Justine Musk's Blog, page 30

the art of watching two friends seduce each other + what it taught me about badass blogging

The two most seductive people I know ended up engaged to each other. One night they started arguing about who seduced whom. Jordan came to my house and said, "You know how I always had this prescient feeling about him, that we'd end up together? And I couldn't figure out if I was being psychic or cocky?"

"Uh-huh." Jordan is so intuitive and tuned into people that it can be downright eerie. She's also totally cocky, at least about some things (ie: men).

"Because the first couple of times we hung out, I just felt like we had a way of connecting, you know? Which made me realize how attractive he is."

I did know this. Adrian had broken up with someone and Jordan didn't want to date him until he played the field a bit (or, as she put it, "slept with some models and gotten that out of his system"). For almost a year, they exchanged friendly texts, bantered, and kept each other up to date on their dating lives while keeping each other in play. ("He's a total flirt," Jordan had reported. "I like that. I relate to that.") When Jordan sensed Adrian's interest drifting too far toward another woman, she made her move. For months, he kept warning her that he didn't know if he'd ever be ready for a monogamous relationship. She smiled and nodded along, and then one night stood him up at a book party and he realized he couldn't live without her.

"I felt that way," Jordan said, "because he made me feel that way. He's just really good at getting a woman to open up and tell him things she wouldn't tell anyone else, because there's something so comfortable and trustworthy about him. It doesn't feel like seduction. But it is." She said, "I fell for the oldest trick in the book."

"That's because with him it isn't a trick," I pointed out. "He's genuinely interested in what you have to say. He enjoys it, enjoys you. And he doesn't care if it leads to anything, because he knows he has other options. So you don't feel like he's trying to get something from you. So you let down your guard."

"I always liked her," Adrian said, "I just didn't expect to end up in a serious relationship." When I asked him how this had happened, he thought for a minute and said, "She made me feel honored and respected. She knew when to draw close and when to back away. There were times when I felt like I was going to lose her, and I knew I had to step up. So I did."

I refrained from pointing out that he was never in as much danger of losing her as he had probably feared. It wasn't a trick. Jordan would wait until she sensed he was ready, then draw a line in the sand and see if he crossed it. She was prepared to walk away; she had just known that she wouldn't have to.

By making her feel like she had a special connection to him, Adrian had reeled in a woman who made that connection manifest.

"You realize that she seduced you into ever-deeper levels of commitment," I told him.

"It didn't feel like seduction."

This made me think of a quote by Voltaire, which I'm using in my novel-in-progress (which itself is about seduction): "The difference between being conquered and being seduced is: everybody wants to be seduced."

Because the key to seduction involves getting inside the other person's head, recognizing what he or she wants, and then giving it to them without making them feel like they're expected to give something back in return. (As soon as someone feels unduly pressured or chased, or senses an agenda, it's over.) It's not about the sexy black dress or the flashy car: those are props.

Most people suck at seduction because most people suck at good listening. When you know how to tune into the other person, to make them feel like the object of your authentic and focused attention, you don't need the perfect breasts or the big stock options (although they probably don't hurt).

This is what I don't think many writers (or other creatives) understand about blogging: that it's a form of content marketing, which itself is a form of seduction.

Content marketing is content that has value in and of itself, but is also driving the reader toward some kind of future action (ie: buying something, whether it's a service or a painting or a book or a product). Many creatives blanch when they think of marketing, because marketing is like plastic surgery: you only notice it when it's done badly. When it's done well, it's a connection made through recognition of a need, and providing a solution to that need, and it leaves both people feeling good about the exchange (ie: that neither was manipulated or taken advantage of). Which inspires trust. Which leads you (if you want) into deeper relationship. There's no pressure, because there's no desperation; people know they have other options. There's nothing slick or cheesy or fake, because both parties honor and respect each other.

Yet how rare that seems. How sad.

As a true creative, of course, you're not supposed to "sell out", as if connecting with an audience – especially a big audience – automatically means compromising your soul. But maybe, if you're authentic from the beginning about who you are and what you have to give, it means that you've found the right audience (or you've allowed the right audience to find you). And although we need solitude in which to dream and reflect and synthesize and Do the Work, we also need relationship and connection, those intersections with each other, to spark creative thinking in the first place (and provide constructive feedback).

In other words, the artist needs a right audience as much as the right audience needs her. Good marketing is the road that enables them to find each other. Good marketing is about authenticity, connection, and relationship (whether that relationship lasts for five hours or five years).

Blogging might indeed be a form of marketing — but marketing is a form of seduction — and seduction itself is an art.

Tiger Medicine: short-short fiction by yours truly

tomorrow we shall return you to your regular programming

TIGER MEDICINE

from the anthology Milk and Ink (proceeds to charity)

"Look Mom," says Jacob, my six year old, "look what I found." And he shows me the toy stuffed tiger, not much larger than the size of his hand. It's the perfect size for our Yorkshire terrier to grab up in his jaws and trot around with self-importantly, before abandoning beside the pool or under the lemon tree. Maybe the toy hunkered down to its own mysterious life, prowling the grasses of our backyard jungle, ears perked, tail twitching, until Jacob came across it.

