Hisham Matar

"When I first began writing In the Country of Men all I had was the voice of the protagonist.  He intrigued me and my desire to want to know him and his world became almost compulsive."

— Hisham Matar

Libyan Novelist

1970 -

Sometimes it is the small things like a memory or face or a photo that triggers the beginning of a story or a novel.  Maybe it is a voice inside the writer's head.  The novel I wrote many years ago was inspired by a character in one of my short stories.  I wanted to explore the relationship between a father and a son, but the father took over the story and it became his story.  The son almost disappeared from the novel.

What triggers your imagination?  What inspires you to put pen to paper and spend hours creating a story?  What inspires you to paint a particular subject?  Some artists paint people.  Others paint landscapes or a still life.  As artists and writers we are drawn to particular subject for a reason.  Somewhere in our subconscious, we recognize that we need to learn a particular lesson or explore a particular idea.  Do your subjects speak to your heart?  Do they demand your attention?  Do they grab you by the shoulders and refuse to let go?

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Katsushika Hokusai

Self-Portrait

"I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six.  I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all.  At seventy-three I have at last caught every aspect of nature — birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all.  When I am eighty I shall have developed still further, and I will really master the secrets of art at ninety.  When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life.

— Katsushika Hokusai

Japanese Artist

1760 - 1849

Humility — a trait many creative leaders do not possess, yet a behavior we all should cultivate.  In fact, the lack of humility has caused the down fall of many creative leaders.  They start believing what their admirers say and acting in accordance with what is said.  In the words of my childhood:  they grow too big for their britches.  They begin to believe their own press.

Learn to cultivate the trait of humility.  None of us are perfect.  We all make mistakes — both in our personal lives and our artistic creations.  It takes a lifetime to become a master and even then we may not achieve that designation.  Be thankful for what you have been given and seek to be humble.

Great Wave of Kanagawa

Sometimes we become so caught up in the day to day activities of living that we forget how short life is. We are here today and gone tomorrow.  In the eons of time, we live for only a second.  That fact alone should make us humble.  And if you look at our place in the universe, we shrink even more.  Practice humility.

Fernando Botero

"When you start painting, it is somewhat outside you.  At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting."

— Fernando Botero

Columbian Artist

1932 - 

Do you become a part of your art?  Your writing?  When you are finished, do you leave a part of yourself on the canvas or on the page?  Do you leave a part of yourself inside the characters you create?  Those who believe that they are separate from what they create are not being honest with themselves.  You and your art are connected at a very deep level.

Woman Drinking with Cat

Sam Savage

"I really do think that art can save you in some sense.  It's the last meaning, unless you're religious — and I'm not religious.  It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have.  It's an immediate self-validating experience.  It lifts you beyond your mortal clay."

— Sam Savage

American Novelist

1940 - 

Art is a form of salvation.  Through art we can discover something beyond ourselves to believe in.  Through art we can discover who we are and who we are meant to be.  Through our art we may even find eternal life.  We can live beyond the grave.

The story of Sam Savage provides hope for all unrecognized painters, poets and novelists.  He toiled for years as an unpublished writer.  At the age of 55 he gave up writing.  A part of him died.  At the age of sixty, he picked up the pen again and wrote.  He said: "I started writing again because I'd given up.  I didn't expect anything from it."  In 2006, Coffee House Press published his first novel, Firmin, told from the perspective of a book eating rat.  The novel became an international best seller.  

Sam said in an interview with Kevin Larimer, "I just sort of quit — gave up completely.  I was fifty-five years old and I just gave up.  And it was total and sincere."  I believe he probably gave up because he felt like a failure.  And society would probably call him a failure.  But I don't think he was.  We make a mistake when we think that one has to be published to be a success.  

For me, success comes from the creative process itself.  If you create, you are a success.  The marketing and selling of the work is a business issue.  Just because there is not an audience for your work does not make you less successful as an artist.  Don't confuse the business of art with the creative process.  Remember that the creation of artistic works is a form of spiritual salvation.  

Bernie Siegel

"Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die."

— Bernie Siegel

American Author/Physician

1932 -

This week I received the latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine in the mail.  Inside, I found a story of Sam Savage who wrote for decades without publishing.  His debut novel was published when he was sixty-five.  Now he is an international best-selling author with his third novel being published.  There is always hope.  After writing for 36 years like I have, it is easy to settle for less than what one hoped for.  One convinces oneself to be satisfied with what he was given in life.  But there is always that slight sliver of hope that just maybe another opportunity lies just around the corner.   Choosing not to hope is a decision to give up — to die empty handed.  Don't give up on your dreams.  There is always hope no matter what your age.  

Listen to what Bernie Siegel has to say about play.

