Articles on Success, Significance and the Evolving Role of Work

You have a foundational choice you must make as a writer or artist.

You can focus on what you offer the world.

Or you can focus on what the world offers you.

Most of us start out focused on what we can offer the world. We’re trying to find our place. Trying to find our voice.

But as we mature—as we meet failure, rejection and indifference—we begin to engage and respond to the world around us in new ways.

We shift our orientation from being broadcasters of our ideas to receivers of universal ideas.

I like to think of myself as an electrical wire that connects people to energy sources. I don’t see myself as the lamp, for example. I’m the lamp wire and you are the lamp.

My job is to feed power to you. And to do this, I must be plugged into a source so I can channel its offerings to you.

How do you see yourself and your role as a creative person?

Does your work emerge from what you offer the world?

Maybe it’s time to flip the switch and open yourself to what the world has to offer.

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 31, 2012.

Every chord has a root note.

It’s the foundation around which many other notes can align.

In any song, you have an array of interesting melodic and harmonic options. But, for the song to work, you must play in reaction to the root notes.

The root note leads. You follow.

I love the idea that music is a beautiful tension created by notes co-existing in time and space.

It’s not unlike our everyday lives. Our communities. Or our culture.

And not unlike the literary life either.

Stories have root notes too—themes and characters around which the story aligns.

I don’t believe in living a balanced life. Balance is about stasis. But our lives are dynamic. And full of tensions.

I prefer a life of harmony over one of balance.

Harmony describes a collection of notes co-existing in tension with a root note.

That makes sense to me.

Relationships are a portfolio of positive and negative tensions.

Our personalities are a portfolio of tensions: introversion vs. extroversion, thinking vs. feeling, etc.

Earning a living is a collection of tensions.

Even art exists in tension with its history. With its culture. With its subjects. So do artists.

Have you identified the root notes in your creative work?

Have you chosen them or have they chosen you?

It’s easy to get distracted by initial ideas. Or ideologies. Or form. Or traditions. Or genre. Or even audience.

Musicians serve one thing: songs. That’s the root note of their creative life.

Writers serve one thing: stories. That’s the root note of their creative life.

Everything else is packaging, performance and merchandising.

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 7, 2012.

Do you have a place or space in your life so powerful, so moving, each time you enter it, you come alive?

For me, that place is a hiking trail deep in the forest. And that space is creative writing.

As I enter the trail, the voices in my head silence and I begin to feel fully present in this big world. It puts me in my place as a tiny being in an immense existence.

As I enter the space in between imagination and the written word, I also come alive. And, like the trail, the craft of writing roots me in my rightful place as a mere note in the symphony of my generation.

The Appalachian Trail (also called the AT) is a world-famous trail whose Southern terminus sits here in my home state of Georgia. Maybe you’ve hiked a portion of it somewhere between Georgia and Maine.

In 1948, a guy named Earl Shaffer became the first person to thru-hike the AT from Georgia to Maine. Years later he did it again from Maine to Georgia, becoming the first person to thru-hike the AT in both directions.

Then, in 1998, he thru-hiked the AT on the 50^thanniversary of his original, record-setting hike. Which just so happened to be the year of his 80^thbirthday.

There are scores of people who want to hike the Appalachian Trail. It’s become a bucket list item.

Likewise, there are scores of people who want to write a book. It’s become a bucket list item too, not to mention a cliché.

But for all those wanting to hike the AT, a few try. And of the few who try, a fraction complete it.

The same can be said of those wanting to write books.

Here’s my paraphrase of what Mr. Shaffer wrote about hiking the AT:

You cannot say you will hike the Appalachian Trail. You can only say you’ll try.

For me, the joy, story, struggle, purpose and root note of my creative life lies in the trying, not in a destination called “success”.

When I enter a mountain trail, I come alive.

When I enter the written word, I come alive.

And no amount of success or failure will ever change that.

Don’t beat yourself up over the things you cannot control in your creative life (like success).

Find some places and spaces so powerful, so moving, each time you enter them, you come alive.

Isn’t that what drew us into a creative life in the first place?

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 30, 2012.

You never know when or where you’ll find a little nugget.

I love that about the creative life—its serendipitous nature. Don’t you?

A few weeks ago, I was on a flight to Denver. For the first time in I can’t tell you how long, I was reading classic creative nonfiction work. Which, if you’re not familiar with that phrase, means essays that are part personal narrative and part a bunch of other literary elements.

One of the authors I was excited to read was E.B. White.

You’re probably familiar with White. He wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. And he also co-authored The Elements of Style, which has been a staple on writers’ shelves for decades.

But I’ve never been drawn to White for those works. I’ve been drawn to him, because he was a master essayist. Which, besides poetry, is the other love of my literary life.

In his essay, “Farewell, My Lovely,” White writes about life and the culture surrounding the Model T. He wrote that the buyer never thought of his new car as a finished product. “Driving away from the agency, hugging the new wheel between your knees, you were already full of creative worry.”

That’s the nugget that rolled off the page, as I read it, and into the rucksack of my imagination.

Full of creative worry.

It was a beginning, a process, because everyone, White writes, customized their Model T. An entire industry existed around customizing and maintaining the temperamental vehicle.

That’s the creative life.

It’s one full of creative worry, because nothing is ever really finished.

As authors and artists, we exist in the tension of incompleteness. One mixed with hope and disillusionment.

We’re like parents. We struggle and sacrifice and lose sleep for our little creations. We hold and stare at each little being we helped bring into the world.

And we are forever full of creative worry, aren’t we?

Because there is no end. There is no “finished”.

There is only right now.

And a few serendipitous possibilities.

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 16, 2012.

When I started out, as a writer, I wrote for myself.

I experimented with voices and styles and topics. It was very much like adolescence when we’re trying to figure out who the hell we are and what we want to be when we grow up. Every thought and idea is new and interesting. (Even when it’s a tired cliché to the world.)

Over time, though, I started figuring out how to write for others.

Eventually I learned to do what author, Seth Godin, teaches. Instead of trying to find readers for my words, I try to find words for my readers.

This shift in orientation is what I look for as I advise other aspiring writers (and even marketing executives).

But, I’ve discovered, it’s still not enough. There are scores of writers writing for their readers (vs. themselves), but very little is distinctive.

One of the biggest obstacles I hear from authors and artists is how to cultivate a unique voice in a sea of stuff.

How can we stand out? How can we stick around?

There are more novels than we’ll ever read.

There are more articles and essays and poems and blog posts than we’ll ever read.

There are more songs than we’ll ever hear.

There are more paintings and photographs and sculptures than we’ll ever see.

And there is more writing, music, art and other creative products being heaped on the pile each and every day.

Here’s an idea that’s working for me: Try to make your creative work relevant to your great grandchildren.

Think about that for a moment.

If the fruits of your idea or story or theme can’t be preserved and passed down, why should you expect it to be distinct?

This should challenge your creative life. And it should change it.

Actually, it should change you.

Which, when you think about it, should be the ultimate outcome of our creative work, right?

I hope this finds you well! Stay the course in your creative endeavors!

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 11, 2012.