Pros. The frontside bus is the same. The level 2 cache is the same. And now BOTH are upgradeable to 4gb of RAM. Nearly all factors that effect the speed and “heft” of the computer are identical! So just what does that extra 100% price increase get you? Again, a better video card and a larger screen. Oh, and a few extra ports as well.

Now, I need to expose my bias. I am an audio guy. I write, record and mix music with my computers, so I need the fastest computer I can get to process all my audio demands. And even when buying for my wife, who’s demands on computers is far less, I still look for the “fastest” or “best” computer for the money. But with this latest announcement I’m having a hard time, again, understanding why anyone would buy a Macbook Pro. I guess if you’re doing remote video editing or gaming the better video card would be nice, but I’ve done both on my wife’s regular Macbook just fine.

But obviously thousands of people disagree with me as Macbook Pros continue to sell. That’s fine, I’d just like to know, from their perspective, what that extra $1000 got them? I guess in the mean time I’ll just continue to enjoy the speed and robustness of a Macbook Pro on my wife’s Macbook!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@next2friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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How to Copyright Your Music: Sections 6, 7, 8 & 9

Hans 1 Comment »

Section 6

sect-6.png

Section 6 is only for those who marked ‘Yes’ in section 5. Let’s continue with our scenario, I am the lyricist/artist who bought music from a writer. In Section 6 I must give the name that the music writer gave to their collection of music as well as the name of the music that I sang over. So if the music writer followed my directions from Section 1 and called their work, “Ron’s Beat Collection 1”, then I write that in space ‘a’ as well as the name that Ron gave the music I bought, let’s say he called it Song #5. Then in space ‘b’ I would write a sentence explaining what I added to his music, I’d write, “I added lyrics to Ron’s Song #5”. And that’s it.

Section 7

sect-7.png

Section 7 is pretty straightforward. In letter ‘a’ you would write your bank account number if you wanted to pay your filing fee directly out of your bank account. I don’t recommend this since you would have no written proof of paying them. Leave it blank. Just write a check or get someone you know to write a check or buy a Money Order made out to the “Register of Copyrights”. Space ‘b’ is yet another place you write your full name and your permanent address. Here you can include your telephone number and email address as well.

Section 8

sect-8.png

Section 8 is where you make this whole thing official. Under CERTIFICATION you check that you are the “author” or the work. All the other check boxes are for different legal scenarios that you don’t need to worry about. Then you print your name and the date below that and finally under the line that says “Handwritten signature” you sign your name.

Section 9

sect-9.png

Last but not least, Section 9 is where you write your address yet again. This is what will actually appear in the envelope that they mail back to you so make sure to get it right. Again, use a permanent address, like a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, anyone who you know is not going to move any time soon.

Drop your finished application along with your material to be copyrighted like your lyrics, your music or both, and a check made out to the Register of Copyrights into an envelope and mail it to:

Library of Congress
Copyright Office
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC, 20559-6000

The fee that you have to pay does change from time to time. At the time of this writing the fee was $45. You can always get the latest fee information at www.copyright.gov. It says the latest fee scale at the top of the page. Now, it can take anywhere from 2-8 months to get the official certificate but your work is protected the minute it makes it to the Copyright Office. And when you get your first legal copyright certificate keep it in a safe place. If you happen to lose it, you can order another for a fee.

So I have taken you all the way through U.S. Copyright Form SR. Feel free to email me with any questions. I’d be happy to help. Good luck!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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How to Copyright Your Music: Section 3, 4 & 5

Hans 2 Comments »

How to Copyright Your Music: Section 3, 4, & 5

Section 3
sect-3.png

Now it gets easier. For section 3 you just write the year the work was completed under section ‘a’. Section ‘b’ you will almost always leave blank. Your work has probably never been published before. Even if you intend on publishing it yourself you usually do that after you copyright it.

Section 4

sect-4.png

Another easy section. Under letter ‘a’ just fill in your full birth name and a permanent address. I often suggest that if you move around a lot, use an address that will remain permanent, like your parents’ or your grandparents’ address. This will insure that you are able to get your certificate once it’s mailed. You’d hate to go to all this trouble to protect yourself and then not end up with the proof! Letter ‘b’ can be left blank. This is only useful for transferring ownership of a copyright from one person to another. Really, there is no reason you should ever do this (unless there are six zeros at the end of it!).