"Look Mom," he says, and he walks the tiger along the edge of the kitchen table. The sunlight slashes through the window blinds, lies stripes of shadow along Jacob's tanned arm. "He's wild," Jacob says "a wild thing, and no one can tame him, and no one should try." The tiger reaches the end of the table and Jacob makes him jump down onto a chair.

"They're endangered, you know." He's so intent on prowling the tiger along the armrest that I pluck at his orange t-shirt to get his attention. "There aren't many tigers left in the wild."

"Where did they go?"

"Poachers, mostly," I say. "People hunt them for their skins and body parts." I think of poisoned waterholes, of steel wire snares. I won't tell him that part.

"To eat?"

"For medicine," I say. "They think the tigers have magic in them, and they want that magic for themselves. They think it makes them strong."

"I don't need medicine for that," Jacob says, and he snorts. "I'm strong."

The tiger pounces on the back of my chair. It sticks its cold plastic nose against my neck. "Don't worry Mom," Jacob says, "he won't hurt you," and for some reason I think of Jacob's father, the last time he looked at me with tenderness in his eyes. I haven't seen him in years. Jacob hasn't either.

"That's good," I say. "Because you can never tell with wild animals. That's one of the reasons they're wild."

"He doesn't belong here at home," Jacob says, and he nods. He is full of knowing.

I brush the pale bangs from his forehead. His eyes are almond-shaped, a light brown flecked with gold. I used to think that he had his father's eyes, although there was something of me in there too. But lately when I look at my son I see only him, as if he's cast aside all resemblance to his parents and emerged fully formed as himself.

"Maybe he can stay here for a while," I say. "But then he has to go off on his own. Tigers are solitary creatures."

"And he has his own secret home," Jacob says.

He sets the little toy in the center of the kitchen table. The tiger is matted and grungy from time spent outside, its ear torn, stuffing coming out of it.

"That's right," I say, as we both look at the tiger. I want to take it off the table and throw it in the wash, but I force myself to let it sit there. Jacob climbs onto my lap and I gather him against me, the warm lanky spill of him. I breathe in the coconut scent of sunscreen on his face and neck and shoulders. "He can go to his own secret home, far away from here, and live out his own secret life."

"Where no one can hunt him," Jacob says, "and no one will try."

I think of how the tiger is the apex predator, except of course for humans. But the survival of the species depends on the entire structure beneath it, on the links of the food chain remaining strong and solid. If any part of that structure gives way, the tiger falls to extinction.

Jacob says, "Right, Mom?"

I think of how an alpha male grows too old or weak or tired to fight off the bold young challengers until finally he's exiled, left to prowl a dwindling stretch of territory until he starves to death or is killed.

"No one can hunt him. No one can hurt him." I tighten my arms around my son. I imagine my own life opening up like a cave to shelter him.

I kiss the top of his head, but Jacob is restless. I want to stay in this moment but already it's over, the sunlight shifting across Jacob's body and hammering the table. I can tell from the expression on my son's face that his thoughts have turned to something else. "What's for lunch?" he asks. "I'm hungry."

I'm not ready to answer him yet. My throat is thick. It's getting hot in the kitchen, so I lean to open a window. Jacob watches me, and waits. The suggestion of a breeze touches my face. I imagine the scents it must carry to a tiger, and the messages they bring: of wildness, of blood, his own or someone else's.

Tiger Medicine: short-short fiction by yours truly

tomorrow we shall return you to your regular programming

TIGER MEDICINE

from the anthology Milk and Ink (proceeds to charity)

"Look Mom," says Jacob, my six year old, "look what I found." And he shows me the toy stuffed tiger, not much larger than the size of his hand. It's the perfect size for our Yorkshire terrier to grab up in his jaws and trot around with self-importantly, before abandoning beside the pool or under the lemon tree. Maybe the toy hunkered down to its own mysterious life, prowling the grasses of our backyard jungle, ears perked, tail twitching, until Jacob came across it.

"Look Mom," he says, and he walks the tiger along the edge of the kitchen table. The sunlight slashes through the window blinds, lies stripes of shadow along Jacob's tanned arm. "He's wild," Jacob says "a wild thing, and no one can tame him, and no one should try." The tiger reaches the end of the table and Jacob makes him jump down onto a chair.

"They're endangered, you know." He's so intent on prowling the tiger along the armrest that I pluck at his orange t-shirt to get his attention. "There aren't many tigers left in the wild."

"Where did they go?"

"Poachers, mostly," I say. "People hunt them for their skins and body parts." I think of poisoned waterholes, of steel wire snares. I won't tell him that part.

"To eat?"

"For medicine," I say. "They think the tigers have magic in them, and they want that magic for themselves. They think it makes them strong."

"I don't need medicine for that," Jacob says, and he snorts. "I'm strong."

The tiger pounces on the back of my chair. It sticks its cold plastic nose against my neck. "Don't worry Mom," Jacob says, "he won't hurt you," and for some reason I think of Jacob's father, the last time he looked at me with tenderness in his eyes. I haven't seen him in years. Jacob hasn't either.

"That's good," I say. "Because you can never tell with wild animals. That's one of the reasons they're wild."

"He doesn't belong here at home," Jacob says, and he nods. He is full of knowing.

