The Thursday! Newsletter 1-26: Create with Your Heart
Volume 1, Issue 26
I made a few changes around the place.
Maybe you noticed? I certainly hope you noticed. That e-mail header up there took quite a lot of work, dragging and dropping and typing and picking a color and using a hand in the picture that clearly isn't mine. I don't know whose hand that is, but I'm glad it was there. It classes up the joint.
You might, though, be wondering to yourself (or to anyone who happens to be in your near vicinity. I won't judge) why. After all, most classy professionals who send out classy newsletters don't often change things up. They certainly don't change the first thing people see when they open the newsletter less than six months into the newsletter's life. Of course, the obvious answer is that I'm not exactly a classy professional and, clearly, Thursday! is not a classy newsletter. It's good, mind you. Full of goodness and comfort and stuff that's good for you, like a tasty stew. What it is not is classy, like a filet mignon covered in...whatever you cover a filet mignon in to make it even more classy.
As it happens, the obvious answer is one part of the correct answer. The other part is what I'd like to talk about for just a little bit. When I started Thursday!, I had in mind a playful but useful versions of those snooty, smart newsletters that call themselves "journals of arts and letters". I admit, I'm not entirely sure what arts and letters are, but I assume they include classic literature and artists discussed by learned people in the highest literary tradition while seated in a comfortable leather chair in a well-appointed library. Also, there is port wine somewhere. There is always port wine. That's the feel I wanted, too, but with just a little bit of easy, charming cheek. You'd close the e-mail having learned a couple things with a smile on your face and warmth in your heart. You'd say to yourself, "That Jimmie sure is a classy and learned individual. And cheeky, too! But in an easy, charming way. I could almost smell the leather and old books. That is one smart guy! Let me absent myself for an evening to his web site so that I may read all of the stories he secreted therein!"
Clearly, that didn't happen. I don't fault the plan itself. There is, I am quite sure, plenty of room for a smart journal of arts and letters discussed by blah blah et cetera, but I'm not the guy to write it. I am neither snooty nor particularly smart. I don't have a nice leather chair not a cool library. I don't even have any port.
I'm a middle-aged fat guy who drinks mostly iced tea, is most comfortable in jeans or khakis, who lives in an entirely too small duplex owned by a landlord who doesn't fix the broken things quickly enough. Clearly, my first idea wasn't going to work.
My second idea has promise though. Turns out the newsletter I want to do is the newsletter I've been sending to you for the past few weeks. I write an essay full of my own experiences and stuff I've learned that I think might be helpful or encouraging, follow it with links to whatever I wrote and something interesting I read last week, back that up with a cool picture or poem, and go out with a solid Call to Action! I'm not sure this idea will work, but it's the best I have right now. My other option is a clever series of crimes that will bring me a nice leather chair and all the rest of the stuff. I don't hold out great hopes for the success of that plan, so I'll just stick with what I have.
Of course my new approach required a new header, which I rather like. it says what I most want you to know about Thursday!, the chief of which is that I well and truly want this newsletter to be something you can love unabashedly. This newsletter is the most "me" thing I've ever done. It is closest to my heart. It carries my hopes and dreams and fears -- not all at the same time and not all well out in the open, dancing and showing off -- because I hope I can inspire you to do the same in your creative endeavors.
The world is full of people making crap just to sell it. Movie studios and television networks make sequel after sequel and crap series after crap series not because they think they have great stories to share with you but because they think they have a "property" they can "monetize". Look around you. They use those terms right in front of you because they simply do not care. They know they can spend a billion dollars to make a billion dollars and one and that's all there is. Even smaller studios do the same, like The Asylum, though I give those folks slack because even through they're playing the Hollywood money game, they're having fun with it. Late night television is stuffed with carbon copy, too-snarky-for-school hosts who tell some variant of the same joke and use some variant of the "are you seeing this" smirk to get a cheap laugh. There is too much cheap plastic crap, in our stores and on our screens. There is too much that pleases only at the surface and runs off without ever penetrating to soothe or inspire the heart.
We are different. We don't do that. We are rare, like Gunslingers in Stephen King's cast series and like those Gunslingers, we have a creed, even if we've never said it. It lives inside us. We recognize others who live by the same creed. It might be said a little bit like this:
We do not create with our eyes.
Those who create with their eyes make only what can be seen and no more.
We do not create with our ears.
Those who create with their ears create only what can be heard and no more.
We do not create with our hands.
Those who create with their hands make only what can be touched and no more.
We create with our hearts.
The thing is, creating with your heart is easier than trying to pick and choose what might be loved. There is always a chance the thing you create will not be successful. In fact, the thing you create probably won't be successful because success is largely up to chance and you don't control who sees what and when. That's a hard fact about creation. But never you mind that. Create with your heart because when the fickle finger of creative fate points to you, you'll want it to find your work strong and true. That kind of work comes only from the heart. What you'll find, though, is creating with your heart is so much easier than creating for an imagined audience or agent or publisher or patron. When you create with your heart, you pull from the part of you that is real. Nothing is fake. Nothing requires time to pretty up because it needs to hit the harsh lights of the catwalk.
Why the changes around here? I'm creating Thursday! from my heart. I'd like to see you create from your heart, too. Big stuff may be coming for you and you might be afraid of messing it up. Don't be. Do your stuff. Do it like only you can. Do it with joy and skill and the concrete conviction that no one -- not one other human being who draws breath today -- can do what you are about to do with the style and quality you can.
And tell me about it, huh? I'd like to see what my fellow creative Gunslingers are up to.
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What I Wrote and Read Last Week
"Tell Mac I Miss Her" is a story about someone we do not see but maybe we feel just a little bit.
I didn't write a lot last week, so let me give you one of my older favorites about a very precocious cat (but is there any other kind?): "Onyx".
I can't remember when I first read Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" article, but I've gone back to it many times since, including again last week because I really needed to figure out if I can be even a minimally-successful writer or whether I need to start looking to WalMart for my post-retirement weekly paycheck. I don't have an answer yet.
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Arts and/or Letters, So I Can Look All Smart and Stuff
Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the look of the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You! episodes. Dig the detail and atmosphere in that illustration from the "Spooky Space Kook" episode. Cool, yeah? Here are a whole bunch more.
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One Last Thing
This is where I ask you to help me out. I don't like asking for help but there's no way I can share Thursday! far and wide without wonderful people like you who dig what I do and are willing to tell other people about it. Please, feel free to share this newsletter with anyone you think will love it like you do. You can also tell them about my cool book, give it a solid review, or buy an autographed copy (ask and I'll tell you how!).
If you're seeing Thursday! for the first time, HI! I'm glad to meet you. If you want more, you can read previous issues and subscribe right here.
As always, you can always talk back to me by hitting the reply button! I can't promise I'll always answer back, because I'm quite forgetful, but I'll read everything you send.