Are You Who Say You Are?

"Cat with a Pearl Earring" 2.5 x 3.5" colored pencil on paper.
Copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.
Available on mugs/ bags/ stuff here.

Sunday is my blog-reading day. Well, it's really my lazy all-purpose doing things I don't have time to do the rest of the week day, but it's quicker to say "blog-reading day."

Anyway, the bigger my blogging circle gets, the more chances I seem to get to actually meet some of the folks whose blogs I read or who comment on my blogs. It's always a weird experience. Because sometimes, you meet someone whose online persona is just like them -- their speech patterns and their . . . I dunno, aura . . . are exactly like their real-life mannerisms.

But more often than not, there's a strange disconnect between someone's online persona and their real-life persona. And as a blogger, that's a bad thing. Because most of us are way better at speaking in real life than we are in writing. Sure, a lot of us can throw together a nicely patterned sentence or a formal paper, but we sure as bunny-fluff don't actually speak like that.

So the reason why this sucks for bloggers is because the success of your blog (and for artists who rely on blogs to drive purchases) relies on how well you can connect with your fellow man. The younger set doesn't have the same problems with this because they've grown up talking to people online. To them, there's no difference in how they speak and how they write (which of course has its own set of problems when they try to move into formal writing). A great example is this teen review of Lament. Tell me you don't know exactly how this girl would be in real life. I had the great fortune to meet her after she wrote that review and I have to tell you, what you see is what you get. And that's refreshing a world of insincerity and anonymity. People want to get a sense of who you are.

On the other hand, I get e-mails from older folks -- and by older I mean thirty -- and I get run-on paragraphs of stilted e-mailese. Often it comes across as curt or uneducated; it frustrates me when I meet them in person and realize that these are highly educated, well-spoken people whose communication skills fall apart when converted to the written word. In a word . . . ack. Communication disaster.

So here's the question for the week: are you who you say you are on your blog? Or are you buried beneath clunky prose and funkier punctuation? Here's an exercise: hold a conversation with someone. Anyone. Your husband. Your dog. Then run to the keyboard and write down exactly what you just said. With some polishing and slightly fewer swear words, that should be what your online persona sounds like too.

Hope everyone's having a great Labor Day . . . I expect I will have a blog post containing humorous antics and tales of disaster as I try to host my first ever multiple-family BBQ at my house tomorrow. I'm afraid, very afraid.

Virtual Sketching and Butt Kicking

"fruit thingies" - in my sketchbook (which is close to getting full -- remember I will hold a drawing of my blog subscribers to give it away once its full)
copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.

First of all, I wanted to post my sketch for the July Virtual Sketching project. The reference photo -- fruity things of some variety (oranges? mangoes? alien seed pods?) -- really wasn't the sort of thing I'd normally tackle, but hey, it was entertaining and yellow-orange-thingies are always challenging for me because of the nature of yellows in colored pencils. The sketches are supposed to be posted any time today so you still have time!

Okay, and now onto the butt-kicking. I do these periodically for those who need/ slash want them. I was already brainstorming about doing one yesterday after two writers in two different online venues asked me how I got so much done, and then the always wonderful Jo Castillo left a comment on my last entry asking for a butt-kicking . . . so I knew it was a sign from the heavens.

So here it goes. You all know what I do -- I have two toddlers, three editors working with me on four novels, a part-time art career, musical instruments I practice, meals to cook (I'm allergic to preservatives so everything has to be from scratch), blogs to write, etc. etc. I think I have a full, life, but I don't feel like I have an impossible life. It's a happy life doing what I love.

And here are the secrets to my success in this month's butt-kicking. Remember, butt-kickings are like hydrogen pyroxide -- if it stings it means it's working.

1. Know What You Want
This is the biggest thing. I know exactly what I want. I knew I wanted to be a published novelist. I knew I wanted to make my living as a self-employed creative type. I knew I wanted to play the piano, etc. You can't make something happen unless you know what it is you want to happen.

2. When You Say You Want it You Better Mean It
The fact of the matter is that when most people tell me they want to be a published novelist or a career artist, they mean want with a small w. A small w want means that you aren't absolutely committed to hunting down that goal with an elephant gun. A small w want means that you can get discouraged. It means that you can be pulled from your motivation by the latest episode of America's Got Talent. No one can make you want something more. It's got to come from inside you.

3. When You Really Want Something, You'll Get It
This is not psycho babble. It's really true. If the goal is specific enough and you are committed enough to achieving it, you will get it. I used to qualify this by saying that physical constraints applied -- you know, if you were five foot tall, you couldn't end up playing professional basketball. But now, I don't think I believe that anymore. I've seen the stories about people taking on overwhelming odds and I now think that however crazy your goal is -- first five foot tall basketball pro, leader of the free world, bestselling author, etc - if you really want it, capital W Want, then you will make it happen.

4. Know the Difference Between Can't and Won't
This is one of the classics. People in my colored pencil workshops tell me all the time, "I can't draw anything better than a stick figure." But what they really mean is won't. Anyone can draw with perfect photorealism. But only some people really want to. Capital W Want that means they put in the hours to achieve it. The rest of the world won't draw anything better than a stick figure. I caught myself the other day telling my husband that I didn't have the patience to knit. That's a lie, did you notice? All it means is that I'm not willing to have the patience to knit. If I wanted to knit, I'd make it happen. Don't lie to yourself and say that you "can't" do something or that you don't have the skills necessary to make it happen. That's self-defeatism at its finest and most insidious.

5. You are Your Own Best Friend
We all have friends that motivate us, right? That get us back on track and pick us up when we're down? These best friends tell us that not getting into a particular juried show isn't crushing or that that deadline pressing down on you is doable. Well, guess what. You had better be your own best friend. Because you have to have a little internal voice motivating you all the time. Nobody will believe in your dreams as much as you and no one can be as hard on you to achieve them as you. Except maybe Jiminy Cricket.

6. Who Are You?
What do you tell people? What do you want to be able to tell people? "I'm an artist." "I'm a writer." "I'm a five foot tall basketball player." Now let's pretend that these people can drop into your life randomly seven different times over seven different days. What will they find you doing? Will they find you, the artist, creating art or developing marketing plans for it? The writer writing? The basketball player shooting hoops? Or will they find you procrastinating . . . watching TV, folding laundry that could wait until after your dreams get tended to, reading my blog, running unnecessary errands. The fact of the matter is that you need to make your dreams your identity. Long before I was a published author, I told people I was a writer and an artist, and if you dropped in at my house randomly at any given time, that's what you'd find me doing.

It's a question of wanting it, people. It's why I like writing for teens. Do you remember being a teen? When you had dreams so big they actually hurt to think you wouldn't get them? You need to sweep away the years of cynicism and putting your dreams aside and really harness that wanting again. In the end, watching So You Think You Can Dance won't change your life. But finishing that drawing, writing that paragraph, planting that garden -- whatever your dream is -- that will.

End butt kicking.

You gotta have goals.

"Memory" - 16 x 16" colored pencil on board.
Copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.
My panel for the Equine Mural Mosaic (which is fascinating -- check it out)

Regular readers will know that I am in love with goals. If goals were a vegetable, I would pick bushels of them, eat them until I was sick, and then freeze the rest so that I could have a continuous supply of goals through the cold months.

