Category Archives: Self-Confidence

November 30, 2022 · 2:09 pm

Writers, Artists: You Are Not a Failure If Your Work Is Rejected

Writers and artists throughout history have feared and hated rejections of their work.

The most coveted goal of writers and artists–the end result and focus of all their education, training, efforts, and hopes–is to see their work published or mounted on display.

Artists and writers are particularly sensitive. When their work goes unaccepted and rejections occur time and again, as often happens in the sometimes cruelly competitive worlds of writers and artists, the emotions they feel are frustration, then discouragement, and then misery.

Each rejection compounds the effects of the previous rejections and can lead writers and artists from heights of blissful optimism to the total disappearance of confidence. Yet without confidence, writers and artists cannot do their work.

This post shows that writers and artists are not failures if their work is rejected. They may be passing through a phase on the way to great success. Or they may find joy and peace of mind in the act of creating without making any effort to sell or publish their creations. They may find satisfaction without an expectation or desire to be published, or they may seek alternatives. Self-publishing is currently very popular, as are blogs and newsletters.

But even for writers and artists whose goal is to have their work published or accepted, rejection does not mean failure.

I Read a Post About Rejection

A few days ago I read an article which asked how writers should respond when editors reject their work, and there it was, the questions “What is winning? Is winning the only thing that matters? Is getting published the only thing that matters? Is that the only credential that makes you a significant literary person?”

Having been involved in many intense competitions in sports, in earning a living in bitterly competitive business environments, and in the arts, I have seen that there are more enduring, valuable, and humane ways of finding success than that. I feel that my views can help writers and artists who are trying very hard, but unsuccessfully, to achieve the ultimate goal of having their work accepted

I remember once learning that a publishing house I was interested in submitting to typically received 5,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year. Less than seventy would be published. What about those thousands of disappointed writers? I’m sure they had worked very hard and had high hopes. But their hopes would be shattered. Are they to conceive of themselves as failures? Are they supposed to give up hope of ever being successful?

I think that there is a healthy response for writers and artists who submit a work and do not have it accepted, an optimistic and hopeful attitude.

Other Forms of Winning that Precede Success

If you are a writer or artist, you are not a failure if your work is rejected. You may be winning.

You are winning and not failing when you refuse to let any fear of rejection or any intimidation stop you from submitting your works. (Stung by rejections, some writers and artists grow excessively cautious about showing their work at all. They become paralyzed. Better to be bold and fearless.)

You are winning and not failing when you are persistent in spite of setbacks, are able to recover quickly, and are resilient.

You are winning when regardless of rejections, your writing and art are now better than ever before, when you are at the peak of your abilities, performing at your personal best.

You are winning and not failing when you make sure that the quality of your work (and your reputation) are always improving.

You are winning and not failing when you are mature and skilled enough to write and paint expertly. (Any person must spend thousands of hours developing an expertise in any art before they should expect to excel in it.)

You are winning when you are motivated and working hard. (Hard work will overcome many problems. Creative people have faith that effort along with talent leads to the best results; they are in love with work.)

You are winning when the work you submit is absolutely finished, polished like a precious jewel, and as high quality as it can be.

You are winning and not failing when you are knowledgeable–about the subject, about your craft, about what the client is looking for, about everything you should know. (To creative people ignorance is not bliss.)

You are winning also when you are true to yourself and have integrity (and are not so desperate to be successful that you compromise too much.)

You are winning when the works you produce have many strengths, like many pillars of a temple, and few weaknesses.

Those are the ways you are really winning even during those times when it feels like you are not.

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Filed under Artists, Failure, Publishing, Rejection, Self-Confidence, Success, Winning

Tagged as artists and writers, success

June 2, 2022 · 12:48 pm

Why Some Writers and Artists Give Up, but Others Never Do

Examples of a Writer’s and an Artist’s Adversity:

A Painter

You’re in the arts–you’re imaginative–so imagine that you are like an artist friend of mine named Ariel and you have worked very hard and have finished a painting that in your judgment is excellent in every respect. Like Ariel you are trained and educated in your craft and recognize your paintings’ consistently high quality and dazzling originality. You know you can’t do better. You feel that no one but you could have executed this project. It required blending many abilities not every painter possesses. You see in your painting, as Ariel saw in hers, something especially flamboyant and fetching. Your hopes for its artistic and financial success are high.

But in the marketplace the work is ignored without a word. Paintings that you know are lower quality are praised and sold for impressive prices. Your work is considered a failure, your reputation tarnished. You are as discouraged as deeply as you have ever been, heart-broken, feeling cursed, dejected, doubting that the experience of being content–that glow of the heart–that conviction of strength you remember–will ever come back again. You lose your appetite for the artist’s life. You have had enough and like Ariel you give up.

Were you to enter Ariel’s apartment and walk down the hall you would find that painting on an easel in an unused bedroom close to the kitchen.

An Author

Now imagine that you are an author with a new contract with a big advance and the publisher–highly regarded in publishing–is ecstatic about your book. She recognizes its significant sales potential. She calls you In Chicago from New York and says that your book is one of the two or three best books of any type she has ever read. She is entranced with the book and pledges to you to commit to “putting it over” whatever resources are necessary to make it the country’s top best seller (The book is topical and has that kind of potential.) You call your agent and ask him about the publisher reputation and he tells you that they are known for selecting one of their titles each year and making it the kind of best seller the publisher described.

Meetings are held, marketing plans laid, enthusiasm grows. But then like a curse you only read about, the very day–the very hour–you are scheduled to begin a long multi-city cross-country promotional tour to kick off the marketing campaign, you are called and told that the publishing house has been sold to a foreign-owned publisher who is not enthusiastic about your book and the marketing money and plan are abandoned. The cab to take you to the airport is outside waiting and you go out and cancel it.

All the plans are canceled and the dreams of being famous and rich are canceled too. You think, “It is no one’s fault. It could have happened to anyone.” But how dreary it is to fall unprepared from the heights of elation to the depths of sullen moods. (What you just read is not a case study I made up: it happened to me.)

Develop the Ability to “Spring Back”

During a career writers and artists who often are particularly sensitive people may encounter many adversities and hurtful failures. Being resilient means first of all accepting such adversities and those you have experienced yourself as an unavoidable part of the writer’s and artist’s life. That insight deeply-felt and never forgotten is essential for maintaining a firm, unshakeable spirit.

The word “resilient” means “to spring back,” the way Ernest Hemingway was forced to spring back when his wife lost the only drafts of all his short stories on a train and he had to begin writing them all over again. A painter needs to “spring back” when a prospect turns down a high-priced painting they had expressed a very strong interest in, but inexplicably changed their mind.

If you are a writer or artist–actor, composer, ballet dancer, musician, etc.– you have the advantage of a much larger tolerance for suffering than the majority of people. Make use of that advantage. Hardships, though they are difficult to bear and may create many stresses, strengthen the development of resilience. Helen Keller was a disabilities rights activist, author, and lecturer who lived her life in total blindness. She said “character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

The lives of people in the arts aren’t easy. For example, their lives confront them with many competitions when they must prove their worth: will my manuscript have a chance among the thousands of others submitted to that publisher? Will my lithographs make an impression at the show? And when there are competitions the majority are going to fail. If you fail, will you make a comeback? Not everyone makes a comeback.

Metaphorically Be a Body-Builder

A body-builder’s goal is to build muscle. When heavy weights are being lifted, the fibers in the muscles are broken down. Then during the period the body-builder rests, those muscles are rebuilt, but bigger and stronger than they had been. Don’t be so afraid of hardships, stresses, difficulties, and crises. They strengthen you emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

A knowledge of yourself and willingness to experiment with life changes and new directions will enhance your resilience. Some writers and artists are innately resilient and psychologically strong; others are not. But less-resilient writers and artists can learn to be stronger and more resilient. Begin by being self-encouraging. Tell yourself, “Don’t weaken. Be strong. This all will pass.”

Poet John Berryman thought ordeals are very positive things. He said, “I do strongly feel that among the great pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it…but mostly you need ordeal…Beethoven’s deafness, Goya’s deafness, Milton’s blindness, that kind of thing.” Harsh difficulties enhance your ability to thrive under stress. They can improve your performance, stamina, and mental health.

Adversities can be positive, leading to the discovery of unknown strengths. Crises can change a novelist or water- colorist for the better. Hope and optimism strengthen you. Deeply-held spiritual beliefs strengthen you. Making tough decisions under pressure also makes you stronger.

Another Painter and Three More Authors Who Failed But Did Not Give Up

Creative people are susceptible to trials and suffering. One especially trying period is getting recognized at the beginning of your career. William Saroyan received not just fifty or a few hundred rejection slips before his first story was published, but several thousand. But he continued working, as confident as van Gogh and became one of the most popular American writers of his era. Ernest Hemingway said that at the beginning of his career every day “the rejected manuscripts would come through the slot in the door…I’d sit at that old wooden table and read one of those cold slips that had been attached to a story I had loved and worked on very hard and believed in, and I couldn’t help crying.” But he had faith that eventually his work would be in demand and never stopped working. The crowning achievement was the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Vincent van Gogh spent a short, intense five-year career producing an astonishing three thousand masterpieces that are now auctioned for many millions of dollars, but in his lifetime sold only one painting, and that was for a few brushes and paints. But he continued working confidently and never doubted that in the future his talents would be recognized

The persistent hard work of an ever-confident van Gogh, a Saroyan, and a Hemingway and other writers and artists like them–the refusal to accept defeat–is an antidote to failures in the arts.

