In my search for the perfect toolsets: a review of favorite books about creative practice.
This all stems from realizing that art and audience are part of one whole – they are the two halves that attract each other. Your art represents your creative spiritual stream. As does your audience.
These cards summarize the incredible toolsets described and offered in the books above. Most are adaptable to any creative practice.
And I’m looking for a few more toolsets- they are the life-changing tools that allow an artist to connect with their audience. I don’t know what these tools are called! So, in my conceptual realm, I’m calling this missing book “The Hermit’s Guide to Marketing for Artists.”
(Because I’m one of those with the hermit archetype sitting in charge of “relationship to the world” and so it makes activities like outreach and marketing challenging. 🐚)
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Soon I will be releasing my first book:
Apophenia Gold is a roadtrip mystery, speculative fiction, set in the modern material world and seen through a spiritual lens. There are angels and fear-demons, auras and in-between beings, chthonic monsters and the lie beasties we create ourselves.
Are you interested in an Advanced Reader Copy? Message me or comment. 💛
Welcome to the mid-May newsletter, where the question is: “Are art and audience two halves of the same act?”
Here’s what I’m looking for: a book describing the perfecting marketing skillset for artists and hermits.
Let me explain:
I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron when I was a teenager, and have been (mostly) writing three pages of stream of consciousness every day since. The Morning Pages are good training in separating the act of writing from the act of editing.
The most important thing I learned from The Artist’s Way was: create first; edit, critique, and censor later on. The book is brilliant and I’ve probably read it seven times.
Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss showed up in my life just after my second moon node. It was profoundly impactful in that mid-life moment of re-evaluating everything you know about yourself. For those standing in that portal where the inscription above reads: “Know Thyself.”
The book maps a complicated archeological project to identify and relate to the archetypes that have sway over one’s personality. I refer to this work and draw on it frequently.
Just this month I read the exuberant We Need Your Art by Amie McNee. Using the techniques of bare minimums, bare maximums, and permission slips, I moved successfully into writing everyday (i.e. beyond morning pages; writing actual novel scenes).
And, I realized why I wasn’t before – because I was missing the container into which the writing would be put. While my basic grounding in creating without editing was firm, I had a mis-perception: that I should wait to create until the container was already set up.
Finally, Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Paired with the miraculous Scrivener, this pair talked me through the toolset of writing scenes that have pull. Without them, I don’t think I would have been able to complete editing Apophenia Gold.
Finally, here is what is missing: the marketing book for artists and hermits. I’m talking about a full-fledged, life-changing program and protocol that will contain secret magical tools (akin to the morning pages, artist’s dates, or permission slips) to create the container for art and connect it to an audience.
Because, like heat and cold, light and dark, poles of a magnet – the art and its audience are two halves of the same thing. And marketing is the skillset that allows one to connect them.
But I’m not going to write this book, because I don’t have the skillsets to describe the magic tools. But maybe you know where to find it? I’d like for it to have lots of maps as well.
Is it possible to have two projects going at the same time?
Yes, of course it is, but perhaps a common challenge for writers is that it feels, somehow, risky, to have two projects going at the same time. Like learning two languages in tandem … it’s easy to get mixed up.
So this past month of reading:
📔 “We Need Your Art” by Amie McNee @inspiredtowrite encouraged me to get over that superstition of “one project only!” – indirectly, with the two week reset of small, bare minimum and bare maximum projects. It’s been great to get back into writing.
📘”Alchemy of the Holy Week” by Dennis Klocek is a beautiful, short book, written in his inimitable colloquial style (taken from lectures) and using the processes of internal picturing before going to sleep and upon waking.
📙 “Influence” by Robert Cialdini, one of the most famous marketing tomes of all time, and for good reason. But unfortunately, by shedding light on so many of half-conscious social maneuvers we engage in over and over, it always leaves a person wondering: does this stranger actually like me or have shared interests, or did they develop that as a strategy to manipulate me? A bit of a dark read.
📗 “According to Matthew” by Rudolf Steiner. Not possible to summarize, so simply: the meaning of 42 generations described in the Matthew gospel, and many other things.
📕 “Sinister Forces” by Peter Levenda. One of the better conspiracy theory books I’ve ever read. Did you know the phrase Psychological Warfare comes from the German Weltanschauungskrieg (Worldview warfare)?
Very soon I will be launching my first book: Apophenia Gold. It’s a story about the hidden beings behind contemporary issues, set as a roadtrip mystery with angels and auras, monks, wanderers, avatars, and invisible beings. And, it includes a bunch of stuff about electricity and frequencies. Like my booksta, it’s eclectic.
Writing a book is a rather different process than I anticipated! I’ve started many books over the years (at least six prior unfinished books existed at one point) – but this is the first one I finished writing.
The first draft arrived like magic, almost whole in Lent of 2022, and the final draft took the next three years.
For a long time- years – I thought I could get away with avoiding marketing. That somehow the book would share itself, find its people, get itself published.
That’s not how it works.
