Module 1 transcript: why create?

When I was in my twenties, I came across a number of interviews with authors who had hit their stride later in life. At the time I was just finishing my MFA in fiction writing, had published in my first journal, and won my graduate program’s award for fiction two years in a row. I had a list of things I was going to accomplish in the next year, five years and 10,

I can remember reading interviews where author after author talked about laboring away for 10 years or more, and still not getting their book published until finally one day it did happen and they were glad that it had taken so long. Because in that process, they'd become much better writers. I remember thinking not me, no way. Is it going to take me a decade to get my book published? I don't think I want to keep doing this if it doesn’t.

A handful of years later, I got a creative writing Fulbright to complete a novel set in the Philippines. After my year there was up and my novel was done. I started sending it out to agents. I won a big award and found myself sitting in the office with the fiction editor at the New Yorker. The agents I was submitting to said that they thought my book was great.

It seemed like the success that I dreamed of was just around the corner, but seven years later, my books still wasn't published. I'd submitted my novel to dozens of agents. They said they liked my work, but in today's publishing industry, . They weren't sure that they could sell the story. In the meantime, I'd had two kids and was pregnant with a third, the week before my third child was born. I heard back from the last few agents that I'd been waiting on. Every single one of them had nice things to say, but ultimately none of them felt like the book was right for them.

Why create? This is the question that I finally worked up the nerve to ask myself in those dark hours before my daughter Mattea was born, the question I realized I'd been avoiding all along.

It's the question that we ask and each and every episode or shelter in place. The question we've asked in each and every Kasama Collective training intensive. And it's the question we're asking you now, as you embark on this creative. Because all of these years later, it's still the central question that drives everything we do.

It can be a terrifying question because depending on your answer, the course of your life could change dramatically. But for that very reason, it's a great place to start. Whether you're a lifelong creator or someone who's just beginning to learn what you're capable of. If you can honestly answer that question, why create it'll help you to weather the storms of rejection, imposter syndrome, financial struggles, professional pitfalls, and creative dry spells.

For me the week before my daughter was born, the question took shape this way. If I knew that I would never get a book published and never achieved the success that I dreamed of as a writer, what I still keep writing and creating.

I think I avoided that question when I was a young, newly published 20-something, because I assumed that I wasn't strong or patient enough to weather that much disappointment. I thought I was creating because I wanted to get published. But a decade after I swore I'd never become one of those creators who had to wait.

I was surprised to realize that the answer to why I created and if I'd keep doing it, even if I wasn't successful came instantly.

I still longed for success, mostly because I wanted to feel that my work mattered, but I knew that I would keep writing no matter what happened. Why create, because creating was my lens on the world. It was how I grappled with all of the important, hard, beautiful questions that life throws at us. It was how I learned to see even the worst moments of life as possible openings to a better way of being.

When we asked this question and our Kasama Collective training intensive, we get a wide variety of answers. People create because it makes them feel seen because they want to belong because they need to make. Because it makes them feel less alone because it's fun because it helps them to work out the darkest, most tender parts of themselves and produce something that can help instead of hurt others.

There are endless possibilities to the way that you might respond to that question of why create. And we hope that you'll take the time to consider them all. There are no wrong answers, just different paths to follow. We've given you some exercises in this module to help you think through why you create.

If you're feeling impatient with this question and anxious to get to the nuts and bolts of producing your own podcast. You'll find exercises for that too, to compile your creative toolkit for podcast production. But I hope you'll consider this question of why you create not just now, but for many years to come, because once you start peeling back the layers, it's really just the beginning of a whole series of questions that all of us have to consider. Is it important to you to create something that will make money or does trying to squeeze money out of your creative work, steal the joy out of making it? Does it matter to you if other people praise you for your work?

Is there an end to the amount of praise you'd need to feel like your work matters? Does your creativity need to be missionary? Do you feel threatened when others create too, if they create something better, do you feel in competition about what you create? Do you attach your identity to your ability to create, do you doubt that you have what it takes to create in the first place?

Not all of these questions are fun ones to ask, but they will tell you a lot about yourself. If you do, sometimes it can take some digging to be really honest with yourself about them.

