So, you’ve been holed up in your little cubby of an office for the past few months tapping away on a laptop. Or, maybe you’ve been clutching your electronic illustration tablet and stylus for so long your hands are starting to resemble and old crone’s.

Whatever your craft, practicing it too much can actually be detrimental to your health as a creative.

The creative minds that get the most pub are able to reach across disciplines and connect things that have never been connected before. If you don’t believe me, just ask lonelygirl15 or Steve Jobs.

Sure, having a niche and being amazingly good at something is essential to carve out your niche and thrive. But your edge and abiliity to evolve with the market will slowly die if you make yourself a one-trick pony.

It’s equally important to try new things. Some writers direct movies. Some painters try their hand at computer illustration. And musicians are constantly trying to act or design fashions (whether they’re successful or not).

Trying your hand at something you’ve never done before regularly will keep you fresh. It doesn’t matter if you fail. It doesn’t matter if you succeed. What matters is that you just do. It doesn’t have to be creative. You can travel to a country you’ve never been to before.

Some of the events that have spawned the most inspiration have been when I’ve been completely out of my element. You should try it to.

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I’m a writer by profession - I work at an ad agency in Chicago as a “content strategist.” But I write quite a bit too.

So naturally, you’d think my writing would be out there over all our client’s websites. I’d have tons of words live and being read by internet users around the globe.

Nope. Not a single word that I’ve written has seen the light of day. It’s merely the nature of the business. Complex projects don’t get done over night, so my last 6 or 7 months in Chicago has been planning, writing, rewriting and honing everything to be as good as it can be.

You might think I’d be frustrated. But if you’re a writer, you’ve probably got to get used to this. Getting a novel published takes 2 years, usually. Films, even longer. Unless you roll your own blog, website or films, you’ve got a long time where you’re slogging away with no one reading what you’ve written.

It can get depressing at times. But cheer up, it comes with the territory. That’s why it makes it all the more important to love what you do.

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If you write for yourself, your family or your friends, stop reading. You won’t ever need to get a thick skin to protect yourself from criticism. Everyone will gush over your work, they’ll read it cover to cover, and you’ll feel pretty good about yourself.

Once you open your work up to strangers, however, look out. And if you write for a business or a client, be prepared to be dragged across hot burning coals and have every single word you write be stomped into the dirt.

O.K., so it’s not that bad. But if you want to sell your writing or make your writing better, you have to learn how to deal with criticism.

Probably the most important and obvious tip I can give is to realize criticism is not about who you are as a person or your ability as a writer. It’s always about the writing, which is not you. If someone is coming down hard on you, ignore them. The kinds of comments that are directed at you personally aren’t constructive, and you probably shouldn’t get feedback from this person anyway, since it’s not helping you.

That’s a lot easier said than done. Here are some tips to help you get to that point where you realize it’s not personal.

• Get feedback from someone you know and whose opinion you trust. They’ll be the most likely to give you good feedback and make you feel good at the same time.
• Get feedback often. The more you expose yourself to criticism, the easier it is to take it. Once you get over that initial fear of showing someone your work, it’s semi-smooth sailing.
• Write with passion and from the heart. Revise and take other people’s notes with your head. The less you allow your personal feelings into the editorial process, the better.
• Realize it’s all about making you a better writer. If someone is picking apart everything in your latest story, remember that you can still learn something from it, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.
• Remember, you don’t have to take every piece of criticism. You can disagree with what someone says. Just make sure it’s because it’s the right thing to do, and not because your heart is telling you to not take criticism.

How have you dealt with criticism in the past?

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How good are you trying to be?

Were you riding the bus one day, reading over the shoulder of a forty year-old woman entranced by her chick-lit novel when you said, “I can do better than that!”

Did you sit down at home, pop in the movie “Bats” and think “I should be a screenwriter?”

I’ve got news for you, if you shoot to be better than bad, you’re going to end up with nothing more than crap.

Watch your favorite movie. Re-read your favorite book. What is it about these pieces of work that you find so compelling. Right about now you should say to yourself, “I wish I could do something this good.”

Then go for it. If you use all the dredge and drivel out there as you’re measuring stick, your always going to fall short to solid, fantastic work.

Forget all the hacks and let them do their thing. You’ve got higher aspirations. The only thing you should learn from bad work is for a perfect example of what not to do.

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Latoya over at Writer’s Brew has a nice post about the habits of an effective freelancer. Go check it out and see how you can apply these habits to your writing career.

The interesting thing about “effective habits” books and posts is that they don’t always work for everybody. If they did, we’d all be highly effective. If I tried to do things the way Warren Buffet does them, you’d probably find me going insane somewhere remote.

The key is to take the general concepts of these “effective habits” and apply them in ways that work for you. To someone else, perseverance might mean marketing yourself tirelessly. To me, it means writing every day, regardless of how I feel.

Find a way to make the habit work for you, and you’ll have your own kind of success. And soon, people will be writing about your effective habits.

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Is writing no fun anymore?

Day in and day out you’re probably focused on turning out the best, most saleable writing possible. Your bread and butter ideas that pay the rent.

It’s like practicing free throws over and over again when what you really need to do is run back to half court and launch up a couple prayers just for the heck of it.

Most writers get stuck in creative ruts quite often. You work on the same type of thing repeatedly, and all of a sudden it all starts to run together like Jello on a hot summer day.

The cure? Spend ten minutes every day writing something you’re going to throw away. Pretend you don’t care about grammar, structure or any of the rules that have you chained to your routine right now.

Forget all the rules and just write what’s in your head. Write something fun for a change. If you laugh out loud and get that self-satisfied clever feeling, you’re doing well.