Section 5

sect-5.png

In most cases Section 5 is easy. You simply mark ‘No’ and move on. There are some cases where you may need to mark ‘Yes’. Let me explain. Now let’s take the case where a music writer maker writes several pieces and then sells them to various artists. If that music writer were smart, they would copyright their work so no one could claim it as their own. They would do this by burning their creations on a CD and naming it as a collection, like I discussed in Section 1, and filling out a copyright form. Well, Section 5 is where an artist who BUYS the music might need to clarify something to the government. If the music is already copyrighted you must use Section 5 to make this known. Here’s how you do it.

I’m going to pretend that I am a lyricist/artist that bought music that was already copyrighted. Under PREVIOUS REGISTRATION I would mark ‘Yes’. Then I would look down to letter ‘c’ where it says, “This is a changed version of the work, as shown by space 6 of this application.” I would mark letter ‘c’ and then I would need to get the registration number off of my music writer’s copyright certificate and the year they registered it. The registration number will appear on the first sheet of their certificate in the upper right hand corner. Remember, I am ADDING my lyrics to a piece of music that was already registered, so I have, in effect, changed the work. This moves us into Section 6 very clearly.

But quickly, there are cases where the writer doesn’t have their certificate yet. Then under “Previous Registration Number “ you would simply write: Pending.

Alright, that’s enough for today, tune in tomorrow for the final sections of Copyright Form SR!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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How To Copyright Your Music: Section 2

Hans 5 Comments »

Section 2

Section 2 Form SR

Section 2 of U.S. Copyright Form SR is where you name yourself and anyone who worked with you as a creator of your work. We’re dealing with the U.S. government here so always use your government name, NOT your stage name or nickname. If you ever have to go to court you want there to be no doubt that you are the person you say you are. So under letter ‘a’ write your full birth name.

Directly under that is a question. “Was this contribution to the work a “work made for hire”?” You will almost always check ‘NO’. If you check ‘YES’ that means that someone else has the right to claim the copyright. You do not want that, so always mark ‘NO’.

Next is AUTHOR’S NATIONALITY OR DOMICILE. If you are a U.S. citizen write U.S.A. You are a U.S. citizen if you were born in the United States or at some point became a U.S. citizen. If you are a citizen of another country, write it in.

Because you are still alive, under DATES OF BIRTH AND DEATH write the year you were born only.

Under WAS THIS AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTION TO THIS WORK you want to check ‘NO’ to both questions. Anonymous means you don’t want credit (and why would you be filling this out if you didn’t want credit?) and Pseudonymous means that you go by another name (and I already told you to only use your government name).

Ok, now the line marked NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP is where you have a chance to do some different things with your copyright form. It says, “briefly describe nature of material created by this author which copyright is claimed”. If you are copyrighting your lyrics only you can just write, “lyrics only” and be done. If you created both the music AND the lyrics you can write “lyrics and music” or, if you are just copyrighting music you can write, “music only”.

Now what if you are the lyric writer and your friend is the music writer? That is where letters ‘b‘ and ‘c’ come in. You can both use the same copyright form and save yourselves a little cash. You, the lyricist, would fill out section ‘a’ as I described above and under NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP you would write, “lyrics”. Your friend would fill out section ‘b’ and under NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP write ‘music.’

Now what if you had several music writers on your album but you are the only lyricist? In that case you would probably just want to copyright your lyrics and your music writers should copyright their music separately. Remember, we want this to be as clear as possible for the government so if you are working with only one exclusive music writer or lyricist then you both can use the same form. If you are working with several, it’s best to keep it separate. If you have a band or a group that always works together and all of you contribute about the same to every track or project, then you all can use one copyright form. There is a form called Form CON which stands for Continuation where it provides you with a letter ‘d’ ‘e’ and ‘f’ so you can easily put up to six people down as copyright claimants. Further, you can fill out as many Form CON’s as you want.

