Tag Archives: talent

July 6, 2023 · 1:59 pm

Good Writers Who Were Discovered by Agents and Publishers

Writers, are you having trouble getting published? I sympathize. Yet, be ready! In a month, week, or day or a few hours, or minutes, you may come in contact with that one editor, one agent you must have confidence exists here, there, somewhere, who will discover you, recognizing your potential, your craft, your genius the way young Faber & Faber editor Charles Monteith recognized novelist William Golding’s immense promise when no one else in the world did.

William Golding

Monteith was charming, witty, and sophisticated, qualities Golding did not possess. Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies was Monteith’s first editorial project; his first taste of an editor’s role. Some editors–very capable in other areas–are surprisingly poor at judging the work of beginning writers, but that was not the case with Monteith.

The manuscript Golding submitted was worn, torn, and stained when Monteith first saw it. It had obviously been rejected by other publishers. Even Monteith agreed that this work of a public school teacher was over-written, disorganized, repetitive–a mess–and seemed never to get started. After many rejections Golding was losing hope of having the book published, of ever being published.

But Monteith saw “something” in the book, and in Golding –the work of a unique talent–and fought for it at editorial conferences, almost coming to blows with a senior editor who was known to have impeccable taste in picking properties that would succeed. Monteith prevailed, staking his young reputation on the book. Lord of the Flies was published, caught on, and was published in many languages. Many Golding/Monteith novels followed. Monteith and Golding were editor and author friends the rest of their lives. William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983.

What might have happened had Golding’s beaten-up manuscript not caught the eye of the best possible editor for him? One day you may be fortunate: a Monteith may be excited by your work and discover you.

The Need to Be Discovered

The logical conclusion of the process of serious writing is to see the work published. Before writers get published they have to be discovered, to be recognized as a person with a talent that can generate revenue. When a writer is discovered by an agent or publisher, their life changes for the better. This post is about writers who were discovered, then published, and found success–perhaps more success than they expected. There are so many writers with all the talent in the world who are trying very hard to be discovered by an agent or publisher who is trying as hard to discover them. There is a good chance that many writers we read would never have been published had they not been discovered by the right agent and a right publisher.

Harold Kushner

A friend of mine was the late Rabbi Harold Kushner. He too was discovered by an editor with insight and moxie. Harold personally hand-carried his manuscript to publisher after publisher in New York and Boston. Every publisher rejected When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Editors said the book couldn’t possibly succeed. For one thing it was “too Jewish.”

Finally a small publisher picked it up. However, this editor who discovered the book, was different. He was enthusiastic and said to Harold, “Your book is going to be a best seller.” Finally what Harold had been hoping for: someone had faith in the book and its spiritual message. It became a phenomenal best -seller, the most popular book in the world, selling twenty -five million copies.

Thomas Wolfe

Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins discovered biographical novelist Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe was the most talented writer of his generation. His monumental goal was to convey in his writing every experience he had ever had. His vocabulary and expressiveness with language was so stunningly extraordinary that it didn’t take a genius to recognize that Wolfe was one. Wolfe wasted ten years trying to be a playwright until his married lover, patron, and muse Aline Bernstein told him, “You were not meant to be a dramatist. You should be writing novels.” The popularity of his first novel Look Homeward Angel marked him as a major talent, so much so that when fellow American Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in November, 1930 Lewis praised Wolfe as the writer to be reckoned with in the future.

Maxwell Perkins was the greatest American editor. Editor of giants Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway at the same time, he tutored and guided Wolfe who never had a concept of “a publishable book.” Thousands of hand-written words poured out of high-energy Wolfe in a frenzy all night long. In the morning a woman picked the pages off the floor of his New York apartment, where Wolfe had thrown them, and typed them up. Perkins taught and tutored Wolfe literally daily. Each man considered their meeting and their relationship the most important event in their lives. Perkins gave Wolfe assignments such as “You have to cut this episode by six thousand words,” and “Cut the book by 200, 000 words. I’ll help you.”

Jack London

Persistent and confident in spite of failures, Jack London submitted his manuscripts hundreds of times to publishers that rejected the work before an editor discovered him. But after that, within a single year London, a self-educated writer, took the literary world by storm and was the most popular, most critically and financially successful novelist/short story writer in the world.

Talented People Looking For a Break

I traveled extensively in North America and Europe during my career as author/public speaker and often after a work day and dinner would have a drink in the hotel lounge and enjoy the entertainment. Invariably I would think, “All these incredibly talented performers I see–artists who are looking for a big break and are dying to be discovered.” Much like them, so many writers with so much talent also are trying very hard to be discovered. Without the people who discovered William Golding, Thomas Wolfe, Harold Kushner, or Jack London, would we have ever heard of those famous authors?

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

Interview with David J. Rogers

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Filed under Adversity, Charles Monteith, Confidence, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Editor, Goals and Purposes, Harold Kushner, Jack London, Maxwell Perkins, Publishing, Thomas Wolfe, William Golding, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, goals, talent

November 3, 2022 · 1:45 pm

The Worst and Best Traits of Creative People

Whether you find creative people in remote little mountain kingdoms accessible only by mule or in big, modern, cosmopolitan cities, you will discover that they are surprisingly alike. The many traits they share are not all favorable; some are obstacles. Yet those traits–the worst and the best together–prepare creative people for fascinating lives other people look at with admiration and envy.

Creative people:

Feel deeply and are gifted. They are people whose ecstasies and traumas will be the raw material for their creations–never to be forgotten, but reflected again and again many times in the works they contribute to the world.

May be “overlooked” as school children. Their talents unrecognized, they may have undistinguished elementary and high school careers, only to be recognized for their significant achievements later in life to the surprise of everyone.

Are self-absorbed, concerned first and foremost with themselves, their own wellbeing and state of mind, their projects and their cherished and most private desires, needs, hopes. Their self-absorption can make them overly emotional, temperamental, and difficult. But self-absorption is a necessary feature of a creative personality.

Proud, may react defensively, angrily, bitterly to criticism.

Sadly, at times may be too emotionally ill to work, particularly poets and writers who may be victims of the high and inexplicable incidence of debilitating mood disorders affecting them.

Have a strong belief in, respect, and enthusiasm for their art.

