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Recently my friend Leah Shoemaker shared a video of herself playing piano and singing an original song she wrote. It was so good! I wrote her an email to tell her so, and to just catch up.

Her reply astounded me though. She thanked me, but then said, “For the most part, I hide singing.”

Then she told me this story from her childhood:

When I was 8, I have this memory of being the lead in our 3rd grade Christmas play (I was Santa.) I was obsessed with being a “singer.” I have a tape full of songs I wrote and sang when I was 6 and 7. They are all love songs, some to my teddy bear.

My music teacher brought me in front of the class to practice singing my solo, I was so excited.

When I was done, the teacher said, “Maybe we will all sing it together.” 

It could have been for all sorts of reasons, but I acknowledged it as “Leah should not sing in front of others.” That was literally a changing point in my life where I felt I wasn’t good enough to share my singing.

I have rarely shared my musical side with anyone since. It’s pretty wild how social expectations can stop people from simply doing things they love.

This story just blew me away for two reasons. The first was how familiar it was. So many writers and artists I speak with have a challenging time giving themselves permission to create. The other reason I was so taken aback is because Leah is such a wildly creative person.

This is Leah, hooping with a hoop that is literally on fire:

You can watch the full video here, it is just incredible.

Creating is complicated. Sharing is complicated. Not just for reasons of craft, but for deeply human reasons.

For the past three years, I have been running these little groups that I call the Creative Shift Mastermind. The goal is to take a leap forward to get unstuck and ensure that your creative work — your writing and art — has an impact on the world. To share your singing. Your stories. Your art.

What I have found is that there are four essential ingredients to making a creative shift in your life:

• Get radical clarity on what you create and why.
• Develop strong creative practices.
• Understand how your work can change someone’s world — that it truly connects authentically with those who will love it.
• Create a support system to ensure you stay accountable and on track.

This past week I met Bruce Springsteen. And it was a direct result of sending out my email newsletter.

About a decade ago, Reed Fry joined my newsletter list. He wasn’t an author or artist, my main target audience, but a friend recommended that he would appreciate my take on marketing and digital media.

Over the years, he would occasionally email me, sharing kind words about the newsletter. But a couple months back, he sent a more cryptic email: “What are you doing the night of June 1. I have an interesting offer.”

That offer? To be his guest to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. He knew I am a huge Bruce fan, and he wanted to see the show with a fellow fan. Seats for this show have been difficult to come by, and very expensive. The seats we sat in typically cost $1,000-1,500 each on the aftermarket.

In exchange, he asked if we could have dinner beforehand, and discuss his blogging strategy. He had appreciated my post “The Return of Blogging” from earlier in the year.

The result? A moment before meeting Bruce:

But of course, the evening was about so much more than that. Because I also got to meet Reed, the man who made this generous evening possible:

Reed and I talked for more than two hours, and it was a wonderful dinner and conversation. Not just about blogging, but about music, art, and life. As you can tell from this post, all of those things combine rather easily.

Bruce on stage was truly magical. His show is two hours of him telling stories and singing songs, alone on the stage except for one song with his wife Patti.

Watching Bruce tell a deeply personal story about his family to a theater of 900 rapt fans had me consider: how is he able to take the authority to do this? How does he have the capacity to do this? To wear his heart on his sleeve in story after story about his mother, father, and his innermost feelings.

After the show, I posted a photo to Facebook with the caption, “I got to meet Bruce Springsteen!.” A friend commented, “And he got to meet you!”

That honestly threw me for a loop. I mean, can you imagine that?

It reminded me that we each have a gift, and a choice. A choice in what we create. In how we share it. In how our creative clarity changes how we live. 

I’ve studied Bruce’s life and art for years. He is a notorious taskmaster and perfectionist. They call him “The Boss” for a reason. You live up to his expectations if you are in his band. You work for him.

