What coule be more difficult for an artist or writer than supreme self-care?

Whenever I teach my workshop on Nurturing the Writer Within, I meet wonderful creative people who are doing what I've usually done. We're so happy to have time for creative work that we see the work as being the way we take care of ourselves.

Julia Cameron says we actually need to take better care of ourselves when we're writing flat out than when we're just doing our daily stints. So what's that about?

It's about wisdom.

It's about meeting deadlines and refilling the well and having a great time as an artist.

And i'm coming back to this blog now to talk about supreme self-care with any of you who are interested.

I'm committing myself to a year of :::gulp::: supreme self-care. I'm considering that maybe this is the lifetime when it's my job to love myself, nurture myself, tend and heal my body--and find out just how creative I can be when I take care of myself.

You're invited to join me.

If you exercise virtuously--but only because it's what you do with your family. Or eat well because you want good nutrition for your family. Or only meditate when the stress level's so high you can't write: This year's for you.

And if you usually take pretty good care of yourself--but you've never really found out how great life could be if you truly loved yourself as well as you love other people: This year's for you, too.

Guest bloggers are welcome. If you'd like to be my guest here, send me an email at maryo@iowapoet.com

Or post a message in the comments line.

Share your tips and ideas. Ask questions. Post your commitments.

There's no time like the present to have a love affair with your beautiful creative self.

EVERYTHING'S CHANGING: LEAN ON THE MUSE

It's a world of turmoil and change. Even if you welcome the changes, there's a lot of change. Publishers are scared. Money is scarce. Markets are changing. What's a writer to do?

Trust your muse. We nurture our relationships with the writer within (or the Creator Within or the muse or whatever affectionate nickname works for you and your muse) so we can lean on the muse in unpredictable times.

The muse is an expert on patterns, so your creative mind will feel and shift toward changing trends long before your more organized left brain has factored in all the shifts.

Daily writing is one good way to keep in touch with the muse. Julia Cameron recommends three morning pages where the muse gets to say whatever's there to be said, then two pages of work for publication in the afternoon.

Twyla Tharp starts the day with the discipline of dance workout and class, then begins choreography by letting her body feel its way into the movement the music needs.

Authors as different as Henry James and Kenneth Roberts and John Steinbeck have kept journals as they wrote, jotting down what the muse said about the ongoing work--and often what the whiney inner critic said, too.

So what does your muse say to do now? Visualize a phone call asking for advice. Or dialogue on a page. Or just start a clean page with the words "Today my muse wants me to..." and keep your hand moving on the page for five minutes.

Post a comment. Tell us how your muse likes to talk, how it's helping you.

Mary: Eric, can you tell us what The Van Gogh Blues is about?

Eric: For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.

To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.

Mary: Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, we are looking at existential depression? Or might that person be depressed in “some other way”?

Eric: When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play. But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life.

Mary: So you’re saying that a person who decides, for whatever reason, that she is going to be a “meaning maker,” is more likely to get depressed by virtue of that very decision. In addition to telling herself that she matters and that her creative work matters, what else should she do to “keep meaning afloat” in her life? What else helps?

Eric: I think it is a great help just to have a “vocabulary of meaning” and to have language to use so that you know what is going on in your life. If you can’t accurately name a thing, it is very hard to think about that thing. That’s why I present a whole vocabulary of meaning in The Van Gogh Blues and introduce ideas and phrases like “meaning effort,” “meaning drain,” “meaning container,” and many others. When we get a rejection letter, we want to be able to say, “Oh, this is a meaning threat to my life as a novelist” and instantly reinvest meaning in our decision to write novels, because if we don’t think that way and speak that way, it is terribly easy to let that rejection letter precipitate a meaning crisis and get us seriously blue. By reminding ourselves that is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us. Having a vocabulary of meaning available to talk about these matters is a crucial part of the process.

