The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 32: Creativity and Synchronicity with Dr. Steven Pritzker
How does synchronicity shape a creative life? In this episode, we explore how a shared connection, a chance meeting, or a risk taken can lead to opportunities we may never have imagined possible. Our guest is Dr. Steven Pritzker, Co-Editor of the The Encyclopedia of Creativity, Professor of Creativity Studies at Saybrook University, and a renowned television writer for Emmy-winning shows Room 222 and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as well as writer/producer on a number of shows including Breaking Away, The Partridge Family, The Loveboat, and many more. We also discuss what it means to live a creative life.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to find ways to embrace and express your own unique creativity, to seize creative opportunities that arise, and to live a life that is fully engaged, whatever that looks like for you.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 9: Music and Psychology: "The Pocket" Experience with Dr. Jeff Mims, Episode 10: Imagination and Creativity with Psychologist and Creativity Coach Dr. Diana Rivera, and Episode 16: Creativity, Innovation & Leadership with Robert Cleve, PhD
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in July. You can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Dr. Steven Pritzker’s Saybrook University Profile
The Encyclopedia of Creativity
The Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership Program at Saybrook University
Show / permanent hyperlinks:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate. This is a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
So my very special guest today is Dr. Steven Pritzker. He's the Co-Editor of the Encyclopedia of Creativity, among many other things. He was also one of my mentors at Saybrook University, where he continues to teach, and was for a long time the head of the Creativity Studies program there. And before that, he was a television writer and wrote for many different shows over the years, including the award-winning Mary Tyler Moore Show.
So, Dr. Pritzker, very delighted to have you here today.
Steven: Dr. Rothouse.
Melinda: Yes, you helped me get there. So thanks to you for that. So wow, okay. So we were talking leading up to this and kind of one of the themes that that as we were sort of riffing on, what we might talk about, was this idea of the connection between creativity and synchronicity, and how we can really kind of, you know, begin to trust the intuitions and the synchronicities that arise and how they can sort of guide our creative process.
So you've had this amazing career, and you've done so many different things, and I'm curious, you know, just kind of diving into that topic. You were telling me a little bit about how you even got to Hollywood in the first place. But, you know, how has synchronicity played a role in your career and your own creativity?
Steven: Well, I'm not sure if it's luck or synchronicity.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: The research on synchronicity is hard. It's almost like religion. You almost have to have faith in believing because you can't. It doesn't seem to, the part that throws me is I'll say, “Okay, I ran into this person in some obscure place,” and they’ll say, “Yeah, but if you compute the odds of the thing, it's not as rare as you think it is.” And I say, “Well, I'm going to stay with my I think it's rare thing,” and go with that.
Melinda: Seems pretty cool to me, right? Yeah, exactly.
Steven: Yeah. I mean, it's like, TV. I had a business degree, and I didn't study writing at all in college and I was working and the Dick Van Dyke show came on, which was about TV writers, and it just, I'd never thought about TV. Right. And you know, that looks like fun. And I've always been kind of the class clown and little funny, so maybe I could do that.
But it also helped that my mother had two friends and another acquaintance that all had gone to Hollywood and become successful comedy writers, in New York and then Hollywood. So I had someone, when I got the idea, I had someone to send the script to. Half a script, actually.
Melinda: Right. [Laughter]
Steven: I couldn’t even do a whole script. And I and who could tell me, you know, I just said, “Tell me if you think I can do this or not? And he said, “Yeah.” And then, he was a producer of the Andy Griffith Show. And he never gave me an assignment, which I really appreciated. But he did give me the confidence, and he told an agent about me. And, you know, that never led to anything directly. But the coincidence, or synchronicity, or whatever you want to call it, was that my mother had this, you know, these friends. And so I had a model in my head; you go to Hollywood and you just do it, you know?
Melinda: Right.
Steven: It wasn’t like, well, originally when I got there, I realized there's like, thousands of people there trying to do the same thing I am. And that was a little bit discouraging.
Melinda: Yeah, but I love that it just, you know, it was a possibility for you. You know, it opened up a possibility in your mind, like this is a thing that people do and it can be done.