American Henry Miller lived the life of a homeless beggar on the streets of Paris while trying to learn to write professionally, artfully. He was penniless and had no permanent address, no possessions but a comb and hair brush, no successes, and no prospects. Yet he was optimistic. He said, “I have no money, no resources, and no hope. I am the happiest man alive.” He lived that way into his late forties before his genius was recognized and he took the literary world by storm, writing a new kind of fiction. He was tough and street-smart. Being abused by an editor he snarled, “Who are these shits? Where do they get off saying such things to me?”

Acquiring Needed Insights and Strategies

In spite of inequities among writers and artists (“Why is she so successful when I am not?”) and the emotions discouragement causes–the anger, the bitterness, the scourge of self-doubt and shattered confidence, the devastation of failure, the sense of inadequacy–some people in the arts such as van Gogh, Saroyan, Hemingway, and Miller take a deep breath, regain their composure, and imperturbable, resume their heroic efforts, trying again, following the philosophy of resilience, of being knocked down seven times but getting up eight. However, some other writers and artists who are just as intelligent, just as gifted, just as aspiring, but not as resilient are tormented and creatively disabled. They may never recover unless they acquire new insights and corrective strategies of the type I’m discussing.

The More Persistent You Are the Better Off You Will Be

In every era, in creative after creative, three empowering qualities like three ingredients of a potent formula have proven to help writers and artists not to give up when they fail. Those qualities are being resilient, being persistent, and having faith in yourself. Resilient, persistent writers and artists with strong faith in themselves never give up.

Without a deep, enduring, never-defeated faith in yourself you may give up at the very moment you should brace yourself, focus more clearly, and work harder. Often unsuccessful people are those who have fallen just a little short of their goals because they failed to persist for three months longer, or two, or even a week. They lost faith in themselves when they met adversity and didn’t realize how close they were to success, acclaim, and satisfaction. Have you ever given up too soon? What if you hadn’t?

Faith in yourself touches every facet of your being–whether you think about your prospects positively or in a self-defeating way, how strongly you motivate yourself, your susceptibility to self-doubt and discouragement, and the positive changes you will be able to make in your life.

You must always strive to overcome the paralyzing sense that your efforts are futile. You must have enduring faith in yourself and not permit anything to interfere with it. Having faith in yourself, being resilient, and being persistent are cornerstones of success and fulfillment whatever your art.

Make the word “Persist” your motto, your rallying word. Whenever you are thinking of giving up your work, your career, say the word “Persist.” Whenever you think “It’s just too much for me. I can’t continue,” say “Persist.” Say “Persist” if your submitted work is rejected. “Persist, don’t give up. Try again.” And when you are losing heart, losing confidence say, “I have faith in myself.” Persist and have faith in yourself. “I will persist and finish my novel, and it will be the best I can do.” Then you will be strong.

Many psychologists believe that whatever the field or the activity the most intelligent person–the person with the highest I. Q.–will be the most successful. Catherine Cox studied greatness and disagreed. She found that persistence is a key. Persistence is so important in almost every endeavor that it compensates for lesser intelligence. Cox concluded: “High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence. “

Many writers, artists, composers, musicians, actors, ballet dancers, and other creatives have learned that their persistence has been more important than talent.

If you want a successful future in the arts, you will never think of yourself as a failure or give up if you don’t succeed. You will be level-headed and do your best to respond calmly with composure and confidence to setbacks, difficult periods, insults, abuses, deprivation and failures–bravely, with hope, courage, and positive thinking. In the most despairing moments of your career you will think, “It’s bad, but my goodness, it’s not that bad. I’m not dead and I’m still very talented.”

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Interview with David J. Rogers

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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Filed under Achievement, Adversity, Advice, Artists, Confidence, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Overcoming Misfortune, Persistence, Personal Stories, Self-Confidence, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, bodybuilder metaphor, Hemingway, Henry Miller, self-confidence, Vincent van Gogh, William Saroyan

February 22, 2022 · 8:09 pm

Authors: Speak to Large Audiences for Large Fees

Some authors have amassed fortunes. Some travel in private jets. Yet I can’t imagine a single author who would not be interested in having another source of potentially substantial income or would not want to increase their popularity with large numbers of people who might buy their books.

A source of substantial income and a method of increasing the sales of books is the lucrative and exciting field of public speaking which in my case changed my life, evolving in a wholly unexpected way, with a momentum of its own and with little effort on my part, from writing to speaking to large audiences for large fees.

You may not be an author-public speaker now but may want to become one and may find this post inspiring.

You might also be interested in my other post about public speaking entitled, “How Creatives Should Present Themselves When Speaking to Groups and to the Media.

The Decline of COVID

Now that COVID is more under control we will be getting back to normal life. Among the changes will be the return of the on-site public speaker who for the past two years has been absent. That will open opportunities for author-speakers. More organizations, associations, and companies will no longer need remote conferences but will again be putting on in-person conferences, seminars, and classes for which they will need quality speakers.

Everyone is Fascinated by Authors

Because they are considered unique and gifted and somewhat mysterious, authors are admired and envied. Always among the most successful speakers are people who have written a book or books. If you answer, “I am an author” when people ask “What exactly is it you do?” their eyes become as big as a doll’s eyes and they say, “Really?” A survey showed that when choosing a mate women would choose a writer before anyone else.

Books that have something meaningful to say and say it noticeably well can lead to royalties, contracts for additional books, and if you set your mind to it and have self-confidence plus talent, a ticket to enviable speaking engagements. If authors have what it takes by to “come across in a big way” they can make direct contact with many thousands of readers and earn more money than they have earned before.

Some Authors Have a Natural Aptitude for Public Speaking

Mark Twain, considered by many to be the greatest American writer of all time, is a prime example of a writer who was a gifted speaker. In his day he was known for his public speaking almost as much as for his writing.

I had minimal training as a public speaker. The only public speaking I had done when I started to teach graduate courses at a Chicago university were an introductory public speaking course and a course in dramatic reading in college. Americans fear being attacked by a shark more than they fear anything else; next, they fear having to make a speech. Even the thought of public speaking made me nervous; I was not confident. I defined myself as a writer, not as a speaker. It would have been inconceivable for me then to expect to become the speaker to audiences of thousands, who would be in high demand and make a very good living from public speaking and would come to adore public speaking more than any other professional activity, including writing books, an activity I loved and which my life had been aimed at since childhood.

I was so uncomfortable with public speaking that I thought seriously about not taking that first teaching job, and went over the pros and cons again and again in my mind. But I sensed it was a challenge I should face and a fear I should overcome. My wife was very encouraging and said I should go ahead with it.

I took the job, and within weeks discovered that the teaching experience was fulfilling, as I discovered I had an unexpected gift for communicating information to a group of people sitting in front of me, people who, in turn, would rate the course and me highly. I was encouraged and founded a management consulting company, and provided training courses to clients. I delivered many lectures and grew in public speaking skill and self-confidence.

My books had been published since I was in my mid-twenties. By the time my books Fighting to Win and Waging Business Warfare were published I was a seasoned public speaker to small groups of no more than about two hundred people. But because of the popularity of both those books–traditional print best sellers–I jumped to speaking engagements involving much larger audiences for high fees in North America and Europe. I was then “in the chips” from royalties and lecture fees.

A great pleasure for me was meeting and often forming friendships with so many pleasant and interesting people. My life was exciting. It would change as if in a wind, bringing happy surprises every day. Business opportunities popped up.

A big break for me and a turning point as a speaker was giving the keynote address at a National Association of Broadcasters annual conference with three thousand people in attendance, enough of whom as a result a successful speech hired me for their events that my career was then put on fast track. Then there were major engagements as keynoter at many conferences, particularly in exciting industries–radio, television, cable, music, and the American auto industry. They became my specialties.

Always aim to be the keynoter. Make that a goal you will eventually reach. Be bold and optimistic. A keynoter is paid the most and has a major role. In a movie the star carries the whole production. The keynoter sets the standard for the whole conference.

I didn’t need to advertise. I didn’t need an agent. I wrote articles about their medium for their major industry magazines that were interesting for me to do and drew attention. Not being “in” the field, my ideas were fresh and often innovative. For example, working with people who owned numbers of radio stations I developed strategies that would increase any station’s ratings and advertising revenues.

My appeal as a speaker was passed by word of mouth. Each success led to additional opportunities. I was busy, constantly flying somewhere, staying in some hotel or resort, there to speak to audiences of two, five, or six thousand people, in Paris eight thousand.

If you can get in front of a large audience as I did–and impress– very many positive benefits will follow. Quite profitable speaking engagements will appear out of the blue. Sometimes that happens serendipitously: a reader of your book recommends you as a speaker.

Writers Have Advantages as Speakers

An immediate advantage writers have as speakers over speakers from other fields is simply that by definition writers are especially skilled in the use of language to entertain, educate, and persuade–the goals also of speeches. They are trained and educated to write. If you are to succeed as a public speaker you must first write polished speeches, Good writers are equipped to do that. Writing and public speaking are related talents. The good speaker tells stories as novelists tell stories. Good writers and good speakers are clear. Their choice of words is interesting. They are able to simplify complicated ideas.