Tune in tomorrow for Sections 3, 4, and 5!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.next2friends.com

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How to Copyright Your Music: Section 1

Hans 2 Comments »

U.S. Copyright Form SR

As I said in my last post, I am going to be stepping you through the completion of U.S. Copyright From SR. Today we are going to go through Section 1 and answer several questions people new to copyrights often have. First get a copy of Form SR. You can obtain it by going here:

www.copyright.gov

Under “How To Register a Work” click on “Sound Recording”. The next page will give you the option to download Form SR. The “SR” stands for Sound Recording. There are other forms that cover other arts such as dance, theater etc. but the one that we as musicians need to worry about is the “SR” form. This will cover both lyrics and music.

Now, the U.S. Copyright Form SR does include directions but I am going to take you through the form one step at a time.

Section 1

Section 1 Form SR

Section 1 is very important. This is where you list the title of your work AND all the songs to be included in your copyright. The current rate for filing one copyright is $45. If you filed every song on your ten-song album separately you’d be looking at paying $450! Well, the government has made it so that you don’t have to do that. One form is sufficient to cover a whole album. So if you’re filing a copyright for your album you write the title of the album in the space “TITLE OF THIS WORK”. Then in the space that says, “PREVIOUS, ALTERNATIVE, OR CONTENT TITLES” you write the name of the tracks.

Now, if you don’t have a completed album but you have a bunch of music or lyrics you want to protect, under “TITLE OF THIS WORK” you can just give it a generic name like, “Ron’s Beat Collection 1”. Then you list the name of your tracks or lyrics on the next line.

If you’re copyrighting lyrics only, be sure to include a copy of your typed lyrics with your form. If you’re copyrighting music only, be sure to include a CD with your music on it. If it’s for an album of lyrics and music by you, just a copy of the recorded music with you singing or rapping the lyrics will be enough to copyright both your lyrics and music.

Alright, tune in tomorrow for Section 2!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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How to Copyright Your Music: Introduction

Hans 5 Comments »

You just caught your bus. You move to the back and settle into your seat, glad to be out of the wind and rain. You close your eyes and begin to run through the second verse of your latest song when it hits you; the perfect way to end your second verse. Reaching into your bag you pull out your notebook and start writing. You’re surprised at how well your ideas are flowing, they’re all coming so easy, that is, until a loud group of kids gets on the bus and sits near you. No longer able to concentrate, you close your notebook and lean it against your knee. Of course one of the kids starts talking to you. He seems kind of dumb, but you feel sorry for him so you keep talking to him. Maybe he’s not so bad, he just needs someone to tell him how it is. You kind of get into the conversation when suddenly you see your stop go by. You jump up and hit the stop request and quickly exit the bus…WITHOUT YOUR NOTEBOOK! You pound on the windows and yell for the bus to stop but it just keeps rolling on. All of your lyrics are in that notebook. Most of them you know by heart, that’s not the problem. The problem is the kids, or anyone for that matter, could pick up your notebook and see how good your lyrics are, and decide to pass them off as their own. If they do that is there anything to stop them?

The answer is Copyrights. There are a lot of myths about copyrights so let’s start with the basic truth.

1) By law, the minute you write something down or put it in a permanent form, like writing or recording it, it is copyrighted.

Let’s think about that for a minute. So, the moment I put my pen to paper the U.S. government will protect my idea no matter what? Or the minute I record myself singing my song into my junky tape recorder the government will protect me? Well, yes and no. Everything, including this blog I’m writing, is copyrighted the minute we write it, the only problem is proving to someone (a judge usually) that you were the first person to write it. Now in the case of those kids on that bus you don’t have any way to prove when you wrote your lyrics. Sure you could hire experts in handwriting analysis to help you prove that the writing was, in fact, yours, but how can you prove you were the first to actually think of it and write it? Couldn’t that kid turn around and say that you had heard him sing that verses on the corner and then written them down to claim as your own? And what if that kid knows more about copyrights than you and copyrights your lyrics? Sadly, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, he’d legally be the “creator” of your lyrics! You’d have no way to legally “own” your own lyrics. Now all this is very hypothetical, but it has happened before, and will happen again as long as artists remain ignorant of how to protect themselves. And as you will see, it’s a lot easier to do than many people think!