Need confidence. Confidence grows exponentially with each success. The most accurate predictor of future success is past success, as “Since I have written a best seller before, I can do it again.”

Are often “seduced” by their art. There is no shortcut to the tremendous amount of experience necessary to become highly skilled in an art. It is hard for someone in the arts not to see their art taking over more and more of their time and possibly becoming their most important activity, finding themselves doing everything for their art.

Are rebellious, bold, and open to new experiences. More daring than the majority of people. Have no fear of risks.

Have an insatiable need to establish rapport with and hold an audience–followers, fans to applaud them. And yet, deprived of an audience, they will still work just as conscientiously.

May not seem to be but are competitive, ambitious, prone to envy and jealousy.

Will of necessity bloom late due to the difficulties of becoming established, overcoming a sequence of hurdles, and mastering their chosen art. Late developing, being “behind,” they needn’t despair because they often accelerate and “catch up” quickly after their first successes, often surpassing those who bloomed sooner.

Tend to “live in their heads.”

Consider themselves the best judge of their work, its “foremost authority.”

Are lucky to have the particular creative talents esteemed by society that make them ideal writers, artists, actors, dancers, composers, etc. as if they are people who have been ordered from a catalogue.

“Know who they are.” Are marked by a clear, unambiguous sense of identity, as “I am an historical novelist specializing in women’s roles in England during the Victorian era.”

Can be characterized as having heightened perceptions of the drama in the world and the beauty and importance of their art. In time they develop a “novelist’s mind,” or a ”painter’s mind,” or an architect’s, or dramatist’s mind, etc.

Can be perfectionists who are extremely hard on themselves and others (loved ones, associates, subordinates).

Abhor pretense.

Are not driven by the same needs as even the people dearest to them. (That causes conflicts).

Hold sacred their independence (Will fight for it, don’t want to lose it) Hate having their freedom interfered with or restrained.

Are far more self-disciplined in their work than most people in other fields.

Can be playful, child-like, humorous, silly, fun to be with, and seem younger than their age.

Are committed to the development and refinement of their talents; motivated by “an urge to improve.”

Are exuberant, often boastful, about their achievements.

Love to work, work hard, sometimes harder than seems humanly possible.

Possess extraordinary energy and are excitable.

Must be patient and longsuffering because if they reach high-level mastery and become famous they will have persisted doggedly through thick and thin for years; many “rough spots on the road” appear in a creative person’s career.

Are strengthened by powerful needs to be competent and to be respected.

Benefit from a rare ability to focus on one object, problem, or task for extended periods without being bored or losing interest. (Facilitates completing “big jobs” like writing novels and painting murals.)

Strive to find “the one true voice” that expresses them vividly and accurately. (Doesn’t happen overnight.)

Generally find more pleasure working alone than working in groups; do not avoid, but relish, solitude.

Must quickly develop a capacity for mature self-criticism, objectivity, and judgment about their work and their abilities

Highly value authenticity, integrity, and sincerity.

For survival must become skilled at overcoming obstacles, of which there are many in the arts.

Have a practical problem-solving intelligence; prefer difficult to easy problems.

May show minimal interest in current events, gossip, and politics–not interested in discussing them, “tune them out.”

Creative people possess many gifts, many strengths, and many imperfections. As imperfect as anyone else, they nevertheless benefit the world in innumerable ways.

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

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Filed under Artists, Becoming an Artist, Creativity, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, energy, Late Blooming, Life of Creators, Persistence, The Nature of Artists, Traits of Creative People, Voice, Writers, Writers' Characteristics

Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, energy, mental illness, psychological obstacles, talent

September 27, 2018 · 3:59 pm

Inspiration, Guidelines, and Quotations for Writers, Artists, and Other Creators

Painting of red trees on blue and green background

Above Vinci by Karin Goeppert

This is my eighth post of quotations about creativity, creative people, and the creative process that I’ve assembled from my reading and writing. These quotes are valuable because writers, artists, photographers, and actors and other performers have expressed interest in them. They are interested in them because insights into creativity and the creative life can be applied to their work, bring them inspiration, and increase their knowledge and skills, enabling them to produce increasingly better, more sophisticated, and more popular work. That is an urge to improve and excel that animates almost every creative person from the first morning of the first day of their creative life to midnight of the last.

An important reason a creator hungers for information like this is the competitiveness of fields requiring inventiveness: painting is exceptionally competitive; writing and acting are too, and the creator is looking for an edge. Even one idea from these posts may lead to a creative breakthrough that strengthens the creator’s competitive position.

Persistence

The first thing a creator has to learn is not to quit. Have you thought of quitting? The majority of creators quit. They quit because they think no matter what they do they can’t succeed. But that can be overcome. The ideas in this post may help. What they need are new insights showing them that success comes from within a healthy, creative mind and is feasible for them. Then they have to also learn not to be mediocre. Most people don’t want to be mediocre, yet are perfectly satisfied to be mediocre-plus. The quotes may help you not to quit and not to be mediocre. A creator must learn to persist, and then persist more, persisting if need be beyond what seems human capability.

Waterborn by Karin Goeppert

Naturally much is made of a creator’s talent. Thomas Wolfe said about the need to put your talent to use: “If a man has talent and can’t use it, he’s failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.” Almost all people believe that talent is the reason for creative success. But persistence–the art of refusing to give up–may be more vital to a creator’s success than talent. Teachers of the arts often state that the students who will fare best in creative life are not the most gifted but the students who are the most determined to succeed. If they are persistent, less talented writers may have more works published and make more money than the more talented. The same is true of painters. American Jack London received 600 rejections before his first short story was published. He was not considered one of the great writers, but after the publication of that first story he became the most popular writer in the world within one year.

Enlightened creators are confident of themselves and possess what I call “inner skills” that not every creator possesses, returning again and again tirelessly, almost maniacally, to their work. They overcome sometimes enormous obstacles and difficulties that would deter less powerfully persistent people. Painter Pierre-August Renoir’s hands were crippled and rendered useless by severe rheumatoid arthritis and he was unable to paint with them late in his career. But with a strong will he produced some of his greatest works after that lying on his back, painting with the brush between his toes. Even without such extreme obstacles, creative work can be exceedingly difficult. When creative work “goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat” (Joyce Carol Oates).

If you are a creator with talent and persistence both, your prospects of success are excellent.

