Teresa R. Funke's Blog: Bursts of Brilliance for a Creative Life, page 39

All That Matters is You Don’t Give Up

The other evening, my husband and I were strolling around downtown and popped into one of my favorite art galleries. I bought a couple of note cards and a glass nail file, and as we were leaving, I heard someone say, “Are you the author? The book editor?” 

“I’m Teresa Funke, yes.” 

“I had a meeting with you a few years back so you could look at my book,” the gentleman said. He described his project briefly, and I recalled our consultation. “You told me it needed work, and I was pretty upset,” he said. 

“Yes, I remember that. Usually when I meet with a client, I’m able to leave them feeling at least hopeful, but I remember thinking you seemed more down than I had experienced.” 

“Oh, it wasn’t you,” he said. “You were very kind and I trusted your opinion. It’s just that I was at one of the lowest points in my life and your advice was the last thing I wanted to hear. But you’ll be happy to know our meeting turned out to be a good thing. Afterwards, I couldn’t bring myself to work on the book anymore, so I went back to my painting, and now look at me! My work is hanging in galleries, I’ve sold a few pieces, and I’ve even been invited to show some of my work in Europe. I’m going to Europe!” 

“That’s wonderful,” I said. And then he showed me his beautiful pieces and we talked about his unique process. 

“Who knows,” he said, “maybe someday I’ll go back to the book. Maybe I won’t. But in the end, I realized something. It doesn’t really matter which direction you take with your art, all that matters is that you never give up.” 

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Is Your Art too Trivial to Matter?

Please, don’t let this feeling end. It’s everything I am. Everything I want to be. Anyone recognize those song lyrics? If so, you’re as old as I am. But when your art is flowing and you are in the zone and all is right with the world, this is often how it feels. That’s not to say it isn’t hard, but the challenge is somehow invigorating.

Recently, though, several of my artist friends have told me some of the luster has gone off their work. “How can I focus on my trivial dabblings when the world is falling apart?” they ask. “Isn’t it selfish or naïve to think my art really matters when so many people are suffering?”

I feel that way too sometimes. But no matter how bad things have gotten in our world, most of the people we know are still showing up for their jobs every day. Doctors and teachers and journalists aren’t asking whether their work is important, even in times of trouble. They know it is. But so do mail carriers, and garbage collectors, and restaurant workers. We are all needed, even when times get tough, and that goes for artists too.

Can you imagine if every artist dropped their “trivial” work to become full-time activists for the causes in which they believe? There would be no new songs or movies or plays or books to inspire and awaken us. And there would be no hope.

There’s nothing trivial about what we do. For the past 25 years, my entire body of work has centered on preserving history so we learn from it, honoring those who have been marginalized, speaking to the injustice of prejudice and the pain of bullying. My books have explored the themes of loyalty to country, the righteousness of war, the aftermath of suffering.

And they have celebrated the ordinary people working to make their nation and world better in whatever ways they can. My books are “just” fictional stories, and more than half of them are “merely” children’s books, but their messages are as relevant today as they were in the 1940s, when my books are set. And they will be relevant 75 years from now too. What has your art been telling us? What do you hope it will say moving forward?

Now is not the time to set aside our art, now is the time to recommit. I’m not at all saying artists, myself included, shouldn’t advocate for the causes they believe in and use their talents and voices to further those efforts. Those actions matter! I’m just saying, don’t minimize the importance of your art at the same time.

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Make No Apologies for How You Work

The other day, I was conducting an author visit at a middle school, and a sixth grader said, “I read about an author who gets up at 5:00 every morning to write. Is that what you do?”

“Honey,” I said, “I don’t do anything at 5:00 in the morning except sleep!”

I then explained to her how you were more likely to find me working on a new scene at midnight than at five a.m. And I told her what I firmly believe, that as artists we need to figure out what systems, methods, techniques, and time schedules work best for us, and then build our lives around those things.

I’ve gotten plenty of ridicule over my lifetime for being a night owl. I’ve been accused of being lazy because I’m a late riser and “spoiled” because I’ve set up a schedule that works best for me. This baffles me. If I go to bed at 1:00 a.m. and get up at 8:00, and you go to bed at 10:00 p.m. and get up at 5:00, we both get the same amount of sleep. So what difference does it make?