Alright, you can forget the first basic truth about copyrighting (that your work is copyrighted the minute you write it down) because the second truth is all you really need to know.

2) The only way to truly protect yourself is by filling out and sending a copyright form with the U.S. Copyright office and paying their filing fee.

Hold on, I gotta pay to protect myself? Well, yes. Think of it this way: You could pay $45 up front to copyright your lyrics or possibly $45,000 or more to sue someone who has stolen your uncopyrighted lyrics. Which seems like the better deal? Now there is something called the “poor man’s copyright” where the artist puts copies of their lyrics/music into an envelope and sends it to themselves. Upon receiving the envelope they then do not open the envelope. The idea here is to send your material through a government channel that will, in fact, date it (the post office stamps a date on everything you send through them). Then if someone steals your lyrics or music you go to court and have the court open your envelope with your material in it and are able to prove that you were the first to write it. The only problem is that there are ways to open envelopes without leaving a trace. Everyone who’s ever watched a spy movie knows that. So “the poor man’s copyright” is not foolproof. The U.S. Copyright office is.

Over the next few days I will be taking you through the entire U.S. Copyright Form SR (SR stands for Sound Recording) section by section and explain how to properly fill it out. Subscribe to my Blog or sign up for my RSS feed for these subsequent lessons:

1) How to Copyright Your Music: Section 1

2) How to Copyright Your Music: Section 2

3) How to Copyright Your Music: Sections 3, 4 & 5

4) How to Copyright Your Music: Sections 6, 7, 8 & 9

I hope these are helpful!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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Customer Service in New York City: An Oxymoron. Part 4

Hans 1 Comment »

Ok, so as promised, I am going to give the gory details of the absolute worst instance of Customer Service my wife and I have encountered here in New York City as of yet. And what’s amazing is that within the following story, there actually is an honest answer to the essential question that underlies every story I’ve written on the oxymoronic nature of Customer Service in New York City. The essential question is: In Customer Service, is it actually your job to help people? I thought the answer was pretty simple but it appears that New Yorkers are either more highly evolved than the rest of the nation or stuck in the mud somewhere a long ways back. Here goes.

So my wife and I have discovered thousands of little annoying snafu’s and inefficiencies here. But the one that starts our story is a bit bigger deal. My wife attends Hunter College, a cheap but well regarded public institution part of the City University New York system or CUNY. As her semester quickly approached we became alarmed at the fact that though she had submitted her request for financial aid, we hadn’t heard anything for weeks. What was worse, we found out that she actually couldn’t register for classes until she paid for them first! And then we found out that she technically couldn’t collect her financial aid until she registered for classes! How’s that for a Catch-22. We then were rudely instructed to just pay for the classes any way possible, with a credit card or perhaps with our savings or something. Well, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of applying for financial aid in the first place? Either way the classes were eventually paid for and she was able to register. Here is where our story really begins.

My wife finally got frustrated with waiting to hear back from Hunter so she headed down to the Financial Aid Office to figure out what the hold up was. It was there, at the Financial Aid Office, that she heard the phrase, “not my job” spoken by a customer service representative for the first time. What’s worse, the man said it wasn’t his job and then just a blankly stared back at her, never offering up of who’s “job” it might be to help her locate her lost application. After a long drawn out battle, the man who’s job it wasn’t to help her gets up and walks about 5 feet from where he was sitting and discovered that her application had been “put in the wrong pile”. She came home pretty worried that night because even though the man said he had now put her application in the right pile, she couldn’t be sure. The confrontation between them was so contentious she wasn’t sure she could trust him. What was keeping him from “losing” her application in the wrong pile yet again!

So the following day she called the Financial Aid Office and received the one-two knockout punch that closes the case on Customer Service in New York City. She gets a Financial Aid office worker on the phone. My wife politely begins,

“Hello, I’m calling to check on my financial aid application, yesterday I learned that it was effectively lost because it had been put in the wrong pile. Can you check and make sure it is in the right pile?”

