The Red Velvet Lawyer

Working on Your Craft This week, I began discussing some of the ideas in Elizabeth Gilbert's new book:  Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear  (2015). Today, I want to summarize some of her suggestions about doing creative work.  She says: Make things. Then share them with an open heart. You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. Thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence. Simply vow to the Universe to write forever, regardless of the result. Be brave. Grateful. Uncomplaining. Never ask writing to be easy. Ask only that it be interesting. Sneak off and have an affair with your most creative self. Curiosity is the secret.  Curiosity is the is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the beginning and the end. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of in...

Devotion to the Work I've been sharing some of my favorite quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert's new book:  Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear  (2015).  These quotes explore attitudes about doing the work: Measure your work by your dedication to your path. Focus on the devotion to my creative work.  That is how to measure my worth.  I only have control over my discipline. Just say what you want to say, then say it with all your heart. Write a book to entertain yourself, not to help someone else. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. Work on your craft every day with steady discipline and love. Make absolutely whatever you want to make.  It's nobody's business but your own. Write with the fealty of a holy pilgrim. Frustration is not an interruption of the process.  Frustration is the process. Mere completion is an honorable achievement in its own right.  What's more, it's a rare one. Rele...

They Are Big Magic At the end of last year, I read Elizabeth Gilbert's new book: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015).  You know her from her earlier work: Eat, Pray, Love . I loved the central theme of the book.  She argues that creativity is our birthright and inheritance. Birthright because we are part of a profoundly abundant and creative universe.  Inheritance because we come from generations of people who got things done through creative problem-solving.  They created useful and beautiful tools, objects, art, books, music, and other forms of expression. She says: "You will find people who spent their lives making things.  This is where you come from. This is where we all come from.  Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time -- long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse." And this: " I have the right to collaborate with creativity because I myself am a pr...

Only two weeks to the July bar exam.   Will our 2013 graduates take the big leap?   My business coach recommended that I read, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, which suggests ways to conquer your hidden fear that prevents you from keeping and enjoying greater love, financial abundance, increasing success, and more creative energy.  You can find more information at http://www.thebigleap.net/ Hendricks is a psychologist, writer, and practitioner in the field of personal growth, relationships, and the mind-body connection.  He has written 25 books, taught at University of Colorado, has a consulting business, and graduated from Stanford University. The Upper Limit Problem He uses the term “Upper Limit Problem” to identify our tendency to follow great leaps forward on all these dimensions with big mess-ups.  We subconsciously use the mess-ups to keep us in our comfort zone when increasing success is taking us to new areas of personal growth and...