Richard Harris's Blog, page 48

The Importance of Mental Health for Freelancers and Artists

Although the title of this piece is “Entrepreneurship and Your Mental Health,” it could just as easily be applied to artists and professional freelancers. Joshua Davidson has written an excellent piece on the importance of mental health for those of us who spend many hours working alone and/or making all the tough decisions unilaterally.

If you’re thinking of going off on your own or starting your own enterprise, the words “complacency” and “procrastination” have to be eliminated from your vocabulary. If self-motivation and a drive to succeed despite the inevitable hardships you will face are not part of your nomenclature, perhaps this is not the right road for you.

More specifically, as Davidson points out, you will undoubtedly face some sense of depression or loneliness along the way. As he puts it:

You see, the reason that I am writing this particular blog post is because some of the most talented, successful and driven entrepreneurs I have ever met are, most often, the most depressed.

They lack the feeling of fulfillment. They feel isolated. They’re stuck in a mental corner, so to speak.

From an outsider’s perspective, that might seem a bit crazy. How can someone who has created their own destiny, been accomplished and driven success, feel this way?

But it’s not all doom and gloom, nor is it all sunshine and rainbows. The grass, as they say, is always filled with more chlorophyll on the other side. Self-fulfillment and stability are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but more often than not they tend to be in the real world.

Ultimately, however, Davidson makes a good point in highlighting the importance of mental health, especially if you’re going it alone. As he puts it, there’s no shame in talking to someone, even a therapist, about the challenges you face professionally. After all, without a strong, sound mind, how effective/productive can you really be?

“I’m a best-selling author and I failed to get a book deal”

The bestselling author of Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty, David Kadavy, wrote a piece called “I’m a best-selling author and I failed to get a book deal” about the difficulty of finding an agent even when you’re a Top 20 author on amazon.com.

Now I don’t feel so bad.

Must-Read WW I Novels

Ouch! According to a list compiled by dictionary.com on must-read fiction about World War I, I am a dullard and a fathead. Of the seven books included on the list, I’ve read but two of them. The books are as follows: The Return of the Soldier (Rebecca West), Three Soldiers (John Dos Passos), Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo), A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway), Good-bye to All That (Robert Graves), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (Siegfried Sassoon), and All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque).

For those who enjoy non-fiction books on the subject more, I’d definitely recommend the all-time classic, The Guns of August (Barbara Tuchman), and Paris 1919 (Margaret MacMillan).

 

Remembering Raymond Carver

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

(from the inscription on Raymond Carver’s tombstone)

James Carver recently wrote a very nice piece about love, literature and remembrance that he posted on medium.com called “A Tribute to Raymond Carver on His Birthday, by His Brother James — With Never-Before-Seen Family Photos” to commemorate his late brother’s birthday, which was May 25. His big bro was an American literary giant in his day, author of notable works like Cathedral and the stories “Why Don’t You Dance?” and “Errand.” Although he lived a somewhat scandalous, alcohol-fueled life (on a par with other writers like Hemingway, Kerouac and Fitzgerald at times), he’s regarded as a titan in the field of American literature, as evidenced by his induction in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988.

For those who’ve read Raymond Carver, the link might not seem so obvious, but he actually had a profound effect on another giant’s writing: Murakami Haruki, author of international bestsellers like The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and A Wild Sheep Chase and, more up Carver’s alley, short story collections like The Elephant Vanishes. Today, there’s even a Japanese professor named Hosea Hirata who teaches a course on the subject and the correlation between the two authors.

For those not in the know, and as his go-to translator Jay Rubin wrote about in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Murakami used to very much enjoy his Suntory time, maybe not as much as Carver liked his booze, but the two connected early in the Japanese writer’s career, when he was just trying to get a foot in the door with the whole translation thing. In fact, as Rubin documents in detail, another American literary great, John Irving, whom Murakami went jogging with in Central Park to earn Garp’s trust (which he did after proclaiming his admiration of Setting Free the Bears – ouch!), represented one more of Murakami’s earliest inroads to the country’s literary establishment.

That said, I like what brother James had to say at the end of his short piece, as it sums up not only his relationship with his brother, but many of our own relationships with a lot of the people whom we love:

“I miss my brother very much. I loved him and respected him enormously…We can’t really get inside the other person’s mind to see how it ticks; we can never know the true feelings one may have for another. We can only be guided by the things said and the feelings shown to us by the other person, and believe it to be true. Ray captured the complexity of those relationships, in love or outside of love.”

A Linguistic Approach to Elbowgate

Writing for the Globe and Mail, Russell Smith penned a very interesting piece, “The Elbowgate apology and the impact of despised buzzwords,” on the most recent scandal to hit this usually scandal-free country: Lecranonportcullis.