As I watched Bruce on stage telling stories, I sat there with goosebumps and wondered how this was all possible. I was reminded that successful writers and artists are a total failure at copying others, and a master at being themselves.

This is the stage without Bruce. It is a dead empty space. A hollow container:

And here is the stage with Bruce. It is a stage that now contains not just a man, but the magic of the art that he has created. For those in the audience, it now contains a lifetime of memories and experiences, embodied in the songs he has crafted:

Bruce was incredibly authentic that evening.

If you are struggling to create, to share, to grow and audience, and to earn a living off of your work, I want to encourage you to lean into what makes you 100% unique from anyone else. In your work, and in who you are.

Take authority over your creative vision in a way that no one else would.

I was reminded of the importance of authenticity and authority in one of my all-time favorite books, a biography of Walt Disney by Neil Gabler. He died far too young, at age 65. In his final days in the hospital, he worried that his newest project and biggest vision — to build an actual city of the future — would not come to fruition if he wasn’t alive to create it. And that without it, he couldn’t understand what his own legacy would be. He lamented, “Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse!” The author states what happened this way:

“A few months after Walt’s death, the [plans for the city] were presented to Roy Disney. Roy said, “Walt’s dead.” And so was [the vision of the city.]”

Was the city a crazy idea that sounds like it wouldn’t have worked? Yep. But so were most of the other things that Walt Disney created in his life. Walt took authority over his creative vision to do the seemingly impossible.

The book ends with a summation of Walt’s accomplishments, and finally concludes, “Yet all of these accumulated contributions pales before a larger one: he demonstrated how one could assert one’s will on the world at the very time when everything seemed to be growing beyond control and beyond comprehension.”

In a similar vein, Bruce took authority over his creative vision standing alone on that stage and pouring his heart out.

I encourage you to take authority over your creative vision.

I want to leave you with a story from a writer who is in my Creative Shift Mastermind group, Susan Davenport. I encourage those in the group to focus on one to one connections, and to reach out to those who inspire them.

She wanted to thank another author who had inspired her, a woman who wrote more than 30 books, who Susan looked at as something of a mentor.

Susan explains what happened:

“As I hit the send button on my message a little voice in my head said, ‘Someone that accomplished will probably never respond to a beginner like you.’

“I did exactly what you told me to. I wrote her an email and focused on her and her work. I told her how much I had enjoyed her books and what I enjoyed about them. I even included a quote that I particularly liked.”

“She sent me an email this afternoon and told me I had made her day! She really appreciated me writing.”

“She told me when the next book in the series I like is coming out, invited me to subscribe to a series of webinars on writing she plans to release this summer if I was interested, and then she asked me to stay in touch!”

“I would never have been brave enough to do this before the Creative Shift Mastermind. I would have let that little voice in my head keep me from hitting send, and I would have missed out on making a connection that feels like it has potential. But what’s really surprising to me, is that sending that email that made her happy, felt better to me than getting positive feedback on my own work.”

The energy from this exchange fueled Susan to then sign up for a local writer’s conference. She describes the registration process:

“As I filled out that form, I could hear all of you in the back of my mind saying, “Own it.” I checked the “Professional Author” box. I felt like there were probably alarms going off on the other end of the Internet wire and bright red lights flashing on and off saying, “IMPOSTER, IMPOSTER.” But I did it anyway.”

The actions that Susan took were in some ways very small. She emailed someone and she registered for an event. But they were also profound. Her actions are no less important than Bruce walking out onto an empty stage. Doing so puts him and his creative vision out there for all to see. And that is exactly what Susan did this week as well.

After Bruce’s show, he goes out onto the street to meet fans. One person at a time. That is exactly the power that you have right now to connect your creative vision to others. Not as an email blast. Not as a follower campaign. Not as a social media ad. But one person at a time. Here is Bruce talking to a fan that evening, just two people looking each other in the eye:

How will you do that today? How will you take authority over your creative vision, and connect it with authenticity to one other person?