Fryderyk Chopin

"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.  After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."

Fryderyk Chopin

Polish Composer/Pianist

1810 - 1849

Have you achieved simplicity in your artistic works?  Or is your work full of complex, paradoxical ideas?  I have been accused of making things too simple — of boiling down complicated ideas to the simplest of ideas.  Writing haiku for seven years taught me a lot about simplicity.  Simplicity does not mean dumb or stupid or ignorant.  Sometimes the most brilliant ideas can be expressed in a few simple words.  Sometimes wisdom can be conveyed in a single brush stroke of black ink or a few notes on a piano. 

Take a break and relax to this piece by Chopin.  It may release your creative juices.  

Robert Mapplethorpe

Self-Portrait
(1980)

"My work is about seeing — seeing things like they haven't been seen before."

— Robert Mapplethorpe

American Photographer

1946 - 1989

One of main functions of any art form is to help people see something they had not seen before — to open their eyes to new ways of viewing the world.  Does your creative work shed new light on the way we view the world?  Does it help us see beyond our small private worlds and help us grasp a greater meaning about life?

Part of our role as creative leaders is to show people that there are multiple ways of viewing the world in which we live.  There is not just one reality but multiple realities.  Great art changes people in multiple ways.  Our hearts and minds open and begin to see in ways we have never seen.

Pearl Buck

"I never look at the papers again.  My secretary types them out and my husband edits them.  I never had anything more to do with a book until it is published . . . . I cannot stand to read over anything I write.  My husband takes care of everything for me except the first draft.  He works in the other half of the house."

— Pearl Buck

American Novelist

1892 - 1973

I am fascinated by the work habits of writers and artists.  Each one is unique and different and brings a special insight to the creative process.  We all find ways to draw on the creative spirit when we need it.

Pearl Buck was American born, but raised in poverty-stricken rural China by missionary parents and her Chinese nanny.  Her father, Absalom, was always traveling, attempting to convert the Chinese with little success.  He had ten converts in ten years.  Her mother, Carie,  buried most of her children in China and filled Pearl's heart with stories of America.  Her nanny, Wang Amah, filled her mind with tales of demons, dragons and spirits.  Educated in an American college, Buck returned to China with her husband, John Lossing Buck, only to be abandon for months at a time by her traveling husband, much like her mother was.  Both her father and her husband were obsessed with work.  Her father wanted to spread the word of God and her husband was passionate about Chinese farming.

Pearl Buck began writing at age 35.  Always a storyteller, Buck's most famous second novel, The Good Earth, was published in 1931 when she was 39 and she was honored with a Pulitzer Prize.  In 1938 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.  She published 38 novels, 16 collections of short stories, and 11 works of non-fiction between 1930 - 1974, sometimes as many as two books a year.

Hilary Spurling, in her biography, Pearl Buck in China, says: She spent every morning at her desk, emerging exhausted, dazed, and stupefied from these sessions with what she called her book people, or sometimes her real people.  She wrote longhand without revision or correction, seldom pausing, covering page after page at phenomenal speed in a small compact script, producing on average 2,500 words at a sitting."  She gave her manuscript to her second husband and publisher, Richard Walsh, who edited them for publication.

Every creative leader has different work habits.  What are yours? 

Albert Camus

"But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads."

— Albert Camus

French Algerian Novelist

1913 - 1960

Are you in harmony with the life you have chosen to lead?  Or do you have multiple personalities?  Do you behave one way today and another tomorrow?  Are you in conflict with yourself?  Or are you at peace with the person you are?  Sometimes we spend a lifetime searching for happiness.  And we only find it when we make peace with who we are and what we have done.  Shake your hand and give yourself a hug.  You are all you have.  Accept the person you are.  

Wilfred Peterson

"Many times we will get more ideas and better ideas in two hours of creative loafing than in eight hours at a desk."

— Wilfred Peterson

American Writer

1900 - 1995

Sometimes our best ideas arrive unannounced when we are relaxed and playing.  When you experience writer's block, escape from your office to walk in the woods, or to fly a kite, or to swing in the sunshine, or to swim in the pool, or to build sand castles.  Creativity cannot be forced.  It is best that you coax it to come out and play.  Your muse likes to surprise you and will offer you a drink when you least expect it.  Be ready when the moment arrives so the ideas don't vanish into the sunset.

What are you doing to encourage your creativity?  Do you meditate?  Or watch a sunrise?  Or visit a museum?  Or talk to a stranger?  What are you doing to navigate your way out of your comfort zone?  How are your breaking out of the routine?

Barbara Sher

"Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do — can love things that no one else can love . . . We are like violins.  We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music."