Steven: Yeah, and it didn't hurt that I had been working for a company, for a couple of years, in the food industry, and I wanted to be in advertising and I couldn't get an--agency jobs were really hard--and I got one, and a client, and I really saw what advertising was. And I had had the glamorous Mad Men vision.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: Mad Man actually was a, probably a closer thing. And I never worked for an agency, but I just saw I saw a guy who was a model of who I wanted to be, who got canned, you know, for reasons that I couldn't find clearly, other than he did something somebody didn't like. So I just kind of knocked the glamor, or the vision of what advertising is, and what it could be, out of my head.
And so I felt doing TV that was I could be proud of would be a better, a better thing. Now, it didn't make sense in a lot of ways, and some of these decisions never do. They have to be done on some kind of gut feeling, and tens of thousands of people have them, and a lot of them don't work out. But I applaud each person that followed it. And I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who regretted it because they took a shot at something they wanted.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: And that in itself is an accomplishment of sorts.
Melinda: Yeah. I mean, you got to show up, right? In order for something to happen.
Steven: Yeah, you know, I won't happen just, you know, out of the blue. There are occasions, I guess, with actors that have been, you know, discovered or whatever. But you don't know the truth. You don't know the truth of those stories. One thing I found out about Hollywood is it's. It is all a myth. All of it.
Melinda: Yes [Laughter]
Steven: It’s a beautiful lie we all want to believe.
Melinda: Yes, but, so how did you land your first break, your first TV writing?
Steven: That again, you know, I have to say, it was through a friend of my mother's in Chicago who had a nephew who worked at William Morris. And it was, and I had another agent before that. But when I got a chance, William Morris used to be the biggest agency. And that's who you wanted to be with, theoretically. And he was a junior agent there, but he liked my stuff. And he said to somebody who had done a show called Laugh-In, which was #1 at the time, and this guy really liked my stuff.
Now, this wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do. I want to do sitcom. These were jokes. And yeah, I just wrote them. How random is that? And then he ended up loving them, and hiring me and doing a lot of, I did some shows with him. Because I had just landed--I was almost out of money--I mean, really, And I had gotten a job, you know, at a hardware. I mean, it was going to do the advertising working at a hardware that made doorknobs. I mean, there couldn’t be a more depressing, they were very pretty doorknobs.
Melinda: Well, I'm sure. I'm sure.
Steven: It wasn’t, I mean, beauty can only carry itself so far, and my office right off the factory where making these, I opened the door; it was in the city of industry. It was like my nightmare.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: And then this came along, and after three weeks, the guy who hired me was so nice. And I said, You know, I went through a whole hiring process. He took me out to dinner and he gave me a good salary compared to what I was making. And I got this offer and he said, “No, you got to take it. Go.” And so, you know, you run across people, you go, “God, That guy was nice.”
And more so this guy was named Digby Wolfe, and he was a head writer and Laugh-In. So he had a spinoff that he was going to do so. A spinoff of the #1 show. You're thinking, this is, may not be what I want to do, but it's going to get me someplace.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: So we did some specials. He had some specials. So the first show I had my name on was the Tennessee Ernie Ford Special. But the guests were like Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, Andy Griffith. So, I was like, I was just behind stage looking at these people, like my God, this is awesome. And didn't matter that, you know, whatever. So we did a couple, we did a pilot and we did, then we did this show, and it was produced by George Schlatter, who did Laugh-In. And the whole idea was life is speeding up. This is in the late 60s, around 1970 something, a long, long time ago.
Melinda: And it just continues to speed up.
Steven: Yeah, but the idea was that quick clips and that the staff, the writing staff that Digby had hired, had some amazing, amazing people. And people went on to do All in the Family and Albert Brooks was, he was like 19 or something. There were, you know, great, great people. And many of them went on to very successful careers. So we had all done this writing. And then we got the first show, and the first show was, we hated it. And the staff, and we spoke up. They said, “You speak up.”
Melinda: Like “You be the one.”
Steven: I’m the youngest next to Howard, and I'm like, well, you know, this was only three years after I got to Hollywood, with no experience and a year I burned. So I'm like, “Well, jeez, I don't know. All right, okay, I'll just say what we feel. We hate the show.”
Melinda: How'd that go over?
Steven: They said, “Well, that's the show.” You know, and it was very political. It was very, very liberal. And to the extent that we didn't feel it was pop television anymore. It was more preaching kind of thing. So it went on the air and it was the biggest bomb that ever hit the earth.
