Articles on Success, Significance and the Evolving Role of Work

There is a story I tell myself about who I am.

There is a story I tell others about who I am too.

Others tell me stories about who they think I am.

They also tell me stories about who I could be. Or should be.

The reality is that not one of these stories is completely accurate. Because I’m all of these stories combined, contradictions and all.

And there are many stories.

There are stories I tell myself about being a writer. And there are stories rejection letters tell me about that too. And there are stories readers tell me about me, as a writer.

There are stories I tell myself about being a husband and father. And there are stories my wife and kids tell me about who I am and should be, as a father.

We are a vast collection of stories spilling over from the projects we do, the people we encounter and the personas we embody.

And we are in a continual, unconscious argument with ourselves about who we think we are, who we think others think we are and who we think we want to be. Or could be. Or should be.

As human beings, we’re not one-dimensional, static creatures. We’re multidimensional, dynamic beings who continually adapt and change in response to the moments we inhabit.

It’s why we can write gripping stories in which we don’t even know the ending. Or why we’re as surprised as our readers by the sudden aha in our poem or painting.

For me, feeling stuck is when I find myself no longer believing one or more of the stories about who I am. They no longer feel aligned in some sort of beautiful, complex harmony.

I’m there now.

But I’ve been there many, many times before.

I don’t panic or try to fix things. I simply embrace the tensions, contradictions, imperfections and all.

Because, to me, art isn’t the pursuit of perfection. Art is perfect beauty rising from human imperfection.

And that’s a story worth telling. Especially in those moments in time when we feel stuck.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on July 7, 2013.

First sentences are doorways—entrances into written and spoken stories that either pull us in or push us away.

Are you aware of the entrances in your life and work and how they influence you?

I’ve been thinking a lot about entrances lately. How hard first sentences can be. How easy it is to miss opportunities that present themselves in the hubbub of my everyday life.

Films often offer a visual entrance, while songs offer them through sound.

Our homes, offices and third places have obvious physical entrances—doorways.

The entrance to a mountain trail is a trailhead or spur.

And we enter relationships through introductions.

An entrance is the way we enter another place (or space). It’s a passage, an opening, a gateway.

There is something enchanting about entrances. A good entrance can cast a spell over us. I love the ornate, historic gates in China.

In other cases, the extraordinary can be hidden behind the ordinary, like New York City’s secret restaurants. Or like the time my parents, grandparents, sisters and I were traveling through Wyoming and encountered the best restaurant of trip. It was hidden in the back of a gas station.

A lot of value is given to ideas in creative circles, but what about entrances? What about the passages we take from our everyday, physical world to our imaginary ones? And what about the laborious passages we make to bring those imaginative places into the physical world through books, paintings, performances and websites?

I love that the word entrance (noun) appears the same as entrance (verb). Even though they’re not etymologically related, they share the same physical identity on the written page.

A good entrance can entrance us.

And like doorways, entrances to the creative can be enchanting when encountered, or they can be hidden for only those of us open to entering.

As you go through your day today, or even your week, think about the role entrances play in your everyday and creative lives. Not just the ones you physically walk through, but the ones you choose to enter—like a good story or relationship.

Do the entrances in my life and work entrance? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself.

I’m thinking they should.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on June 23, 2013.

Fascinating Fact #1: Cognitive neuroscience has uncovered four types of creativity, yet many still act like there is only one type and you either possess it or you don’t.

Fascinating Fact #2: The way we think about the creative process and the role of the artist in the West is vastly different than the way our friends think about and approach it in the East.

Fascinating Fact #3: Most of us are trying to live linear lives in a nonlinear world.

So what’s all this about?

It’s about you and me, as creative beings.

We tend to be seekers. And, therefore, never truly settled in our own skin. Plus, a lot of us are introverts and do our best work through the lives and voices of others.

The problem is that many well-meaning artists, writers and bloggers are out there offering (or selling) advice based solely on their limited, personal understanding of the creative process. And they ignore the myriad of alternative creative processes and lives that exist.

Which means a lot of creatives feel defeated in their pursuit of some sort of a creative life.

And this breaks my heart.

So here’s my offering…

There are gardens, farms and factories. And we benefit, in some ways more than others, from each of these.

Artists who tend gardens (metaphorically speaking), do it because they love gardening. It’s a labor of love. It’s even spiritual. They enjoy growing different things at different times and they love having the freedom and flexibility to plant whatever they want, whenever they want.

Artists who farm, do it to feed their family. It can still be a labor of love, but it comes with a cost. You have to plant what will sell. And you have to maximize produce while minimizing overhead.

Artists who run factories, do it to feed many people. It, too, can be a labor of love, but the art lies in getting people to want more of what you sell or making more of what people want.

Gardeners share what they grow with family and friends. Like little gifts. If it’s good, folks ask for more. But it tends to stay local.

I tend to think of Gary Snyder and David Bottoms, two of my favorite poets, as gardeners.

Farmers have to sell nearly everything they produce to the highest buyer(s). With limited supply and demand, it’s a real estate and negotiator’s game.

I tend to think of the author, Seth Godin, as a farmer. He keeps quality high and, since there is just one of him, he can earn a premium when selling his services.

Industrialists pump out product after product and sell the hell out everything they can to maximize profit.

James Patterson and Stephen King are two names that pop in my head as writers who churn out work like factories.

So which type of artist are you? And which artists do you look to as models?

It’s possible—as has been the case with me—that your goals, approach and sources of joy are different than the artists you admire. Maybe you are a gardener at heart, but you’ve been taking advice from artists who approach their work like factories.

Said another way, there are over a thousand flavors of ice cream. Why not become an irresistible version of the flavor you already are?