— Barbara Sher

American Author, Speaker

Are you playing the music that is inside you?  Or have you hidden it away in the closet, not to be heard by anyone?  Each of us is unique.  There is no one like us.  Each of us has something to offer the world?  Do you know the gift that you are giving back to the universe?  No one else can be you.  Celebrate your uniqueness.  You are someone special.  Don't let anyone put down what makes you unique.  


Take a moment and listen to Barbara's message.

Paulo Coelho

"It's only those who are persistent and willing to study things deeply, who achieve the master work."

— Paulo Coelho

Brazilian Novelist

1947 -

Most people give up on their dreams too soon.  Every time you are knocked down, you need to stand back up.  The difference between the winners and the losers is that the winners keep going long after the losers have quit.  Quitting is not an option.  Even if you are bleeding with two broken legs, you need to stand back up and keep dancing.  

Creative leaders need to be constantly learning new techniques and ideas for use with their art or writing.  Even the masters continue to study.  No one has perfected his art.  Everyone needs to continue to grow and develop their skills.  What have you learned today?  Last week?  Last month?  Last year?  

Enjoy the visual.

John Singer Sargent

Self-Portrait
(1906)

"Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

— John Singer Sargent

American Artist

1859 - 1925

Theodore Roosevelt
(1903)

How often have you painted a portrait of a friend and lost his friendship?  Have you ever included a friend in a novel you wrote?  Writers and artists often include their friends in their creative works.  In a novel I wrote, the main character was a composite of two older men that I knew.  Imaginative fiction often has its roots in reality.  Ask any writer who is honest with himself.  Artists need people to sit for them and often these are friends.  Sometimes these friends are not happy with the portrait painted of them, either visually or verbally.

Where do you find the people who sit for your portraits?  Children?  Spouse?  Friends?  Strangers?  Cousins?  Business Partners?  Lovers?  Where do you find the characters in your novels?  Bosses?  Enemies?  Competitors?  Neighbors?  Peers?  Yourself?

Writers are often asked how many of their novels and stories are autobiographical.  And the answer, if given, will very from story to story and character to character?  Readers connected to the author often play the game of guessing who is who.  The bottom-line is that creative leaders make use of their lives to help create their stories and paint their portraits and that is acceptable.

In a world where memoirs have become a dominant art form, the flip side is also true.  Writers often use their imagination to expand and enhance their personal stories to make them more entertaining.  Some have called this lying and unethical.  Others find it acceptable to marry reality and imagination.  What do you think?  

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood
(1885)

Steve Jobs

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” 

— Steve Jobs

American Businessman/Inventor

1955 - 

Can we change the world?  Jobs thinks so and he has done so with the Apple computer, the MAC, the I-Pod, the I-Phone and the I-Pad.  And yet he has not touched the human heart.

I think we can change the external world a lot easier than we can change the internal world.  Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison and others like them have changed the way we communicate and interact, but they have not changed the people who communicate.  We still have liars, thieves, rapists and murderers.  We have greedy, mean and negative people. We still have people who are poor, hungry and jobless.  Technology does not change the heart.  The computer did not make us better people.  The internet did not make us better people.  Think about how many people run scams via the computer or hackers who steal people's information and identities.

Changing the human heart is an inside job.  Only I can change myself.  Only I can make me a better person.  And even then I often fail.  And some would say that only God can change the human heart.  Yet, if you look at some of the religious leaders who commit adultery and you will realize that He too has failed.  How many times have you tried to change old habits and failed?  Our human nature is often a barrier to our success.  People keep hoping the world will change and it does, just not always for the better.

So can we as creative leaders change the world?  I don't think the answer can easily be found.  We can change somethings but not all things.  But we must keep trying.  We cannot let failure stand in our way.  Let us celebrate the rebels. the misfits and the troublemakers because they look at the world through rose-colored glasses.  They see things that others do not see.  They find hope where others give up and quit.  So I celebrate hope amidst my failures.  And I still choose to believe that I can change.  Don't you?

Dorothy Fadiman

"Each of us is an artist, capable of conceiving and creating a vision from the depths of our being."

— Dorothy Fadiman

American Filmmaker

I believe that every person is capable of creating artistic works.  Some of us may have had our creative impulses damaged as a child by either a parent, a teacher or another child.  Someone somewhere made fun of something we created.  I know I have had those people in my life, but for some reason I kept going.  In fifth grade, I was given the opportunity to write about my class for the weekly newspaper.  Our small town newspaper published a page or two of articles written by school children.  My first article was criticized by the editor as be too much like advertising.  My headlines were too bold.  I was writing ads not journalism.  I never seriously wrote for a newspaper again.

When I was a junior in high school I started writing poetry as a way to express my feelings.  When I was a senior, I submitted a paper composed solely of my poetry in a social studies class.  My English teacher asked me why I had not showed her my poetry.  I had no answer for her.