Intensity

Floris Mit Rahmen by Karin Goeppert

Intense people are growing rare in this era. Something is weakening people. But creative people are different. They tend to live intensely, and have strong beliefs about their creative pursuits: “It is through art and through art only, that we realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence” (Oscar Wilde). That intensity of their emotions and sensitivities is a necessary part of their make-up. They think, feel, and imagine intensely. They are often overstimulated, and at any moment may be flooded with mystical waves of rapture and joy with a sense that every cell of their body is incredibly alive. “So far as the artist is concerned, the unlimited extent of human experience is not so important for him as the depth and intensity with which he experiences things” (Thomas Wolfe). “It is evident that a faith in their vocation, mystical in intensity, sustains poets. There can really be no greater faith than the confidence that one is doing one’s utmost to fulfill one’s high vocation” (Stephen Spender). The creator has to learn to harness that intensity and aim it to producing quality works.

Creators must have a hunger to experience, to feel deeply, to know, to self-disclose, sharing what they have learned, felt, seen, and heard with anyone who is interested. “The meaningful difference intellectually between one painter or writer or one actor or director and another is simply the number of things they are intrigued by in a square yard of their experience and the urgency of their hunger to express them”(David J. Rogers).

Risk-Taking

Nothing Ever Stops by Karin Goeppert

Creative works do not come cheap. In order to produce them, creative people, once as ordinary as dishwater, must reshape themselves and not be afraid to branch out into the insecure, the anxious, and the unknown, risking, daring. For the creator risk-taking is not fool-hardiness. It is essential. On what is a memorable creator’s life based if not taking chances because life is short, time is fleeting, and an art that burns inside the artist must be expressed or it will extinguish into nothing. Can you feel it: that hunch igniting your spirit that there is a passion there that has appeared in your writer’s, painter’s, or composer’s life that must be pursued to its conclusion no matter the cost to your time, personal life, or peace of mind? Picasso said that “one must act in painting, as in life, directly.”

Identifying Creativity

How can you tell if you are creative? The pursuit of ways to identify creative people has led to scores of tests. But it has not been possible to demonstrate that creativity tests are valid. “High scores on a creativity test do not signal that one is necessarily creative in one’s actual vocation or avocation: (Howard Gardner). The answer is in the work: Is it original? Does it have a use? Do your artistic peers and the public agree that it is creative? If so, it is creative and having produced it, so are you.

Life of Creators

Ferns and leaves on white on green background

Hasenheide by Karin Goeppert

Generally, creators’ childhoods have more impact on their creativity than any other period of their lives. “Early in life, the creator generally discovers an area or object of interest that is consuming” (Howard Gardner). Author John Updike said that nothing that happens to you after the age of twenty is worth writing about. If you knew in childhood what you loved doing and were relatively sure what you would be when you grew up, you were more likely than most people to be creative as an adult.

The creator’s life, being hard, is not suited to everyone. To succeed you have to be an exception from the norm. To become highly skilled in creative works takes many years of hard work that only a minority of people are equipped for. “The sheer labor of preparing technically for creative work, consciously acquiring the requisite knowledge of a medium and skill in its use, is extensive and arduous even to repel many from achievement” (Brewster Ghiselin). “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon one can never resist or understand” (George Orwell).

To live the life of an artist appeals to millions of people, many envious of artists who they think lead “glamorous, exciting” lives. But that life is especially difficult in ways that other lives are not. “The artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts…There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire” (Carl Gustave Jung).

To accomplish something noteworthy in art requires that you sacrifice at least one other important activity, person, or goal. The hard and fast rule is: to get, you must give up. “A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life” (Carl Gustav Jung). The artist must take time and think very carefully and decide what he/she is willing to give up. What shall it be–this or that?

Influences on Creative Output

Harbinger by Karin Goeppert

Memory is the most significant key to the creator’s gifts. “The poet above all else is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can re-live again and again as though with all their original freshness…There is nothing we imagine which we do not already know… And our ability to imagine is our ability to remember what we have already experienced and to apply it to some different situation” (Stephen Spender). All creators in any of the arts and sciences possess this kind of memory.

Creative works are the products of the whole person: intelligence and courage, talents and commitments, and unceasing energy: “It is not what the artist does that counts, but what he is…What interests me is the uneasiness of Cezanne, the real teaching of Cezanne, the torment of van Gogh, that is to say the drama of the man” (Pablo Picasso). “I don’t care who the artist is, if you study him deeply, sincerely, detachedly, you will find that he and his work are one” (Henry Miller).

Creative Vision

Many artistic creations are a result of the creator playing with new possibilities that disregard and shatter society’s sometimes restrictive rules of decorum, conformity, and political correctness. Doing that may lead to a kind of liberation: Novelist Henry Miller wrote, “The world would only begin to get something of value from me the moment I stopped being a serious member of society and became…myself.”

The creator must never sacrifice his or her own vision, or water it down for the sake of acceptance, whatever the opposition to it or how out of the ordinary it may be, and must never be intimidated by anyone, or live in fear of anything for even a moment.

leaves and flowers reflected on aqua water

Beneath the Surface by Karin Goeppert

The artist whose beautiful work is featured in this post is Karin Goeppert (www.karingoeppert.com). She says, “Life is a largely subjective experience; but that subjective experience is my bridge to the objective world. And it’s this synthesis of the two that I am trying to capture.” She says of her inspiration and process: “I love experimenting and want to give my works an individual expression. Most of my works are abstracted from nature but I also do non-objective paintings. I am inspired by the beauty and power of natural phenomena, the mystery of nature, its colors and forms. Every painting is a one-of-a-kind work in which I try to combine feeling and thought.”

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

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Filed under Artists, Creativity, Creativity Self-Improvement, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Inner Skills, Life of Creators, Memory, Persistence, Quotations

Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, self-confidence, taking risks, talent, Writing

October 3, 2017 · 1:02 pm

More Inspiration and Information for Creative People

Part 4 in a Series

The Perfect Imperfections of Creative People

In a survey of the most desirable occupation for a mate “poet” and “novelist” scored near the top. If you’re a poet or novelist yourself I can just see you now. You’re stifling a knowing chuckle and asking, “Did the respondents have the remotest idea what might be in store for them if in fact their mate had either of those careers–or was a painter, sculptor, dancer, composer, violinist, etc? Or were they expressing some romantic fantasy picked up from books and movies? Would it be a blissful and fulfilling match made in heaven or would it be full of turmoil and misunderstanding? Would it be any different than having a less artistically-bent man or woman partner? When all was said and done, would it be worth it?”

