Author: Dan Blank

If you have a creative vision that you hope finds an audience, I encourage you to identify collaborators that you can work with. Too often, writers and other creative professionals struggle with their craft alone. The reality: collaborators are an essential part of the creative process, and how inspired work reaches the world.

Today I want to share a few examples of what this may look like, and ways that you can seek out collaborators regardless of where you are, and what you work on.

Collaborators and Craft

Last week I mentioned that I’m releasing my first book. When I reflect on the process, it has been highly collaborative at every stage. Let me take you behind the scenes:

The topic of the book came out of a collaboration I have in a mastermind group I run. This is a small group of creative professionals who help support each others work. I record an original video for the group each day, offering my advice to help them stay on track with their creative work, and ensure it reaches an audience.

One day I shared a video called “Be the Gateway.” It was a concept I crafted live during the video, and the feedback from the group was amazing. Their reactions helped me expand it into a blog post. I received even more feedback on that blog, so I decided to expand it into a book.

This is where collaboration is helpful in the creative process. I knew it would be a worthwhile topic to explore because my audience already showed me it was.

In vetting this topic further, I talked to my friend Jennie Nash. In those conversations she helped give really good feedback on how the concept could help writers, and it gave me even more confidence and direction.

As I began working on the book, she helped me navigate a lot of questions, and put a structure around the process.

My team here at WeGrowMedia got involved, helping to edit and set the strategy for publishing.

As the book began coming together, I formed a small launch team of people who would provide feedback on it. At times they were beta readers, reading entire sections of the book and providing feedback and edits. Other times they provided feedback on specific publishing questions, including helping me set the price for the book.

Even now as I prepare for publication, I am speaking to dozens of others who will share this work with their audience.

In addition to these people, I’ve hired a copyeditor, cover designer, and layout designer. Plus, lots of people have helped with advice, including the very generous Eric Van Der Hope.

My name is on the cover, but every part of this was a collaborative process.

The Daily Practice of Collaboration

I mentioned my mastermind group earlier, and the work we do there is focused on the daily practice of creative work. Here we set weekly intentions around our creative goals; we encourage each other to develop clarity of focus and good habits; and we help each other get back on track when distraction inevitably gets the better of us.

Throughout my life I have been a writer, an artist, a musician, a painter, a sculptor, and many other things. At each phase, I was always surrounded by collaborators. Some were passive — other people in the community that I engaged with, but many others were active. Those who helps shape the work and how it finds an audience.

So many creative professionals I meet are overwhelmed with their many responsibilities at home, with their career, and with their creative projects. Involving collaborators on a daily or weekly basis radically shifts their ability to stay on track.

There are so many apps and processes nowadays that promise to help you manage your busy life. What I have found is that collaborators — other people — are the best way to not just find success, but also having the process feel meaningful and fulfilling.

Collaborators and Connection

In the past few years I have gotten more involved in my local arts community. I volunteered at the Morristown Festival of Books, I did small things to support my friend Barb launch her bookstore, and I was one of the founders of the Madison Storytellers Festival.

Each of these things would not have been possible without a wide range of collaborators.

Success in sharing the arts or in growing a business all relies on collaborators. If you want to seek out collaborators, here are a few ideas:

• Seek out others in your community who work on creative projects. If you are a romance author, you do not need to seek out other romance authors. I have found incredible value by collaborating with people across disciplines. If you had coffee once per week with a local artist, crafter, musician, or entrepreneur, they would still help keep you on track and inspired.
• Develop colleagues virtually. In the 6+ years I have run WeGrowMedia, and the 10+ years I have had a newsletter and blog, I have develop countless connections to people who live nowhere near me. In fact, most of the people I mentioned above who have assisted with my book live all around the world. Reach out to people via email and social media to strengthen loose connections.
• Develop a short-term project with a collaborator to exercise that muscle. For instance, when we developed the Madison Storytellers Festival, none of us did so thinking we were committing to some annual event. We figured we had nothing to lose by spending a few months trying this new idea. The energy that has been created allowed us to make a decision later on that it should be an annual event. If you are collaborator-curious, then place boundaries on a small project, and try it out.

Collaborate Now

Recently, my wife volunteered to run a workshop for local first graders on the artist Keith Haring. She spent weeks preparing and each student was able to create their own version of a Haring-inspired figure.

