The Artist's Career at Lake Junaluska

Last weekend's 3-day workshop at Lake Junaluska was about artists of all sorts increasing audience, income, and time for creative work. The photos are some of the artists and this old Methodist mountain retreat in the NC mountains where we met.

There were a couple of dozen of us and we left there wildly excited, full of ideas, and each carrrying
one overriding lesson: set your goal as high as you can imagine, and then develop a detailed step-by-step plan for how you can use the resources you have to start moving yourself in that direction.
The big lesson was that simple. And yet how many artists of any sort put together such a plan?


The idea is that each small step you take toward your goal opens some new resources and wider possibilities. And when we run up on the inevitable setbacks and fits of nervousness: just STAY WITH YOUR PLAN.

I set as my goal to sell one million copies of Cobalt Blue and all my other books. I do have a plan--and I've begun. Will keep you posted.

Feel free to post here any similarly immodest goal of your own. (The workshop was run by Creative Capital and sponsored by the NC Arts Council.)

Hypnotic Exploration

A note to women in central NC: my mesmerizing husband, psychologist Dr. Bob Dick, is running a seminar at our house this Friday on hypnosis and women's issues: which of course always include creativity.

I attended one of these self-hypnosis seminars of his not long after we got married, and, because of a trance experience there, the next day started work on what would become my first published novel, Revelation. Bob's contact number is 919 929-1227. We live in a log cabin on a pond out in the woods of eastern Chatham County.

The photo to the right is of Bob and me on an Alaskan exploration.

Stunned by Wisdom, Ambition, and Fatigue

The fatigue is mine. The wisdom came from the Creative Capital workshop I attended in the NC mountains this weekend.

Over this past winter, I wrote a lot of posts here about the one-day class I took with this group whose purpose is to help all kinds of artists, especially the most experimental ones, learn how to make money at a professional level and have the time and independence to do their best work. The workshop was sponsored by the NC Arts Council.

I said this before, but I will brag again. My income increased 82% in the four months after that workshop in December compared to the same four months a year earlier.

So I went back for the 3-day class. It was extremely valuable strategic career planning. That may not sound sexy. But the income that these teacher/artists were making sure did. And it was pretty fascinating and exciting when I started working with some seriously high-priced planners on how to arrange for my just-completed novel COBALT BLUE to sell a million copies.

It was also intriguing to see a couple of dozen other artists show their first-rate work, and see their plans get bigger--and more do-able and detailed.

I'm hoping some of those folks are going to comment on this blog about their art and accelerating careers.

I'll have a lot more to say about mine, as you might imagine. And be back with some pictures too, once I get my mind unpacked.

Shipping the Manuscript

Just shipped my book to my agent. After first going all the way to the copy center without bothering to take it with me.

My first two novels--Sister India and Revelation--are stories about people daring to to be bold on behalf of what's most important to them.

This new one Cobalt Blue is my own act of daring. It ventures into some raw sexual territory--and into sacred sex. The scenes are absolutely integral to the story and the character; and it's a serious novel, has ambitions. Nonetheless, I'm a little worried about what my mama's going to think; and curious about what it will feel like to have this book out in the world. My agent, when she first read the first chapter, said, "This is quite a story, Peggy."

Final Copy?

Four minutes after midnight Good Friday; actually Saturday morning technically. I'm printing out what I'm hoping is my final copy of my new novel COBALT BLUE.

I just spent a couple of hours going through and getting rid of what I'm told is my excessive use of words including: now, again, so, and sardonic. What does that say about my book? I'm not sure.

I have great hopes, confidence, actually, in this novel. Long-term anyway. I do hope it flies on this time out, though. I'm eager to get it to my agent before the publishing industry slows down for the summer. She'll have it by the end of this coming week.

Maybe I'll follow the industry's excellent example then and slow down for the summer myself. I'm not really sure I want to. Guess we'll see.

Happy Easter, Passover, Holi (that's Hindu) and Spring.

Increasing Income of Writers/Artists

The weekend after this one, I'm going to a second event run by Creative Capital and the NC Arts Council on how writers and artists can make professional incomes.

Last fall I went to the one-day seminar, did (most of) the homework assignments, because the folks there said that if you did that, your income the next year would rise 20%. Well, in the first month mine went up roughly 250% over the previous year. This is a fluke, I cautioned myself. It was, but still...the first quarter of this year was 28% higher than last year. I'm happy. And I'm going back to learn more, and I will report here.

If you'd like to go back to earlier posts and look at some of the earlier homework assignments and tips, just do a search of this blog for the phrase "Creative Capital."

Knowing The Guts of the Story

At this late point in my revisions, the changes I'm making in my novel Cobalt Blue are small and huge.

SMALL CHANGES because:
*they're short
*they don't take long.

HUGE CHANGES because:
*the small additions, to fill in holes that my local reader/critics pointed out, are very high-impact
*I've worked on this story off and on for 18 years (while also writing three other books, etc.) and know all the off-stage history of the characters, can thus produce a highly relevant mini-scene pretty easily
*I know the story so well that I've grown more sure of each step I take, and each step is therefore stronger and clearer: BOLDER.

It's a very nice feeling, a real treat, in fact. It feels like a reward for a lot of groudwork, this rare ease.

Final Revision Mood Swings

I'm about three weeks from sending my new novel COBALT BLUE back to my agent. I can tell the end is near because I'm shifting from mood to mood in a most unsettling way.

END-OF-NOVEL MOODS SO FAR:
*relief, as if I'd already finished
*fear that this finished book is going to make trouble for me one way or another *exhaustion that makes me feel tremulous with any emotion
*indecisiveness about small, unrelated things
*feebleness as if I'm starting to come out of an illness
*anger, that it hasn't already won the National Book Award, and that it still isn't quite finished
*uneasiness about the peculiarly erotic nature of this novel
*sadness that it will soon leave my hands
*pride that it's so good
*excitement about what will happen next

So mid-morning today, I lay down on the rug in front of my desk and slept for an hour. It was an excellent solution. It's 8 pm. and I've been balanced and productive ever since. Now I'm wrapping up for the day. And soon I will re-encounter my peculiar emotional state in my dreams, at least that's the way it was last night.

I'm telling myself to cherish these interestingly tumultuous times. At least I've given up fighting off the turmoil.