Artists can be wonderful speakers and writers. I’m constantly impressed with what excellent writers artists sometimes are, at times better writers than writers, as Vincent van Gogh, for example, was a masterful writer. So many of them have excellent verbal abilities and give spell-binding talks as teachers and conference speakers.

Prize the Speech You Write

Speeches that will become the staple of the author-speaker and artist-speaker and delivered often should first be written down and honed through many written drafts as carefully as a painting, poem, short story, play, or novel would be, and then, of course, practiced many, many times until the delivery of the speech is flawless. Be ready to work hard on your speeches or talks. Because there is so much money to be made, public speaking is highly competitive, and the quality of the written speech itself separates one speaker from another. A beautifully written speech is literature. I had an advantage in that I had been employed as a speech writer in the past.

You have two products that the audience will hear and see: the speech you have carefully composed is a product and you are a product too. The author-speaker and artist-speaker thinking the excellence-generating thought “why do something unless I do it extremely well” aims to develop a superb, unforgettable speech and then to deliver it superbly and unforgettably again and again.

There Are Social Benefits for Author and Artist Speakers

A major benefit of being an author or artist-speaker is the pleasure that role makes available to the person who has left a quiet work place where creative work is done in solitude and gone out into the noisy world and through public speaking come in contact with live human beings that open new vistas. Creatives-speakers then see before their eyes how people respond to their ideas and to them. They now interact with people who have come to listen to them and perhaps to meet them, to ask questions and share opinions, to hear what they have to say, and to applaud them–new and gratifying experiences for many writers and artists who never leave their work room.

Talent and Preparation Are the Keys to Successful Public Speaking

Some people are so naturally talented that even in their first major speech they are magnificent, but even they benefit from careful preparation. You must realize that preparation is a key to public speaking success. That extremely thorough preparation is mandatory cannot possibly be overstated.

By that I mean preparation certainly of the words you will speak in your speech, but also preparation of your character. You must always be a sincere and genuinely decent person, and that will come across to your listeners. You may not be brilliant, a spell-casting word-smith, or physically appealing, all of which help a speaker. But people will forgive you those deficiencies. If you are a sincere, genuinely decent man or woman the effect on the audience can be potent and positive.

Unfortunately Many Authors Have Not Developed Their Public Speaking Abilities

I went to my local library, looking forward to hearing a top bestselling author speak, and found her presentation childish and silly. She was there just to be admired by her fans. I’m sure they were disappointed. I went to a conference of poets reading and talking about their poetry, and selling their chapbooks. Some poets were very shy and uncomfortable; some just didn’t know much about projecting a lively, intelligent, and authentic presence. Some were unprepared; and some were disinterested. Some obviously dreaded facing an audience as I once did. Some seemed to be unpleasant people you’d like to have nothing to do with, let alone listen to.

I’ve often wondered when there are books and art works to be promoted and speakers can earn thousands of dollars for forty-five minute speeches, why they don’t take the time to learn what is learnable: how to overcome fears of public speaking and how to speak interestingly, charmingly, intelligently, and persuasively in a down to earth manner.

Authors must concentrate first on their writing because that’s their main pursuit. But they benefit from being more well-rounded and becoming accomplished speakers as well. Possibly Jane Austen never had to speak to a group, but now, two centuries later, producing something creative and speaking publically are similar talents that go hand in hand.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Interview with David J. Rogers

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waging-business-warfare-lessons-from-the-military-masters-in-achieving-competetive-superiority-revised-edition-david-rogers/1119079991?ean=2940149284030

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Filed under Increasing Income, Preparation, Public Speaking, Self-Confidence, Success, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, careers, Mark Twain, Public Speaking

January 5, 2022 · 2:41 pm

Writers with No Desire to Publish

The senior editor of a literary journal asked a writer friend of mine to submit a piece for a future issue, but my friend who thanked the editor for the compliment has no interest in submitting anything to that magazine or any other. I’ll call her Kathy because that’s the name she wishes she had, but doesn’t. It is a highly-regarded journal and would enhance any serious writer’s reputation to appear in it. That journal had published other pieces of Kathy’s in the past during her particularly prolific period when work poured out of her and was in demand by editors and readers. Some of her books were being published at the time, and many of her articles appearing in magazines were achieving record readership scores.

Kathy is far from alone now being a writer who works as hard as ever at the writer’s craft to perfect her work, and has high standards–revising, refining, embellishing, cutting, and improving endlessly–but does not care to be published by book or magazine publishers. People like Kathy enjoy writing for its own sake and its own sake alone. Publication that was once important to her is not important to her now. People ask her, “Don’t you get a kick out of seeing your name in print?” and she answers, “I’ve seen it in print many times so it is not as big a thrill.”

I am talking about the difference between writers whose overriding goal is to see their work in print–a Publication Focus–contrasted with writers whose overriding goal stops short of publication in which they are not interested. They are concerned solely with generating what is in their judgment the highest possible quality text–a Production Focus. The latter are more than contented to produce works they are proud of without seeing them published.

Having their work published seems an automatic motivation for writers that follows sequentially from writing the work, and is generally expected of writers–you are a writer and you write a story, for example, and then you are expected to submit it to a magazine (or a novel to a publishing house) where a committee of editors and managers evaluate it in comparison with other submissions and decide if it is suitable for them to publish. The submitting writers are competing for a prize and the prize they are competing for is seeing their name and their work printed, perhaps for pay, but even if not for pay, for the delightful satisfaction of well, having a work published which they can tell friends and family about, which for most writers is the whole point, the end goal for which they are prepared to work very hard.

What could writers who are not motivated to publish possibly be thinking, and what does motivate them to go on writing with no intention or hope of seeing the finished product in print where it would be read by hundreds, or thousands of others–or more–many of them fans of good writing?

Research

Production Writers who have no desire to publish don’t have to wait for money or praise or any external reward to be fully satisfied. All that matters to them is that the works they produce be the best they have the skills to produce. They believe that because they are not interested in publishing but in producing the highest quality work they can, they are more creative and do better work than they would were they competing with others to see their work in print, and there are grounds for that belief.

Harvard psychologist Teresa M. Amabile has spent her entire career trying to understand what motivates people to be creative and what are dis-incentives. She has staked her reputation on proving that creativity increases when you are what she calls intrinsically motivated and engage in the creative activity for the sheer pleasure it offers (as Production Writers do). If you write, paint, sculpt, dance, etc, to earn rewards other than the enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of performing the activity as well as you are able (as Publication Writers do), you are extrinsically motivated and become less creative. The work that results is not as finished-beautiful-aesthetically pleasing-masterful as it might have been.

Amabile tested subjects ranging from young children to college women, giving some of them rewards for doing the work. What they had produced was then graded by professionals–seasoned painters grading the paintings, experienced writers the writing, etc. The results were significant in that no matter what the reward was or when it was given, if the subjects thought they were working for external rewards, even a little trinket, and not for fun and pleasure, they became less creative. But when they were light-hearted and fooling around and no external reward was involved, they were more creative and their work was better.

In one experiment Amabile divided writers into two groups. She had one group fill out a questionnaire about the joys of writing for its own sake such as being able to experiment with words. The other group filled out a different questionnaire about the external benefits of writing like being on a bestseller list. Writers in both groups then wrote short, haiku-like poems. Then a panel of judges—poets–rated the poems. The writers who had been thinking about rewards like bestsellers wrote inferior poems. Extrapolated, that suggests that it may be detrimental to the quality of your next novel to have making The New York Times list on your mind.

I had experiences that confirmed Amabile’s research in my writing life. When I was writing one book, my mind was solely on communicating in a clear, informative, and entertaining way concepts that were unfamiliar to western thinking. It was a challenge because the concept of the book was totally new and original. Every day’s work of many hours was fulfilling, I didn’t spend a second thinking about how my book would do in the stores, only about the book’s clarity and how useful I could make it and how inviting it would be for readers. It was a highly successful and profitable book and my ambitions for the next book I began were high. But I found my thoughts losing focus. They often wandered away from the book’s content and style and how to satisfy the reader to where I would build the new house the new book’s royalties would bring me and the kind of cars I would buy. Both books received many accolades and made best seller lists. But whereas I wouldn’t change a single word of the first book, I live with the knowledge that the second book could have been better.

Publication Writers in Contrast with Production Writers

Publication Writers often experience stress and worry about the chances of the work being published. But in contrast the Production Writer feels no pressure, no stress, and is relaxed. That experience can make Production Writers feel freer and bolder and unafraid of taking chances they might not otherwise take, but which might improve the work. That freer confident mood can lead to leaps in their performance. William Faulkner is a good example.

When Faulkner realized that his complex rhetorical style and subject matter weren’t those of a commercially-popular author (would not lead to extrinsic rewards such as high sales) he began a period of sustained creative energy. He started to become great. He decided to write for himself: “One day I seemed to shut a door between me and all publishers. I said to myself, ‘Now I can write.” He started working on The Sound and the Fury, “thinking of books, publication, only in the sense in saying to myself, I wont (sic) have to worry about publishers liking or not liking this at all.”

A disincentive Publication Writers must face is the inevitability that their work is going to be evaluated by editors and others. They are competing for the good opinion and a favorable decision of people who have power who will be passing judgment on the quality of the work, and indirectly, also the quality of the writer. That is why rejections can be so hurtful and discouraging, and taken so personally: “In rejecting what I have worked so hard on and put so much effort into they are telling me I am inadequate.” Thousands of writers make the decision to quit writing every day. Most of them quit because of the heavy, depressing weight of too many failures and too few–if any–successes and the toll of failures on one’s confidence and sense of competence and self-esteem. Extraordinary self-confidence is necessary to persist in the face of failures and setbacks.

