Secrets to Creative Success

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra, and you’ll keep me supplied in caffeine. It’s a win for everyone, really. 

There are a few things that people think about as they head into a new year. Usually health and fitness, their life path and career success. Let’s talk about what it is to be a success. Does it mean money, prestige, a corner office or to be be successful requires us to do more and be more of ourselves in order to bring success into our lives? What are the secrets to success? 

On www.myemma.com I came across an article on the “10 Secrets to Success” from the worlds top marketers. Bringing the reader quotes and ideas from people at the top of their field. My Emma is a plethora of resources for marketing and learning to bring your skills to your audience. 

What does this have to do with creativity? a creative person, our marketing is in our work. The same rules apply on another level and by bringing in these skills we can create personal and possibly professional success to our creative paths. Creatives often focus so much on their creative work they can forget the marketing aspect of their careers. A creative persons work deserves to be seen and recognized by an audience, even if it is an audience of ten or a thousand. 

The first rule: Be human. Remember we are all human.

“Marketing is all about creativity, humanity, and authenticity.”

Jay Baer Convince & Convert

We all have basic needs and desires that drive us. Try to be reachable, accessible and understandable. That doesn’t mean changing your work, it means be you in what you are doing and no one else. Bring all of who you are, and your humanity into the creative work that you bring into the world and you will find the right audience for your work. You need to be authentic in your creative work. 

Another piece of advice: Narrow your audience, don’t expand it. You will never appeal to everyone and the great news…YOU DON’T HAVE TO!


“GO NARROW, NOT BROAD: WE HAVE A TENDENCY TO THINK ‘IF I GO BROAD, I’LL CAPTURE MORE PEOPLE.’ BUT THE MORE TIGHTLY YOU DEFINE YOURSELF, THE EASIER IT IS FOR YOUR PEOPLE TO FIND YOU.”

TAMSEN WEBSTER

Those who relate to your work will find you and become your biggest fans. Look at Amanda Palmer as a great example of success and unusual expression. Her fan base found her and our some of the most loyal fans I have witnessed. Her success is based on her style. She marketed to the people that would love her work the way that it was. She did not try to reach everyone. You don’t either. Create what you want to create with all your heart and your people will find you. Those are two big secrets of success. 

If you want the other Eight secrets, head over to My Emma and check out this eye opening article and their other resources as well that can help you on your way to becoming a marketing success with your own creative works. So often, creatives overlook this aspect of their work and wonder why they aren’t selling and why they aren’t getting their fans. You have to consider the marketing aspect of the creative side of work, the business side to really get yourself out there into the world. You success is in finding your people and creating a loyal fan base. Money, prestige and even the corner office can be nice, but if it isn’t what you are aiming for, then it isn’t real success. 

Thursday Prompts: Journal Prompts

Thursday Prompts: Journal Prompts

I’m back after my bit of a break. I may not post as often as I had been as homeschooling uses a lot more time than I had intentioned and it has to be a priority. However, I still want to bring you some Thursday Prompts and other creative goodies. Today is prompts day and it’s time for some journal prompts.