We hope that in all of these questions, you'll extend to yourself, permission to be in process. To not have all the answers now or next week or even next year, that the process itself will become for you one of the reasons why you create.

For those of you who feel brave enough to share some of that process with your Kasama Labs classmates, we invite you to submit your own answer to that question of why you create, and this week's coaching. Just remember that you'll need to submit your response by midnight Pacific standard time on Thursday. You'll find a place to submit your responses along with any of the questions that you have for that call and each module. We can't wait to see where this first creative experiment takes you.

Why do we create? As the early cave paintings from 30 to 40,000 years ago show, humans have been driven to express themselves creatively as soon as the needs of food and shelter were taken care of. And like those early cave paintings of wild animals, Shelter in Place also started as a chronicle of the world and time around.

But as a quick scan through art history shows, there are many reasons to create. For centuries, much of art revolved around religious faith, medieval illuminated manuscripts, Arabic calligraphy, portraits of religious figures and scenes. In more recent times, you can see many more reasons for people to create.

Shepherd Fairey’s Obama posters in 2008, trying to get people to vote. Banksy's graffiti questioning society. David Sedaris dissecting his childhood for awkward humor, Damien Hirst, thumbing his nose at the fine art world, and NFT creators proclaiming that art doesn't even have to be tangible at all.

Looking over the history of Shelter in Place, we can see a number of motivations for creating the podcast started as a pandemic survival project and time capsule, a fresh way for Laura, a fiction writer by training to grapple with the current state of existence, our season one theme line, finding sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane, reflected that perennial, artistic motivation of searching for better understanding, for a way forward.

The other entwined motivation of course, was simply feeling compelled to create something, to survive. Like our homosapien ancestors, Laura had to pass those cave-like hours of early COVID quarantine, but like any creative project that lasts Shelter in Place had to keep evolving. In season two, we created episodes around a theme of our pandemic Odyssey, a geographic journey from California to Massachusetts and back that also mirrored our ongoing journey to find our sense of wellbeing. Or as we also put it, “Seeking not just safety, but a place where everyone can belong.”

This last phrase also ties into another of creativity’s great motivations, the desire to change the world around us. In the case of Shelter in Place, our attempt was to create a bigger home, so to speak one that would be more inclusive, a place where different voices and perspectives and people could all be welcomed in and treated with dignity and humanity.

For season three, our motivations for why create have continued to evolve. We've completed our pandemic Odyssey arriving back in our physical home in Oakland, California, but just as we, as a society are not post-COVID like, perhaps we thought we might be at this point, we, as a family are not done with our journey in a larger sense, which is why we're calling season three “the search for home.” Or also “embracing the journey in a world forever changed.” And one might say that this is the most important reason why we create, because as human beings, our journey is never done. We're always in process.

Another reason for us creating subconscious at first, but increasingly clear now is the persistent feeling that life before wasn't working. It's why we describe what we're doing. Not as trying to go “back to normal.” Since that normal wasn't working for many of us nor has just accepting “the new normal,” which feels defeatist, but working toward a better normal, this desire to work together toward a better normal was also part of why we created both our intensive program Kasama Collective, and now the self-paced program, Kasama Labs, we want a better normal where everyone's story can be heard and where everyone who wants to is equipped to tell those stories.

As any of you know, who have teaching experience, Seeing students succeed is one of the best ways to balance out the ups and downs of one's personal creative work, but doing that creative work also informs and energizes the teaching. So that's why we're creating not just podcast episodes, but programs.

There are, of course, many reasons why you might create, and as with many aspects of creativity there isn't right or wrong, better or worse, but there are trade-offs. For example, if you want to create something to be famous, the trade off is having to spend a lot of time networking and promoting, rather than simply creating. (As a quick side note, we have been advised that we should spend as much time promoting as we do creating, advice that we've struggled with since we do not find the promoting part as fulfilling as the creating part.) Or for example, if you want to create, to tackle big issues and change the world, the trade-off will be having some people dislike, misunderstand, or even attack you. Or let's say you want to create to process your own emotions or upbringing, the trade-off can be some uncomfortable, even painful moments with family members and yourself. One of our biggest goals for each of you doing this program is to understand your why in all its complexity. So then you can plan your what and your, how accordingly and intentionally happy creating, and we'll see you on the journey.