The knowledge that the submission will be evaluated negatively affects the writer and tends to produce works that are more conventional. Some of them are written specifically to suit the publication as if to order. Magazines and publishing houses make very clear the kinds of materials they are in the market for and will publish. Possibly the works could have been better written had the writer been more relaxed and playful and had not been seeking the approval of editors so desperately.

Writers at ease and at work–in a favorable state for creativity–have many of the attributes of children at play. Psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott wrote that “it is in playing and only playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative.” Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson said it is striking to see a two-year old child rolling a ball. They can throw the ball on the floor again and again, watching it roll a hundred times and never get bored. Just as children do that, writers can do something remarkable. As fully absorbed as children, they can work on perfecting a single paragraph forty or fifty times without experiencing a moment of boredom while people who are not writers and think that one draft is sufficient are astonished that such a feat is possible. The conclusion of Amabile’s experiments was that a playful approach like that of children increases the likelihood of producing creative results, and that pursuing external rewards diminishes the person’s creativity.

Being competitive makes it hard for most writers to be relaxed and in a light and child-like playful mood that is conducive to creativity. But competition is a major feature of most writers’ experience Out of necessity writers are forced to be competitive when they try to get their work published. There may be hundreds of other writers attempting to get their work published at the same time in the same magazine or thousands with the same book publisher.

In contrast, the absence of competition and evaluation (other than their own evaluation, perhaps severe, but coming from no one but themselves) which Production Writers experience has been shown to improve the quality of the work that is produced. That is why so many famous writers think that they, and no one else, are the best judge of their work and why so many of them ignore or don’t ask for the advice of editors. Who enjoys being evaluated? Writers often dread evaluations, and evaluations negatively affect the writer’s mood and thus the quality of work that is produced. A Production Writer may ask for editorial assistance–to be helped–but not to be evaluated.

The best way to recognize which kind of motivation you have is to ask yourself if you’d continue doing the work if no reward were to follow. If you answer, “No way,” your motivation is that of a Publication Writer. But if you answer, “Of course I would; it wouldn’t affect my work whatsoever,” it is the motivation of playful, child-like Production Writers.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Interview with David J. Rogers

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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Tagged as Creativity, motivation, self-confidence, Teresa M. Amabile, Writing

June 21, 2019 · 12:03 pm

How Innovators Transform Art

Major new ideas, styles, or other innovations in the arts are not met with open arms, but with hostility.

Jackson Pollock, Bluepoles

They are intended to transform an art which the innovator believes needs improvement, but these unprecedented innovations upset the status quo.

When Jackson Pollock splashed paint from cans onto a canvas and called that art, revolutionizing twentieth century fine arts with Action Painting, he was told cruelly, “You haven’t an ounce of talent and that’s not art. Why you’re the man who can’t even paint the human figure. You were the worst in your class in art school. How can you call yourself an artist?”

Ernest Hemingway

The clipped, adjective and adverb-free, dialogue-rich writing style Ernest Hemingway introduced in the mid-1920s was ridiculed as anti-literary by critics when it first appeared. Igor Stravinsky’s compositions were written in the “Modern” mode featuring a new style of dissonance and discontinuity rather than neat formal structures and appealing tone qualities. His The Rite of Spring was so unconventional that it provoked a riot in the Paris concert hall when it was premiered.

Innovative artists merely want to be allowed what is (in the free world) a fundamental freedom of all the arts–the liberty to follow their imaginations into whatever nooks and crannies of the human mind and spirit they lead, and to express whatever they find there–which does not in itself seem dangerous or subversive or deserving of punishment. Yet like Pollock, Hemingway, and Stravinsky, artists that break away from the familiar-and widely-accepted are harassed and ridiculed. Poet and commentator on the creative process Brewster Ghiselin observed that “Every creative act overpasses the established order in some way.”

Painting by Manet of a woman with a parasol

Jeanne_(Spring) by Édouard Manet

Edouard Manet was vilified by critics and the public when he introduced Impressionism to the art world in 1863. This art, revolutionary at the time, was eventually to become the most popular and conventional style of all. Author Jonathan Swift whose work too was mocked said, “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Great Innovators May Shake the Art at Its Foundations.

In the Italian Renaissance Giotto di Bondone turned the art world inside out by showing that the subject of painting could be realistic and secular life. Figures in paintings could look like real people and not be angels and saints. Art was never the same after Giotto.

Still life with Apples by Cezanne

In the nineteenth century Paul Cezanne became the most important name since Giotto by changing the direction art had been following for seven hundred years into abstraction. Abstraction is the essence of Modern Art. Cezanne’s innovations made Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque feel free and led quickly to their innovations in creating Cubism, and also led then to numerous other abstract innovative schools and movements in modern art one after another. Art was never the same after Cezanne.

The Innovator’s Need for Confidence

Original, non-traditional artists must have confidence in themselves and their work to bolster themselves against the negativity they will meet. Confidence touches every aspect of a person’s being–whether artists think about their prospects positively or in a self-defeating way, how strongly they motivate themselves, whether they will persist in response to adversity and setbacks, their susceptibility to discouragement and other impediments, and whether they will be able to make necessary changes in their lives. They must be steadfast and not let criticism against them and their work stop up the flow of their creativity which should always, under all conditions, flow freely, river-like, unstopped, unaffected by any attack. Innovator’s confidence, like their imaginations, must be supreme.

If you are a creative in the arts, judgments are being made about the quality of your work and your skills at every turn: Do you have what it takes? Are you any good? Should I care about your work, or should I ignore it? You must be prepared for criticism that makes you uncomfortable and perhaps makes you doubt yourself and your talent.

English writer Rudyard Kipling would go on to establish himself as a master stylist and to win the Nobel Prize in literature. But early in his career a publisher wrote him: “I’m sorry, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” Vladimir Nabokov, also a dazzling stylist, received this message from a publisher in response to Lolita: “I recommend that you bury this under a stone for a thousand years.” But neither Kipling nor Nabokov was deterred.

If there’s one thing famous artists, writers, actors, and other creatives will tell you, it is that you work best and are most powerfully motivated to create and will overcome almost impossible obstacles when you’re not thinking of anyone’s approval but your own. Such a confident attitude gives you backbone and courage. Pugnacious Patti McNair warned editors, “Get your mitts offa my story.” English novelist Graham Greene put a note on the title page of a manuscript, “Please do not change any of Mr. Greene’s punctuation or spelling.” When Greene’s publisher expressed doubt about a book’s title, Greene sent a cable that read: “EASIER TO CHANGE PUBLSIHER THAN TITLE. GREENE.”

The Art’s Absorption of the Innovation

Girl With a Watering Can by Renoir

The process of the art’s absorption of the innovation begins with experimentation by artists of a new technique. The public and critics don’t like the technique and condemn it. If it has promise there is a period of adjustment and the new technique is then absorbed into the field. The public changes its opinion and finds the technique appealing. The new technique becomes prestigious and is widely imitated.

The most useful and appealing new styles, techniques, and innovations catch on and the once-abused innovator is now celebrated: has genius, has something new to say, is worth looking at. The popularity of the new style sets the fashion for plays, novels, songs, movies, etc. If a new style or school transforms an art and skill in a major way, it is likely to be incorporated in the field almost immediately.

Pollock’s Action Painting, the works of Stravinsky, “The Hemingway style,” and philosophies of Giotto and Cezanne overwhelmed the art scene because artists could see the value of these new approaches and the public began to appreciate them. The techniques of writing Hemingway invented became the most popular way to write in the world. The citation of the 1950 Nobel Prize Hemingway received singled out “his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of modern narration.” There is hardly a writer even almost one hundred years later who hasn’t studied it and knowingly or unknowingly been influenced by it.

Impressionism is the best loved painting still today. Within a few years the Impressionism Manet started came to enrich not only the painting of artists such as August Renoir, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, and others, but also took shape in other artistic fields–in literature in the impressionism of Stephen Crane and

Painting of a woman and child by Mary Cassatt

Painting by Mary Cassatt

Joseph Conrad, in music by impressionistic composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, in film, acting, and other arts.

Jackson Pollock is considered one of the twentieth century’s luminary painters, Stravinsky one of the greatest composers, and Giotto, Cezanne, Manet, Picasso, and Braque innovative pioneers who are owed a great deal by artists today, many of whom are producing beautiful works of art that would not have been possible had innovators not had the notion of attempting a kind of work that was new and unprecedented that they found alluring and could not resist.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

Interview with David J. Rogers

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Tagged as artists and writers, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Georges Braque, Giotto, Graham Greene, Hemingway, Igor Stravinsky, Jackson Pollock, Jonathan Swift, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cezanne, Rudyard Kipling

April 10, 2019 · 5:01 pm

Reward Yourself: A Secret of Self-Motivation

You may not be doing something you should be doing and because of that may not be feeling the creative zest that should fill you while you write, paint, compose, practice, or perform. Let’s begin by asking why some creatives work tirelessly while many of their fellow creatives’ time spent doing the work they should be doing is minimal.

A secret is the rewards the former give themselves. The operating principle is simple and clear–easy to understand: it is human nature to want to do things which you will be rewarded for doing.