I brush the pale bangs from his forehead. His eyes are almond-shaped, a light brown flecked with gold. I used to think that he had his father's eyes, although there was something of me in there too. But lately when I look at my son I see only him, as if he's cast aside all resemblance to his parents and emerged fully formed as himself.

"Maybe he can stay here for a while," I say. "But then he has to go off on his own. Tigers are solitary creatures."

"And he has his own secret home," Jacob says.

He sets the little toy in the center of the kitchen table. The tiger is matted and grungy from time spent outside, its ear torn, stuffing coming out of it.

"That's right," I say, as we both look at the tiger. I want to take it off the table and throw it in the wash, but I force myself to let it sit there. Jacob climbs onto my lap and I gather him against me, the warm lanky spill of him. I breathe in the coconut scent of sunscreen on his face and neck and shoulders. "He can go to his own secret home, far away from here, and live out his own secret life."

"Where no one can hunt him," Jacob says, "and no one will try."

I think of how the tiger is the apex predator, except of course for humans. But the survival of the species depends on the entire structure beneath it, on the links of the food chain remaining strong and solid. If any part of that structure gives way, the tiger falls to extinction.

Jacob says, "Right, Mom?"

I think of how an alpha male inevitably grows too old or weak or tired to fight off the bold young challengers until finally he's exiled, left to prowl a dwindling stretch of territory until he starves to death or is killed.

"No one can hunt him. No one can hurt him." I tighten my arms around my son. I imagine my own life opening up like a cave to shelter and hide him.

I kiss the top of his head, but Jacob is restless. He shifts away from me and picks up the tiger and rubs it against his cheek. I take a mental snapshot of this. I want to stay in this moment but already the moment is passing, the sunlight shifting over Jacob's small body and hammering the table. I can tell from the expression on my son's face that his thoughts have turned to something else. "What's for lunch?" he asks. "I'm hungry."

I'm not ready to answer him yet. My throat is thick. It's getting hot in the kitchen, so I lean over to open a window. Jacob watches me, and waits. The suggestion of a breeze touches my face. I imagine the scents it must carry to a tiger, and the messages it brings: of wildness, of blood, his own or someone else's.

you go to Burning Man

You go to Burning Man.

Your friend Julia, who has never been, asked if you would go and you said, "Yes," thinking it was way too last-minute, not thinking that a day or so later Julia would text that she has two of the sold-out, impossible-to-get tickets, and then texting again with two places in an RV.

Julia is a journalist with a vast social network. You have to be careful saying "yes" to such people.

When the private pilot stands you up, leaving you stranded on the tarmac at Santa Monica Airport for several hours – "This," a friend remarks dryly, "is what some might refer to as a rich people's problem" – you haul your stuff and yourselves to Southwest Airlines and then to a rental car and then to the middle of nowhere. Otherwise known as Black Rock, Nevada.

This is the place where a city unlike any city you've ever seen springs from the dust…and disappears right back into it.

Burning Man is a feeling and a state of mind. "You'll get out into the playa and look around and wonder, What the fuck?" a BM veteran tells Julia. "You'll be irritated and dirty and annoyed. But then two days later you will feel yourself opening up to it. You'll feel the magic of it."

It's a place of topsy-turvy. Lords and ladies of misrule roam an alien landscape. Giant letters rise from the desert floor spelling out L-O-V-E. The one, lonely tree is made of neon. Art cars crawl in every direction. The Man stands over it all. On Saturday night they will burn him to the ground.

Regular life falls away.

You wear whatever you want, whether it's a purple tutu or a garter and stockings or furry legwarmers or a bellydancer outfit that jangles when you walk.

Strangers hug you and say, "Welcome home."

It's the kind of place where you hear yourself saying, "It's interesting taking relationship advice from a man in a fuzzy animal costume." Or: "No, I haven't been to the disco roller rink yet." Or: "You go past the Thunderdome and turn left at that giant dolphin thing floating in the sky." Or: "I got lost because all my landmarks kept moving." Or: "I walked out to the Temple, I didn't bike, because I wanted a sense of pilgrimage." Or: "Have you seen Rosario Dawson's giant vagina?" [Ahem. You are talking about an art piece inspired by Dawson's involvement with the organization V-Day.) Or: "We lost the bike. Another sacrifice to the playa." Or: "Crystal Method played there last night." Or: "Are you going to Prom?" Or: "The New Orleans camp is serving gumbo. Look at the line for it. In the middle of the desert." Or: "I like your devil ears, but they would be better if they lit up, you know?"

Regular names fall away.

People get to know you and call you something else. Julia is Princess. (When you tell her this, she laughs hard and says, "Well, at least it isn't Diva.") Justine is Phoenix. You dance all night. You walk around and look at weird and random stuff. You watch the sun rise in the deep playa (your friend yells, "Deep playa, baby!"). You swing in a hammock and have heartfelt conversations. You open up like a hothouse flower. You feel the magic.

On the flight home they make you put your luggage in giant plastic bags because it's caked in playa dust.

Burning Man is the most creative place you've ever been. You see the relationships between art and play and risk and freedom and trust. People are free to be, without censor or judgment, and they make things, build things, create things for no other reason than that they want to, and they can.

