Marketing for Artists

This Saturday I'm planning to have all my business and professional problems solved and my future assured.

You may think I'm exaggerating, but I have extraordinary high hopes and excitement about a seminar I'm participating in. The title is Strategic Planning Workshop for artists, run by a New York-based organization, Creative Capital Foundation. These workshops are given periodically at locations scattered around the country.

THE MOTIVATION: I saw one of my friends come back transformed from one of these classes last spring. Carrie Knowles, a visual artist as well as author of THE LAST CHILDHOOD, attended a weekend class.

When she got back, she bought a historic house, moved her office out of her house and into this new arts center, established an art gallery/studio in the building and a writing office, and rented space to me and others.

Moreover, six months later, she's still steaming ahead with her writing and art a lot faster than she used to.

THE RESULT: I'm going to go to this thing day after tomorrow and see what happens to me.

One of the exercises, I'm told, is doing an "elevator pitch." That's putting together--and practicing--a sentence that will sell your book to the publishing luminary you find yourself squeezed in next to on an elevator.

I will report here what happens.

Courage Advice From Another Site

Another creative courage strategy that works, reprinted from the Confidence & Courage Tips link on my link list to the left side of this site. Do give this one a shot; it's good for the just-back-from-the-holiday Monday.


Rise, Knight...
Slay The Dragons In Your Path...
Then Claim The Golden Crown

By Gabriel Daniels


The following is a powerful technique you can use to conquer your fears...and attain your dreams.

Imagine yourself being a brave knight, complete with armor, shield, helmet, and sword (or any weapon of your choice...ex. spear, bow and arrow, etc.). In other words, “act as if” you are a brave knight (one who has fought and won countless battles). You can do this with eyes open or closed...whichever you find more comfortable.

Stand the way a brave or fearless knight would stand. Breathe the way a brave knight would breathe. Gaze the way a brave knight would gaze. Feel yourself having the same kind of resolve and determination a brave knight would have.

And in your mind’s eye, focus on your target (your dream...visualize it vividly) in the distance (for the purpose of this article, let’s just use a “golden crown” as the target to symbolize your dream...when you’re applying this technique on your own, visualize exactly what it is you want instead of the golden crown), with such intensity, that you’re absolutely sure that nothing can stop you from attaining it. Better yet, believe that it’s already yours.

Imagine the golden crown with a bright light around it...as if it were drawing you towards it like a magnet...as if it were saying to you, “Come claim me. I’m yours.”

Then, in your mind’s eye, walk confidently and courageously towards the glowing crown. (If you wish to ride a horse instead, then go right ahead. You can even fly and do all kinds of acrobatics...just like what they do in The Matrix. Use your imagination to the fullest.)

And on your way to the crown, imagine one fire-breathing dragon after another flying towards you...trying to stop you from reaching the crown. (Include as many senses in your visualizations as possible. Hear the dragons’ wings flap. Hear the noise they make...including the sound of their breathing. See their huge, red eyes staring at you. Feel the heat of their breath. And so on.)

As each dragon comes towards you, strike it with your sword. And as your sword hits each one, imagine it getting blown to smithereens—just like the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Blade. (If you wish, you can make it even more graphic. It’s up to you how you want to see the dragons defeated...how you want to see “your fears” defeated.) Use your imagination to the fullest. Don’t worry, no one will know you’re doing this. Remember, you’re merely visualizing all of this. So just go all out.

Let the glowing crown (your dream) in the distance inspire you to persist with courage and determination.

And when each dragon tries to breathe fire on you, simply use your shield to protect yourself. Imagine yourself being invincible as you continue to walk towards the brightly shining crown. Even though you feel intense heat all around you because of the fire coming from the dragons, it doesn’t bother you or make you retreat. You simply keep moving forward...with the confidence and conviction that nothing can get in your way.

Remember, you are a knight with absolute courage and unshakeable resolve. You are determined to get what you want...and absolutely nothing can stop you! In fact, nothing will stop you! The golden crown is as good as yours.

(Tip: As each dragon comes before you, you can label/name each one as a particular fear you may have. For example, as you look at the dragon before you, you can say, “Come on, rejection, let’s see what you’ve got.” Then without hesitation, strike the dragon with a quick swing of your sword...“POOF”...smithereens...like it was nothing. Or if a voice keeps playing in your head, telling you that you won’t succeed because you’re simply not good enough, bravely meet the dragon flying towards you and say, “You think you can stop me, negative critic? Well, you’re wrong! Take this!” Then drive your sword into the dragon’s body...“POOF”...smithereens. And continue to do this with each of your fears.)

