Robert Collier

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out..."

— Robert Collier

American Author

1885 - 1950

Commentary

The illusion, that many believe, is that success happens overnight.  This is far from reality.  Success happens slowly, gradually over days, months and years.  Have you the stamina and commitment to write or paint for ten or twenty years without recognition or reward?

Public success is also fleeting and fragile.  One day you are on top of the world and the next you have fallen and failed.  Yet, measuring one's success by the whims of the world does not bode well.  We need to measure our success by our own internal clock — by our own internal standards.  We need to give ourselves credit even if those around us don't appreciate what we have done.

Creative Practice

Count your blessings this week and write them down.  What are you thankful for?  What are the gifts you have been given?  What are you grateful for?  Spend time thinking about how you are already a success.  Acknowledge and celebrate your success.

Biography

Robert Collier was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Mary Ferguson and John Collier.  His father was a foreign correspondent for Collier's Magazine published by his brother Peter.  Robert entered a church seminary and expected to be a priest, but dropped out before taking his vows and moved to West Virginia to seek his fortune.  He worked as a mining engineer for eight years before moving to New York where he worked in the advertising department of his uncle's company.  He wrote sales copy selling books.  His sales circulars on the O. Henry stories brought in orders for over two million dollars.

Robert, because of an undiagnosable illness, became interested in health products.  He believed that 98% of our illnesses came from chemically treated food.  From this illness came the desire to investigate the mind and the powers that lay hidden within the mind.  He studied hundreds of books and courses on everything related to metaphysics, the occult and success.  Based on his study, Robert wrote a series of books entitled the Secrets of the Ages, which sold over 300,000 copies in his lifetime.  He received thousands of letters telling the results obtained from reading the book.  His books are still published today through the efforts of his family.

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C. S. Lewis

"Faith is the art of holding on to things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances."

— C. S. Lewis

Irish Writer & Novelist

1898 - 1963

Commentary

Creative leaders need a lot of faith because they live in a very negative, sometimes hostile world, that often does not understand or appreciate their work.  I have been writing seriously for almost forty years and have yet to receive acceptance and recognition for the work I have produced.  Another person might have quit many years ago, but I keep plugging away.

Do you have faith in your creative ideas?  Your poems?  Your stories?  Your paintings?  Your ability to become another person on stage?  Do you have dark days when you want to quit and live a normal life?  Faith keeps us going even everything and everybody around us are telling us to give up — that we have no talent, no gift.

Where does your faith come from?  What keeps you going during those darkest of hours?  Why do you believe in your ideas?  

Creative Practice

This week think about what faith means to your artistic endeavors.  Why is faith in yourself and your creative work important?  Why must you believe in yourself?  Write for ten minutes on the importance of faith.  Or paint a picture of what faith means to you.

Biography

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland to Albert James Lewis and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis.  When he was four, his dog, Jacksie, was killed and he began calling himself Jacksie and would not answer to any other name.  He was known as Jack to his family and friends the rest of his life.

Jack loved animals as a child and read the Beatrix Potter's stories.  He wrote and illustrated his own animal stories as a child.  His mother died from cancer when he was ten.  Jack developed a love of Norse, Greek and Irish mythology.  At the age of 18 he was awarded a scholarship to University College, Oxford and a year later dropped out to join the British Army during World War I.  He resumed his studies when the war was over.

Lewis became an atheist at 15 and it took many years to restore his faith in God.  He converted in Christianity at 33.  

C. S. Lewis was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction.  His close friends included J. R. R. Tolkien.  His Chronicles of Narnia (seven fantasy novels for children) is a classic of children's literature.  The series has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into 41 languages.

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Isabel Allende

"Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me."

—Isabel Allende

Chilean Writer

1942 -

Commentary

The person who says that he has no fear is a liar.  We all fear something.  Maybe we are afraid that we are not good enough.  That we have not talent and have wasted our time writing or painting or acting.  What do you fear?  What keeps you awake at night?  How do you cope with your fears?  Do you run and hide?  Do you confront your fears head on?



