Justine Musk

the art of becoming a (badass creative) thought leader

2012-02-04T01:24:48Z

I used to watch Project Runway (back in the days when I still watched TV) and the judges were often talking about whether or not the aspiring designers had a point of view.

At the time, I didn’t get it. How could something like clothing have a point of view? It was only when I realized that I was interested in style rather than fashion that I made the connection.

Great personal style is an expression of who you are, so distinct and singular that it might even make you an icon (Kate Moss). It becomes a statement of identity. You move beyond expressing yourself to ideas of the self, inspiring others to pick up those ideas to express that same sense of identity.

That same point-of-view.

We talk about voice a lot. So-and-so has a great voice. You need to find your voice. She needs to get her voice ‘out there’ (wherever ‘there’ is). The best writers have voices so distinct that you can not only recognize them at a thousand yards, you can recognize pale imitations of them.

Voice is about style of expression, but it’s also about the ideas that shape that expression. Readers then take that ‘voice’ and construct a sense of identity around it. When you think of Hemingway or Stephen King or Anne Lamott (or Picasso or Jackson Pollack or Mick Jagger or Adele or Donna Karan or Steve Jobs, to take examples from other creative fields) you get a strong sense of the person as well as the work. Because although the person isn’t the work, the work (at least of a matured artist) is the person: an identity expressed through a particular point of view.

(It’s why we flinch at criticism, or sabotage ourselves to avoid it altogether. We take an attack on our work as a direct attack on us, at least until we train ourselves to think differently.)

I like to say that “style is the story you tell about yourself to the world”. Your ‘voice’ also tells a story. And every great story has a strong point of view.

Global business guru Paul Arden talks about “the conventional or popular” point of view versus the “small or personal point of view.”

Advances in any field are built upon people with the small or personal point of view.

So this is what we talk about when we talk about thought leadership, whether it’s in art or literature or pop music or business or blogging. Arden points out that “having an original point of view or angle is a novelty.”

People are like sheep: they follow the leader. It is the leader who has a point of view about which way they should go….

Having the courage to stand up for it in the face of public opinion is what makes you a winner.

It’s why telling your story isn’t (just) an exercise in narcissism, but a political act. It’s the overriding point of view that shapes the culture. It not only sets policy but influences the way we talk and think about different groups of people as well as ourselves.

(For example, a woman who marries or divorces a wealthy man is assumed to be a golddigger long before the man is considered to be abusive or an addict or maybe just an asshole, to take the examples of ex-wives like Robin Givens and Denise Richards and how they were treated in the media before revelations of Mike Tyson and Charlie Sheen came to light years later. If this culture was told from a woman’s point of view, would the ‘golddigger’ story be the default cultural narrative, the kneejerk story that we like to tell? And what does that narrative say about the way we think about women? But I digress.)

A strong and original point of view is what sets you apart from the masses, which means in today’s overpopulated post-consumer marketplace, where anyone can upload and self-publish, it’s more important than ever to have one.

But if it’s to mean anything to anybody other than yourself (and your mom), it has to connect with an audience in a way that resonates: they have to see themselves in you, so that by aligning themselves with your set of ideas, they’re expressing a key part of their own identity. (I’m going to form a different impression of someone who dresses like Audrey Hepburn from someone who dresses like Lady Gaga, for example.)

Which goes back to the whole leadership thing.

It’s scary to lead. When you’re a leader, you are putting yourself out there. You are hanging part of your very identity on the line. You become a target for all kinds of criticism.

There’s a theory that the fear of public speaking – the most common phobia out there – has its roots in the ancient survival instinct.

If you were out on the plains, and you felt eyes trained on you, chances were it was someone or something with hostile intentions: to kill you or eat you. So it makes a lot of sense, according to that primitive part of the brain, to get the hell off the stage.

So how can you put yourself out there and keep those eyes trained on you in a way that your old brain can tolerate?

I think that’s where purpose comes in.

When you connect yourself to something bigger.

When you shift your focus from your self (and your own self-consciousness) to the ideal that you want to serve, and how you embody or manifest that ideal for other people. When you know the set of ideas that you represent. So when your wrong people attack you (and they will) you recognize that they are attacking what you stand for, not you personally; and you, in turn, are defending what you stand for (or opting out of the argument altogether).

The challenge then becomes identifying what your purpose is, and understanding how it connects to other people.

Your purpose has to be authentic, so that it invokes your intensity and passion and stamina, and rings true to your natural audience. It has to run through the very center of who you are. In that sense, you don’t choose your purpose; your purpose chooses you, and you don’t discover it so much as unearth it from the layers of your past and personality.

(But more on that in a future post.)

I’m reading the book GROW by Jim Stengal, who examined how “ideals power growth and profit at the world’s greatest brands”. His study noted how the ideals that connected with people in a way that inspires fierce brand loyalty – and deep, engaged followings – are

grouped into five very rich and interesting fields…five fields of fundamental human values that improve people’s lives by:

Eliciting Joy: activating experiences of happiness, wonder, and limitless possibility.

Enabling Connection: enhancing the ability of people to connect with one another and the world in meaningful ways

Inspiring Exploration: helping people explore new horizons and new experiences

Evoking Pride: giving people increased confidence, strength, security and vitality

Impacting Society: affecting society broadly, including by challenging the status quo and redefining categories

I’m fascinated by how we can take this stuff from the business idea-space and apply them to what we do, both in our creative work and the voice with which we ‘promote’ it through our ‘platform’ (I hate both those words).

If we can recognize our own specific point of view and the purpose that powers it (and motivates us in the first place).

If we can locate that purpose in one of the fields of “fundamental human values” mentioned above, and understand how that connects us to our right audience.

If we can take that set of ideas – and ideals – and use it to create a ‘platform’ that actually means something, in a way that becomes an organic extension of our work itself.

Our platform, then, becomes a discussion of the ideas that inform our work, which can refine and deepen our own understanding of them – and make us better artists (and entrepreneurs). And our work – whether it’s a novel, an installation piece, or a company — becomes a way of illuminating those ideas/ideals through the emotional experience it creates for other people.

And we become thought leaders in the true sense of the phrase.

In my previous post about the power of introverts (inspired by Susan Cain’s book), I noted how our culture is a story told from an extroverted point of view.

Extroverts throw themselves into events; introverts throw themselves into the meaning-making of those events. It’s why so many introverts grow up to be creators of one kind or another, and so many extroverts go into sales or business (with its emphasis on constant networking).

My point isn’t that one is better than the other (we need both). But extroverts, by their very nature, tend to dominate the conversation (while introverts hang back, observe, and keep their own counsel). This leads to an increasingly lopsided perspective. I see this in social media as much as anything else.

Recently I was at a conference where I sat at a table with four other people. During a break in the seminar, three people started networking with each other while the (cute) guy beside me and I worked on our assignments. When he and I engaged in conversation, we went to the deep stuff – the ideas the seminar was presenting. Then we relaxed into the where-are-you-from and what-do-you-do kind of smalltalk.

Thinking about it afterwards – and having just read Cain’s book – I recognized that encounter as textbook introversion. Cain makes the point that the ‘small talk’ so many introverts claim to hate is an important form of social glue. It allows us to connect with one another. But whereas extroverts tend to open with small talk, and use it to bond with each other — and then move to the deep stuff — introverts do the opposite. Introverts prefer to open with ideas. And then they move to the smalltalk.

Cain also mentions that one out of every three or four people is an introvert, as seemed to be the case at my conference table. Despite the stereotypes (often created by extroverts), you wouldn’t recognize us just by looking. We both know how to present ourselves well and add to the conversation. It was actions rather than appearance that suggested us to be introverts.

So my point is this:

There’s a significant part of the population that bonds over ideas. Because they’re the quiet sort (and the extroverts are not), this might not be readily apparent. Social media may seem to be ruled by small talk, chitchat, nonsense chatter – but your corner of it doesn’t have to be. Like your creative work itself, it can express a strong and purposeful point of view that connects to the value system of other people like you.

And they will be so glad to find you.

If you’re willing to put yourself out there.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that you do.

The world needs your story (even if it doesn’t know it).

And some of us – maybe a lot of us – need you to lead us.

We’re waiting.

badass creatives from around the web

2012-02-03T15:32:49Z

Here’s some people who intrigue and inspire me. They might do the same for you.

Natasha Wescoat

Natasha’s bio describes her as a “self-taught artist who is a force of nature” and I believe it. She’s a savvy artist-entrepreneur I discovered when I was just becoming interested in artist-entrepreneurs.

She not only cut out the middleman and seized control of her destiny, she takes out the elitist vibe that so often infuses the very idea of Art by offering her work at warm, friendly, accessible prices. She reminds me a little of the innovative art dealer Edith Gregor Halpert, subject of the bio THE GIRL WITH THE GALLERY, who believed in art for the people (and was herself a force of nature).

I bought a piece from Natasha as a gift for one of my closest friends after she had her first baby, and it’s possibly my favorite gift I’ve ever given. I like her art – it’s kind of got this dreamy pop art deco primitive thing going on, if you know what I mean (and if you don’t, that’s okay, because I’m not sure I do either).