One thing I have learned about goals, however, is that, like vegetables, if you don’t use ‘em or freeze ‘em right away, they go bad. Some of them go bad in a spectacular fashion. Like if you vow to lose 20 pounds at the beginning of the year, forget about the goal, and then discover Haagen-Daas ice cream sometime in June . . . not only is that goal to lose weight gone bad, but it’s bad like stinking in the bottom of your crisper drawer bad. With rotten goal juice eeking around it.

And other goals go bad in a sort of failure to stay relevant way. Like if you suddenly crave sweet potatoes and buy a ton of them. If you don’t cook all of them, you’ll have those few lonely ones left over. They’ll never go bad in a fantastically awful way, but you’ll end up throwing them away after eight months because you just don’t want them anymore. So goals should be checked often and the ones that are really timely ought to be attacked immediately.

So enough with the metaphor. I wanted to write a post today about New Year’s Resolutions. Stop staring at the screen like that, it’s rude. I know it’s nearly the end of July (yes, it’s nearly the end. The 21st. Can you believe it?) but they’re still a good topic. Because halfway through the year(ish) is a great time to pull out your Resolutions and see which of them are done, which of them are so irrelevant you’ll never truthfully attempt them, and which of them are oozing stink-juice in your veggie drawer.

Here’s the sordid truth about New Year’s Resolutions: very rare is the resolution which actually stays good for a year. Twelve months is a long time. Priorities change, economies shift, careers jiggle, exercise goes better than planned, things get born under your porch with six limbs and eyes that glow red faintly in the darkness. It just makes good sense to reevaluate your goals partway through the year to make sure they’re still functioning the way they’re supposed to.

Here are my New Year’s Resolutions I made at the beginning of the year. Let me show y’all how I’m changing them to make them fit my changing priorities (without welching on any of them).

1. make x amount of money with my art
2. make x amount of money with my novels
3. make x amount of that with prints.
4. Contract for sequel to Lament.
5. Memorize 2 O’Carolan pieces for the harp
6. Visit NYC
7. Inspire someone to be an artist
8. Comfortably run a mile
9. Record a lament for Lament.
10. Get an agent
11. Contract for one other book.

I've managed to accomplish #1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 11. Instead of just crossing them off the list, I’m revising them.

NEW 1. Establish a solid financial plan for the next two years. (See how this is related to my first three goals I accomplished?
NEW 4. Begin writing Re: Myself, my next work in progress. (See how this one flows naturally from finishing Ballad and handing it in to my editor? The idea isn’t to keep myself constantly busy for the sake of being busy – but rather to keep myself motivated and on track for my career and personal life.)
NEW 7. Talk to one hundred teen writers about the business of writing. I’m about a third of the way there already. (similar purpose, just different career)
NEW 10. Keep my novel website updated regularly.
New 11. Double my number of subscribers to my writing blog (m-stiefvater.livejournal.com) and my short story blog (www.merryfates.com) (see how both of these are about furthering my writing career, just like the original goals)

Now for the ones I haven't done yet. Two stay as they are: I'm still going to NYC and I'm still going to record the lament -- I've written it, I just need to make it into the studio.

But two need to be changed.

I didn’t do #5. I’ll confess, I let these two musical pieces sort of go stale next to my potatoes. I had thought I’d be playing my harp more, but really I’ve been working with my acoustic guitar more as the harp needs new strings. So I’m changing #5 to something that will actually have meaning on the list: Buy an electric guitar for my birthday in November and start to learn some fun tricks on it.

And I worked diligently on #8, running a mile, until it got hot – really hot – and then I decided that I really needed something that I could do indoors. I’ve been dying to get killer abs, so I switched this to sit-ups instead. (and whoo do I see a difference . . . you could throw bricks at me now and my abs would repel them). Anyway, so my new number 8 is to do sit ups three times a week for the rest of the year. Still fitness related. But totally air conditioned. Go on, call me a wuss . . .

So how about you guys? Have you revamped your goals yet? Do you need to?

Maggie on Time Management, Part II

all artwork in this post are 1 minute sketches from life at a Lunasa concert
copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater
(please note all sketches posted in this blog are from my current sketchbook, which like the last one will be given away to a random blog subscriber when it's full -- so if you read regularly, make sure you subscribe so I know!)

As promised, today is the follow up post on time-management -- what I do to keep myself on track in the midst of a crazy world.

In the last post, I pointed out the top reasons that kept me from working: excuses, funky priorities, aimlessness and self-doubt. Those are the top reasons. Here are some others that might sound familiar to you: lack of energy, distraction, procrastination, and misdirected energy (fake usefulness).

And here's what I do to counter-act them. Maggie, Future Queen of America, tells all.

1. Excuses

This is a bad one for me, because I can think of so many: toddlers not taking as many naps, new puppy needing lots of walks and making lots of epic puddles, too many commitments, not enough hours in the day, need to cook dinner, need to clean the house, need to finish reading that novel that is burning at me to read it . . .

And I have to confess that for me, the biggest defense against excuses is my husband. He knows what I can do and he can see write through my excuses. He has a very low BS titer. Everyone has someone like this -- it could be a sister, a friend, a husband, another of your personalities -- someone who knows just how much you can do and will hold you to it.

If you don't, use me. I know what you're capable of. Shove those excuses under the rug. They're not doing either of us any good. This is about good habits, too -- the more you stop leaning on your excuses, the weaker they'll get, until finally you can blow them down like a straw house.

2. Funky Priorities

Funky priorities, as you remember, is when you think that there are things more important than your art, your writing, your music -- whatever it is that your dream is. For me, there are only a very few things that I consider more important that what my dream is, but I know that just because this is a concept that comes easy to me, it's not necessarily one that comes easily to others, especially if you've been raised to have an eye constantly on the reliable and the tried-and-true.

I do, however, have funky priorities when it comes to choosing between my various interests -- music, writing, and art, and I think the method I use for straightening out my priorities applies across the board. I ask myself constantly

• do I need to be doing this? (watching a TV show, signing up for a new artists' community online, etc)
• will it matter in the long run? (fretting about not making it to a show opening, knowing who the front-runner is in American Idol)
• does it make me feel good to get this done?
  
• does this touch upon more than one of the goals that I've set for myself?

And I know this last one is silly, but as a writer, you have to indulge me -- it really does work for me.

• If I were a character in a book or movie, would I be sympathetic for the character that I am? Would I think that I was doing all I could to accomplish my goals?
  

3. Aimlessness

This is one that used to torment me a lot. I would clear my schedule, allot time for work, sit down at the desk, and sort of . . . fritter around. It wasn't that I didn't have things to do -- I had lots to do. Too much. Way too much to accomplish in one day. Way too much to accomplish in one week. Give me a month, maybe. It just piled around me like . . . like . . . stuff that piles around you (my powers of metaphor momentarily failed me).

So I started setting goals. I got myself a notebook and started putting down my daily, weekly, and monthly goals. I got out of the habit of the notebook once the year was done, but I still have a stack of index cards and a calendar on my desk now. The calendar has long range goals and deadlines and the index cards have the week's goals on them, one day to each card. I also have my 2008 Goals/ New Years' Resolutions taped up next to my desk (Out of 11, I've already crossed out 2 and I'm this close to the next two - I can taste it).

