your sphere of influence

When you're young and want to save the world, you maybe envision yourself as President of the United States or in some other grandiose position of power, and you see yourself taking down the bad guys and supporting the deserving underdogs.

As I get older, I've become more and more attracted to the small, intimate, personal contributions I can make to society.  Instead of saving "the world," maybe I can teach a classroom of students or inspire a handful of friends to go after their dreams.  Now that I've started a small business, I feel like maybe just giving a solid, reliable salary for relatively enjoyable work to three amazing people is a good place to start.  

It's humbling-- not exactly "saving the world" here-- but it's also solid, tangible and positive.  

So, maybe your sphere of influence isn't as large as you imagined, either.  But maybe the small sphere of influence you have is actually creating more good than you think.  In my little coffee shop, for example, we have no Wi-Fi and no sea of laptops or TVs.  And yesterday, to my delight, two women who didn't know each other sat together and talked about the music one bought at the record store next door, about where they'd come from and just had a nice conversation for about an hour.

And that's what it's about for me.  Simple human connection.  It isn't moving mountains or ending injustice, but if I can create a space that fosters community and connects former strangers, that makes me happy.

And who knows?  Maybe those strangers will become friends and feel their lives were brightened and warmed a bit because of a tiny coffee shop they happened to stop into one day.  Maybe a great relationship will develop.  Or maybe they'll never see each other again.  But they'll have made a little connection, and that's what life is about for me.

People are everything, and no amount of money or success or anything else can equal a sincere and caring relationship to another human being.  As a creative artist, you'll often work alone.  So, the question is: in addition to your art/craft/work, what are you doing to foster your relationships?

shuen

There is a Chinese word, shuen, which means flowing or smooth sailing, and it seems when you are on the right track, everything just flows and feels effortless.

Take this new coffee shop I just opened yesterday, for example.  I saw that this little space (385 square feet) was available in December, and I called the landlord and said I'd take it without asking any questions.  He laughed and said sorry, he'd just signed a lease to someone else.  Bummed, I said to please call me if anything changed.

Fast forward to June 27th, when I got a call out of the blue saying the space would become available soon.   I wanted to take over on September 1st so I'd have some time to plan and get everything together, but after negotiating for two weeks, it became clear that if I didn't take over the lease by August 1st, they would find someone else.

So, on July 12th, I turned in my signed lease.  On July 14th, I found three amazing baristas to help me out.  And yesterday, on August 1st, we opened a brand new little coffee shop with tons of colorful art covering the 15-feet-high walls and a sky blue ceiling, we're serving the best coffee we could find (Ecco, a boutique branch of Intelligentsia), serving the best food we could find (organic, local vegetarian spring rolls, grain salads and turkey sandwiches for those who need some protein), baking fresh cupcakes daily and we already have a steady stream of customers.  Somehow, in those two weeks, we all completed our food safety certification and a full-day barista training down in LA, sorted out our dairy delivery, and acquired all of the coffee, coffee equipment, baking ingredients and equipment, and paper cups and so on.

It's a minor miracle, but that's shuen for you.  The universe/God/whoever you believe in at work.

planting seeds

One of my writing teachers once told me when I asked her how one knows what direction to go in, what to pursue in life, "You just plant seeds and see what grows."

I've been following her advice through the years and have found it to be one of the simplest and easiest ways to live.  Interested in too many disparate things?  No problem-- just send out your seeds and see what sprouts.

Some examples: interested in travel writing?  Go ahead and apply.  Interested in grad school?  Same thing.  Also interested in running a little cafe?  Start writing a business plan.  I know it sounds like you then get spread too thin and maybe don't do anything that well, and that risk certainly exists.  But!  Sometimes it works, too.  And you get this amazing set of life experiences because of it.

I think dumb luck has something to do with it, too, but I am so glad I went after all of the seemingly impossible things I tried and don't regret any of it.  I crashed and burned lots of times, but I've always given 100%.  

Because of this philosophy, I've gotten to work for an NGO in Geneva focused on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, work for an advertising company in Cape Town that was filled with some of the most creative people I've ever met, be an actor in a Steven Spielberg film opposite Leonardo di Caprio, graduate from Harvard, be a paid travel writer for Let's Go and accepted as a staff writer for the Rough Guides, backpack around the world for a year, and open a little coffee shop committed to serving both the best coffee and freshly baked cupcakes and treats but also to being nice about it/making gourmet accessible to all, displaying local artists' work and hopefully supporting grassroot community projects once we get off the ground.  

I'm working on my second novel now, and it's taking a long time, but I just consider it part of the process.  In the meantime, I'm opening a little cafe that will open a week from today.  If you keep on plugging away at your dreams, eventually, you make progress in all fronts.  It's like cleaning a bit of your living room one day, your kitchen the next, your bedroom the next-- as long as you keep at it eventually, everything gets cleaned.  Unless you're a total slob.  (So, moral of the story: don't be a slob.  And keep on cleaning.) :-)

Yes, my resume looks like I'm on crack, leaping from one industry to another, but I am passionate about many things, and I don't see why I'd have to follow a linear trajectory just because others prescribe it.  For me, a successful life is one full of passion and creativity, full of adventures and amazing life experiences, and I don't want to be boxed in or labeled.