My biggest fear is not having enough money to pay my bills?  I need to know where my next pay check is coming from.  I know deep inside that I am not an entrepreneur.  I have the desire and the ideas, but I am not willing to risk my financial security.  I have tried to start businesses while still employed but have not been successful.  And this fear is also why I have not become a full-time writer.  I need financial stability so I write part-time.



I am a risk-taker in my mind.  I will question any idea or concept.  Nothing is sacred.  Everything is fair game.  And the reason for this, I believe, is that in my teenage years I rejected the faith of my forefathers.  If I could challenge God, then I could challenge anything.  I am not a risk-taker with living life.  I have learned that I need security in the physical world so I can take risks in my mind and soul. 



But I have also faced fear and beat him at his own game.  I once was afraid of speaking in public, but after 5,000 presentations, I rarely experience fear of speaking.  In fact, I have become so relaxed that I am willing to make mistakes and laugh at myself.  What fears have you overcome?  



What fears are holding you back?  What fears are preventing you from being the writer or painter that you want to be?



Creative Practice

This week identify the fears that are preventing you from following your creative pursuits.  What can you do to confront these fears — to challenge these fears? What can you do to minimize the impact of the fear on your life and happiness?



Biography

Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru, the daughter of Francisca Llona Barros and Tomas Allende, who at the time was the Chilean ambassador to Peru.  Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.  Her father walked out on the family when Isabel was three.  She spent her youth in Chile, Bolivia and Lebanon as her mother and step-dad moved often.  She married Miguel Frias in 1962 and became a TV personality, a dramatist and a journalist.  She also translated romance novels from English to Spanish, but was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue that make the heroines sound more intelligent.



Isabel gave birth to a daughter, Paula, in 1963 and a son, Nicolas, in 1966.  In 1973, because of the assassination of Salvador Allende, she fled  Chile and moved to Venezuela where she worked as a journalist.



Her 1982 novel, The House of Spirits, began has a letter to her 99-year-old grandfather. The manuscript was rejected by numerous Latin American publishers, but was finally picked up by a publisher in Spain.  The book was a huge success and has been translated in many languages.  

Allende writes on a computer and writes in Spanish.  On her website, she writes:  "Language is essential to a writer, and language is as personal as blood. I live in California—in English—but I can only write in Spanish. In fact, all the fundamental things in my life happen in Spanish, like scolding my grandchildren, cooking, or making love."

Allende has written more than 20 books that have been translated into 30 languages and have sold over 57 million copies.



In honor of her daughter, Isabel has created a charitable foundation dedicated to the protection and empowerment of women and children world wide.



Video

Here is a powerful, humorous Ted Talk by Isabel Allende.  Be sure to watch it all.

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Uche Nduka

"Creativity is a way of responding to life.  It's an all-around essence — it's in how you make love, how you cook, how you talk to other people."

— Uche Nduka

Nigerian Poet / Songwriter

1963 -

Commentary

Are you creative in every area of your life?  Or do you limit your creativity to your art or your writing?  Creativity is a way of life.  It is how we live our lives.  Creativity is about making things better — about changing the world in which you live.  You can be creative while brushing your teeth or combing your hair.  Creativity is about how you see the world — how you experience the world.  Creativity is how we explore the world and learn its secrets.  Don't limit your creativity.  Don't limit yourself.

Everyone is born with the gift of creativity, but many lose the gift on the road to adulthood.  You can recover this gift if it has been lost.  You can expand your gift if it has shrunk over the years.  Learn to apply creativity to everything you do or say.  Learn to be happy with the gift you have been given.  Learn to release your natural creativity to help you deal with the problems of the world or your personal life.

Celebrate the gift of creativity.  Acknowledge the gift that you have been given.  Share the gift of creativity with others.  Believe that you can change your world through creativity.  Free yourself from the shackles of doubt.  Embrace your inner creative being.