Nobody sells anything at Burning Man, except for the espresso drinks at Center Camp (…and thank those pagan gods for sweet caffeine…). There are no prizes or gallery shows or contests. There's no money. If you want something, you barter for it. There's no WiFi, no Twitter, no blogging, no texting, no constantly checking your cell phone. There's only the vast, unplugged, white space of the playa: space to wander, dream and think, to expose yourself to all kinds of random interestingness, bits and pieces of which will get under your skin and into your brain and combine and recombine with other things of interestingness that have lain in wait there all this time. Your grooves of thinking are disrupted, your ways and patterns scattered like coins. The brain makes new connections – it has no choice — and readjusts paradigms, looks over edges and into corners and sees things it never truly registered before. You uncover new elements of you.

How, then, to create that kind of space for yourself back in the World?

How to hold it, and keep holding it, so you can enter it at will?

So you can dislodge the familiar and see it from strange angles?

So you can play toward new realizations and insights?

So you can make stuff because you want to, tapping the fire of intrinsic motivation that enables whatever genius you have in you?

So you can guard your solo time, your dream time, your wandering-around time, so you can expose yourself to ideas that meet the ideas already existing in your head, where they can have idea-sex and give birth to new ideas, your own?

So you can grow and become more of yourself, bigger in yourself, explore your edges and push beyond?

So you can live full and whole, with your sense of purpose and your playa name, so your other names reveal themselves to you, one by one, over time, as you are ready to receive them?

So you can navigate the fear, anxiety and uncertainty that come with any creative endeavor? Let it fall away, because you know that in the end – the end that comes for all of us – we go back to the dust from which we came?

Nobody gets to stay here for long.

Nothing stays.

We burn it down.

We sort through the embers for souvenirs. We cycle round.

We start again.

You start again.

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you go to Burning Man

You go to Burning Man.

Your friend Julia, who has never been, asked if you would go and you said, "Yes," thinking it was way too last-minute, not thinking that a day or so later Julia would text that she has two of the sold-out, impossible-to-get tickets, and then texting again with two places in an RV.

Julia is a journalist with a vast social network. You have to be careful saying "yes" to such people.

When the private pilot stands you up, leaving you stranded on the tarmac at Santa Monica Airport for several hours – "This," a friend remarks dryly, "is what some might refer to as a rich people's problem" – you haul your stuff and yourselves to Southwest Airlines and then to a rental car and then to the middle of nowhere. Otherwise known as Black Rock, Nevada.

This is the place where a city unlike any city you've ever seen springs from the dust…and disappears right back into it.

Words and pictures can't do it justice. Burning Man is a feeling and a state of mind. "You'll get out into the playa and look around and wonder, What the fuck?" a BM veteran tells Julia. "You'll be irritated and dirty and annoyed. But then two days later you will feel yourself opening up to it. You'll feel the magic of it. But it takes about two days."

It's a place of topsy-turvy. Lords and ladies of misrule roam an alien landscape. Giant letters rise from the desert floor spelling out L-O-V-E. The one, lonely tree is made of neon. Art cars crawl in all directions. The Man stands over it all. On Saturday night they will burn him to the ground.

Regular life falls away.

You wear whatever you want, whether it's a purple tutu or a garter and stockings or furry legwarmers or a bellydancer outfit that jangles when you walk.

Strangers hug you and say, "Welcome home."

It's the kind of place where you hear yourself saying, "It's interesting taking relationship advice from a man in a fuzzy animal costume." Or: "No, I haven't been to the disco roller rink yet." Or: "You go past the Mad Max Thunderdome and turn left at that giant dolphin thing floating in the sky." Or: "I got lost because all my landmarks kept moving." Or: "I walked out to the Temple, I didn't bike, because I wanted a sense of pilgrimage." Or: "Have you seen Rosario Dawson's giant vagina?" [Ahem. You are talking about an art piece inspired by Dawson's involvement with the organization V-Day.) Or: "We lost the bike. Another sacrifice to the playa." Or: "Crystal Method played there last night." Or: "Are you going to Prom?" Or: "The New Orleans camp is serving gumbo. Look at the line for it. In the middle of the desert." Or: "I like your devil ears, but they would be better if they lit up, you know?"

Regular names fall away.

People get to know you and call you something else. Julia is Princess. (When you tell her this, she laughs hard and says, "Well, at least it isn't Diva.") Justine is Phoenix. You dance all night. You walk around and look at weird and random stuff. You watch the sun rise in the deep playa (your friend yells, "Deep playa, baby!"). You swing in a hammock and have heartfelt conversations. You open up like a hothouse flower. You feel the magic.

On the flight home they make you put your luggage in giant plastic bags because it's caked in playa dust.

Burning Man is the most creative place you've ever been. You see the relationships between art and play and risk and freedom and trust. People are free to be, without censor or judgment, and they make things, build things, create things for no other reason than that they want to, and they can.

