Telling Herstories: The Broad View

6.5 Multi-talented? Ask the Creative Catalyst.

Saraswati: Hindu Goddess of music, knowlege, and the arts.

Notice her four arms--typical of artist-writers-musicians-performers. The doubled images tell the story. Can we be in two places at the same time? Maybe. See the conversation below between "Swamped" and the Creative Catalyst. --Janet Riehl

__________________

Dear Creative Catalyst: It’s only the first week of the school year, and I’m feeling swamped already! Is dancing and leading workshops in addition to teaching a dodge from my main work as a poet? Is it a secret wish for failure?

Swamped in Savannah

Dear Swamped: That depends on your motivation and how you manage time and energy. Does fear not being enough lead you toward distraction? More practically, are you over-booked?

Swamped: I think I’m in search of something, but I don’t know what.

Creative Catalyst: Wholeness, as I see it. But there is only so much of you to go around. Your quest leads to fragmentation rather than wholeness.

Swamped: I want to feel that expressing myself as a poet is enough. I want to feel worthy without having to add another layer—say, becoming a nature mystic before I can be a worthy poet.

Creative Catalyst: It’s a bitch to be an artist in our linear world! Be careful not to internalize judgments from family and friends. Sure, it’s okay to be the poet you are without another layer. You don’t have to prove yourself to feel worthy.

Layering springs from a creative impulse and is a quest for richness. Simpler is easier. But now all the richness, wholeness, and layering is a part of you and your poetry. Do not renounce an iota of the richness yet continue to focus. Do what you can without going crazy.

Swamped: How can I know if I’m sidestepping commitment?

Creative Catalyst: Ask yourself if some fear leads toward your seeking distraction.

Swamped: If were truly committed to my writing, wouldn’t I do something like go on a month-long writer's retreat and dive deep into myself?

Creative Catalyst: Not necessarily. You don’t have to prove yourself by undertaking extraordinary steps. Staying home and doing your work is enough. 

However, I love the self-guided writing retreat idea! You could even dance during your retreat! Does dancing, your secondary interest, feed your primary writing interest? If so, you’re on a path that will serve your work.

Swamped: Oh, yes. For me, the rhythms and music of dance embody the rhythms and musicality of language. I know that dance helps reduce my stress. It makes me feel alive and healthy. Plus, it’s fun to be in community with women. Even when we speak different languages, dance unites us.

Creative Catalyst: It’s rejuvenating— your personal Fountain of Youth.

Swamped: How can I tell when studying with a teacher will help me, and when it’s hiding from what I know? This is so not people-speak :)

Creative Catalyst: Take stock of what you know now. Do you need to know more in order to go further? Claim your authority, and give it a go. Perhaps later you’ll benefit from taking another class.

Swamped: My new resolution is to focus on my poetry collection in the coming months Instead of spinning off in so many different directions.

Creative Catalyst: Focusing your prodigious talent and energies makes perfect sense. Go easy on yourself, and let your work flow.

_______________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog. See the Creative Catalyst archive at http://bit.ly/9z1BQv.  Learn more about our audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music”at http://bit.ly/aZVd1e. Become a Riehlife Villager www.riehlife.com.

 

6.4 Multi-talents: Artist as Farmer

As artists, we plant, cultivate, harvest our crops, and take them to market just as farmers do. Farmers decide how to ensure the greatest harvest, and we make decisions about our creative endeavors. We must choose, design, and organize our multi-talented creative lives to be most fruitful. Three basic strategies we can use are: 1) crop rotation; 2) companion planting; and 3) hybridization.  

Crop Rotation  

Farmers grow each crop separately, in rotation. Crop rotation replenishes and restores the soil to prevent depletion.  Similarly, through identifying seasons of creativity, we can rotate projects and creative disciplines. These seasons might be either literal or metaphorical.   

When I lived in Northern California I wrote, acted, played music, and designed outdoor art installations. I concentrated on discreet projects, each in its own time, rather than working on several simultaneously. I learned that my brain jams and my life scrambles if I schedule projects in more than one discipline at a time. A simultaneous approach forms a “tempest in my mind,” as Shakespeare said in King Lear.  For me “that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.”  

Companion Planting

In companion planting two or more mutually beneficial crops are planted close together to discourage pests and nourish the soil. In the southwest United States, early native peoples learned that squash, beans, and corn yielded the best harvest when they were planted as a threesome. In the life of the artist-farmer one discipline may influence and enrich another. Playing music makes our poetry more rhythmic. Dance and your acting becomes more graceful. Visual art, writing, and music all depend on the inventiveness and structure of composition. The underlying principles of artistic forms feed each other.