“So,” you may wonder, “which one are you, Keith”—a gardener, farmer or factory?

My wife and I love the V. Sattui Winery in St. Helena, California. It’s not big and famous. You can’t buy their wines at any supermarket or Costco.

You have to visit the winery. And experience it firsthand.

They offer winemaking tours, tasting rooms and the typical gift shop experiences. But what sets it apart, at least to us, is its cheese shop, deli and picnic grounds.

We love visiting the winery and having a lunch date outside.

V. Sattui approaches winemaking like a farmer—it produces a mix of in-demand wines and unique, premium wines. It has to in order to be sustainable. But it practices winemaking like a gardener—offering only the very best quality.

That’s the kind of artist I work to be.

See? We don’t have to accept that gardens, farms and factories are the only three options. I just threw them out as starting points for your thinking.

You are a creative. Which means you are only limited by what you can create.

If you’re wondering about the four types of creativity, or the East vs. West approaches, we’ll cover those another day.

My sole goal today was to give you some seeds.

Now go till your plot.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on May 19, 2013.

Soon the fireflies will be out.

The bamboo is shooting across my backyard. The kudzu stirs.

Wild honeysuckle appear along the roadsides. I catch hints as I drive back roads with my truck windows down.

My sons, daughters and I have filled two school books with four-leaf clover. And we’ve made necklaces out of the white, pea flowers that dot those clover patches like little pom-poms.

As I’ve sat periodically in the cracks of the week to think on screen, I’ve written at least six or seven leads, but nothing really came of it. It’s okay, though. I love knocking on keys to see if any stories come out to play. It’s like we did with our neighborhood friends, when we were kids.

As I type this, I am sitting in my daughters’ darkened room, as they squirm and kick and toss and talk and twist in a valiant battle against Mr. Sandman.

Our creative life is a relationship. Much like our everyday life. We live in relationship with ourselves, our families and friends, our neighbors, our natural and climatic surroundings, our work and co-workers, our faith, our interests. Just like we live in relationship with ideas, characters, songs and scenes.

And, like those around us, the relationship we have with our creative life takes on many forms. I’m surprised by how many writers and artists treat their creative life as a silo they enter, rather than a relationship they have.

What kind of relationship do you have with your creative work? How do you treat it?

Is it a marriage? A friendship? An affair?

Or is it like a co-worker—serious business?

Maybe it’s more like an old friend you catch up with every once in a while, but never as often as you intend or wish.

For some, it can be like a parent-child relationship when the dishes need to be done or the garbage needs to make it to the street.

I may be wrong, but when I imagine myself reflecting on my life near its end, my mind won’t go to the books I wrote, or poems I published, or lectures I gave, or money I made, or awards I earned, or anything like that. I will remember the relationships I had.

And not just the relationships I had with the people in my life. But the relationships I had with mountains, creeks, animals, songs, stories, poems, seasons, the moon and the memories.

Everything in life is a relationship. Your creative life is a relationship too. An important one. One that offers meaning and connection to yourself and others.

Embrace it.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on May 12, 2013.

I was drawn to writing at a very early age, because I felt compelled to express things going on inside me. And around me.

Ideas, voices and emotions bubbled inside like molten rock and needed an outlet, a release valve.

Once placed on paper, once out of me, I felt better.

In time, though, this was no longer enough. I needed more than merely writing could offer.

I began experimenting within the Arts. I was an artist, primarily charcoals. I was a musician and songwriter. I worked in video production for a time. I wrote (or at least tried to write) fiction, essays, poetry, screenplays and avant-garde literary works.

But these efforts proved to be lacking too.

That’s when I poured myself into the craft of writing. I wrote a lot. All styles. All genres. I read a lot. All styles. All genres. I talked to other writers.

There came a time when craft was no longer enough. I needed more than the mastery of expression could offer.

I needed a voice.

Voice is a powerful notion in the literary and performing arts.

Writers, singers and actors call it voice. Musicians call it sound. Painters and designers call it style.

It can be manufactured, crafted or pure.

Some say you find it. Others say you create it. And others say it’s inherent within.

However, like our fingerprint, our voice distinguishes us in a look-alike, sound-alike world. It’s our signature.

I believe our voice is an ensemble. Like notes in a musical score, it is a collection of parts within us combined with parts we collect through external influences.

Which means our voice can’t be found inside or outside us. It can only be cultivated through the collecting and connecting of many independent things.

Which also means, one’s voice evolves and changes over time, although the root stays the same.

And that’s just where I wanted to go today, to our voice’s root note.

I recently emailed a friend about the development of his voice, as a writer. I asked him whether he had ever written something so raw, so vulnerable, so personal that it surprised him and made him want to hide it.

Have you?

That’s the root voice. Your root voice is you, without any inhibitions, fear, or doubt. It is achieved, not through control, but through letting go.

Yet, it’s not enough. Like a single note played, it needs harmony and rhythm.

That’s just it. At its best, our root voice lies underneath a harmony of influences we’ve collected and connected in time. And what makes an artist’s voice beautiful is its texture. Its complexities. Its richness. Its rawness. And its vulnerability.

In her book, Forest for the Trees, Betsy Lerner writes that writers are afraid. We’re afraid because we are compelled to tell. And with telling comes accusations of exposing others. But even more comes the fear of exposing ourselves to our families.

Which brings me back to where I started.

The mere act of writing is no longer enough. Craft isn’t enough. And even my voice, as important as it once was, is not enough. I now write for human connection.

I write to expose myself for who I really am—an artist wandering and wondering creative landscapes in search of beauty among the clutter and chaos of life. And my hope is that in revealing my voice, root and all, I can inspire you to do the same for someone else.

From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on May 5, 2013.