Friday, April 28, 2006

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.)