Nobody sells anything at Burning Man, except for the espresso drinks at Center Camp (…and thank those pagan gods for sweet caffeine…). There are no prizes or gallery shows or contests. There's no money. If you want something, you barter for it. There's no WiFi, no Twitter, no blogging, no texting, no constantly checking your cell phone. There's only the vast, unplugged, white space of the playa: space to wander, dream and think, to expose yourself to all kinds of random interestingness, bits and pieces of which will get under your skin and into your brain and combine and recombine with other things of interestingness that have lain in wait there all this time. Your grooves of thinking are disrupted, your ways and patterns scattered like coins. The brain makes new connections – it has no choice — and readjusts paradigms, looks over edges and into corners and sees things it never truly registered before. You uncover new elements of you.

How, then, to create that kind of space for yourself back in the World?

How to hold it, and keep holding it, so you can enter it at will?

So you can dislodge the familiar and see it from strange angles?

So you can play toward new realizations and insights?

So you can make stuff because you want to, tapping into the fire of intrinsic motivation that enables whatever genius you have in you?

So you can guard your solo time, your dream time, your wandering-around time, so you can expose yourself to ideas that meet the ideas already existing in your head, where they can have idea-sex and give birth to new ideas, your own ideas?

So you can grow and become more of yourself, bigger in yourself, explore your boundaries and push beyond?

So you can live full and whole, with your sense of purpose and your playa name, so your other names reveal themselves to you, one by one, over time, as you are ready to receive them?

So you can navigate the fear, anxiety and uncertainty that comes with any creative endeavor? Let it fall away, because in the end – the end that comes for all of us – we go back to the dust from which we came? Because nobody gets to stay here for very long?

Nothing stays.

We burn it all down.

We sort through the embers for souvenirs. We cycle round.

We start again.

You start again.

badass creativity

An aura has formed around the creative process that obscures what it is and how it works, often with a layer of mystical woo-woo.

If you don't wear black turtlenecks*, if you're not running with the wolves, if you don't hear the muses whispering in your ear, if the universe isn't speaking to you or through you or laughing with you or maybe at you

if you're not jolted awake at 3 am with yet another dazzling epiphany, if you would rather stick needles in your eyes than knit or read the New Yorker or rock contemplatively in a rocking chair while writing in your art journal and sipping herbal tea

if you've never been to Burning Man, if sunsets bore you, if you don't believe in angel guardians, if you've never owned one of those little dreamcatcher things hanging in windows, if the only conversation you've ever had with your Spirit was about that guy you kept promising yourself you wouldn't sleep with while continuing to sleep with him

if you're good at sports, if you've never written bad poetry in high school, if you've never dated anyone who wrote bad poetry in high school, if you're not even sure why people write poetry of any kind…can you still be creative?

Damn straight.

Badass creativity is about more than self-expression; it's about learning, process and mastery. It's about coming up with ideas, lots of little ideas that add up to big bold ideas that just might change your life, or the world.

It's about impact. It's about working from that sweetspot where your gifts and the world intersect, where what you do has fascination and relevance. It's about working close to your soul, and delivering that work to the world with style and savvy.

It's about finding yourself – and finding an audience.

Badass creativity is a state of mind.

It's necessary.

The world changes, and changes again. Old structures crumble. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman observed, his generation went out and found jobs, but his children will have to invent them. We can't just "be who we are" but must construct personal brands and online identities. We no longer "live our lives" but design them.

We search for ways to be remarkable enough to cut through the clutter of an overcrowded marketplace — to be seen, be heard. We build online platforms to promote our creative content through other forms of creative content. Meanwhile, as the world becomes more interconnected, as digital technology empowers people to collaborate and communicate, we must find ways to influence each other toward solutions to the deeply complex problems that we face (ie: save the world).

Badass creativity is a way of life.

It's no longer a bohemian novelty or a form of self-indulgence but central to our survival as individuals and as a species. Yet our society seems to conspire against it.

The old myths about who is and is not creative – that you either have it or you don't — continue to shape our perceptions about our ability to come up with great ideas. (Author Gail McMeekin found that when she told people the title to her bestselling book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, people would often say, "That has nothing to do with me. I'm not creative.")

Meanwhile, our education system continues to teach to a linear way of thinking that bestselling author Peter Sims refers to as a "death knell for creativity". We learn to cringe at our mistakes and give up after failure. We learn to be careful. We learn that risk comes in one flavor: bad. We think of creativity as a hobby, something we can nourish in the sidelines of our busy lives.

But badass creativity is a way of observing , questioning and discovering, of experimenting and refining, that can improve every aspect of the way we live, including our relationships and health and productivity, and even our ability to feel alive.

Creativity is your birthright.

Yet in a society that bombards us with constant stimuli and neverending distraction, where the value of productivity ranks right up there with hope and faith and love, it has never been more necessary to carve out the elements needed to generate creative thinking. A creativity-committed lifestyle rarely happens randomly; you design it, through understanding the strategies that enable creativity and building them into your life.

And somewhere along the way, a badass creative makes the connection between what she makes and who she is.

She makes meaning from the raw materials of her life….that can provide value not just for herself, but others.

In this six-degrees-of-separation world, where we are influenced not just by our friends, but their friends, and their friends' friends that we've never even met, what we do resonates out along those invisible lines of connection.

A badass creative understands herself as part of this web of interdependence.