I’ve known creative people all my life–grew up in a family of sensitive, fiery Welsh musical people–and for the last fifty years of it have been spending time with writers, painters, and poets in particular, and reading the life stories of the most eminent creators ever to kick up dust on this earth and of their almost miraculous achievements and analyses of their inner psychological workings. This blog puts me in contact with thousands of them in 172 countries.

The end result is that to me artists are the most enthralling, most complicated, gall-darndest, stupefying, generally frustrating, and when in their brooding dark nasty moods the most demanding, maddening, impossible yet endearing individuals on this globe–in short, immensely fascinating, highly-productive, beautiful, focused, exasperating beings. Though they are often no more possible to understand than I can understand the mystery I call myself, and often torture to live with. Rascals like Dylan Thomas, Vincent van Gogh, or Jackson Pollack: there’s just, well, something irresistible about them.

In my most visited blog post–“The Characteristics of Creative People: What We Learn from Writers, Artists, Dancers, Musicians, and Actors”–I laid out just that, the characteristics of people who do creative things that conspire to make them able to do those things. I said creative people possess extraordinary energy and a compulsion to work, are willing to sacrifice almost everything else for their art with no hesitations, can produce tremendous volumes of work, value authenticity, integrity, and sincerity, are oriented toward the fullest development of their creative potentials, are resilient and able to overcome obstacles and to persevere, must have the ability to attract and hold an audience, are more self-confident, bold, and daring than the vast majority of people, and so on

I want to fill out the picture of these original, gifted, talented people who contribute so many ideas and such beauty and creative feats with a description of artists’ characteristics many people consider flaws, imperfections, but which I think if they are imperfections are perfect imperfections that in some convoluted upside down, day is night, night is day way also equip them for the artist’s unusual life.

Artists–creative people of all sorts–are often indifferent to social “rules” and values, and have far less respect for people in authority than the people around them. The artist’s main motivation I think is to be left alone. He craves the freedom to express himself, to experiment, to blunder, to go this way and that without rhyme or reason, and rules and external authority hold him back. Artists are often rebellious and uncooperative for the same reason, finding it extremely difficult and painful to do things they really don’t want to do simply because another human being says they should do it, no matter who he or she may be.

They are careless, disorderly, absentminded, forgetful, sloppy with details and matters they consider unimportant though their partner and their teachers and editors and such may consider them extremely important, and there may be conflicts. In a study comparing experienced writers with novices it was found that experienced writers forget what they have just written almost immediately after finishing a piece while novices remember their pieces in detail. Probably like every writer reading this I’ve had the experience many times of finding in computer files or drawers completely finished, refined, polished pieces–even finished novels–I wrote and completely forgot about. My wife-editor will often say, “Remember that thing you wrote about….” And I’ll say, “Oh yah, I forgot about that.” To the artist to say the work is DONE means that his job of doing the creative work–the fun stuff– is done, the fun is over; let someone else worry about the middling details.

They may be argumentative, cynical, and sarcastic, “too” direct–and tactless and intolerant. Sensitive to their every mood, and every shade of their moods, they are often overly emotional and temperamental, and easily hurt and quick to anger. Aware at every moment of what they are feeling and what they are thinking, they are self-absorbed in ways other people cannot fathom. Bundles of energy, their bodies and minds are perpetually active–over-active, electrically-charged in a way that a partner may not be prepared for or know how to respond to.

The Latin sine qua non means literally “without which, not.” It means the essential, crucial, and indispensable ingredient without which something would not be possible. I think that without their imperfections artists could not be artists any more than they could be artists without their positive creative characteristics. In other words, their imperfections are–for them–perfect.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on 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 artists and writers, Creativity, Dylan Thomas, imperfections, perfection, Salvador Dali, talent, Vincent van Gogh

July 11, 2017 · 11:40 am

Inspiration and Information for People in the Arts: Parts 2 and 3

PART TWO

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMALL ART AND GREAT ART

“The great art includes much that the small art excludes: humor, pain, and evil.” (Oscar W. Firkins)
“Great art is either easy or impossible.” (George Bernard Shaw)
Indifference to the response of an audience “is a necessary trait of all artists who have something new to say.” (Art critic Roger Fry)
“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” (Jonathan Swift)
“Every great and original writer…must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBE TO DESCRIBE THE COMPLETE, COMPLEX STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS AN EXPERT ARTIST HAS ACQUIRED;

“Mastering accumulated knowledge, gathering new facts, observing, exploring, experimenting, developing technique and skill, sensibility, and discrimination…The sheer labor of preparing technically for creative work, consciously acquiring the requisite knowledge of a medium and skills in its use, is extensive and enough to repel many from achievement.” (Brewster Ghiselin)
“Every artist was first an amateur.” (R.W. Emerson)
“When a painting is finished, it is like a new-born child. The artist himself must have time for understanding it.” (Henri Matisse)

THE VALUE IN ALL ARTS OF SUCCINCTNESS, INCLUDING ONLY WHAT IS ESSENTIAL

“In art economy is always beauty.” (Henry James)
“The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.” (Ernest Hemingway)
“A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.” (Henry David Thoreau)

ARTISTS ARE BY NATURE INDEPENDENT, RESTLESS, AND CONFIDENT OF THEIR TALENT

“The artist must do the launching of his own career. He has to prove what he can do for himself.” (Vladimir Horowitz)
“I have never known a poet who did not think himself super-excellent.” (Cicero)
“How few writers can prostitute their powers. They are always implying, ‘I am capable of higher things”.” (Edward Morgan Forster)
The process of creativity is “characterized…by restlessness, and creative people often move on to other projects just when the world is beginning to catch on to what they have done.” (Jane Piirto)
“The experience of most artists is that the quality of their production is in keeping with the intensity of their wish.” (Abbe Dimnet)
“Writing is a compulsive and delectable thing.” (Henry Miller)

MOST ARTISTS HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR

When a young man approached him and said, “May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?” James Joyce said, “No, it’s done a lot of other things too.” (James Sutherland)