Melinda: Oh, no!
Steven: The biggest bomb. And it was canceled by Tuesday. I swear to you, the whole show, we had already got seven more and it was canceled. We had better shows. We gave you better material. Why didn’t you use it? Well, that material is gone. And people didn't like the concept. It was, probably seem slow now, or not that fast, but for the time it was very fast, but they hated the political stuff. And they were calling up, and I'm driving home on Sunday from a thing and I one of the guys was on the radio, one of the writers was on the radio, and he said, you know, I'm on this show and it got canceled. I’m like, well, I mean, I got the worst credit anybody ever had. At that time I think it was the first show that had been canceled after one episode. So it.
Melinda: Really? Wow, that's a dubious distinction.
Steven: It is. Dubious hall of fame. That would be a good hall of fame. So I'm broke, I've got a terrible credit, and I didn't know what I was going to do. And something happened with my folks that was terrible, and I had to send them what money I had. So I'm down to like, I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent. And William Morris, the guy from William Morris called and he said, they're having a, you can go to that girl and get a, if they like you, they'll let you write a script. You'll get minimum. You won't get what normal writers get, but it's a deal with the Writers Guild. So they want to give that to someone. So go over there and see if you can get that.
So I went over there. I was so nervous because, you know, I don’t know if I'm going to be on the street in a month, then I, I got lucky because a guy there in the room, really, he either related to me in some way, saw himself in me, and he said, “Don't worry, you got it.” And I did the script, and the guys that produced it, they told me, “You have to do it in a week.” You turn it in, or two weeks. And there was no hurry. I mean, it was spring. They were just, I don't know why they did it, but it taught me to write quickly.
Melinda: Yeah. Nothing like a deadline.
Steven: You have to write quickly. So they liked the script. It was a story they had come up with, and they liked it. And they gave it to Marlo Thomas, who was the star of the show, and she hated it.
Melinda: [Laughter] Here we go again.
Steven: This is not going well. But they did something really, really kind. These guys, Saul Turtteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, they sent it to two people to read, and one of them were guys doing a show called Room 222, which was a high school show that was very good. And I wanted to work on that show, and they liked it. And I went over and I met Jim Brooks, who became Jim Brooks, you know, and Allen Burns, I think was there at the time, and Jean Reynolds.
And they said, “Fine, do a script.” And I went out and did research and the other guy was Ed Weinberger, who was doing Cosby. And I gave him a story and he said, “We're not going to do that story.” So “I liked your story, but we're not going to do it.” But, Ed, Room 222 I went and did research with Jean Reynolds at a high school, did a show about somebody who wanted to be a teacher, and how difficult it really is to control a classroom. And they don't really teach you that in college. So I liked it and they liked it. And this is like a Hollywood thing, You talk about, I don't know if it's synchronicity or dumb luck. I think, you know, also a lot of it is dumb luck, because who could design this? The story, Ed was leaving even though the show was picked up, because he wanted to write movies, he had a chance.
And they said, we'd like you to be the story editor. Now, I hadn't even had a show on the air yet.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: The show went on the air. I got credit as my own story. I don’t know if anybody’s ever had that happen.
Melinda: That's amazing.
Steven: And the show, the ratings went up in the spring, and the show got an Emmy for best new comedy series. And then I left after that year. The other guy came back. It was a temporary position, but Jim Brooks and Allan Burns did the Mary Tyler Moore Show. And so I went over to them. They liked the work I'd done and so I got to work there, and everybody liked the work on Room 222. So I was getting all kinds of offers as far as doing script writing. And so that then established my career.
So I mean, I don't know if that's probably more information than you wanted, but I tell that because I feel there's a series of really lucky things that happened there, that occurred because I followed through on them. I did what…I can give you also a series of mistakes.
Melinda: You know, I just think it's interesting. Like you were kind of saying, you know, the mistakes along the way, right? I mean, it's not it's not a linear path, right? We have false starts and we have things that don't work. And then we, you know, if we keep showing up, eventually something happens and one thing leads to each other.
Steven: Maybe, yeah, but that's the thing. It's maybe. There's a lot of people that doesn't. But I never met anyone, well, I don't know if I've ever really asked that question. You know, do you do you really wish you hadn’t done this? You wish you had tried for something you didn't get? It'd be an interesting. It would be an interesting research question.