  1. When was the last time you were really happy about something, someone or just because? Describe the feeling of happiness or joy that you felt and what you did with it.
  2. Are you prepared for the Holidays? What do you have left to do? If you are someone who prepares early, try to understand why and if you are a procrastinator, also explore the why.
  3. What is the one thing that scares you about the upcoming holidays that you are afraid to say to anyone? That someone won’t like the gift you’ve chosen or the meal you prepared? That there will be a family fight or disagreement? Or maybe it’s is something else, like driving in the snowy weather or having to visit family and friends…obligations to others?
  4. What would do if you had just 48 hours for yourself? No one to interrupt you or a budget to get in the way. Just 48 hours of you time. Where would you go? Would you go anywhere at all or hide out at home?
  5. Its that time of year, fall where people start thinking about gratitude.  Create a list of at least fifty things that you can be grateful for. Anything big or small works.
  6. As the year comes to an end, what is one thing you would like to accomplish before they year is over? What is something that you wished you could have accomplished but are okay letting go of until maybe next year? What will you continue working on even though it may not be finished by the end of the year?
  7. How do you take care of your mental health over the stress that often comes from holiday pressure? What will you do to take care of yourself? Taking care of ourselves allows us to be there for our friends and families in a more present way.
  8. If you had to make one apology for something that happened this year that you still feel is bothering you, what would it be? Who would you say it to? Why do you regret it so much? How do you let go and move forward so that you don’t take the incident into the new year with you.
  9. What are you secretly wishing for for the holidays? What is your deepest wish? Have you told anybody? Would you? Why or why not?
  10. What is one event or activity that you participated in this year that you are really glad that you did? Why is it special? What did you do at the event? Who was with you? Where was it? Do you enjoy replaying the memories from that event? Do they make you happy when you do?

Here you have it! Ten journal prompts to get you through the week until we meet again on Thursday with more prompts of another kind. Do you like the mix of prompts? Are there some  you prefer over others? What would you like to see more of? Let me know in the comments below.

Seven Steps to a Daily Creative Practice

Seven Steps to a Daily Creative Practice

I talk a lot about creative activities and things that you can do to improve your creative self but I want to talk to you about creating a daily creative practice. I advocate a lot that your creative time spent does not need to be more than ten minutes in a day. But how does one create a daily practice? Here are the steps to developing a ten minute daily creative practice.

  1. Set a specific time that you can be creative each day. It works best if it can be at the same time every day, however, I know life comes up so make an effort to put the time in your calendar each day so that you know for those ten minutes you are occupied with being creative. Think of being creative as part of the work of your soul. Your being needs creativity to thrive. Otherwise, unused it festers into something else. Making time for it is of the first importance.
  2. Make room for it. When I began making pendants all I had was a tv tray in the living room where I would work on creative stuff while everyone around me was watching television or playing games. I didn’t have space to myself but I had a space that was mine. If you are lucky enough, and your kids are back in school or all grown up, then you get to have some space to yourself. But create some room for being creative. This is the second most important part because if you don’t have somewhere to be creative, you won’t do it.
  3. If you don’t know where to start, start anywhere. Unsure if you want to paint or write or uncertain what you like creatively? Look at what you are drawn to. If there are several things, try one thing at a time. Maybe one day your journal for ten minutes, then you try a poem the next day but the day after you watercolor paint or play with clay. Eventually you will find what it is that calls you. If you don’t like it, then you have only spent ten minutes and you can try again the next day. Think of it a a sort of spiritual playtime to connect with your creative self.
  4. Begin. Make a commitment to start your practice on a certain day and commit to say seven days in a row. Then commit to two weeks in a row and so on. The new research shows that it takes an average of sixty-six days to form a new habit. Build it a couple of weeks at a time and by the time three months have gone by, you have created your new daily practice.
  5. Continue committing and recommitting. I have learned this through my new exercise routines as life comes up and trips and other events get in the way. Don’t beat yourself up over it, just recommit to starting over and keep going. It isn’t the end of the world. Life isn’t going to always stop for us plus we need vacations and outings with friends or have family dinners. Do the best you can to make the time sacred and commit to it but allow yourself to be flexible and not rigid. There have been times where I skipped my creative practice for meeting with a friend and was more inspired through that meeting that I came home and did creative work anyways.
  6. Try new things. The problem some people have is that they get bored doing the same thing every day…some people thrive on the routine. Don’t change the commitment. Change the activity. Scour Pinterest for new ideas. Read craft blogs or DIY blogs or writing blogs for other ideas. Even here I list prompts every Thursday as well as ten minute projects on Tuesdays. You don’t have to do the same thing every day.
  7. Just do it! That’s it. Show up every day and be creative. Allow  yourself at least ten minutes. You might find yourself expanding to fifteen or thirty over time depending on what you are working on. Ten minutes to just to open that window and let some light in on the creative soul. It doesn’t mean you have to stay there. Grow from it. It will feel great to move into your creative self more often. Your soul needs it.