HOW ART WORKS: THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST

“Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.” (Alfred North Whitehead)
“Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.” (Arthur Symons)
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.” (R.W. Emerson)
“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” (James Joyce)
“The work of art is complete only as it works in the experience of others than the one who created it.” (John Dewey)
“The chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full, rich complex matter to deal with.” (Walter Pater)
“A man’s (writer’s) works often describe his longings or temptations and almost never his own true story.” (Albert Camus)

PART THREE

ART WHOLLY TAKES OVER THE DEVOTED ARTIST

“The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.” (W.B. Yeats)
“What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.” (Marcel Proust)
“Many excellent writers, very many painters, and most musicians are so tedious on any subject but their own.” (Arthur Symons)
“I do not believe there lives the Southern writer who can say without lying that writing is any fun to him.” (William Faulkner)
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” (John Ruskin)

OFTEN ARTISTS DON’T THINK HIGHLY OF THEIR CRITICS

“You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.” (Benjamin Disraeli) But when T.S. Eliot, an editor himself for a time, was asked if he agreed that most editors are failed writers he said, “Perhaps, but so are most writers.” (I.A. Richards)
“Some critics haven’t had a new idea since they were undergraduates.”(Saul Bellow)
“I am convinced that the spontaneous judgment of the public is always more authentic than the opinion of those who set themselves up to be judges of works of art.” (Igor Stravinsky)
“A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate it to the world.” (Joseph Addison)

THE ARTIST WORKS HARD, BUT COULD WORK HARDER

“Genius has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble.” (Samuel Butler)
“If you wish to be a writer, write.” (Epictetus)
“Nine out of ten writers, I am sure, could write more. I think they should and, if they did, they would find their work improving even beyond their own, their agent’s, and their editor’s highest hopes.” (John Creasey)

ARTISTS ARE SENSITIVE ABOUT EVEN THE SMALLEST THINGS

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” (Oscar Wilde)
At tea once, novelist Ronald Firbank said to poet Siegfried Sassoon, “I adore italics, don’t you?”

ARTISTS ARE INDEBTED TO THE WORK OF OTHER ARTISTS

“Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available to his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from.” (Ernest Hemingway)
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” (Albert Einstein)

AMONG THE INSPIRATION AND INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE IN THE ARTS IS THE UNVERSAL TRUTH THAT CRAFT SHOULD BE SUBTLE AND NEVER DRAW ATTENTION TO ITSELF IN A WORK

“Art lies in concealing art.” (Ovid)

ARTISTS MUST SACRIFICE

“To follow an art you’ve got to give something up.” (Katherine Anne Porter)
“Tolerate nothing around you which is not useful to you or which you do not find beautiful.” (John Ruskin)

ARTISTIC LICENSE

“Poets have a license to lie.” (Pliny the Younger)

ART BENEFITS FROM PATIENCE: DON’T BE IN SUCH A HURRY

“Art done least rapidly, art most cherishes.” (Robert Browning)

WRITING IS NO GOOD WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE

“The reason that so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.” (Walter Bagehot)
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is unread.” (Oscar Wilde)
“All our words from loose using have lost theirs edge.” (Ernest Hemingway)
“The literary artist is of necessity a scholar.” (Walter Pater)

STAY AN ARTIST AS LONG AS YOU LIVE

“Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” (Pablo Picasso)

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

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Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, motivation, painters, talent, Writing

January 5, 2017 · 5:33 pm

Devotion to a Particular Creative Subject Matter

The work of two good blog friends of mine, artists Michelle Endersby and Janet Weight Reed, fascinates me. Michelle paints roses, lovely roses, different varieties of roses, every color of rose, and travels her native Australia and elsewhere to study roses, always searching for a new rose to paint. Then she paints them and then they appear on her blog and in homes and galleries for us to enjoy. My English blog friend Janet paints masterful landscapes, portraits, and bright, colorful hummingbirds, and it’s apparent to me that she studies hummingbirds—how they fly, how they flutter, how they cling to trees. She is a wonderful colorist, and her colors you don’t forget. Every rose and hummingbird they paint is different and unique. I have to realize that when they look at roses and hummingbirds, they are seeing much more than I am able to see.

Ingrid Bergman Rose by Michelle Endersby

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Hummingbird by Janet Weight Reed

Painter Julian Levi said, “It seems to me that almost every artist finds some subdivision of nature or experience more congenial to his temperament than any other. To me, it has been the sea…In painting the sea coast I have tried to acquire as much objective knowledge of the subject as I possibly could.” He studied the fishermen, fishing gear, their boats and assorted paraphernalia.

Another artist I know specializes in painting clouds and another paints skies exclusively. American impressionist Mary Cassatt came into her own when she began specializing in the personal lives of women and painting mothers with their children. That’s because the most creative minds are drawn to explore and write or paint about—or take photographs of or make movies about–specific material in one segment of their experience.

They look at something that takes their fancy and feel an excitement within them, a yearning, a hunch, a hard to define but easy to recognize intuition that there is something there in that familiar subject that’s worth pursuing further. They then work with a devotion to that specific sort of material, possibly for their entire careers. It is their most creative world, their signature, what we know them by.

It is not a random choice, but a discriminating, highly selective instinct, a particular order of things that has an outstanding appeal to that particular creative woman or man. Ernest Hemingway and before him American novelist Stephen Crane were drawn to writing about men under extreme pressure such as warfare and shipwrecks where the best way out was through having courage. Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner wrote a fictionalized version of his home town. Like me, many writers write mainly about growing up.

Speaking of creative people, T.S Eliot said, “We all have to choose whatever subject matter allows us the most powerful and most secret release; and that is a personal affair.” Literary critic Gilbert Murray wrote, “It seems to me that the writers who have the power of revelation are just those who, in some particular part of life, have seen or felt considerably more than the average run of intelligent beings.” I think the great difference intellectually between one painter or writer or one actor or director and another is simply the number of things they can see and feel in a square yard of their particular world of creation.

Creative people create because what they create and the act of creating it please them. Unless they please themselves, they will please no one. They function best when, while at work, they are thinking of nobody’s liking and standards but their own: “I alone here, on my inch of earth, paint this thing for my own sole joy, and according to my own sole mind. So I should paint it, if no other human being existed but myself…Thus I must do it, for thus I see it, and thus I like it” (John Ruskin).

