Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Disrespecting Albert Camus.”

The episode begins this way:

“I love Albert Camus to pieces but intuitively supposed that there would be few monuments to Camus in Paris. His World War II heroism notwithstanding, he told too many hard truths to receive public glorification. So, out walking one day in the northeast corner of Paris, it horrified me but did not surprise me to discover how the politicians have decided to disrespect Camus. They exiled him far from artistic and intellectual Paris, a maneuver excellent as irony and an unintended reminder of the title of his short story collection, Exile and the Kingdom.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Smaller and Smaller.”

The episode begins this way:

“You’ve made it to Paris. Congratulations! Now, where will you live? In a tiny studio, no doubt, so as to keep expenses down. You can certainly survive in a small studio, just as millions of artists have done from time immemorial. But there is a catch. The smallness of your studio will definitely begin to get to you. One afternoon you’ll find yourself daydreaming about wide verandas. Then, rather more dangerously, you’ll think about proposing to the very next person you meet with a real apartment. Cheap rooms--and everything that comes with them, the alienation, the bad dreams, the roaches, the dingy walls, the ratty furniture, the unbroken silence, the hallucinations—addle the brain over time. In order to endure the smallness of your studio you had better take some precautions.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the six in the series, is called “The Professor of Nothing.”

The episode begins this way:

“I meet an American writer at a café not far from the Right Bank Sorbonne annex where English is taught. Many Americans gather at this particular café because of the Sorbonne connection. Emily explains to me that in their midst is a fellow from the Midwest who is a poseur. He is posing as an instructor at the Sorbonne but, as she explains it, ‘He is really a professor of nothing!’”

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “On Not Speaking French.”

>p>The episode begins this way:

“For any creative project that you contemplate doing, you can always ask yourself ‘Do I really know enough to tackle this?’ or ‘Am I really equal to this?’ and talk yourself out of trying. How might you talk yourself out of Paris? One way is by reminding yourself that you don’t speak French. Tell me, though—how much French will you really need? An awful lot to translate Finnegan's Wake into French but almost none to write in English. You are not in Paris to study archaeology at the Sorbonne. You are in Paris to write in English. If your best excuse for not coming to Paris is "I don't speak French," make sure to add that to your "great excuses that hold no water" list.

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “Fearing Paris.”

The episode begins this way:

“Maybe you fear coming to Paris to write. But is it really Paris that you fear? My hunch is that it isn’t. I doubt that you fear not knowing the language, ending up in a closet-sized studio, or subjecting yourself to a supercilious shrug or two. I bet that the thought of managing your affairs from an Internet café or buying a foreign shampoo doesn’t seem all that daunting. My hunch is that what you fear, if you fear anything, is bringing into consciousness a trunk full of painful thoughts about your writing past, present, and future.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “Au Revoir to the Place Des Vosges.”

The episode begins this way:

“It is hard to leave the Place des Vosges. I have a rich life waiting for me back in San Francisco but still it is hard to leave. The Place des Vosges is the first place I come to when I arrive in Paris and the place where my leave-taking occurs. I give it a whole afternoon of leave-taking, sitting on the western side of the park, not thinking about home, not thinking about Paris, but thinking, this particular afternoon, of a certain Camus essay, penned the night of Paris’s liberation.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “Presenting Yourself.”

The episode begins this way:

“The question how should I present myself is really two questions in one. The first question is, ‘What works?’ The second question is, ‘How do I want to represent myself in the world?’ It may work to be difficult, arrogant, grandiose, paranoid, dramatic, and pretty nearly impossible—that is, to be a diva. But is that who you want to be in the world? This is a serious first question, as many ambitious artists might be inclined to answer, ‘Absolutely!’ Picasso, Dali, Warhol—to turn a noun into a verb, artists with big egos and big talents are often inclined to diva the world.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “Practicing Empathy.”

The episode begins this way:

“There are two completely different ways to conceptualize how you might relate to your potential collectors. One way is to picture buyers as people who deserve to be manipulated and who must be reached by virtue of sales tactics that play on human weaknesses like greed and envy. A second way is to picture buyers as your fellow human beings who can be met without manipulation and without trickery. If the question is, which way garners the better results, sadly enough the answer is probably the first. If the question is, how do you want to live your live, the answer surely is by practicing the second in large measure—by practicing empathy and by championing the principle that people do not exist only to be manipulated.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Managing Boundaries.”

The episode begins this way:

“As artists, we require solitude and alone time, probably more than the next person. But we also require human contact, human warmth, friendships, and marketplace advocacy. Life can grow too cold if we live it completely alone and our career suffers if we avoid interactions with the people who might help us and who might appreciate our art. So, although we may consider ourselves introverts and feel happiest keeping ourselves company, we have many interpersonal needs that require our attention.”

Tune in to hear more!

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Preserving Relationships.”

The episode begins this way:

“Sometimes it is distance that begins to wear relationships down; sometimes it is interpersonal difficulty; sometimes the demands of life seem to steal all our time and leave little time left for even family and friends, let alone our contacts in the marketplace. This is a large theme, preserving art relationships, and I want to focus on just one aspect of it: preserving your relationship with “difficult” marketplace players, folks who are important to your art life but whose relational style sets you on edge.”

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