Seven Creative Skills You Need to Master in Order to Reinvent Your Life

What do Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt, Rembrandt, and your favorite memoir writer have in common? A lot more than you might think. The book below will teach you not only to recognize patterns in the lives of great artists but to become a great artist yourself–a “life change artist.”

Becoming a Life-Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. Fred Mandell, Ph.D., Kathleen Jordan, Ph.D. Avery, 2010.

The lives of artists fascinate me. Actually, all lives fascinate me.  I hold a secret hankering to be an artist, and this book helped me understand why, inspiring me to use my own life as the canvas and the principles in this book as the viewfinder, paint, and brush.

Co-authors Kathy Jordan and Fred Mandell have studied artist’s lives, searching for patterns, and have emerged with a number of findings that might surprise you and a list of seven creative skills all of us can hone.

The “elevator speech” about this book describes it as The Artist’s Way meets What Color is Your Parachute. I’m not a student of those two books, but I can say that this one deserves as much success as they have had.

Why? Because the authors guide the reader seamlessly back and forth between in-depth biography of artists and into real life stories of ordinary people. Their skills as researchers, psychologists, and coaches combine to create an elegant book with relevance to almost anyone at any stage of life. One of my favorite quotes from the book says it best. “The ultimate work of art [is] a life of meaning and purpose imbued with hard-won self-awareness.”

Three sections comprise the book’s structure: The Process, The Skills, and a synthesis chapter called “The Way of the Life Change Artist.”

The Process (Part One)begins with recognizing when one has come to a “creative dilemma” in life. Dante’s famous description in The Inferno came to mind when I read about this sense between knowing and not knowing, whether to act or not to act:

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself in a shadowed forest.
For I had lost the path that does not stray
Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
That savage forest, dense and difficult,
Which even in recall renews my fear:
So bitter-death is hardly so severe!

The fear so powerfully described by Dante affects all of us in transition. The key to overcoming fear lies in welcoming change, knowing that we have an artist’s tool box to create something beautiful from whatever mistakes we have made or whatever external force threatens to overwhelm us.

The rest of the process, after recognizing and entering the creative dilemma, consists of exploring, discovering, and integrating. Each of these parts of the process can produce a variety of feelings, both positive and negative, that require our attention and strengthen our ability to remain open even when we don’t know the outcome of our search.

The heart of the book, however, is the discussion of the seven skills of the life change artist based on the patterns in all great artists’ lives. For each skill, the authors use side bars to describe how individuals follow the four-steps of the creative process to strengthen the skill, an ingenious way to bring process and skills together.

The seven skills are:

1. Preparation–walking, writing, going outside the familiar, listening to music, doing physical chores, soaking in a bathtub, helping others. . .

2. Seeing–the linchpin creative skill. Blake said it: “The eye altering, alters all.” In this section I was reminded of the thrill I felt back in the 80′s when I encountered the concept of negative space in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

3. Using context. Pay attention to trends in the world around us. Be aware of social identity and how it can bias our thinking.

4. Embracing uncertainty. Recognize that change is constant and don’t rush to resolution prematurely. Adapt, seek, and allow opportunities to unfold. Creating rituals, meditation, are useful practices as we learn this skill.

5. Risk taking. Acting without certainty of outcome. This might mean following our intuition, going against the crowd or even our own friends, managing our fears, and converting mistakes into opportunities for learning.

6. Collaboration. Braque and Picasso invented cubism together. Neither one could have done it alone. Likewise, Renoir, Cassatt, Degas and all the Impressionists. This section was the greatest “aha” for me. Most of us are trained to think of artists as loners, individuals haunted by their own dreams. In fact, they almost always have some kind of supportive artistic circle, often consciously cultivated. Here’s what the life change artist needs in an advisory group:

a. An empathetic listener like Rembrandt

b. A mentor like Pisarro

c. A catalyst like Picasso

d. A strategic thinker like Leonardo da Vinci

7. Discipline. Acting consistently whether or not we feel motivated. This is the “perspiration” part of inspiration. We adopt habits that allow us to overcome distraction, disappointment. We “sit in the chair” as long as we have to to get the job done. Leonardo da Vinci:  “You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.”

