You are an artist — and you are also a project manager. You are obliged to create plans and schedules, to set goals, and to monitor the state of your creative projects, your creative career, and your creative life. Before we turn to an examination of you as project manager, let’s summarize a bit. The following are seven key ideas that summarize the material we’ve been covering:
1. Understand what you are up against. Our personalities produce difficulties, the creative work we attempt produces difficulties, and the world we live in, which includes our society, our relationships, and the art marketplace, produces difficulties. Fully acknowledging the extent to which our life is a project beset by this array of difficulties and shadows, and that it will always be beset by this array of difficulties and shadows, is better than hoping and pining for the facts of existence to be different. You are not easy, writing your novel is not easy, and selling your novel is not easy. So be it.
2. Take your own side. What will make this marathon race easier is being your own best friend, advocate, and advisor. This means creating strong intentions that meet your vision of how you want to live and how you want to make yourself proud, aligning your thoughts with those intentions and ridding yourself of thoughts that do not serve you, and aligning your behaviors with your intentions and ridding yourself of behaviors that do not align with your intentions. When you nominate yourself as the hero of your own story, you start to think and act like that hero.
3. Show up. What will also make this marathon race easier, in addition to your taking your own side, is showing up, not attaching to outcomes, and embracing the reality of process. You go into the dark and you do the work. You do not keep trying to turn on a light that does not exist, a light that will allow you to know before you know and that will prevent you from making mistakes and messes. You do not keep wishing and hoping that each thing you begin will turn out well. Each new day is a day to sit down, surrender, and do the work.
4. Explore your anxieties and learn anxiety-management techniques. Anxieties plague artists, and it is vital that you understand the role that anxiety plays in your life, where and how it manifests itself, and what you are going to do about it. Anxiety may be preventing you from learning difficult repertoire, from trying your hand at painting in a new idiom, from entering or doing well at competitions, from talking to agents, even from approaching the blank canvas or the blank computer screen. Anxiety is your friend since it can accurately warn you of danger; it is your enemy since it can stir up your defenses for no good reason; and it is your lifelong partner.
5. Practice some existential magic. Get in the habit of creating new meaning in your life, of investing meaning in your current ideas and projects and in new ideas and projects, of starting each day in right relationship to meaning by announcing that you matter, that your efforts matter, and that you are going to seize meaning opportunities as they arise.
6. Have a life. Don’t imagine that creating well or having a successful career in the arts is enough. You also need a life — or, to put it in meaning language, you need to make meaning in more ways than just via creating. Luckily, many additional meaning opportunities are available to you. That rich life might include relationships, a meaningful second career, activism, a disciplined practice of some sort in addition to your morning creativity practice, along with time-outs, relaxation, enjoyment, and “meaning-neutral” periods during which you don’t pester yourself about meaning.
7. Prove the exception. Most people won’t create regularly. Don’t follow in their footsteps. Most people won’t market their work energetically. Don’t follow in their footsteps. Most people will avoid the darkness of not knowing and never go deep. Don’t follow in their footsteps. Most people will never engage in the kind of personal analysis and self-awareness that I’ve been preaching, analysis that includes, for example, identifying what language doesn’t serve you and changing it. Don’t follow in their footsteps. Prove the exception!
Daily, Monthly, and Long-Range Planning
As a lifelong project manager, you are obliged to engage in daily, monthly, and long-range planning. Here are some tips to help with all three. Let’s begin with eight straightforward elements of a daily plan:
1. Start each day with a simple, eloquent plan, such as “I am writing today.”
2. Create a daily mantra that you use to keep yourself on track. It might be something like “I stay the course” or “Process” or “Effort, not outcome” or any other phrase that resonates for you.
3. Actively plan your day. Get a picture of when you’re creating, how many creative stints you’re penciling in, when you mean to do your art business, and so on. Plan your day to include both creating and the business of art.
4. First thing each day, take a moment to think through where you want to invest meaning, and then move effortlessly and without a fuss directly into your morning creativity practice.
5. Plan for anything else that you consider important, like an AA meeting, some cognitive work, or some anxiety-management work.