And I like her, even though I don’t know her and have met her only passingly at a tech thing in LA. I just bought this piece for myself, titled VIRGO, from her Sirens series, because I am one (a Virgo, not a Siren, although sometimes I do try).

Electric Literature

This literary journal is the bomb. And I love their website because it’s fun (‘cause, you know, ‘fun’ and ‘literary journal’ are so often used in the same sentence). They have animations. They have Youtube videos involving gunplay (“Let’s shoot some books.”) They have a blog featuring lines like

It was a reading, a listening, a cartoon-watching event rolled up into one uber-intimate media presentation that made a few people tear up.

These people are smart, literary and cheeky.

I like that.

The Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows Guy

I don’t know who this dude is. I’m not sure I want to know. Some mysterious force compels me to post this here.

See if you can decipher these complex and challenging lyrics.

Kristin McCloy

True story. Many, many years ago – I do not wish to say how many – I read a book called VELOCITY, in which a young woman grieves the loss of her mother and takes up with a biker named Jesse who is not, shall we say, husband material.

I loved this book. I wanted to write one just like it. The sex scenes are elegant and awesome. Then, somehow I lost the novel – and I mean truly lost it – I couldn’t remember the author’s name and couldn’t track it down.

Now and again over the years, I would remember the book and take to the Internet and again fail to find it, until I wondered if I was remembering the title correctly.

Then, only recently, a stranger left a comment on my blog in which she casually mentioned that, many years ago, she came out with this book called VELOCITY. And btw, she’s a fan of the blog. I promptly emailed her because how cool is that? I acquired a used hardcover copy of the stupidly out-of-print VELOCITY and bought her other two books as well (SOME GIRLS and HOLLYWOOD SAVAGE).

So there’s a lesson here, people. I may not know what it is, exactly, but somewhere in here there’s a lesson.

nerve.com

I enjoy Nerve.com — “the center of the Internet for sex, love and culture” — partly because they run pieces like The Third Annual Nerve Awards for Love & Sex on Film. Love and sex and movies. It’s kind of like a holy trinity. Throw in some Belgian chocolate and you’re good.

Abby Kerr and Tara Mohr

There’s a rising wave of smart young online female entrepreneurs, and one of the smartest is ‘brand editor’ Abby Kerr. I discovered Abby’s work through a Google group – her ‘this is what you get when you give me your email address’ newsletter series on niche branding is well-informed and well-written. When I noticed that she was retweeting my blog posts, we made contact.

Tara Sophia Mohr is a poet and Huffington Post blogger who coaches women on how to play big. I like that. She did the talk show circuit when one of her posts – 10 Rules for Brilliant Women, in which she urges women to “clear a path by walking it, boldly” – went viral. In her bio she writes this:

When I was fourteen years old, I listened to my high school English teacher explain that our class would read a variety of books centered around the theme “Coming of Age.” The teacher passed out a list of the books we would read over the course of the year: Black Boy, A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, and others.

I looked at the list and saw: all the books were about boys coming of age. All were written by men. I knew, from my own experience, that the story of girls coming of age was very different from that of boys. I understood we’d only be learning only half the story of “coming of age” if we only read books by men and about boys….

…I [am] following a calling that continues to be at the heart of my work: to restore women’s voices where they are missing, to amplify women’s impact in the world – both for the wellbeing of women and for the wellbeing of our civilization.

I like that too. I’ve been following Tara for a while now, and so when she showed up on Abby Kerr’s blog so Abby could interview her about ‘voice’ – well, hey, two for the price of one. Except it’s free. Very cool.

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler, author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES isn’t afraid of saying the words that you’re not supposed to say in polite company – or, really, at all. Well, fuck that. Having spoken with women all over the world, having created a rehabilitative and educational community in the Congo for female survivors of the worst sexual violence that you can (not) imagine – at a time when no one wanted to speak words like Congo or rape – Eve writes one of the most powerful blog posts I’ve ever encountered, called ‘Over It’. And she uses the word rape. Repeatedly.

….I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it’s their fault or they did something to make it happen.

I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime — the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.

No women, no future, duh.

I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.

I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters — film directors, world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes — while the lives of the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in social and emotional exile.

I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?

You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren’t you standing with us? Why aren’t you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?

I am over years and years of being over rape.

Susannah Conway

If you want to learn how to take cool photographs – so you can use them in your blog, for example – you could do a lot worse than Susannah Conway’s ‘photo meditations’ online course. I’d been eying it – and Susannah’s blog – for months before I finally jumped in.

My favorite part is when Susannah takes us through a weekly slideshow in which she analyzes the photographs that she likes and teaches us why she likes them. She knows her stuff, plus she has that cool British accent that conveys added authority (why is that?).

Susannah interviewed me for her fledgling ‘How I Write’ series, in which I followed the formidable Danielle LaPorte. Since I’m a fangirl of Danielle – her blog was one of the blogs that showed me a way in to blogging – I was, shall we say, pleased.

And finally, I liked Caitlin Flanagan’s piece on Joan Didion that ran in The Atlantic. I have started to suspect that I like reading about Joan Didion more than I like reading Didion herself, and Flanagan has done nothing to disabuse me of this notion:

Women who encountered Joan Didion when they were young received from her a way of being female and being writers that no one else could give them. She was our Hunter Thompson, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem was our Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,” Thompson wrote. “All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better,” Didion wrote. To not understand the way that those two statements would reverberate in the minds of, respectively, young men and young women is to not know very much at all about those types of creatures. Thompson’s work was illustrated by Ralph Steadman’s grotesque ink blots, and early Didion by the ravishing photographs of the mysterious girl-woman: sitting barelegged on a stone balustrade; posing behind the wheel of her yellow Corvette; wearing an elegant silk gown and staring off into space, all alone in a chic living room.

Didion’s genius is that she understands what it is to be a girl on the cusp of womanhood, in that fragile, fleeting, emotional time that she explored in a way no one else ever has.

I love that line “….a way of being female and being writers that no one else could give them.”

It makes me think of Muriel Rukeyser’s line: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

Yes, please. More of that.

the art of being an introvert creative (forced to cope with social media)

2012-01-31T00:57:02Z

I’m giving a workshop on blogging/social media at the Southern California Writer’s Conference in San Diego in February.

I asked people on Facebook if there were particular questions that I should address.

Canadian novelist Adrian Kelly made this point:

….I’d like to hear less about the end of the book, and more about how we still need to make room for the book, for deep, attentive reading and writing, even as we explore the benefits of blogging and social media. Good writing, good reading, takes time and silence and solitude, three things that blogging and social media, used injudiciously, erode.

My first response was, I always take this as a given. And because we tend to project ourselves on the world – we think that other people think like we do (except, of course, when they don’t, which can be so annoying) – I assumed that other people did as well.

Meanwhile, over on his wildly popular blog, Chris Brogan ran a post called 97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform in which he urged people to “keep everything brief” because

We are in a consumption society. People can barely read a tweet.

Well.

I can read a tweet, and I sure as hell know that you can. But Brogan is playing into this extremely familiar idea that we live in an ADD culture, chasing after shiny objects, constantly on the move, so keep your content bite-sized. People can’t pay attention.

Chris Brogan, whom I would tag as an extrovert, and Adrian Kelly, whom I would not, seem to live in different worlds.

(I just flashed on an image of a Brogan vs Kelly smackdown, but no matter.)

Here’s the thing. I do have ADD – I was diagnosed with it as an adult – and I am very capable of long, sustained attention when I am interested in the matter at hand. (ADD isn’t about a failure of attention so much as a failure to modulate it appropriately, which means I’m just as likely to hyper-focus on my Kindle as I am to forget my car keys. Or my car.)

It’s true that I don’t finish reading a lot of the stuff that I start, especially online. I am distractible. But maybe that’s not because of some basic inability. Maybe that’s because a lot of stuff is crap, or starts out strong and then turns into crap. Maybe it loses my attention because it’s no longer worth my attention, which is limited and valuable and, like a flashlight, can only shine in one direction at a time.

Maybe I’m not the only one who feels this way.

What keeps my attention is this:

Meaning.

For all the stuff that flies at us in the course of any given day, all the messages and TV shows and blog posts and movies and news and ads and commercials and Oscar announcements, how much of it is stuff we truly care about? How much of it actually means something?

Not enough.

This, according to author and game designer Jane McGonigal, is why “ reality is trivial” – at least compared with the high stakes, feedback loops and epic questing of computer games. My seven year old son can barely get through his ten minutes of math homework, but if I let him he can sit cross-legged on the floor and play a newly downloaded game on my Asus Transformer for hours.

Jane writes in her book REALITY IS BROKEN (bold italics are mine):

Games make us a part of something bigger and give epic meaning to our actions.

She stresses the word epic, defining it as something “that far surpasses the ordinary, especially in size, scale and intensity.” Epic is awe-inspiring, and awe, according to neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, is “the orgasm of positive emotions.”

