TEDx Talk Sept. 10th, 2010

Below is the text version of my recent TEDx talk. Enjoy!

I wonder if you can remember the last time you were truly and completely happy?

And I’m not referring to those wonderful moments of rapture we experience from time—when we stand looking out over the ocean at a magnificent sunset, for example, or when we walking into the awesome space of a cathedral. Or even when we’re making love… or during meditation.

No, I’m wondering if you have ever closed your eyes and traveled back through time and space to what I might call your personal Eden, before the loss of innocence—a time when the sky was cloudless, when there were none of those familiar worries gnawing at the edge of consciousness, about money, or job, or your relationship, or the kids… a moment, then, when you felt completely at one with yourself and the universe…

When I was first invited to do this exercise, I found myself on a swing, suspended by long ropes from the branch of a tall pine tree overlooking the red sandstone country church where my father was Rector, and past it over the green landscape of rural Bedfordshire, in England, where I grew up. Behind me is the redbrick Victorian rectory, where we lived. The big kitchen window stands open and through it I hear the voice of my mother, who is calling me in for elevenses, or afternoon tea, or supper…

If I start here, in my own personal Eden, it’s because the place in me that responds to this “calling” of my name is the same, I believe—because we’re talking here about the “real me, the core self”—is the same as the place where I respond to that other, deeper call, the one that tells me not only who I am but what it is I’m given to do with my life. It was not for nothing that I was “called” Peter, as I hope you will come to understand.

It’s my conviction that each one of us has a calling—a mission, if you will, a purpose for our lives—and that we can each hear it, if we stop to listen closely. Those who are the happiest among us, I believe, are those who have listened to the call and who have learned to follow it.

I happen to have been called to be a writer. I have known this since I was twelve years old, not because I actually remember it from that age but because my mother—yes, that same mother whose voice I heard calling me from the Rectory kitchen!—was at pains for the rest of her life to remind me of what I told her at that age: that I wanted to be a writer.

And indeed, I was a writer as a teenager. I wrote poems. I wrote poems about love and war, all those things I knew absolutely nothing about. By the time I got to university, my sole aspiration was to be a poet and, indeed, I wrote a great deal of poetry during my undergraduate years and began to publish it in undergraduate magazines.

But then, alas…! I was ejected into the real world! In my last year at university, I was confronted with the awful truth that poets—even the best of them—do not make a great deal of money. I would need to find some other form of employment if I wished to make my way in the world.

I considered my options. The first was to use my talent with words—such as it was—to make a living. I considered journalism. But then I recalled the face of a wizened old Austrian count in a Weinkeller in Vienna, where I had spent a somewhat inebriated summer as a student, gazing at me through a haze of cigarette smoke and shaking a finger under my nose. “Sie sollen NICHT Journalist werden,” he warned me. You must NOT be a journalist. You’re a POET. And so, from the dizzy heights of literary ambition, I chose not to prostitute my talent.

Instead, I went into teaching. A noble profession, I thought, with the dreadful condescension of the youthful intellectual, and one that would afford me wonderful long holidays in which to follow my true vocation. What a delusion! It took me hardly any time at all to discover that by the time the long holidays came around, I was so depleted, emotionally and in every other way, by the demands of an extraordinarily demanding job, that I had no words left to write…

I left teaching… I cast around a bit, then ended up returning to graduate school, buying myself more time to be a poet at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. I also embarked on a doctorate. University teaching, I imagined, was the ticket. Longer holidays! Fewer students, more receptive and more intelligent!

Ph.D. in hand, I came to California to teach Comparative Literature at USC. I began to climb the academic ladder. It took me several years to conclude that this was not was what I was supposed to be doing with my life. The same feelings of vague, sometimes acute dissatisfaction returned—the feeling that you get when you know you’re out of place. But I chose to misinterpret it once more. I was more interested in art than in literature, I convinced myself. I was, however, totally unqualified to teach art, so I moved over into administration. I became a Dean.

Smart move!