Tada! My aimlessness was gone. I could get right to work. But it's not something I ever grow out of. If I try to go a week without my daily goals . . . nothing gets done. Work crawls to a halt. I don't think I'll ever be able to manage without them written down.

4. Self-Doubt

Yes, I still get it. Yes, I still foolishly think I can get around it by getting praise from outside parties. No, it never works.

Self-doubt is sort of like a cramp when you're running. It makes it hard to run at first, then intensely painful (and still hard), and finally impossible. You want to stop. You have to stop. You just can't keep going -- but you do. Well, most people don't. Most people stop and say, "$%^&! Blinkin' cramp! #$%^!" But those people who push through the cramp -- it goes away and you can keep going, good as new.

Well, I assume so. When running, I've always stopped for the cramps. But I don't stop for the self-doubt. Even when I think a piece is complete crappola, I push through it. Because I know the next one won't be, even if the current piece is a write-off. And I'll never get to the next piece if I stop then.

6. Lack of Energy

Sleep isn't something I like to compromise on, though I hear through the grapevine that most Americans do. I become a raving banshee hair-pulling lunatic without at least seven hours of sleep, so I try to get as much as I can. I also try and work with my circadian rhythm as much as I can. Meaning? I'm a morning person. The days I got to bed early and manage to get up early before the kids, I can get a lot more work done, because I feel good. Hard to remember that when I want to stay up and watch a movie.

Also, I watch what I eat. I'm of the opinion that Americans are guilty of eating a lot of junk, and it makes us uncomfortable, sleepy, and depressed. I'm allergic to preservatives of all sort, and it's an allergy that got worse as I got older. The early symptoms of my sensitivity? Depression, tiredness, headache. (then all sorts of fun gross painful ones later, but that's for another time, my pets). I don't think that I'm the only one that doesn't react well to preservatives, I just think I take it to a slightly higher level than most people. On my preservative-free diet, I have lots of energy and I stay fit.

Also, some of this is habit. People used to sitting stay sitting. People used to moving stay moving. I suppose if I stopped moving and being energetic, I might stop moving and being energetic altogether. I'm not really prepared to find out. So I keep on motoring.

7. Distraction

Oh, I'm bad about this. There are lots of things to distract me. The neighbors' dogs barking. The birds on the feeder. My cat feeding on birds from the feeder. Children hooting in their rooms during "nap" time. Husband watching interesting television. The thoughts rambling around in my head.

For me, headphones are the answer. I pick a CD suitable to what I'm doing -- nice uptempo stuff when I'm on a deadline -- warn my husband that I'm going to another planet, and put on the headphones. I must have music to stay focused. Otherwise, I can guarantee you my brain will be off holidaying while I'm trying to work.

8. Procrastination

*coughreadingblogscough* I'm a good one for procrastinating. I always waited until the last moment to do my papers in college too. The way I kicked this one (though it still plagues me) is fooling myself. I set false deadlines, well before the real deadline, and make myself work to that deadline instead of the proper one.

Example? My deadline for getting Ballad written isn't until the very end of the year. Plenty of time to write it. I can play around, right? Wrong. I'm giving myself a fake deadline of Halloween. If I have it done by then, I can play afterwards.

9. Misdirected Energy

This goes back to priorities, but unlike the more general priorities, misdirected energy is more insidious. See, with this one, I'm talking about things that seem useful for your work, but aren't really. For instance, investing a lot of time in an exhibition that won't really pay off. Or spending a few hours creating a pretty profile page on an artists' forum. Or going to art group meetings that aren't productive.

These are really hard to identify, because they feel like they must be useful. But time's at a premium, and the truth of the matter is you have to be like an emergency room doctor. Triage, it's called. It's looking at a room full of sick people and deciding who's most likely to kick the bucket and who's just there for the lollipops and Snoopy band-aids.

So look at your waiting room of tasks carefully. Who's really going to bleed to death first? And who can be shunted to the end of the line or off the line entirely?

10. There has got to be a number 10 to this list. This is going to drive me crazy. I'm going to make one up. Um.

Man, I couldn't think of one. I really am creatively stifled tonight, aren't I?

Okay -- you guys know the routine -- questions in the comments section and I'll answer them tomorrow. Also, any solutions that you've come up with, share!

Maggie on Time Management, Part I

Commission, in progress
Colored pencil on board
Copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.

As promised, today is the first of my posts on time management and motivation. This is a topic I feel very strongly about, nearly as strongly as I do about sweet tea and cookie dough.

Why, Maggie, do you feel thus? you may be asking. Because this is a typical conversation with a would-be artist/ novelist/ musician.

PERSON: Maggie, I admire your work immensely.
MAGGIE: (preens)
PERSON: I have always wanted to draw/ become a professional artist/ write a novel/ play the harp/ have two children that possess the ability to scream like harpies, but I don't have any time.
MAGGIE: There's always time.
PERSON: But I have work/ husband/ children/ cooking/ cleaning/ love slave/ iguana fostering.
MAGGIE (dangerously): There's always time.

Because here's the truth of it. I also have a husband, two toddlers not yet in school, cooking (all from scratch as I can't eat preservatives), cleaning, a full-time job as an artist, and two novel contracts. No iguana fostering, yet. For me, the secret is time management, motivation, and goals. Today I want to talk about the things that keep me from being productive and on Thursday I'll talk about things that help me be productive.

So -- if I you thought the list of things that keep me from being productive would include my kids and the laundry, you're wrong. Here it is:

1) Excuses
This one is going first for a reason. It is the number one thing separating people from their dreams. Remember conversation with unnamed Person above? Those things she listed: husband, cooking, cleaning, job -- those are excuses. Some might be more valid than others, but the truth is, the only thing keeping you from doing what you want to do and accomplishing what you want to accomplish is you.

This is the hardest truth out there, and it's worth repeating: the only thing keeping you from doing what you want to do and accomplishing what you want to accomplish is you.

When it comes down to it, there is always something else to be doing. Every second that I'm sitting at the keyboard writing a novel, there are five or ten or three hundred other things I could/ should/ might rather be doing. Could I use them as excuses to keep me from writing? Absolutely. But I'd rather use my writing as an excuse for why the last load of laundry hasn't been folded yet.

Excuses are insidious and sneaky little buggers. I consider myself a very motivated person, and even I fall prey to them. Luckily my husband knows me and knows what I'm capable of. So if I start to whine "I don't have the time," he tells me to look at my schedule and find it. Because it's true that some things are impossible. But it's more true that most things aren't.

2) Funky Priorities
Which leads perfectly into non-productive reason number two: funky priorities. I hear "I wish I had time to finish my novel" all the time. I can sympathize. Writing is one of those things that's infinitely easier if you have a big chunk of time to get into the groove. But then the next thing I hear out of their mouth is the latest American Idol results or the group meeting they went to.

This is about priorities. I'm not saying that art or writing is better than American Idol (okay, maybe I am saying that) or the local anti-littering group meeting or whatever it is that's occupying your time. I am saying that if you really want something, you'll make it a priority. You'll skip that TV show, that meeting, that phone call, that blog-reading time (not mine, of course), etc., in favor of whatever dream you're pursuing.