Then after you’ve slain all the dragons, walk up to the golden crown and reach for it. Claim it. Hold it proudly with both hands and place it firmly on your head...knowing you deserve it. And as you do that, smile and experience the great feeling of victory.

Do this regularly or whenever you find all kinds of doubts, fears, worries, etc., creeping in. Then you will notice a difference in your attitude towards them...in the real world. You will feel like nothing can get in your way as you pursue your dreams.

So, now, I say to you, “Rise, knight. Slay the dragons in your path. Then claim the golden crown.”

About the Author:

Gabriel Daniels publishes Confidence & Courage Tips...To Help You Realize Your Dreams. For tips, strategies, stories, quotes, and more...to inspire and empower you to take action...so you can get what you want out of life, visit his website at: http://confidencetips.blogspot.com
You are free to reprint this article in your ezine or newsletter, or on your website, as long as you include this resource box—and as long as the article’s contents are not changed in any way.

Comfortable Creativity

A life-changing piece of news just in. The Compuserve What's New window today cites a study showing that creative thinking is best done lying down. People were tested on their skill in solving Word Jumbles in various positions. The clear winner: horizontal! Good news indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Let Intention Take You the Rest of the Way

Some years ago, I attended the publication party at Carnegie Hall of a novel about a musician, BODY & SOUL, written by Frank Conroy, who was head of the famed creative writing program at Iowa.

Turns out that Conroy was also a terrific jazz piano player; he stayed at the piano much of the night.

When I got home with his novel, I came to a passage about being a musician that offered a bit of wisdom that works as well for writers.

The talented young man in the story was trying to play an exceptionally demanding piece. He told his teacher that he couldn't quite get all the way to the sound he was aiming for. He could come close but then he would come to a sort of wall; his fingers were too stupid to make the leap over that invisible barrier,.

THE BIT OF WISDOM: His teacher told him to let his fingers carry him as far as they would. Then while playing he should focus on the result he was aiming for, and imagine the sound lifted over the wall. Eventually, the force of that imagined music, that aural "visualization" would take his playing where he wanted it to go.

MY WRITERLY APPLICATION: Keep writing, letting knowledge of craft do all it can. Keep in mind, while working, the emotional heart of the story. Then let imagination send its shooting currents--unpredictable but ultimately trustworthy--and ride them to see where they go.

Writing Goal for the Day

I seem to be having a hard time managing myself lately. I tell myself I'm going to work on this or that and then I don't.

Since I'm self-employed I find this particularly unnerving. I have the feeling, right or wrong, that everything depends on my doing what I decide to do.

So I'm resorting to a SOLUTION that has worked before: I'm STAKING MYSELF OUT, making an irreversible public commitment: today I will spend a minimum of one hour on my novel revisions and a minimum of one hour on the project I've been putting off for a week. I know that once I get going, I'll go on longer than that on at least one of these items.

THEN: I will report at the end of the day in the comments on this post that I've done what I decided to do. And I will feel very good. In fact, I'm feeling less irascible already.

I invite you to join me and make a commitment of your own here, today or at any time. Remember that it doesn't have to be large to work. Some days I've gotten myself started by committing to a mere 5 minutes.

My Writing Breakthrough

So I made my roughly annual visit to my psychotherapist, bringing what seemed to me an intractable writing problem.

THE PROBLEM: I didn't have a reliable sense of how many times I have to say things in a story to make them clear to most people. I'd write something that I felt hammered the reader over the head with the point. Yet not everybody got it. And I'm talking about people with good sense.

In no time, Nick Stratas (my doc) offered a plain and simple and effective solution. So simple it seemed like a no-brainer. And yet I, and later my writing group, were stunned by the power of it, and the fact that none of us had thought of it after 23 years of meeting, a stack of published books, several movie deals, a couple of stage adaptations, and decades of writing struggles.

EVOLUTION OF THE SOLUTION:

Nick: How long does it take you to figure out the point of one of your novels?

Peggy: One full draft.

Nick: And then you write that down and keep it in front of you while you write?

Peggy: No.

Nick: Why not?

Peggy: Because I know the point by then.

Nick: It takes you a full draft to discover it!!! This is preconscious material. It can slip away. That's why people keep a notebook beside their bed. I wake up with some wonderful idea and by the time I go to the bathroom, it's gone.