6. If you start to get down, remember to choose meaning over mood and to talk yourself back from doubts, worries, sadness, and all the rest. Try to keep yourself focused on the meaning you intend to make and not on the mood you find yourself in.
7. Be prepared to use small increments of time as they arise. Part of daily planning is remaining on your toes throughout the day so that you can deal with everyday emergencies and changed circumstances and use time as it arises for additional creative stints and additional business efforts.
8. Go to bed mindfully, maybe by posing yourself a sleep-thinking prompt such as “I wonder what John and Mary want to chat about in chapter 2?” or “I wonder whom to approach with my new suite of paintings?” By going to bed this way, you ask your brain to continue working on your behalf and you set yourself up for a productive next morning.
Next, let’s look at eight straightforward elements of a three-month plan (you can plan in a monthly way or you can plan in a three-monthly way; I think that choosing three months is a good idea):
1. Create a system that allows you to keep track of three months at a time. You might use a large white board, a software solution, or an old-fashioned paper planner.
2. Identify weekly creative goals. You’ll be identifying daily goals as part of your daily planning; as part of your three-month planning, identify weekly goals like “complete a draft of chapter 2” or “start and finish one pumpkin painting.”
3. Identify weekly marketing goals. This might sound like “contact two dozen literary agents with my email query” or “start the process of finding someone to build my website” or “search the net for London art galleries that might take an interest in my work.”
4. Create backward timelines from when things are due or from when things are needed, and pencil in the appropriate target goals. For example, if your manuscript is due to your publisher in six months, create a backward timeline from that deadline and pencil in weekly goals that align with meeting that deadline.
5. Pencil in special events, such as open studio weekends or gallery visits. Also pencil in the special risks you’d like to take, for instance, by choosing a particular day when you intend to cold-call that gallery owner you’ve had your eye on.
6. Note your networking opportunities during the coming three months. These might include the annual party that local publishers throw downtown, the openings of other artists’ shows, the conference your romance writers’ chapter is holding that agents and editors are attending, and so on.
7. Pencil in the vacations you mean to take with your creative work — the weekend in the country you’re setting aside to plot your mystery, the day at the shore in the company of your sketchbook, and so on.
8. Pencil in dates with your other loves. If your novel is your primary creative project during this three-month period, but you also want to work on an art quilt and get a piece of wearable art made, you indicate on your calendar which Saturday you’re devoting to the one and which weekend you’re devoting to the other. In this way you get your main creative work done, but you also pay attention to your other interests.
Naturally you’ll need to update this three-month picture as you go (which is one reason I like to use erasable boards). For example, if you happen not to meet a weekly goal, you simply forgive yourself and you recalibrate your goals for the remainder of the three months. In this way you know exactly what you’re intending to accomplish each week and you keep yourself regularly updated.
Next, let’s look at long-range planning. Here are eight things to keep in mind:
1. Maintain a sensible balance between dreaming big dreams and testing those dreams in the crucible of reality. Part of your long-range planning should include some regular way of making sure that you still have dreams and some regular way of making sure that you are being real in your efforts to realize those dreams. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself on the matter of dream-upholding and reality-testing.
2. Include some regular way of reminding yourself that while creating is not the only meaning opportunity available to you, it is one of your most important ones. Also remind yourself that if you’re feeling low on meaning, creating is a great way to make some new meaning. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself about how often you are using your ability to create as part of your meaning-making efforts.
3. Keep track of how well or how poorly you’re doing with the rhythm of starting creative projects, working on them, completing them, showing them, and selling them. That is, you want to make sure that you are going through lots and lots of complete cycles with projects and not just starting them and abandoning them. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself on how often you are finishing the things that you start.
4. Keep track of how quickly or how slowly your body of work is growing. Your goal, of course, is to make seamless transitions from creative project to creative project and to build a satisfying body of work over time. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or longrange planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself to make sure that you are actively building a body of work, which is one of the ways that we make ourselves proud.
5. Keep track of your marketplace connections and of changes in the marketplace that affect you. To take one example, you keep track of current self-publishing options and how the electronic delivery of books has changed the publishing landscape. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself on whether your understanding of the marketplace is up-to-date enough.