There you have seven steps to creating a daily creative practice. Do you already have a daily practice? What does it look like? If you don’t, what would you like it to look like? Feel free to answer in the comments or on the Facebook page. Happy creating!

Friday Interviews: Zev Levinson, Author

Friday Interviews: Zev Levinson, Author

Today I am excited to bring to you an interview with friend and author, Zev Levinson. Zev and I were introduced through my friend Jen Rand, and through them I found my way to the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. I have had the joy of getting to know Zev as a person, a poet and a writer. His writings are eloquent and colorful. He brings images to life in his poetry, especially in his new book that walks the reader through the  beauty and history of Humboldt county. His book, Song of Six Rivers, is a delightful epic poem to read and a visual experience with pictures from the archives of Humboldt State University. His writing comes from a deep connection with the Humboldt region through his working and teaching.  Zev is also a teacher of poetry working with California Poets in the Schools and works with the Redwood Writing Project.

1) Please introduce yourself to us. Tell us about your work with California Poets in the Schools as well as the Redwood Writing Project.

I have been with California Poets in the Schools since 1998. It’s one of the largest writers-in-residence programs in the country. We go into schools, hospitals, juvenile halls. I get students to read and write a lot of poetry. I’m in a classroom or several classrooms for a week at a time. Since I mostly do this for my living, as well as being an editor, I sometimes stay a week at a time in places far enough away from home to preclude commuting.
I’ve been with the Redwood Writing Project [RWP] since 2001, which is part of the National Writing Project. When I joined, its two main objectives, as I understood, were teachers teaching teachers about writing; and also that if you teach writing, you should be a practicing writer. With the RWP I have been teaching the Young Writers Camp since summer 2003, and the main poetry teacher for their Young Writers Conference which is a separate event. When I teach in the schools, I always advertise RWP’s Young Writers Programs, so we get a lot of crossover signups for these events.

2) What drives your passion to stay involved with these projects?

[Laughs] I don’t know what else I would do. I was on the path to become a professor and that didn’t work out. Teaching kids was going to be a side project. I received so much positive feedback from teachers, principals and parents that I kept teaching. I keep my calendar filled with teaching nearly every week during the school year. I have seen thousands of young minds light up when I present poetry and love the interchange that happens. All kids are ready to be poets if they aren’t already, whereas adults have walls up. Even when I walk into a place with reluctance and resistance, I try to break the ice really quickly and blow their minds really quickly. Most of the time, one hundred percent of the students get on board pretty rapidly. It’s been impossible to want to turn away.

3) Let’s talk about your new book. Tell me about the title of your epic poem, Song of Six Rivers.

It’s about the area I live, Humboldt County, in the far north of California. With the title, I had some guidance from Jim Dodge, a great local author. He encouraged me to settle on a title that didn’t specify a politically mandated name like “Humboldt County.” The area where I live is called the Six Rivers region or the Humboldt Bay region. We have the Six Rivers National Forest, emphasizing six main watersheds. It sounds good and people know the area. It’s a bioregional name. The poem is an ode to the region as well as to Guy Kuttner, who is its muse. When I was searching for the right title, Bob Sizoo, former codirector of the RWP, suggested it.

4) What are your connections to Humboldt County and what does that bring to your writing?

I haven’t lived here my whole life: less than thirty years. But I am deeply connected to this place. I moved away, and came back, and never want to leave again. Humboldt is a special place. It has very beautiful natural surroundings, rural, with a small population. We’re on the ocean; we have the mountains and the forests. There’s a strong sense of community with people helping each other a lot. I bonded with the place quickly. When I moved here I became Dan the Flower Man, selling flowers in Arcata and Eureka. That’s how people knew me. Then I kept morphing into one thing or another, mostly a teacher and writer.

5) Can you tell my readers about Guy Kuttner and what is his significance to your poem? What is your dad’s influence in the poem?

