I am excited to introduce the first interview post on Be Inspired. Melissa Dinwiddie is someone I have only met recently but definitely fits the mold of inspirational people.

Melissa Dinwiddie is a multi-passionate, creative ARTpreneur.

You read that right. Inspiring people know who they are and live the lives they were meant to lead. If there isn’t a job description that fits them, they create their own.

Last fall I was directed to a new program called The Thriving Artists Project, run by Melissa. After watching the video Melissa had on the site, I was impressed with what she had to say about her hopes for the project – helping artists but the starving artist mentality. It didn’t hurt that she said that members would “be inspired” by being a part of this project.

Since joining this initial group, I have been introduced to a whole new world of thriving and want-to-be thriving artists that is so encouraging. Melissa offers audio interviews, exercises, and a forum for questions. Through her consulting, I have made positive changes to my blog and website.

The Thriving Artists Project is opening its doors again in about a week, so if you are interested, please check it out. I do make a small commission if you click through from here and join the project, but I only recommend programs like this if I am a part of them myself and am whole-heartedly behind them.

Besides the Thriving Artists Project, Melissa does one on one and group coaching through her site, Living a Creative Life, and also has a social network/magazine style site, called 365 Days of Genius.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Melissa through this inteveriw. My questions and comments are in italics.

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You call yourself a multi-passionate ARTrepreneur. What three things are you most passionate about?

Unfair question! I have way more creative passions than that! However, if I had to list the three creative pursuits I’m most passionate about, they would break down into:

1) Making stuff with my hands (ie, art) <– ketubahs, calligraphy, yoga art, you name it!

2) Making stuff with words (ie, writing, songwriting)

3) Making music (ie, singing, playing ukulele) <– a working jazz singer!

See how I managed to squeeze more than three in there, while still keeping it technically to three? I will always cheat on questions like this!

(Lesson to me: Never limit a multi-passionate ARTpreneur!)

How did you come about starting your site, Living a Creative Life?

My blog was born out of a personal crisis. Actually, a series of them.

This time last year I found myself in debt for the first time ever, and suddenly I didn’t know how I was going to pay my mortgage. Then my boyfriend, who’d been discussing marriage just a couple of months earlier, suddenly announced that he was moving out, taking his share of the monthly mortgage payment with him.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to jolt you out of a rut. The truth is, I’d known for a long time that something needed to change, but I wasn’t sure what or how. I was making my living as an artist, primarily from my ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) and matching invitations, yet I was mostly selling prints, and spending very little time actually creating anything new. I really wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do.

When I started making ketubot back in 1996 it was a dream just to earn money from my art. Making a living from it felt like the final frontier. I was following my bliss, but it turns out that bliss evolves! Rather than continuing to follow my bliss as it blazed new trails, however, I kept down the same path. What started out as a groove turned into a rut. Being a ketubah artist had defined my business self for years. Now I was really clear that even just as a business title, this definition was way too limiting.

Not long after my boyfriend moved out, he sent me a link to Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Nonconformity blog (so he was good for something!) When I realized that here was someone doing what I thought was impossible — namely making a good living doing what he really wanted to do — I perked up my ears and took notice!

One role model was all the proof I needed that a better life was possible. I determined then and there that I would dedicate myself to following my evolving bliss, and creating the life I really, really wanted. I started Living A Creative Life as a way to document my journey, in the hopes that perhaps my experiences would also be helpful for other people.

How has your bliss evolved?

I’ve discovered that I have many blisses. When I was a teenager I dove into the world of dance, and for a few years that was my obsession, until an injury put an end to my dance career.

In my late 20s, I discovered a passion for calligraphy. A few years after that I started salsa dancing and “rediscovered” dance, albeit in a different form. I felt as if I’d been given an incredible gift, finding a second passion, then getting my first passion back, but in a shiny new package that didn’t carry the emotional baggage of my previous dance life.

When another injury kept me from dancing, I spent a year studying aerial arts at a circus school (which I’d probably still be doing if it weren’t so expensive and time-consuming!)

As my calligraphy and ketubah business grew, I had less time to create art in a fulfilling way, so I turned to music to get my creative fix. I picked up the guitar and took my singing more seriously, going on to study and perform jazz.

Now I’m getting great joy from writing, and in the past year I started creating mixed media pieces, working on canvas for the first time, and I fell in love yet again.

It took me decades to realize that I’m hard-wired to be multi-passionate. I used to see this as a liability, but now I embrace it. It’s kind of fun wondering what cool thing I’ll discover next!

Who or what inspires you?

So many things! People who are doing things I want to do — like Chris Guillebeau. Other artists. Animals. The natural world.

How do you actively seek inspiration?

I think I’m always on the lookout for inspiration. I spend a lot of time online, and if stop to think about it, a lot of that time is seeking inspiration, whether consciously or not.

Offline, one of my favorite ways to seek inspiration is walking by the San Francisco Bay. I love watching the foliage change over the course of the year, seeing the water at different levels because of the changing tides, watching the various birds and other critters that live there. Google headquarters is a half mile away, and the path I walk on is manmade, but I’m surrounded by wildness, and something about that combination is incredibly inspiring.

Tell everyone what the Thriving Artists Project is all about. What are your hopes for it? Who should join this project?

Several months ago I set out to interview other artists and creatives who were making a living from their creative passions. I wanted to learn from them myself, and I wanted to help other artists bust the ‘starving artist’ programming that can keep us stuck.

That was my initial concept: just a collection of audio interviews with real, live thriving artists, to give people examples of how others have done it, and ideas for how they might do the same. But as the project grew I decided to add lessons and an interactive component as well, with monthly live sessions and a member forum.

My hopes for tTAP are that it makes a difference for as many artists as possible. The interviews provide inspiration for anyone, regardless of where they are on their business path, and the lessons cover the areas where artists are historically weak, show them that yes, this is stuff they really can do, and empower them to turn their creative passion into a thriving business. I plan to keep providing new content that will continue to push members forward as they become better and savvier business people!

On January 1st, you launched 365 Days of Genius. How is it going so far? How is it different from the Thriving Artists Project? How would you like people to participate?

365 Days of Genius is a website dedicated to creativity, innovation and the way the mind works. Whereas tTAP is a course, 365 Days of Genius is more like a magazine. There are blog posts from a variety of writers, daily resource links to inspire and get your creative juices flowing, a Genius Question of the Week that anyone can respond to and 6 months worth of free creativity lessons. (Plus I’ll be adding other cool stuff down the road!)

The site is very participatory — anyone can respond to the Question of the Week and comment on lessons and blog posts, and anyone who creates a profile can acquire “karma points” just by interacting with the site, which they can exchange for “advanced” lessons and special content. The goal is to grow 365 Days of Genius into its own thriving community, including a member forum down the road.

How do you define genius?

I like Malcolm Gladwell’s definition of genius/talent as love, or what I would call passion. When you’re really in love with doing something, you’ll pour your heart and soul into it, you’ll commit to it and do it and do it and do it.

It’s that doing that makes you good at something. Yes, there are people with such innate facility that they don’t have to work hard, but usually the hard workers are the ones who actually make something brilliant out of their gift. So I guess maybe my definition of genius (or today’s anyway) is doing.

Yeah, I kind of like that. I hate to quote a multinational corporation, but Nike said it pretty well with their motto, Just Do It.

Thank you, Melissa! Learn more about her work here. 

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