The end of the book contains an assessment tool called the Creativity Calculator. The calculator told me that I am highly creative in all areas except “using context” and “discipline” where I am a high medium. I find it helpful to see the places I can improve while also identifying with both process and skills that I learned through trial and error, careful observation of others, and learning to listen to the voice within. Among the most important gifts a book like this gives the reader are new names for one’s own experiences and new eyes for seeing the mountains yet to be climbed.

Here’s a final story from p. 125 of the book and Japanese artist Howard Ikemoto. “‘When my daughter was seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college–that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”‘”

We were all artists once. We all can become great artists with our own lives. Before that can happen we need to develop a deep process that develops these seven skills.

Now, memoir readers and writers, check out these seven skills in the life of the memoirist you most admire. Can you see them–both in the life and in the construction of the life as a work of art?

Never Underestimate The Power of the Pen to Change Lives

Sometimes we get surprised by joy–by the growth of seeds we planted but did not cultivate.

Dr. Catherine R. Mumaw presents me with a two-volume memoir set

On August 18, 2010, I was asked to attend a tea commemorating the beginning of the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society at Eastern Mennonite University, my alma mater. Apparently, in 1994, when I gave a speech at EMU (“Renewal from Within: Transformation in Higher Education”), I recommended that senior professors enter a new role in the academy–”senior fellows” at newly-established academic centers designed for this purpose. I delivered the speech just two weeks after publishing an article advocating the idea in  The Chronicle of Higher Education. I remember writing the article, but I did not remember including the recommendation in my speech. That was the seed I dropped while engaging with the audience.

In the intervening sixteen years, EMU designed just such a center which is now flourishing. I encourage you to check the link above which outlines many roles the ACRS “senior fellows” play.

One important role of ACRS is mentoring. On August 18 I was moved to be in the presence of many of my own mentors–Catherine Mumaw taught the fine arts class which started me and many other students on a life-long path of art appreciation. Jay Landis taught me public speaking, a skill I used when I returned home to speak at EMU. Myron Augsburger was the college president who imprinted upon me the importance of spiritual and intellectual leadership in an academic community, an image that unconsciously formed my own presidential years at Goshen College, 1996-2004. And the current EMU president, my friend and colleague, Loren Swartzendruber took time from his busy schedule to attend the tea.

All I could do was say “thank you” to them and to the other faculty members who comprise the ACRS. A more dedicated group of people I have not met in all my travels in this country and abroad. Special thanks to Ray Gingerich, Cal Redekop, Vernon Jantzi, and Roman Miller, who planned the event. Robert and Nancy Lee edited the books I was given. Here’s a slide show of some photos taken by Ray Gingerich.

A second, but equally thrilling delight, was that the ACRS chose memoir as one of their most important methods of creating identity for the Center. The two volumes of memoir published by Cascadia Press carry the logo not only of the university but also of the Center.

So, as I was developing my own interest in memoir as represented in this blog, the ACRS was stimulating the writing of 32 short memoirs collected in two volumes. I will review these volumes in a future post.

As the country begins a new school year, the eyes of students and teachers shine with hope. For a few days or weeks, at least, the love of learning seems to be reignited in everyone. If you have a chance, hug some of those students and teachers. And give them some sharp pencils and smooth-flowing pens. You will never know where your influence stops. And they will never know where theirs stops either.

In Praise of Book Reviews and An Invitation to Review

Did you ever think about how important book reviews are? Jo Parfitt, over at Write Your Life Stories explains just why and how books and book reviews need each other in this post called “The brilliance of book reviews.”

If you love to read, you can help your favorite author by writing a review. Using social media, these reviews can reach many readers. If you don’t have a blog, you can post your reviews on Amazon or other online booksellers. Or if the book is a memoir, send me the review, and I will consider posting it here. I will make the decision to publish or not based on the quality of the writing and the relevance of the book to the subject of this blog.

Writers often decry the loss of review sections in major newspapers and magazines. As the mainstream media constricts space due to loss of subscribers, blogs proliferate and digital space opens. Let’s keep the spirit of friendly critique alive!

Memory of Trees: Another Farmer's Daughter Memoir

I love reviewing books for Christian Century magazine. If editor Richard Kauffman had not asked me to review this book, I may never have found it, and that would have been a great loss. You can find the review below in the August 24, 2010 issue. When it is posted online, I will link to it.

Marty, Gayla. Memory of Trees: A Daughter’s Story of a Family Farm. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.