Hybridization  

A hybrid takes two different things and brings them together to make something new. Mules and high-yield corn come from inter-breeding and cross-pollination. Myths and folktales have given us unforgettable hybrid beings. What child could forget the Sphinx, mermaid, or minotaur?   

Combining art forms produces integrated products and art forms. Dance performances, for example, might include costumes, stage sets, scrims, backlit slides, music, light design, and choreography. When these elements come together, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. We can hybridize projects either alone or in collaboration with others.

Steward your talents wisely; become an artist-farmer. Bear in mind Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.” That reminder will enrich and multiply our work.

_____________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog. See the Creative Catalyst archive at http://bit.ly/9z1BQv.  Learn more about our prize-winning audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music”at http://bit.ly/aZVd1e.

 

6.3 Multi-talented Roads to Roam: Diverge & Converge

Robert Frost had to choose between only two roads diverging in a yellow woods. Today we have to choose among a bewildering series of cloverleaf exchanges connecting high-speed freeways. As we travel the interconnecting paths of our multi-talents, how can we possibly decide which creative roads to take? What will help us traverse the interconnected web of deciding which projects to undertake and which creative disciplines to use?

Using divergent and convergent thinking is a way to avoid the traffic jams having multi-talents can drive us to. Identified by J. P. Guilford in 1967, divergent and convergent thinking are tools for problem solving. Divergent thinking explodes outward from a central point of origin. It’s a tool to expand choices. Think of a cluster diagram or physics vector graph Convergent thinking is a tool to compress choices. It moves ideas back toward a point of origin. One is not better than the other. Both can be useful tools in decision-making.

Divergent Thinking in Action

With divergent thinking you discover along the way. Rather than stopping at what is already defined, you make something new. How? By creating your own definitions.

Try this: Cluster or mind-map your ideas as they arise.  Then use the idea bubbles to freewrite about what you want to know more about. You’ve just generated options you can build from.

Review each bubble and the web of connections in the cluster diagram. For freewriting read your work; circle key ideas and underline sentences or phrases that shine. These beginnings set a foundation for making choices, solving problems, and launching into your writing project.

Convergent Thinking in Action

Creativity can be stifled by chaos. To bring order to your creative universe, 1) search for themes, patterns, and commonalities among your choices; 2) Analyze categories that emerge from your original idea; and, 3) Ask yourself what pulls you towards a particular choice. What pushes you away?

Don’t be afraid to explore your different talents. At the same time, don’t let too many choices become overwhelmingly confusing. Include balanced sanity as part of your creative goal.

Use these tips to gain clarity:

·     Ask yourself: Can I say “yes” to all the possibilities I uncovered through divergent thinking? Do I feel comfortable with the simplification convergent thinking provided?

·     Be like Oprah Winfrey. Say “no” as easily as you say “yes.

·     Accept that life is the art of improvisation.

Choose a creative road to roam. Walk to the next fork and choose a path to follow. Don’t fret about getting lost. Soon enough you’ll find your way home, enriched by your exploration.    

____________________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog. Learn more about creating connections through the arts and across cultures at www.riehlife.com.  And, heh! “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” won an award at the San Francisco Book Festival  http://bit.ly/aZVd1e.

 

6.2 Multi-talents: A Wizard of a Solution

 
 Photo: Comedy on Tilt Troupe, Lake County, California

by Janet Grace Riehl with Stephanie Farrow

A wizard appears before you. He offers the tantalizing gift of creative talent in more than one field. Do you accept?

The blessings of the wizard’s gift would be:

• An expanded palette with which to paint your creative vision: language, movement, sound, visual art and media, theater.
• A choice to rotate your gifts or bring them together into new form.
• Wowing your friends in cocktail conversations and parlor games.

The curse of the gift would be:

• Confusion. What to do first, where, and when?
• Overwhelm by and fear of so many choices.
• The responsibility of deciding how to shape the extra freedom of expression.
• The possibility of never getting anything done because of starting so many creative projects without finishing them.
• Having to learn to say “no”—and mean it.

The wizard promises more freedom and choice. But the gift comes with responsibilities and obstacles to match. Choosing and directing the freedom multi-talents bring, may make you feel like you need magical powers of your own. You’d have to learn to welcome limits, rules, and boundaries in order to sort, shape, and determine the scale of your projects. You’d have to make friends with constraints as a way to make the best use of your freedom.