Peggy: (flooded with memories of times of re-remembering the point of a story, after not thinking of it for months) Oh. (pause) Yeah. (pause) You're right. (in wonderment) Jeez.

THE PUNCHLINE: Write down the embarrassingly simple idea that underlies the story. Keep it visible during writing times.

Turns out the problem hadn't been that I didn't know how to be clear; it was that I periodically forgot what I was talking about.

THE CHEEKINESS OF IT ALL: It takes confidence on the part of an advisor to make such a simple suggestion. A few years back I visited a notably astute psychic on my January birthday, a tradition I maintained for while. My annual question was: how do I make the most of what's going on for me in the next year? On one visit her answer was: eat more vegetables.

What a letdown. And how true. It would be easy to think that it's necessary to look good by saying something more complicated. It takes boldness to say the simple effective thing.

MY WRITING BREAKTHROUGH: Putting the idea in front of me is working. That's what it took to get fully clear.

Stay Loyal to Your Writing Passions

On a blog called Daytips for Writers I just ran across a reference to a Ray Bradbury book which jogged my memory of a chat with him on the QE2. Which led me to tell his story on that blog, and now to bring it back here. I'd like to make sure I NEVER FORGET it again.

I interviewed Bradbury when I was writing an article on writers at work on the ship's transatlantic crossing (Francis Ford Coppola was finishing a script on that same voyage.)

Bradbury told a story about staying true to our callings. He was saying that we need to stick with our passions, however odd they may seem to others. He told about being into some cartoon spaceman for years after he was considered too old for that kind of interest. Kids made fun of him and he went home and threw out his collection of Captain Whoever.

Then as an adult he tried to succeed as a writer of mainstream nonscifi fiction. Didn't work.

On a lark, he went back to his old interest, wrote a story about a dragon. Years later he picked up the phone. It was the director John Huston. He had run across the old story about the dragon, wanted Bradbury to write a script for him that had the same feel to it. The story was about a white whale. The movie Moby Dick turned out to be Bradbury's breakthrough. And all because he came back to the fantastical that was his love.

A Courage Tip: Nerve in the Curve

I don't remember where I came across the idea. I have a vague sense it was in the book LEARNED OPTIMISM by Martin Seligman (worth reading in any event.) But wherever it was, this idea I now think of as NERVE IN THE CURVE.

It seems some study showed that the race drivers who won races were most often the ones who didn't slow down on the curves.

The way I translate that for myself as a writer is: don't back off from my strategy at times when things have gotten difficult. Just ride through those tough periods full steam, focused on what's up ahead, doing what I planned and giving that plan a full chance.

EXAMPLE: going ahead full-tilt finishing my novel SISTER INDIA though it took three months longer than I'd planned and put me into my line-of-credit (in debt) for a while. I did sell the novel, and I did come out okay with the bank.

There's always a point in a project when I start getting nervous about whether I should be putting as much time or money into it as I first planned. My knee-jerk impulse is to slow down. Sometimes it might be the right thing to do. Or it might be like slowing down the boat when you're pulling a water skier. The skier sinks. Withdrawing fuel from a project at a crucial moment can make that project sink.

So when things get a little scary, I remind myself: nerve in the curve, Peggy. It might make sense to back off, but it doesn't make sense to get wobbly just because I'm running into the predictable delays and risks and difficulties. It doesn't make sense to slow out of a reflexive fear.

I hope these mixed sports metaphors make sense. Tell me if I didn't quite get it across.

Short Bursts of Writing

It's late on a Friday--been working on revising my novel COBALT BLUE. I found that I could work for only about 15 minutes before getting antsy and nervous. (The changes I'm making are small but BOLD) Some of the time it was abougt 3 minutes.

My jumpiness felt rather discouraging; it gave me the feeling that I wasn't going to get anything done today. Wrong--I got a lot done.

MY METHOD: I quit about every time I felt like it. Then went back to work 5 or 10 minutes later. It took me about 5 hours to do about 3 and a half hours worth of writing. And toward the end of the afternoon, I was starting to be able to stay with it longer.

I consider this approach a variation of the LOWERED EXPECTATIONS approach, essentially it's to do what I can. I'm happy with the way it turned out this time.

I don't think I was evading any subject matter by quitting so often. But next round I think I'm going to experiment and explore that possibility.