Jane writes:

Awe is what we feel when we recognize that we’re in the presence of something bigger than otherselves. It’s closely linked with feelings of spirituality, love, and gratitude – and, more importantly, a desire to serve…

And then she quotes Dacher Keltner, who wrote the book BORN TO BE GOOD:

…It is about finding your place in the larger scheme of things. It is about quieting the press of self-interest. It is about folding into social collectives. It is about feeling reverential toward participating in some expansive process that unites us all and that enobles our life’s endeavors.

(Awe makes us feel good. It also inspires us to do good. That’s cool.)

Our ability to feel awe in the form of chills, goose bumps, or choking up serves as a kind of emotional radar for detecting meaningful activity. Whenever we feel awe, we know we’ve found a potential source of meaning. We’ve discovered a real opportunity to be of service, to band together, to contribute to a larger cause.

In short, awe is a call to collective action.

Jane believes that if we can design our reality like we design our games – including “to always connect the individual to something bigger” – the depth and quality of our collective attention will expand accordingly.

Which reminds me of a study that agent Donald Maass refers to in a post on Writer Unboxed, in which researchers studied the articles in the New York Times that people emailed the most. In other words, they were looking for the quality that inspires word-of-mouth.

Their conclusion?

A feeling of awe.

Notes Maass:

These researchers defined awe as an “emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self.” Stories that inspire awe have two important dimensions: 1) Their scale is large, and 2) they require of readers “mental accommodation”, meaning they force the reader to view the world in a different way.

Show me a tweet that can do that, and I’ll show you an attentive reader.

Perhaps the problem isn’t (just) that we live in what Brogan calls a ‘consumption culture’. American culture is an extremely extroverted culture. In her book QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS, Susan Cain discusses how introverts and extroverts

…work differently. Extroverts tend to tackle assignments quickly. They make fast (sometimes rash) decisions, and are comfortable multitasking and risk-taking. They enjoy “the thrill of the chase” for rewards like money and status.

Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They are

…drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling…extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves.

Cain observes what she calls the “rise of the extrovert ideal”, which started with the Industrial Age and the migration to the cities. Cut off from the traditional networks of family and community, people had to differentiate themselves from the masses and win the trust and admiration of others through the force of their personal charisma. This created the Culture of Personality:

The new economy called for a new kind of man – a salesman, a social operator, someone with a ready smile, a masterful handshake, and the ability to get along with colleagues while simultaneously outshining them.

Today, we find ourselves in yet another new economy – call it the new new economy – where we have to create not just a personality but a charismatic personal brand. We have to hustle, promote ourselves, get our voices heard (whether or not we have anything to say), become an expert, join Toastmasters, and become productivity ninjas so we can (maybe) also have a life. We have to be go-getters who are GETTING THINGS DONE. We must AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN. We have to be master networkers who NEVER EAT LUNCH ALONE. We have to build platforms. We have to Be Remarkable.

Etcetera.

In short, we have to be extroverts. And if we’re not extroverts, we have to learn to pass as extroverts, at least convincingly enough so that we won’t be regarded as weird or anti-social or “too much in our heads”. (God forbid that you be, you know, an intellectual.) We also have to pretend that many of the real extroverts, as they dominate the conversation and confidently hold forth with their faulty opinions, who will talk without thinking and rarely think to listen, don’t annoy us.

But if we’re all extroverts – if we’re all rushing into events without carving out the time and silence and solitude required to connect them, and ourselves, to a sense of meaning, much less epic meaning – who is left, then, to make that meaning for us?

Science journalist Winifred Gallagher writes:

The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither the theory of relativity nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.

(Nothing against party animals.)

The creation of meaning requires contemplation and reflection. It requires an observing, a listening, a curious and thoughtful gathering of ideas, and time for those materials to incubate in the mind before they synthesize into something new.

Time and solitude and silence.

But we have no time. We’re so interconnected through all our devices that genuine solitude is difficult to come by. And silence, in this culture, is often linked with powerlessness. It’s the person who talks the best game who is generally perceived to be the master of it – whether or not that is actually true (and many studies show that it isn’t.)

I find it rather ironic that such an extroverted culture is now exhorting the values of creativity and creative insight. Now, we don’t just talk about leadership; we talk about thought leadership. But the raw work of thinking, in this action-oriented culture, has generally belonged to the introverts. As children, they were often accused of thinking too much, or being too serious, or being bookworms or study grinds or geeks. Traits that were not exactly celebrated.

After all, people can barely read a tweet.

Except I don’t believe this, and never have. As Susan Cain points out, one out of every two or three people you know – is an introvert. If that surprises you, it might be because so many introverts have grown up learning to imitate something that they’re not, feeling pressured to manufacture a kind of rah-rah version of the self. “Some,” Cain remarks, “fool even themselves.”

And because introverts aren’t angling to dominate the conversation, because oftentimes we’d rather stay at home with a good book, the benefits of introversion get increasingly eclipsed by a story of culture as told by the extroverts (in which creativity is deemed the product of collaboration and groupthink and wildly sociable office environments).

But if we lose sight of what introversion can offer us, we stand to lose its considerable gifts.

Janet Farrall and Louise Kronberg note in Leadership Development for the Gifted and Talented:

While extroverts tend to attain leadership in public domains, introverts tend to attain leadership in theoretical and aesthetic fields. Outstanding introverted leaders, such as Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Patrick White and Arthur Boyd, who have created either new fields of thought or rearranged existing knowledge, have spent long periods of their lives in solitude. Hence leadership does not only apply in social situations, but also occurs in more solitary situations such as developing new techniques in the arts, creating new philosophies, writing profound books and making scientific breakthroughs.

Which reminds me of something my friend Jeremy Lee James recently said to me: “Writers are leaders.”

And it occurs to me that the people teaching us how to “use” social media tend to be business-oriented, or in marketing or PR. Fields which are known for “the extrovert ideal”. So the social part of social media gets emphasized; social media becomes a vehicle for networking and “relationship marketing”.

These things are valuable, no question. But what if writers and artists and other types of highly sensitive, creative people, the kind who do their best work alone (thank you very much), could reframe their use of social media in a way that promotes an introvert ideal?

If we could use social media to support the book, to make room for the book, and then guide our right people to that very room?

Cain notes that

Religious leaders from Jesus to Buddha, as well as the lesser-known saints, monks, shamans and prophets, have always gone off alone to experience the revelations they later shared with the rest of us.

Your typical writer may not be Jesus or Buddha, but it’s true that epic meaning generally isn’t found in a Facebook status update. Instead of allowing social media to erode away at our “deep, attentive reading and writing”, our “time and silence and solitude”, we should find our own rhythm of movement between working in silence and voicing the gifts that silence has brought us.

After a few sessions of an online photography course, I noticed a change in the way I perceive space. I became fascinated with negative space, how it defines the objects in the picture and presents them for contemplation. I even started visualizing my To-Do tasks this way. I see the task surrounded by the mental equivalent of negative space. This allows my ADD mind to settle and focus, instead of getting overwhelmed by everything else that is yammering at me.

When composing a scene for a shot, I focus on what to take out before I do anything else.

This seems a good way to approach the noisy tumble of social media.

If we can come to it with intention and purpose.

If we can use an introvert’s quiet strength to carve out negative space and block out the chattering static.

If we can say what we want to say and create what we need to create.

It could turn into something epic.

why Pinterest is totally not a waste of time: creating a visionboard for your creative project ( + why it’s helpful)

2012-01-27T02:49:52Z

I joined Pinterest for one major reason. I am returning to my novel-in-progress THE DECADENTS after a couple months’ break from it and wanted to create a digital visionboard to help drive it to completion.

This book has been tricky for me because it deals with some challenging subject matter. It’s also drawing on some raw life material from my years in LA which (it turns out) I’m still processing.

It’s a big departure from my three previously published novels, which I regard as the work of a much younger writer: someone who was still finding her way to her true voice, who hadn’t yet realized the Big Themes of her life – and thus her fiction. I’m not the same person I was back then, and I’m not the same writer. (I like to think I’ve deepened with age.) I’ve also lost a lot of illusions, which means that the personal world I am writing both from and about is very different. And some of those changes, I realize now, still had to settle into me before I was equipped to write the novel that I need to write.

But I digress. (Clears throat.) So.

Pinterest.

Visionboard.

Yeah.

I’ve always – always – written to music, and I create playlists for each novel (and for some of the characters) to serve as a private soundtrack. My brain learns to associate certain songs with a certain kind of fiction writing – neurons that fire together, wire together – so when I sit at my desk and start up iTunes on my Mac, my brain realizes it’s Bidness Time and shifts into the required state. (This is why creative rituals can be so effective – once they’re ingrained, they can shortcut you into productivity. )

Not to mention — music inspires, even without the power of ritual.

Music gets you in the mood.

So why not do this visually?

Marketers have realized that the more senses a brand can evoke, the more powerful the connection it can form with the consumer. It makes sense to apply this to the creative process. The more senses you engage as you bring your work into being, the more vivid and committed the relationship you form with it – which ends up creating a more powerful experience for your audience.