Creativity binds you to your 'tribe' and connects you to those people formerly known as your audience. A badass creative is a thought leader, taking people someplace they haven't been before. She brings them into something larger than themselves. She might even start a movement.

Badass creativity isn't something you just do for yourself, but the world.

*I actually do wear black turtlenecks. From time to time.

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badass creativity

An aura has formed around the creative process that obscures what it is and how it works, often with a layer of mystical woo-woo.

If you don't wear black turtlenecks*, if you're not running with the wolves, if you don't hear the muses whispering in your ear, if the universe isn't speaking to you or through you or laughing with you or maybe at you

if you're not jolted awake at 3 am with yet another dazzling epiphany, if you would rather stick needles in your eyes than knit or read the New Yorker or rock contemplatively in a rocking chair while writing in your art journal and sipping herbal tea

if you've never been to Burning Man, if sunsets bore you, if you don't believe in angel guardians, if you've never owned one of those little dreamcatcher things hanging in windows, if the only conversation you've ever had with your Spirit was about that guy you kept promising yourself you wouldn't sleep with while continuing to sleep with him

if you're good at sports, if you've never written bad poetry in high school, if you've never dated anyone who wrote bad poetry in high school, if you're not even sure why people write poetry of any kind…can you still be creative?

Damn straight.

Badass creativity is about more than self-expression; it's about learning, process and mastery. It's about coming up with ideas, lots of little ideas that add up to big bold ideas that just might change your life, or the world.

It's about impact. It's about working from that sweetspot where your gifts and the world intersect, where what you do has fascination and relevance. It's about working close to your soul, and delivering that work to the world with style and savvy.

It's about finding yourself – and finding an audience.

Badass creativity is a state of mind.

It's necessary.

The world changes, and changes again. Old structures crumble. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman observed, his generation went out and found jobs, but his children will have to invent them. We can't just "be who we are" but must construct personal brands and online identities. We no longer "live our lives" but design them.

We search for ways to be remarkable enough to cut through the clutter of an overcrowded marketplace — to be seen, be heard. We build online platforms to promote our creative content through other forms of creative content. Meanwhile, as the world becomes more interconnected, as digital technology empowers people to collaborate and communicate, we must find ways to influence each other toward solutions to the deeply complex problems that we face (ie: save the world).

Badass creativity is a way of life.

It's no longer a bohemian novelty or a form of self-indulgence but central to our survival as individuals and as a species. Yet our society seems to conspire against it.

The old myths about who is and is not creative – that you either have it or you don't — continue to shape our perceptions about our ability to come up with great ideas. (Author Gail McMeekin found that when she told people the title to her bestselling book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, people would often say, "That has nothing to do with me. I'm not creative.")

Meanwhile, our education system continues to teach to a linear way of thinking that bestselling author Peter Sims refers to as a "death knell for creativity". We learn to cringe at our mistakes and give up after failure. We learn to be careful. We learn that risk comes in one flavor: bad. We think of creativity as a hobby, something we can nourish in the sidelines of our busy lives.

But badass creativity is a way of observing , questioning and discovering, of experimenting and refining, that can improve every aspect of the way we live, including our relationships and health and productivity, and even our ability to feel alive.

Creativity is your birthright.

Yet in a society that bombards us with constant stimuli and neverending distraction, where the value of productivity ranks right up there with hope and faith and love, it has never been more necessary to carve out the elements needed to generate creative thinking. A creativity-committed lifestyle rarely happens randomly; you design it, through understanding the strategies that enable creativity and building them into your life.

And somewhere along the way, a badass creative makes the connection between what she makes and who she is.

She makes meaning from the raw materials of her life….that can provide value not just for herself, but others.

In this six-degrees-of-separation world, where we are influenced not just by our friends, but their friends, and their friends' friends that we've never even met, what we do resonates out along those invisible lines of connection.

A badass creative understands herself as part of this web of interdependence.

Creativity binds you to your 'tribe' and connects you to those people formerly known as your audience. A badass creative is a thought leader, taking people someplace they haven't been before. She brings them into something larger than themselves. She might even start a movement.

Badass creativity isn't something you just do for yourself, but the world.

*I actually do wear black turtlenecks. From time to time.

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you have permission not to wait for permission

Sheryl Sandberg gave a talk to some Facebook employees. She informed the audience that she had time for two more questions. Hands continued to wave, so she continued the Q & A.

Afterward she went back to her desk and found a young woman waiting for her. Sandberg asked if she'd learned anything from the talk, and the young woman said, "I learned to keep my hand up." Sandberg asked what she meant, and the woman told her, "After you took those two final questions, I put my hand down and all the other women put their hands down. A bunch of men kept their hands up and then you took more questions."

The men ignored the question limit and went for it, keeping their hands in the air. What did they have to lose? Nothing…

…Sandberg admits she didn't notice that only women had taken their hands down, because after all, why would she have noticed what wasn't there?

from the book KNOWING YOUR VALUE: Women, Money, and Getting What You're Worth by Mika Brezezinski.

This reminds me of what my father often told me when I was growing up: don't interrupt.

Early in adulthood, when seated with highly intelligent, passionate, opinionated people of both sexes, I learned that if I didn't interrupt someone who was often interrupting me (usually a man) I would never get a word in edgewise.