6. Regularly catch up with yourself and keep track of milestones, developmental changes, and whatever else is new in your life. You aren’t quite the same person after you’ve had a few gallery shows as you were before you had your first one; you aren’t quite the same person after your novel has been rejected fifty times as you were before you began sending it out. Our life experiences matter — and it’s hard to know how they matter unless we stop and check in with ourselves. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself about who you now are and what matters to you.
7. Keep track of how well you’re dealing with the many challenges that we’ve been discussing, such as marketplace disappointments, losses of confidence, new stressors, and all the rest. You want to keep sharp track so that you will be quick to notice if some challenge or another is getting the better of you. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself about the challenges you face and about how exactly you intend to address them.
8. Continue your cognitive work and maintain it in an ongoing way, noticing those thoughts that don’t serve you, disputing those thoughts, and substituting more useful inner language. If you decide to keep some sort of ongoing or long-range planner, you will want to regularly check in with yourself on how well your self-talk is serving you.
The average youth finds planning and scheduling too boring for words. As we grow older, it dawns on us that creating a smart routine amounts to a real service that only we can provide for ourselves. Phrases such as daily practice take on a new, poignant meaning as we notice how much time we’ve lost by not planning and scheduling and by not keeping to our plans and schedules. Institute simple, sensible daily plans, monthly (or three-monthly) plans, and long-range plans. You’re unlikely to achieve your best life in the arts without them.
Envisioning the Coming Twelve Months
Use the following tips for getting a handle on your next twelve months:
1. Pick a distant target date for the completion of a big project — say, Mother’s Day for the completion of your suite of flower paintings. In your mind’s eye, slowly move through the calendar year toward your target date, experiencing the generous amount of time at your disposal between the present moment and your completion date.
2. Get seven decks of cards and lay them all out on your living room rug. The cards in front of you amount to a year’s worth of days, give or take a few. Let the magnitude of this sink in. Experience the wonderful availability of time.
3. Do a little simultaneous picturing. Picture you creating in your work space. Simultaneously experience the fullness of a year. Connect these two rich feelings into one feeling of abundance.
4. Picture in your mind’s eye the amount of creative work you’d like to accomplish in the coming year, mentally calculate how much time that allows for each project, and then write out your goals for the whole year on a one-year calendar.
5. Carefully count the number of days separating two holidays — for instance, the number of days separating New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July — and envision starting a large project on that first holiday and completing it by the second.
6. Picture a single month in your mind’s eye. You might picture the calendar page for January, say, and mentally pencil in a slew of creating days. Be optimistic, and fill that month with your creative efforts; and then in your mind’s eye move on to February, then March, and so on.
7. Create a backward timeline, or several backward timelines, from important dates in the coming year, like the two gallery shows that you know about, the delivery date of your nonfiction manuscript, deadlines for grants and residencies, and so on.
8. Create a backward timeline, or several backward timelines, from important goals that you intend to set for yourself in the coming twelve months. Say that you decide you want to have six new sculptures done by June 1, before you leave for your annual vacation. Figure out how much time that allows for each one, and transfer that information to your three-month calendar.
9. Think through the contours of the year. Are you busy teaching for three months and then freer to create during the two months thereafter? Calculate in your mind’s eye how much work you’ll tackle in those busy months and how much more work you’ll tackle in those freer months.
10. Create an actual, full-year, oversize calendar, maybe made up of twelve large sheets of paper that fill a whole wall. On those big sheets you would mark workshop dates, conference dates, contest deadlines, and so on, as well as your creative goals. You might use this instead of your three-month calendar or in addition to it — using it in addition is not overkill, since you really can’t have too much organization!
You have a human-size chance to create a subjectively rich and objectively successful life in the arts. You better your odds by thoughtfully considering the issues I’ve presented and by making a concerted effort to arrive at your personalized conclusions and solutions. It is really unlikely that your best life in the arts will just happen. Yes, luck is a factor; yes, there’s no accounting for the gods of whimsy. But I hope that you now know what you need to do. There’s nothing left to do but to wish you the best of luck!