Eric Maisel's new Making Your Creative Mark

I've been a reader, fan, and student of creativity coach Eric Maisel for quite a long time. I got my first Maisel book, The Creativity Book, about 10 years or so ago. It opened up a whole new world of ideas for me. Since then I've read a number of the others and taken a half-dozen online courses with him. His honest teachings about the creative life have been both encouraging and grounding as I move my way further into a life in the arts.

His new book, Making Your Creative Mark, takes the same honest and practical approach to creating a life in the arts: things to know, things to do, things to consider, things to sort out. He addresses some of the most hidden issues for creatives: confidence, passion, empathy, stress, and managing our minds, our self-talk. I think you will find this book of great value.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book:

1. There is almost nothing that we are free to control. By the same token, there is almost nothing that we aren't free to influence.

2. Complete projects for the sake of making progress.

3. Remember that passion isn't optional.

4. You need to be a calmly confident seller.

I also want to put in a plug for Eric's book Natural Psychology, which changed my life. It's an articulated philosophy for those of us who are concerned with finding meaning in life. Happy reading!

New blog name, expanded blog focus

When I started The Writing Wheel blog in 2008, my interest in the creative process was pretty confined to helping writers do better work. Over the last five years, while I have continued to work as an editor and have spent a lot of time working on my own fiction writing and writing about that here, I've become more and more committed to my visual art practice. I've also written and published a book on the creative process called Sober Play: Using Creativity for a More Joyful Recovery.

I'm really fascinated by all aspects of the creative process and want to expand my discussions in this blog to more aspects of the creative process, both for artists and for everyday creatives. I'm also linking this blog to my Jill Kelly Creative Facebook page where I'll be posting as well.

I've got lots to stay about creativity: tips, suggestions, musings and amusings. For today, here's a new piece from my studio and a quote from Luciano Pavarotti: "People think I'm disciplined. It's not discipline, it's devotion, and there's a great difference."

How can you turn your devotion to your creative life?

Reworking a set-aside novel

Last June, I finished a second draft of my third novel, When Your Mother Doesn't. I proofread it and then sent it out to several trusted early readers. The story concerns three women, a mother and two daughters, who are getting together for the first time in 24 years.Weaving together by means of this reunion, I tell the stories of each of them and how they came to be who they are in relationship to each other.

I had tried something experimental in the first daughter's story by using reverse chronology, and while the general comments about the book were very favorable, only one person liked the experiment. The other four readers felt confused by it or had to keep looking back at what was happening to keep things straight. Not good news for me.

I'm currently on a writing retreat at the Oregon Coast and one of my tasks was to reread Frankie's story and see how I could resolve this issue. I decided to scrap the experiment and go with a more straightforward telling of the story. That required quite a few changes and I also decided to simplify Frankie's life. I'd written the other two stories first and felt a need to make Frankie's story as complex and dramatic as her sister's and her mother's, but I realized today that that was both unnecessary and inauthentic, for part of Frankie's story is that it isn't all that dramatic. My challenge is to make it compelling in its ordinariness. I'm not sure I've succeeded in that yet but I think I'm closer.

The wheels of traditional publishing grind exceeding slow!

In early February I signed a contract with Skyhorse Publishing for my second novel, Fog of Dead Souls. Since the odds of getting a traditional publisher these days are about a thousand to one, I felt very lucky. And I'm very glad I did as this is the easiest way to widespread sales although there is no guarantee that that will happen.

But I'm learning how slow this old process is. It's been two and a half months and the advance check has just finally arrived at my agent's. It now has to clear the bank and then they send me the money minus 15%.

My book is scheduled to be published in February 2014, basically a year from signing. Of course it is fiction and not a time-sensitive subject so there is no hurry, but when I finished my Sober Play book in late December, I had it proofread, designed, uploaded, and copies in my hand in less than 3 weeks. I am mindful though that I had only one book to get done and they have a rotating list of quite a few happening. I'm just one of the authors they publish for. But it is a curious and interesting process.

Another treadmill writing episode: 43:28

As I've mentioned in some earlier posts, this new novel I'm working on is posing many different kinds of problems than the ones before it where I seemed to automatically know what each next episode was going to be. This process is much more one of fits and starts. I show up every morning to write, but I often have to wait a while to know what to write and some days I don't get very far.

This morning was one of those days. I reread yesterday's drafting as always and tweaked a couple of words and added a little description. I had two other chapters started (a couple of sentences in each) but I couldn't figure out where to go with either one. Finally one of the characters told me she wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant so we ended up there but I couldn't figure out why and then my time was up.

I went to the gym after that. I needed to go early as I had a memorial service to attend later in the morning and I was conscious of the time so I decided on 40 minutes on the treadmill. As I got to the end of that 40 minutes though, something in me said "do another 10." But I had decided on 40 and I was already cutting it close to get ready to leave for the service.However, the little voice just wouldn't let go.

And so I stayed, listening to Foreigner and thinking about the book, and suddenly at 43:28 on the treadmill, I knew a big piece of what happens. It just came into my mind--all laid out. And it was so cool!

And yes, I walked the full 50 in gratitude and yes, I made the memorial service in plenty of time!

Book marketing #3

When I published my first book and the whole marketing challenge settled in on me, I felt overwhelmed and baffled. Even though I knew a fair amount about marketing (I had written press releases for clients, knew how to put together a press kit, knew how to get information), I felt pre-discouraged by all the bad talk I'd heard about how impossible it was to get your book out into the world on your own.

I'm a chronic list-maker and so that's what I set out to do. Make a list of all the feasible, practical, and possible things that I could do to market my book and an equal number of crazy, impossible, and impractical (i.e., too expensive) things I could do. But I didn't get very far until I asked myself two questions, which, are, I think, at the heart of marketing.

1. Where do I buy books/art objects?
2.  How do I learn about new books/art objects?

Here are some of the answers I came up with:

Question 1:
a. from catalogs
b. from amazon
c. through online searches and the retailers that show up
d. small retailers, including independent bookstores and gift shops (museum and otherwise)
e. Fred Meyer's
f. at workshops and classes I take

Question 2:
a. friends
b. chance encounter (see it in a shop)
c. looking for something similar to what I already like

So I began to target my marketing efforts in those directions. What would be your answers to these questions?

Book marketing #2 Why bookstores may not be your best bet

While there are many possible venues and routes for selling self-published books, traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores are probably not your best bet. Here's why:

1. Most small, independent bookstores carry only 1-2 copies of any particular book unless it is guaranteed to be a big seller (usually a new book by a well-known author).
2. It is up to the distributor (that's you) to check to see if they have sold the 1 or 2 copies of your book and need another 1-2 copies.
3. They expect a 40% discount from the list price. Depending on what your book costs you, you may make only pennies on the sale, not enough to cover your gas in visiting the store and checking to see if they sold that one copy.
4. They will expect you to take the book back if they don't sell it.

So you end up with a lot of effort for the sale of 1-2 copies of your book. There are better ways to go.