If you are salivating for the book, go get it, and then come back here if you have a few minutes to read this.
If you want to go strait to the party, and my invitation to celebrate, scroll down to this part: Let’s Get This Party Started.
Otherwise, I want to tell you a little story about putting a new book into the world.
A few weeks ago, I quietly updated the sales page of my memoir to “now shipping” instead of “Pre-order. Shipping soon.”
I put Alicia Keys’ song Empire State of Mind on repeat for the time it took me to personally email the digital edition to everyone who pre-ordered.
Then I danced around my kitchen while brewing another pot of tea for a couple more turns of the song.
And I cried the whole time.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Even though the song is about New York, when I hear the lyrics, I think of my time coming of age in some of the grittier sections of Chicago.
Grew up in a town that is famous as a place of movie scenes
The song doesn’t make me cry because I’m sad. It makes me cry because I’m happy.
You know, the happy tears that follow impossible accomplishment.
The happy tears of getting something you’ve always wanted and it was touch and go getting there. Like crying at weddings or when babies are born.
As a kid, I imagined I could be anything I dreamed of. Despite whatever odds.
By the time I was 15, I had survived so much, and so improbably, including a drug overdose that put me in a coma.
Noise is always loud, there are sirens all around and the streets are mean
My friends (and some relatives) were alcoholics and junkies and dealers and thieves.
There were a lot of guns, knives, gang tattoos, violence (goes without saying, I guess), and drama.
And I got the hell out. Propelled by a dream of what could be. What I really wanted to be.
If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, that’s what they say
My biggest dream, always ever present, my earliest memory, was to be an artist.
Seeing my face in lights or my name in marquees found down on Broadway
I remember exactly where I was standing—in the gravel parking lot in a trailer park, when I was about five years old—with this overwhelming feeling of eagerness to start living the purpose I came here for.
What was it? I wanted to get on with it as soon as possible.
Even if it ain’t all it seems, I got a pocketful of dreams
The book isn’t even about this early time in my life, although threads of my childhood experience of homelessness, parental abandonment, and living on my own at age 15 weave themselves into the narrative.
How I survived all of that was through the private making of visual diaries, my sketchbooks.
Written and painted and sketched dreaming on paper, done mostly in public libraries wherever I lived. And then in the grubby studio apartments I could barely afford in the edgy neighborhoods of Chicago.
On the avenue, there ain’t never a curfew, ladies work so hard
Such a melting pot, on the corner selling rock, preachers pray to God
I think about the first apartment I lived in, on Broadway across from the blinking neon light of The Lake Hotel, a by-the-hour place where certain illegal transactions went on all hours of the day and night.
One of my singular goals at the time was to not have to stay at a place like The Lake Hotel. My studio apartment was only a slight improvement from what I could see (and hear) going on outside my window.
Some will sleep tonight with a hunger for more than an empty fridge
My dream of being an artist felt so far from me at that time.
Even as I was unknowingly doing the art that would become my work.
I’m gonna make it by any means, I got a pocketful of dreams
Making stories visual and saying what could not be spoken of with image. Then using image as the leaping off place to put words to feelings, ideas, dreams.
When I talk about the healing and transformative power of expressive art-making, I’m not speaking about abstract notions. I really mean it.
Art saved my life.
And I mean it in the most literal sense.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
The tools and methods I used were shared with others, starting when I became a therapist and found my weird (to me at the time) creative process was also the most healing thing I could share with my patients.
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
I was at my wits end with a group of hospitalized anorexic and bulimic teen girls and finally just said,
You know, we’re not going to do therapy together anymore. I’m going to show you something that helped me a lot when I was your age and sitting where you are sitting right now.
That certainly got their attention, and off we went. Playing in visual journals.
One hand in the air for the big city
Street lights, big dreams, all looking pretty
Art heals.
The memoir takes place in recent history, from October, 2011 to December, 2012, during which time I made another leap into expat living from Northern California, near San Francisco, to the City of Oaxaca (pronounced wa-ha-ka) in Southern Mexico.
No place in the world that can compare
The book contains typed excerpts from my own visual journals, which I compiled along with extended “love letters” to some of my most loyal fans and clients during that time.
In these letters, sent by email, I share in-depth about the realities of my own life and creative process.
Stuff that I think is important for people who wonder where art comes from needs to know.
Where Art Comes From
Art comes from an inner knot that needs unravelling.
Art is a by-product of an inner excavation.
The inner journey feels impossibly lonely, and yet we are not alone.
All journeys inward have a universal theme, these journeys connect us.
We journey alone, and yet our journeys are so remarkable similar, even as the details vary.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
This is the power of sharing our stories about our journeys.
The artist realizes she is not alone after all.
The reader realizes she is not alone, or crazy, or too weird to make her own art.
There’s nothing you can’t do
Books Saved My Life
Before I ever published by own art, I was on the reading end of hundreds of books.
Memoirs. Poetry. Biographies of the lives of artists. The Diaries of Anais Nin.
These stories gave me hope, courage, and the desire to keep moving along in the direction my own art was leading.
Even if I didn’t understand it.
Or know what my art was yet.
These streets will make you feel brand new
I’ve still got a hefty stack of these sorts of books in constant rotation from the library on my nightstand. Well, actually they’re piled up under my bed.
