January 19th: Interview with Eric Maisel, Ph.D and Author

Welcome, everyone. I’m excited and pleased to host our very first (of many) author interview with Eric Maisel, Ph.D.

If you’ve not yet read any of Eric’s insightful books on the writing life, you truly are missing out. (Remember, you can win you own copy by entering my January contest...see details to the right) As creative-minded folks, we struggle with a variety of issues with making meaning that are often misunderstood by others.

Eric’s lessons come in many formats if you don’t have time to read (though you should…): check out his podcasts and MP3 files available for download.

Eric’s experience as a creativity coach and trainer of creativity coaches makes him a premier expert on what drives the creative mind. (I know firsthand—I just finished my first creativity coaching course with Eric and found it one of the most enlightening writing-related courses I’ve ever taken).

Today wraps up the end of the first week for Eric on his virtual book. You can view the entire tour schedule here. I’ll share here some thoughts I think you will find most helpful and insightful for your own writing career.

Interview: Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and author of “The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression”.

Beth: Welcome, Eric, and thank you for your dedication to exploring the creative mind. In “The Van Gogh Blues”, you stress the importance of creating a life plan sentence/statement to guide writers and other creative minds toward achieving their purpose. Could you explain more about the importance of creating a life plan sentence/statement?

Eric: If you agree to commit to active meaning-making, you need to know where to make your meaning investments, both in the short-term sense of knowing what to do with the next hour and in the long-term sense of knowing which novel you are writing or which career you’re pursuing.

Having a life purpose statement or life plan statement in place serves as an ongoing reminder of the sorts of meaning investments that you intend to make, both short-term and long-term, and helps you make the right “meaning decision” about where to spend your capital and how to realize your potential.

Beth: (just another reminder to my readers about the importance of goals and planning, this month’s theme at Writer-In-Progress!)….(now back to the interview…)

Eric, your work doesn’t only center on the writer but the creative mind in whatever medium that particular mind feels most comfortable to creating meaning in (painters, musicians, graphic artists, etc.). While the examples of creatives in the book are great, they are primarily folks who have chosen mediums with long, drawn-out deadlines.

How would you advise the person who has a purpose with tight deadlines, such as being a news reporter or romance author on deadline to jumpstart themselves when they find themselves spiraling downward?

Eric: It depends in part whether what they are doing matters to them and feels meaningful. If it doesn’t feel meaningful, then the answer is that they either need to reinvest meaning in their choice or find other meaningful work—this is true whether we face daily deadlines or annual deadlines.

If it is meaningful work, then the trick is to remember to construct a parallel life in which you fashion and enjoy relationships, because one meaning container, even one we love (say, investigative reporting) does not meet all of our human needs.

To put this simply, you meet your deadline and then, instead of getting it into your head that you are already onto your next deadline, you say, “Time for love.” You change pace, make meaning in another way, and feel less like you are on a perpetual treadmill.

Beth: I often joke I have the cleanest bathroom on the block whenever I have an impending deadline—at those times, I’d rather be busy at anything other than writing—usually because I’m doubting my abilities as a competent writer. For that reason, I really related to chapter 14 on Taking Action.

In it, you discuss that even the smallest steps toward creating are valid. Can you give us an example of the self-talk an artist needs to engage in when she makes that transition from busyness to stepping boldly into action?

Eric: The first step is to completely stop—not to slow down but to completely stop. Learning how to do this (and it isn’t easy, especially in our culture that promotes speed, fracture, and a short attention span) makes all the difference in a creative person’s life, as internal busyness is completely eliminated if in fact you actually stop, quiet your mind, and allow yourself to calmly grow present.

The self-talk is exactly “I am completely stopping,” followed by the idea that you intend to calmly create without worrying about outcomes—that you are just intending to be present and to do your work. If a doubt or a worry intrudes, you dispute it by saying “I’m not interested in that doubt” or “I reject that worry,” return yourself to deep silence, and continue “just working.”

B: In that chapter (14), you deliniate between taking action vs. busywork, and give us the example of making soup. Do you think there's ever a time when busywork is actually helpful toward getting us to take action? If so, can you expand on that?

Eric: There is a sense in which doing anything is better than doing nothing, because doing nothing almost always leads to brooding, the sense of time passing and being wasted, and a small meaning crisis. Furthermore, many of the things that we find meaningful to do, for instance writing a novel or starting a business, require tons of steps that are tedious, uninteresting, and meaningless in their own right—and yet they are very important because they serve our meaning needs and without them we could not make meaning. So in these senses at least, opting to do something rather than nothing is almost always the right choice.

Beth: On the first page of chapter 14, you list things that are considered "actions". All of them are physical, require movement and effort to accomplish. However, one "action" is unlike the others--"thinking about your scientific theory". Thinking, then, is a non-physical action, but to many writers, it sometimes feels like we're wasting time. It's very hard to see "thinking" as a valid action when fingers are not typing or pens are not rolling across the page. Are there ways us writers who equate "action" with "physical" to train ourselves to view "thinking" as "physical" (thereby valid)?

Eric: Writing is thinking—it is not typing. The thinking may be conscious or it may occur out of conscious awareness, but if we are not thinking then we are doing something more reflexive and ultimately formulaic. It may SEEM like our best writing is automatic and instinctual but in fact it is a considered outcome of the work are neurons are doing thinking about these particular characters in this particular plot line or these particular principles in this particular work of nonfiction. Very often when a writer is “blocked” all that is happening is that he is feeling too anxious to think about his piece and see what it needs. If you want to write well, then think well. Whether or not thinking is precisely an action, it is definitely what’s required.



That's it for now....



I'd like to thank Eric for taking the time to stop by and enlighten us with his thoughts on how to help the creative mind flourish. You can read more from Eric on the rest of his whirlwind blog tour by visiting the sites listed.



In the meantime, start writing that 100 word story to win your very own copy of The Van Gogh Blues! Time's a wastin'! (check out the sidebar to the right for more details)



Beth