In his book BLAH BLAH BLAH: WHAT TO DO WHEN WORDS DON’T WORK, Dan Roam compares our visual and verbal minds.

Our visual mind, he says, is a hummingbird.

Our verbal mind is a fox. (How cute.)

The fox is:

Linear
Analytical
Patient
Clever
(A little smug)

The fox “advances step by step with laser-like focus.” He shifts as he needs to but keeps his eyes straight ahead. He “tests the wind, calculates distance and velocities, and, at the precise moment…he strikes!”

And then he’s very impressed with himself.

The hummingbird is:

Spatial
Spontaneous
Synthesizing
(flighty and easily distracted)

The hummingbird “sees clearly in all directions at all times…She sees her environment as a three-dimensional space with food potential everywhere; she can fly backward (and even upside down) to get to the nearest flower.” She’s so speedy that she doesn’t have to get from point to logical point like the fox; she just appears where she wants to be. And she synthesizes: “touching and seeing everything, she builds a complete model of the forest in her mind.”

And then she wonders where she put her keys.

The verbal mind is the “piece-by-piece” fox mind. The visual mind is the “all at once” hummingbird mind. The fox is the trees; the hummingbird is the forest.

I wanted, in writing my novel, a little less fox and a little more hummingbird. I felt like I was losing the forest for the trees, and getting trapped in thickets. Which is one reason I decided to cultivate the visual side of my brain.

By creating a visionboard, I am ‘telling’ the story of my novel….all at once. I can get a kind of deep visceral feeling for how the different parts relate to each other, and flash on some new insights as a bonus.

A visionboard acts as a creative trigger in other ways as well:

a) It sends you on a hunt for appropriate images. Since images, like music, evoke mood and feeling, you not only have to think about the look of your novel, but how it should make you feel.

(When I come across images that I like, and want to keep, but that don’t feel right for my visionboard, I use the ‘like’ button to tag them and store them away for whatever.)

Which means you define the general aesthetic of your novel by what you reject as much as — if not more than — what you select. As I do this, my vision for the novel assumes greater depth and clarity.

And for any vision to be compelling, it needs to be clear. A strong, clear vision that resonates with you emotionally can act like a kind of motivational tractor beam. It pulls you along. It pulls you in. Which means you’re more likely to achieve your goal – or finish the novel.

b) As you search out images, you are also feeding your head.

There’s a great quote by Gertrude Stein: Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.

When you open yourself up to different kinds of influence, you are priming your creative pump. The mind is a restless, pattern-making machine: and, like a shark, it must be constantly on the move. Which means it’s constantly digesting what you feed it: seeking out new connections and relationships that incorporate this new material into whatever pre-existing scheme you might be working with.

So by discovering images that symbolize your old ideas….you’ll also find images that help you produce new ideas (or tweak the old ones in new ways).

c) Like any other form of social media, Pinterest can be addictive. But if used with intention and timing, it can also help your writing because of how it allows you to take a break from it.

Thoughts create neural pathways in the brain. When those thoughts repeat, those pathways deepen. We get blocked in our creative work when we get trapped in the same loops of thinking and cut ourselves off from the kind of stimulation that can trigger new ideas (see above).

In the book THE BREAKOUT PRINCIPLE, Harvard professor Herbert Benson refers to
“a powerful mind-body impulse that severs prior mental patterns and…opens an inner door to a host of personal benefits”

including an increase in creative insight.

In sum, the way to achieve this is by working a problem as hard as you can until you hit that inner wall and cannot get beyond it. Then you remove yourself to a completely different activity that lulls you into a kind of trance. Random thoughts might drift through your mind….and then, without warning, some kind of solution bursts forth.

(Benson talks about “the relaxation response, which measured cardiovascular and respiratory responses”, etc., and how the science of that underpins the breakout principle, but excuse me if I don’t get into all that. I’m going for the really general gist of it.)

Switching from your writing to Pinterest can also serve to switch off those repeating thought-loops that weren’t getting you anywhere. By immersing yourself in a different activity – one which allows your mind to relax and roam – you’re setting yourself up to kick some more creative ass.

As always, intention is important. Stating your intention at the beginning of any endeavor sends a signal to your unconscious mind to bring certain things to your attention while ignoring what’s not relevant.

To that end, you could create a “vision statement” for your board – and your novel – that keeps you focused and on track. You could come up with what Joyce Schwarz in her book THE VISION BOARD refers to as a “power word” that serves a both a “vision statement and defining image” for what you want your board to accomplish. It could be a word or words that states the general theme of your project, or the end result you want to create, or a feeling you want to invoke in the audience, or…anything, really.

After all, it’s your visionboard.

Do you work with visionboards? Do you have any thoughts on them or experiences to share in the comments below?

If you’re on Pinterest, and especially if you’re creating a visionboard of your own, look for me.

Maybe we can inspire each other.

how to become your own rebellion

2012-01-19T03:16:32Z

“I became my own rebellion,” writes Twyla Tharp in her book THE CREATIVE HABIT, and I have loved that phrase ever since I came across it a handful of years ago.

She was talking about her decision to become a dancer/choreographer: generally not a choice of profession that fills parents with glee. She goes on to say:

Going with your head makes it arbitrary. Going with your gut means you have no choice. It’s inevitable, which is why I have no regrets.

I was in my early thirties when I read this and realized that I, too, wanted to become my own rebellion.

Even if I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

I’m reminded of a conversation with an older, worldly friend shortly after my ex-husband filed for divorce. I was at the beginning of what we both knew would be a volatile transition.

My friend said, and I will always remember this: “You’re going to think and feel your way forward.”

She was telling me to listen to my gut. To take each day as it came and let my intuition lead me, like an unseen hand guiding me through a maze lined with thorns. The problem was, I had become disconnected from that sense of inner knowing. I was constantly questioning and second-guessing myself. I had spent too much time listening to certain people tell me what was wrong with me and invested too much authority in their opinions. Whenever my inner voice rose up to suggest a different perspective, I would discount it and switch it off.

This happens to so many of us. As kids, growing up, we learn strategies for getting the attention and the love that we need to survive. So often our strategies involve emphasizing this part of our personality while banishing that part into the shadows. Certain adults hold a godlike power over us, and they define our reality. If they say one thing – but on a gut level we know something else to be true – we’ll tell that inner voice to shut up. We’ll send it packing. It’s easier and safer that way. Who are we to challenge a freaking god?

As a child, this is basic survival.

As an adult, this turns into something else, called denial.

If you’re raised to be a nice girl, or boy, you learn to be polite and respectful and fair instead of being honest with yourself: you’ll override your intuition when it seems inconsiderate. Better to try and see things from the other person’s perspective and find ways to excuse his (or her) behaviour, even when that inner voice is telling you to get the fuck away.

It doesn’t help that for so long our culture has derided emotion and intuition. If someone calls you emotional, they generally don’t mean it as a compliment; and often words like ‘hysterical’ and ‘crazy’ aren’t far behind. Intuition, meanwhile, gets lumped in with New Age notions of being psychic. Both ‘emotional’ and ‘intuitive’ are regarded as feminine traits. To grow up in this culture means to absorb lots of big and little, covert and overt, conscious and unconscious messages that feminine equals weak and inferior — so much so that many women will scorn so-called feminine things in order to imply that no, they do not belong to that club.

But as it turns out, emotions don’t interfere with rationality — they enable it. It’s people who don’t have emotions (at least as we understand them) who make decisions that strike other people as irrational. When our brain creates memories, it lays down both the memory of the event and the way the event made us feel. Our brain’s biggest priority is physical survival. It uses memory as a kind of GPS, guiding us away from potential danger and pain (like being eaten) and toward safety and pleasure (like not being eaten).

Emotion and reason work together to help us determine what is happening, what that means to us, and what kind of outcome we would like to make happen.

When we do a gut check, or rely on so-called ‘female’ intuition, we are accessing a powerful form of nonverbal intelligence. Our subconscious is constantly absorbing the million little bits of information that bombard our senses at any given time and processing, processing, processing. Because it is not hooked up to the verbal part of our brain, intuition operates outside of language, communicating with us through symbol, hunches, dreams – and feelings.

To ignore what you feel is to shut down a big part of your brain, which makes it a lot easier for the world to take advantage of you. You have to rely on what other people tell you is true. You take what they say at face value, since you have no way of sensing what’s going on beneath their words.

This is what it means to be gullible.

Recently I read a book called THE VIRGIN’S PROMISE, which looked at the female archetypal equivalent of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. (Keep in mind that both the ‘virgin’ and the ‘hero’ can be of either sex.) The Virgin’s quest is to resist the urge to conform to the values and standards set by others that conflict with her true self:

The Virgin takes on the task of claiming her personal authority, even against the wishes of others. A big part of her story therefore is how she is viewed by society. Initially she is a valued commodity for being pure, untouched, good, kind, nice, compliant, agreeable, or helpful. She carries the hope for continuation of the virtues of a society. Through her journey she learns to redefine her values and bring her true self into being.