Mary: If a creative person’s best bulwark against depression is doing meaningful work and also loving or having relationships with someone or something beyond herself, might that relationship be another way of making meaning? I’m thinking of an artist who is politically active and sees political activity as a form of art, not as something apart from or separating her from her painting. For her there seems to be a work she does alone (and exhibits publicly) and a work she does in community. Would that kind of community activity fit your thinking, or are you talking about more personal relationships as a balance for the work?

Eric: I entirely agree with this and I’ve coined the term “engaged creativity” to stand for the idea that a person might want to do personal art much (or most of the time) but might also enjoy and find meaningful doing some art that is pointedly political or social in nature.

For example, in 1832, Angelina Grimké, the daughter of an aristocratic, slave-holding Southern family, became, as a matter of conscience, an abolitionist. Publicly championing the unpopular abolitionist cause constituted an act of engagement and an example of conscience in action. In 1835, Angelina converted her older sister Sarah to the abolitionist cause and together they became the first women to speak in public for the black slave and, later, for women’s rights. They became founding activists in a pair of vital movements.

As activists, they persuaded their mother to give them the slaves who constituted their share of the family estate, whom they immediately freed. In part as a testament to their Quaker faith, they began speaking and lecturing in New York and New England against slavery, speaking engagements that included Angelina’s three effective appearances before the Massachusetts legislative committee on antislavery petitions in 1838.

In addition, Sarah wrote, among other nonfiction pieces, An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836), urging abolition, and Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838). Angelina wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). Standing up for abolition equaled engagement; speaking out made them activists; but quietly sitting and dealing with the challenges that attend to writing an effective nonfiction piece amounted to something else. Creating something that could move a listener constituted an act of engaged creativity. This is a primary way that a creative person can stand up for what she believes, by filling public spaces with her creative efforts.

A songwriter, when he attends a rally, is engaged. If he helps organize the rally, he is an activist. But when he composes a song for the cause, that composing is an act of engaged creativity. It is an act that requires that he make use of his talents, skills, mind, heart, hands, and personal presence in ways that are different from—not better than or more courageous than, but different from—the way he uses himself when he signs a petition, writes a check, or builds a barricade. In exactly the same sense, a physician who travels to Africa without pay to provide medical services for the indigent poor is engaged and an activist; but if, upon arriving, he discovers that he must invent new procedures because of conditions on the ground, that need demands that he engage the creative part of his nature, the part that innovates and dreams up new combinations. Both the protest song and the new procedure are acts of engaged creativity, that is, creative effort in ethical service.

Engagement is conscience in action and engaged creativity is creative effort in ethical service. A writer can do her part in the struggle to keep civilization afloat in each of two different ways: as a person and in her art. As a person, there are organizations to join and movements to support, like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the Brights, the Secular Coalition of America, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, and countless others. But she can also turn over a portion of her time to making art with an overt social and political bent. That is a real option.

Recently many nonfiction writers have felt compelled to do exactly this. Recently the following books appeared on Amazon’s top 20 list: State of Denial: Bush at War (#1) by Bob Woodward, Letter to a Christian Nation (#4) by Sam Harris, The Greatest Story Ever Told: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (# 5) by Frank Rich, Fiasco: The Military Adventure in Iraq (#6) by Thomas Ricks, The God Delusion (#11) by Richard Dawkins, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (#13) by Noam Chomsky and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (#20) by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. These writers, who perhaps would rather have been writing other things, felt compelled to use their rhetorical skills and moral sense in the service of social commentary.

“Engagement” is not a new word or a new idea and “the engaged artist” is a well-known designation in existential literature. Both “engaged creativity” and “the engaged artist” are useful phrases and we should begin to use them—and live them—more. An “engaged artist” is someone whose body of work is political and who perhaps is always political. This is admirable but it may not be the way you want to live your life. “Engaged creativity,” by contrast, only requires that you spend a percentage of your time on social-political writing. Maybe you write one kind of novel most of the time; but every so often you try your hand at a Brave New World or Animal Farm.

We need our writers and artists to bring their best efforts to the struggle against the reactionary forces that, wherever and whenever they can, tyrannize others. We need our writers to create iconic work that speaks the truth and that provides us with a powerful shorthand way of thinking and speaking—a shorthand like “Kafkaesque” and “Orwellian.” We need these things more every day. Most writers do not want to do this work as their only work or as their primary work; but perhaps they can commit to being engaged part-time. Can you?

The domestic and worldwide forces lined up against reason and justice are considerably more powerful, more ruthless, and more single-minded than we are. They have slogans and enforcers: we seem always to have only ourselves. Because we seem only to have ourselves, we feel exhausted and defeated even before we begin. How can I, a lone individual, make a dent? We feel past absurdity, past irony, past despair, and find ourselves disempowered and equal only to watching television. And yet it is exactly where we find ourselves that we must make our significance.

So, yes, I invite your visitors onto the path of at least occasional “engaged creativity.” There is a public space for you to inhabit as an artist, one where you add your voice to the voices of others and defend with your pen those principles you deem important. We need you there, in that public space, despite the risks you invite by going public.

Mary: This is the paperback version of The Van Gogh Blues, How was the hardback version received?

Eric: Very well! The reviewer for the Midwest Book Review called The Van Gogh Blues “a mind-blowingly wonderful book.” The reviewer for Library Journal wrote, "Maisel persuasively argues that creative individuals measure their happiness and success by how much meaning they create in their work.” I’ve received countless emails from artists all over the world thanking me for identifying their “brand” of depression and for providing them with a clear and complete program for dealing with that depression. I hope that the paperback version will reach even more creative folks—and the people who care about them.

Mary: How does The Van Gogh Blues tie in with other books that you’ve written?

Eric: I’m interested in everything that makes a creative person creative and I’m also interested in every challenge that we creative people face. I believe that we have special anxiety issues and I spelled those out in Fearless Creating. I believe that we have a special relationship to addiction (and addictive tendencies) and with Dr. Susan Raeburn, an addiction professional, I’ve just finished a book called Creative Recovery, which spells out the first complete recovery program for creative people. That’ll appear from Shambhala late in 2008. I’m fascinated by our special relationship to obsessions and compulsions and am currently working on a book about that. Everything that we are and do interests me—that’s my “meaning agenda”!

Mary: What might a person interested in these issues do to keep abreast of your work?

Eric: They might subscribe to my two podcast shows, The Joy of Living Creatively and Your Purpose-Centered Life, both on the Personal Life Media Network. You can find a show list for The Joy of Living Creatively here and one for Your Purpose-Centered Life here. They might also follow this tour, since each host on the tour will be asking his or her own special questions. Here is the complete tour schedule. If they are writers, they might be interested in my new book, A Writer’s Space, which appears this spring and in which I look at many existential issues in the lives of writers. They might also want to subscribe to my free newsletter, in which I preview a lot of the material that ends up in my books (and also keep folks abreast of my workshops and trainings). But of the course the most important thing is that they get their hands on The Van Gogh Blues!—since it is really likely to help them.

THE VAN GOGH BLUES by Eric Maisel is a thoughtful and thought-provoking consideration of creativity and depression by a man who's a writer, a therapist specializing in creative clients, and the founding mentor of creativity coaching.

Maisel is one of my own mentors--but depression hasn't played a huge role in my life. Or so I thought. So I said. Whatever it is I feel when I've finished a major writing stint and "need" a nap, it's part of what Maisel is talking about here. He addresses clinical depression, but he also talks about the rhythms of a writer or artist's life, the depression that comes when people born to make meaning find their work or their lives, well, meaningless, even for a moment.

THE VAN GOGH BLUES goes beyond traditional views of depression to focus on the moods of the artist. Out of his experience with his own work and his students' and his clients. Maisel forges simple suggestions for life plans that reduce the pain of being an artist.

And the best news, from my perspective, is that this blog is part of Eric Maisel's virtual blog tour. Do come back Thursday, January 24th, when Eric will be sharing his ideas on this blog :)

Serendipity always amazes me, just as hummingbirds and butterflies do. I'm not surprised by any of them, but I'm occasionally awed.

Tonight I was thinking about Venus retrograde.

Venus will be retrograde from July 27 to August 8, and my column about all the reasons you shouldn't shop for bargains when Venus is retrograde is already posted at http://www.fmam.biz/
Just enter and scroll down on the left for my Starfire astrology column.

Tonight I'm working on the August Starfire, and I've been thinking about Venus returning to Leo on August 8th. You couldn't have a better time for revising a romance novel (or any novel about family relationships) than Venus retrograde.

And serendipity slapped me in the face again. My writing buddy Diana Rowe and I host some of the best writers and online instructors we know for monthly online classes through http://www.writersonlineclasses.com/ And coming up in August we have Susan Wiggs, winner of the Rita and lots of other awards--and guess what we've got La Susan teaching for us while Venus is retrograde in Leo? Revision, of course--all the things that make a good book great.

Did we plan that? I wish! Yes, of course, I'm the astrologer and I always think of these things and float through life with ease and grace and all-knowing astrological wisdom. I might try that line among strangers, but you all know me. It's serendipity again, that great gift of coincidence that just pops up when we most need a lift in our lives.

Susan's own website (just in case you want a list of her books for summer reading) is http://www.susanwiggs.com

Ten Reasons to Keep a Writer's Journal

I've been talking with writers about coaching all week. I listen to the ways writers can get stuck in the early stages of a new writing project, and I find myself asking, "Do you keep a journal?"

I'm not talking about morning pages or diaries. I'm talking about a working writer's journal, a place to gather the raw material of stories, let the story ideas simmer in each other's company, and carry on conversations with yourself, your muse and your characters.

Kenneth Roberts, Henry James, John Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf are just a few of the great writers who kept working journals. Somerset Maugham's was one of the first writer's journals I remember reading.

But why keep a writer's journal today?

1. So the bits and pieces of story that always pop up while you're writing something else have a home.
2. So you have a portable writing office to carry with you, a place to work on your story ideas no matter where you find yourself with a few minutes to write.
3. So you can gather revision notes--appropriately indexed on the back page or tabbed with a colorful post-it--as you go.
4. So you can see life through a character's eyes even if you're not writing a particular scene if her viewpoint.
5. So you can make notes about what you want to accomplish in your next writing session.
6. So you can capture your whines--and read them when you start the next project and forget how anxious you were during the writing of this project.
7. So you can put your questions and anxieties on paper and not carry them around with you all day long.
8. So you won't lose notes you need later in the book.
9. So you have a place to draw or sketch or even cluster, a place for visual images to support your work.
10. So you can play with time and sequences in a private flexible space.

I could go on...and on...and on. I love writer's journals. But that's not the point. The point is that a working journal, like an old and comfortable chair, can become a writer's workshop and comfort zone.

Visual artists are allowed messy studios with bright dabs of paint out of place on walls and floors. Artists who paint in oils have partially finished canvases stashed in their studios. Potters and sculptors do test pieces just to see how they'll fire.

And writers deserve comfortable, messy, drag-along-everywhere journals to deepen our thinking and ease the pain and anxiety that is part of being a creator.

It's blog tour day. Helen Hawthorne is at it again...another Dead End Job mystery combines humor, social commentary and a great story...this one Elaine's MURDER WITH RESERVATIONS.

The short version: Helen made six figures back in St. Louis until she came home early, caught her husband nailing another woman, picked up a crowbar--and wound up hiding out in South Florida, working one dead end job after another to hide out from the ex and the courts.

Helen's jobs seem to be killers, literally, and they give Elaine (who researches Helen's jobs by working them herself) fodder for some of the best reading around.

We're hosting a blog tour for Elaine because she's recovering from a stroke and can't tour on her own. Just click on Elaine's Tour by Proxy link to learn how to get your own autographed copy. This blog, of course, disclaims all responsibility for death by laughter.