Here are a few powerful first lines that I have recently come across.

“From the twisting, smoke-filled clouds, blood rained down.”

-from Steven Erikson’s Midnight Tides

“The summer of 1972, before I turned nine, danger began knocking on doors all over China.”

-from Yin Chang Compestine’s Revolution is Not a Dinner Party

“Captain Ahab was neither my first husband not my last.”

-from Sena Jeter Nashland’s Ahab’s Wife

Great first lines, each making me want to keep reading.

So in my case, this apparent audience is kids between seven and ten years old and their parents, as well as older teenagers interested in fantasy literature. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

However, what I am coming to realize as I am working on my children’s and young adult books is that those target audiences are not enough for me to thrive as a writer.

When I first started writing, there was only one audience: myself. I write because I have to and to entertain myself. I enjoy the process of creating characters and worlds and trying to create some mask of order over all the chaos of words spilling out of my head.

More than thirty years later, I am still my key audience.

This lesson in keeping the primacy of the writer as the main audience really struck home about ten years ago. I was formally schooled in the classic undergrad university creative writing laboratory with heavy doses of Raymond Carver and Chekhov and other masters of the short story.

A certain ideal of writing, both in terms of content and style, was heavily imprinted on me, and as I left university and entered the world of a writer who struggled while trying to earn money and develop a career in other fields, when I returned to writing that imprint weighed heavily on my ideal of what writing was.

About ten years ago, I realized that the subject matter and style bored me. I am not interested in writing about modern middle-aged angst and subtle nuanced revelations of character in stories where nothing happened.

So I turned my writing to what inspired me to read as a child – fantasy literature. Perhaps not the material for witty conversation at New York cocktail parties but the material that makes me write.

The second audience I am realizing that I need to write for is one that I have kept myself blissfully blind to for too many years: the publishing industry.

For years, I have only had my eye to the creation of the work: the thrill of developing ideas, the joy of flow, the struggles with structure and process, and the elusive task of editing. A few short pieces have found their way out into the hands of publishers only to be returned, but I always figured that I am still a young (albeit 43 year-old) writer and that my work needs polishing or I have sent the work to the wrong editors and agents.

But now after the children’s book conference at Book Passage, I have realized that a primary audience is the editors and agents that are the gatekeepers to getting published and those whose job it is to sell my books.

It doesn’t matter if a classroom of children sat in rapt attention listening week after week to Sophia in Mouseland when I came in to read chapters or if their first grade teacher thought the book was great. Despite the kids being the target audience, the work has to first make it past the publishing industry.

So the story cannot just be entertaining, it has be to have the potential to sell. It has to fit within the range of books that are selling this year. It has to fit within their catalogues. It has to have the potential for successive books. It can’t be quiet, but has to jump out from the other books on the shelf. It has to been seen as fit to sell by those in the industry.

And, of course, there is the more obvious audience: the kids and teenagers that seem like the apparent answer to the question of who is the audience.

But, as I move along this path, I have realized that writing is not just an entertainment or a stage of my life but a calling for me that fundamentally must keep me passionate, especially in the valleys and tough spots, and that writing is a also business and to get a book to the broadest target audience possible, the work must also speak to and excite the gatekeepers in the industry.

As it is with most “rules” of writing or life, there is no simple answer and the more one looks at the question the more complex the answer must be.

Everything started off full steam ahead on that first day of the conference: notebook tucked beneath my elbow, manuscript well loved by a roomful of seven-year olds in my back pocket, and visions of dollar signs dancing in my head. With a bellyful of coffee, I was ready to take the kid lit scene by storm.

Then the train jumped the track, folded like an accordion, and burst into flame, belching black smoke into the clear blue sky.

The story that I had brought to the conference hoping to sell had another thing in mind for me.

Sophia in Mouseland, my chapter book manuscript that my daughter’s first grade classroom loved, was labeled “quiet” (apparently industry code for not likely to sell) and my swept-under-the-rug doubts about the flatness of the characters further revealed themselves in an editor’s critique that the story lacked an overarching theme. The holes in the craft of my writing were dragged out into the sun: telling rather than showing, a weak opening, improper placement of dialogue tags, on and on.

My dreams of instant accolades and success were squelched. No six figure deal eagerly handed to me. No immediate penning of Return to Mouseland.

But luckily I have been training in the martial art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for the past two years, and honestly there is nothing like BJJ to teach a person how to get crushed and then just climb back on your feet. Every class, despite learning more techniques, connecting dots, and improved conditioning, I get choked, I get my arm nearly twisted off, and I get smothered beneath a sweaty guy who outweighs me by at least 60 pounds. Every class, my ego gets stepped on and ground into the mat.

Yet I keep showing up. I’ve learned how to disregard the crushed ego to learn an art. I’ve learned how to push myself beyond my previous limits and accept daily defeat on the long term journey towards martial arts mastery.

However, I am less used to get my squirreled away writing crushed. Maybe not sharing my work has been a strategy to protect my ego, but it is also a sure fire way to never truly learn or master an art.