Because she is the “continuation of the virtues of a society”, by redefining those virtues she works to redefine society itself. She asserts herself against the status quo. She becomes a cultural activist. Instead of living out the life that others have handed to her, and would dictate, she creates it by connecting with her true self and finding effective ways to manifest that self in the world. And since truth has a way of resonating with others, her actions ripple outward to alter the world around her.

Instead of trimming and chopping and editing her personality to fit herself to her environment, she forces the environment to fit itself to her.

There is always some kind of price for this. A quest would not be a quest if there weren’t any dragons to slay (which is a slightly more poetic way of saying hey, if it was easy, everybody would do it).

When you become your own rebellion, you establish psychological independence.

Going with your head makes it arbitrary, Twyla writes. That’s because our conscious mind is the ultimate spin doctor. It deals in language and narrative. Language is not reality, but our best attempt to explain reality. We can edit it any way we want in order to rationalize or justify ourselves (otherwise known as “confirmation bias”). We put a certain spin on things. Or we allow other people to spin them for us, and absorb those distortions as truths.

But when you go deeper inside yourself, you move beyond words. Your body has its own language. It’s interesting that when we refer to a person’s authenticity or sincerity, we talk about who they are in their heart or at their core: words that locate the ‘self’ in the body. You may spin a decision however you want, but it either feels good — or not. It makes you feel light – or the opposite. It might even make you feel ill.

But it is what it is, and it can’t be argued with. Your truth is truth. You can move toward it, or let your head lead you away. But you can’t change its essential message — or the fact that it knows what you need better than you do (especially when what you need isn’t exactly what you want. )

Twyla chose the hard, uncertain life of a dancer. It was not the rational choice to make. It’s hell on the body, and poorly paid, and a difficult art to preserve (if the dancer is the dance, then the dance disappears with the dancer). I admire her for her discipline – dancers are the most disciplined people I know – and her sense of self that manifested at such a young age.

And now, when change is happening so rapidly in our world, when the old models no longer work and we’re forced to improvise new ones, it’s more essential than ever that we take the time to turn inward. We need to think and feel our way forward. Otherwise we’ll be lost.

I suspect that becoming your own rebellion isn’t something that happens only once. It’s a choice you make every time your quest offers up another dragon. You can always run away. Except when you know you’re on your true path, your only real option is to slay it.

Which is why you’ll have no regrets.

If you liked this post, please share. I’d really appreciate it. Plus, you know, good karma.

the art of letting your freak flag fly

2012-01-10T23:36:07Z

White collar conservative flashin’ down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me. They all assume my kind will drop and die, but I’m gonna wave my freak flag high. — Jimi Hendrix

I have multiple small male children, which means I do a lot of Lego (a pox on those Lego pieces that get lost and screw up the design until you find them three days later when you step on them barefoot). If I go to my laptop after a lengthy Lego session, something strange tends to happen: the keys on the keyboard feel oddly Lego-like. With each touch-tap my brain ‘hears’ and ‘feels’ a Lego snapping into place.

So I could relate when I read about something called The Tetris Effect (even though I don’t play Tetris). From a book called THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE:

Tetris is a simple game in which four kinds of shapes fall from the top of the screen, and the player can move or rotate them until they hit bottom. When they create an unbroken line across the screen, the line disappears. The point of the game is to manipulate the falling shapes to create as many unbroken lines as possible.

…In a study at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry, researchers paid 27 people to play Tetris for multiple hours a day, three days in a row….

For days after the study, some participants literally couldn’t stop dreaming about shapes falling from the sky. Others couldn’t stop seeing these shapes everywhere, even in their waking hours. Quite simply, they couldn’t stop seeing their world as being made up of sequences of Tetris blocks.

It’s like the bright spots of light you need to blink away after a camera pops off in your face, or the surreal feeling you sometimes get when you walk out of a movie theatre. In this case it’s a cognitive pattern that caused these players to see Tetris shapes everywhere they looked. Playing Tetris had changed the wiring of their brain, laying down new neural pathways that distorted the way they looked at life.

That’s the way it is with our brains: They very easily get stuck in patterns of viewing the world, some more beneficial than others…the Tetris Effect…is a metaphor for the way our brains dictate the way we see the world around us.

Gratitude journals, no matter how corny and Oprah-esque you find them, can be surprisingly effective because of their own version of the Tetris Effect. When you routinely scan your days for things that you are grateful for, things that make you feel good, you retrain your brain to start picking up on the positive while letting the negative fade into the background.

When you write fiction, you learn to pay attention to the details of your scene. As you develop your craft, you learn to be selective, editing out everything except a few well-chosen details you then present to the reader in order to construct a very specific (if non-existent) reality. Details are small things, but every one of them contributes to a larger whole that makes up the vision, the worldview, expressed through the experience of story.

Your brain is the author of your own, ongoing life narrative. It chooses what it considers the ‘relevant’ details to bring to your attention – according to the patterns in which it has been trained — while the bulk of incoming stimuli gets edited out from your waking consciousness. Those details form the ‘reality’ that you navigate everyday, as well as how you interpret it: if the glass is half-full or half-empty.

There’s a lot of talking and blogging about how in this day and age it’s important to Be Remarkable. We have entered The Creativity Age: what matters now is whatever can’t be automated, outsourced, or copied by your competitors. Your ability to succeed is tied to your ability to reach people emotionally as well as intellectually, to enlarge their perspective or put an unexpected twist on it, to be relevant, interesting and original. Otherwise you’re just another “me too” brand or product or blog, another unread manuscript in the endless Internet slush pile.

For the most part, we don’t grow up learning how to Be Remarkable, and the fact that we will take various tests in order to learn what our strengths are indicates that neither do we grow up learning ourselves the way that we probably should. That whole question of ‘who am I?’ gets shuffled behind other pesky questions like ‘How will I make rent’ or ‘will we be graded on this’ or ‘will I get laid tonight’ or even ‘are you going to eat that, and if not, can I have it?”

We get trapped in patterns of thinking, including the way we’ve learned to perceive the different aspects of ourselves. We learn what is wrong with us – or rather, what other people perceive as wrong with us. Those external voices get internalized and become the inner voices that we carry around with us until we decide (if we decide) to finally stop listening to them.

What we often don’t recognize is that it’s the things that we get criticized for, that get declared as the ‘weaknesses’ that we must fix and fix and fix (until we fail, give up and watch American Idol), that hold the key to our potential Remarkableness. In our weaknesses lie our strengths (and vice versa). If our brains can only learn to perceive them that way.

“As young people,” writes Parker Palmer,

“we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability…our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.”

From kindergarten on, I’ve always been a freakish reader. I vaulted from picture books to Agatha Christie (my favorite book as a first grader was TEN LITTLE INDIANS) and my parents, thank their souls, left me alone to read as much as I wanted, whatever I wanted.

Teachers, however, were forever trying to shoo me outside during recess and lunch hour to Play and Be Social. I didn’t want to Be Social. I wanted to read. And then, later, I wanted to write.

When I was a 17 year old exchange student in a small country town in Australia, my host parents expressed concern that I was spending summer afternoons holed up in my back bedroom with a stack of library books. They fretted that I was an isolate, anti-social, a teenage recluse. They thought I should get out of the house and Be Social. The father advised me to read less (and only nonfiction, because then I would “learn something”). I nodded and smiled and ignored them. They didn’t know what to do with me. (When I finally did start partying with some older kids, and breaking curfew, I’m sure they were relieved: “Thank the Lord, she’s almost sort of relatively normal!”)

I’ve always been freakishly disorganized and absent-minded (“Justine,” one boyfriend asked me during college when I was looking for whatever it was that I’d inevitably misplaced, “how do you get through daily life?” I found it an excellent question). When I was a child, kids teased me because I cried too easily (until I trained myself not to) and because I would sometimes, as they put it, “spazz out” (until I trained myself not to do that, either). I used too many big words and thought too much. I was too intense, given to stalking dramatically out of rooms or hurling my putter when I lost at miniature golf. Later, through my late teens and early twenties, I was too serious, too cerebral (although one guy told me that I smiled too much). Boyfriends who were in taekwondo with me or majoring in English lit with me said I was too competitive. Recently, during a somewhat drunken conversation in a bar in San Francisco, a well-intentioned friend told me that in the time she’s known me I’ve been too melancholy, too much the “tormented writer”.

We’re allowed to be some things, so long as we’re not too much of anything. We prune ourselves back and rein ourselves in, in order to fit in and be normal. And for women, ‘normal’ often translates into effacing ourselves; we worry that if we speak, we’ll be too obnoxious or offensive; if we attend to our own needs instead of those of others, we’ll be too selfish. Someone told me that the TEDXWomen conference came into being because of all the women who were turning down invitations to be guest speakers at the original TED. They would defer instead to some man they claimed “knew more” or “was better qualified” to speak on that topic. (Note to all women everywhere: PLEASE STOP DOING THIS.)

And we do this – chip away at our too-ness, become lesser quieter versions of ourselves — because we think that if we follow the rules and fit in, if we can somehow fix ourselves, we’ll become balanced and well-rounded. We’ll survive and thrive, be loved, find success or, at the very least, some degree of security.