They are at their best when they are immersed in their own individual creative segment of the world—Michelle with her roses, Janet with hummingbirds, Mary Cassatt with her women and their children, Hemingway and Crane with men of courage, Faulkner walking the streets of Oxford, Mississippi.

In what “subdivision of nature or experience” do you see more and feel more and are more at home and have more knowledge than other people? What subject allows you your most powerful creative release? Once you’ve defined it and have the voice to express it, then you become immersed in it and its details and you make it your own.

Then you tell us all about it and we find pleasure in it too.

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Filed under Artists, Creativity, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, Hemingway, Janet Weight Reed, John Ruskin, Julian Levi, Mary Cassatt, Michelle Endersby, painters, Steven Crane, talent, talent development, William Faulkner, Writing

March 18, 2016 · 4:40 pm

Why Do Creative People Write Blogs?

Until I started writing a blog I’d never read one. And one thing that surprised me right away was how so many talented, creative people writing them were talking so freely, so honestly, and so candidly—so confidentially–about their work in progress. And knowing that hardly anyone does anything without expecting something in return, I wondered why they were doing that. What were they gaining? And were they losing something by doing it as I had been led to believe a creator who did that would? Now I can see that they are gaining something of immeasurable benefit.

I cannot imagine myself showing work in progress I’m serious about or discussing it with anyone until I think it’s finished and that I’ve done the best I can. To get that feeling about the work I’m serious about such as a book or a literary sketch, I might make major changes in it 70 or 75 times before anyone else knows about it. When I was writing what was to become my most popular book, an award-winning poet/professor of literature friend and I would get together every two or three weeks and talk intensely for hours about writers and writing (and jazz, and the price of apples—that kind of thing–etc.).

And for two years I never once mentioned the book I was spending 18 or 20 hours a day writing. I told him about it when I gave him the date it would be hitting the book stores. He said “What the hell?” I didn’t show him. I didn’t show my wife. I didn’t show other friends. I didn’t show anyone because I didn’t want to hear anything that might affect my vision of the work, my plans for it, or my enthusiasm for it. And I believed that if you talked about your work in progress you’d dissipate the drive and energy you should be using to write it. I was very happy with my editor who didn’t give me a word of advice except to say, “An introduction would be a good idea,” and then as I turned chapters in said simply, “It’s really very good.”

But once the work in my mind is done I want to hear the frankest and most direct criticism, the kind a creator gains the most from—if it’s from someone who knows what they’re talking about. A teacher in college said to me, “A good friend is one who’ll kick you in the teeth constructively” and that has always stayed with me. Without adequate feedback, effective learning is impossible and performance improvements only minimal, even for the most highly gifted artists or writers.

You need to have a good sense of your strengths and weaknesses as a creator. Often the best route to that kind of self-understanding is via constructive feedback and help from other people who won’t know about you unless you tell them the way bloggers tell you, “Here I am in England, Russia, Paraguay, Australia, Oman, etc., and I’m working hard.”

Getting help, support, and feedback is a major strategy for reaching creative excellence. Without any doubt at all, performance feedback, support, high motivation, and writing success go hand in hand despite what anyone says to the contrary. Being deprived of support and positive feedback is a big reason why so many thousands of creators give up their craft altogether and turn to other pursuits, hoping to find fulfillment there. And maybe finding it, maybe not.

I suppose I was thinking along the lines of William Faulkner who said, “The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity.” Or Truman Capote who said, “I never show anybody a single thing I write…I write it and finish it and this is the way it’s going to be.” Or Hans Koning, author of 40 books who wrote, “You don’t worry about what editors or reviewers may like or not like. (That comes afterward.) You don’t write…in order to get an independent judgment. Your own judgment is independent. You don’t accept any suggested changes except where you made a factual or grammatical mistake. My motto has been through all these years: Not a comma.” (And I once had an editor who told me she was so depressed because she’d argued for an hour with a writer about a comma.)

Ernest Hemingway believed talking about your work was bad luck and that writers should work in disciplined isolation, and “should see each other only after their work is done, and not too often then.” Otherwise they become “like writers in New York.” He thought that giving a public reading of your work in progress was “the lowest thing a writer can do” and was “dangerous” for the writer. If people liked the writing and said, “It’s great Ernest,” he would think, “If these bastards like it what is wrong with it?” “It made me feel sick for people to talk about my writing to my face.”

When I ask myself why I’m so private about my work until in my mind it’s finished (at that point I’d like every person on earth to read it) my theory is it’s because growing up we did not talk openly about personal things that were important to us and were taught not to blow our own horn, not to be showy in any way, and that has had a lasting effect on me. Not showing off is a value I think of all born and bred bona fide American Middle Westerners. Even now when I find myself showing off in my writing I say to myself, “Cut it out.”

I’ve often thought about there being so many women artist and writer bloggers and so few men and such strong relationships between the women. It’s kind of lonely for me. But I sit back and read what creative women say to each other and just as often have thought, “There’s something very special, very wonderful going on. Look how they understand each other, how they comprehend each other’s meanings, the nuances and subtleties. And how they raise each others’ confidence.”

When I look at the comments such forthright writer and artist bloggers receive about their experiences with their works in progress, what strikes me is that what they receive mainly is not technical information. There’s very little discussion of that at all, or it’s superficial—a few positive words. No, they talk about what they’re going through—their difficulties, successes, failures, setbacks, fears, and hopes, the balance they’re trying so hard to strike between their creative life and their family and work lives. And that’s exactly what readers want more than anything to hear about and what they respond to.

Before I’d thought of writing a blog and I don’t think knew what a blog was, my son Eli, a writer himself, told me I should write one. “Me?” I said. And he said, “Yes.” He said I was writing every day for hours and producing volumes of work, and that I should share it with other people and receive feedback from them.

How I love now to wake in the morning and still drowsy-eyed go upstairs to my work room, and there on the screen see that I’d been visited overnight by viewers from the world’s capitals and desert villages, remote South Sea and Atlantic islands, and African mountain kingdoms accessible only by horseback–Lesotho, Sri Lanka, Somalia–and to hear from them that they like what I’m doing and look forward to it. What a joy to hear from bloggers from everywhere who’ve become my friends, whose work I admire, to hear the stories of the lives they’re leading and to care about them and about hard they’re trying and to think about them.