Creatives who reward themselves for their efforts work harder and longer, accomplishing more than those who perform the same tasks, but don’t reward themselves. And self-rewarders are much more likely than non-rewarders to solve the problems they face while performing their craft. Rewards strengthen their problem-solving persistence, and persistence is the only way difficult problems of an art will be solved.

Don’t wait until the whole task is finished before rewarding yourself. Reward yourself for finishing components of the task. For example, a poet might reward herself after completing a stanza or a line. An actor, known for his spellbinding performances, might give himself the task of learning his lines to perfection (as he always does) before he rewards himself with a glass of wine. The reward needn’t be major. Just so it’s something that you find pleasurable.

It is probable that if you increase the rewards you give yourself, you will find yourself putting in more time at your craft (another principle is that the more time you spend developing your abilities, the more successful you will be.) By rewarding yourself you will probably become more adept at solving the creative problems facing you than you have been, and will accomplish more than you are accustomed to. Self-rewards also increase concentration.

Rewards are particularly effective when what you’re working on is tedious, as the crafts of art may sometimes be. The person who is under the misconception that the artist’s life is romantic and so exciting that it is free of boredom hasn’t known how dreary making creative things can sometimes be.

You may make the reward of breaking for dinner or going to a movie contingent on putting the finishing touches on the article. Or, as a reward, get away from your work place and do something pleasant and refreshing: go to the zoo, visit a museum, talk to your friends, walk to the store and buy a Reese’s Pieces.

Ernest Hemingway said, “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times.” Rewards that are a result of your accomplishments increase your self-confidence and are an antidote to discouragement. Self-confidence is crucial to all artists. Achieving your goal may be all the reward you need, but if there aren’t any rewards along the way to the goal, you may feel little or no motivation to continue working and may be susceptible to the scourge of discouragement.

The greatest danger facing a creative is the possibility of quitting. When you quit, your career ends. The majority of creatives quit–hundreds of thousands every year– from the little boy or girl who, although gifted, doesn’t want to practice anymore, disappointing parents whose hopes were high, to the writer who for years has never had a work published and thinks, “What’s the use?” Quitting is more likely to occur if the creative receives no rewards from continuing to work and thinks it is hopeless to go on. A reward brightens your spirits and makes you want to go on.

If rewards you need do not come from the outside, they must come from yourself to sustain you until eventually they come from the outside too. The greatest predictor of future success is past success. If you’ve succeeded once, you can do it again. Have faith. In other words, all that may be necessary to supply the motivation to go on working for years may be a single success. But if you give up, even that single success, as important as it could be, will be unreachable.

Decide how you’ll reward yourself. Custom design your rewards to suit yourself. Some people devise complex systems of rewards involving charts where they record steps on the way to the goal. Parents sometimes use this rewards of this kind to encourage children to practice. For me, “making paragraphs” that I think are pretty good is a reward in itself. Good, clear, paragraphs bring a strong feeling of satisfaction—a glow of overall contentment that I’ve worked energetically and efficiently and it’s paid off. I look at paragraphs on the screen and they excite me.

Then as a further self-reward, after a substantial workday I get to read the wonderful books I collect that are waiting in stacks downstairs for me. To get that feeling that will last into the next working day, leaving a residue in my mind of language beautifully used–to read those books–l will work very hard for hours, even when the work is not enjoyable and seems to be going nowhere. But if I don’t persist, I give myself no reward.

Make self-rewards you’ve designed for yourself a key part of your work schedule and see positive changes in your creative behavior. Don’t forget to reward yourself every day. Begin now by listing the rewards that will motivate you most strongly: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.

When you do a good job you might walk through a rose garden. Or if you prefer noise, walk down a busy street.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

http://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

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Tagged as actors, artists and writers, Composers, motivation, performers, self-confidence

October 30, 2018 · 4:24 pm

How Creatives Should Present Themselves When Speaking to Groups and to The Media

PART ONE

Creative artists in general welcome aloneness and are often apart, by themselves, and deliberately seek heavenly solitude. To be able to work with no one to bother them and boss them around and divert them from their creative goals may be the main reasons they go into the arts to find fulfillment nothing else brings. Some creatives cannot produce a single thing unless no one is near. However, they cannot work alone forever.

The day inevitably dawns for artists–particularly if they have any hope of making money from their art or of establishing any kind of favorable reputation–when they must come out of hiding and leave their easel or keyboard. They must go somewhere, telephone someone, meet people, sometimes in groups, and talk. In that world of person to person conversation and group dynamics, rules other than sentence structure and perspective apply. The artists leave their expertise and often become fledglings in a world they don’t quite feel secure in. The artist wishing to survive in that give and take and take again competitive marketplace of the arts today will have to learn new skills related to how they present themselves to groups and the media.

Nowadays authors usually do their own promotions, but in the past the deal was that that was the publisher’s job. I was surprised back then to learn that not all writers were sent on promotional tours to tout their book–in a way shocked–that some authors make a poor impression in the media. The publishers’ thinking was, “The book looks good, but if the author is not able to inspire audiences to purchase it and may even be a disincentive, why send them out of the road at the cost of…?”

You might think that having a facility with language, authors in particular would be articulate and persuasive and make good guests. But that is not always–maybe not usually–the case. That has been confirmed a number of times at various author’s readings, author’s speeches, and at book signings, etc., I’ve attended, the uncomfortable authors obviously as aware as everyone else that they had lost the audience. At times I have been embarrassed for the author and wondered why in the world they didn’t take the time to learn how to speak effectively.

I participated in an arts center poetry reading, and I noticed that many of the poets that day were rather diffident and shy in front of the audience. Although many were fine poets, they lacked confidence. Speakers wishing to connect with their listeners must be sure of themselves, their skills, and the positive effect they will have on audiences.

The objective when a writer, artist, or most any other person in the arts appears on radio, television, and cable, discusses their work in face to face contact with people in groups, gives a formal speech, talks with journalists, or is involved in any other public forum is usually ultimately to behave in such a way that results in the sale of their work. Oh, a desire to inform and educate may be there too, but creative artists are always aware of their desire to have their work published or put in a show or gallery, or produced in a theatre, etc. I’ve had considerable experience with media appearances and making speeches. I was a graduate school teacher, and taught classes of about twenty or thirty students.

After my book Fighting to Win (FTW) was successful and I became nationally known–and because of it–I quickly found myself speaking to audiences of thousands in cavernous auditoriums in America, Canada, and Europe. With that kind of responsibility I was very conscious of the obligation on me to satisfy through my words, skills, and personality those who had sometimes traveled far to hear me talk about my ideas.

PART TWO

The goal of your planning your comments and delivering them is to get the listener’s ATTENTION, to hold the listener’s attention, and induce interest in what you have to say. You must hold the listener in the highest regard whether it be a single listener or an audience of thousands. Whatever the size, you have to get the listeners’ attention right away because, as in writing a story or novel, the very beginning of your talk, whatever your art, will often determine who stays with you and who tunes out, never to return. To the listener the start of your talk is a preview or dress rehearsal of the whole talk. If it’s no good, the listener will assume the whole talk will be no good, so why bother listening?

The beginning must be lively and have verve (Verve, what a magnificent word.) Never take listeners’ interest for granted. You have to earn their interest through your skills and personality, including the aura your body, mind, and spirit communicate. You might want to start, as I do, with a brief, colorful, story that shows that your mind is sharp and you are down to earth, a regular person. Your job during the first few minutes is to convince your listeners that you have something interesting to say, that you are competent to develop your ideas, and that you should be listened to to the end.

My career made a leap up in quality and success when, riding home on a plane from a talk, I had an insight I want to share with you. That insight is that in contact with an audience you are not just a speaker, you are a PERFORMER, and to come across in the best possible way, you need some of the skills of an actor. That will make your presentations better. You must, like an actor, be at least slightly “larger than life,” more alive and animated than you may usually be. Gesture with your hands, arms, and face. Be energetic, have a sharp mind, be quick, alert, mindful and dynamic, and visibly happy to be there with those listeners who want to hear you. Energy is contagious. It is generated from you in waves or a steady stream out into the audience.

You must always be SINCERE and MODEST. Fakery and big egos will not do. Audiences can see right through a phony–and it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. No tricks–just actual sincerity and modesty. Even if a speaker is not overly brilliant, polished, or a spellbinding wordsmith, if he or she is truly sincere, the listener will like the speaker, and will listen, and liking and listening are necessary if listeners are to be pleased with you and stay with you every second, every word, till you take a bow and thank them for their attention.

My second main insight was that you must appeal to listener’s FUNDAMENTAL INTERESTS such as health, wealth, family, home, and personal success. Once a publicity tour took me to St. Louis, Missouri to appear on a radio show hosted by one of the country’s leading radio personalities. He began by interviewing me for a while, and then turned it over to call-ins. I was there mainly to talk about the book and why the audience would like it and should buy it. The callers were interested in solving their problems such as unemployment which was rampant in the community. So I talked about how the book might help them handle that problem in a positive way.

I felt great sympathy for the callers, and felt that helping them in any way I could was the main thing and selling my book was a secondary thing. I think it was apparent in everything I said that I identified with them, having gone through tough periods in my life too, as everyone has, wishing them the best, trying very hard to help them. I became totally absorbed in their problems and tried to draw out anything in my mind and experiences that could be of aid to them. I happened to have written articles I had been asked to write about techniques for finding jobs. That fitted into the conversation well. The hour and a half went unbelievably fast, and when it ended I felt I had been of help to the callers.