I believe inside each of us is a need to find an outlet for our creativity.  For some that might be sewing, or cooking, or fixing cars.  For others, our creativity finds its outlet in writing, drawing, painting, singing or acting.  Unfortunately, naysayers have blocked our creative impulses and we must learn to open our creative channels.

Here are clips from one of Dorothy Fadiman's films: Reclaiming Their Voice, Saving the Petroglyphs: Teaser.

Wayne Dyer

"The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life.  Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better."

— Wayne Dyer

American Author/Speaker

1940 -

Do you love to laugh?  Or have you forgotten how to laugh?  I don't remember laughing much as a child?  I probably did, but I can't remember.  I know that I was a serious child and have been known to be a serious adult.  I know that my grandfather on my mother's side was very strict and serious.  He probably considered laughter to be the devil's work.  I know that as an adult I don't smile a lot.  I think that it is because as a child I spent a lot of time in the sun.  I squinted so I was able to see in the brightness.  I know that I do laugh as an adult, but I don't always laugh at what others consider to be funny.  I know that many of the movies that people think are funny I find stupid.  I guess you could say I don't like people acting dumb or stupid.  I like serious humor.  I don't like humor that puts people down and makes fun of individuals or groups of people.  I did not grow up in an environment where we told jokes.  I don't know how to tell a joke.  I don't like planned or canned laughter. 

The best laughter for me arises unexpectedly and spontaneously out of the moment.  Something someone says or does will strike me as funny and we will both experience a deep belly laugh.  It is not laughter that you can share with others.  If you were not present when it happened, it will not be funny to you.   

As creative leaders, we must be careful not to take life too seriously.  We must learn to laugh and enjoy the moment.  In the laughter we are refreshed and we will find hope.

Harley King

"Service to others in their time of need is a privilege and an honor."

— Harley King

American Speaker and Poet

1949 -

As creative leaders, we inspire, encourage and give people hope with our paintings, sculptures, poetry, stories and music.  Our creative works touch the hearts and souls of millions of people with passion and power.  Reading novels have helped people through difficult times in their lives.  Listening to music has brought encouragement to unhappy souls.  It is a privilege to help others in their time of need.  

Have you been inspired by a poem or a novel you have read?  Have you found peace and comfort in a song?  Has a painting opened up new worlds for you to experience?  Just as we as creative leaders have been inspired by other artists and writers so our audiences are inspired by us.  Yes, we often feel we are creating for ourselves, but in the end our legacy is to be found in the people to whom we have given hope to through our creative expression.

Here is a short video of a speech I gave in May at an awards banquet to over 1000 health care professionals about the privilege of service to others in their time of need.

Marilyn Chin

"Poetry is my passion.  It is my art.  It is my love, it is my first love, my love beyond all loves, beyond romantic love.  It's as necessary for me as breathing is necessary for me.  I can't live without it."

Marilyn Chin

Chinese-American Poet

1955 -

Are you passionate about your art?  What would happen if you could no longer create works of art?  Would a part of you die?  For me, my writing is a part of who I am.  And I agree with Chin that it is as important as breathing.  If I could no longer write, I would not be happy and a part of me would wither and die.  I need to feel the creative juices flowing through my body.  And hear my voice speaking to the universe.

Here is Marilyn Chin reading her poem, The Floral Apron.

Ann Linnea

"The essence of parenting is to never lose faith in your child and the essence of adulthood is to assume that faith in yourself.

— Ann Linnea

American Author/Educator
1949 -

Many have compared the act of creation to the act of giving birth and to their creations as their children.  And there is some validity to the analogy.  But the more important message is that one should never lose faith in what you create.  Believe in your creation as you would a child.  And believe in yourself as an artist and creative leader.

Too many people give on their creativity because they haven't found fame or fortune.  Lack of interest in your art by the world does not negate what you have created.  The opinions of others don't much matter.  What is important is that maintain your faith in yourself and what you create.  Don't give up or give in.

Marian Wright Edelman

"Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others."

— Marian Wright Edelman

American Author
and Child's Rights Activist

1939 -

Our world today is filled with man-made noise that drowns out many of sounds that can be heard in nature as well as the voice with in in our hearts.  Many of us cannot go anywhere without our I-Pods, I-Pads and I-phones or their equivalents.  We cannot live without filling our ears with sound.

As writers, musicians and artists we must learn to be quiet.  We must have the self-discipline to shut out the noise from the outside world and learn to listen to the small voice deep inside.  If we learn to hear that small gentle voice, then maybe we will one day be able to hear that voice in others.  We will be able to connect with others through the sounds of our voices.