Thanks.

-Dan

P.S.: The next session of my Creative Shift Mastermind begins July 1. Details here.

 

Yesterday was a little tough for me. I had this intense feeling of “the fear of missing out” all day long. Why? Because I missed out on meeting a bunch of famous authors and celebrities, and I missed catching up with some wonderful friends who I rarely see.

You see, I decided to skip going to BookExpo yesterday. BookExpo is this huge tradeshow in New York City where all of traditional publishing meets. The big publishers are there, famous authors are there, and its only open to those “in the industry.” I had my ticket, and I didn’t use it.

In saying “no” to BookExpo, I instead said “yes” to my own creative work. I instead used that time to focus on some creative projects.

I tried to view it as a one-day creative retreat, just me in my studio:

Today I want to share the exact process I used that day in order to make progress on the creative work that matters most to me. How I turned 8 hours into a big creative leap forward, and my advice for how you can do the same thing:

Step #1: Decide How You Want to Feel

BookExpo is truly a joy for me to attend. Here is a look at my previous visits:

• An Inside Look at How the Publishing Industry Promotes Books
• Inside BookExpo: How Publishers Promote Books
• At BookExpo, You Can…

Pretty glamorous, right? In the past, I’ve met wonderful authors there including Brené Brown, Amy Tan, Gretchen Rubin, Mo Willems and many others.

But BookExpo is also the bright and shiny thing that would distract me from my goals. From doing the work that I think about constantly: truly helping writers and artists create and share their work.

Going to Bookexpo would have been saying “yes” to exhausting distraction, and “no” to my creative vision. That is why a couple years ago I turned down a free trip to Hawaii. The Hawaii trip would have been amazing, but it also would have turning my back on the things that matter most to me. At the time I asked my friend Jennie Nash for advice on if I should go on the trip or not, and she said this:

“EVERYONE would say yes to this. Even if it meant they would be busy and overwhelmed, and it meant their wife would be mad at them. It’s because they rushed for the shiny object and were distracted from what matters most.”

When I considered not going to BookExpo, I asked myself what I would accomplish instead. The day was already cleared on my calendar, I had no meetings or obligations.

I asked myself, “How do you want to feel at the end of that day?”

In considering this, even though it would have been great to be able to say, “I met Susan Orlean!” the honest answer is that I wanted to end the day feeling as though I had taken clear actions to live up to my mission and help more writers and artists.

Then I read this quote from Warren Buffet:

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

Which brings us to the next step…

Step #2: Set Clear Goals

The first thing I did that day was write down four clear things I wanted to accomplish by the end of the day. This was the list:

1. Create a free guide that outlines five simple actions that a writer or artist can take to push their work forward and connect it to their ideal audience. Something super useful and practical. Oh, this is what I ended up creating, a 19 page PDF, I hope you like it!
2. Reconnect with writers and artists that I haven’t spoken to in awhile.
3. Really sit down and consider how can make the next session of my Creative Shift Mastermind become more accessible to those who would love it. (By the way, the next session begins July 1, full details here)
4. Take a clear action to connect with writers and artists who inspire me. My days are spent in the trenches with those who create, and I wanted to ensure I was expanding this circle.

In some ways, these goals are huge. It’s a lot to do in one day. This is how I tackled it…

Step #3: Involve Others to Stay Accountable

After I outlined my goals, I immediately involved others in the process. The surest way for creative work to fail is to hide it from the world.

I posted to Instagram and Twitter that I’m skipping BookExpo to give myself a day of creative growth. I immediately wanted to make myself publicly accountable to the goals I was setting for the day. To feel obligated to live up to my intention.

Then I went into my Mastermind group and created a new discussion area specifically devoted to this one-day creative retreat. I shared with them everything in this post as it happened.

It was pretty amazing. Right away, they were supporting me, asking questions about my process, and many were even inspired to take their own actions that day to double-down on their creative work. The entire day they were in my corner. It felt A-MAZ-ING. I am deeply grateful for how supportive that group is.