As the host walked me to the car he said, “Most authors who come here are full of their own egos and don’t connect with my listeners who are important to me. They don’t care about them. But you did connect in a powerful way because you are a caring person and have a lot of valuable things to say. I’ll tell you this right now: if you ever have anything you want to talk to my listeners about just call and I’ll put you on immediately. Thank you, friend.”

The third major insight came easily to me because I always devote a lot of time and effort to being well-prepared whenever I write or speak. It is that PREPARATION for the talk and KNOWLEDGE of the topic are king. You must know your material backwards and forwards. You must love your material and feel a strong urge to share it. Ideally there should be no question you could possibly be asked by a listener on your material that you would not have an intelligent answer for.

With that kind of preparation comes an extremely important and irreplaceable result: CONFIDENCE and POISE. You will not experience stage fright or timidity if you are confident that you know and can present the material, perhaps like no one else. Fear will disappear.

The major ingredient of self-confidence and poise is PAST SUCCESS. If you’ve succeeded doing something in the past, you will likely believe you can succeed with it again: why not? The important thing is to make sure you succeed the first time so that subsequent success will occur. As you begin a speech, having fully prepared and being fully confident of your material and your speaking skills, you should have in your mind, as I always do, the sentence, “They’re going to love what I have to say. Let me at them.”

You will hold listeners’ interest by arousing their CURIOSITY. Keep them looking forward to what is coming next and to what your development of the talk is leading to. Always be specific and concrete; do not be abstract.

Use IMAGERY and COLORFUL PHRASES when you speak. The death of my sister at a young age was instrumental in my beginning to write seriously–her daily courage during her long illness inspired me–and I shared that with my listeners in my Fighting to Win speech, saying, “Goodness shined down on Sharon like light from a private sun.” That very personal image which was important to me connected with my listeners. Often after the talk people would come up to the podium and ask me to repeat that sentence because it had moved them.

Use many EXAMPLES. The easiest and quickest way to get people to listen, and the surest way to hold their attention is to use ILLUSTRATIONS. Talk about PEOPLE. People are interested in other people’s habits, peculiarities, and their stories in general.

Let your PERSONALITY liven up your talk. Early in my career I was hired to give a number of presentations to an organization. After a few of them the director said to me, “The presentations are great. We couldn’t be happier. But there is one thing: people want to know about you. Who you are, what you believe in, are you married, do you have children, what are you like? Are you just a smart man, or are you human too?” You needn’t be a solemn sourpuss. When you prepare the talk weave in personal information that will create an I-and-Thou relationship with the listeners.

I was in a grocery store pushing my cart, on the way to the scale in the produce department to have my vegetables weighed. I could see that a woman to my left with her cart was going to reach the scale at the same time, so, feeling playful, I speeded up and got to the scale first, and said, “Beat you.” I thought possibly I had made the woman feel badly, and so I said, “You can go first,” and she said, “No, no, you go. It’s just so refreshing to find a person who has such a lively spirit.” Audiences too love some PLAYFULNESS and LIVELY SPIRITS in speakers, again showing you’re a blood and bone human being.

LOOK at the audience. You need to read the faces of the listeners to judge whether they are giving full attention. If you give your full attention to what you are saying and the dynamics of the audience, you will not have time to worry or be unsure of yourself. If the audience is bored or uninterested, their faces will let you know. You must always accept full responsibility for holding their attention. Only a naïve speaker thinks it is the responsibility of the audience to listen. The listener has no obligation to a speaker who cannot gain and hold its attention.

From your first word to the last be ENTHUSIASTIC, conveying “What I am telling you I think is important and valuable to you. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I’m excited to be here telling you about it. My hope is that when I am finished you will feel excited about it too.”

People are generally interested in life, action, energy, and movement. They want to be around exciting people, not dull people. Excited people excite them. That’s what charismatic people do. A speaker should never appear feeble or weak, or talk feebly and weakly, nor should he or she rant and shout or be melodramatic. The Greeks believed that enthusiasm is a gift from the gods. Wherever it comes from, speakers are often good or bad based on whether they possess it or do not possess it.

The effective speaker should have a steady a focus: the listener: “So long as you are mindful to say nothing unworthy of yourself, nothing untrue, nothing vulgar, you had better forget yourself altogether and think only of the audience, how to get them and how to hold them” (James Bryce). By focusing on your listeners, you will forget yourself, and no longer be unsure of yourself, but will have the confidence you need to be a superb, polished speaker.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

http://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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December 7, 2017 · 2:37 pm

The Self-Concept: Freeing Up Your Creator’s Mind and Personality

In those happy days when I was starting out and writing books during the night while my wife and children slept, I was a business consultant during the day. One client was an anal-type organization–lots of rules, very little freedom, dictatorial–and many disgruntled employees. You might have worked in an organization like that. You may be working in one now.

One rule was that no one from one unit was to visit another unit during working hours. They were serious. Wherever you went you heard people saying, “Don’t get caught out of your unit.”

Your creator’s self-concept–self-image, self-estimate–is your internal, private opinion of the kind of creator you are and of the actions you are or are not capable of performing as a creator. It directly controls how successful you are in your creative endeavors and how full and satisfying your creative life will be. Like that nutty rule, your creator’s self-concept says, “Whatever you do, don’t get caught out of your self-concept.”

Your behavior has absolute trust in your creator’s self-concept and believes it and obeys it. You may have decided after five years writing that you’re a pretty average poet, so you work only hard enough to write average poems, never expecting to do any better. Your self-concept is perfectly content with mediocrity although you may have the potential for greatness. It is continually telling you to stay inside its definition of the kind of person you are: “You’re a decent painter but let’s face it, you’ll will never be much more than that.”

Many people I’ve met and you’ve met tell themselves they’re not creative. They realize that creativity could make them happier, but they claim they just don’t have it. Many people think, “Oh, a painter is creative, or a novelist or an architect. But I’m not a bit creative.” Yet researchers have demonstrated that the self-concept is so powerful and yet so malleable and so easy to change that the moment–the moment–people start thinking “I am creative” instead of “I’m not creative,” creativity increases. They can write and paint and perform dramatic roles passably well. Now they have a creator’s self-concept.

Disappointments lead some creators to think, “I can’t produce really superb art work. . .sell my stories to magazines…make a lot of money…place my paintings in the best galleries…get in a good show… compete with young creators…” and so on.

Many creators have such narrow self-concepts they’re living in a unit that’s only a fraction of the size of their true creative ability. They possess the capacity to accomplish high creative goals but they don’t realize they do. Other creators have wide and expansive self-concepts. Their actions are bolder. They are self-confident. They expect to excel and often do.

What’s holding narrow self-concept creators back? Don’t look at me. I’m not holding them back. You’re not holding them back. They are holding themselves back. Some creators—maybe you know a few of them—have self-concepts so narrow and confining that they have made themselves incapable of doing anything significant. Often they don’t even try.

Many of you reading this are fiction writers. But we are all fiction writers. ALL SELF-CONCEPTS ARE FICTIONS; THEY ARE ALL MADE UP. They are not real in the way a flower pot is real or a desk is. They are merely ways you have chosen to view yourself. From this insight it’s a short, leaping step to the next: “Hey, since I made up this damned self-concept and I’m not happy with it, and it’s holding me back, all I have to do to increase my possibilities and free up my creator’s mind and personality is to create another one and act accordingly,” or “Do I need a self-concept at all?” If your self-concept is right for you—if you’re happy with it—by all means keep it. But if it’s bringing you creative disappointment after disappointment and discouragement and you’re dissatisfied with it, you’d better, I think: (1) change it, or (2) operate without it.

I want to tell you two stories:

Story One: “The Storekeeper and the Thief”

In Japan in the nineteenth century, storekeepers were considered lily-livered weaklings. One storekeeper became sick and tired of this reputation. To prove that it was totally false he took lessons at a martial arts dojo. He devoted himself religiously and after some years he became an expert. After closing his shop late one night, the storekeeper and his wife started home down the dark streets carrying the day’s receipts. They had just turned the corner when a man holding a knife stepped out of the shadows and ordered the storekeeper to hand over his money.

At first he refused, but when the thief charged him, growling, “You miserable merchant, I’ll cut you to pieces,” the storekeeper lost his courage, fell to his knees, and began to tremble with fear. Suddenly his wife cried out, “You’re not a storekeeper, you’re a master of the martial arts.”

The storekeeper turned his head and looked at his wife. “Yes,” he said, “I am.” He stood, a warrior now, totally fearless, completely calm. He let out a powerful katzu, “battle shout,” and leaped at the thief. He defeated him easily.

Story Two: “The Teaman and the Ronin”

In feudal Japan, a servant, a poor practitioner of chado, the Way of tea, unwittingly insulted a ronin, a masterless samurai. Outraged, the ronin challenged the servant to a duel. “I’m not a warrior,” the teaman said, “and I’m very sorry if I offended you. I certainly didn’t mean to. Please accept my apology. ”But the ronin would have none of it. “We meet at dawn tomorrow,” he said, and as was customary, he handed the terrified teaman a sword. “Go practice,” said the ronin.

The servant ran to the home of a famous sword master and told him the terrible thing that had happened. “A unique situation,” the sword master said. “For you will surely die. The thing I might be able to help you with is isagi-yoku, the art of dying well.”