How badly do you want to create art? How badly do you want to have enough pieces for a gallery exhibition? Now think about the obstacles in your way. In one week, one year, five year, ten years, which activity will be more meaningful? The surfing on the internet? Or the piece of work you did in that time instead?

If you want something make it a priority.

3) Aimlessness
Even if you have your priorities straight and you've cleared the books, I still might not get anything done, if I don't kick my natural aimlessness. I have a tendency to sit down at my desk, having cleared the calendar, and even though I know I have one thousand things to do, I don't do any of them. Why not? I have no clue how to even start. I'm completely aimless.

The solution to aimlessness is aimfullness, obviously (I made that word up. It's nice). I set daily goals. I write them down. If I write them down, I can check them off.

If you want to be productive, you have to know what you're trying to accomplish. Otherwise, what are you working towards?

4) Self-Doubt
The final killer of productivity is self doubt. Even if you have the time, the priorities, and the goals, self-doubt can stop you in your tracks. Even me. I can still look at a project and say "Is this ever going to pay off? Maybe I should just drop it." "Maybe I can't pull this one off." "Maybe I'm over my head."

I'm not going to rewrite my post on smacking self-doubt with a wet noodle here (though I humbly recommend you read it), but I will say again that self-doubt isn't something anyone else can cure you of. No amount of awards or praise will keep it from your door. Confidence has to come from within, and it's something you can have regardless of skill-level. You don't have to be confident in your ability to weld a pencil or a paintbrush -- you have to be confident of your ability to solve problems and push forward despite adversary. Everything else is secondary.


So what keeps you from being productive?

The Nuts & Bolts of Commission Work

"All Strung Out" - 11 x 14" colored pencil on drafting film.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Prints available here.

Okay. Finally back on track! In this post I'm going to outline my commission portrait process. I want to emphasize that this is just the system that works for me -- anyone revamping their portrait process should regard this post as an all-you-can eat buffet. You can take as much or as little as you like, and if the carrots look gross, just leave them there. I won't know.

And as always, ask questions or comment on things you do differently in the comments -- I read every single one and try to reply to all of them. Now let's do this thing!

PRICING

First things first. Let's assume someone's approached me through e-mail and asked me about portraits. The first thing we're going to talk is prices. I price my portraits by size alone. I used to price based upon complexity, number of subjects, how long it took . . . and all I did was make it hard for the client to predict my pricing and make it impossible for me to remember them off the top of my head.

So instead I averaged out the time spent on my most popular size (11 x 14") and work out what I was charging for that. I turned that into a very inexact mathematical formula which I applied to the time spent on the other common sizes and then rounded them to even numbers. They're logical for clients, easy for me to remember, and fair.

PAYMENT

I used to do portraits without getting the money first. Gasp, right? I don't know what I was thinking -- but it didn't take me long to get burned. For awhile I reacted by asking for 100% upfront, which people did without question, but I found that I worked more slowly when I already had the money in hand. (See the painful truths I reveal for you guys? Do you see them?) So I settled on 50% down and 50% on completion. That gives me security and incentive to finish in a timely manner. And it also gives the client some confidence, I think, because they don't have to pay all of it until they actually see a .jpg of the final piece. Giving money to a perfect stranger can be scary. Remember that you're that perfect stranger in most cases.

REFERENCES

This is a crucial step of the process. If I don't have good references, I'm not going to get a good portrait. Period. If the client is in my state, I'll go take my own. In this case, I only as for my travel expenses and I give the client a CD with the images on it with the final portrait. This is definitely an extra and don't feel like you have to do this to be a good portrait artist.

If they aren't in state -- and this happens often as I get a lot of commissions from online sources -- then I'm going to have to make do with their photos. Also, dead people and animals don't pose very well (at least for me), so any post mortem portraits will have to be done from client photographs.

This is a scary moment, waiting for the photos to appear. Will they be awful? Beautiful? I have only turned down one commission based upon terrible photos (the cat had gone to that big litter box in the sky and wasn't available for further photographic torment) -- and in the end, we actually worked out a compromise on that one, which I talk about later.

I tell my clients to send me as many photos as they think they need me to see. I need to establish:

• actual colors (flash will obliterate proper coloration; however, even a blurry photo can establish colors)
• pose (though I can also play with these with my sketchbook)
• likeness (a nice crisp photo, please)
• personality (this is not the same as the above item)

My record is a client who sent over 30 photos for her cat portrait. I didn't mind -- I'd much rather have too many than too few. I also ask for a description of the subject, if I can't meet them. I want to work as much life into this portrait as possible.

I usually get digital photos but make sure if you get snail mail photos to ask if they want them returned.

WHEN REFERENCES GO BAD

Sometimes, the client will only have terrible references available. Blurry or flashed or just plain too small. You have two choices then. 1) turn down the commission (I'm loathe to turn down a possible electric bill payment, myself), or 2) fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

This is where communication is essential. If you don't tell the client the references are unworkable, they'll just assume they're fine and be horrified at the portrait of mush that you deliver. If I get unusable references, I go back to the client and tell them right away. If the subject's still breathing, I coach them on taking photos that will give me what I need.

If the subject isn't still walking among us (I'm determined to see how many different ways I can say "dead" in one post), more drastic measures need to be taken. No, I'm not digging up any graves. But I do give the client homework in that case. I tell them about google images and Flickr and I ask them to find photos that fill in the blanks (you can tell at this point that I'm talking about animal portraits, not people). For instance, one client had no photographs that showed her moribund cat's actual eye color. Rather than just guessing at what shade blue she meant, I had her find a photo of a cat with a similar eye color.

Sometimes I do the leg work myself. For instance, if the photo has poor lighting, I'll go in search of a photo with better lighting. Or if I'm combining elements in a portrait (I get asked to do this a lot -- more in the next section), I'll often need to find images to help me out with lighting and shadows or shapes.

STYLE & COMBINING ELEMENTS

Often clients will ask if I can change things from the photo. The answer for me is a resounding yes. In fact, if it was a no, I'd wonder what the point was of doing the portrait in the first place. But I do have my limits. If the request is something like putting a dog on their favorite chair or having a woman snuggling her child where no snuggling had occurred, I'm very happy to do it.

But sometimes I have to say no. A man once asked me to do his portrait. He wanted to be standing on a pedestal while three former presidents stood at the base in baseball uniforms and regarded him. I said no. (this is an absolutely true story, by the way).

Other things I won't change? My style. If someone is asking you for a portrait, it should be because they love your existing body of work. The goal is to create a piece that will fit seamlessly into my current pieces. I'll ask for color input if there's going to be a large field of color in the portrait, but otherwise, my style is the default setting and is unlikely to change.

REQUESTED CHANGES OF THE PORTRAIT ITSELF

These used to terrify me. I never wanted to show the portrait to the client because what if they didn't like it? I've worked out a system now, however, where I do a few two-minute thumbnail sketches and send them to the client to approve. This has eliminated 90% of the change requests, because the pose is already worked out.