If one person needs all the latest technology to do his art well and another needs only the most modest tools, who is right? Neither, as long as they are doing what makes them feel most comfortable and efficient in their work.

A friend of mine was talking about his artistic son one day. “This boy,” he said, “sometimes he just jumps out of bed, heads straight to his computer and gets to work. He doesn’t even bother putting on pants.”

“Are pants necessary to the task he’s doing?” I asked.

My friend looked at me like I was crazy, but I’m not. As artists, we don’t have to conform to society’s rules if we are not hurting anyone. As long as we are not going bankrupt by buying more tools than we need or causing our family serious distress in any other way, we should never feel the need to apologize for how we work.

And if people want to make fun of us, let ‘em. If they want to call us “privileged” or “entitled” or “lazy” or “odd,” that’s their judgment and envy talking. We know how hard we work.

And we also know it’s pretty difficult to create with confidence if you are busy worrying about what other people think. So poke fun all you want. We’re not listening.

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New Video – How to Manage Your Research and Outlines

I’m taking a moment this week to draw your attention to my new writing video “How to Manage Your Research and Outlines.”

I know many of you are becoming more and more interested in stretching your writing skills and moving in new directions with your work. You may have been inspired by the start of a new year, the change in political and world events, a growing feeling of concern for our environment and human rights, a sense of urgency regarding everything from our economy to the effects of technology on our children. Or maybe you just want to tell a really good story.

If you are thinking about starting a new fiction or nonfiction project, this video will help you get off on the right foot!

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Why You Should Ignore Their Pain Points

As an author-entrepreneur I’ve attended many a class and read many a book on sales and marketing. So often I’m told that the first step in selling your products or services is to identify your buyer’s pain point, then you explain how your product or service is the solution to their pain.

Every time I hear this advice, I bristle. I once asked, “What if my customers don’t have a pain point?” (I was thinking that really the people who buy my books are just looking for a good read). “Then you convince them they do have a pain,” I was told. “They just don’t know it yet.”

Okay then, your pain (though you don’t know it) is that you are tired of reading so-so fiction and dismayed that you don’t know enough about your own country’s history, therefore you need my books. No, I’m serious, if you don’t buy my books, you’re going to regret the time you’ve wasted slogging through those mediocre stories and you’re going to feel more and more inadequate because you don’t know your history. My books are going to save you, especially given current events in the world. Convinced?  Good . . . click to my products page or hop over to Amazon and buy, buy, buy.

To be honest, I resent how advertisers take advantage of us. I resent that the sale is, so often, the only goal. I think it’s true that many people are selling products that truly meet a need, and I’m grateful for those products, but art is about more than feeding a need. Art is about the artist first examining his or her own pain points – what we need to understand about ourselves or our world right now–and then creating art to reflect that inner journey in the hopes that fellow journeyers will recognize themselves in the piece and a connection will be made. A true connection, not one born of manipulation.

I’ve been told I’ll never be a bestseller because I can’t embrace this notion of selling to your pain, and they are most likely right, but I’m okay with that. Some of my happiest moments are when people tell me, “I knew nothing about World War II and didn’t know if I’d like your book, but I loved it. Now I want to know more.”

In reading my story, they didn’t go looking for a solution to a problem, they took a chance on something new, something unfamiliar. They didn’t find a remedy which could provide rest and relief, they found the opposite, a pinprick that awakened in them questions and curiosity. Or maybe they just found a few hours of enjoyment. What’s wrong with that?

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When Good Words Turn Bad

While listening to a friend talk the other day about a moment of personal discovery, I had a realization . . . there are many words I use that I’d always thought of as “good” words, but I realized in certain circumstances, even a good word can turn “bad.”

Take “wish” for example – a word full of positive energy and hopefulness. “Make a wish, honey,” we say. But just as often when I say the words “I wish,” they are followed by negatives. “I wish she’d stop that. I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish this wasn’t so stupid.”

And what about this one, “I am.” Such a powerful statement on its own, but just as often, it leads off sentences like, “I am not very good at that. I’m too slow. I am such an idiot.”