I had to jump into the fray, wearing high heels and a dress.

The legacy of nice-girl training is that when you do speak up and put yourself out there – when you keep your hand up – you worry about being intrusive and obnoxious.

Not so long ago, in a situation that resembled group therapy, several people (both men and women) commented on how my presence "went in and out". Sometimes I owned my space, and sometimes I gave it up. When I owned it (through my body language and the whole 'being present' thing), people listened to me. When I didn't (when I got shy and uncertain and my body language showed that, or when I mentally vacated), they ignored me. They didn't see me so of course they wouldn't listen. Why would they notice what wasn't even there?



So I realized that the distinction I was making between being nice and being obnoxious had more to do with being seen and not-seen.

And it was usually within my control. I was going in and out of hiding. Being 'visible' had become equated, in my mind, with 'being in danger'. What I've learned is that invisibility can be the most dangerous of all.

We end up serving a status quo that doesn't serve us.

We play by rules set by people who themselves will 'break' or 'disrupt' them.

So someone like Tom Matlock can write

Is it sexism that causes men to go where women have not yet? I don't think so. The Internet is a great equalizer. No one cares who the founder of a particular web company is. What they care about is whether or not the product works and solves a fundamental need. Again, people use Facebook despite hating Mark Zuckerberg, for the most part. And frankly, the really great companies are so great from the get-go that venture capital is hardly a roadblock. Google, Facebook, and the like took money only after they were massively successful.

If Mark Zuckerberg had been a woman, the world wouldn't have boycotted Facebook. If the product worked, we all would have used it—probably more than if an unlikeable guy was the founder. But no woman has stepped forward with a revolutionary idea that has turned into a multi-billion dollar transformative company.

Of course, the reasons why we don't 'step forward', why we have internalized so many reasons not to keep our hands in the air, do have something to do with the conditioning we internalized growing up. (Tom so neatly steps over this not-insignificant point.)

We learn to disconnect from 'negative' emotions – like anger – that can, when used constructively, serve as catalyst for personal or social change.

We learn that our competitive drive isn't proper (unless we're competing in the Hotness Olympics, or with each other, or for men).

We learn that if we're not the right kind of girl, we won't get love. In fact, we will get cast from the herd. It's hard to keep your hand in the air when the primitive part of your brain equates that with the risk of social exile, and thinks social exile = death.

And meanwhile some people – always men, at least in my experience – advance theories that women are intellectually inferior because where are the great female physicists and chess players (because that, of course, is the only way to evaluate intelligence), or use bad science to 'explain' why women love housework (I am not kidding, this was in the 1950's) or why women are masochists (looking at you ,Freud, even though you're cool in other ways).

Because when you don't communicate your truth, someone else communicates it for you.

What really hurts us, I think, is when we continue to play small even though we don't 'have' to. We play by the rules instead of making our own. We're told to sign on the dotted line, so we do, without understanding what it costs us.

We take our hands down.

We wait for permission.

how to be a dangerous woman (in fiction + life)

1

I went through a period in my life when people kept telling me how 'strong' I was. You must be very strong. You're such a strong woman. You're strong!

It got annoying.

And not because I disagreed with the premise.

I just didn't understand why this wasn't the assumption to begin with.

The bar for my behavior seemed set rather low. All I had to do to exceed expectations was to refuse to live down to them.

2

Strength in and of itself is not strategic, and it's not necessarily powerful, and I wonder if we tend to forget that.

A strategic woman, a powerful woman, is a brilliantly disruptive woman.

She's dangerous.

I admire women who are dangerous.

3

But the major reason I tend to roll my eyes when we talk about "strong" women is because – ironically – the whole conversation starts from a place that's insulting (despite the best intentions). It assumes that 'we' are not strong – how could we be? In pop culture, this is the kind of 'strength' defined in masculine terms. It creates characters that aren't real women so much as stereotypes and fantasy figures

alpha professionals whose laserlike focus on career advancement has turned them into grim, celibate automatons; robotic, lone-wolf, ascetic action heroines whose monomaniacal devotion to their crime-fighting makes them lean and cranky and very impatient; murderous 20-something comic-book salesgirls who dream of one day sidekicking for a superhero; avenging brides; poker-faced assassins; and gloomy ninjas with commitment issues.

….a prostitute with a machine gun for a leg or a propulsion engineer with a sideline in avionics whose maternal instincts and belief in herself allow her to take apart an airborne plane and discover a terrorist plot despite being gaslighted by the flight crew

And the thing about fantasies is this: they don't exist.

And since they don't exist, they can't actually threaten the status quo. Buffy slays vampires and looks cute in heels – awesome! But what does that have to do with life as we actually know it? In comparison, the female love interest in the movie STOP LOSS is a more 'realistic' female character who is also 'strong': she can handle a gun, she demonstrates mad driving skills, she is smart and gutsy and competent because she's not doing any of that stupid wussy idiotic female stuff, like knitting or baking cupcakes or reading tabloid magazines or getting her nails done or wearing pink or decorating the kids' treehouse. Goddess forbid.

But we don't see her driving the plot, forging her destiny or playing her own game. She's shown in reaction to her boyfriend's decisions, which he makes independently of her needs and wants. She's quote-unquote strong, but she isn't all that powerful.