Melinda: Well, it's interesting. They've done studies at the end of life, and the biggest regret that most people have is what they didn't do.
Steven: Exactly, that came to mind too, the things you don't do, trying for things that you don't get. That's a good thing, you know.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: At least we, at least you didn't, you know say, well I'm not going to do it. I mean people do you regret that, and that's part of what interested me in, eventually when I transitioned to creativity is, you know, that I feel that, with all of the pain and, you know, suffering that goes with the entertainment business, and there's plenty of that, I got something from the experience I couldn't get, I couldn't put a price on. In terms of understanding more about life, entertaining people, enlightening, in some cases, myself and other people, you know. So the good was so good that you, you know, you say, well, the stuff that didn't work, it's a privilege to have been a part of something that reached.
Melinda: So many people.
Steven: More. Everybody in America.
Melinda: Exactly. Yeah. And I recently watched that documentary that came out about her [Mary Tyler Moore] and about the show. And I'm curious, just what was it like to be in that environment, and to work on that show.
Steven: Well, that that documentary, you know, presenting the feminine side of.
Melinda: Yeah, right.
Steven: There weren't a lot of women involved when I was there, truthfully.
Melinda: Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Steven: You know, we did write 20, whatever number of percent of the scripts, was higher than any other show. But frankly, women were not were not there that much. It was, it was easy. And I turned down a staff position on that show. That's one of the regrets I have.
Melinda: How come?
Steven: Because I had the experience on Room 222 was terrible. I mean, I left to do Mary Tyler Moore. I was alone, with no experience, writing for a national audience. I would, you know, frankly, I didn't like it. I didn't think it was the way to work, even though, I mean, shows do that. All in The Family, Norman Lear did it. He tore up the show every week, and that would, that wasn't my way of working. It was too, I mean, I'm getting my stomach’s churning just from talking about it.
Melinda, Oh, Gosh. Yeah.
Steven: I didn't, I thought I might be in that position again, as the only, there weren't it weren't big staffs then. There wasn't even a story editor in the first year. So I thought, I'm going to be in that room, and I'm going to be miserable trying to do this stuff, and it's not going to work for me. I mean, it was the logical decision.
Melinda: Yeah, so, but, you know, you made the decision based on the information you had at the time, right? And then you eventually pivoted to academia. So how did you decide to make that shift into, then, studying creativity?
Steven: Well, we're going to do a dissolve, okay. Because this is, like, this is 25 years later. [Laughter] It wasn't like, I'm not going to be a story editor, ok I’ll go work in academia.
Melinda: So you kind of worked through your whole TV career.
Steven: I played it out in show business, actually it was like 22-23 years at least, that I was doing it. So you age out in that business. Most people. And I was the oldest person in the room there for the last 5 to 10 years.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: So at that point, you know, you're kind of, it's clear, you know you're not going to be the oldest person in there into your fifties.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: So I had gone to around 50, and it wasn't instantaneous. It was a slow process, in which I didn't know what I was going to do next. You know, I didn't want to just take what I had and go try to live the rest of my life on that. I wanted some, another challenge, or another thing that interested me.
And I was I started teaching at UCLA extension, almost immediately. So teaching did crop up as something I was doing. And I enjoyed it. And I didn't know, I didn't want to just teach writing though. I didn't feel that was what I wanted to do. And the term creativity popped up in a class I was taking at UCLA. If you teach, you can take free class. I was taking these random classes.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: And I thought about consulting on creativity, you know, things like that. But I, ‘cause I had been a business major, but it didn't ring any more appealing to me. Ultimately, I got stationery printed. I didn't want to sell it. I didn't want to do it.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: So, I mean, I did a couple of seminars for business, big business companies, that paid well, but I didn't think the people that worked there really wanted that. They were, you know, salesmen who wanted to be out selling, and they didn't have any interest in listening to some, anybody, and well, I didn't take it personally. I just, they didn't want it. They weren't in the market for that and didn’t feel they needed it. They thought they were already the most creative people in the world.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: So, the term creativity came up, and I didn't know anything about it. So I had, something I didn't mention, though, right in the middle of my career, when I could see that I wasn't going to want to do this, or sustain this for a, you know, a longer time, I stopped and got a master’s degree in psychology. So, I had that. And, I was going to maybe be a therapist or, you know, work with writers. But then when it came to the time, even though I could have done it, I didn't want to do it. So following the idea that I shouldn't do anything I don't want to do. I was really a spoiled brat.