What honest bloggers receive in return for their blogging is what every creative person hungers for—companionship, friendship, kindness, generosity, and words of blessed encouragement. To “discourage” someone is to steal their courage away from them, but to “encourage” them is to give them courage. When we’re deeply discouraged –and that is so often in the arts–our courage abandons us and one way or another we must retrieve it or we will perish creatively. The main thing a writer or artist–or actor or dancer–has to overcome is getting discouraged.

Even the smallest encouragement during difficult times bolsters a person’s spirits. Someone, anyone, saying, “Just hang in there, my friend, a little longer.”

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

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Filed under Actors and Directors, Artistic Perfection, Artistic Relationships, Artists, Becoming an Artist, Bloggng, Creativity Self-Improvement, Dancers, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Encouragement, Feedback, Goals and Purposes, Inner Skills, Literature, Motivation, Rituals and Habits, Self-Confidence, The Writer's Path, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, energy, facing difficulties, fulfillment, goals, Hans Koning, Hemingway, motivation, painters, success, talent, talent development, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Writing

January 14, 2016 · 7:15 pm

Models for Peak Creative Performance

An important way to reach peak creative performance, the ultimate goal of all creators, or peak performance in riveting or cooking or anything else is by observing models—highly skilled people in the field whose work you admire, for example. For me the model for my writing without doubt is Ernest Hemingway’s writing, as it’s been for many thousands of others. He’s been called the most influential writer across the world with the most influential style in the last hundred years. I’ve read and mulled over his novel The Sun Also Rises and the short story “Indian Camp” (his best story) probably twenty times. And read many biographies and scrutinized studies of his writing.

I’ve a fondness for Hemingway’s writing that goes back to my childhood. He was born and grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where my parents and their families also lived and where I spent many hours over the years. He was on the school newspaper at Oak Park High. My great uncle was on the paper too and was his best friend. Hemingway once said my uncle was a better writer. I asked my uncle if he was, and he blushed and said, “I don’t know. Ernie was damned good.” When I was in high school I told my friends one day Scribner’s, Hemingway’s publisher, would publish a book by me. I wrote a book that a number of publishers bid on. I picked Scribner’s.

Sunset Fantasy by Diana Voyajolu

In the past I’ve written about artists’ and writers’ preoccupation with style and technique—a characteristic of most of them. I look at pieces I write and if you were curious and asked I could tell you, “See the minimal use of adjectives and adverbs. I learned that from Hemingway.” “Everything understated, nothing exaggerated, a calm style—that’s Hemingway.” And the attention to detail and my need to tell the truth. (Hemingway’s “A writer must always tell the truth.”) The simple sentences. Language pared down. A serviceable vocabulary. Never showing off. And my emphasis on high productivity. (Hemingway’s “Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn’t writing, doesn’t.”)

When you observe a model with high standards like perfectionist Hemingway, you’re more inclined to adopt high standards yourself. It’s contagious. Modeling yourself after a successful writer or artist (pianist, ballet dancer, architect, etc.) enhances your self-confidence, which increases your persistence, which positively affects your achievements. It makes it more likely that the skills they possess will be skills you come to possess and you’ll be surer of yourself. You can see how important models can be, how related to a creator’s success they can be.

Most of what you and I have learned we’ve learned from models– observing them, reading about them, or hearing about them from parents, teachers, or peers. We copy and emulate them. When you feel you can perform a skill you’ll be more motivated to succeed, and an important way to internalize a skill and your approach to writing—the strategies you’ll use–is by observing how models performed tasks you’re interested in and comparing yourself to those models. Making changes, improving, learning.

When you learn how a writer, or painter, or actor succeeded in a difficult situation, you’re more likely to believe you can do the same. Often classes or workshops in the arts are taught by more experienced artists who discuss how they solve problems students are facing. Effective models reveal the strategies they use, provide detail, answer your questions, and clarify issues.

Who would you most like to be influenced by?

Who have you been most influenced by (Who’s your Hemingway?)

Who inspires you most? Whose work do you admire?

Who would you most like to be like?

What qualities do they (did they) have that you would like to have too?

Observing what’s called a mastery model is observing someone who has mastered the skill you’re interested in acquiring, like Hemingway for me, and someone for you. Mastery models demonstrate a high level of both skill and confidence: “I’m good at this. It used to be hard for me, but now it’s easy.” Notice how persistent the model is or was as he or she solves problems. That’ll affect your persistence.

By “observing” a model I don’t necessarily mean sitting in the same room and watching, though a lot can be learned that way. You can “observe” by reading or hearing about how a writer or artist solved a problem you’re facing or learned a skill.

ernest-hemingway-401493_640 Mastery models in your life should discuss ways in which their confidence in themselves helped them to achieve their desired goals, and their errors and failures they had before eventually performing at a mastery level, and the work they put in to reach success. Ideally, the mastery model will be a warm, enthusiastic, and encouraging person who is trying to help someone else learn new behaviors after possible years doing things in a different, less productive way.

Observing a peer model is different. It’s watching someone who is at about the same skill level as you and who doesn’t perform the skill as expertly as the mastery model. He has difficulties and makes mistakes and has to correct them while you compare yourself with the model and learn from those difficulties and mistakes. Someone in your artists’ or writers’ group, for example.

“Think aloud” strategies involve the model describing thoughts and thought processes aloud while performing a task you’re interested in: “The reason I did that is because I think you should start everything with a strong, simple declarative sentence.” Ask the model about particular problems: “How did you handle that? What did you do first; then what did you do? What were you thinking? What decisions were you making?”

To get best results tell the model you’re asking for help:

“Say whatever’s on your mind. Don’t hold back hunches, guesses, images, and wild ideas.”

“Speak as continuously as possible.”

“Don’t worry about complete sentences and being eloquent.”

“Just say what you’re thinking and don’t think for a while and then describe your thoughts.” (D.N. Perkins, The Mind’s Best Work, p 33)

Using models will pay dividends. Simply put: people who study models perform better than “no-model” people.