Freedom requires a container, and that container is structure. In art school I learned that setting criteria, goals, and deadlines helped me create a body of work for my senior show. I set the theme early on of investigating the vessel. Then I yielded to intuition as my hands made a flotilla of boats from the constructed world, pods from nature, and the intimacy of the body. To install a cohesive show I had to decide which objects to include, how to arrange them, and how viewers would interact with the world inside the room. In short, I used structure as my guide and my support.

In the end we must become our own wizards. We must know what our powers are, understand how to use them, and live within the limits of our human reach.

This is the second in a series of five posts on multi-talented creativity. Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog.

See the Creative Catalyst archive at http://bit.ly/9z1BQv.  Learn more about our audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music”at http://bit.ly/aZVd1e.

 

 

6.1 Take the Multi-talented Quiz

by Janet Grace Riehl with Stephanie Farrow

 

Ask yourself, am I creatively multi-talented? And if I think I am, how can I be sure? Try this quiz to find out.

1) Do you work in more than one artistic discipline such as performance, visual art, and writing?

2) Can you work in several roles within a creative discipline? Perhaps you write books, articles, and blog posts. You might teach, organize conferences, run a publishing company, consult, judge contests, and review books.

3) Do you create products, projects, or productions that include more than one creative discipline—either alone or with a group?

4) Do you sometimes wonder if your profusion of passions and abilities is a blessing or a curse?   

If you said “yes” to one or more of these questions, congratulations. You can join the ranks of the multi-talented.   

Multi-talented artists have always enriched culture as they explored a range of ideas and expression. Artist-scientist Leonardo da Vinci springs to mind, as does poet-painter-designer-socialist William Morris. Modern day examples include performance artist-musician Laurie Anderson. Yoko Ono successfully weaves together her music, poetry, filmmaking and graphic design skills.

Don’t confuse multi-tasking with being multi-talented. Multi-taskers do more than one thing at a time. All too often, it means doing too many things at once—none done fully, as recent research indicates. Can you really talk to your mother on the telephone while typing a report for work, pausing now and then to manicure your fingernails? Danger lurks as you inadvertently promise your mother a force field analysis written on a mirror with Scarlet Tango fingernail polish.  

Being multi-talented multiplies our opportunities, benefits, and choices. The other side of that coin is that it also increases our challenges, obstacles, and obligations. Sounds overwhelming, doesn’t it?  Perhaps exciting and frightening all at the same time.  

How can you successfully manage multiple talents? Is it possible to make having this quality work for you? 

In our next two posts in this cycle we’ll discuss how to harvest your talents with balanced sanity.

____________________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog. See the Creative Catalyst archive at http://bit.ly/9z1BQv.  Learn more about our audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music”at http://bit.ly/aZVd1e.

5.3 Collaboration: Check Your Ego at the Door

by Janet Grace Riehl

  with Stephanie Farrow

Our second heart skill focuses on the emotional and relational part of collaboration. The important question here is, once trust is built and sustained, what does it look like in action?

Trust infuses work with support, ease, and humanity. With trust you can resolve conflict by telling the truth. With trust you can check your ego at the door.

When looking good gives way to a desire to support your partner and your jointly held work, then a new dimension emerges.

 Humility: It no longer matters who gets credit for an idea. In fact, Stephanie and I often laugh at our tendency to ascribe the origin of a good idea to the other. We can tell when a collaboration has been truly successful because the end product seems to be a seamless whole. The warp and weft of our individual ideas are woven together smoothly.

 Spaciousness and Generosity. We give each other room to create. And, we give each other room to mess up without making a big deal of it. It’s safe to make a mistake. No blame, just joint acknowledgement and resolution. Cutting each other slack over mistakes (or temporary “stupidity”) keeps our work flowing and fun. Rather than chipping away at each other’s confidence, we bolster it.

 Kindness. Kindness is such a simple courtesy, but often not used enough. In good collaboration we honor each other’s needs. We stay sensitive to nuances. We nurture each other with our good will.

 Gratitude: When our working relationships include these qualities, we build a virtuous cycle rather than a vicious one.  When we are treated with care and respect, we feel grateful and even more generous. Of a mentor and colleague I once said, “Hal gave me the world, and in a tick I would give the world back to him.”

 For myself, work is more than product. How I’m allowed to create is as important as the end result. A collaboration that allows me to check my ego at the door fosters the trust I need to do my best. And for that, yes, I’m more than willing to check my ego at the door. I might not even ask for the ticket to have it returned to me when it’s over.