Having them there fueled me to ensure I made clear progress that others could see. Living up to their expectations kept me from checking email, social media, the news, or any other distraction — they kept me focused.

Step #4: Done is Better Than Perfect

The next step was to actually do the work! For each goal, In considered what minimum viable success would look like for each item on my list of goals.

For the PDF guide I created, I originally envisioned it as being much longer and wordier. When I considered the minimum I would need to do for it to be useful, I realized that it didn’t need all of that. It needed five clearly expressed ideas, and then five useful actions for someone to take.

I quickly took photos to include in it, put together a very basic design template, and created an outline. Within two hours I had a solid rough draft, and it only took another hour to finish it.

I actually published it live to my website at that moment, even though my editor hadn’t yet proofread it for typos and grammar. I told myself, “Done is better than perfect.”

The good news is that it was only a couple hours later that she was able to make the corrections, and I simply swapped out the file with the revised version.

This same idea applied to all of my goals. For reaching out to the writers and artists that I hadn’t talked to in awhile, I had a clear number in my mind of how many emails or phone calls would be “good enough.”

It felt amazing to reach out like this, too. To make time to for those who truly inspire me.

Step #5: Assess Progress

Throughout the day, I kept checking my list of goals to check progress. I felt like there was an energy throughout the day because the list of goals was so clear.  I would constantly review them and see how I was doing.

Every time I checked off a task, I reported back to the folks in my Mastermind group about it. I think that helped a lot. When you have a long to-do list, it is so easy for other items to get added to it, or for one tasks to take up 90% of your time.

The clarity of a short list of goals and bringing in accountability partners helped me stay focused.

At the end of the day, I assessed progress again, and checked in on how I felt. Did I feel like what I accomplished was worth the trade off of skipping BookExpo. Of not meeting Susan Orlean, or seeing Rick Riordan, or bumping into Dr. Ruth?

Step #6: Celebrate Success

While I’ll never know what would have come of those chance encounters at BookExpo, what I do know is that I feel great about what I accomplished in this one-day creative retreat.

What did I do next? Celebrate success!

Too often, writers and artists move past big milestones, but forget to celebrate them because they are already worried about the next task on the list. I think it is important to pause and celebrate success.

Here are a few ways I’m doing that:

• I’m recognizing and sharing what I achieved. Each task had an element of connecting my work to someone, and that feels wonderful.
• I completed my goals early, so I went home early to spend time with family. My son had a friend over, and when he saw me come in the door he said, “Your dad comes home at 4pm?!” Yep, on creative retreat days I do!
• This one was kind of a coincidence, but it felt serendipitous: when I arrived home, a new guitar was waiting for me on the porch. It’s a Takamine EF341sc and it is gorgeous! It felt like a gift after a productive day.

Step #7: Share What You Learn

Finally, I wrote this blog post to try to share what I learned in the process. Writing it down helps me reflect on my own creative process, and I suppose it is my hope that you consider turning down something bright and shiny in order to focus on the creative work that matters most to you.

If you took a one-day creative retreat, what would you work on?

Thanks!

-Dan

P.S.: I just opened the doors to my next Creative Shift Mastermind session which begins July 1. Join me to get the clarity and habits you need to feel great about your creative work and ensure it connects with your ideal audience. Plus: you will become a part of a wonderfully supportive small group — your own creative community. Details here.

 

Saying “yes” to your craft means saying “no” to so much else. What I mean is this: if you struggle to:

1. Find time to create
2. To know exactly what you should create
3. To finish what you start
4. To understand who will love your work
5. To reach those people

There are no easy answers. No webinars that will teach you the magic secret button in Amazon or Etsy that makes it simple to find success.

Instead, there are only choices:

The choice to say yes to your craft by saying no to other obligations.

The choice to create something — anything — even if you don’t know if it is the right thing.