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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Tagged as artists and writers, Creativity, goals, models, motivation, painters, personal stories, self-confidence, self-improvement, success, talent, talent development, Writing

December 18, 2015 · 4:36 pm

Writing Routines and Rituals

The main goal of all creative people is to be productive: to produce works. Their work schedule and environment are designed to facilitate production because production is their reason for being. Everything—all your education and training, habits, dreams and hopes, and all your routines and rituals are aimed at that one central goal: getting good work out; being able to produce. If a writer or artist is being productive she’s happy. If she’s not, she’s unhappy.

I rise fully awake, my mind sharp, at 4:00 A.M. Then I turn on music and putter around in the kitchen. I’m purposely delaying starting to work so ideas will start germinating, straightening themselves out, and working themselves to my consciousness. Waking or sleeping, night or day, conscious or unconscious, writers’ and artists’ minds continue without stop to produce ideas relevant to their work.

I have a bowl of Cheerios and make my wife’s breakfast. In the winter I go out and shovel snow. (This is, after all, Chicago.) I may throw a snowball at my wife and I may load or empty the dishwasher and put in a load of laundry in the basement. I avoid knowing anything about the news, bills, problems, troubles, and other practical matters that are unrelated to my work. I kiss my wife good-bye as she goes off to work or wherever she’s going.

In my mid-twenties I was hired by a university think tank of psychologists and economists to rewrite for publication a book from a draft they had written. My main job was to translate all the pretentious academic mumbo-jumbo of their version into clear concepts and language the general reader would have no problem understanding. One day I was at the institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my feet up on a window sill, gazing out at ducks on a pond. I was paying no attention to the stacks of books, research periodicals, and reams of data surrounding me. The director of the institute poked his head in and said, nervously, “When are you going to get started, Dave? We’ve got to get the thing to the printer.” And I said, “I’ve already started. I’m working right now.” What I meant was that I was deep in what I call “Pre-Compositional Lilt.” It’s a very pleasant mental aimlessness—a lilting–that most creative people need to engage in before they tackle a project—a ritualistic, nebulous, uncertain, dream state.

In the article “Write Before Writing” Pulitzer Prize author Donald M. Murray is really talking about my lilt, and my lilt affects artists and writers as well as inventors and scientists—creators generally. He says that resistance to writing is not something to be avoided, but “is one of the great natural forces of nature. It may be called The Law of Delay: that writing which may be delayed, will be. Dawdling, going on errands, sharpening well-pointed pencils, rearranging the writing space, wandering to libraries and book stores, going for walks, and driving around serve a purpose.” Murray adds, “Teachers and writers too often consider resistance to writing evil when in fact it is necessary…There must be time for the seed of an idea to be nurtured in the mind.” Murray says writers who delay starting are trying not to think about what they are going to write so they can think subconsciously about it first. Most writers are strong believers in putting their subconscious to work.

I go upstairs to my work room and listen to You Tube for a few songs—always the same songs, same performers—while shuffling mindlessly through my piles of notes, and checking the ten-day weather forecast, and last night’s scores, also drinking a large mug of coffee that isn’t too strong. I try never to write for an hour after eating. I don’t want brain oxygen that I save for writing to be worried about digestion.

It’s commonplace for creative people to nap at least once during the day, sometimes more, and that’s highly recommended by psychologists who study creative achievement. Who was more creative than Thomas Edison (1,093 patents)? And he alternated work and naps throughout the day. He napped under a table in his lab. I take a short nap on the living room couch. All the while everything else is going on I know my mind is busy toying with a problem I set for it the night before, or a minutes before, such as, “How will I organize the section on…” or “Should I cut the last paragraph as so-and-so suggests?” Ideally writers and artists work in the same place every day, a place that is exclusively for work.

I’m now in my element, fully confident, contented, primed and ready to write. Then I plunge into work and follow Ernest Hemingway’s advice and review what I wrote the day before, editing a little, expanding, embellishing a little—a word here, a phrase there–till I get a feel for the rhythms of written words, am able to fit myself into the narrative flow, and stimulate the right vocabulary. I’ve transitioned and am now in a goal-focused state. This is when—when the actual work begins—that you mustn’t allow the Law of Delay to be in effect any longer. What do you have when the Law of Delay becomes a habit? Writers who make a career of delay, whose promise will not be fulfilled, whose talent goes to waste, whose books go unwritten.

I take no phone calls during the day unless from a member of my immediate family, make only essential calls (as to my wife at noon), and generally skip lunch or have a small container of yogurt. If I’m being very productive—“making good progress” in my lingo–I can easily feel an excitement which can get out of control and make me lose focus and write sloppily. I try never to be so relaxed that my writing isn’t crisp, but aim for a degree of alert tension.

To “settle down” from an excited state I may take time out to whip up a salad for dinner later and tell myself, “No more coffee today.” And I may do deep abdominal relaxation breathing. Broadway composer Cole Porter had an alarm clock rigged to ring every fifty minutes when he was composing. Then he took a ten minute break. William Faulkner wrote rapidly at top speed as fast as he could type for a half hour or so and then would relax for perhaps another half hour, talking or reading, and return again and type at the same breakneck speed, sometimes picking up in mid-sentence and continuing without any hesitation. I may work the entire day without a break except the bathroom.

I try never, never to do any writing after 4:00 p.m., and certainly don’t do any after six, unless a deadline tells me I have to, for if I did, words, ideas, and plans would fly through my mind like missiles and I would not—would not, absolutely would not—would not be able to sleep that night. Tell me, is it possible to be a writer without also being an insomniac?

Between four and five is “reading time,” which is essential—a hunger. The kind of reading depends on the reason for my reading: non-fiction research reading involves close concentration and taking extensive notes. For best results I must sit at the dining room table (in a particular place at the table) with notebooks and black ink Pilot G-2 07 pens. Fiction reading can be done in an easy chair or on the couch while a baseball or hockey game is played on the television screen. I read fiction more for its style than its content.

Then my wife appears and asks, “How was your day? Were you productive?”

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Filed under Artists, Creativity Self-Improvement, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Goals and Purposes, Motivation, Rituals and Habits, The Writer's Path, Work Production, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, Cole Porter, diaphragmatic breathing, fulfillment, goals, motivation, naps, painters, Pre-Compositional Lilt, success, talent, Thomas Edison, William Faulkner, Writing

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