So, when I walked up to that coffee dispenser on the final day of the conference, I was a mess, still tangled up in the twisted metal, mind clouded with the black smoke of the train wreck. Maybe I was not meant to be a writer of children’s book, or a writer at all. Did I have the energy and will to go back into Sophia in Mouseland to make it a better work? Or should I just put aside my writing ambition as an excess of youth?

But on the last day of the conference with the bitter taste of coffee in my mouth, things began to change. Another writer told me how an agent was interested in seeing her middle reader story but that her picture book and young adult novel were not well received. And the piece that agent wanted to see had at one time been labeled as “quiet” and the opening too slow. The author had swallowed the criticism and then invested the time to improve her piece, enough so that progress was being made.

It was during that discussion that I saw that I was not Sophia in Mouseland, and I realized that several of the fantasy novels that I have been working through over the past several years had potential as young adult novels. So I decided that morning that rather than attending another session on the middle reader age group that I would sit on the young adult session.

And that session gave me the courage to pick myself up out of the train wreck and continue my journey.

The session was taught by Ying Compestine, an author of picture books, cookbooks, and young adult novels and food celebrity. Ying inspired me. Despite an obvious savvy about the business of selling and promoting books, Ying is a writer deeply concerned with her craft.

While it is perhaps not surprising that it took her seven years to write and publish Revolution is Not a Dinner Party (such stories of long times from writing to publishing are not unusual), what struck me was the work that she put into the story. For example, she condensed her first three paragraphs into a single sentence. She re-wrote several short stories when an editor made an off-hand comment that those stories were not as strong as others in her Hungry Ghost collection. Every word she labored over to make sure that it was perfect. For her, every published work is part of her reputation and she refuses to let a work go out before she considers it perfect.

What Ying brought to life for me was something that I knew deep down inside: story comes first – before queries, before sales, before fame, and, above all, before ego.

A day later that train wreck is a distant memory. In my hand, I hold tattered manuscript pages charred at the edges. I could let them drift off in the wind, soon to be forgotten by all but me, but I can’t. I’ve survived the train wreck (the first of many, I imagine), so I will hold onto these pieces of paper that perhaps might become great stories and keep walking, step by step, on the path of where I want to be heading.

In this way, a physical teaching is a direct connection to the earlier adepts in a method or tradition and is the living gate through which one needs to enter a pathway to begin to understand what the old masters sought.

While every teacher is different and learns and embodies the arts in his or her own manners, it is important for the student to discover his own truth by learning the essence and details of the art, testing the methods and practices, and arriving at a personal understanding.

The words of Basho, the Japanese poet, capture my philosophy:

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the old men/
Seek what they sought.

Seeking is the work of a lifetime.

The following people have guided me through my various practices and I thank them for their time and honesty and for providing the gates through which I have been able to explore:

Allen Pittman The base art from which I explore all other arts is the Gao Bagua system that Allen learned from the Taiwanese master Hung I Mien. Allen’s teachings (through seminars, private training, and conversations) have created a framework for exploration that while grounded in the physical and the combative, expands to healing, philosophy and the development of the whole person.

Steven Yip The world of push hands was the entry point into Steven’s Taoist influenced taiji style. Central to his teachings are working with the mind/intent and using forms and push hands as the frames from which to explore the idea of emptiness.

Maijia Soderholm My most recent training has been in the escrima blade work of Sonny Umpad through Maija. The random flow training, which in many ways is like push hands with blades, is the prime method to develop the escrima body and to explore the ideas in a contained environment. A key part of the training is learning to see.

Hal Mosher My introduction to the hands on aspects of the internal arts came through Hal. His close instruction provided a great base from which to explore the internal arts of bagua and xingyi. Through Hal, I learned my foundation in the Gao bagua and related xingyi, as well as Chen Pan Ling’s versions of these arts. My time with Hal whetted my appetite for “eating bitter” in my practice.

Laurel Houghton The world of Indian yoga traditions was brought to me through my study with Laurel. Her precise and insightful instruction provided me an opportunity to explore the similarities with Chinese internal martial arts traditions, especially as it relates to the breath and posture.

Kenn Chase My first taste of the internal martial arts came through the study of taiji with Kenn and set me on a path of near daily practice since first studying with him. He also introduced me to the Feldenkrais Method, which began me on my ongoing study and exploration of somatics

Additional folks whose workshops and classes I have attended for briefer training periods, include: Qian Zhao Hong, Li Tai Liang, Fong Ha, George Xu, Leo Gaje, Bruce Frantzis, and Ricardo Kayanan. I also spent time training with the Stanford Kenpo Club, the Stanford Judo Club, East West Bok Fu, and judo as a youth.

I also want to thank those who have shown up to spar, push, and share their knowledge including: Troy, Hal, Koa, Ghislan, Davis, Bill, Jake and many others in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“The only thing that has less value in our society than reading is writing.”

Bret Anthony Johnson, Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University

To the average person, Mr. Johnson’s comment during a recent talk about his new book at Book Passage may have seemed more like an indictment on his own book and craft than a rallying point for those of us in the audience.