Then I give my clients the option of seeing the portrait in progress or being surprised at the end. The vast majority prefer to be surprised. The others get to see the portrait twice. Once early on, when I can still make pretty major changes (colored pencil is picky this way). And then at the end, when it's all done and only minor changes can be made. A few times I've had to adjust an eye or a smile at the first stage, but really, I don't angst over this anymore. If you've done your sketches, the major things, the pose issues, are all taken care of.

I used to let my clients push me around, back when I was a tadpole. Before I said very firmly how much I could change and how much I couldn't, I was asked to do all sorts of nit-picky alterations -- colors on sofa cushions and positioning of highlights and random things. And I finally realized that this was entirely my fault. Not the client's. I wasn't emanating self-confidence in my own ability, and I was basically asking the client to second guess me. Now, I'm open to suggestions, but when it comes down to it, I'm the artist. They're just going to have to trust me.

And it works.

DELIVERY

First, I show the client a .jpg of the image, unless they want to be surprised. If they approve (I should say when), I send them an invoice for the balance, and I wait until I've received payment to ship.

No exceptions.

Then it's time for the package to go whirling through the postal system. Two words for you:

1) sturdy cardboard
2) insurance

I don't do anything fancy to package the art. I don't frame or mat my pieces -- the client will make all those decisions anyway, and I don't sell frames. I sandwich the art between sturdy cardboard and either bubble wrap it or otherwise cushion it against the post office playing kick ball with the box. I tape a business card to the packaging and jot a little note on the back of it.

Yo! Tis Maggie thanks for buying thanx bye.

Well, slightly better than that.

Then I send it priority (always priority) with insurance and follow up to make sure they've gotten it.

Thus a commission portrait is born.

Rats, I really wanted to work in a dead reference one more time. I had a good one: "living impaired." See, that would've been funny, right?

Answers to Marketing Questions & Next Week's Plan of Action

Okay. Start of a new week. Last week was productive (finished my rough draft of current novel) and eventful (watched my three year old accidentally grab a guy's crotch in the middle of church as she lost her balance)(at least he doesn't have to worry about having the same humiliating experience happen with his kids, as those parts of his body no longer function after Victoria's fall-and-grab).

And next week should be good too. My editor gets back into the office after being out with baby-having last week, so hopefully I get more news on LAMENT's cover (which should be appearing soon, sometime this month I think) and I get to go see Lunasa (world's best Irish band, people!) in concert. Nice!

This week on the blog I'm going to be doing a three-parter on commissioned portraits, from both client and artist perspective. So if you have any questions on that, stick 'em here in the comments.

Oh -- and before I answer the questions from the marketing posts, I want to say hello to the visitors from Ann Kullberg's colored pencil mag FMP, where she nicely named this blog her website of the month (very flattering. My husband had to push me through the living room door today as my head was too swelled to fit comfortably). Anyway, hi, Ann's people!

Okay. Onto the questions from the comments -- pinch me if I missed one. These are edited for typos and insane numbers of punctuation marks.

I am curious, you say that you won't sell in local shows (I only looked at them for exposure anyway) but I was wondering why don't you sell there? Is it the target audience just isn't a "buyer" as such?

This is a good question. In my original post, I said something along the lines of "enter local shows but don't expect to see any money from them." This has definitely been true -- in my experience. One has to keep in mind the location of the shows when analyzing this statement, both the city and the hosting establishment. A "local" show in an artsy town might net you sales. But usually, I find that free local exhibitions gather a lot of lookers but not a lot of buyers. I think I can remember two pieces I've sold from local exhibitions, and both were after the fact, after the buyers had had time to mull it over.

This is why I think that more pieces don't sell in exhibitions in coffee shops and libraries, etc. Imagine yourself as the buyer (this is a great exercise anyway). You're not actually a buyer, by the way. You're a coffee-thirsty patron. You walk into the coffee shop. "Whoo! Cool art by an obviously awesome girl named Maggie Stiefvater!" You love the style. You love the colors. It's inspired. But when it comes down to it, none of them grab you by the throat. You think you'd probably buy one if it was the right image -- but it's not there. These are all tea cups and you want a streetscape. Or vice versa. But you take the card that clever Maggie Stiefvater has made available, and then you pass that info on by word of mouth or file this information away for later use when you are buying Christmas presents.

Not an immediate sale! You have to woo people, and that means you have to give them time. But don't expect your exhibition to pay you anything -- unless you're doing an opening. (I really recommend the book TAKING THE LEAP -- it's over in the sidebar of this blog -- for a lot of basics on openings, etc.).

Say you are starting work on a new series and you only have one or two finished pieces. What is your take on entering one of the pieces in a juried exhibition - you know, one of the ones where you only get to have one entry? Would you wait until you had other pieces from the series showing different places (your rule of three)or would you enter this new, kick-butt piece into the show?

Hmm. I had to scratch my head and think on this one because I've never had quite this situation. I'd be tempted to go ahead and enter that kick-butt piece into the show, because jurying is generally a long process. By the time they decide your piece is, indeed, kick-butt, you can have the rule of three satisfied and even if it doesn't get in, you have your series well under way.

A question for you, how do you feel about joining art clubs? Would you get involved in any and all?

Ohhhhh. This is something that I don't normally talk about online on permanent record because (ssshhhhhh) I don't do clubs very well. I've never been a meetings sort of person. I don't do orderly and tidy and rules very well (I know, you guys could never guess this, right!?) . Anyway, needless to say, I don't belong to any clubs. But that's not to say I haven't thought about it, enough to have firm opinions on if I were going to join clubs, which ones I would.

Would: national clubs having to do with my medium. For me, that's the Colored Pencil Society of America, a large, active organization well worth looking into if you're a cp'er.
Would: Active local clubs with professional artists swelling their ranks. Active means not only actively meeting but actively scheduling group exhibitions.
Wouldn't: Pay excessive amounts for local clubs to pay for wall space.
Wouldn't: Join local club mostly populated by amateurs. Remember, people rise to the level of the people around them -- and if you're surrounded by equals, you'll stay where you're at.
Wouldn't: Join a local art co-op that required that I sat in the gallery for x amount of hours a month. I have better things to be doing with my time! That sounds snotty -- but it's true.

But I would say that the most important rule is you want to be in a club that you feel proud of all the members. You're associating yourself with them -- make sure that they, like a new pair of jeans, don't make your butt look big.

Have you had to deal with art theft yet? As in people stealing the work off your site ect, and if not, how would you deal with it?

I haven't had to deal with physical theft yet. I know most good galleries are insured against these things but a lot of artists have insurance themselves -- some art shows require it. I can't speak knowledgeably about this side of it.

However, I have had someone steal teaching threads off WetCanvas before (WetCanvas, if you're not familiar, is a wonderful, huge community of artists and definitely a club you should join) and publish them in Russian on another site. Another artist found them and alerted me. It wasn't just my work, it was a bunch of folks' threads all lifted wholesale and reproduced in a Russian-language art forum. Some of the artists e-mailed the website and demanded they be removed. I decided that I had put the threads up in public for teaching and I was still fine with them being up, as long as I got credit, and I e-mailed him saying so. I got a link back to my site and I still get traffic from there. Moral of the story, I guess, is be empathetic. Sometimes thieves are just thieves and you should blast them. Other times, they're ignorant and you can twist the situation around for good. Be sensitive in all things.