The choice to finish something, even if it feels like it could use more time; that it isn’t yet “good enough.”

The choice to understand who will resonate with your work — and why — better than anyone else who creates as you do. This isn’t hard, it simply takes the subtle skills of caring and listening. Oh wait, maybe that is hard. Because nowadays, I just see too many people who feel that the real goal is followers and likes. Bleh. The goal is connection. To connect one’s art to another person’s life in a way that transforms them.

The choice to learn to reach those people not through waiting for them to find you, but by reaching out. To forge actual human connections.

Oftentimes, we think we are doing all of these things, but we are mistaken. Instead, we half-bake it.

We let the slightest problem disrupt it all. We hope that the world will make it easy for us. We copy others, assuming that “best practices” will save us. They won’t.

Instead, you need to lean into the items above. Here is an example:

My friend Lori Richmond (right) spent months and months sharing her newest children’s book, Bunny’s Staycation, with the world. The book delves into the challenges that families face when parents travel for work.

After sending out copy after copy to help promote the book to “influencers,” she grew tired of the process. She asked herself, “How can I get this book to kids who really need it?”

So who did she ask? Her online running group. Funny, right? But it totally worked, and aligns to the advice: start where you are. Lori offered to donate copies of her book to families in the running group who may be in need. She explains what happened next:

“I received several lovely responses from women nominating friends or others. One of them, Amy, told me she was Assistant Director of USO of North Carolina, the oldest continuously-operating chapter of the USO in the world, located in North Carolina. (If you don’t know what the USO does, they help our US Military service members stay connected to their family, home, and country while they are serving our nation). Amy told me these parents are on the ultimate business trip—deployed overseas—and her location hosts a weekly storytime for the children. She thought Bunny’s Staycation would really resonate with them.”

“I was so incredibly touched by this thought and quickly put together a package containing a signed book, a drawing of Bunny, an oversized handwritten letter, and a whooooole bunch of passport activity kits. Off to North Carolina it went!”

“Amy said the story time was a big hit with all of the parents and kids. One mom, who is relocating to Okinawa and applying for passports for her children, even used the kits to help explain what a passport is to her little bunnies! I’m so thankful to Amy and the rest of the staff at USO of North Carolina for these ah-mazing photos from the event and that they have allowed me to share them with you. These kids are making the ultimate sacrifice by sharing their brave parents with all of us.”

Just look at these kids enjoying the book!

Too often, when someone thinks of how their creative work can truly effect someone, they default to spamming social media, to desperately trying to reach “influencers,” to feeble attempts at gaming Amazon.

I love how Lori was able to connect her book to kids in such a human way. To kids who need to hear the message of this book.

This is why I feel that how you connect your writing and art to the world is a craft as well. It takes caring, attention to detail, and understanding how art transforms us on a human level.

I want to share one more example of saying “YES” to your craft. I was able to interview author Michael La Ronn (right) recently, and he shared some astounding things with me, starting with this:

Michael writes and publishes ten books per year.

I mean, let that sink in. In the past six years, he has published 40 books, largely science fiction, fantasy and nonfiction. He writes 3,000-5,000 words per day. Okay, I just did math, and that potentially adds up to a million words per year.

In addition to that, he has a full-time job. He goes to law school in the evenings. He is raising a young family.

So how does he do it?  He eliminated everything in his life that isn’t writing or reading. He gave up TV, videogames, movies, and even some friendships. Instead, he stays focused, saying, “I’m always thinking about writing and reading.”

He is saying “YES” to what what matters, and “NO” to everything else.

Doing so has allowed him to find some amazing ways to write more. He increased his writing output by 40% per year simply by writing 100 words in small moments on his phone. If he is on line at the foodstore, he writes. If he is waiting for his wife at the store, he writes. In the small moments where most of us check social media or the news, he writes.