Creative Practice

This week apply your creative gifts to areas of your life where you normally are not creative.  Maybe you create a new dish in kitchen.  Maybe you have a creative conversation with a friend.  Maybe you invent a tool to make your life simpler.  

Biography

Uche Nduka was born in Umuahia, Nigeria.  He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Nigeria.  He published his first collection of poems in 1988 at the age of 25.  He has since published 8 more collections of poetry.

References

• Interview with Uche Nduka: http://www.slowtrains.com/vol7issue3/ndukavol7issue3.html

• Six poems: http://mtls.ca/issue10/writings/poetry/uche-nduka

• Four poems:  http://xpoetics.blogspot.com/2009/09/poems-from-uche-nduka.html

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Fiona Gardner

"One of the most important things about childhood is imagination.  All artists, on some level, are adults who still have access to their imagination, who have figured out a way to carry that into being an adult."

Fiona Gardner

American Photographer / Artist

Commentary

Potential creative projects are all around us.  It takes imagination to find them.  Fiona Gardner found hers at Ellen's Stardust Diner in New York in form of Miss Subways.  She spent several years of her life working on the project with Amy Zimmer.  

We all have ideas, but most of us never act upon those ideas, and if we act upon an idea, we often don't finish the project.  I have started two novels that I have never finished.  I began a haiku notecard business using my haiku with artwork that never made a sale.  I still have cards sitting on a shelf in a closet.  I had an idea for a sports newspaper that focused only on local sports like Little League, softball teams, etc.  I never even got to first base.  I struck out before I got started.  I once had the idea for a book about the history of Illinois High School Tournament basketball.  I wrote to the state high school basketball association proposing that they fund my writing of the book but received no answer.  A year later they published their own history using a retired sports writer.  They stole my idea and didn't even acknowledge the theft.

But there are projects that I have finished.  My wife had an idea about writing a book on pet loss and the grieving people experience.  We spend four years on the book and interviewed over 100 people.  We published the hardback version in 1998 and the paperback in 2000.  The paperback, It's Okay To Cry, can still be found on Amazon.  The driving force behind the book was my wife.  She held my feet to the fire until it was finished.

We all have ideas.  The key is acting upon our ideas.  What ideas have you had that are still resting in a file folder somewhere?  What ideas have you started but never finished?  What projects do you need to take off the back burner and finish?

Creative Practice

Review your files for past ideas that you have never brought to completion.  Choose the one that you are most passionate about and set a target date for its completion.  Begin working on the project this week.

Biography

Fiona Gardner is an artist and photographer based in New York.  She received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in photography from Columbia.  Her work focuses on women and performance in constructed environments.  She has photographed mermaids, Southern belles and Miss Subways.  Miss Subways was a beauty contest which ran between 1941 - 1976 in New York and used to promote the subways.

Video:

Here is journalist Amy Zimmer talking about Miss Subways.  Amy and Fiona collaborated to create the book, Meet Miss Subways: New York's Beauty Queens 1941 - 1976.

Reference Links:

Interview: 

http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2012/10/19/interview-artist-fiona-gardner-on-meet-miss-subways

NPR Story: (See some of the Miss Subways, then and now.)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/12/20/167659444/miss-subways-a-trip-back-in-time-to-new-yorks-melting-pot

New York Times (Nine Miss Subways)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/29/nyregion/thecity/20071230_MISSSUBWAYS_SLIDESHOW_index.html

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Lucille Clifton

"I have a feeling that sometimes rather than wrestle and look for words, you have to be still and let them come."

Lucille Clifton

American Poet / Writer

1936 - 2010

Commentary

People sometimes perceive writers and poets as spending their days wrestling with words until they find the perfect word.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Yes, there a moments of revision and some will revise for years searching for the best word to convey the meaning.  But sometimes writers are lucky and the words appear as if out of nowhere.  A good writer, artist and creative leader learns how to remain still and listen.