While they talked, the teaman prepared and poured tea. The masterful way he did it caught the eye of the sword master. He slapped his knee and said, “Forget what I just told you. Put yourself into the state of mind you were in as you prepared the tea and you can win this fight.” The teaman was shocked. The sword the ronin had given him was the first he had ever held. “What state of mind?”

“Were you thinking ‘I’m a teaman?’ ” asked the master.

“No. I wasn’t thinking at all.”

“That’s it!” The sword master laughed. “Tomorrow draw your sword and hold it high over your head, ready to cut your opponent down. Don’t think you’re a teaman or that you’re a swordsman. Just listen. When you hear him shout, strike him down.”

The next morning the ronin appeared on the field and the teaman immediately raised his sword overhead, his eyes on the ronin, his ears waiting for the battle cry. For long moments the ronin stared at the raised sword, and the determination in his opponent’s eyes. Finally the ronin said, “I cannot beat you.” He bowed and left the field.

The problem of these two men should seem familiar. Their predicament is one we all encounter every day. Our opponents aren’t usually thieves and they certainly aren’t wandering samurai ronin, but that’s not important. Those weren’t the main opponents anyway. The primary battle, the main event, was going on inside the storekeeper and the teaman. To win on the outside, each had to deal with a faulty, inadequate, self-defeating self-concept.

Option One: “I’m a Warrior, Not a Storekeeper.” Changing Your Self-Concept

Many creators are overlooking their creative abilities. They persist in thinking they’re storekeepers when if they just thought differently about themselves they would see what warriors they have the potential to be. Listen to the things you say about yourself and think about yourself that begin with “I am,” “I’m not,” and “I can’t.” They are your self-concept in action. And they directly control what is possible for you.

Robin tells herself, “I’ve been working on the thing I call ‘My Novel’ for years and can’t seem to finish it. It’s embarrassing. I have no will power.” And because of it she has real problems getting the damn thing off to a publisher. Ariel tells herself she’s not intelligent enough to write a Hollywood screen play. She doesn’t realize that intelligence is not fixed and final in a person, but can increase with use and with it her concept of herself as an intelligent woman.

Creators are what they are because they keep telling themselves they are. If they stop telling themselves they are, they change. If creators say to you, “I just can’t talk in front of large groups,” or “I’m not the sales type,” or “I’m not a really clever person,” and then ask you if there is anything they can do about it, you might suggest that they never, never say that again. Then suggest they counter every “I’m not” or “I just can’t” with a firm “I am” or “I can.”

Saying it isn’t enough. What is in your head doesn’t count for anything unless you translate it into action, “body knowledge.” It’s not enough to think, “Hey, I’m not just a storekeeper, I’m really a warrior after all.” To defeat the thief you have to fight, and you can because:

All behavior is nothing more than an act, a performance. Acting is easy. Everyone can act. We are all performers. As soon as a public speaker realizes that she is not a lecturer but an actor, her presentations get good. To BE confident, ACT confidently.

Find a model, someone who does well what you would like to do. Watch how she does it, then do it the same way yourself. Or borrow from a number of models.

Option Two: Operating Without a Self-Concept

The sword master advised the teaman, “Tomorrow draw your sword and hold it high over your head. Don’t think that you’re a teaman or you’re a swordsman. Just listen. When you hear him shout, strike him down.”

In sales training sessions I gave I often used a simple role-playing exercise that’s designed to demonstrate the teaman alternative. The teaman alternative is not replacing your old, limiting self-concept with a new and improved one. It’s not thinking you’re a cowardly storekeeper or a poor teaman, but it’s not thinking you’re a warrior either. It’s not holding any self-concept in mind, but just taking action, doing something.

After everyone in the training group had played the part of a sales person making a presentation to a potential customer, I asked them to list the things that they did well during the role-play and the things they would like to improve upon. Then we discussed the “like-to-improve-upons.” Sam said he was no good at thinking on his feet. He went blank. A real salesman, Sam said, is able to handle himself smoothly.

Gerri said her problem was talking too fast. Her words came shooting out so fast she often said the wrong thing. She got flustered. She blew sales.

One by one, they all had to tell me about their “improve-upons.” Midway through every description of a problem I stopped the speaker and said something like “I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I’ll tell you what: show me how you would like to be able to do it.” Then I just sat back and watched the amazing thing that almost always happened. Virtually every time, they were all able to do what they said they had trouble doing or could not do at all. Now they were acting.

Sam, for example, actually did think on his feet, and responded smoothly and quickly to the prospect’s objections. Gerri actually became a more composed, together, non-flustered and relaxed saleswoman. Shy people who wished to act more boldly and self- confidently actually did. Those who wished to improve their body language did so. And tough, defensive people who “always” argued and who wanted to be more friendly and warm succeed in acting that way.

I had prompted each of the role-players to act directly without letting their self-concept affect their performance at all. They were doing before their self-concepts had time to inform them, “You just got through saying you couldn’t do that, so it doesn’t make any sense for this guy to ask you to.”

What the role-players learned is precisely what the sword master taught the teaman: You can do what even you believed you couldn’t if you forget about your self-concept totally.

Seeing how easy and effortless it was to forget about a previous self-concept and just act, just be, just perform was exciting for everyone. It was an unforgettable life learning experience.

Do whatever you’re doing creatively without any thought about your “I ams,” “I can’ts” and “I’m nots,” or any concern about “what bad thing will happen if I fail” or “what great thing will happen if I succeed.” You’ll be unhappy whenever your internal opinion of yourself makes you concerned with yourself instead of the creative action at hand.

The creative action at hand–the story or the painting to be crafted, the role to be played, the dance to be danced–they are all that matters, they are the main thing. Forget about everything else. Watch what happens. Watch your creative life change.

Parts of this post appeared in different form in my book Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques For Your Work And Life

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

http://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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April 28, 2017 · 7:09 pm

Total Concentration: The Heart and Soul of Creative Work: Part Two

A heart surgeon was performing a delicate operation when large chunks of the ceiling came crashing down all around him. People in the operating room screamed, the noise was deafening. But the surgeon was so concentrated on

the surgery that he didn’t notice. When your creator’s mind is as deeply on the act of creation as it should be when you are painting, writing, dancing, acting, like that surgeon you will be aware of nothing else. You will look up and see that your friend has been talking to you and you didn’t notice or that rain is coming in the window that has blown open while you worked. You won’t hear blaring music from the apartment next door.

Creative people often notice that if their ability to concentrate while they are working is poor, their work is also poor, but that if their concentration is good, their work is also good–cause and effect–that concentration is essential to their doing their best work.

An actor’s concentration must be total and never not total from curtain up to curtain down. The more total her concentration, the more engrossed in her performance the audience will be. Also, the more concentrated a writer is while writing, the clearer the writing should be. And isn’t clarity the secret of supreme writing that not every writer has learned, but the best writers have? It’s obvious that to produce clear work you must be thinking clearly.

Part One of this two-part post began…

… Concentration is the heart and soul of creative work. How to develop and sustain it is a concern of actors, painters, dancers, pianists, composers, writers, and all other creators. Unless you bring to bear all the mental and physical alertness and clear-mindedness that you have the potential for you will not be enjoying the best conditions for your creative work.

… Creators who can concentrate their mind like brilliant beacons of light at will can focus anywhere and can work under any conditions, and whenever they wish.

… Concentration is an ability most people have not developed. Their minds run wild.

Creators must concentrate on what they are doing in the moment, in the “now.” Then they must be able, when that “now” is finished, to move onto the next “now.” They work very hard. They should strive to develop the ability to be as little affected by distractions as possible, to brush them off and to quickly resume their performance after an interruption. Some creators avoid distractions almost completely by eliminating TV, clocks, telephone calls, Face Book, Emails, and unnecessary conversations.

Select a place where you concentrate best—for most creators that’s the same place every day. Get started (the best way to get started is to get started), keep distractions and diversions to a minimum and don’t stop for any reason until the day’s goal is reached, except for brief rest periods. Look at the prescriptions for increasing concentration in Part One of this two-part post.

Persist working and growing in the face of obstacles and inevitable setbacks. Overcoming psychological obstacles such as discouragement, self-doubt, lack of confidence, and the ubiquitous creator’s fear of who knows what is another skill creators must master. You can still do great work if you don’t let the obstacle stop you from concentrating. You must also learn to pace yourself and maintain your energy and stamina over days, weeks, months, and years.

Konstantin Stanislavski was the most significant and most often quoted figure in the history of actor training. He was a pioneer attempting to define the actor’s mental, physical, intellectual, and emotional processes in a way that was comprehensive and had never been attempted before. He said, “The first step of creative art is concentration of attention…Through my system we try to achieve a state of concentrated attention.”

He said that concentration cannot be defined in a few words. But that “the thought must be fixed entirely and absolutely on one object or idea and only it, without breaking the circle of creative attention for anything else…You need all the power of your attention to dwell on each separate aspect of your task.”

How are you to know that your mind has become concentrated? What is the test? It is when the awareness of time has vanished. The more time passes unnoticed the more concentrated you are.

When I was so ill and in such pain I looked for relief. I observed that since the human mind can be on only one thing at a time, if I absorbed myself deeply in some thought or activity my mind could not be aware of my misery. Prize fighters, hockey players, football players, bullfighters, soldiers in combat, and others engaged in activities requiring intense concentration may be seriously injured but yet experience no pain whatsoever. I took seriously the Buddhist aphorism “Without mind there cannot be pain.” When my mind was deeply engaged in working on my Growing Up Stories when I was ill the sensations of pain, so horrible usually, thankfully, didn’t trouble me.