Guy passed away about seven years ago. He was an educator, naturalist, peace activist, and one of the founders of the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. Bob Sizoo originally created the retreat through RWP, mainly for teachers. When funding dried up, a group of us turned it into a retreat for writers with published authors presenting workshops. It was a lot of work and we had to charge campers much more than we do now. We would have meetings in Guy and Cindy’s living room [Cindy was Guy’s wife]. Guy kept saying that if this was too much work, we should just rent Camp Mattole by ourselves and let it be a collective with our own workshops.

The year we decided to change it to a collective, he died suddenly. He was stricken with a rare disease and within a few weeks he was gone. He was a really powerful presence. Several hundred people came to his memorial. He was uncompromising in his beliefs, kind, loving, gentle, and changed our community. He had a big personality. When I began to write the poem, I was nearing fifty, wondering about my own legacy and what I would leave behind when I go. In the poem, I am asking why am I here, what am I doing, is my teaching in the schools enough? Guy responds by speaking to me from the beyond and instructing me to sing of these lands that we both love. He was a mentor figure to me as well as somewhat of a father figure, being twenty years my senior.

My father was also a community leader, a professor, a cantor in a synagogue, and he died when I was fourteen. He was in a car accident, then a coma for four months, then died. A thousand people were at his funeral. So that has always been a part of my psyche. He was my role model who left behind this legacy. He was also a published author, and there is still a Robert Levinson Memorial Lecture every year at San Jose State University where he taught, as well as a library named after him. There is all of this legacy in my life. As I was working on the poem, I was asked to work on the third edition of his book, The Jews in the California Gold Rush. The first edition was published while he was alive, the second one after he passed. Now a third edition was requested by the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West.

It was the first time that the text was digitally scanned, which caused a whole riot of errors and I had to go in and correct them, comparing one text to another, all the while working with an editor from someplace else through email. It turned out to be a complicated process. The book took four years to put together. While I was writing the poem, I was very present with my father as well. You might say that editing his book was my first collaboration with him ever. It was a deep process to read his words over and over.

It had taken me decades to read his book in the first place, telling myself I wasn’t too interested because it was dry history. Of course I was in denial, not wanting to get that close to him after he was gone, open up the wound. When I finally read it, I could hear his voice speaking every sentence and it was as though he was talking to me. So I read it very, very slowly and savored that. Then he unintentionally walked into the poem. He is not as present as Guy, but the two books came out around the same time.

6) What inspired you to take on the project of writing an epic poem about Humboldt?

I was wanting to leave something memorable behind. I didn’t know it was going to be as long as it was, but I did want it to be somewhat epic in scale, to honor the land. The poem spontaneously formed as I continued to work on it. I didn’t always know where it was going. The more I went with it, the more I realized it was a sweeping view of the Humboldt area. In order to name so many places here, and to honor the Native Americans living here now and the ones who were decimated, it was going to take a lot of lines. I guess it was two things: I was going for something big, and the epic suited itself to my needs. And it was also fed by my love of British Romantic poets who wrote epic poetry. I was also inspired as a teenager by progressive rock, musicians who created great epic songs. I felt I was working in a true vein. When I was younger, before I was serious about or schooled in poetry, that kind of poem would come to me. The musicality of meter and rhyme works well for me.

7) How does teaching influence your writing?

I’m inspired by the natural beauty of the places where I teach. And teaching and writing feed each other. I couldn’t have written Song of Six Rivers without the teaching aspect. Since I go all over the county to teach, and sometimes stay for a week at a time in faraway communities, I take walks every day, asking the locals about good places to explore and what secrets I ought to know. I get invited into people’s homes for dinner, and get to know the communities intimately.

Although my poetry isn’t always inspired by teaching, I am grateful that poetry has become the main focus of my life. As I’ve gotten older, poems have come less spontaneously to me; so one of the benefits of teaching is that during writing time in the classroom, sometimes I can work on my poems while students are writing theirs. I might chip away at a poem for years while working in schools.