Then there are words like “never” or “always,” which for all the times they can be used in the positive, can just as often be used in the negative.

As a writer, two of my favorite words when paired together are “What if?” That question has spawned many a great story. But I sometimes catch myself slipping toward doubt when I use these words. “What if it doesn’t work? What if she doesn’t like it? What if I’m wrong?”

Then again, I’m just as likely to use a negative phrase in a positive way. Take the phrase “So what?”  Makes you bristle just to hear it, right?  But it can also be motivating.

“I don’t want to submit this story. It might get rejected.”

“So what. Are you any worse off if it does?”

“I don’t want to call her, she might say no.”

“So what? Then at least you’ll know.”

Language has power and there is no such thing as a good word or a bad word, there is only how we use them and how we pair them. This last election taught us that. So be careful how you talk to or about others, but be careful how you talk to yourself as well.

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How to Be a Multicultural Artist/Writer

January 27 is Multicultural Children’s Book Day, and it brings me around to an interesting conversation that’s underway in the publishing community–whether anyone has the right to tell stories outside of their race or culture. I have friends whose story ideas have lately been turned down because they wanted to write about a race different than their own.

I write a multicultural children’s series set in World War II called The Home-Front Heroes, and from the moment I conceived of the series, I knew I’d be writing about different ethnic groups. Why? Because to tell the American story during one of the most critical times in our history, it’s impossible to view it through the lens of just one city or neighborhood. In the 1940s, it was rare for people to travel more than 50 miles from their homes. Your city, your neighborhood, and the people who surrounded you were your experience with the world. In many ways, that is still true today.

In my first book, my female character is white and living in rural Illinois. In the second, he is Japanese-American living in an internment camp. In the third, he’s Mexican-American living in San Antonio. And in the fourth, she’s Jewish and living in the Bronx. As a writer I had many concerns when starting these books:

–I did not live in the 1940s, so I would have to gain knowledge about that time period.

–I did grow up a young boy, so I would have to talk to my male friends, my husband, and my son to see how young boys think.

— I did not grow up in a small town (like my Illinois character) or a big city (like my children in the Bronx or San Antonio).

–I did not grow up Japanese-American or Jewish, and even though I am half-Mexican, I did not grow up strongly in that culture either.

I knew from the outset that this series would require not only deep research, but also real empathy. I would have to listen very carefully to the people I interviewed about their experiences and hold space in my head and heart for their truths, as they were told to me.

All writers write outside of our experience, even memoirists, because even though you lived it, once you cross that line and tell us what your mother said and how she said it, you are bringing your own interpretation to her experience. What I know full well as an historian is there is no such thing as absolute truth or even absolute fact. There is only how we interpret it, and our intention when we do so.

I’ve written numerous stories about men and women from various backgrounds, and I never take that responsibility lightly. I admit to having felt apprehension when my story about the African-American WAC in World War II was published in my book Dancing in Combat Boots. I wrote that story in dialect, because that is how the woman I interviewed talked. To be honest, I couldn’t have written it any other way if I tried. I worried when it came out, though, that I’d be criticized for that choice.

But my source called me when she received the book. She was thrilled. “And thank you for making me sound black,” she said. “Because now anyone who reads this story will know immediately this was my people this happened to.” Whether you agree with my decision or not, all that mattered to me was that I had done right by the woman whose story I told. To the best of my ability, I had captured her truth.

In other words, as one writer put it, there has to be a “why.” If there is a good reason for you to write that character, do it. But if you are throwing in a multi-cultural character just because, refrain.

As artists of all kinds, though, I believe we have a duty–a responsibility–to tell the stories that need to be told, especially now. Now is not the time to suppress a story simply because you’re not sure you are “allowed” to write it. Now, more than ever, we need diverse stories and perspectives and we need people who will tell them with respect and empathy. If you can do that, then embrace your art!

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The Pendulum Theory of Art and Politics

When I was pursuing my history degree in college, I learned about the Pendulum Theory, or so my professor called it. According to the theory, history (and especially politics) swings to one direction until it reaches a tipping point (usually driven by popular mood) and then it swings back. This makes living in a two-party democracy like ours challenging at times. A Republican candidate may gain the presidency for 4-8 years, and then oftentimes the pendulum swings toward a Democratic candidate, and then back again. In most cases, the new president spends at least a portion of his time undoing what the previous president did!