I was appointed dean at Otis Art Institute. And later, Dean of the arts at Loyola Marymount University…

Here I interrupt myself. Because while I believe firmly in that “calling” I have been talking about, I’m equally convinced that we ignore it at our peril. We get to be unhappy, sometimes even bitter people, who walk around wishing we were someone else, or somewhere else, or doing something else…

I also believe that in addition to the call, we’re offered all kinds of hints along the way—signposts, as it were, that say NO EXIT, ONE WAY STREET, or DO NOT ENTER; or else they say THIS WAY, THIS WAY…

But we have to pay attention. We have to be watching for them, or we drive right past and end up in the familiar cul-de-sac.

Let me offer some examples of signposts I have ignored, and signposts I have paid attention to.

It will be obvious by now that I ignored, for many years, some very clear signals about my academic career. I don’t wish to sound churlish or ungrateful for the opportunities I had. It was in most respects a wonderfully rewarding path. I climbed the ladder with increasing recognition and success. I was nearly at the top when I decided to quit. I was being invited to interview for top jobs, even presidencies at some truly great art schools around the country, and I was bemused by my inability to accept the offers that came my way. But when I started to think more closely about what had been happening in my life, I could not escape the conclusion that I had managed to sabotage every job I’d ever had. You’ve heard of the Peter Principle. I was the living, breathing Peter. I had kept rising just beyond my level of competence. Well, not so much competence, because I believe I managed to do a decent job. But it just did not feel right. Experience was trying to tell me, at every pivotal point along the way: STOP! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THIS WITH YOUR LIFE!

But I chose not to listen. I chose to listen, instead, to the fear—the fear of not having a job, of not having the income, the security, even, perhaps, the identity, in which by this time I had a great deal of my self wrapped up. Only in retrospect would I begin to see things clearly. Academia, even that special branch of academia represented by the art school, was not my calling. It was what I had settled for.

So I did manage to quit. Let me tell you another Peter story. It happened nearly twenty years ago, at one of those moments in life when everything seems to be falling apart. I had finally committed myself to my calling as a writer but was still floundering, unsure what direction I should take or “what to say.” My mission to be a writer was clear to me. That felt good. But what was still not clear was my mission as a writer. It was a matter of, Okay, I’m a writer. So now what?

January 1^st, 1992. A propitious date. I went to my desk in the morning to check on my to-do lists. One of them was a list of telephone calls to be returned. There were five names on the list—and every one of them was a Peter. So I joked to myself, this had to be the year of Peter.

Well, it happened that I was commissioned that year to write a piece about an art installation in Rome. It was a big, ambitious light and space installation in the ancient Trajan Market and the artist was Los Angeles-based Peter Erskine. It happened that another LA artist was having an exhibition in Rome at the same time—Peter Shelton.

So there we were, three Peters from Los Angeles in Peter’s city, in the year of Peter. I had been in Rome a couple of years before and had wanted to find the church with Michelangelo’s Moses. I had seen the David in Florence—the epitome of young male virility and strength—and wanted to see Michelangelo’s vision of masculinity at the other end of life, which I had always imagined the Moses to be. But I had failed to find the church on that previous visit. This time, I was determined to find it.

And I did. It was the church of San Pietro in Vincoli—St. Peter in Chains. I was with my wife, Ellie. We found the Moses, and admired that spectacular work of art. Then Ellie wandered off in one direction, I in another. And I found myself looking down into a crypt chapel, where there was a reliquary—a large glass display case which contained what purported to be the very chains from which Peter, the saint, had been released from prison by the angel of the Lord…

Well, I was born on the Anglican feast of St. Peter in Chains. I was given my name by my Anglican priest father for that reason. I realized at that moment that I was looking down at my own chains—the chains that had restricted me as a man, as a writer, for my whole life; and that it was time to free myself from them.

A big epiphany, then. A very big one. I returned to Los Angeles with the realization that this was the purpose of my writing—indeed, the purpose of my life—to search for the freedom that each one of us longs for and few of us achieve. I stand here now, in front of you, as a result of having dedicated myself to that long search. It’s a search in which I am still obviously engaged. I do not expect to ever reach the end.