Here is a classic Keith Haring piece:

And here is a sampling of some of the pieces the first graders created:

Watching this process, I spent some time researching Keith’s life. I was astounded to learn he died at the age of 31. Perhaps I knew this earlier in my life, when 31 seemed like a “ripe old age.” But now, at 43, it seems impossibly young. All I can consider is potential that died with him.

Yet, he saw it otherwise: he saw this limit as one that fueled him. From Wikipedia:

Despite all the fear that led up to [his AIDS] diagnosis, in some ways Haring found his impending death liberating. It pushed him to produce more work as quickly as possible.

In a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Haring stated, “That’s the point that I am at now, not knowing where it stops but knowing how important it is to do it now. The whole thing is getting more articulate. In a way it’s really liberating.”

Critics have recognized this about Haring’s works – particularly his later works – as well. “Haring’s way of living life – liberated and with death in mind at a young age – allowed him to pull himself away from his diagnosis,” Blinderman writes. “A year after his original diagnosis he was producing radiant paintings of birth and life.”

The introduction to the compilation of Haring’s journals sings the same song: “Haring accepts his death. For in his art he found the key to transform desire, the force that killed him, into a flowering elegance that will live beyond his time.

Haring created his work in public. He rose to fame by sharing his work in the streets and subways of New York City. Collaboration was an inherent part of his work because it was being engaged with by the audience even as it was created. People would watch him craft his art in public.

He opened a store in New York City in 1986 called Pop Shop, where “Posters could be had for a dollar and “Radiant Baby” buttons for fifty cents.” His store made his work accessible to the masses in ways that others artists of his fame would not.

Keith forged his own path to collaboration that helped fuel his art, not hinder it. What’s yours? How can you make your creative process and how your work is shared more collaborative?

Further reading: here are a few posts I have published about the value of collaboration.

• The secret to growing an audience? Collaboration.
• Collaboration and creative work
• Two Words to Define Your Career: Custom and Collaborative

Thanks.
-Dan

I’m excited to finally share details on my first book. It’s called: Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience, and it will be released on March 7th.

This book is the result of years of working one-on-one with creative professionals, and it takes you step-by-step through the process I have developed to help share one’s work and engage an audience in a meaningful way.

In the coming weeks, I hope to provide resources that help you:

• Turn frustration and overwhelm into simple ways to feel fulfilled in reaching your audience.
• Take you behind-the-scenes with this process with examples and case studies.
• Provide a step-by-step look at the creation of the book itself, and what I learned about writing and publishing in the process.
• Make myself available to answer your questions and share my best advice as it relates to your work.

If you have a moment, go check out the book on Amazon, then let me know: what are the biggest challenges you face in sharing your creative work and engaging an audience.

I will use your answers to shape the resources I share in the coming weeks.
Thanks!
-Dan

For the past several months, I have been writing and preparing to publish a book. At the same time, my family and I are preparing to welcome a new baby into our lives. The book is released in March and the baby arrives in April. Today, I want to talk about the process of creating work that matters.

This is what creating looks like, here are photos of me writing my book day after day, often around 5:30am at Starbucks:

In other words, this process looks boring. It’s the same thing, day after day. These photos represent a small fraction of the time I spent working on this book.

What the images don’t convey is the range of emotions I experienced on each of these days as I wrote. You can’t see the moments of doubt, the enthusiasm, the questions that threatened to sideline the entire project, the breakthroughs, or the decisions I wrestled with.

Even now, I have taken thousands of actions to create the book, I have brought on a wide range of collaborators in the project, and there is still so much to do between now and March 7th, the publication date.

This entire time, at home, my wife, son and I have been preparing for the baby. We are making room in our lives, both physically and emotionally.

Of course, the fact of the matter is, we know we are entering into the unknown. Our biggest concern is always the health of my wife during the pregnancy, and the health of the baby. As much as we try to prepare, we know we can’t control much.

I work with creative professionals every single day, and the reality of their work is not dissimilar to the photos above. Every day, amidst complex lives and very real challenges, they push forward, little by little.

Creating work that matters takes time.

This reminds me of two quotes that underscore why someone chooses this work in order to make way for possibility and invest in their own potential:

“The best way to complain is to make things.”
— Singer/songwriter James Murphy

In other words: the power to create what you want to see in the world is in your hands. Then there is this quote, describing the reality that one goes through:

“Nothing ever goes according to plan. When I hear new filmmakers talk, they [complain] about their film. “Nothing worked, it was a disappointment.” They don’t realize: that’s the job. The job is that nothing is going to work at all, and you have to turn that into a positive, and get something much better than if you had all the time and money in the world.”
— Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez

I will be sharing more on the book very soon. In the meantime, I would love to know: if you had 15 extra minutes of time and mental energy each and every day, what would you create?