Creative Exercise

Find a quiet spot where you will not be bothered by people and their electronic gadgets.  Spend 10 to 15 minutes listening to the sounds both within your head and outside.  Then take out your paper and pen and write for 10 minutes.  Repeat this process 5 times throughout the week.  At the end of the week review your work.  For an artist, repeat the same process and draw instead of write.

Biography

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York.  She graduated from high school in 1953 and attended Howard University and the State University of New York at Fredonia.  She married Fred James Clifton, a professor of Philosophy and sculptor, in 1958.  The novelist Ishmael Reed introduced them while he was organizing the Buffalo Community Drama Workshop.  Reed also shared her poetry with Langston Hughes who included them in his anthology, The Poetry of the Negro.

Clifton's first poetry collection, Good Times, was published in 1969.  She was poet-in-residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore from 1971 - 1974.  She was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 - 1985.  Over the years she has taught at Columbia University, George Washington University, University of California at Santa Cruz, St. Mary's College of Maryland and Dartmouth College.



Clifton published 14 collections of poetry and won numerous awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007, the National Book Award in 2000 and the 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.  She also wrote and published 18 children's books.  Her children's book, Everett Anderson's Goodbye, won the Coretta Scott King Award in 1984.



In Clifton's interview with Bill Moyer for his series the Language of Life, she said: "I was not trained as a poet, and I've never taken poetry lessons or had workshops.  Nobody taught me anything much, really.  So, I learned how to learn, and what I learned is that I could be still and allow the world and the impressions and the feelings — I'm very good with feelings — to come to me, and I could use our language to write them down."

Video

Here is Lucille Clifton reading her poem, won't you celebrate with me.

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John Holt

"We learn to do something by doing it.  There is no other way."

— John Holt

American Author, Educator

1923 - 1985

Commentary

We take in information about the world outside ourselves through our senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling and it is through these senses that we learn.  When it comes to the classroom, we learn primarily through seeing, hearing and doing.  Usually one or two of these ways of learning will be dominate in a person, but we learn through all three ways and we can improve our ability to learn in a given way.  

How do you learn?  Are you a life-long learner?  Are you a visual learner?  Do you learn best by seeing something?  There are two types of visual learners?  Those that learn through pictures and graphics and those that learn through the written words.  Are you an auditory learner?  Do you learn best by hearing something.  Do you listen to recorded books?  Are you a kinesthetic learner?  Do you learn best by doing?

So how does this apply to the creative leader?  First, how do you best learn your craft of drawing, writing, or acting?  By reading about it?  By watching others?  Or by doing it yourself?  I think that we learn in all three ways, but we learn best by doing.  No matter how much you read, you have to pick up the brush or pen to be successful.  No matter how much time you spend watching others, you have to pick up a pen or brush.  Only in doing can you put what you learned by reading and watching into practice.   If we pay attention to what we do, we can teach ourselves many things.  Reading and watching others, though, will speed up the learning process.

How about how your audience experiences your works of art.  Do they only experience it visually?  Can they hear it?  Can they smell it or taste it?  To me I experience a story or poem differently when I hear than when I read it on a page.  When I listen to a novel while driving, I become part of the world of the novel in a way that does not happen when I read about the world on the page.  I find my others senses are more engaged when I listen to the book.  I see, smell and taste the world in ways that often don't happen when I read.

Creative Practice:

Take a test to determine how you learn best.  Here is one free test that can be found on line. 

http://www.berghuis.co.nz/abiator/lsi/lsitest1.html

Background on Author

John Holt, born in New York City, was the oldest of three children.  He joined the navy and fought in World War II in the Pacific.  After the war, he became a school teacher and taught in Colorado and Boston.  He published his first book, How Children Fail, in 1964.  The controversial book blamed schools for the failure of children.   His follow-up book, How Children Learn, was published in 1967.  I remember in college that I bought bought books from the Doubleday book club.  He wrote 11 books of which two were published after his death.  Holt became disillusioned with the school system and became an early proponent of homeschooling.  His book, Teach Your Own was published in 1981.

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