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seven week agenda

Posted: June 1st, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: create more | Comments Off

This is the agenda for the seven week ‘Create More’ program.

It is likely — desired even — that we will veer from this, depending on the needs and interests of the group. In the event that there’s more material than time, an extra session may be added to the end, if the group agrees.

Note that there is homework even before we begin! … Please come to the first session prepared to talk about the items listed under ‘pre-homework,’ below.

Pre-homework:

  • Be prepared to introduce yourself: your name, and what you’re creating
  • Talk about at least 2 influences. What started you?
  • Talk about at least 2 goals. Dream big.
  • Talk about at least 2 struggles. What stops you?

Week 1: Artists and the Wish to Create

  • Introductions
  • The pieces of an artist’s life
  • The desire to create
  • The two big steps to creating
  • The requirement of being wild and how to do it healthfully
  • Good food vs. junk food for the hungry mind
  • Homework: the random call to work

Week 2: Choosing Work

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Arriving at ideas
  • Choosing difficult ideas. “Deep creativity means dangerous creativity.”
  • Choosing easy ideas
  • What will you choose to do next?
  • Seeing your next idea
  • Is it the right idea?
  • Choosing among ideas
  • Homework: your autobiography

Week 3: Starting Your Work

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Sharing the homework
  • Starting and anxiety
  • ‘Yes’ and active aloneness
  • Belligerent commitment and the healthy ignition system
  • Being the person who is an artist
  • The critical moment: killing to get to ‘yes’
  • The most important two minutes of your life: the walk to the work
  • The maze of choices
  • Starting every day
  • Homework: your operating instructions

Week 4: Working

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Logging your journey
  • Working in the moment
  • Making mistakes
  • Choosing in the trance of work
  • Impossible work
  • The dangerous territory of real work, and trying to feel safe
  • Using the day
  • Distractions
  • Depression
  • Hating your work, growing cold to it, and breaks
  • What working means
  • Homework: make something awful, destroy it, and mourn the loss

Week 5: Completing Your Work

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Many small completions
  • Showing yourself the work
  • Are you finished?
  • Being your first critic: appropriate and inappropriate judging
  • Revising
  • Are you ready to be finished?
  • The anxiety of past work
  • Homework: pick a piece of your own work, and describe how you will judge if that work is complete

Week 6: Showing the work

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Showing your work, and the problems with impulsive showing
  • Planning to show
  • Showing, exchanging, and selling
  • Selling the work
  • Making a living
  • Creating things that sell
  • Homework: pick a piece of your work, and write your sales script

Week 7: catching up, and odds and ends

  • Discussion of the last week
  • Making up for lost time
  • The care and feeding of an artist
  • Course evaluations

 

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