Why I Write Spooky, Literary, Metaphysical Fiction

I used to be a newspaper and TV reporter, covered politics and school boards, one motorcycle gang shootout, a few fish kills, a lot of other odd occurrences. Then as a travel writer for magazines and newspapers, I tended to accidentally turn up wherever events were about to explode: in Israel for a war with Lebanon, in India in a city where riots broke out, in Poland in time for the second round of Solidarity strikes.

As a novelist, I still fancy myself a reporter of sorts. I'm interested in "things unseen," the shapes and stirrings in our deepest recesses, in mystical experiences of the divine, in the paranormal and the barely conceivable.

MY METHODS: I meditate, though not very much
I write a fast see-what's-there chunk of story
I revise to develop-what's-there
I get feedback from the writing group/class I've been a member of for
22 years
I do more exploratory drafts and more polishing drafts
Maybe get more feedback
And all the while I count on what floats up into my consciousness, the
unexpected connections and images

GETTING THE DEEP IMAGES:
The surprise thoughts rise to my mind usually after two things have
happened: I've prepared the ground by writing about whatever it
is I'm currently most drawn to, and then I've taken a break and done
something physical like exercise, taking a shower, sleeping, raking.

EXAMPLE: In the case of the the novel I'm working on now, COBALT BLUE, the deep connection came to me while I was doing something rather quietly
physical: sitting out on my porch with Bob on a summer night,
thinking about nothing but the slight stirring of the damp air.

What came to my mind on that porch was the phrase: "it's kundalini." I
knew that the "it's" referred to the major event in my novel. In COBALT BLUE, the main character Andie has a sudden mysterious inner rush, followed by a blast of creativity as well as some rather extreme sexual episodes.

There were psychological reasons for this of course. But then this word
that I didn't know the meaning of showed up. I had overheard it
once but didn't know what it meant.

Kundalini, I learned, is a concept of unused life
force stored in every person. When the kundalini
spontaneously "rises wrong" a person can get more than they can
handle. The word is Sanskrit, but the idea exists in the history of
many religions.

I felt the idea slide into the story as if the story had been built
for it in every detail.

So I think of myself as a reporter, doing a sort of reconnaissance. I'm watching for what shows up and,in my way, reporting it. I want to know what's there.

Revising

Today I'm starting back into a novel I thought I'd finished writing. The last third of the book is set in New Orleans and I need to update for the effect of Katrina, and I want to clarify a couple of other things while I have it "opened up."

It's not as hard as it might sound; I know (pretty much) the changes I want to make. On the other hand, every change in a story seems to necessitate others. So this is not a small undertaking either.

THE OBSTACLES I DEAL WITH IN STARTING A REVISION:
the fear that I can't do it
the fear that I'll mess up what's already there
the weary feeling that I've already spent enough time in this story
the question: is it possible that "deep down" some part of me doesn't want to
be immediately clear and finish stories quickly, that I really want to be
"hard to get"

THE GREAT THING ABOUT STARTING A REVISION:
once I've begun I'm involved and excited again
I discover new things to explore
I know I'll get where I'm going eventually

And so the thing now is simply to take a deep breath and begin.

Strategy for Today

It's morning and I came into the office tired. I have four appointments (including a haircut) and so, perhaps fortunately, I can't flop onto the carpet. My plan for today is low expectations: do the stuff I've committed myself to and give myself lavish credit for getting anything at all done otherwise.

What I usually find when I do this is that I get perked up by the first person I see, and then find that the combination of that energy with the pleasurably lowered expectations frees up my thinking, allows me in the time available to get a bit more done than usual.

An Oddly Satisfying Day

Bought some gizmos this morning to be able to tape a big-deal interview this afternoon on my cell phone.

Went with one of my brothers to the funeral of my mother's 94 year-old first cousin and had a thoroughly good time visiting with relatives.

Did the big-deal phone interview--with the great-grandniece of the woman whose biography I'm writing. Important because there are almost no relatives alive who know anything about her. Got a lot of good information and leads. I feel like such a sleuth, even more than during my many years writing for newspapers.

Opened the box from UPS containing my new laptop wireless computer. My current elephant of a machine is tottering. Still this is bold: buying new cutting-edge equipment that'll actually do what I need.

Pretty soon: off to my meditation group for the first time in a while.

And all of this without a twinge of hesitation, second-guessing of myself, or procrastination. That's what I mean by satisfying. Not a bad way to live. I'd like to figure out how to make a habit of it.