 Is collaboration all soft-focus and watercolors in a gentle spring rain? Not in this lifetime! It’s like a marriage. You make a commitment, then keep plugging away, using your best heart skills to make it work.

_______________________

Pose questions about practical creativity. Give ideas for future cycle themes. Join in the dialog in the comment section below. Peruse the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://is.gd/9xolA.  Create connections through the arts and across cultures at www.riehlife.com.

 

 

5.2: Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

By Janet Grace Riehl and Stephanie Farrow

See a two-part conversation between Janet & Stephanie reflecting on their 37-year collaboration. These are the third & fourth posts on this blog-of-the-month theme of Making Collaboration Work. 

Part 3
Part 4

At the 2010  SCN National Memoir Conference in Austin Janet gave a workshop on how to Put Story Poems in Your Memoir Tool Box. You can listen to her discussing story poems on the SCN podcast: http://is.gd/9xpv5

Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

Trust, at the core of collaboration, is a heart skill needed for emotional intelligence and effective joint work. Sure, you need a work partner who balances your skills and temperament. But without trust, it ain’t gonna work.

How do you build trust?

Personal trust begins with common points of reference. It’s often a shared experience or sensibility. When you share a wider passion, your work becomes an extension of friendship and respect, and vice versa.  

For example, Stephanie and I are the same—only different. We look different, have different lifestyles, were brought up differently in different parts of the country.

At first blush you might not think that we would ever be friends, much less collaborators. Truth be told, we didn’t  become true friends until some years after we met in Ghana. Over 37 years we’ve translated our relationship from Ghana to New Mexico and continued as I moved to California and then to Missouri. Thank goodness for email and wide-area calling!

Our common sensibilities and core values allow us to bridge our differences.  Our decidedly quirky sense of humor doesn’t hurt either.

How do you sustain trust? 

Beyond trusting each other on a personal level, sustaining trust in a collaboration relies on the indispensable ingredients of a shared work ethic, sense of purpose, and discipline. In effective collaborations both partners share goals, desire quality work, and respect one another. Both need to be committed to seeing the job through to its mutually agreed-upon end, no matter what.

In any collaborative project, each partner brings her own strengths and skills to the table. In the best of circumstances, these interlock with and complement each other. Partners often find that one is better suited for a certain task. This makes the division of responsibility logical, even easy. When partners are equally adept, or when a task appeals to both, the key is to parcel out tasks fairly and to the satisfaction of both partners. Fairness and successfully solving a problem jointly bolster trust. 

The shared quality of stick-to-itiveness generates a history of reliability. You can trust that your partner will be there with you from beginning to end of the project. Together you build a strong track record. 

Trust is the vessel that holds the messiness and chaos of creative collaboration. If you’re gonna float your boat, you don’t want it to leak.

Out next post on collaboration (5.3) will guide you to check your ego at the door as you explore further the emotional and relational side of collaboration. What does trust look like in action?

_________________

 

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog in the comment section below. Peruse the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://is.gd/9xolA.  Create connections through the arts and across cultures at www.riehlife.com.

 

 

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work

by Janet Riehl & Stephanie Farrow

Read a 2-part conversation between Janet and Stephanie as they reflect on 37 years of collaboration. These are the third and fourth posts in this blog-of-the-month series.

Part 3
Part 4

__________________________

Collaboration: How to Make It Work

Some people do. Some people don’t. Collaborate. It can land you on your face or make your life and work more fun and productive. For our keynote post on collaboration we’ve identified eight tips to make it work.

This Telling Her Stories post dovetails with Riehlife's blog-of-the-month theme. In February my blog-magazine features two interviews by two pairs of seasoned collaborators.

You know the first pair, Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler, either from their columns here or from their richly resourceful Women's Memoirs site.  On Telling Her Stories Kendra's column is "Getting Read," and Matilda's column is "Opening Salvos."

Kendra and Matilda identified five tips from their 30-year collaboration as business partners, authors, and friends. Their helpful interview runs in two parts on Riehlife. In Part 1 they tell how they met and began working together. In Part 2 they identify and discuss their five tips.

The second two-part interview features my collaborator Stephanie Farrow and myself as we reflect on our 37 years of working together designing workshops, writing, and laughing.

Looking over Kendra and Matilda’s five tips, Stephanie and I found we agreed with all of their points and added a few of our own. Here’s the list we came up with to make collaboration work.

#1 Choose a partner you know, like, and share interests and experience with.

#2  Build trust and truthfulness.

#3 Check your ego at the door. Honor the other person’s ideas and share the credit.