Along America’s highways, wooden barns used to reign, their blue or white silos standing like sentries. Today those wooden barns with their high hay mows and accompanying silos are slowly being replaced by low steel buildings or allowed to decay, their wooden ribcages emerging like skeletons after years of neglect. Under this seemingly innocuous change in architecture lies a great American drama.  You will want to read this book if you are interested in the story of transformation of the family farm in America. Gayla Marty has told this larger story inside the particular story of her own family.

In this memoir of a Minnesota girlhood, Gayla Marty turns the Marty and Anderson farms into characters in their own right. To give these characters weight, she surrounds them with four generations’ histories and introduces chapters about them with passages from the King James Bible like those she memorized as a child. To give them breadth, she relates them to the little-told agrarian tale of how the Roman republic fell as the empire grew, history she learned first-hand as an international student in Tunisia. To give them life, she intersperses chapters on the various kinds of trees she first came to love on the farm, in the Bible, and in her travels: nine trees paired with nine chapters.

Marty’s gifts as a writer include: a fabulous memory for detail, sensitivity to the lyric sound of language, excellent documentation and historical research skills, and honest descriptions of her own spirit, creating a very credible, authentic voice.  The structure and pacing of the book may discourage some readers, but those who persist will be rewarded.

Two churches—East Rock Creek and Rush City Baptist–play an important role both as an anchor for family and community life and as a place where Marty’s inner life was formed, as in this passage:

On the last Sunday of the year, we walk into our old church, the furnace burning for the last time. Facing the painting of Jesus the shepherd in the field with his sheep, we sing.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols play. Mama and Daddy’s voices harmonize, different notes but close together. And wild and sweet the words repeat, of peace on earth, good will to men.

Inside my head, I hold the words: wild and sweet the words repeat (58).

With this book Marty joins the ranks of many wonderful storytellers and memoirists of rural America. Readers may be reminded of Wendell Berry’s poetry, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, Kathleen Norris’ Dakota, and Mildred Armstrong Kalish’s Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Marty has Norris and Berry’s spiritual attunement along with some of the zestful documentary voice of Kalish.

But Marty also speaks with the voice of a prophet, wailing a lamentation even as she finds solace in trees and the abiding divine spirit they represent. When she leaves the farm for college and then again for an international education experience in Tunisia, she learns the history of the Roman republic, rooted in agrarian yeoman farming, which gave way to forced large-scale agriculture that fed the Roman Empire. She skillfully connects memory, culture, and characters in a Muslim land: “At every call to prayer, I thought I heard Uncle’s and Daddy’s clear voices” (164). When she hears a street vendor cry out in Arabic, she thinks it sounds like “C’m baaaaaaaaas!”—the calling of the cows in Minnesota.

The connections to home continue, in a sharper vein, as she describes how the inexorable movements toward growth haunt both places: “I felt the movement of ghosts, wandering peoples and languages scavenging for places to plant, graze animals, satisfy hunger, build a shelter and hearth—sending legions ahead in clanking metal, enslaving each other to dig and build, . . .” (176).

The antagonist of Marty’s father is her Uncle Gaylon, her father’s business partner whose family lives in an adjacent house. Uncle makes Gayla feel special when she is a small girl through his attention and storytelling about the history of the Marty farm. Later, he becomes angry and unpredictable, like his father before him. Moving full circle, he becomes an ally in a failing cause. Marty and her Uncle want to keep the farm as a spiritual inheritance. The rest of the family wants to sell it and view it as an investment like any other.

So years of labor, love, harmony and community end up on the auction block. The needs of one generation do not align smoothly align with the next. And a daughter who loves the land can seldom own the land. Since trees serve as her primary metaphor, she voices her protest this way: “Daughters have been like apple trees, transient, adaptable, wandering the earth with their sweetness and tartness and promise, bending to the will of men in exchange for roots.”

In the epilogue, the daughter has given up the struggle for the land itself. Uncle gives her one final gift before he dies, reciting long passages memorized from the King James Bible all leading to this conclusion: “Then shall I fulfill my promise and bring you back to this place.”

Rosanne Cash: Composed

I have always had a fondness for the best of country music and have always enjoyed making fun of the worst. One thing is true about country music: you get a lot of memoir packed into most of those three-minute songs.