Melinda: But you were also following your intuition.
Steven: I did television shows to finance my PhD, I worked on a television show I didn’t like, so I thought, well, I'm going to try something I really am excited about. And so when creativity popped up, I went to look at the research, and I found that, it was like a curve that went up and down by decade. It went up and went down, and went up, went down. But when I looked in the early nineties, it had gone down, so I thought, well maybe it'll go up.
Melinda: Yeah. [Laughter]
Steven: Then, I follow a pattern. I see a pattern here.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: And I looked into it and I liked some of the stuff I read, and I realized it was kind of a niche thing. Or, you know, it wasn't a big, but there was a division of APA. And there were, there was a journal and there were, you know, it was a thing. It wasn't a huge thing, but it was something that I was excited about learning more about and being a part of. So I went to, turned out one of the guys that was teaching at USC, Dennis Hocevar, had done some work in creativity, so I got my master's at USC. So I went down and talked to him and he said yeah, you know, you can do this.
Melinda: And was there a particular aspect of creativity that intrigued you, I mean, having been a television writer, or like what kind of drew you to the field?
Steven: Yeah, I thought, well, ultimately that wasn’t what I went for. But ultimately, my dissertation was on television situation comedy, writing? And I thought it was very interesting, a lot of people would look at it, and nobody is probably, few people.
Melinda: Right. [Laughter] Nobody took your advice?
Steven: Well, it was about shooting of one episode of a comedy. So I guess it was pretty specific. And, but I, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. I thought, I probably wanted to teach if I could, but I realized that I was, you know, not the typical person that gets a teaching job a university.
Melinda: Right.
Steven: And that's what, that's what I wanted, especially when I started doing research.
Melinda: So how did you find your way there?
Steven: Well, I again, synchronicity, luck, whatever you want to call. Dennis Hocevar knew Mark Runco, who was at Fullerton at that point, and he said he has something every month, or something. Why don’t you get in touch? So I went down there, and Mark had this little group of people that just met to talk about creativity, and he was interested in the fact that I was a writer, and my history.
And so I had an idea, about my second year in, or third year, based on my doing research at USC. I had gone to different libraries to get books on creativity. I wasn't, I was in the School of Education. My degree was educational psychology. And in order to find such stuff, I had to go over to the engineering library, and the law library. And I was like, this is crazy, because it's a field, but it isn’t, I mean, it's scattered all over. We should be centralized. So I had this idea for an encyclopedia of creativity and one of the, I originally thought it would be for the public. And I went over and talked to Mark about it and had lunch with him. And he said, Yeah, that's good, you know. So now I had a guy who was the most published guy, in the field as my co-writer. I mean, you know, that's you look at the synchronicity with that. It’s crazy, right?
Melinda: Exactly right. Someone knows someone, you get to talking, and all of a sudden there's an Encyclopedia of Creativity.
Steven: Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just, okay, we went to a publisher. We did get an agent and he tried to sell it to the public, and to a publisher, and they didn't buy it. And Mark and I were talking, and he said, “Well, what if we tried to do it as a, you know, a research for, you know, for people and education and business and stuff.
And I said, well, let's give it a shot. Nothing's happening with this. Boo! We got two offers. He sent it to two people, to an academic press, and the other, and we were able to get a pretty good deal for an educational publication, and it got published. It got great reviews. It got published about the time I got my Ph.D., so.
Melinda: Nice work!
Steven: So I just barely had my Ph.D. and I mean, because, and I had stuff published. And I'm trying to get students now--I'm still teaching the writing class--I'm trying to get them to, you know, think a little bit more aggressively about getting publication. But you know, you find that somebody who can open the door for you, and if you're lucky, very lucky, they will do it. And, you know, Mark didn't do it for me. He did it for himself, because he thought it was a good idea. And, but so you have to come in; you have to come in with something.
Melinda: Yeah. But you had an idea, and he was open to it.