AKA: Elbowgate.

 

2016 Trillium Book Award Nominees

Here are some exciting facts about the white trillium flower. It’s a genus of perennial flowering plants native to temperate regions of North America and Asia. Excited yet? How about this doozie! It serves as the emblem and official flower of Ontario and is an official symbol of the Government of Ontario. Not fired up yet? Well, the large white trillium is also the official wildflower of Ohio, and because of their shared connection to the trillium, Major League Soccer teams in Toronto and Columbus compete with each other for the Trillium Cup. Wowzers!

Actually, the more exciting fact tied to this very pretty flower is that it’s the symbol of the Trillium Book Award/Prix Trillium. Yes, even our awards can be bilingual in Canada! In any case, nominations were announced yesterday and, I’m pleased to announce, authors from independent publishers dominated the nominee list.

Created in 1987, the Trillium Book Award is the real deal. Winners in both the English and French book categories get $20,000 each (with the publisher receiving $2,500), while winners of the poetry collection award in both languages get $10,000 each (and publishers a cool $2,000).

Congratulations to all the nominees and their respective publishers. Click here to see this year’s English- and French-language book/poetry nominees. Winners will be announced on June 22.

Grants for Short Film Projects

For all my friends in the film business, check this one out:
Every 4 months, at least one filmmaker will win this production grant of up to $20,000 in production funds. We announce the winner(s) 6 weeks after the final deadline.

 We are accepting applications from around the world (in English). Whether you have a simple screenplay or a short film that’s already in production, we want to consider your short screenplay or in-production short film project.

If your aspirations are solely to become a produced screenwriter, you can rely on ScreenCraft and BondIt to package the winning short film screenplay with a talented director and in-house production resources with up to  $20,000 in financing. 

Click here to apply online. Deadline is July 31, 2016.

Paying Heed to Einstein, Cloaking Your Daggers

Albert E. once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” I think about that quote almost every time someone asks me about my fiction. “I can’t believe you went through what you did!” readers will say after finishing A Father’s Son. “Your dad seemed like a really good person at heart. I’m sorry it ended the way it did.”

“Whoa whoa whoa!” I’ll say. “Hold the teletype machine. It’s a work of fiction.”

“Oh,” the person will reply, like this has unlocked some convoluted mystery for them even though it says “A NOVEL” right below the title on the cover of the book. “So is it based on truth?”

I was reminded of this anecdote recently when doing some background research on one of my favourite books, The Count of Monte Cristo. I think it goes without saying that Alexandre Dumas was one of the great writers of the 19th century and is a formidable presence in the Western canon of literature. However, the Count was essentially a retelling of what happened in real life to Pierre Picaud. Today, nobody remembers who this Pierre fellow was, but most people can tell you they’ve heard of Monte Cristo, either as the page-turning story of revenge or as a fried sandwich.

What was Dumas’ secret? Keeping his secret a secret! Journalists do it every day in the name of “exposing the truth.” Artists have been doing it since the beginning of time. The fact of the matter is this: No person is an island. We’re influenced and impacted by the events that unfold around us. The key to genius – at least artistically – is how to shape these events in such a way that makes them relatable and enjoyable and inspiring.

I think I’ll keep that in mind this morning as I return to my current work in progress and write about events and people that aren’t real, but will hopefully come across as completely believable to the reader.

Reading Nook Sweeps

For everyone out there who loves authors like Alberto Manguel and books such as The Library at Night, here’s a contest to win a mac daddy library in your own home. Per the contest description:

“Calling all bookworms! This is your chance to win a fully furnished reading nook courtesy of Room & Board and Penguin Random House, complete with chair, end table, floor lamp, and most importantly, bookshelf–plus, a library of books in the genres you love.”

Click here to enter for your chance to have a reading nook built in your home. Contest closes June 8, 2016 and is open only to U.S. residents.

Ontario Arts Council Writing Grant Deadline Approaching

The Ontario Arts Council has money to grant artists in the fields of crafts, dance, theatre, literature, music and visual & media arts. For established writers, there are grants of $12,000 available for the purpose of subsidizing their living expenses while they complete book-length works of poetry and prose. The next deadline for this program, called Writers’ Works in Progress, is June 15, 2016. The basic guidelines are as follows:

Program for: Individuals

Purpose: To assist professional writers to complete book-length works of literary merit.

Eligibility: Ontario-based professional writers may apply for support for the continuation of new work in poetry or prose.

Graphic novels and other comic arts projects will be received at a separate deadline of December 1, 2016. Please see Writers’ Works in Progress – Comic Arts for the guidelines and application.

Click here to learn more about the grant and download the application. Good luck!