We’re kind of deluded that way.

Irony is – today – that the safety found in numbers, in being average and ordinary, is no longer so safe or secure. Management guru Tom Peters argues that “The White Collar Revolution will wipe out indistinct workers and reward the daylights out of those with True Distinction.”

By True Distinction, he means those who are too much of something, or do too much of something. Who go to an extreme. Who are decidedly not the norm.

Who are, in some way, freaks.

But as David J Rendall points out in his book THE FREAK FACTOR, the good news is: we’re all freaks. We just need to reclaim those parts of ourselves that we’ve been hiding away out of shame or embarrassment – for being too this or too that – so we can look at them with a retrained eye, recognize our strengths and build on them, and become even more of what we are already too much of.

My weaknesses have had a funny way of turning into my strengths. When I took this Strengths Finder test,it identified my top strength as Input:

Driven by your talents, you have been described as someone who reads a lot. You probably carry reading material with you just in case you have to wait in line, eat alone, or sit beside a stranger. Because the printed word feeds your mind, you frequently generate original plans, programs, designs, or activities. Chances are good that you link your passion for reading to your work. Your definition of “recreational reading” probably differs from that of many people. By nature, you continually expand your sphere of knowledge by reading…Like world travelers, you pick up a variety of souvenirs from your reading, such as facts, data, characters, plots, insights, or tips.

By this point in my life, Input has been good to me. I can’t complain about the benefits of my extreme reading, even if, sometimes, people in my life complain that I’m too preoccupied.

‘Cried too much’ and ‘oversensitive’ became empathic and compassionate, two of the traits I value most about my character.

‘Isolated’ and ‘anti-social’ became independent enough to leave my hometown and see the world. I was unafraid of being the new kid, or of being alone in a foreign city where I didn’t speak the language. I could always learn what I needed to know from a book – and you’re never lonely when you’re reading a good book.

My episodes of ‘spazzing out’ as a child turned into what I like to think of as a decent sense of humor: an appreciation of the absurd, the perverse, and the ridiculous.

Too ‘intense’? I prefer passionate and spirited. Too ‘dramatic’? I have an active imagination that is great for writing fiction. Also for performing. Too ‘cerebral’? Oh please. ‘Melancholy?’ I’m in touch with a range of emotions and the hardwon wisdom they have brought me. Yes, I am ambitious and competitive: would these be bad things in a man? I can be selfish, rebellious and bad – I have what a good friend once described as “a defiant fuck-you spirit” — and I’ve become grateful for that, otherwise certain life events would have trampled me underfoot.

‘Disorganized’ and ‘absent-minded’? Well, yes, but I’ve learned to work around that, realizing that it comes as part of the package of my creative brain. I find myself moving toward minimalism and sustainability. As minimalist blogger Joshua Becker recently tweeted, “It’s better to own less than to organize more.” I know enough about myself to stay away from administrative, detail-oriented work; if I ever show up as your personal assistant, you can take it as a sign that the apocalypse is upon us. You can also fire me.

I’m not one of those people to go on about how we are all perfect just the way we are.

I think we are gloriously and perfectly imperfect.

I think there is beauty, wisdom, strength and vulnerability in our secret fucked-up selves.

But so often the smart thing is not to try to change our natures, but our situation, including relationships that prove toxic to us; we’re like plants that differ wildly in their needs for water, light, shadow, soil. It’s our job to seek out the conditions we require in order to grow, to blossom, to bloom – hopefully not into the kind of plant that eats people like in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (remember the movie? Steve Martin was great in it).

And what I’ve learned is that if I can change the way I perceive myself, if I can recognize my strengths and weaknesses as flipsides of each other and appreciate them as innate to the experience of being, simply, me; if I can cultivate and celebrate the freak in me, and expect others to do the same (and if they don’t or won’t, avoid them), then I have to turn that same, retrained gaze on those around me.

I can’t be attracted to certain people for certain reasons and then wish that they were, well…different.

It’s perhaps one of the biggest tragedies of our nature that we take the people we love and attempt to change them into who we think they should be…because it makes life easier for us, because it suits our agenda, because it makes us feel more comfortable.

If we could only play Tetris in a different sense, if we could only catch the flaws – in ourselves and others – as they fall from the sky, rotate and maneuver them until they form one unbroken line across the screen.

And then disappear.

If you like this post, please be a total stud and share it. I’d appreciate it. Thank you.

letter to a young emerging creative who thinks she wants to blog (gods help her)

2012-01-08T00:46:14Z

Anything with a low barrier of entry will let in a lot of crap. This is just the natural order of things (of social media, of blogging). But this only makes it more important – not less – to strive for excellence, relevance and meaning.

You need to have an intention. ‘Developing a readership by attracting strangers and turning them into Fans and maybe True Fans’ is a very different kind of intention from ‘making money online’ or ‘putting up a blog so my agent/editor/writing instructor will get the f*ck off my back’.

I was talking with a young writer who wanted to start building her online platform and said she needed “to get on Tumblr.”

“Why Tumblr?” I said.

She kind of shrugged and said something about how Tumblr is hot and all the cool kids are doing it.

“And if all the cool kids were to jump off a bridge….”

I didn’t really say that, because that would be annoying. But I did mention how Tumblr is great for short posts with lots of visuals, is that what she wanted to do?

She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. I told her to go online and explore different blogs and websites and see what she resonated with, what she could see herself doing in a way that would maintain her interest over a long period of time.

If you can form a very…clear…image in your head of what you want your online presence to ultimately look like, be like, feel like, then you have something specific to move toward.

You have a destination.

You have a journey.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can find someone online who inspires you. When I became seriously interested in blogging, it was the writer-entrepreneurs who intrigued and excited me: Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Jonathan Fields, Joanna Penn. I also fell in love with Kelly Diels’ defiantly personal tone in a world of ‘authority blogging’ (which is also, interestingly enough, predominantly male).

You also don’t have to do what other people tell you to. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. Soak up all that online advice, keep what serves you and reject what doesn’t and then experiment, experiment, experiment. Ultimately what works best for you will be that thing, that ‘you-ness’, that might not work at all for anybody else and which nobody else would have known to teach you.

At some point you will revise your intention to focus less on yourself and more on your readers. You will realize that it’s about them. You will stop asking yourself, “How do I get more people to read me?” and start asking instead, “How do I create value for other people? How can I help? What can I give?” This is when your traffic will slowly but steadily grow.

But don’t get too hung up over the whole traffic thing. Blogging has a learning curve, and you need that time in the beginning when no one is reading you (except maybe your mom – hi Mom!) to figure out not only what the hell you’re doing, but where you want to take this.

What your purpose is. Your Big Meaning.

An effective social media presence does not require you to get down and dirty with the details of your life. (Here’s the amazing thing: we don’t care!)

You are not required to share what you had with breakfast, or what new exciting sexual positions you tried with your partner(s) while swinging from the chandelier the other night –

and even if you do want to share, the question is, are those personal details relevant in any way to whatever it is that you’re hoping to accomplish?

Which comes back to intention.

I believe that the most powerful blogs are fueled by an underlying mission that goes beyond ‘promote my stuff’ and it is this mission, this Big Meaning, that shapes your content and your direction and gives your blog an identity.

The standard advice in the blogging world is to find your niche: that particular subject in which you can establish expertise that will draw in new readers who want to know what you know. A niche can be a good place to start when you’re still learning who you are as a blogger; it’s easier to talk about your blog to people when you can tell them what kind of blog it is (“a creativity blog”); and one way to attract an audience is to answer their questions and solve their problems. But as a creative, you’re doing much more than selling solutions to problems – which is ultimately what niche blogging is about – you’re also engaging your people with the voice and worldview that shapes your creative work. In the end, you probably won’t want to be limited to ‘a niche’.

Superstar blogger Leo Babauta talks about this in a post encouraging you to bundle together several topics you are passionate about, so long as you can find an ‘angle’ on them that differentiates you from everybody else.

I think that angle should be your Big Meaning, your Ultimate Why – and by that, I mean the reason why you do that voodoo that you do. The big life question that you’re compelled to explore. The wound that you seek to heal. The quest, the mission, the journey you’re on that will ultimately make the world a better place – while inviting other people to be a part of it.

This goes beyond blogging – it goes right to your art, your life, your identity. It’s also not something you decide on so much as discover – your ‘why’ rises of its own accord, up from the core through all the layers of thinking and creating until you can finally feel what you’re all about.

And by feel, I mean exactly that – it’s a sensation, a resonance, a fullness. It lights you up. That’s because – as Simon Sinek puts it in his great book START WITH WHY – your ‘why’ taps directly into the part of your brain, the limbic part, that is nonverbal, emotional, and busily influencing all the decisions your neocortex thinks it makes through ‘logic’ alone.

