Tune Into Your Creative Process with Pam Slim

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The more you tune into your creative process–how you work, how you get energy and how you get your best ideas–that’s the way you’ll find the best kind of writing practice. – Pam Slim

About Pam Slim

Pam Slim is a writer, speaker and small business coach. She loves working with business owners and is passionate about the healthy, thriving, creative ecosystem of people who are creating community and overall economic wellbeing for all. That is what gets Pam out of bed in the morning. During our conversation Pam shares some staggering stats on how small business owners contribute to the overall economy, which I just had no idea about, and how she uses the conversations she has with small business owners all over the country to fuel her writing. We also talked about what the writing process is like when you’re an extroverted thinker and listener, the act of writing through discomfort, how writing a book is hard but finding those moments where you can totally break through, and how deadlines can motivate you to get your writing done. In this interview Pam offers a lot of simple, practical and easy to implement advice that will help you find and improve your creative practice and writing process.

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream it on Soundcloud.

This podcast is brought to you by Ulysses. Ulysses is a fully-fledged, beautiful and distraction-free writing app your Mac, iPhone and iPad. It’s been my primary writing app for over a year now and I know I will never stray. Because… it make me want to write. That’s why I’m stoked to tell you that Ulysses is offering the listeners of this podcast a very special extended free trial. If you’re looking for a writing app to love go to ulyssesapp.com/howweworknow to get your extended free trial of Ulysses for Mac.

Topics We Explored

The challenges and opportunities that copywriting presents for any writer.
Charlie Gilkey’s Create, Connect, Consume model. Whenever your creating something there’s three components of it.
The act of writing through discomfort.
Writing a book is hard, but then you have those moments when you totally break through.
How deadlines can motivate you to get your writing done.
What you need when you’re an extroverted thinker and listener.
The importance of having an editor whether your self-publishing or traditionally publishing a book.
You cannot stay too long stuck in your own head. That’s what a good editor can help you with.

Key Takeaways

Why you should commit to writing for someone else’s site. Whether that be a notable publication or a small blog. When you’re writing for a site that’s not your own you will up your game in order to make it useful for someone else.
Batch your creative work. Look at your week in your calendar and divide your time out into chunks, allowing blocks of time (or even days) to dedicate to your writing and creative work. For Pam, Monday’s and Fridays are her creative writing, thinking, creating and planning time.
The only way your going to get what works for you is to tune into your own creative process and find what works for you. Forget everyone else.

Resources and Books Mentioned

Trello (project management tool)
Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (book on writing)
Scrivener (writing app)
Betsy Rapoport (editor and writing coach)