But for those of us pursuing work that is not highly valued by society, his comment serves as a validation that our efforts have a value that extends beyond the surface on which most of society seems to accept as solid ground.

At this point of my life, I seem to have mired myself in what most of society would view as pursuits of little value:

• writing fiction for a vanishing audience,
• studying esoteric martial arts, and
• protecting animals and the earth and poor communities from the industrial juggernaut.

But these pursuits allow me to dig into the depths beneath the surface – whether it is through the joy of creating or practicing martial arts forms every day to peel back layers of the somatic experience or to know that my caring has made a difference in the lives of other beings. In these depths lie the jewels of meaning.

Society moves on the level of the lowest common demoninator – that which is most widely accepted. But we exist as individuals and it is our responsibility to burrow deep to uncover the worlds that we want to explore in order to create the lives that we want to live.

What could be of greater value?

These traditions are deceptive because as one explores them many layers are newly revealed, and what one thought was simple and knowable, suddenly becomes vast and constantly changing. A simple practice such as Bagua’s circle walking becomes a lifetime study of the idea of change.

The more deeply I explore these practices, the more unfolds before me, like the image of a flower blossoming, each petal unique, what was hidden slowly being revealed.

These traditions can be containers of differing shapes depending on what one’s goals are. Here in lies their richness and why they are worthy of a lifetime of study, providing a vehicle for exploration that keeps pace with the changing goals of a person that matures.

On one level, the goal of martial arts as a physical training tradition is simple and apparent – to dominate or kill an opponent. How does one throw a punch with the greatest efficiency? How does one swing a blade to cut through flesh? What are the physical tasks that I need to do?

But, martial arts traditions, if deeply conceived, can serve other goals as well – to improve health or forge of the spirit, especially when undertaken with a daily discipline of mindfulness. These types of goals manifest through the exploration of other types of questions when studying. How do I not tense up when facing change? Where does my mind get stuck? What is freedom?

I am at a midpoint both in my life and in the study of these traditions. On one level, I focus on the martial aspect – the sparring, the two person practices, the swinging of the blade, the “eating of bitter”.

But, increasingly, my interests are leading me towards connections between these martial traditions and theories of Eastern medicine, and the connections to meditative practices that carry lessons and actions away from the training and into the rest of my life – whether it is with work, family, or my own inner being.

And as a father, how do I share these traditions and the exploration of the somatic being with my daughter so that she lives a life of freedom, both in body and mind, especially in a society that does not value the development of either?

These pages are a place for me to write about, and give some solidity, to the ideas and questions that permeate my practices and to acknowledge those who have helped guide me on this journey.

Mr. Maisel, who has combined his experience as a counselor with his passion for nurturing creativity, was plugging his new book which focuses on the intersection between creativity and depression and provides tools for the artist and writer to manage the inevitable obstacles and challenges that make up the artist’s life.

Certain parts of his talk really hit home with me.

The three (paraphrased) keys to finding meaning in creativity:

1. Taking the plunge by deciding to live a creative life (not just dreaming about and surrounding yourself with the material results of someone else’s creative life),
2. Realizing meaning by working on a creative project that you intend to see through to its finish (it’s not just enough to call yourself a writer, you actually need to write), and
3. Committing time to the project (making time every day to create without fail).

Reversing Negative Self Talk One of the points that he brought up was that too often we are self-defeating, chopping ourselves down before or in the middle of projects. This was something that I felt at critical points in creative projects, usually when the going got tough, such as in the middle act. But interestingly enough, after his talk, I began to listen a little more closely to that silent voice of the incessant mind. Just the other night while watching a movie on George Sands with my lovely wife, I had this sinking feeling that I will never be as successful as the authors and artists depicted in the movie. That soft whisper in my head, almost more a feeling that an actual articulation, nearly passed unnoticed, but I caught it. And I think catching it was enough, at least for a first step, to become aware of the tricks of my mind that happen not just at critical points in the creative process, but also as an incessant background noise.

Pushing the Creative Self Beyond the Comfort Zone A final piece of advice that I took from the talk was to really push myself in my work beyond my expectations. He pointed out that often folks would write for forty minutes, get caught in a tricky part, and then give up for the day. He urged us to push on, write for another two hours. Well, at this point, I am not sure that I can steal away enough time from my other work and family to do that, so what I did instead was rather than giving up after reaching 750 words in 40 minutes, I pushed through for another half hour to reach a thousand words.

Before I attended his talk, I suppose I was a bit skeptical about how a creativity coach might add something to my creative process (after all, I am the one who has to do all the writing), but now I see the value in having a guide who can help provide the tools to be more creative and to help me finish projects.

So I have thrown my name into the pool of “free clients” who have the opportunity to work with one of Mr. Maisel’s creativity coaches in training. If I get selected, I’ll provide updates on how that process works for me.

And if I don’t get selected, I’ll still be putting the time into my novel and finding and sharing the tools to overcome the inevitable bumps and road blocks on this journey.