8) Tell me about your writing routine. What was your process in writing this poem?

My routine is not as rigorous as I wish it were. This is mostly because I’m a self-employed freelancer who spends a lot of time organizing my work. Being an editor and a teacher means that often I don’t have time for my own writing. When writing an epic poem, you can’t just go back to it a day at a time because there is so much to read through, to recall, to mull over. I need chunks of time, and that’s what’s so valuable about the Lost Coast Writers Retreat and having some summer vacation. It gives me time to reorient myself and remember what I was trying to say.

I started working on Song of Six Rivers at Camp Mattole [Lost Coast Writers Retreat] because it has become a sacred place for all of us who knew Guy. Cindy even had us release some of Guy’s ashes at our favorite swimming hole. That’s where I began working on the poem. I finished half of it by the time the retreat ended. I wrote the other half over the rest of the summer. I made myself keep working on it. It was such a challenging process and I wanted to run it by someone like Jim Dodge, who has such a keen eye and ear.

He tore it apart. He’s kindhearted but an unforgiving critic. He didn’t finish reading it, as other things had come up in his life. He said he’d read the rest if I wanted, but I was trying to be generous and I regrettably told him that I got the overall gist of his comments. I wish I had had him continue with detailed critique. Besides some helpful ideas regarding logic, he pointed out weaknesses in the meter and rhyme scheme and stanza structure. So I ended up rewriting the whole thing. The first draft was around four hundred and fifty lines but I tightened up the meter, changed the rhyme scheme and the stanza structure. It took another year to finish it.

9) How did you discover that writing was your path?

Writers always say that it’s something they can’t help but do. The hard-core ones say they would rather not be alive than not write. I’m not so extreme. When I was younger I was inspired more by music. Music was probably more important to me than poetry. Then a shift came and I didn’t care about the labels: musician, writer, etc. When I was a teenager, poems would just come to me, and that continued into my twenties and beyond. As for a career, I wasn’t sure. I always loved reading and writing, so I chose the path of becoming a teacher of writing. The writing grew over time. I think I would have written some book on my own—and I have put together unpublished collections over time—but I was lucky and discovered the Redwood Writing Project which led to the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. Without those, the epic poem, the book, wouldn’t have happened. Now that it’s out in the world, I feel more that being an author is a possible career, enjoying working hard to get other books into the world.

10) What is the most difficult aspect of writing?

Getting the words perfect. A writer wants to share inspiring ideas. It’s not hard to share these, but to share them in a powerful and intriguing way . . . that is the great challenge. And poetry has to be musical as well. It has to sound good or history won’t remember it. I like to push language. I like to make it unique, sometimes verging on language poetry, where the emphasis is on the sound and normal channels of meaning are not always accessible.

11) Did you plan on Song of Six Rivers to also be such a visual book?

No. I was only thinking of the poem. When I presented it to Kyle Morgan at Humboldt State University Press, he liked the project. But he also saw it as a visual book, with accompanying archival photos from the library’s Special Collections. I said yes, even though I thought the poem stood on its own. I was pretty naïve about that, since many people buy the book for its visual appeal. There was a team at HSU that put the book together. CM Phillips and Ashley Schumann went through over twelve thousand photos that the public mostly hadn’t seen before, and matched photos with the text. In the end, forty-something archival photos were used, as well as four contemporary photos from local photographers. My partner, Jennifer Rand, also helped with the design a bit. Now it is this beautiful book to look at. Pharmacies even buy it because it’s not just a poem about the area; folks can look at it and see the pictures too. I am now much more open to books being visual.

12) Are you working on another project?

Well, I can’t talk about the subject of the current project. I’m one of those people for whom talking about it lets the air out of the balloon, takes away the magic of creation. However, I am working on something that is twice as long as the last one. I learned so much about the process of creating an epic poem that I am happier as I put this one together. I don’t know if I’m going to keep writing epic poetry, because a thousand-line poem takes years to put together. One- to two-page poems still pop up from time to time, when they want to. I also have a couple of other writing projects that aren’t poetry: books on different topics.