(As Simon puts it, we ‘like’ things out of our neocortex. We not only like them, we can explain why we like them. But we ‘love’ things out of our limbic system, which means we can never articulate exactly why we ‘love’ something or someone; the feeling lives in a place beyond language. We can use words to gesture toward it, but that’s it and that’s all. So if you can’t understand why your best friend is in love with that crazy dude, don’t worry, she can’t either.)

Are you obligated, as a creative, to do any of this? Of course not.

But this is what I believe: we live in a world that is now so interconnected that we can no longer afford to blindly buy into this ‘individualist’ ethos that would have each and every one of us standing alone, working and creating alone. As it turns out, that’s not how real creative insight actually happens.

Every creative has his or her natural audience – and by that I mean her right audience, who values her for what she is, who stimulates her and enables her to flourish. (Your wrong audience, on the other hand, could trap you, suffocate you, encourage you into all kinds of artistically compromising positions).

There is a point where your needs and desires intersect with your right audience’s needs and desires, so that you are your audience and your audience is you.

Which means, if you are a writer, you don’t have to wonder if you are writing for your audience or for yourself; you are writing for both.

Blogging becomes an extension of that.

You use your voice and your craft to serve your audience; and through serving them, you serve yourself. And it’s not just because your right audience will do the real work of promoting you to others through the all-powerful word-of-mouth; it’s because of how you learn and grow in this mysterious, rather magical space that you and your audience co-create online. And it’s the influence and creativity and levels of insight that you and your audience can unleash together that ripple out along all the lines that connect us and tilt us toward better – or worse.

The real power of social media is not about the (often misleading) number of fans and followers you can brag about, but the potential global impact that you as a cultural creative can have through your work and your platform and the ‘why’ that fuels both. (Sales of your work happen as a side benefit.)

It doesn’t happen overnight – it takes, literally, years – but there will be new voices rising with something real to say (and different platforms through which to say it).

You can settle for just trying to promote your work. Or you can turn into your corner and scoff about those talentless hacks who tweet what they had for breakfast and Lord knows what other nonsense (“don’t they have lives???”). Or you can maybe look above these tired, stale, outdated notions of what it means to market online to see something new emerging, something deep and long-lasting and powerful, and decide that you want to be a part of it.

There are no wrong answers, only personal preferences. Whatever yours are or may be, I wish you the best.

If you like this article – or this blog – please share. I’d appreciate it.

how to flunk social media + lose me as a potential True Fan (but you know I love you)

2011-12-25T02:11:23Z

The other day I finished reading the kind of novel you develop a relationship with: the characters move off the page to take up residence in your head. Their reality runs like a shadowy river alongside your own, waiting for you to step back into it.

When it was over, I leaped online to check out the author. For the most part, at least in my experience, literary writers tend to eye the social media platforms as if they’re instruments of sexual bondage: I’m supposed to do what, exactly? Surely you’re joking. What exactly is that, anyway?

gratuitious sexual bondage photo

Still, I was hoping for a blog. I wanted to prolong the experience of the novel by remaining in contact with the author’s voice. At the same time, I was curious about the author. More than curious: I felt a respect and readerly affection for her.

I had touched her mind.

I had walked through her imagination.

I wanted to show up at her virtual doorstep with the equivalent of a bouquet of flowers to say thank you and let her know how much her novel meant to me. I was ready to evangelize her to the world – or at least my small corner of it.

reading is awesome

The website was static, uninteresting: I didn’t care about any of the promotional stuff, I was looking for a blog, which there wasn’t. The Facebook page and tweetstream were also broadcasting and promotional. I was invited to leave a message – a “polite” message, as if I was in danger of being rude – but the flush of my enthusiasm had faded and I no longer saw the point. So I clicked away.

I think about this now, because it reflects the changing nature of the artist-audience relationship. I bring different expectations to that relationship than I would have, say, five years ago, when of course the author would have remained this remote, mysterious figure in the distance, giving me a well-meaning wave through her book readings and interviews.

Now, here I was, ready to be not just a reader or an admirer but a True Fan, ready to spread the word.

And feeling denied.

What had I been expecting, exactly?

Interactivity. Engagement.

Not with me, since she had no idea who I was, and although I have many flaws I am not, at least to my knowledge, psychotic; but with others, as if she was holding court in the center of a café and I had wandered in to join the crowd. It was like she had spurned the café entirely – I’m supposed to do that? — and so I ordered my mocha latte and took my Android tablet from my bag and started on another book, another author, hoping to fall in love again, knowing that, sooner or later, I would.

As a reader of literary fiction, I’m probably not the norm: although I do indeed love the smell of a physical book, the flick of the pages, the creak of the spine, the heft of the thing in my hands, I do most of my reading on my devices (pick one: my smartphone, my tablet, my Kindle Fire). I’m a social media enthusiast, live on the edge of the tech industry and spend a lot of time online, which might be why I consider this to be a good and exciting time to be a writer. (Since I became a Kindle convert a couple of years ago, I buy and read even more books, not less – and, judging from the data, this is typical.)

But – dare I say – the future of reading looks like me (as William Gibson so succinctly put it, the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed). And as my reading habits adjusted to the new technology, as I absorbed the values and customs of social media culture (transparency, authenticity, connectedness), I became one of those people formerly known as your audience.

It’s no longer enough to seduce me with a good book.

My world is crowded, noisy, and moves at lightning speed.

In order to keep me as a longterm reader, you need to engage me, or in the time between your last work and your next work some other charismatic wave will have borne me away. It’s the difference between checking out your next book and seeing if it appeals to me – and buying it immediately, no matter what the content, and talking about you to my friends, and on my blog and Facebook and Google+ and whatever else I happen to be using at the time.

Let me be clear: I don’t expect or demand one-on-one communication. I am happy to remain faceless and nameless to you. But the online world is exactly that – a world — full-bodied and dazzling and multi-dimensional — and it’s transformed my relationship to you (or any writer) into a place that I would like to find cool and interesting enough to visit. Often.

In his book SMART WORLD: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas, Richard Ogle talks about “idea-spaces” and “the extended mind”. Basically, in order to navigate a complex and sophisticated world with as a little mental effort as possible, we offload our intelligence into the spaces around us through our myths, customs, technology, business models, codes of behavior. Our knowledge, our sets of ideas, live outside us (and breakthrough creativity happens when you can look across different idea-spaces, recognize emerging patterns and find new ways to fit them together).

What I wanted to find wasn’t standard self-promotion….but the author’s own personal idea-space, where she had offloaded enough of her mind and voice and personality (through blog posts and ongoing conversations) to invite me in relationship with her brand.

And yes, this requires extra, unpaid work on the part of any writer. Then again, writers always had to promote their stuff in one way or another. We also have to remember the definition of ‘marketing’ (taken from marketing genius and online master Marie Forleo):

…an emotional connection with the people whom you’re meant to serve.

(Did handing out bookplates and bookmarks and badgering people to come to your book signings create that ‘emotional’ connection? At least in the old world, there was the illusion that that kind of marketing actually worked.)

You serve people – not all people but your people, your right people, your tribe – through creating value for them. And, increasingly, what that ‘value’ looks like is a sense of community: individuals gathered round that offloaded version of you holding court in the center of your thoughtfully constructed idea-space. You, and your work, become a social object that gives like-minded souls a reason, or an excuse, to come together. You’re no longer simply ‘marketing’; you’re creating a little values culture.

Thing is, when different forces meet up with each other – when the distance drops away between artist and audience – chemistry ensues and transformation happens. Nothing brings us face-to-face with ourselves the way a relationship does, or exposes us to new ideas, or reshapes the ideas we may currently hold. A blog becomes more than a blog: a site of discovery, of creative and intellectual collaboration. It’s a living document, forever evolving, as readers shift in and out, and create value for themselves and for you through comments and sharing.

There’s you, and your audience, and then this thing, this entity, this energetic space, created when you come together. Jerry Garcia attributed the success of his band The Grateful Dead to the magic that happened at live performances when the Deadhead community fed the band with their energy. Since the band never played the same show twice — and believed in experimentation and innovation — they created a new show each time with the audience, responding to the audience even as the audience was responding to them. “Everybody should be in the band,” Garcia enthused. “And when that’s happening, it’s really something special. It’s an amazing thing.”

Writes Barry Barnes:

When you erase the distinction between band and audience, between producer and consumer, wonderful things can happen. Ken Kesey once explained the difference between the Dead and other bands: “The Doors were playing at you. John Fogarty was singing at you,” he said. Garcia, on the other hand, “was not playing [at the audience]. He was playing with them,” and often members of that audience would realize, “He’s not only moving my mind. My mind is moving him!”

I’m not saying that you should let your readers dictate your plot choices, or that you should compromise your vision or pander to your people (they’re too smart for that, and will abandon you in droves). But I’m reminded of a recent post in which successful entrepreneur/author Jonathan Fields discusses his decision to blog less frequently so he can create greater depth and quality, more value, with each post. “I write to make a difference,” he says, and refers to the “sweet spot between your authentic genius zone and the deeper needs of your community.” As an entrepreneur, Fields knows what online marketing is – and isn’t.

It’s not a billboard to let your readers know how great and accomplished you are.

It’s writing to make a difference.

