Julie Otsuka

"I really like the act of writing; it's the same as painting in that I become engaged in the process of making stuff.  What I love is the form and language.  Each paragraph is like a puzzle."

Julie Otsuka

American Novelist

1962 - 

Julie Otsuka graduated with a bachelor's degree in art in 1984.   Thinking she would have a career in art, she entered the MFA program at Indiana University and quit after 3 months.  After struggling with what she wanted to do with her life, she switched to writing and her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, was published in 2002.

Sometimes we think we know where we want to go in life, but events and circumstances can and will alter our course.  When I was a sophomore in high school, I committed to being a preacher.  By the time I was a senior, I had rejected the faith of my parents.  I turned instead to writing, hoping one day to be successful.  Instead for almost 25 years, I have spent my time and energy as a speaker, a preacher variation.

Have you traveled the roads that you thought you would travel when you were 18?  What surprises did you not anticipate?  What impact have these changes had on your creative expression?  How many times have you changed careers?  Where do you see yourself tomorrow?

Ernest Hemingway

"I sometimes think my style is suggestive rather than direct.  The reader must often use his imagination or lose the most subtle part of my thought."

— Ernest Hemingway

American Novelist

1899 - 1961

The writer and the artist should not tell everything.  They should respect the intelligence of their readers and admirers.  One important concept that my study of haiku has taught me is that the reader must bring something to the table.  The artist's job is to suggest.  The reader must discover the meaning in the writing or the painting.  My writing like Hemingway's is often suggestive, not direct.  Simple, not complex.  My painting is even more suggestive and simple.  

What this also means is that our state of mind when we read something impacts our response to what we read.  It impacts our experience of what we read.  Readers always bring something to the table.  Some books should be read when we are young and others when we are more mature.  Some books should be read again and again.  Each time we read it, we find new meaning in the words because we are a new person.  The same is true of painting, music, dance and theater.

Anne Frank

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

— Anne Frank

German Writer

1929 - 1945

One of the challenges that I have faced in my life is that I am sometimes too trusting of people.  I believe that inside every person there is some good.  Yet, I know that people have been nice to my face and negative behind my back.  Sometimes I have not found out about it until years later when somebody accidently says something.  


As creative leaders we may encounter people who will try to use us and manipulate us for their advantage.  People will try to take advantage of us.  I talked with a speaker once whose office manager embezzled more than $750,000 from him.  He trusted her and treated her as family only to find out she was stealing from him.  Those of us who have a kind and trusting heart need to be careful.  


Fame and fortune can turn friends into enemies.  Fame and fortune can bring jealousy and envy.  In the book, Dean and Me: A Love Story, Jerry Lewis discusses the breakup of his business and theatrical relationship with Dean Martin.  Fame and fortune brought people into their lives who did not have their best interests at heart.  These people stoked the flames of jealousy and envy.  And eventually the dynamic comedy duo was destroyed.


Yet, as Anne Frank says so well, we need to still believe in people despite what they may have done to us.  Don't let yourself become cynical and sarcastic.  Not everyone is out to steal from you.  Not everyone wants to use you and your good name.  Hold onto your innocence.  Believe in the good in others.

Wallace Stevens

"A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman."

— Wallace Stevens

American Poet

1879 - 1955

What a powerful statement of love and lust!  Do you lust after your creative expression?  Do you lust after the physical world?  For some creativity is a form of sexual expression.  Do you have love in your heart when you create?  Do you make love to the infinite when you paint, or write, or dance?  Are you inspired by the beauty surrounding you?  Does your creativity give birth to your greatest desires?  Are you passionate about the work you do?  Do you dance with your muses and sing songs of love and lust?

Do you look at peaches with lust and love?  Here is a poem by Wallace Stevens.

A Dish of Peaches in Russia

by Wallace Stevens

With my whole body I taste these peaches,

I touch them and smell them.  Who speaks?

I absorb them as the Angevine

Absorbs Anjou.  I see them as a lover sees,

As a young lover sees the first buds of spring

And as the black Spaniard plays his guitar.

Who speaks?  But it must be that I,

That animal, that Russian, that exile, from whom

The bells of the chapel pullulate sounds at

Heart.  The peaches are large and round,

Ah! and red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!

They are full of juice and the skin is soft.

They are full of the colors of my village

And of fair weather, summer, dew, peace.

Robert Bly

"I learned to trust my obsessions.  It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions."

— Robert Bly

American Poet

1926 - 

What are your obsessions?  Do you deny that they exist?  What is it that keeps appearing in your paintings or writings?  In my art I am obsessed with masks.  I paint and draw masks.  When I did wood carving I carved masks.  When I doodle, I draw masks.  We all wear masks even those who say they don't.  We change our behavior depending on the people we are with? I bet most of you act different around your parents than your friends.  And you are probably different at work than you are at home.  We all don our masks and sometimes we even hide from ourselves.

What are your obsessions?  What drives you to paint or draw or write?  What is the message that you must deliver to the world?  Do you trust your obsessions?  Do you understand why you must pursue your obsessions even if it means putting yourself at risk?  Please take a moment and share your obsessions?  I would enjoy hearing from you.

Wilfred Grenfell

"The service we render for others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth."

— Wilfred Grenfell

English Medical Missionary

1865 - 1940

It is a privilege and honor to be an artist.  We have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people.  Creative leaders provide tremendous value to societies and the people who make up those societies.  We entertain, inspire, inform and teach.  We give hope when hope is needed.  

Have you ever read a book that changed your life?  Thank the author with all your heart for the hours he spent writing and rewriting that book.  Have you ever read a novel that made you cry?  Thank the author.  Have you ever listened to a piece of music again and again because it calmed you down?  Thank the composer and the musicians.  Have you ever stood before a statue with your mouth wide open in awe?  Thank the sculptor.  Have you ever sat for hours in a museum studying a painting of a master?  Thank the painter for sharing his talent.

Be thankful for the privilege of serving others — of helping to ease their pain.  For giving them a few moments of laughter, joy and encouragement.  For helping them bear the loneliness of living.  For saving them from their thoughts of suicide.  Creative leaders are seldom aware of the impact and influence they have on people's lives.  If they did, they would be thankful every day for the gift they have been given.

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?