“That’s not my job” said the office worker.

“I’m sorry, I’ve called the Financial Aid Office, right?”

“Yup”

“Ok, you mean you can’t just walk over to the pile of applications that I saw sitting on the counter and make sure mine is in there?”

“Nope”

“Ok, well, what is your job?”

“This” said the worker.

“This? You mean not helping me?”

“YES” replied the worker.

So there it was. Finally, the honest answer that my wife and I so desperately sought from the day we got here. In New York City it is, in fact, NOT your job to help people as a Customer Service Representative. Thank you for your candid response Financial Aid Office Worker. I hope you continue to stand up and refuse to do your job. I can’t wait to discover all the ways that people are not Taxi Drivers, or not Doctors, or not Underwriters here. With over 8 million people, I’m sure I will meet more. These not workers that I never knew existed.

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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Customer Service in New York City: An Oxymoron. Part 3

Hans 1 Comment »

So I’m working up to the grand-daddy of a story about poor/non-existent customer service in New York City. But first I need to speak on the amazingly bitter and vindictive woman who “sold” me two tickets to get into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Being new to New York City and tearing through two years of savings in two months, I began asking people what a nice cheap date would be for my wife and I. Several people mentioned the Metropolitan Museum of Art since it was essentially “free”. So we set about figuring out how to get there and went on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

The Met is a gorgeous museum if you’ve never been. It’s a grand, Neoclassical structure that projects permanence and authority. We eagerly marched up the sweeping steps, confident and excited about what was to be a great afternoon.

The ticket line was long. And similar to many other experiences I’ve had in New York City, there were simply not enough ticket sellers, perhaps two for the whole museum. But we stood in line regardless, we had no other option.

So twenty minutes later we arrived at the front of the line. I requested 2 adult tickets and the woman working the register flatly said,

“That will be $40.”

“Forty dollars?” I said, “but I was told that you could get into the Met for essentially free! Isn’t there some way to get a discount or something? I’ve had three different people tell me this, how could they all have been wrong?”

“Sir, two adult admissions cost $40.”

“Well, I don’t have $40.”

She let out a long sigh and finally said with a huff,

“Well, you need to go see Customer Service then.”

So I marched back to the hectic Customer Service desk and finally spoke to an employee. She informed me that, no, the Met is not “free” per se, BUT, you can choose to donate as much or as little money as you’d like for your tickets. I reached into my pocket and felt a meager 4 pennies. I told her that all I had was 4 cents and she said that that was fine.

So I got back in line to “purchase” my tickets and waited another 20 minutes before I found myself standing in front of the same ticket seller (remember there were only two, I had a 50% chance to have to deal with her again). I looked at her and she looked back at me with a sardonic smile. We stood that way for an awkward moment before I realized that she wasn’t going to say anything. So I said yet again,

“I’d like two adult tickets please.”

She reached for the register and tapped a button twice without ever taking her eyes off of me and casually said,

“That will be $40 please.”

So now, I begin to realize that I this is some sort of sick game for her. I’m not sure from where she’s deriving the pleasure to keep this up, but she is deliberately making this difficult and her very gaze is some sort of challenge. It’s saying, “go ahead, try to get me to serve you, I’ve got all day, and I will make this as hard as possible.”

I looked back at her triumphantly and said,

“I’d like to donate 4 cents for my two adult tickets today!”

TRUMP! She sighed and kind of deflated back into her chair and angrily whipped out her open hand. I dropped the four pennies into her palm and she proceeded to do what I’ve only seen done in the movies. She stopped, looked at the pennies for several seconds, kind of tilted them as if to see them in a different light, looked back at me and then slammed them onto the counter top. She then counted them, one by one, with her eyes still locked with mine, at a rate of about 1 every 2 seconds. I was in utter disbelief. She huffed one more time and finally dropped two green buttons into my outstretched hand.

Total elapsed time to “purchase” two adult tickets into the Metropolitan Museum of Art? 1 hour. Cost of beating a vindictive New Yorker at her own game: Priceless.