Johnny Cash and Ruth Carter Cash were some of the best. When I heard about Johnny Cash’s daughter Rosanne Cash’s album The List, I blogged about it here. Last night I heard Diane Rehm interview Rosanne, and the broadcast brought tears to my eyes. If you can watch theYouTube below of father and daughter without having your vision fog up a little, you are made of sterner stuff than I am.
I now have to read Rosanne Cash’s new memoir with the perfect name for her life: Composed.

Anniversaries of All Kinds: Blogging and Living Memoir

This week marks the second anniversary of www.100memoirs.com. After about 200 posts, more than 1000 comments, 35,000 hits and new links to Facebook and Twitter, this blog has brought me into the social media world, sometimes kicking and screaming, but always with a reward of new friendships. Thank you, dear readers, for helping me learn.

This week also marks our 41st wedding anniversary, which we plan to celebrate in Chicago. Last year I blogged about 40 years with 20 suggestions for newlyweds. Since that time, both children have married, and we have enjoyed their weddings and our vacations together to the max. We are deeply grateful for the way our own life stories are woven together.

This blog was begun as a way to encourage reflection on the joys, pains, challenges, and opportunities of memoir and memoir writing. After two years, it has achieved many of its aims, including the aim of creating good memoir lists as a resource for others and reading at least 100 memoirs. We’ll see what next year’s memoir journey brings. Stay tuned!

Anthony, Chelsea, Kate, Nik, 2010

Toy Story 3: A Memoir Stimulus Package

When Stuart and I saw Toy Story 3, I remembered one of our more delightful experiences while in Prague last year–a trip to the Toy Museum at the base of the huge castle in Prague, Czech Republic.

Exhibit in Toy Museum, Prague, Czech Republic

At the time we visited, the museum displayed an amazing collection of Barbie dolls in honor of her 50th anniversary.

Barbie's 50th anniversary exhibit

Lanie Tankard, in her essay on touchstones published here, said,”The adult is always searching for the child still within, as well as reminders that the person’s own adult children were actually smaller at one time.”

Toy Story 3 overflows with touchstones, or “luminous particulars” that will take you back to your own childhood or to your time of parenting young children, or both. It also evokes deep, universal themes of love v. fear, home v. homelessness, belonging and separation. The animation is so good, you will forget you are watching animation.

Click on the link in the paragraph above for a series of movie trailers that will give you a partial glimpse of these touchstones. Toys in general are great carriers of childhood memory–especially classic toys, like the telephone on a string (I remember this one from my little sister’s toybox as well as our own) to toys of a given era such as astronauts or robots. They carry first impressions of love, which, like all first experiences, go deep into the psyche.

If you have not yet seen this movie, I urge you to go. If you have some kids handy–your own, your neighbor’s, your grandchild, your nephew or neice, take them with you. If you have already seen the movie (or Toy Story I, or II), please tell us your thoughts! What nostalgia floodgates did the film open for you? What insight did you gain? Do you think you could construct a memoir on toys alone?

How NOT to Write a Memoir: Susan Shapiro's Satirical Advice

Susan Shapiro teaches writing. She also gives advice. Since her advice in the online version of The Writer magazine  underscores the premise of this blog–that to be a good memoir writer it helps to read 100 great memoirs–I offer this link to the ten things not to do as a memoir writer.

Enjoy! If you are on Facebook, join The Writer’s fan page, and you will get sweet little tidbits like this one without having to come here to find them.

Unfinished Business by Lee Kravitz: A Book Review

Like many of you, I am surrounded by books and paper everywhere I go.  Here in the red chair, which serves as my favorite office, magazines spill over each other on the both sides of me. In front of me is the pile of paper I scooped off my work desk on the way out the door for the holiday weekend. Embedded in the debris are about four books I have promised to review.

In the next room, which doubles as guest bedroom and my official home office , sit stacks of books that have reproduced like rabbits since the last time I cleaned off the desk. Next week we will have guests to welcome in that room, so I have vowed to find places to store the books. Soon I can procrastinate no longer!

All of which is to say that Lee Kravitz had his work cut out for him when his publicist sent me a copy of the book that had to compete with all the rest.

But he won the battle.

I read his memoir, Unfinished Business, in a matter of days. As I said in a previous post, his thesis matches one of my most profound motivations for doing this blog.  He knew that he would be a better person, a better father, and a better writer if he took care of the unfinished business in his life. Where I work, we call that desire the power of love and forgiveness. I believe that memoir writing at its best resolves unanswered questions and teaches both the writer and the reader profoundly spiritual lessons.

