Jumpstart Your Creative Resolutions With Neighbor Christy O’Shoney
The new year has begun and many of us have made all sorts of resolutions to improve ourselves in 2016 — some of which might have already been broken. For those with creative resolutions or projects to work on in the new year, it can be hard to set up a plan to get started.
Neighbor Christy O’Shoney has set up an e-course called, “Do The Damn Thing” to help creatives like her get started. We checked in with Christy to learn more about her work.
DPC: Tell us a bit about yourself.
Christy O’Shoney: I’m a freelance writer, originally from Texas, and I’ve been living here in Ditmas Park for the past four years. I’m a big fan of connecting with creatives and exploring this borough that I love.
What’s your business, and how did you get into it?
I’ve been blogging for the past four years, and I’ve been a self-employed freelance writer for three of those years. When I first started out, blogging was purely a hobby. I wrote about movies I’d seen, haircuts I’d gotten, and what it was like to transition to life in NYC.
But the process of keeping a blog was incredibly illuminating for me. I quickly realized that writing was precisely what I wanted to do with my life. And as my blog grew, I found that I was collecting an audience made up of people with strong artistic ambition. In connecting with them, I so related with their struggles to balance their creative ambitions with their responsibilities. That’s why I recently launched my new site, christyoshoney.com, a place where I provide resources for individuals looking to grow in creativity and confidence.
Tell us about “Do The Damn Thing.”
“Do The Damn Thing” is my eight-week e-course for creatives who want to (finally) get unstuck and moving on something BIG! This is a course for those who have either had a project on the back burner for quite some time – perhaps a book, a blog, a podcast, a screenplay, etc. – or those who haven’t quite figured out yet how to channel their creative energy. Each week, I’ll be providing lessons on how to craft timelines, how to brainstorm effectively, how to develop better habits, and how to connect with a thriving creative community.
In fact, this course comes with its own built-in community. Everyone enrolled has lifetime access to a Do The Damn Thing Facebook group where they can collaborate with and seek help from likeminded individuals. Additionally, I’ll be hosting four live video check-ins in which students can ask questions and share what have been working on. There’s also an option to schedule a one-hour consultation with me in which I’ll map out a crazy specific plan of action, specifically catered to helping students see their projects through all the way until the very end.
That’s what this course is all about: not simply starting but finishing something that truly matters. To enroll or to learn more about the course, check out dothedamnthing.info.
What do you think is the biggest reason people get “stuck” on projects?
Fear. Fear of not being good enough, fear of not being original enough, fear of not being taken seriously. And what we don’t always realize is that fear can be a bit of a slippery creature. It often masquerades as other things entirely – as busy-ness or pride or perfectionism. But those things are often just fear dressed up in different hats. The problem with this is that we regularly mistake our fears as coming from some logical, rational part of ourselves. We assume that if we are having a thought that we might not be good enough, then it must be true.
But the truth is that everyone feels like this at one point or another. Maya Angelou once shared, “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”
The people who end up creating are not the ones who are fearless. They are the ones who keep working despite the lies that fear regularly tells them.
Why did you settle in this neighborhood?
My husband and I moved to Ditmas Park from Austin, Texas in May of 2012. It was pure chance that we found this neighborhood, actually. Because we had so little time between deciding to move here and actually moving here, we had to solidify a temporary sublease and just hope for the best. It was a one-bedroom apartment on 17th street, and because we agreed to take care the tenant’s three cats, we had $300 knocked off of our rent. We spent an incredibly smelly three months in that place, but along the way, we fell in love with the neighborhood. The homes, the people, the food – there is really nothing else like it in the city. We’ve lived in three Ditmas Park apartments, and as long as we are in New York, I don’t think we’ll ever leave this hood.
What is one of the neighborhood’s hidden (or not-so-hidden) gems?
Oh man, I’ve got several, most of which are food-related, but I’ll narrow it down to just one. The Coney Island 2.0 pizza at Wheated is a thing of beauty. If it had been in my life at the time, I probably would have served it at my wedding.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
“Write shitty first drafts.” Anne Lammott says it in her book on writing, Bird By Bird. Essentially, the idea is that when creating, you shouldn’t care if it looks good or sounds smart or is entirely grammatically correct. You should simply create with reckless abandon, with full freedom to come back and revise. It’s a solid reminder for anyone pursuing creative work. Plus, any piece of writing advice with the word “shitty” in it immediately demands my full attention.
Christy’s course, “Do The Damn Thing,” began on Saturday, and the enrollment window will be open until January 7th. If you have any further questions, you can check out dothedamnthing.info. Christy is hosting a webinar today at 1pm called, “How To Build Creative Habits That Stick,” which you can check out here.