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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3 Tips for Overcoming Creative Blocks

Hans 2 Comments »

Anyone who endeavors to create something knows the feeling. You’re sitting there with the desire to work and NOTHING is happening. Your mind is as white as the page before you. And this doesn’t only go for the traditional arts. I’ve talked to computer programmers or even psychologists who wrestle with the same issues. The truth is, we must use our creativity to overcome nearly any obstacle or problem we encounter, virtually anytime something requires original thought. So I’ve come up with a few tips that help me, not only as a musical artist, but also as a computer user, a teacher, and a husband to overcome creative blocks!

Tip #1: Stop Saying ‘No’

This is a hard one. It was brilliantly illustrated to me by a teacher I had. He silently walked to the front of the room and put on someone’s music. He just sat there while we all listened and then asked us to write down three reactions to it. We then read them aloud and nearly every single one was negative. Now I know that musicians are particularly hard on each other but I think it can be said that anytime we judge our peers we have a tendency to find what we don’t like about their work. My teacher then went on to explain that every time we say ‘no’ to something (or judge it negatively) we are effectively cutting ourselves off from any possible growth. Think about it. You can can sit around and make lists of things you “aren’t” or “dislike” that could wrap around the world, but you still will not be one step closer to knowing what you want to do. For what we want to do is a reaction to what we admire, not what we don’t admire. So his solution was pretty easy. When looking into your chosen field or medium, find what you admire about other people’s work. Force yourself to do this, even if it’s something that in the past you would have summarily rejected, find something to like about it. You will start to feel the cogs creaking loose.

Tip #2: Cut Yourself Off

This can be applied in a couple of ways. The first is to try not to view creative energy like striking oil. When you strike oil you quickly hunker down and set up a well and suck all the oil out until the well is dry. Creativity doesn’t have to work that way. Sure, everyone has had moments of profound inspiration, and these are great, but unfortunately they don’t happen nearly enough nor almost ever on time. So to start to change your perception try this experiment: Set a time limit to how long you will let your creativity flow. Make it short initially, like ten minutes. Set a timer and then cut yourself off the minute it rings, right in the middle of the thought if necessary, and just leave your work for the rest of the day. A couple of interesting things will happen. First, your creative mind will actually continue to spin for the rest of the day (feel free to write down the ideas or fragments of thoughts that come up) and when you return to the pursuit the following day there will be no question about where to start. You actually will look forward to your time to sit down and work.

The second way to cut yourself off is really just an amalgamation of the first. I also like to call it “try again tomorrow.” This is for the days that really nothing is coming. Again, set up a specific amount of time that you will try, but if nothing is happening, or you don’t feel very good about what is happening, give yourself the permission to stop after the alloted time. It will put definite boundaries around how long you will let yourself struggle. When the time is up, walk away, confident that you have tried today and that you will try again tomorrow.

Tip #3: Focus Your Creative Energy Elsewhere

Many of us have instinctively followed this one since we were kids (think of getting bored), but it was reiterated to me by a writer. This writer was writing a book. She was all stopped up creatively and was really at her end with what she could do get writing again. She had tried writing exercise after writing exercise and nothing was working. So finally she put down her pen and picked up her camera and went walking around her neighborhood in search of interesting things to take pictures of. She so enjoyed this that instead of writing the next day she just went out to take pictures and continued to for weeks. When she finally sat down to write again the words came easily. Now, I know, we don’t all have this luxury, to take weeks walking around snapping pictures, but this can be put into practice in small ways. As a stuck songwriter I have gone outside and sat on a bench and just tried drawing a tree. As a stuck lyric writer I have switched to writing a short poem (they may seem too close to count as something different but they’re not). I’ve tried the snapping pictures thing as well. My focus is on the more traditional arts but you should know what fields are tangential to yours. Pursue them for a little while.

Ultimately, I believe creativity springs from wonderment and anything that helps you tap into that feeling will propel your creativity. I think you could even tap into it this just by watching children play. Children are like creative amplifiers and speak to a state that we all have come from. Watching their minds work is like returning to that place.

So I wish you luck in overcoming whatever blocks you experience. And remember, the people succeeding are not necessarily the brightest or the most brilliant, they are just the ones doing it, day after day after day. Good luck!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com

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