Not all epiphanies are so big, of course, nor so immediately and completely life-changing. It’s the little ones, the ones that come along every day of our lives, that are the important ones. I have come to believe that everything, every event, every object that we stumble across in our lives, can be read as a signpost; that if we only pay attention, we have something to learn from something as small as a gum wrapper dropped on the sidewalk. (Do I walk on by? Do I make a judgment about the person who dropped it there? Do I stop to pick it up and put it in the trash? Do I reflect a little more deeply on the way we humans trash up our planet? My behavior in that instant, if I examine it, will teach me a lot about who I am and the skillfulness of my actions in the world. It may teach me to modify my ways, to become just a little bit more skillful in the future.

So what I have come to talk about is essentially the examined life. I have come to understand that there is absolutely nothing in this world I cannot learn from, if I listen to what it has to tell me. Because every single thing I look at offers me the opportunity to reflect on the action of my mind.

As I was preparing this talk, my memory took me back to a poem by the 19^TH century French poet, Charles Baudelaire. As I see it, in part at least, it’s about those things that call out to us as we pass through the real world, at once acknowledging our presence and asking us to pay attention to them. So let me, in closing, just read a single verse from that poem—first in French, because it happens to be beautiful, and I’m sure there are plenty in the audience who will understand it. And then in English:

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
 Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
 L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
 Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Nature is a temple in which living pillars 
 Sometimes give voice to confused words; 
 Man passes there through forests of symbols 
 Which look at him with understanding eyes.

So there you have it. Everything calls to us. Our own voice calls from within. The real world calls to us constantly from out there. And this world, I believe, would be a better place if we each learned to pay attention to the call.

Stealing Plums-An Interview With Molly Anderson-Childers

Molly Anderson-Childers is a writer, artist, photographer, and creativity consultant. Her work has appeared in local and national print publications, including Southwest Colorado Arts Perspective, Edible San Juan Mountains Magazine, Images, The Durango Telegraph, The Four Corners Business Journal, newWitch, On the Wings of Poetry, Eternal Portraits, and more. She has also been published extensively online, and contributes work regularly to: www.creativity-portal.com , www.ediblesanjuanmountains.com , and www.thepaganarts.com. She publishes two blogs, www.stealingplums.blogspot.com and www.addictivefiction.blogspot.com. She founded the Durango writer's group, Wild Women Writing, in 2008, and leads their monthly meetings. She is currently hard at work editing her first novel, Stealing Plums.

Persist: In your piece, “101 ways to Delight and Inspire Yourself,” published on Creativity Portal, you mentioned that you had recently quit your job to pursue a freelance career. Was it difficult at the time to make this decision? Was there a “straw that broke the camel’s back” that catalyzed this decision? Any regrets? No matter how slight...?

Molly: Quitting my job was the easiest decision I’ve ever made in my life. I hated the job, because I wasn’t treated with respect by my bosses, and I didn’t feel safe there- I carried Mace to work every day! The straw was an awful performance review- I’d worked hard for months, but instead of receiving a much-deserved raise, I was told I’d have to improve my sales figures or be terminated. It was all about the money- my efforts meant nothing to them. The only regret I have is that I didn’t torch the place…

Persist: In your first 50 tips from the same article, which strategies for breaking down creative blocks work the best for you and how did you discover them? Is there a strategy for finding strategies?

Molly: I’ve honed these strategies after many desperate battles with my own creative demons. As the founder of a writer’s group, I have also had the benefit of working with some amazing women who have shared their strategies with me. When I’m feeling creatively blocked, a change of scene always helps. Taking a long drive, visiting a favorite bookshop or gallery, or just going for a walk with my dog can give me the fresh perspective I need to attack the page with renewed vigor and inspiration.

My strategy for finding strategies? I ask every writer and artist I know what helps them out of the creative doldrums, and then I take their advice. Another strategy for finding strategies? Follow your heart. What are you called to do? What do you love? Do it, and find your inspiration there.

Persist: When you gave yourself the time and freedom to create after leaving your job, how immediate was your ability to “practice daily?” Do you find it challenging to sit down every day and create? Was having an irrelevant job the only barrier?