Lee Kravitz is a name you might recognize. Until a few years ago, he was the editor of the largest circulation magazine in America–Parade. If he had not been fired from that job, we would not have his memoir, his father and his brother would still be estranged from each other, his high school teacher and mentor would not have gotten a thank-you visit, his friend would never have heard from him after his daughter was killed in Iraq, an old debt would still exist in the debit column, a Muslim friend and an Eastern Orthodox bishop would not be in his life, and an old enemy would continue to haunt him. The benefits of these redeemed relationships, will cause every reader to do an inventory of his or her own unfinished business. You may even find yourself hoping to get fired yourself!

The book falls neatly into a preface, ten chapters, and an epilogue. The deceptively simple structure, each the story of a memory or relationship that the author attempted to salvage, makes a satisfying package. But it could have been otherwise. If the author had not found ways to maintain the complexity and individuality of each relationship or had allowed a sentimental stew of good feeling to overflow without a real struggle to understand himself, he would have destroyed the value of the book to anyone outside his immediate family.

So how does the author keep us reading? He begins with aimless depression following the firing and the arrival of ten cardboard boxes of personal momentos that he, as a good workoholic, had stored in his place of work rather than integrate into his home.

As Kravitz goes through the boxes, he finds evidence of parts of himself long repressed–the world travelling adventurer who had been to Israel, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in the 70′s, the puzzled and dutiful son who saved over 1,000 letters from his father full of capital letters, red type, and strange punctuation, a highschool yearbook brought back the fear he felt in the presence of his childhood bully, but also the love he felt for his history teacher and for the boy who had opened his eyes to the possibility of experiencing God. In the box was a recording of an interview he did with his grandmother Shirley. He listened to her voice again with awful guilt–he had skipped her funeral because he had had too much work to do when she died.

In Kravitz’ own words:  “There were signs in these boxes that there had been a better me: a more curious, adventurous, and compassionate individual who had taken risks to do the right thing.” He decides to wait to search for a new job and instead to devote an entire year to “tying up my loose emotional ends.”

The great spiritual traditions offered great support on this journey. Kravitz, a Jew by birth, rediscovers his own tradition as well as explores what Buddhism, Christianity, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Islam have to say about making amends. The book has an ecumenical, inclusive, joyful spirituality running like a current under a stream.

The author does not try to hold us in suspense. We know from the beginning what he is trying to do and that he will succeed in doing it. Yet we keep moving, page after page. Why? My own reason was to discover the nuances of the journey, the how and why of it. The what hardly mattered. Adventure in this book happens in the mind and in the heart not so much in plot devices. His narrative arc is readymade, but his real story has to be chiseled from his unique displays of courage and ingenuity. We follow him, still curious, as he checks one mistake after another off his list, because his approach varies adroitly every time.

Martin Buber, Jewish mystic and spiritual guide to many, provides Kravitz with the language he needs to describe his transformation. Throughout his ten journeys he learns to take time to listen, to recognize the holiness of other human beings, and to treat them as “thou” rather than “it.” Though this new ability to hold the other’s gaze with love and attention may seem like a small thing, it is in fact the beating heart of every spiritual tradition. Discovering how to love in daily life is the spiritual equivalent of scaling the Alps. Kravitz shows us how the smallest act can either slip into our metaphorical boxes of unfinished business or can elevate us to the place Buber talked about in another of his famous books–ecstatic confessions.

Identifying unfinished business may in fact be the route to your own memoir. What aspects of yourself and your story lie buried in boxes, literally or figuratively? I’d love to hear questions and comments about Kravitz’s approach. What thoughts does his story evoke in you?

Help Marla Contact Oprah: She Wants a New Show About Conscious Aging

 I met Marla Miller at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference in 2007. She taught the marketing workshop which came highly recommended. She has a no-nonsense style of teaching and interviewing that I respect and enjoy. I took the class again in 2008.

We became Facebook friends last year. Marla posts essays she writes for More Magazine, a great publication directed to women over 40. Marla is a nurse, so she writes about health and sexuality issues as well as books and writers.  Above all, she tells stories. Here’s a list of all her stories as published in More. She also is a blogger at Open Salon.

Marla would love to have her own show with Oprah and has auditioned here. 

Please watch her short audition and vote for her–before midnight tonight!