When I asked about his drive, he shared the story of his 2012 bout with food poisoning, which put him in the hospital for a month. He says, “I swore on my hospital bed that I would be a writer.”

You can listen to my full chat with Michael on my blog or on iTunes.

Okay, one final thing. Last week I shared the story of the Studio Time workshop I ran with a group of writers. Our goal was for each person to establish a writing routine. In the past week, I’ve been blown away by some of the progress they are sharing with me:

• “I’m having a hard time finding time NOT to write. This workshop has been a jam breaker for me.”
• “I have not been in the zone for such a long time, and it was downright marvelous to be there today.”
• “I have had four writing sessions in the last week!”
• “Success! I opened a chapter I hadn’t looked at in weeks. My goal was 150 words and I wrote 246.”

This is what happens when you say “YES” to your craft.

How will you do that today?

-Dan

What is it like to begin writing a book again after a 60 year break? Yesterday I ran a small workshop about establishing a writing routine, and one of the writers in the group, Fred Sanborn, told us about how he wrote and published books in the 1950s, and then stopped. He was here today to establish a new writing routine for three books he had in mind. At 90 years old, he was very mindful of both the importance of this work, and how he had to make the most of his time.

Here is the group:

A theme emerged from the day: “I need to claim my creative time.” To make it a priority when so many other responsibilities and distractions keep us from our writing.

As Fred put it: “It’s time to get on with it.”

I loved working with this group of writers so much because we delved into the reality of why, too often, we don’t make writing a priority. Usually it is not because we are binge watching Netflix, but because we are caring for loved ones who are ill, for children who rely on us, attending to jobs that support our families, and coping with a commute that eats up a lot of time.

None of these things that keep us from writing are easy fixes because they are important responsibilities.

So how did we address them in the workshop? Like this:

• Everything I do begins with the idea of Radical Clarity. Of understanding your priorities not just in writing, but life as a whole. You only have so much creative energy every day, you need to put it in the things that matter most to you. (You can read more on Radical Clarity here.)
• Right away we talked about the importance of mindset. There is no secret button that will suddenly give you the time and space to write. Instead, we dug into how to get into the correct mindset to write, to sustain the habit, to meet writing goals, and to celebrate what we achieve.
• We identified the minimum we would each need to write each week to feel that we had established a writing habit that was fulfilling. This idea forces you to reframe writing not as huge milestones, but as a simple practice. It doesn’t sound glamorous to say, “I wrote 150 words today.” But if you did that every day for a year, you would have a manuscript of more than 50,000 words.
• I encouraged each writer do do an Energy Audit, to better understand when they have an easier time writing. We then explored other factors that encourage writing — where they write, preparation for writing, how sound factors in (silence, white noise, music), and then discussed this in the context of their real life. Lives amidst kids, jobs, commutes, dishes, and so much else.
• We identified our Cave Trolls — the things that distract us. The key here is not to try to kill the Cave Trolls, but instead, to learn how to manage them.
• For each writer in the group, we explored their daily schedules and came up with clear ways that they can fit in writing while also feeling fulfilled. That is the key. I didn’t suggest solutions that rob you of sleep — but rather — considered how your writing is an essential part of what it means to feel fulfilled as a person. How attending to your writing makes you a better parent, a better spouse, a better employee, a better friend.
• We created plans for celebrating what they write each week, and brainstormed ways to stay accountable to their writing goals.

I would imagine that challenges you face in attending to your creative work are similar to those in this group. That claiming your creative time each week is a difficult because of the other important responsibilities in your life.

If that is the case, I want you to think of Fred. How, at 90 years old, he is working on a memoir and two nonfiction books. And that he has decided, “It’s time to get on with it.”

To create is a choice. Your choice.

But so is the ability to not create. That is not decided by your boss, your friends or your family. It is your choice.

What will you create today?

-Dan

PS: If you want to be notified of my upcoming workshops, you can join the early interest list for my Creative Shift Mastermind here, and for Studio Time Workshops here.