Do you have a cure for Studio Avoidance? I have a severe case of it and can't seem to get over it. I spend about 95/5% on marketing and am down to those four paintings, so I'm getting pretty desperate.

I saved this one for last, because it ties in with my rough sketch I posted tonight. Studio Avoidance . . . Artist's Block . . . I got this last year after doing a painting every single day for months. I was chasing eBay's art selling trends to pay the bills and frankly, I was burnt out. I gave myself permission to create pieces for me, and suddenly I was off and running again.

Likewise, I was sluggish in the studio for the last few weeks. Creatively drained from writing my novel and doing portraits. I'd had an idea for a series for a long time but it was very different and I didn't think I could pull it off in my style and . . . well, I just had all these reasons and doubts. But today, I gave myself permission to start that series. I don't usually do "meaningful" art, but this whole series is very much about something I believe strongly about: taking a chance, taking a leap, doing the impossible. And suddenly I'm excited and desperate to be in my studio again.

So that's my advice . . . give yourself permission to do something you've been putting off. Or sit down with a sketchbook and plan the exhibition you'd be proud for your friends to see. Imagine what it would look like if you took your personality and put it on the walls. We let self-doubt keep us from the studio and we shouldn't.

Marketing, Maggie Style, Part III

Okay. This is the third and final marketing post in the series (though I will answer all questions posed in the comments of all three posts on Sunday) and I have only two key phrases for you:

1) Marketing may be an art, but it ain't art.
and
2) If you're only exposing yourself online, you're only as good as Paris Hilton.

Do you like them? I took all of, like, two seconds to think of them and I think they're quite catchy. Not bumper sticker worthy, but still, I'm proud of them.

Anyway. First things first. Marketing may be an art, but it's not art. You can't neglect one or the other; It's crucial that you balance your art and marketing efforts. There's is absolutely no point in having a huge and lovely inventory that never gets sold because of ineffective marketing. And likewise there's no point in marketing yourself into the ground for an inventory of four paintings.

The amount of time you spend on each is going to vary depending on how time consuming your art making methods are and how efficient you are at marketing -- but I would say for me it's at least a solid 50-50. Sometimes leaning decidedly more 60-40 in the marketing direction. And if it falls below 50% -- you'd better believe my wallet feels it. Not right away, but a month down the road.

And while I enjoy marketing, I don't like it nearly as much as making art. (that's where the catch phrase comes in). And some people don't like it at all. But honestly, if you want to be a professional artist, you're going to have to find a way to make it palatable. Professional art and marketing -- inseparable. Until you get rich and famous and you can hire some guy with a snotty name like Theodorus Alexander Hamilton Ltd to promote you while you do the hermit artist thing.

Now, this is only vaguely related, but I want to rant very briefly about fine art snobbery because it irritates me and shoots many nice artists in the feet. I see a lot of this attitude: "I'm a fine artist, so I can only sell limited edition giclees with my images on it. If my work appears on any other sort of product, I'm selling out and I'm not really a fine artist."

I was going to preach a long few paragraphs in defense of getting your art out in as many creative ways possible -- including t-shirts, calendars, etc. -- but instead I'm just going to say this: think about it for two seconds. Seriously. I know those really big famous artists like Da Vinci and Vermeer etc. would never be caught dead on t-shirts etc., because that would devalue the original pieces, but . . . oh yeah, that's right. They're everywhere. Put your art everywhere too.

Onto my second amazing catchphrase. The one about Paris Hilton. I see a lot of artists who are struggling to make a living at it only promoting online. If they ask my opinion, I always say: get your work out in the real world. In my opinion, there is no replacement for real life exposure.

"But Maggie," they all say (and if I had a dime for every single time an artist tells me this I could hire Theodorus Alexander Hamilton Ltd right now) "but Karin Jurick/ Duane Keiser/ fill in the blank with some famous daily painter just has their online blog and they make x amount of money every day from their paintings."

Okay, no. Just stop right there. They don't just have their blogs. All of them do gallery pieces, or portraits, or private showings. Show me someone who looks like they do 100% of their marketing online and I will show you someone who does incredible marketing online . . . and incredible marketing offline. Read their blogs -- interspersed between their daily paintings, you will find mentions of their bigger pieces and their galleries that represent them and exhibitions and openings and magazine articles and . . . are you getting my gist here? You may acknowledge that you need help figuring out how to get your work out in the real world but it's just not right to say that you don't need to be out in the real world.

The internet is a wonderful thing for the professional artist. It opens up a tremendous amount of business and makes being a pro possible for many people (myself included). But it will never replace seeing the art in person -- seeing you in person. Because while you may be an amazing artist, there are a million other amazing artists out there, but 900,000 will never leave their studios or promote their art to the fullest extent. Don't be one of those 900,000. If you want this, really want it -- go get it. Don't go 50%. Go 100%.

All questions in the comments this week will be answered on Sunday, so ask away (or disagree with me too if you do)!

MARKETING, MAGGIE STYLE, PART II

I don't have a subtitle on this one, mostly because there's no real room to put a subtitley thing, but if there WAS room, I'd subtitle this post Hype, Consistency, & Flexibility. Don't wince. It's not that bad.

So, hype first. This is particular pet peeve of me in marketing and sales. Not just marketing of art, but of all things. I hate sales-speak and I hate ad copy that looks meaningful but is really just fluff. Example?

Evergreen Wallabies. The pet that gives back! Check out our family friendly Wallabies today -- they'll give you a taste of Aussie style! If you order one Wallaby before Valentine's Day (Wallabies make great Aussie gifts for your world-loving spouse), we'll throw in a free "Care Package" -- a value of $25.00!

What does that tell me? Nada. Zip. It's a bunch of buzz words and a time limit thrown in to encourage sales. It looks tacky, and moreover, it's the sort of marketing that Americans have grown immune to in a phenomenon that online sellers call "ad blindness." Obviously I don't think any of my charming readers would ever shove their product down someone's throat this way, but if you find that your marketing efforts tend towards the general and the impersonal, you might want to reconsider your strategy.

Okay, enough with hype. Onto consistency. I'm not talking about doughy versus crunchy here. Rather, I'm talking about branding. This links in very stongly with my earlier post series on artistic style. If you take away only one thing from these posts on marketing, take this one away: you need to build a brand for successful marketing, and you, baby, are that brand.

Let's say you have ten different places you're pushing yourself. One's a gallery, three are public hangings (no jokes about Jack Sparrow here, please), and the rest are various online ventures. If you're displaying watercolor florals at one, acrylic macro still lifes at another, and pen and ink military art at the rest, you're really only marketing your military art. The other two efforts are wasted. You're violating two marketing rules here.

1) You should always have at least three different places to find current artistic style that you're marketing.

2) You should only have one artistic style being actively marketed (for greatest efficacy).

Anyway, this goes back to the concept of branding. Think about some successful brands: Martha Stewart. Ikea. Pier One. I don't have to tell you what's on sale this week for you to guess what kind of things each of them have available, do I? They might occasionally have something out of character, but they've built their brand so well that you can say, "That doesn't seem like Ikea."