4

I can't help thinking that the whole 'strong woman' thing is a kind of decoy: a conversation that keeps us busy but doesn't actually achieve anything.

The conversation is framed in a way that underscores and reinforces the idea that men are men and women are….not.

It also denies the fact that women have always been strong, birthed babies and held dying children and endured oppression and fought for the rights of others (and sometimes even themselves) and waited for husbands and sons to come back from wars and managed households and worked in factories and lived in the streets and nursed the sick and dying and worked the fields and kept families together and survived domestic violence and sexual violence and started businesses and reinvented themselves and carried water for miles and so on and so on: they saw work that needed to be done and they did it, and they continue to do it.

But that kind of female strength isn't glamorous or even all that visible or acknowledged. These are not the tasks that win prizes or promotions or partnerships. Meanwhile, slaying vampires and kicking werewolf ass — while wearing tight leather pants – is supposed to be 'empowering', in the same way that the strong stoic bare-chested pirate confessing his innermost feelings to some virginal thing who has changed his nature forever is supposed to be 'romantic'. It's a very pretty story but it's a sidestep of reality. It's a play at feeling powerful without the work and risk and cost involved.

5

Maybe what we really want to see more of in ourselves isn't strength so much as achievement and boldness, ambition and power.

(Except I wasn't entirely comfortable writing those words, and were you comfortable reading them? It's a weird sort of female taboo, under your skin, still wiggling around.)

Except when a woman takes steps to go after these things – even just to utter the sentence, "I want to be great" – somebody somewhere is going to freak out, and some voice inside her is going to tsk-tsk that nice girls don't do that kind of thing.

As author and psychotherapist Linda S. Austin puts it:

…women must be even more psychologically brave than their male counterparts to succeed. After all, it is so clearly within the scope of expected male behavior to take independent, autonomous action. The bolder a man of achievement is, the more he is actually conforming to his gender stereotype; his social position becomes safer than ever, and he…gratifies the expectations of his parents, family, and society. For a woman, boldness put her distinctly at odds with the role that society expects of her. She leaves the safety of conformity to group expectations for a solitary adventure that is hers alone.

A powerful man falls into the category of powerful men.

A powerful woman creates (still!) her own category.

She is by her very nature a challenger and a rebel.

She has to defy the ingrained gender norms which encourage a woman to be good…but not great.

To be bright…but not brilliant.

To be creative…but not disruptive or innovative.

To play the game…but not to change it.

To play by the rules…instead of shifting the battlefield, to where she can make new rules.

6

A powerful woman learns to embrace the contradiction of herself, to work it instead of being pulled apart.

A powerful woman figures out how to rock being herself, instead of letting others define her identity and her reality.

A powerful woman owns her story and creates her own meaning, which fuels motivation and resiliency.

A powerful woman develops capacity for risk and tolerance for failure, and her ability to learn from failure.

A powerful woman defines her own vision and values. She lives her vision, and not a state of constant reaction.

A powerful woman develops her selfhood instead of sacrificing it, piece by piece and bit by bit, to others.

A powerful woman is not afraid to raise the level of her ambition.

A powerful woman knows that at some point she needs to be where the boys are…and where the girls aren't.

A powerful woman knows her worth. She asks for it.

A powerful woman defines the problems that intrigue her and sets about to solve them and make her contribution.

A powerful woman is a lover and a fighter.

She's maybe a little bit dangerous.

It's good to be a little bit dangerous.

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turn this into a powerful logline and win my eternal love + gratitude ( + a hundred bucks)

Dear You with the Wondrous Taste to be Reading this Blog:

Below is my working synopsis for the novel I'm working on called THE DECADENTS.

I would like to call upon the wisdom of the crowds to help me develop a punchy one- or two-sentence description that I can use at cocktail parties when people ask me what this damn book is about.

So give it a shot.

Enter a logline in the comment section below.

If I choose yours, I will give you a $100 Amazon gift certificate and name a character in the novel after you.

Contest ends whenever someone delivers up the perfect logline — or I come up with one on my own, or give up on the whole exercise, in which case I will give a $50 Amazon gift certificate to the entry that amuses (or bemuses) me the most.

Here is the working draft of the synopsis (and feel free to comment on it, what you like or don't like about it, if you would actually read this book or hurl it at the neighbor's dog that barks too much):

Gabe Maddox is a famous artist in Los Angeles fighting off drugs and a hedonistic nightlife when a mysterious younger woman confronts him with his past.

She is Cat Rusakova, a dancer plagued by nightmares and periods of 'lost time'. She demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of Gabe's high school love, Angelina, who disappeared over twenty years ago, presumed victim of a serial killer.

Gabe remains close to Angelina's powerful family, especially her brother, Mason Lowell, a brilliant and enigmatic CEO. When a triangle of obsession and desire develops among Gabe, Cat, and Mason, the present begins to echo the past and forces Gabe to investigate Angelina's last days and his own involvement with her. As the connection between Cat and Angelina reveals itself and Cat's sanity begins to unravel, Gabe must overcome the deepest betrayal of his life — or a woman he loves will die. Again.

bestest

Justine

xoxo

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