Molly: After quitting my job, my schedule- and my creativity- was wide open. Sometimes it’s tough to focus, as my studio is at home and I do most of my work there. Time management and organizational issues can be a hurdle if you’re working out of a home-based studio, but my joy is in sitting down to write, and it is usually effortless once I get started.

The challenge is finding time (and motivation) to do dishes! Money issues also enter into it at times- freelance work doesn’t offer a steady paycheck, so learning to budget is very important if you’re thinking of making the leap from day job to dream job. The great thing about it is with the added pressure of paying my bills through my creative efforts, there’s not a lot of time to worry about writer’s block. I’ve got deadlines to deal with, new assignments coming in- a steady stream of inspiration is flowing. I find that the more I write, the more I want to write. It’s self-perpetuating.

Persist: How do you actively differentiate forcing an idea to happen and simply opening yourself to inspiration? Which is more essential, in your definition of success, discipline for the sake of producing or finding inspiration?

Molly: The difference between forcing an idea and finding inspiration is tricky. I maintain that 90% of writer’s block is just laziness, and lack of discipline. I’m inspired every day. I’d hazard to guess it’s the same with most people. When I sit down to work on an article that’s due, even if I’m not feeling inspired, I’m not so much forcing an idea as forcing myself to stop procrastinating and slacking off.

Making the time for that inspiration and acting upon it is the hard part. Those who actually do something about it are the ones who succeed where others fail. I think that discipline and inspiration are equally important aspects of my work. Without discipline, all of those fabulous ideas would never get written down!

I firmly believe that you can discipline yourself to become inspired on demand. The two are inextricable, in my mind. At times, stories appear whole and breathing, like a bolt from above. It’s wonderful to be in The Zone, taking dictation from the Muses…but that state is fleeting, and not always easily accessible. However, with a discipline of writing daily, you’re more likely to become inspired than someone who only takes pen in hand when the mood strikes him. Getting started is the hardest part. Once you’re into the second or third page, you’ll find your inspiration and time will fall away.

Persist: In fact, what is your perception of success? Why? Has this changed often throughout your life and career?

Molly: I was a kid in the eighties; my perception of success at that time was loads of money, a closet full of stonewashed jeans, fancy cars and a mansion on a hill. As I’ve grown up, this perception has changed. My perception of success now is working for myself, on my own terms, and being able to live comfortably on the fruits of my creative labors, with no day-job distractions. My dreams are simpler, but no less dear to me. Now, success means doing the creative work I love all day, every day, and getting paid well for it.

Persist: Anything else on your mind these days?

Molly: I’m gearing up for a writing/art workshop in September called “Text off the Page.” I won a scholarship from the local Women’s Resource Center, and can’t wait to attend. In other creative news, I’m expanding my scope as I take on the role of creativity consultant. I help clients take their work to the next level, with dynamite strategies to beat creative blocks, solve problems, and banish the demons of procrastination. I’m also editing my first novel,Stealing Plums, and will soon be seeking an agent. I’ve always dreamed of being a novelist…now, I’m making that dream come true!

In the photo below, Molly offers us a Gerber daisy; a symbol of creativity, passion, and inspiration.

HERE'S WISHING MOLLY GOOD LUCK WITH STEALING PLUMS--WE CAN ALMOST TASTE THEM ALREADY! AND THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO INTERVIEW WITH US HERE AT "PERSIST: THE BLOG"

Stories in the Subconscious Mind: Screen Writing Success with Jurgen Wolff

I enjoyed my half hour interview with Rick DiBiasio of Middle Aged Crazy on Blog Talk Radio yesterday afternoon. Our talk ranged from the challenges faced by our creative people in our current cultural climate to detailed questions about Persist, the book, and its contents. I found Rick to be a bright and perceptive questioner and valued the time I spent with him. I plan to return the complement and include him on our growing list of interviewees before too long. In the meantime, as promised, here is the interview with Jurgen Wolff, the hollywood writer and writer's mentor. I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did and that you will take the time to visit his sites at Jurgen Wolff, Your Writing Coach and Time to Write. There is much to be learned from a man of his experience.