Once you’re done, throw away the paper or drag it to the recycle bin.

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The scariest part of creativity is getting started. There’s nothing like looking at the blank page of death and knowing where you have to go to get the ole’ procrastination excuses churning.

There are a ton of techniques to brainstorm and to grease your neural wheels. One I like to do fairly often is the mind map.

A mind map is essentially a blank page of death you beat into submission by writing and scribbling thoughts on as quick as you can.

You start with your central idea. Then you draw a line and connect that to another (hopefully related) idea. Repeat.

Maybe along the way one of those ideas sparks you into thinking of something else. Draw a line between said ideas. Soon enough, you’ve got a page filled with lines and words. Yes! You accomplished something! Right?

It’s something alright. What you’re looking at is a brain dump. The mind map keeps you from dwelling too much on any one thought. Dwelling during brainstorming sometimes turns thunder and lightning into a light drizzle. Once you’ve got all your ideas out, you can go through and pick out the choicest bits and kill the rest without stressing too much. After all, you’ve got a hundred or so to pick from. Some of them HAVE to be good.

All you need is a pen and paper. There are some online mind mapping software programs out there you can try out too if you want. Maybe I’ll try them out and review one for you.

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If you’re just dipping into freelancing, or even if you’ve been at it for awhile, you could be grossly underpaid for what you do and not even know it.

So how do you know what you’re worth? You may think it’s not much, judging by the dearth of no-pay and low-paying jobs out there. But your creativity is extremely valuable. If everyone could do it, you would expect to receive commodity type rates for work.

But not everyone can do it, and you should be paid as such. Companies that employ creatives full-time understand this, and you should turn to them to figure out what you should charge.

If you need a guideline or a starting point for negotiations, this method is a good place to start. It’ll always be an inexact science based on the project, but this way you’ll be able to confidently ask for what you know you’re worth, which is half the battle.

Step 1 - Go to a free salary wizard like Monster’s. Are you a writer? Designer? Project manager? You’re trying to find a job description close to yours. Check the advertising category, they employ creatives.

Step 2 - Some salary calculators differ, but you should be able to enter your years of experience, education or location.

Step 3 - Find out how much someone doing what you do at a company makes. Pick the median number, or a little bit higher if you feel you’re stronger than the job description implies.

Step 4 - Add the costs of your healthcare, industry subscriptions and other business expenses. At a company, these are benefits. As a freelancer, you’re on the hook for all of it. The company you freelance for is saving money by not having to pay you full-time and cover your overhead, but you should still charge them for the time period you’ll be working on their project.

Step 5 - Divide the number you have by 52. This is what your weekly rate should be. Divide it by 40 and you’ll know what your hourly rate should be.

The numbers will probably vary by the market, so this number is one of many factors you should consider when pitching yourself. Ask what other freelancers you have a good relationship with charge. Get a good feel for the market you’re in, and you’ll have a more accurate idea.

Remember, a company is paying you for your time. You know how much your time is worth, and if a job is paying you 5 or 6 bucks an hour, you may as well go work at Starbucks instead.

The company you’re freelancing for wouldn’t pay their employees bottom dollar for the work they do, so why should they pay a freelancer a rate like that? Especially if you have experience no one in their company has.

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Tons of aspiring creatives spend their lives sending out query letter after query letter, hoping against all hope that some unknown pair of eyeballs on the other side of the mailman is going to get their letter.

“Stop the presses!” he’ll yell. “We’ve got to find this person and make them famous!”

It doesn’t work that way. Surprised? Don’t be. The best way to get someone to look at your work is to have an “in.”

What’s an “in?” It’s a friend of a friend who works in the industry. A real person you can talk to that’ll give your work to the right person and vouch for you at the same time.

This person is out there, you just have to find them. And here’s the catch, they have to know that they can help you.

Here’s how you do it. Whenever you start a conversation, anywhere, and the other person asks how you’re doing, respond in this way.

“Busy. I’ve been working on (insert novel, screenplay, painting, etc. here).”

It’s that simple. If you can work this line in to every single one of your conversations, you WILL meet someone who knows someone. I have a friend who talks to everyone about his writing, and he’s got tons of “ins.

Some people are better social creatures than others, and that makes it all the more critical that the creatives with fewer opportunities for conversation maximize every one.

After that, it’s up to you and your work to shine.

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Today at Lifehacker, they asked a question of their readers based off some new research asserting that group brainstorming, or “group think” hinders people’s ability to come up with good, alternative solutions.

In short, “None of us is as dumb as all of us.”

I’ve been a part of my fair share of dumb meetings. But their poll led me to ask myself, “What makes a good meeting?

Good Meetings Are Small - Only the people that need to be there show up.

Good Meetings Are Informed - People who have no idea what’s going on, STAY AT YOUR DESK!

Good Meetings Are in Person - Conference calls should be done away with altogether. The more people there are, the more I want to staple my own skin.

Good Meetings Have a Purpose - A meeting should accomplish something people couldn’t on their own. Meetings to get ready for meetings should go to the same place conference calls go.

Good Meetings Contain Minimal Bull - Every good meeting needs someone to stop the conversation from going off the rails if it starts turning into a stupid meeting.

Good Meetings Happen Outside a Conference Room - The most productive ones I’ve been a part of happen at somebody’s desk or at an impromptu table or countertop.

Good Meetings Don’t Include You - If you don’t think most meetings are crap, you’re probably part of the problem. Before you hit accept, ask yourself if the meeting can’t happen without you. If the answer is that it can’t, ask yourself if the objective couldn’t be accomplished with a phone call or an email. Otherwise, don’t attend.

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