Thanks.
-Dan

A friend of mine told me how she is expanding her art business by placing her illustrations on new products, such as notepads or mugs. But she had a concern: “I’m not inspired by making more stuff the clutter the world.”

I asked her about her experiments with notepads, and she explained how people loved them. With mugs, she described that people are always asking her to make them. I encouraged her to reframe the objects not as clutter, but of moments of joy. That when someone chooses her mug for coffee each morning, her art will bring a moment of joy to their life.

Today, I want to talk about how you can grow the audience for your creative work, even when you have the concern that the world is cluttered, and you don’t want your work to be seen as adding to the clutter. I don’t just mean “clutter” as a physical object. Many writers and creative professionals tell me things such as:

• “Why am I writing this book when there are already thousands of books published each year in the same genre?”
• “I don’t want to engage in social media; it’s just pictures of what people are eating for lunch.”
• “I don’t want to use email to reach my audience, people are overwhelmed with spam.”

I have complete empathy that these are keen observations that are not untrue. There is already lots of stuff vying for people’s attention. But my question for you is this:

Will you let these reasons stop you?

I am not encouraging you to sell out, or embrace the idea of just joining in with adding more clutter — more useless distraction — to people’s lives. Instead, I want to frame it this way:

Bring a little bit of joy into someone’s day.

To use this as a daily prompt when you consider how you can grow and engage your audience, how you can expand your creative work, and how you can find more success.

The writers and creative professionals who bring joy to the days of others, are those who:

• Get followed on social media.
• Don’t have their emails deleted.
• Are the one’s people talk about.
• Sell more of their work because people see it as a way to say ‘thank you.’
• Have their work spreads because it empowers others to share the joy they have received.

When you bring a little joy into someone’s day, you give them a respite. A moment where a simple pleasure gives them hope, or speaks to them in a meaningful way.

Be the person who we want to welcome into our days.

How does this translate to actions you can take to help you grow and engage your audience? Some ideas:

• Say thank you. My goodness do we need more of this. Find an author you like, a reader you like, anyone who inspires you, and just email them a heartfelt thank you letter.
• Do a video reply. Instead of being the 100th person to “like” something on social media why not instead do a short video reply instead. Connect as a person, instead of the same heart icon that everyone else uses. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have all added easy to use video features.
• Promote someone else’s work. Imagine if someone spent a whole day just telling the world how wonderful you were? Why not do that for someone else. Write a blog post or podcast or email about just them and their work.

I follow author Hugh Howey on Facebook and saw him casually share this photo the other day:

That’s author Neil Gaiman and musician & author Amanda Palmer just hanging out on Hugh’s boat. I don’t know how this meetup came about, but I can imagine a moment where Hugh reached out to them and said, “Why not come for a ride on my boat?” He offered them a moment of joy.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “Sure Dan, when I’m as successful as Hugh, then I will gladly take the time to be generous to others. Especially if they are Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman.”

I am simply encouraging you to start now. Because bringing moments of joy to others is something you are able to do in this very moment. It is a habit you should build. And yes, this will help you develop a larger audience, and one that becomes raving fans.

Waiting to do this until you are “big enough” is no more apt, than if you said, “Sure Dan, when I am successful as Hugh, THEN I will work out enough to get the same killer abs that he does.”

You can get those abs right now. And you can be generous to your readers and other creative professionals right now.

Do I think sharing joy works? Yes. I also think it is the antidote to what so many writers tell me they see online: constant pressure to not “miss out” on some limited time promotion, deal, course, webinar, or guidebook. Instead of adding yet another click-bait headline, another high pressure marketing tactic, another pop up window, why not try something different: brighten someone’s day.

How can you add a little bit of joy to someone’s day?
-Dan

Something I have been thinking about this week is how negativity clouds positivity in your creative work. Let’s say you are an author, and 1,000 things are going well for you: you have a good writing habit, you are working on publishing your book, you are slowly developing an audience, and you feel that your voice is becoming clearer and that it is beginning to resonate with others.

But you receive one negative comment from someone, and quickly that comment kills your confidence and diminishes your momentum.

It is like adding a tiny drop of blue dye to a bowl of water. Immediately, all clarity is lost, and the entire bowl looks blue, even if the dye was only 1 part out of 1,000.