#4  Know your collaborator’s work ethic, sense of purpose, discipline, and desire for quality work.

#5  Know how to balance strengths and skills. Divide the work load accordingly.

#6  Know and honor Needs

#7 Deepen trust, truthfulness, and ways to resolve conflict.

 #8 Stick to it and have fun!

Our next post in the collaboration series on Telling Her Stories focuses on trust. Our last post will further deepen the theme of collaboration.

____________________

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog in the comment section below.

See the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity. 

Receive a free download of a 10-minute audio from“Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” at www.riehlife.com.

4.3: The Critique Waltz

Fred Astaire was an elegant dancer, but Ginger Rogers had to be every bit as good—while dancing backward and in high heels. Being at the center of a critique may feel like tottering on high heels, but after this dance lesson you’ll keep your balance.

Sometimes you lead, and sometimes you follow. It’s all about connection. Each partner contributes to the style and mood of the dance while keeping the conversation going.

YOU LEAD

Yup, knowledge is power.

·       Know yourself and your needs—in both your emotional and writing life. Do you receive criticism easily? What kind of group will serve you best? What do you want from the group? At what stage is your writing and where do you want it to go?

·       Know your group. Are you comfy?  Does the level of writing challenge feel like a good fit ?

You’re the boss.  Structure keeps you safe.

·        Speak up! Make specific requests at the level of response you want. Is it witnessing—listening while you read the piece aloud? Or, technical: Does the story arc work? Is the plot plausible?

·       Props at the ready. Consider writing your questions out to share with the group. Be ready to take notes and be silent. Ask for someone to take notes on the group discussion.

·       Tell me more…or not. Need further clarification or want to explore a comment further? If you’re not convinced an idea will work, say why and continue the conversation.  “I’m not sure how that will work. I need to think about it.” Had enough for one night? If you’re maxed out on information, ask to continue at the next meeting.

·        Sort it out. It’s yours; the writing belongs to you. Go easy on doing everything the group suggested. Maybe your piece just needs a little tweak. Those final writing decisions are yours alone.

YOU FOLLOW

Don’t step on your partner’s feet. Relax! Your partner is there to help you, remember?

Listen up!  When a group member speaks, pay close attention; listen with more than your ears.  What’s being said?  Who’s saying it? How does your stomach feel? Oh, yeah: breathe.

Soak it up.  Even if you don’t agree, a graceful response keeps the music playing. No need to explain or defend. While you’re nattering on, you’re likely to miss a beat.

Cool off! If you’re feeling discombobulated after a critique (hurt, misunderstood, or angry), no need to brood.  Sit out a dance while you and your manuscript cool off. With a cooler head you can respond with a clear eye and balanced emotion.

 It’s the dance, sweetheart.   Critique is not about you; it’s about the writing. You don’t need a make-over, just brush up on your steps.

 Dancing and writing take hard work and discipline. Keep practicing. Before you know it, you’ll be twirling across the floor in the Critique Waltz. 

 

Column written by Janet Grace Riehl of St. Louis in collaboration with Stephanie Farrow of Albuquerque.

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog in the comment section below.

See the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity/

Go to www.riehlife.com to sign up for a free download of a 10-minute audio from“Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music.”

Put Story Poems in Your Memoir Tool Box!

During Stories from the Heart V (February 5-7, 2010 in Austin, Texas) Story Circle Network’s National Memoir Conference will be abuzz with myriad ways of storytelling. Among these workshops will be mine: “Story Poems: A Tool for Writing Our Stories.”

The story-poem is an often-overlooked form for telling our stories. We'll discuss the genre and its unique niche in storytelling. We’ll compare samples of prose and story poems. Then you’ll practice turning your own prose into a story poem.

What is a story poem? A story poem combines highly compressed narrative, musing, and observation using poetic techniques such as alliteration, imagery, and metaphor. In the story poem, as in prose, the sentence rather than the line is the primary unit.

Besides introducing the story poem genre, we’ll examine when the form is best used. What are its advantages and disadvantages as a writing tool? Would your own writing projects benefit from using or borrowing from the story poem form?

Poetry is an excellent genre for memoir because it condenses the story, handles emotion deftly, and is open to non-linear constructions. The story poem fosters dialogue, character, event, and understated language.  Being familiar with story poems allows you to see your story from a different perspective. They are also good teachers of craft elements that make your writing strong.

To learn more about story poems and my work browse three links from Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler’s Women’s Memoirs site.

Read story poem as memoir tool here.

Listen to a recording of our discussion on story poems as memoir:

Check out Kendra’s review my audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” :