As frustrating as this sometimes feels, the reality is that progress does get made. We did finally achieve the vote for women and African Americans, for example, and that was never overturned.

I read once of a pendulum theory regarding the visual arts, too. How it swings back and forth between line and composition and color as the supreme value. Maybe my writer or musician friends know of a similar comparison in literature or music.

I’ve even read this theory applied to sales. If the salesperson’s pendulum swings too much toward prospect meetings, they don’t have time to close deals. If it swings too much toward closing deals, their prospects dry up.

I think, as artists, we do this in another way too. We swing between making art for art’s sake and making art for money’s sake. We may even swing in our artistic themes or belief systems.

The point is, if you stick to this business long enough, eventually the things that matter most will stick. And you’ll have a diverse body of work that will tell a story, your story. I think there’s value in that.

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Don’t Let Them Tell You It’s Too Easy

Last week I talked about how my professors’ high expectations motivated me. This week, I want to put a slightly different spin on that. See, I was a history major, which meant writing tons of 10 and 20-page papers. One year, I was taking a Native American Studies class. My professor was passionate about her subject. She gave us some suggestions for our final papers, but also told us we could choose our own topic.

I decided to write about how Native Americans had been portrayed in film. When I turned in the paper, my professor called me into her office. She tossed the paper at me and said, “What is this? This is not scholarly study, this is pop culture. It’s fluff.”

“I disagree,” I said. “Pop culture is what most people relate to. The vast majority of the citizens in this country know nothing about Native American culture or policy. What they know about Indians is only what they have seen on film. They believe a Hollywood myth.”

“That is not why you wrote this paper,” she said. “You wrote it because it was easy. You can take a B (after all, I had done all the research required) or you can rewrite it.”  I chose to take the B, mostly because I was angry with her for not seeing my point. I confess there was a flicker of truth in her accusation, though I hadn’t chosen the topic because it was “easy,” I chose it because it interested me, and it’s easier to write a long paper when you are engaged.

But of all the papers I wrote in college that is one of the few I remember well. And to this day, I’m watchful of how Hollywood portrays Native Americans and all ethnic groups. I question what I see on the big screen. I seek to learn more. I share my concerns with others.

My point here is, don’t let anyone tell you your art is “beneath you” or “too easy.” If you worked hard on it, if it has meaning to you, if you see value in it, if you are learning and growing, the work is what it needs to be.

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Are You Living Up To Their Expectations?

On the last day of classes during my senior year of college, I dropped in to say good-bye to my professors. I was graduating in a few days with a degree in history and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my education. When the dean asked me about my plans, and I confessed I had no clue, he said something I’ve never forgotten. “Let me tell you something, Teresa. Every year we teachers take a poll at the faculty meeting to decide which of our graduating students we think will go on to do something special. Which one we think we should keep an eye on. And we unanimously decided it was you.”

I left his office stunned. My teachers had sometimes seemed to expect more from me than other students, but I assumed that was because I often challenged the status quo (and sometimes their teachings). Not one of them, though, had ever taken me under his/her wing. Knowing then that this entire group of people had high expectations for my success made me feel both honored and scared. What if I never figured out how to use the knowledge they had shared? What if I tried to use it and failed?

Ask yourself who were the people who noticed your talents and potential long before you did? Who were the ones who believed in you before you believed in yourself? Who are the people who have never stopped waiting for you to impress them?  Are you living up to their expectations or have you given up? They may have been right or wrong about the direction you would take, but they believed you would figure it out. Have you?

Most of my professors have passed on now, but I’ll go to my grave hoping I earned the faith they put in me. Though none of them kept in touch after I graduated, and most of them probably never knew what the dean had told me, that passing comment helped give me the motivation to eventually pursue my dreams.

So when you see talent, call it out. You may provide just the right amount of encouragement to a fellow artist when he/she needs it most. And when someone shows faith in you, don’t dismiss it. Sometimes others know better than we do of what we are capable!

 

P.S. This is my 150th post on this blog! If you like it, please share it.

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