An artist I know recently told me this:

The friend I got together with yesterday said something encouraging, she asked about my art with, “So how is it going with your Etsy shop?” But this was followed immediately by something not as encouraging, “Are you just gonna kind of leave it there and not do anything with it?”

I explained why I haven’t opened it up “full boar” with lots of prints because of the up front cost, and how I am having to be patient.”

Later, in thinking about this, I felt challenged and affronted. I hate that she (and maybe others) are perceiving my Etsy shop as half-hearted.

Her question is really discouraging to me.

The artist, let’s call her Stephanie, has been making incredible progress with her work and getting her shop setup. Yet, even a slight offhand comment can wipe away that work, because it challenges how we perceive the value of our efforts.

This is a pervasive roadblock for creative professionals.

I told Stephanie that her art becomes a mirror for those around her. That when her friend looks at the Etsy shop, she is not seeing art. Rather, she is seeing someone who is working to create something from nothing, share their voice, and redefining how the world sees them. And that can be personally challenging to her friend. Simply by creating art and selling it, Stephanie can unknowingly challenge those around her to redefine how they see her, and because of the “mirror effect,” how they see themselves.

When you follow your dreams, it can disrupt the world of those around you.

You force them to confront their own barriers. Where they may have a creative dream that they haven’t pursued. They may feel that they have good excuses why they haven’t, and when you go ahead and pursue your dreams, it breaks their excuses.

The easiest way for Stephanie’s friend to cope with this is to try to put Stephanie friend back into the box — the role — that she knows her: the always aspiring, never doing, artist.

I shared this story with some other writers and creative professionals I know, and they immediately shared their own versions of this story. I’m sure you likely have your own as well.

Can you use this as motivation — turning negative energy into positive momentum? Yes. A sense of competition can be healthy, because it is a reminder to live up to your own goals. To be competitive with yourself. I also think it forces you to own your progress and double-down on it.

I encouraged Stephanie to use her friend’s comment as FUEL, and that the next time this happens, consider giving a response like this:

The friend: “How is your Etsy store going?”

The artist: “Amazing! I posted a few pieces just to test it out, and made my first sale almost immediately. I’m learning all the ins and outs of printing, packaging, shipping, and customer service. I plan on adding 500% more of my art to the shop by the middle of 2017 — it feels incredible to finally be doing this.”

*drops mic*

She replied, “look at how much I’ve grown in the past 12 months – I began to take art seriously and then I had people want to buy some pieces, and then I opened an Etsy shop and then I sold a piece. That’s great! I’m making pretty fast progress, and I have a plan for making more progress. And I’m just going to take tiny steps forward until I’m posting and selling more work. I have a new goal in my plan: Have a “mic drop” conversation at least five times in the next three months.”

So much of success is about sheer persistence.

As a creative professional, even though it shouldn’t be, it is your job to reframe the conversations like the one Stephanie had with her friend. To turn negativity into positivity, even when the blue dye clouds your waters.

This also speaks to the importance of having a powerful support network. I run a small mastermind group, and this is a core value that we offer there — a group of 20 people who have your back 24/7. It is also why I include a “wellness” channel in the group — where we can discuss the importance of physical and mental health, which can be sidelined by negativity.

I would encourage you to invest in developing a support network for your creative work. Convert negativity into fuel that create momentum in what you create.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith shared the following on his Facebook page recently:

[In 1989 I] briefly dated a girl whose Mom knew I wanted to be a writer. After her daughter and I split up, the Mother handed me a piece of graph paper that was folded up so I couldn’t read it in front of her and said to me “If I’m wrong, come find me and I’ll eat this.”

When I got to my car and opened the note, I read something completely unexpected. In tiny words on the large piece of paper she had written “Kevin Smith will never be a famous writer. He does not have the drive. I do wish luck.”

It was also dated and signed, as if it was an official proclamation about my future. I was only 19 years old and someone had informed me in writing that my dreams would never come true. So I cut away the empty page until only the sentiment itself was left and tacked it to my desk. Later, I put it into a small baseball card frame. It was important to preserve – and not because I wanted the woman to eat it one day.

The note served as a constant reminder that NOBODY writes my story but me. Rather than believe this adult who had some minor insight into my character, whenever I looked at this piece of paper, I’d start typing.

And one day, I typed a screenplay that changed my life… Remember: nobody writes your story but you… Don’t let someone else define your future for you: sing your song and show ’em what you’re made of.

How do you deal with negativity that clouds the waters of your creative work?

Thanks.
-Dan