Now that I'm in my 30s, I'm mellowing out and settling down a bit.  But, given my restlessness and insatiable curiosity in my 20s, there's no way I'd be at peace now if I hadn't tried everything I was curious about.  I'd always wonder, 'What if?'  And who wants a life of 'What if?' when you can have a life of 'I tried'?  Even if you crash and burn, which is inevitable in the creative and/or competitive fields, you'll always be able to say you gave it a full-hearted shot.

And you don't know if you really like something until you try doing it.  So, what is your dream life?  What are you doing to make it happen?  Planting seeds gives you the excuse to say, "I'm just trying it out."  But you have to at least try.

Dreams evolve over time-- what I thought I'd love often turned out to be unappealing once I was actually in it (politics and acting come to mind), but that's how you fine-tune your dreams.  Try it, see if you still love it, tweak it, try more things-- and just keep pushing forward, planting seeds wherever your heart leads you, and then, when you lie on your death bed, you'll be able to look back and say, "Wow, what a life I created."

Okay, stepping off soapbox now.  Thanks.  Hope it helps you on your creative journey. :-)

being an amateur and loving it

There is a freedom in being an amateur.  People allow you to make mistakes, as you're just learning.  So, I'm a writer, but I also love painting and photography and am not ashamed at my feeble attempts to create beauty or preserve a memory.

I recently put a book of my travel photos together, for example, and I love that every photo was taken with a little idiot-proof point-and-shoot digital camera.  It seems like everyone has a fancy camera these days, and you can disagree with me if you like, but I don't think a fancy camera guarantees a better picture.  You still have to frame a photo well, capture something interesting, etc.  

Of course, I'm just an amateur photographer-- what do I know?  :-)

So, how does this relate to writing and the creative process in general?  Two points:

1.  Don't let technology get in the way of your craft.  And don't expect technology to do the craft for you.  
I'm a technology dinosaur.  I like handwritten letters, my cell phone doesn't have a camera, internet access or anything other than numbers and a screen to let me know who I'm calling, and we don't have a TV at home (but that's a-whole-nother discussion).  Photoshop is amazing, but a good photo should be able to be awesome without it.  Just as I don't like plastic surgery for people, I don't like it for photos, either.  Maybe the old masters were better because they didn't have devices like spellcheck to make sure they were on top of their craft-- they alone had to churn out the images or stories in their minds and bring them to reality.  I think it's a good exercise to create technology-free art.  Low-tech --> imperfect --> human --> real.  And I like real.

2.  Just do it.  
Yes, Nike paid a lot of money to use that little phrase, but I like the spontaneity of it.  Don't have a fancy camera?  Then make your documentary with whatever you've got.  Don't have paint and perfectly pulled canvases?  Do pencil sketches on regular paper.  You can always create-- and you don't need classes or materials to get started.

Creative people tend to enjoy many creative arts, and I firmly believe each of your creative projects enriches your other creative work.  So, paint or write or dance or make music-- and enjoy the process, imperfections and all-- and know that you'll just have exercised your creativity a bit, making you a better all-around artist than you were yesterday.   And eventually, you may have to leave the amateur label behind, but you'll have so much practice behind you, you can then claim you were self-taught. :-)

point and shoot by jennifer kan martinez | Make Your Own Book

Writing Rules

We hear a lot of rules of "good writing," and while grammar is important...

I'd argue that flow is even more important.  

In other words, if you can read your writing easily without tripping over any phrases, it's likely better than writing something that's technically correct but unnatural to the ear.

As Clarence Darrow says, "Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"

My favorite writers tend to favor the stream-of-consciousness style: William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce...  I've heard that rambling isn't fashionable now-- people want minimal, clean prose, like Ernest Hemingway.  But if you don't naturally talk and think like Ernest Hemingway, isn't it a lie to try to suddenly write like him?  Or would you argue that that is the whole point of writing?  To experiment, like acting, with different voices, different lives and experiences?

And this is exactly what differentiates writing and acting in my mind and why I prefer the former to the latter.  I feel you have to write your own truth in your own voice, and that will be the strongest piece of art you will be able to create as a crafter of words.  An actor's job is to take those dry black-and-white scratches on paper and infuse them with life-- and each actor will bring a different feel to the words, even if they say the same things verbatim.

So, what's the point?  Basically: to disregard the rules, unless they are necessary for clarity (see: grandpa example above) and just write write write.  If writing at 7am every morning works for you, great.  If you're a spurt worker that does well writing 6000 words one day and nothing the next, that's fine, too.   

In the same way good teaching is so personal-- you can't teach someone to be a good teacher; they have to find their own teaching personality and method-- good writing is just a reflection of you, how you see the world and an indirect way of showing either what you love or hate in the world.

And how can anyone impose their rules on that?