That should be you. Even if you don't have a consistent style yet, you should be able to eyeball the pieces that you have and see which ones hang together enough to start building a brand. Somewhere along the way, I got a great piece of advice from a successful artist. She said, "Professional artists always work in series." And this is absolutely true. If you work in series of 5-10 pieces, it gives you a nice body of work to market and allows you to change your style subtly from one series to the next. Let's say, for instance, that I wanted to market that crazy surrealist piece I'm working on for the Bauer/ Nielsen project. Ideally, I would do a series of them, using the same palette as my absolutely realistic stuff, but using the same concept as the Bauer piece. Then I could take that series and

• name it
• market it as a slight departure
• have enough images to build a "mini-brand" for the series
• have enough images to fill a booth with originals and prints that all look related (and thus look professional)
• have a cohesive series to present to my gallery, if I went that route (click here to see my interview with the owner of the wonderful gallery that represents me)
• subconsciously create a sense of urgency, because once that series is done, I'll be onto the next thing and the buyer will have lost out (this happened with my Cats of the Old Masters series last year)

Last point for tonight's post is: flexibility.

I know, flexibility sounds like the opposite of consistency, but I'm not talking about style now. I'm talking about keeping my ears open for marketing options. We all have in our heads the idea of an ideal marketing situation or an ideal client, etc. Well, sometimes that ideal doesn't come along. Professional art isn't like selling shoes -- I don't get all my income from one type of sales outlet. So I need to be flexible, always looking for new and interesting ways to market myself. You never know when something weird will turn up -- a festival you'd normally never think of going to, a commission for something that's really on the very edge of your style, a chance to be on the radio, a cheap billboard in your area, a really popular art group that you can weasel your way into, etc. It's hard to talk to would-be professional artists on flexibility because you don't know where you'll have to use it until you see it.

I can tell you this. Opportunities & work & sales don't come along by accident or good luck. I've seen too many envious artists simperingly congratulate other artists on their success and then snark about the successful artists' good luck behind their back. It's not good luck, folks. Sales and success come along because:

• preparedness
• consistent branding
• honesty
• a willingness to share your knowledge
• a passion for your product
• a desire to honestly please your client
• networking
• acting & passive marketing
• a constant drive to improve
• a willingness to listen
• and absolutely last on the list, because I really believe it belongs here and not at the top -- talent

The best artist in the world will starve on a diet of Ramen noodles if they don't have the above qualities and a mediocre artist who shines with all the others will happily dine on cookies and sweet tea.

Naming no names, of course.

Questions and comments?

Marketing Maggie Style - Part I

"Strawberries" - unfinished 35 minute sketch from my sketchbook/ done during my workshop
Copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.
Remember to subscribe to the blog if you want a chance to win the sketchbook when I'm done with it!

Okay, I promised a mini-series of posts on art marketing, so here goes. I want to preface this like I preface all my advicey blogs: there are a million ways to do everything having to do with art, including the business of it, so take my advice and adapt it to what you do. Seriously. If something works for you, run with it like it's going out of style. If it doesn't chuck it. Nobody's grading you here on anything but results!

So, that out of the way, in this first post, I want to talk about diversity. Diversity is absolutely crucial in any art marketing plan. Unless you are a talking whale who does pastels and you land a spot on Oprah, I can guarantee you that you're not going to get all your marketing needs from one place. You're going to need to be like my dog Ginger -- everywhere.

However . . . before I talk about various places I've poked my head up for the sake of marketing, I want to talk about bad publicity. There is such a thing as negative exposure. Couple of examples?

• In the company of bad artists. I'm not talking about artists in a different style from yours. I'm talking about websites that mostly advertise artists who aren't yet at the top of their game. If you're at the top of your game, you don't want to be lumped in with them. Believe me, it is far better to have artists who are your equals or better all around you if you're paying for advertising. Don't be intimidated by other good artists -- I don't believe that a good artist truly has to worry about competition from other artists. You're a unique commodity.
  
• On unprofessional looking websites. Yours or anyone else's. It's far better to look elusive and unreachable than to be found on a two-color website coded by a ten year old that is called "Lola's Fine Art & Hairdressing."
  
• On a myspace page also featuring photos of you throwing up on your date after a party. This partially goes under the second heading, but the point of this one is that your business and personal identities need to mesh seamlessly or one of them has to get off the internet. Period.

Okay. I'm assuming that none of you would commit any of the above sins. Now here are a few ideas of places that you can use for marketing. I'll go into more detail on the next posts on marketing (which will be on Wednesday and Friday for those so inclined).

• a personal website to act as a professional portfolio (www.sitekreator.com hosts very nice template based ones)
• a blog that is at least 75% about your art and is updated at least twice a week
• on FREE artists' portfolio sites with good traffic (Painters Keys is one of these but there are other -- use Google, it is your friend)
• by posting on artists' forums with useful information and works in progress (WetCanvas & ScribbleTalk are just two)
  
• by reading other artist's blogs and commenting intelligently to drive traffic back to your blog (and to get to know other artists)
• magazine articles. write them and submit them - submission guidelines are on most magazines' websites and there are so many subject specific mags that you don't have a reason not to
• local exhibitions. find out where people display art locally and work yourself into it -- as long as it's free. DO NOT PAY FOR GALLERY SPACE. Note that you probably won't sell pieces at a local show. Doesn't matter. Exposure always pays off in the long run.
• national exhibitions. You will have to pay a jury fee for these. But find the ones most specific to your medium and subject and it will pay off.
• business cards. Make them beautiful and send them out into the world so they can keep working for you while you're sleeping.
• local festivals. I try to do a booth at my local town festival every year. It's tiny, but that's the good part -- word of mouth in a tiny town can do wonders. Big fish in a small pond isn't a bad thing.
  
• subject-related shows. When I want to get horse portraits, I do booths at horse shows. Find venues related to what you paint, whatever it is you paint, and make yourself known.
  
• eBay - if you think of eBay as a marketing tool instead of an income maker, you'll be a lot happier.
  

This is just a start -- but I do all of these things consistently. You'll notice that most of them don't cost money, and I'm inherently wary of things that do. Another note -- it takes awhile for these things to pay off. So sow the seeds now so they can start to bear fruit sooner rather than later

Questions?

The Last Butt-Kicking of 2007

Successful people believe that they have the internal capacity to make desirable things happen.

This is perhaps the most central belief shown to drive individual success. People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats. This comfort with ambiguity leads people to take greater risks and achieve greater returns.

Successful people tend to not feel like victims of fate. They believe that they have the motivation and ability to change their world. They see success for themselves and others as largely a function of motivation and ability, not luck, random chance or external factors.

-from "How Successful People Become More Successful"

Okay, folks. Here it is. My last friendly butt-kicking of 2007, for artists, writers, moms, and anybody else who reads this blog. I don't pretend to be the most successful person in the world, but I can say that I'm happy with where I'm at as a brand-new 26-year-old. I'm better off this December than I was last December. If I've made the same leap by next year, I'll be happy next year too.

I'm a big believer in goals, so for me, setting New Year's Resolutions seems pretty obvious. I tend to write down my resolutions right before the New Year and then modify them throughout the year as I meet them. And I do tend to meet them. Want to hear some of mine from last year's resolutions?

