One Being Creative . . . my book on leading an art-full life.

Introduction (DRAFT) to David’s new book on how to lead a more creative and rewarding life.

Comments are welcome.

Introduction

The content of this book comes from my life as a journalist, photographer, workshop leader, from my research and readings, and the conversations I’ve had over the past 40 years with my fellow artists. My own curiosity, about who I am, and who other creative people are, how creative people learn and lead purposeful lives, has fueled my research into the creative process. It’s been a marvelous voyage, and while far from over, it is time to share what I’ve discovered . . . so far.

In 1972, at the age of 32, I was a working photographer and magazine writer–covering ski racing and photographing some of the world’s great mountains. While the work was exciting and glamorous, it was not deeply satisfying. I was searching of a more soulful work. I took a photojournalism workshop with the then Director of Photography at the National Geographic, Bob Gilka. I was hoping he’d hire me and give my life purpose. While Gilka did not hire me, he and the workshop he led set my life on a new path, one that continues today. In a way, I got what I went for, but it took a while to realize it.

That next summer, 1973, still searching for what to do with the rest of my life, I started a summer workshop program here in the Maine Coast– based loosely on The Center of The Eye, the workshop center I’d attended the previous summer. My plans were to do this for just that one summer, to hold workshops that I could learn from, while sharing the experience I’d had experienced. That summer, my small staff and I conducted about twenty one and two-week workshops in the basement of the old Town Hall in Rockport, Maine. 150 Photographers showed up. They came from throughout the country and Canada. We grossed a little less than $100,000 that first summer and came close to paying for this experiment of mine. I was out of pocket about $10,000 by the end of the summer, but I’d had one helluva an education. I never did get to take part in a workshops that first summer . . . I was too busy running the place, solving plumbing problems, dealing with staff, housing, toilet paper, and faculty that failed to show up. . . . in fact over the 33 years I ran my school, I have not had time to take even one workshop. I’ve been on a wild horse all these years, hanging on for dear life, but loving it.

The Workshops is now world famous. About 2,500 photographers and filmmakers coming from around the world each summer at attend hundreds of workshops and residencies. In addition to the one-week workshops there is a college graduate program that I founded in 1996–Rockport College. There are now workshops throughout the world, all based on what I discovered those first summers in Maine and what I experience in Aspen during my first workshop. The Workshops is now a $5 million a year educational empire, or it was when I turned it over to a nonprofit organization (Maine Media) in the winter of 2007. After 33 years as owner, CEO, visionary, and janitor I’m free of the wild horse I created and that has dominated my life for three decades. I can now get on with the rest of my life, returning to where I was that first summer, beginning a new pathway. Now nearing 70, with a young family, I am returning to my mid 30s to write this book that I promised myself I would write. I am far from retirement, nor do I wish to retire. Working, writing, making images and films, doing research, talking with younger artists, and chewing the fat with my peers about the changes we’ve experienced these past 30 years this is my desire. I’ve been extremely lucky these years. The Workshops has been my personal research laboratory, a living library, and a think-tank where I’ve been free to explore the process of being creative with my peers, masters and students. My observations of the workshop process: the “Transformational Experience” that each students goes through in a one-week workshops, has lead me to create hundreds of learning experiences for photographers, filmmakers, writers and media artists and technicians. My own creative drives as an entrepreneur led me to build the three institutions that are now thriving, under the brand Maine Media Workshops. My association with some of the world’s most creative photographers and filmmakers has provided me with insights into their lives, the blocks they’ve bested and the success they have realized. The students in the workshops I teach each summer; Discovering Your Creative Potential, have taught me how to teach, or better how to allow them to learn.

The Introduction to “On Being Creative”

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As The Workshops’ Director, it was my responsibility each Sunday evening to welcome each new group of students. We met after dinner, the students, the staff and faculty. It was my role to remind each participant why they came, what the week would be like, what to watch out for, and how to make the most of the intense experience. I introduced the Staff and the Faculty and sent them off to meet in their respective class spaces. I’ll share some of what that lecture entailed a little later.

My Sunday evening lecture expanded, as I added more and more insights into “The Workshops Process.” My staff told me I was packing too much in at one time and so I moved some of the more philosophical material to a new lecture. Monday morning seemed the ideal time: 8 to 9 AM, just before the individual workshops began. I didn’t know if anyone would show up, but they all came, the students, the faculty as well and some of the staff. This one-hour lecture took on a life of its own. Over the years, I added more of my observations and discoveries. The lecture became an important and integral part of the “workshops experience” in Maine. The Faculty and the students provided encouragement, made suggestions of readings I might include, as they shared their own stories and insights with me.

I looked forward to giving my lecture each Monday morning for 30 years. Each lecture was unique, as I wove the elements together in a different way, to keep it fresh for me, as well as those who had heard it before. Students, faculty and friends have asked me to put the lectures into a book for at least 20 years now. I have already written a great deal of this book over the years in essays, magazine articles, and handouts for my one-week workshops. What I have not done is pull everything together into a book. I now find, with the time to write a book, that I am creatively stuck. I, like the students I have mentored and advised over the years, am faced with a block that I must overcome or find a way around, if this book is to be. First, I want this book to be mine, not written by someone else. I want to go through the process myself, and come out the other end having done it myself. I want to learn what the process is like to have written a book, not read about some other writer’s experience. Also, I want it to be perfect. But, with these self-imposed restrictions I am where many people find themselves: stuck.

So, I took a page from my lecture. First: “Go find an expert to guide you through the process.”

Luckily, I live in a community of writers, novelists, poets and agents here on the Maine Coast. One such chap is Hodding Carter, a prolific writer with six books to his credit, including one of this summer’s releases, OFF THE DEEP END: The Probably Insane Ideas That I Could Swim My Way Through A Midlife Crisis. Hodding and I met for lunch at Boyton McKay, a cafe here in Camden, to discuss my book idea.

“It’s all about stories . . . ,” Hodding Carter said over the pulled-pork sandwich I’d bought him. “David. You are a storyteller. You are not a scholar. The points in the lecture are valuable, and they work well in a lecture. In a book, people do not hear the passion in your voice; you have to use other techniques to get your points point across. Tell stories.”

Hodding also introduced me to my agent, Tris Coburn, who lives nearby, so we shared another lunch.

“This outline you’ve given me, and your credentials as the founder of a major creative center, are enough to get you started. Now, here’s what you have to do.” Tris outlined the steps I needed to go through to get the book published. “You need to write a proposal. I’ll send you a few samples, so you can see the structure and content. You’ll need to include an introduction, this outline, and a sample chapter. Also, give me a list of successful books that are in a similar genre and get a few of your friends to write short testimonials that tell the publishers that the content is valuable and marketable.”

“That’s all?” I asked, formulating the daunting task in my head.

That’s how this book began, an idea shared with a few knowledgeable people who gave me direction and the structure for the work I had to do. The rest was just hard work and long hours of writing and re-writing, especially the re-writing and re-re-writing.

So, let’s get started.