Persist: You clearly have an extensive history and a fine reputation as a writer in a variety of fields. At what point did you begin to recognize that you had a contribution to make as a coach and advisor to others? What brought you to this realization?

Jurgen Wolff: When I went to Hollywood, I found that it was very difficult to get good information on what producers were looking for, how to get an agent, and so on. I didn't have any connections, so I came up with the idea of starting a little publication that I called "The Hollywood Scriptletter," and used that to get interviews with experienced writers, producers, agents, and TV and film executives. By publishing the newsletter I was able to share what I was learning. These interviews later became a big part of two books I wrote.

My first successes were in the field of sitcoms and again, at that time, there was very little information about how to do that. I started teaching some workshops and found I really enjoyed sharing information and helping people who were trying to get their start. At that point I wasn't that much more experienced than they were, which was good because it allowed me to understand their needs.

I continue to write books about writing and creativity but now I am also able to reach more people via the internet and I'm excited about the new mentoring/coaching program I have that helps people to set and reach their goals. I call it the Breakthrough Strategy Program. It's on a hiatus during the summer but returns in September (information at jurgenwolff.com). I also have a new website dedicated to helping people who want to learn scriptwriting--that's at Screen Writing Success.

Persist: In what way are the satisfactions and rewards you get from your creativity coaching work different from those you get from writing and publishing?

Jurgen: Writing is quite a solitary activity. I enjoy that, but I also like to get out and interact with real people. I guess the main satisfaction I get in terms of teaching and coaching is encouraging people who often don't get that encouragement from anybody else, and watching them blossom. I understand from my personal experience what an important dream it is to want to share your stories with others.

As well as the workshops, I share tips on my writing blog, and on the screenwriting site I mentioned. I post there every day and it gives me an excuse for staying on top of new developments on the writing scene. It's not a secret that when you teach, you learn a lot as well, and that's part of the appeal.

In November I will be teaching for two weeks in Las Vegas and those classes will be filmed and turned into DVDs for people who can't make it to my live workshops, so that will be another way to share my methods and I'm very pleased about that. .

Persist: I myself place a good deal of emphasis on the need for “practice” and recommend a daily practice-such as meditation-as a fine model for the writing practice. To what extent does something similar figure in to your workshops and individual sessions?

Jurgen: I have developed a lot of what I call "right brain" tools and exercises that use visualizations, dreams, and techniques like mind mapping. I know from my own experience and that of my students that these make writing easier, more enjoyable, and more organic. I think it was Michelangelo who said the figure was already in the marble, he was just chipping away the parts that weren't the figure so he could liberate it. I have much the same attitude toward stories. I believe they develop in our subconscious mind and we just have to clear the way for them to make their way into the conscious mind. We have to allow the story to appear rather than to try to force it.

That is one reason I am against the trend toward using templates or formulas in screenwriting. I believe the story should determine the structure, not the other way around. Too many aspiring screenwriters start with the three act structure or the hero's journey or some other model in mind and try to make the story fit it. That results in very predictable and inauthentic stories. Of course that doesn't stop many of them being made into predictable and inauthentic films--some of which make a lot of money.

I think it's important to feed your mind with lots of different things: mythology, music, art, nature, and some foolishness. Pay attention to your dreams and take time just to wander and be quiet. You are filling the well that eventually you will dip into to get the material you will turn into a story. It's not fashionable to say so, but we need to disconnect sometimes, to waste a bit of time, to leave the phone and the computer turned off so we can hear ourselves.

Persist: I am also much concerned with the predicament of writers and artists who are not and may never expect to earn a reliable living following their passion. How do you advise those with the passion of the amateur rather than the goals of the professional?

Jurgen: If you base your judgment of your work and your life on how much material success you will have, you have come up with a prescription for unhappiness. The cliche is that good work will find an audience but sadly I don't think that's always true. In our culture, the writers and artists who are great at self-promotion tend to get the attention, not necessarily the ones with the most talent. I worked in Hollywood for about ten years and it really is a place where "you are only as good as your last picture." That attitude is soul-destroying and was one of the reasons I left and moved to London. Here I've made less money but have been happier, and that's a good trade.