Steven: I didn't say, that'd be a nice thing to have. Someday maybe they’ll do it. I did it. And that's. That's really what I think is important. And look at you, you know, all the stuff you’re doing – you’re doing great!
Melinda: I was going to say. Yeah, no, and I, you know, you and my other faculty at Saybrook really encouraged me to get out there and start publishing, turn my dissertation into a book. And, I've been I've taken that to heart, you know. But I was going to say, you know, in reference to your teaching career, you know, when I was looking around at programs and I was interested in the psychology of creativity. And so Saybrook University has this somewhat unique program, and I remember when I was looking at the program, and I spoke with you, and I spoke with Ruth Richards, and also with Terry Goslin-Jones. She was an alum at the time.
And, but I remember the conversation with you. It really struck me because I said, you know, here I am, like, I'm already out here in the work world. I'm doing coaching. And I, you know, I have a career and all this, but I don't necessarily want to be a career academic. So what does one do with a degree in creativity studies? You know, and you said to me, you know, “In the 21st century, we are going to need people who are experts in creativity, who understand creativity and how it can be used to address, you know, the complex problems of our time.” And that really struck me, you know, and at the end of the day, that's the that's the one program I ended up applying to, you know.
Steven: Yeah, it was very I knew a little bit of what I what I envisioned it, why I had gone into it. That was very clear to me. And the and the bottom line is that it helps people. It's personal growth as well.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: …as accomplishment, and that's a great combination.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: And I think that I was at a different stage in life at that point. And I had seen, you know, a lot, good and bad. And I wanted to kind of pass on what had happened to me, and get the benefit of making this something special. And Saybrook had popped up because it's like one thing leads to another. I had never heard of Saybrook.
Melinda: Right. And neither had I.
Steven: And people who were on the board of the Encyclopedia were Stanley Krippner and Ruth Richards. So I said they’re both at this Saybrook.
Melinda: What is this place?
Steven: I looked it up and I went to, again, I wasn't necessarily going to do this. A lot of this is synchronicity. There was, uh, I was in Austin, Texas, where you are.
Melinda: Where I am right now, yeah.
Steven: And spent a month. And I thought about living there, and decided I wanted to live in the United States. Excuse me.
Melinda: Yes. [Laughter] Understood.
Steven: ‘Cause everything there is Texas, State of Texas, Texas, Texas. That radio, if that guy says Texas again I'll have to smack him.
Melinda: They're very proud.
Steven: So yeah, very proud in Texas. And the weather was a little hot. So I was going to go to Colorado and, but I did my due diligence before--I love to ski--and I love the mountains. But I went to the University of Denver, where I been a student briefly, and I talked to the Department of Psychology. I went the University of Colorado; I talked to, they were like “Creativity? What? English, please.”
Melinda: Right. What are you talking about?
Steven: You know, like, “We don’t do that.” And I'm like, “Yeah I can see that.” You know, there's no creativity in this department. So I had to go back to L.A. for a dental thing. My daughter was there and I drove from Texas. I wasn't to do this at all. I go to Colorado and live there? I had shipped stuff there. I went to L.A. and APA [the American Psychological Association conference] was in San Francisco. So I drove up to San Francisco. And a friend of mine had a sister who I knew, was also a friend who said, “I'm going away for two weeks, so use my apartment.” I mean, it's all laid out for me.
Melinda: And there you were.
Steven: So I went to a Saybrook event and I met Ruth. I met Ruth. I called Ruth, and I said who I was. And I met Ruth, and Ruth is one of those people who said “Of course, you can you can do this!” If I said I wanted to walk across the Pacific Ocean “Of course you can!” So she said, “Why don't you get in touch with Maureen O'Hara?” I also met Dennis Jaffe, who are both guest speaking in my class.
Melinda: Oh, nice.
Steven: And I went to see Maureen O'Hara, who was the president [of Saybrook] at that point, who took, who gave me an appointment, which again, lucky, you know. And I went in and I just had the Encyclopedia published, and I showed her a copy and I said, “I want to teach here because you're the place that gets creativity, ‘cause you got Ruth here.” And Ruth was really the doorkeeper in a way, because she was the creativity expert there. And I, a lot of people would say, “No, I don't want anyone else. You know, we don't need you. I'm the…”
Melinda: Right. