Personal Life Media

Episode 32: Smaller and Smaller

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Smaller and Smaller.”

The episode begins this way:

“You’ve made it to Paris.  Congratulations!  Now, where will you live?  In a tiny studio, no doubt, so as to keep expenses down. You can certainly survive in a small studio, just as millions of artists have done from time immemorial.  But there is a catch.  The smallness of your studio will definitely begin to get to you.  One afternoon you’ll find yourself daydreaming about wide verandas.  Then, rather more dangerously, you’ll think about proposing to the very next person you meet with a real apartment.  Cheap rooms--and everything that comes with them, the alienation, the bad dreams, the roaches, the dingy walls, the ratty furniture, the unbroken silence, the hallucinations—addle the brain over time.  In order to endure the smallness of your studio you had better take some precautions.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 31: Disrespecting Albert Camus

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Disrespecting Albert Camus.”

The episode begins this way:

“I love Albert Camus to pieces but intuitively supposed that there would be few monuments to Camus in Paris.  His World War II heroism notwithstanding, he told too many hard truths to receive public glorification.  So, out walking one day in the northeast corner of Paris, it horrified me but did not surprise me to discover how the politicians have decided to disrespect Camus.  They exiled him far from artistic and intellectual Paris, a maneuver excellent as irony and an unintended reminder of the title of his short story collection, Exile and the Kingdom.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 30: Sartre and Inauthenticity

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Sartre and Inauthenticity.”

The episode begins this way:

“We writers lie incessantly.  That we are bound to lie, however, is no justification for choosing to write insincerely. If we ourselves know that the point we are making is weak, it rests squarely on our shoulders to strengthen that point or abandon it entirely.  If we throw in a gratuitous scene, tossed in to make fun of this or to rail aimlessly at that, it is up to us to edit that scene out when we revise.  If we are writing in jargon so as to avoid saying what we mean or to disguise the fact that we haven’t much to say, our own voice should shout ‘No!  Don’t do that!’ There is necessary lying; and there is old-fashioned, everyday lying.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 29: Privilege and the Place Vendome

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “Privilege and the Place Vendome.”

The episode begins this way:

“I’m a privilege-conscious person.  I’m fully at home with sentiments like Proudhon’s ‘property is theft’ and other articulations of the idea that we are not entitled to more than our neighbors.  We possess no such rights just because we are pretty, Caucasian, American, a celebrity, have lived there longer, or claim that God is on our side.  When I see a grand estate I think ‘criminal.’  If you strut about with a sense of entitlement, I’m there to trip you up.  It is therefore not surprising that questions of privilege pop into my head as I cross the Place Vendome.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 28: Pure Flaneur

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “Pure Flaneur.”

The episode begins this way:

“Paris is a physically small city comprised of twenty arrondissements laid out like a pinwheel.  The inner arrondissements contain most of the tourist attractions—the Louvre, Notre Dame, the D’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower—and the outer arrondissements sport features like the Bois de Boulogne to the west, the Bois de Vincennes to the east, Montmartre to the north, and the Parc Montsouris to the south.  Most tourists skip the outer arrondissements and experience Paris as a very tidy, handy place.  Even those tourists who venture further afield discover that they can get anywhere by métro in no time at all.”

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Episode 27: Egg-cetera

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “Egg-cetera.”

The episode begins this way:

“I often do the odd thing of having folks in my online trainings start out their lesson responses with the following affirmation: “My creative work and my creative life matter to me.” I might have them do this for a month running and, if they agree to make this announcement, it is almost impossible for them not to turn their creative life around. You try to say thirty consecutive times that you and your work matter (even if you don’t believe it) and see if you don’t change for the better.”

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Episode 26: At the Green Apple

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “At the Green Apple.”

The episode begins this way:

“One winter evening I find myself in the green room of the beautiful new theater on the campus of the North Carolina School of the Arts, waiting to give a creativity chat to a crowd of a few hundred Carolinians. I’d given this chat many times before, varying the title to suit the audience but presenting essentially the same material, and can now deliver it on a dime, starting up the instant you say “Go!” and ending directly on the hour. In fact, when I delivered this chat to a group of Indiana arts administrators, what impressed the conference chair the most, more than the chat’s content, was the fact that I ended so promptly—perhaps a little left-handed praise, wouldn’t you say?”

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Episode 25: City Lights

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “City Lights.”

The episode begins this way:

“The problem with bookstores is all those books. I’m analogizing to a groaning buffet, to the idea that we writers are inclined to buy three books every time we set foot into a bookstore even though we have twenty-nine unread books at home. No, the problem with all those books is that any one of them can precipitate a meaning crisis.”

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Episode 24: You Are a Real Poet

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the sixth in the series, is called “You Are a Real Poet.”

The episode begins this way:

“For a year I dated a schizophrenic poet—let’s call her Carol.  Carol was ten years my senior, very sane, and very crazy.  When insane, she had visions of roses appearing, threw a bowl of poisoned pumpkin soup at the counter girl at the Owl and the Monkey, and craved pastrami.  When she was sane, she was a meditative vegetarian who lived on adzuki beans and classical music.  Finally she got too crazy and got herself institutionalized in the locked ward of a local hospital. When she emerged, months later, she was still broken.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 23: Silent Respect

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Silent Respect.”

The episode begins this way:

“I would see him drawing with pen-and-ink and colored pencils and sometimes writing in the same oversized sketchbook in which he drew. It seems to me that he wore a flannel shirt and jeans, though I also recall a colorful vest. I took him to be a visual artist or maybe a children’s book writer. He would sit at one table at the Owl and the Monkey, on Ninth Avenue in the Inner Sunset, and I would sit at another. Sometimes we sat across the café from one another, sometimes we sat at adjoining tables, and sometimes, when the café was very crowded, we even shared a table. But we never spoke and we never acknowledged one another.”

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Episode 22: Theme Party

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Theme Party.”

The episode begins this way:

“I was throwing a little party at our Bernal Heights flat for a visiting publisher, someone with whom I had a long history. She had been my editor fifteen years before, one of two editors on my first nonfiction book. Then she went back to school, into the Master’s program at San Francisco State, to hone her fiction skills. During that interlude I occasionally attended the salons she organized and hosted at her apartment in the foggy Richmond, so far west that it was almost in Japan. Then she bought a publishing house in Boston and published me. She was going to be in town and I rounded up some folks for a get-together.”

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Episode 21: South of Market

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “South of Market.”

The episode begins this way:

“Dateline 1966. When I wheeled my armored personnel carrier down the rutted road between grassy mine fields I felt the joy that only a nineteen-year-old can feel, a cigarette between his lips and a 30-caliber machine gun poised behind his ear. I should have been in the higher turret, manning that machine gun and monitoring the other three armored personnel carriers in the platoon, as I was acting platoon sergeant. But as acting platoon sergeant I got to designate myself the driver. I just loved to wheel that beast down those Korean back roads.”

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Episode 20: The Bohemian International Highway

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “The Bohemian International Highway” and makes the case that certain places pull at our collective artist consciousness and demand that we visit them—and, if we can—live in them for at least a little while.

The episode begins this way:

“San Francisco and Paris are sister cities.  They are not connected by architecture, class structure, or climate.  They are not connected by their shellfish preferences (in San Francisco it is crab, in Paris it is mussels), their history (wild west provincial versus urbane royal), or their museums (San Francisco has no Louvre, D’Orsay, or even Pompidou).  The way they are connected are as two of the world’s very few bohemian meccas.  Each is an important, well-marked stop on the bohemian international highway.”

Tune in to hear more!

Episode 19: The View from Bernal Hill

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “The View from Bernal Hill” and provides a glimpse of my writing world here in an out-of-the-way San Francisco neighborhood.

The episode begins this way:

“I’m American by birth but an urban writer by nature.  My true homes are Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco and the world’s resonant cities.  I am calmest in a Paris jostle or a Manhattan stampede and edgiest hiking a mountain trail or shopping a Walmart.  Everything in the universe may be equally spiritual but not equally congenial to a blue state person like myself with a horror of orthodoxy and the grandiosity of everyday people.”

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Episode 18: Your Mind on Brownies

In the ninth and last episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the abundant joys that arise when you actually honor your creative space. Creating is not all woe and difficulty: sometimes creating provides us with the deepest satisfactions available to us. What are these satisfactions? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 17: At Home, Choosing

In the eighth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at how active choosing helps you make the most of your creative time. If you are uncertain about which creative project you are actually working on, if you can't quite decide whether to tackle chapter three or to do a little research, if one song is pulling at you but you think that you ought to finish up another song, you can tire yourself out even before you begin. What can help you choose more efficiently? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 16: The Space-Time Continuum

In the seventh episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we examine why you want to slow down time so that you can create more deeply. If you spend time in your creative space the same way that you spend time during the rest of your day--in an unquiet, half-mad rush to get items checked off your to-do list--deep creating will elude you. What can you do to slow time down? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 15: Like Taking Your Medicine

In the sixth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the idea of returning to your creative work periodically during the day. Many creative people, even when they have sufficient time available, only create once a day. What if you were able to return to your creative work several times during the day? Wouldn’t that increase your productivity and deepen your connection to your art? What can help you do just that? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 14: Adding Spaces

In the fifth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we examine what other creative spaces you want to nurture, in addition to your primary one. It is vital that you have a primary space where you go every day to create. But it also valuable to find additional spaces, especially public ones like cafes, that afford a change of pace and that force you to wear your artist being publicly. Why is this so important? Tune in and fine out.

Good listening!

Episode 13: Honoring Your Space

In the fourth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the notion that it matters what you do in your creative space and that some activities are more honorable than others. It is fine to do research for your novel–but only if that research is really needed and not if you are researching in order to avoid tackling that hard chapter in front of you. What can you do to better honor your creative space? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 12: Protecting Your Space

In the third episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at what it takes to protect your creative space from visitors, emails, and other distractions. If you allow foot traffic to flow through your space, if you accept interruptions, if you distract yourself while in your space, you will find it extremely hard to settle into a good creating rhythm. What can you do to better protect your creative space? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 11: Picking Your Space

In the second episode of the "honoring your creative space" series, we examine the art of picking the right physical space in which to create. Your preferred space may not be the room in your house with the most stunning view but the room where you can actually go deep and get lost in the trance of working. Which is the best space for you? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 10: Your New Impeccability

In the first episode of the "honoring your creative space" series, we learn why you have to rebuild your personality in order to make space for creating. It doesn't matter how fine a studio you outfit or how fast your computer can compute if your personality doesn't match your tools. What can you do to strengthen your personality so that you stand ready to create? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 9: Blaming Others

In the ninth episode of the “creative obstacles” series, we look at the idea of how easy it is to blame others for our lack of creative output—and why we don’t want to do that. One of the ways that we avoid getting our creative work done is to involve ourselves in the affairs of others, enter into dramatic and difficult relationships, and distract ourselves with people–and then blame them for our meager output. What can we do to change this dynamic? Tune in and find out.

Good listening!

Episode 8: Projects Morphing

In the eighth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we examine the idea that the anxiety produced in us when our creative projects shift and change can cause us to flee the encounter. It is in the nature of creating that the project in front of may change countless times as we continue thinking about it, as we chnage our mind about its direction, and as it takes on a life of its own. What can we do to survive all of this morphing? Tune in and find out.

Good listening! more.

Episode 7: Feeling Individual

In the seventh episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we look at the idea that a creative person's sense of individuality is a special sort of challenge. Born individual into a conventional world, a creative person begins to grow oppositional as he fights to retain his individuality. What can he do to retain his individuality and modulate his growing oppositional nature? Tune in and find out. Good listening! more.

Episode 6: Minding Your Emotions

In the sixth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we examine the idea that there is a difference between having emotions and being a slave to your emotions. It is necessary that a creative person have and express her emotions, but that is a very different thing from being led around by the nose by her fear, anger, envy, or sadness. What can we do to break free of the grip of our emotions? Tune in and listen. Good listening! more.

Episode 5: Responding Defensively

In the fifth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we look at how our psychological defenses can get in the way of authentic creating. Why do we deny--to ourselves and to others--that we are having difficulties with our current painting or our current novel, when if we admitted that truth we might open up to our good solutions? Listen and find out. Good listening! more.

Episode 4: Chasing Ghosts

This week's show is the fourth in a series called "Overcoming Obstacles to Creating," a series about how our personality can get in the way of our creating. Today, in a show adapted from an essay in my book A Writer's Paris, we look at the negative effects of looking too ardently to the past for models. The show is called "Chasing Ghosts." Good listening! more.

Episode 3: On Being Too Nice

Today's episode is the third in our series about overcoming obstacles to creativity. In today's show I focus on the problem of self-censorship and how too many people, wanting to be "nice," fail to find the internal permission to say, in their life or in their art, what's really on their mind. This lack of internal permission is a great blocker and a great silencer--which is why we need to take a careful look at the problem. I hope you enjoy today's show! Good listening. more.

Episode 2: Fearing Difficulty

In today's episode on the Joy of Living Creatively, the second in a nine-part series on "creative obstacles," I chat about how writers who take my nonfiction book proposal writing workshops start with such enthusiasm and quickly lose that enthusiasm as the largeness of the task in front of them becomes all too abundantly clear. The episode, called "Fearing Difficulty," focuses on our natural desire that the creative work in front of us might be just a little bit easier to accomplish than it is--and the courage we have to muster in the face of the ordinary difficulties that come with creative effort. I hope you enjoy this week's episode! more.

Episode 1: Doubting Process

Creative people start each project hoping to do excellent work. That makes perfect sense; and yet, side by side with that hope and wish, needs to be the deep and real understanding that only a percentage of their output (maybe a large percentage, maybe a modest percentage) will actually turn out to be excellent. This means that they will need to take "the bad with the good" in their creative life. In the first episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we learn what happens when you don't allow yourself to take the bad with the good. I hope that you enjoy the show! Do leave I comment—I look forward to hearing from you. more.