1. make my living entirely from art again this year (despite a ghastly October that had me eating way too much spaghetti with no sauce, I did this) (and I had a set money figure that I wanted to meet for myself to count as "making my living", which I'm not going to share here, so don't ask, you nosy buggers)
2. get a contract for one of my novels (regular blog readers will know that LAMENT is coming out in Fall '08)
3. get into American Academy of Equine Art's exhibition (didn't do this but got into the Colored Pencil Society of America's International Exhibition instead).
4. teach more workshops (the Detroit branch of the CPSA flew me out there to teach a three day workshop in March, which was very fun & I've been asked to do a series of 5 workshops in Northern Virginia in '08)

For me, there's no need to convince me about the value of New Year's Resolutions. Setting goals works, because it makes me accountable. How can I be successful if I don't know what I'm supposed to be trying to do? With that in mind, I've dug up some useful goals links for the wafflers amongst you to read before setting your goals. Setting bad goals is worse than none at all, so make sure you're doing it right.

Make Your Goals Specific
The Mindset of Successful People (scroll down to get to the good part)
Hokey Article about Visualizing Goals

The most important thing is to make your goals specific. "Make Money with my Art" is a crummy goal. "Make xx,xxx" with my art is a better goal, because you'll know when you've achieved it. And if you only make x,xxx amount with your art, you know how far you still have to go, and you'll stretch to reach it.

The next thing is to make your goals something that you can mostly do under your own steam. Don't put "Achieve world peace" (which is another sucky non-specific goal by the way) unless you think you can do most of that on your own.

And the next important thing is to not make your goals too easy. Sure, you can throw in some gimmies. But throw in some stretches there. You risk not making them, but you also include that chance that you might. And if you don't put them in there, I can guarantee that you won't make them.

And finally, show them to everyone. Remember that accountability thing? The more people that see them, the more real those goals are. You have a reason to achieve them, to prove yourself to others as well as to yourself.

With that said, here are my top ten goals for 2008.

1. Make 75% of my income from my art. (I have an actual dollar amount that only my family knows).
2. Make 25% of my income from my writing.
3. Shift my art income to 75% prints, products with my art on it, and workshops and the rest from originals.
4. Get a contract for at least one other novel and the sequel to LAMENT.
5. Learn to play my two favorite O'Carolan pieces on my harp (this is my gimmie, but I wouldn't make time for it unless I put it on the list).
6. Visit New York City with my husband (and maybe my toddlers).
7. Inspire at least one other person to go full-time with their art.
8. Comfortably run a mile by the end of the year (this is another gimmie, but like the other one, I wouldn't feel like I had to do it unless it's on this list).
9. Get into the studio to record a lament for LAMENT & build website for book with the tune as a download.
10. Land a good literary agent.
(11). Get my dog Ginger to stop smelling like fish.

Looking at that, I'm sure I'm missing some things, but I'm going to jot them down as I think of them. And you know what I'm doing right at this moment? I'm taking that list, using a beautifully fat and smelly Sharpie to write them on a piece of cardstock and taping it next to my desk where I can see them every day. And I can't wait to start crossing them off.

Let's see your goals, folks. Post a comment here if you've put your goals up on your blog, or if you're afraid to do it that publicly, feel free to email them to me (portraitswithcharacter AT gmail.com) if you want me to help you feel accountable.

Happy New Year! It's going to be a good one.

Practice Safe Art

"Pink" - 6 x 6" acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

A reader and fellow artist, Bethany Caskey, sent me this e-mail today:

I was contacted last week by a couple that wanted to purchase five paintings. They gave an address in England. I received a cashiers check today - for far more than the amount of the paintings and shipping- and thinking it was fishy, took the check to the bank to have it looked at. About 30 minutes of sleuthing later, they came back with the information that it was indeed a phony check. The couple was using the names Kelly and Frank George and claiming to live in London and Alabama but the check was from a bank in Maine. Hey, they had good taste at least.

You may have already heard about this scam -- it's been around for as long as there have been cashier's checks -- but if not, be wary. There will always be people trying to get something for nothing. Which brings up an important topic for artists: security and money. I generally like to follow ten important rules on this front, and I'll share them with you here.

1. People are evil. Okay, perhaps not all evil. But for every innocent Adam out there minding his own business, there is definitely at least one Eve who is not only going to bite into that apple, but convince some other schmuck to bite into it too. Just realize that there are more Eves out there than a friendly person would like to think, and keep your apples close.

2. Get it in writing. It doesn't have to be in the client's own blood or anything, but definitely ink, and definitely signed. If you're doing a large commission with a new client, you'll both be a lot happier if you have limits set and on paper for the world (and any courts) to see.

3. Get it up front. Thou shalt not set pen to paper until thou have received a deposit. I didn't use to do this. Then I had an Evil Person commission a work and never reappear to take it or pay me. Oh, I weep for my lost innocence.

4. Money's money except for when it isn't. Cash is pretty much always cash. I suppose someone could slip you counterfeit bills but I haven't heard of it yet. Checks, believe it or not, are almost always money. I know it's easy to give someone a bad check, but I've never gotten one. And considering the number of times I've been paid with a check, that's pretty good odds. But money orders and cashier's checks . . . wait until your bank smiles over them before releasing any paintings anywhere. And since they're the most scam-worthy currency, turn on Ye Olde Gut Feeling when deciding when to accept them as payment.

5. Keep receipts. From the post office, the art store, the bank, the costume rental place . . .
wherever you spent money for your art, keep the receipt for Mr. Tax Man (who definitely falls onto the Evil side of the population, especially if you cross him) and also for clients. If someone quibbles over how much they paid for shipping (and this does happen, because people assume you're Evil too), you want to be able to show them the receipt from the post office, saying that it really did take $90 to ship that ceramic baby hippo that you mailed to them.

6. Have a credit card or debit card from a purely business account to buy things. It's easier to keep track of things, you feel really important when you say "put it on my business card, would you?", and life in general will be rosier with more cupids flitting about.

7. Make all your art purchases at one time. Shipping costs can add up faster than calories on a donut spree, and it will make a big difference to your overall budget if you can both cut shipping costs and get bulk discounts on items like frames and paper.

8. Watch out for your clients' well-being. If you have a client who loves to buy but her desire outstrips her budget, think about talking with her about it. I've had clients who loved my art but they bought so much they couldn't even hang it on their walls. The idea of it stacked somewhere in their house . . . that's not what art is for. Leave your clients feeling good and guiltless about their purchase and they'll come back to you later -- and recommend you to their friends. Talk them into a higher priced piece and they'll regret it like that Mercedes they bought last year.

9. Be quick to offer refunds on your mistakes. If you overquote shipping, offer to refund or give a credit. If they accidentally paid twice, get on it like a tacky button down on a computer geek. Even if they refuse, they'll know you're honest. Every step you can take to convince them you're an Adam and not an Eve will be one closer to repeat business.

10. Reward yourself. We're starving artists, I know. We hoard. It's what we do. But when you make a great sale or you sell a piece you've been dying to sell . . . reward yourself. Just a little splurge, and you'll feel motivated to both pay the electric bill and paint the next big seller.