It was a pleasure to interview Zev, and to share his writing with you. Here are the links to purchase his book. If you want to support and independent book store you can request the book through IndieBound.org or you can purchase through Amazon, Song of Six Rivers. Visit him at his website: www.zevlev.com

Creativity in a Busy World

Creativity in a Busy World

In a world that often moves too fast and is too busy, it is easy to lose sight of our creativity. Our lives get overloaded. Kids, maybe parents, jobs, housework can swarm around us and take up most of our waking moments until we fall, exhausted into our beds. It is easy to see how creative expression can be sidelined. However, I want to tell you that the act of creativity does not have to happen in huge, planned out moments of time. It is possible to dedicate just five or ten minutes to a creative project or exercise. Everything from coloring pages to drawing mandalas, from painting to making jewelry or even five minutes of journal time, all count towards your creative spirit’s health.

I do this often. I recently created a prayer flag mobile for someone who just had a baby. Over all, it was quite the process from painting the fabric to stamping the designs, and then because it was for an infant, I laminated the flags so no paint was exposed. I attached it to a small wreath that I also decorated with ivy and flowers. I broke the tasks into small ten to fifteen minute increments that I could work on between other projects, kids, etc. The project took about a week to finish but it got done. I could have easily said, “Nope,. It’s just too much work,” but in doing it in small pieces, I had the creative satisfaction of completing a project that was important to me and fulfilled my creativity needs.
Your creativity needs to be taken care of in the same way you would attend to your mental or physical health. It is part of your part of your health. Creativity helps physical, mental and spiritual aspects of our selves. It is why it is such an important practice to attempt daily, just as you might meditation, or jogging. In fact, these practices done together, help one another. The act of being creative brings our mind to life.
I am encouraging you to seek out small daily acts of creativity. Sneak the time in during soccer practice with a journal in your bag. Or maybe give yourself ten minutes before you go to bed to draw or write or begin a painting. No one says it has to be a completed project, just take the time to invest your creative self.
There have been a few days where I have come to the end of the day and I feel like I am missing something and it is because I have not done any creative work. I make an effort, sometimes just making simple artist trading style cards or I journal. Some days, I paint or draw mandalas. I want to encourage to find a practice that suits your desires and needs. Are you a needle pointer, a knitter, maybe a wood-burning person ( like my friend). If you need to, try scheduling it into your day, the same way you would schedule your workout or plan a menu.
If you aren’t sure what you want to do creatively, start with something small, like picking up some pens and colored pencils with a coloring book or a small palette of water color paints and paper. Pick up a journal and write for five to ten minutes. Play with play dough. The point is to start doing something to be creative.

If you are stuck creatively, maybe you need a little guidance or coaching along the way. Maybe you just need a boost through out your week that you need to be creative. I offer two coaching packages that are just for these occasions.

The first package is the Encouraging E-mail Coach. This is a subscription designed to prompt you during the week to reach your creative goals and hold you accountable to them. It is a simple coaching program designed to jump start your creative endeavors. Three encouraging e-mails will go out over a 7 day period to cheerlead you on your creative project. At the end of seven days, send me an e-mail and tell me how you did and where you left off, and we will keep going from there.

The second package, The Creative Play E-mail Coaching, is a more intense email package. It is more interactive with us working together toward your creative goals that include homework assignments to get you there. There will be up to five e-mails a week from me, and you can feel free to e-mail me anytime with questions and epiphanies. This package can be done in 30, 60, or 90 day increments, depending on what you want to accomplish.

My goal here at The Creating Room is to feed and encourage the creative soul. I believe that we all have within us the ability to be creative and that it arrives in us in different ways. Sometimes we might not have yet discovered what that is. That’s okay. I am inviting to come along on this journey to discover your creative self…to seek out the creative soul within you.

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