When RocketMan hears me say I’m sleeping with so-and-so tonight, he understands that I’m getting into bed with a book by an author I adore.
Big lights will inspire you
My purpose in publishing anything I write is this:
1. To stay true to my innermost higher purpose to be an artist.
2. To inspire others that they, too, can stay true to their own innermost higher purpose. Whatever that may be.
Even if they don’t know what it is yet.
Or fully understand it.
Creating something new makes us vulnerable. This is a fact.
How we deal with our vulnerability determines whether or not we will create art.
Or whether or not we will self-destruct and kill the urge to create art instead.
Creativity is full of paradox.
We are constantly pulled toward the edge of what we are most afraid of: making a mess, doing it wrong, not knowing the outcome, scared of telling the truth, worried about offending people.
While simultaneously being pulled toward what we want and love the most: to express ourselves, to make something beautiful, to find our unique voice, to put our own halting words on paper, to take the paints out of storage, to claim a space to create in our own house, to take a stand, to be brave, to get over our old ways of stopping ourselves, to finally get the monkey off our back, to look in the mirror and not feel anguish.
To see that we, ourselves are beautiful, and brave, and that the greatest work of art is really our own life. And what we do with it.
Living on this edge of fear and courage is not at all glamorous.
It’s gritty, messy and fraught with doubt.
Not to mention the attendant frustrations and clusterfucks of the very real things of this world: the state of our finances, juggling day jobs and gigs for the money, physical energy levels of the body, emotional burdens that weigh on the heart and mind.
So many responsibilities to others who depend upon us. All the responsibilities we put on ourselves.
This is what I feel it is necessary to write about.
Not just me. But you. The world needs your stories, too. Whether they take the form of a book or not.
How an artist manages all of this without being an addict or completely self-destructing? That’s my path and what I want to read more about.
The Middle
I once read on a blog, the author saying that whenever she hears a rags to riches story about an artist, that the story goes too quickly from the rags part to the riches part.
What I want to read about is the middle, she said.
What was the middle like? What did they do in all that in-between time? How did they feel?
This is what fascinates me most about the artist’s journey, too.
What happens in the middle?
How did they cope, hope, survive? Especially when the middle is so protracted and muddled while you are…well…in the middle of it.
In the middle we don’t know there is an outcome in sight. That there will be any dreamed of riches, let alone reward for our effort.
Sketchbooks: My Personal Creative Practice Memoir
This book is all about the middle.
About a year-long slice of it, threaded with works-in-progress, and an artists life-in-progress that I haven’t written about anywhere else.
Except within the pages of my own visual journals and sketchbooks.
Those same blank books that saved my life as a child.
That held me close to my higher purpose. That continue on, in the work that I get to share with you.
I’m really proud of how this book turned out.
Besides being a writing experiment, it is also a publishing experiment.
I designed the book myself, and have also published it myself. Another dream I’ve had for a long while, to have creative control over what I publish and how my books look. I founded and ran a design and marketing firm for nine years, so design has been a big part of my work life. My bread and butter gig for many years.
I’m inspired by the whole nature of “artisanal publishing”. The way a craft beer is made by hand in select batches rather than something mass produced. Indy publishing is growing the way of indy music, and I’m happy to be creating on the edge of this new frontier.
After so many years of teaching the creative process, I have plans to help others get their stories out and published, so stay tuned here to find out more about that. More long-standing dreams that I can’t wait to share with you.
Will you help me celebrate this big win?
Let’s Get This Party Started
Here’s how you can help me celebrate.
1. Get the book. (I would be remiss in my duties in the entrepreneuring part of creative entrepreneur if I didn’t directly ask you for that.)
2. Tell The World. Share this post widely and freely through your social networks. You’ll find handy social share buttons below.
3. Inspire Your People. Share this post in its entirety on your own blog.
You could introduce it as simply as:
Hey, an author I admire (Lisa Sonora Beam, who wrote The Creative Entrepreneur) has a new memoir out about the creative process, and the glory and hardships of being a single woman artist of a certain age who decides to move to Mexico. Here’s what she says about putting the memoir into the world:
And then add my piece. Voila, an instant blog post for you, if it resonates with your people.
4. Interview me. We can talk about writing, creativity, courage, expat life, pursuing creative dreams, being a creative entrepreneur, being a single woman artist, how art heals. Those are some topics that come to mind.
5. Testify. Take one minute to leave a comment or email me. Tell me what part of the book stood out to you. What did you resonate with? Why are you glad you read it? Even a sentence or two means the world to me. But already people are writing to me with really long letters of appreciation and take aways. Which of course bring on the tears again.
6. Grab the torch. Go work on your own creative project. If you need some help getting on with it, I’d like to support you. Check out the Creative + Practice workshop if you’d like to work together on this.
7. Put on a song that makes you happycry and dance around in your kitchen. Think of something you’re really proud of accomplishing and really get your body into it. Alternately, crank it up in your car and sing along. Dance in your seat.
Here’s Alicia Keys and her song whose lyrics I’ve quoted. (Thanks to reader Maya Zaido for the link!)
However you choose to celebrate with me, thank you, as always for your kind attention.
I’m so glad you are here.