First, I think you have to love the process and your creation (which is not the same as thinking it's perfect, of course). For instance, I wrote a novel that so far is unloved by publishers. But I am very fond of the two central characters and will be glad I got to know them and to spend a year with them, even if the book is never published. Actually, if I don't find a traditional publisher probably I will self-publish and at least introduce these characters to my friends. If you don't enjoy the act of creating something, if you think it will be worth doing only if you sell your creation, maybe you should be doing something else.

However, naturally we all want to have our work reach as many people as possible. One way forward is to learn about marketing as well as creating. I have written two books on this topic, again because I needed to learn the process and thought I might as well share what I was learning. It's still not my favorite part of what I do, but I know that I need to do it.

By the way, if you are shy, it would be a good idea to try to overcome that. I am confident when teaching or public speaking, but I have a basic shyness that I realize has been a hindrance. Maybe my next book will be about how to overcome shyness! Actually that is one of the reasons I first learned hypnosis and it did help.

Back to your question, it really helps if you have a day job that leaves you enough energy to pursue your creative activities. Or if you have a rich spouse or partner. I am thankful every day that I have been able to make a good living doing what I love, but the hard truth is that for some the act of creation will have to provide enough satisfaction--not because they are less talented but because life is not always fair.

Persist: To what extent and in what ways does your practice of hypnotherapy feed into your work as an advisor to writers?

Jurgen: The visualization tools I use for myself and with my students and clients could be called "hypnosis lite." They give an easier access to the subconscious mind and sometimes yield remarkable results. For instance, one exercise is in your imagination going into the character's residence and finding a photo or painting of great importance to him or her. This happens in a light trance, and 99% of the people I do this with find the image and often it gives them a sudden greater understanding of their character.

I also use it to help people with creative blocks. In a light trance, they get into a dialogue with the block, which usually is a form of protection against rejection. Then, in the waking state, we figure out how to build in that protection so they can move forward. For instance, perhaps someone is blocked from finishing a novel because they fear it will be rejected. We make a deal that when they finish it, they have the option of never showing it to anyone. When they get to that stage, we make the deal that they will show it to only one person who is supportive but candid. The process continues small step by small step so that it feels safe all along the way. And when they are ready to send out the manuscript, I suggest they start work immediately on something else so not all their emotions will be invested in the project they have just finished.

It's unfortunate that for most people the word hypnosis brings images of people on stage doing Elvis impressions or a funny dance. Not only does it trivialize a tremendously valuable tool, it makes them afraid that the hypnotist will somehow have total control over them. Of course that's not what it's about in the context of creativity, but that image is hard to counteract.

Jurgen Wolff is a writer and teaches writing and creativity techniques internationally. He has written nine books, including "Creativity Now!| and "Your Writing Coach," as well as more than 100 episodes of television (including "Benson," "Family Ties" and "Relic Hunter,", mini-series (including "Midnight Man" starring Rob Lowe), TV movies and feature films. His plays have been produced in London, New York, Los Angeles and Berlin. He lives in London.

A Quick Note...

... for today.

First, I'm sure that readers of Persist: The Blog will share my interest in aesthetics. This can be a dry and tedious field of philosophical inquiry, but there's also a great number of interesting issues at stake. If you missed it, check out my brief advance

review of Leonard Koren's soon-to-be published book with the provocative title, which aesthetics do you mean? ten definitions, posted yesterday on The Buddha Diaries. Koren combines word and image in a slim, readable volume, off

ering an elegant, sometimes playful engagement with ideas. As a teaser, let me ask if you know about wabi-sabi?

Also today, Emily and I are working on an interview we received just yesterday from Jurgen Wolff, and plan to get it posted early next week. In case you don't know of Jurgen and his work, he is a highly successful scriptwriter for film and television who has also devoted considerable time and energy to writing books about his methods and advising aspiring writers about the creative process. He's also a trained hypnotherapist, who brings that skill to his work in counseling, and a widely known workshop facilitator. I hope you'll look forward to meeting him on Persist: The Blog next week.

If you would like to explore his various sites you can visit the following links:

Jurgen Wolff: Your Writing Coach

Time to Write