As my husband says, himself a lifelong creator and maker of projects: You need to build the lanes, set up all the pins, and roll the ball. (I don’t bowl, not sure if I got that terminology right. You get the picture.)
There were edits and re-edits and further edits and then giant pauses, followed by major re-edits. Friends and colleagues helped and guided and supported.
Apophenia Gold is a roadtrip mystery, speculative fiction, set in the modern material world and seen through a spiritual lens. There are angels and fear-demons, auras and in-between beings, chthonic monsters and the lie beasties we create ourselves.
This document – CIA declassified in 2003, called the “Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process” – is an absolutely fascinating description of the techniques used to make a person able to remote view.
Remote viewing is Army terminology for astral projection. It’s sending the consciousness out of the body into another time or physical space, gathering information, and returning, hopefully with something useful for national defense.
Sending consciousness out of one’s body has risks- which are properly noted in the document.
The thing I found so interesting about this protocol is that it suggests we can use SOUND frequency to “entrain” (to resonate with) an ELECTROMAGNETIC frequency.
The sound/acoustic spectrum and the electromagnetic spectrum are different. But I like to look at the coincidences between them, and then ask the AI, since I don’t have any physicist friends who could jam on this.
So was remote viewing useful? Yes, and no, according to the document. One of the issues is that viewers saw thought forms just as vividly as they saw physical reality. How cool is that? Thought forms are just as real as the material world when seen from a spiritual perspective!
Been obsessed with electricity and its trajectory for humanity for several years. Life without wires in the walls is incredibly different. I wish houses were built this way standard.
Remember: turn your wifi off at night for better sleep!
Spring takes its time getting to this part of the world. We often have the last snow in early May.
In the depths of winter, I spent too much time in front of the computer, obsessed by a cliff of thoughts, and thus faced the necessary springly re-balancing.
Let this week be that.
Inching closer to the book launch, and measuring in weeks instead of unknowns.
Till a few weeks with love-
Rose & Apophenia
Listen:
Prelude and Chapter 1 are a 45 minute audio file. It’s on the front page and here. Enjoy.
I’ve started a series on instagram called “From The Conspiracy Theorist’s Bookshelf.” That’s Apophenia in a nutshell – you’ve got a lot of books on conspiracy theories, and aim to synthesize the patterns into digestible bites.
Propaganda: “information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions.” – Cambridge Dictionary
Propaganda is the tool that makes hiding true conspiracies possible. It’s often noted that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was popularized as a pejorative to imply someone wasn’t skeptical enough, was easily bamboozled, or otherwise generally gullible. But conspiracy has meaning in law, and it’s ridiculous to think that conspiracies don’t happen. A lot.
The phrase conspiracy theory often means: when the government makes it legal, through loopholes or other means, to act in a morally wrong way and against the will of its general populous.
The continuum: One of my projects this year is a deep dive into marketing and messaging. Useful to know, and because effective messaging is a core component of propaganda.
Advertising: “the business of trying to persuade people to buy products or services.” – Cambridge Dictionary
Marketing: “the work of advertising and offering goods or services for sale.” – Cambridge Dictionary
A theme of Apophenia Gold is the inability of many to recognize propaganda. Apophenia smells it as lies, and sees it as dirty colors, and works to explain the mechanism through The Journal for Apophenic Research.
Recognizing propaganda techniques makes one less susceptible to their charms.
Additional New Things
Successfully re-recorded the Prelude and Chapter 1 as a 45 minute audio file. It’s on the front page and here. Enjoy.
Determined it was possible to export a good looking kindle book from Scrivener. (Writers, Scrivener is literally the best writing program I could hope for. No more need to go into Indesign or heavier programs for publish-ready output. It’s a dream!)
Prelude and Chapter 1 as a PDF are here. (Soon, I’ll be adding the entire book to Amazon, but in the interim…)
Two weeks ago, the intention was to post the audio recording of Chapter 1 in Apophenia Gold publicly. Then I kept recording, and realized: I’m going to re-record chapter 1 last. That way it will be best.
Where’s that first chapter I said I’d be posting?
I’ve spent the bulk of my free time this month making an author recording of Apophenia Gold. My friends alternately think it is (a) hilarious or (b) ridiculous because I committed to the project. I acted out all the voices.
Acting out the voices is necessary for an audio book to be understood. (Imagine listening to a conversation where everyone sounds the same- it’s hard to follow.)
What I learned was this: there are word repetitions and wording problems that I miss in first, second, and third editing read-throughs. I also might miss them in speaking – but I hear them when I listen to the recording. So, it’s a very prudent final editing step.
At this point, I’ve recorded 80% of the book. After that, I’ll re-record chapter 1, with these newly gained voice acting skills, and post it publicly.
How did things change by waking up at 5am?
Waking at 5am consistently for the past month has ALSO led to:
Practicing violin/ viola more consistently
Practicing second language more consistently.
As I hoped, having that few hours of sovereignty over the morning (typically, nobody calls before 8am) is remarkable.