It’s a sweetspot. It’s an idea-space. It’s a relationship with your readers…that can move your mind.

That is, if you’re willing to let it.

7 awesome reasons to kill your inner ‘nice girl’ (or maybe just send her to Cleveland*)

2011-12-13T16:17:14Z

“Killing the angel in the house was part of the occupation of the woman writer.” — Virginia Woolf

I give you seven awesome reasons to kill your inner nice girl.

(Or maybe just send her to Cleveland or something.)

You get to be kind.

As my friend Scott Hoffman told me, “Nice is not the same as kind.” (He’s a literary agent, so he should know.)

It’s not the same as civility either. We are polite out of consideration for others. It is an act that we perform. Two people who despise each other can still make the decision to be civil to each other, while knowing full well that each holds the other in unqualified contempt.

Niceness also isn’t a trait – nobody gets described as ‘nice-hearted’ – so much as a superficial layer of behavior. But unlike civility or politeness, niceness pretends to have some depth to it, masquerading as the person’s actual thoughts, feelings, or character. It often hides a self-serving agenda (like kissing up to your boss in order to keep your job; or wanting to please everybody in order to feel loved, accepted and safe; or trying to charm someone into random meaningless sex**.)

‘Nice’ can be a symptom of feeling powerless; people can’t say what they truly mean or ask for what they really want, so they maneuver and manipulate to get it. Which is probably why we sometimes associate ‘nice’ with ‘spineless’. (Also with ‘resentful’ and ‘passive-aggressive’.)

Kindness, on the other hand, can require great courage.

You get to be authentic.

We all learn how to perform ourselves – online or offline – but the people we admire are the people who feel ‘real’ to us. Their persona is an honest expression of their personality (instead of a distortion or a disguise).

As Eckhart Tolle puts it:

“[They] function from the deeper core of their being – those who do not attempt to appear more than they are, but as simply themselves, stand out as remarkable, and are the only ones who truly make a difference in the world…Their mere presence, simple, natural and unassuming, has a transformational effect on whomever they come into contact with.”

You get to stand for something.

You can’t have your own strong point-of-view when you’re too busy accommodating every other point-of-view out there, or when you’re afraid of offending people or rocking a boat (any boat).

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. Your point of view is who you truly are. (It’s also how you differentiate yourself.) To deny people that is to deny them – yourself – the chance to get to know you – as well as robbing yourself of the chance to get known.

Standing for something means that you will piss some people off. They won’t like you. That’s okay. (That helps to bond together the people who do like you.) It’s much more liberating to live your life according to your values. Not to mention that when you do that, you attract people who stand for the same things that you do. They might even be inspired by you. And that is super cool.

You get to live off your ragged edge.

The ragged edge is the edge of your comfort zone. It’s the jumping-off point on your way to mastery. It’s where real growth begins.

Growth is a messy process, filled with events that some people label ‘mistakes and failures’ and others regard simply as ‘data’. (It’s the latter types that tend to be more successful.)

People who are overly invested in the opinions of others can be perfectionists. They don’t want to risk falling on their face (or ass). They think appearing perfect = being loved.

(The ironic thing is, people as a general rule tend not to like ‘perfect’ individuals. We’re quick to sense that that kind of perfection is bullshit.)

But if you don’t let yourself rise to your level of incompetence, you’ll never get the chance to explore, discover …and move on to something greater.

You get to love up your inner voice.

Your inner voice is who you are at core. It knows what you need – even if what you need isn’t necessarily what you want – and points the way to your ultimate well-being and self-actualization.

If, that is, it hasn’t been drowned out by all the voices of all the individuals you’re so busy trying to please.

(And if it has, don’t worry. That voice isn’t going anywhere. You just need to get yourself to a still and quiet place so you can tune back into it.

Also, a beer might be helpful.)

You get to be the hero of your own freaking life.

The whole point and purpose of a ‘nice’ girl is to support somebody else — usually male — in his life quest for accomplishment, purpose and epic meaning. As Carolyn Heilbrun observes in WRITING A WOMAN’S LIFE, throughout history women have been expected to live out ‘marriage plots’ while men live out ‘quest plots’. Although obviously this is changing – and has been changing for decades – there’s still an expectation embedded in the culture, often unspoken and barely registered, that at some point the woman will put her dreams and ambitions in check and follow her man to wherever his quest takes them. The woman’s own quest ended with marriage and children – the rest is details.

Clearly, for those of us who are maybe not such domestic goddesses, who may want marriage and children and/or something else, it doesn’t have to be this way. But to take full control of your destiny and assert the importance of your own needs is to risk being called ‘selfish’, and a nice girl doesn’t do that sort of thing.

You get to have a voice.

And when you tell your truth, you give other people permission to tell their truth. In the end, we’re never as alone as we think.

* I have absolutely nothing against Cleveland.

** which might not be a bad thing, depending.

how the power of free can help you become a raging success (just ask the Grateful Dead)

2011-12-09T03:24:33Z

Why should you bust your ass on your creative content and give it away, online, for free?

How is this supposed to help you?

And it can’t be mediocre stuff, either.

It has to be remarkable, engaging, useful, distinctive…or else no one will care.

Part of becoming a powerful artist involves being a relevant artist.

Consistent blogging gives ideas life and energy as it tosses them to you, dear reader, and you bounce them around and back to the blogger.

The blogger can lean into what works, what resonates, and discard or reshape what doesn’t.

I’m not saying that, as a blogger, you learn to pander — which doesn’t work all that well anyway, since people respond to authenticity (tricky to define, an easy word to overuse, but we know it when we see it, or at least when we don’t).

I’m also not saying that you learn to compromise your vision to fit your (inaccurate) sense of the (ever-shifting) creative marketplace. But ideas evolve through expression and social interaction, and that growth weaves through your creative work.

Creative work requires isolation, but creative insight develops when you’re in the world, observing and asking questions and testing your aforementioned ideas and exploring stuff and meeting cool people and taking risks and learning cool shit.

Blogging is a way to be in the world that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Even if the benefits stopped there, I would wonder why more writers in particular, especially literary writers, don’t take advantage of this.

“But why should I write,” they grumble, “for free?”

Which brings me round to my opening question.

John Perry Barlow* nails it in his introduction to the book EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT BUSINESS I LEARNED FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD (seriously, how could you not want to read a book with this title)?

The band became a massive success without compromising their values or vision in large part because they gave away their music for free. Or rather: they allowed tapers in the audience. As bootleg tapes of their concerts (free content) circulated among fans, they attracted new fans who paid money to come to their concerts (paid content). And because fans knew from listening to the tapes that Grateful Dead concerts changed from night to night they had incentive to attend as many concerts as possible

endowing us eventually with a following so devoted that we could, for a time, fill any stadium in America.

Barlow makes the point that an information economy is “fundamentally different” from a physical economy. In the latter, scarcity equals value. If we can’t have it, we want it more. It’s why De Beers manipulated the diamond market so that diamonds appeared scarce when they were all over the damn place.

But these rules don’t seem to apply to expression

where there appears to be an equally strong relationship between familiarity and value instead.

The worth of a diamond remains the same whether it’s hidden in your pocket, displayed in public, or dropped into the ocean like in the movie TITANIC (which I always thought a stupid pointless move on the part of the heroine, but whatever).

Barlow continues:

…the world’s greatest song has no value to anyone but me as long as it’s in my head…Only when a lot of people have heard and enjoyed it does it start to accumulate value, and even then not so much for itself but for me as its source. In this, music is more like a service, something that is continuously provided, rather than an object of commerce. The more people who become aware of the quality of that service, the more that can be economically derived from providing real-time access to its provision. Thus, every time we “gave away” a show to the tapers, we increased the value of the music that hadn’t been played yet.

It’s the free content that draws you in to a much larger story the artist is telling.

The unfolding of that story — that sweeping, creative, singular vision expressed over years through an evolving body of work — is a service rather than an object. The more people become aware of “the high quality of that service”, the higher the demand, the higher the perceived value, and the more the artist can charge for access to certain aspects of it (if the artist is inclined in that direction).

Blog posts, in a way, are like songs: little units that have value in and of themselves, fluttering out in all directions, assuming lives of their own –

– if they’re good enough to win attention.

Familiarity builds trust and likeability. There’s a psychology study in which a girl at college shows up for class everyday — and then, in another class, shows up only some of the time. In both cases, she doesn’t speak to anybody, or make eye contact, or linger in any way before fleeing the lecture hall.

But the students who saw her everyday rated her ‘likeability’ much higher than the students who barely saw her at all.

The more you hear a song, the more you tend to like it (at least until you hate it again for being so overplayed).

When the success of your creative work depends largely on subjective elements — appealing to subjective tastes — it makes sense to attract your right people (through the power of your amazing content) — and make your style as familiar as possible — even before you have anything to sell them.

Because this whole question — are people willing to pay for content? — is, in my mind, kind of ridiculous.

Yes! They are!

It just depends on the story you’re telling.

* I met Barlow at a String Cheese Incident concert. It was a highly memorable evening.