It’s easy to be absorbed in the creative problem if it’s interesting–that’s not hard at all. But what if it’s not interesting? What if it’s boring? You know as well as I that creative work and the slow snail’s pace process of developing your skills to a level you’re satisfied with are often drudgery. Drudgery or not you still have problems to solve before you can go on with your creative performance. What can you do? When something is not interesting the first thing you do is what you shouldn’t do: you give it less attention. But give more of your attention to something and it will become more interesting.

The famous biologist Louis Agassiz was known for turning out students with highly developed powers of observation. Many of them went on to become eminent in the field. A new student appeared and asked Agassiz to teach him. Agassiz took a fish from the jar of preservative and said, “Observe this fish carefully and when I return be ready to report to me what you noticed.”

Left alone, the student sat down to look at the fish. It was a fish just like any other. The student finished looking and sat waiting, but no teacher. Hours passed and the student grew restless. He asked himself why he had hooked up with an old man who was obviously behind the times.

With nothing else to do, the student counted the scales, then the spines of the fins, then drew a picture of the fish. In doing so, he noticed the fish had no eyelids. He continued drawing and noticing other facts that had escaped him. And he learned that a fish is interesting if you really see it. (From Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life)

You may turn to something else and return to your work later when you’re more focused. At times concentration can be so intense that it actually interferes with work and is exhausting, and so then it’s better to decrease attention.

Some people find that working when they’re tired and their mind is less sensitive to distractions is best for them. Then their work speeds up.

Your job to figure out how to focus on your work for a desired period of time. You have to learn to abandon what isn’t working and put aside problems that aren’t worth bothering with because they will lead to dead-ends.

Condition your mind. Practice concentrating on one thing at a time until you can concentrate at will. Focus on concentrating on things, on people, on ideas, on the text you’re reading. Look at your thumb. Turn it, study it and see it. Stare at your face in the mirror for ten minutes. See the blemishes; see the beauty you’d never noticed.

Fix your mind completely on one thing at a time and give it all your full attention–that one thought that it’s most important to express in that one sentence, that one right word that will capture exactly what the poem means, that one brushstroke, that one most-important emotion you, the actor, will communicate to the audience in Act Two. Practice keeping yourself in that state of alertness as long as you’re working.

The great Vivekananda said, “There is no limit to the powers of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point; that is the secret… In making money, or in worshiping God, or in doing anything, the stronger the power of concentration, the better will that thing be done.”

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

http://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waging-business-warfare-lessons-from-the-military-masters-in-achieving-competetive-superiority-revised-edition-david-rogers/1119079991?ean=2940149284030

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Tagged as artists and writers, blocks, Creativity, Eastern philosophy, Louis Agassiz, psychological obstacles, talent development, Vivekananda

March 24, 2017 · 5:54 pm

Crucial Inner Skills for Writers and Artists

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but my blog posts are not like the blog posts of other people. Obviously, though, some of you notice the difference. You send me blog comments and tweets indicating that you do. I want to thank you because it’s gratifying to know that one’s ideas are of value to the people you’re trying to reach.

For example, when it started getting out that I was talking about ideas that were different, I was happy to receive an email from novelist Josephine Rose letting me know she thought I was on the right track: “David, it’s great that you focus on the practical aspects of being a writer. If I had read you 10 years ago I think I would have said, ‘Nah, it’s all about talent. Either you can write or you can’t.’ Now I know this is an error…Thank you for these wonderful reminders.”

Abundance by Alison Jardine http://www.alisonjardine.com http://www.erincluley.com/

I write about creators’ need for confidence because confidence may be the most important factor of all to the creator. Confidence touches every aspect of the creator’s being—whether you think about your prospects positively or in a self-defeating way, how strongly you motivate yourself, whether you will persist in the face of adversity and setbacks, your susceptibility to discouragement, and the changes you will be able to make in your life.

Believe in yourself. The higher your faith in yourself, the higher you’ll set your creative goals and the stronger your commitment to achieving them will be. You’ll feel serene, for now you can make full, free use of all your talents.

Failure can actually increase your confidence. If you experience only easy successes, you come to expect quick and easy results, and your sense of confidence is easily undermined if you fail. Setbacks and failures serve a useful purpose by teaching that success usually requires confident effort sustained over time.

Once you become convinced that you have what it takes to succeed you quickly rebound from failures. By sticking it out through tough times, you come out on the far side of failures with even greater confidence. If you’re not failing some of the time one thing is true: you’re not aiming high enough.

I write about human qualities that distinguish one creative person from another such as strength (suggesting that it’s worth a creator starting every work day by asking, “Am I strong today? Will I be strong?”) And I write about courage, persistence, tenacity, will power, commitment, empowerment, sense of purpose, discipline, good writing moods and bad writing moods, and ideal writing moods.

Light. Resting by Alison Jardine http://www.alisonjardine.com http://www.erincluley.com/

And the creator’s experience of ecstasy, and the need for stamina, which I call “the creative person’s inner power.” And self-resilience, enthusiasm, self-motivation, energy and your capacity for work, sacrificing for the sake of your craft, boldness, doggedness, adaptability, endurance, resilience, maintaining at all times the highest hope of succeeding, and other spiritual dimensions of your personality.

My interest in the inner dimensions of creative people springs from the work I did on my international best-selling print book (now an ebook), Fighting To Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life, which is now considered a classic. In that book I said that a frightening 70% of the blocks–obstacles–impediments to fulfillment that a person encounters are inside them. Something is wrong and needs mending in their minds and spirits.

All people need to be inspired to overcome obstacles and shown strategies for accomplishing that. That’s what I set myself to accomplishing in Fighting to Win.

The main inner blocks people anywhere on earth and especially people trying hard to do creative work are encountering right now as they set out to work today are these:

Fear

Being Afraid to Take Risks

Thinking Too Much of What Could Go Wrong

Doubting Yourself

Hesitating

You will see that you’re no stranger to blocks.

So a person’s inner territory has been my main concern for more than thirty years–in fact probably much longer than that.

III

Rarely will you find me writing anything about how to write or paint or act or dance because that’s not my main interest. I will not tell a painter how to paint because I don’t know enough about that. But even if I did I probably wouldn’t talk about good technique or good use of color, or composition, or perspective except to say I recognize them when I see them. I’m a great lover of art. And I’m grateful to many accomplished artists who have allowed me to include their work in my posts. I will talk about what makes great artists tick and why they’re so special. And I will say that creators who do great work are great in themselves.

I know enough about writing to apply careful technique to my own writing and to have taught serious writers and found great pleasure in that and discovered I have a lot to say. I’ve written about extraordinary writers—the most extraordinary ever to write.

But you won’t hear from me these days anything about developing characters, scenes, conflicts, and episodes, or how to write dialogue, or generate a mood, or structure a plot, or anything dealing with technique and mechanics.

There are two reasons for that. First, technical skills aren’t my main interest. My main interest is the psychology of creative people and how to teach them and support and inspire them to reach tangible success and personal fulfillment.

Also, there are already thousands of books, magazines, web sites, classes, and blogs for learning technique and mechanics. People have been writing books giving advice on how to write better for 2,000 years. The fact that information is so easily accessible is one reason why so many creators are autodidacts and have taught themselves their craft.

In contrast, almost nothing has been written about what I write about and what the book I’m finishing up after 3½ years of researching and writing is about. I’m convinced that inside, in your mind, in your gut, in your spirit, in your highest and dearest aspirations will be found the magical difference between adequate creators and great ones.

Creators who have technical skills, but lack these spiritual inner qualities and the ability to overcome internal obstacles will not go as far as they could. Or may not go far at all. Or they may give up and quit long before they would have reached their peak performance. Isn’t it sad to think of the thousands of gifted writers, painters, and performers who will quit this year, telling a spouse or a friend, “I’ve had enough”?

Who you are—what you are made of, what you know, what constitutes you, what you stand for and dream of—cannot be separated from your strange, puzzling creative self.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

www.mentorcoach.com/rogershttp://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waging-business-warfare-lessons-from-the-military-masters-in-achieving-competetive-superiority-revised-edition-david-rogers/1119079991?ean=2940149284030

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Category Archives: Self-Confidence

Writers, Artists: You Are Not a Failure If Your Work Is Rejected

Why Some Writers and Artists Give Up, but Others Never Do

Authors: Speak to Large Audiences for Large Fees

Writers with No Desire to Publish

How Innovators Transform Art

Reward Yourself: A Secret of Self-Motivation

How Creatives Should Present Themselves When Speaking to Groups and to The Media

The Self-Concept: Freeing Up Your Creator’s Mind and Personality

Story One: “The Storekeeper and the Thief”

Story Two: “The Teaman and the Ronin”

Option One: “I’m a Warrior, Not a Storekeeper.” Changing Your Self-Concept

Option Two: Operating Without a Self-Concept

Total Concentration: The Heart and Soul of Creative Work: Part Two

Crucial Inner Skills for Writers and Artists

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Story One: “The Storekeeper and the Thief”

Story Two: “The Teaman and the Ronin”

Option One: “I’m a Warrior, Not a Storekeeper.” Changing Your Self-Concept

Option Two: Operating Without a Self-Concept

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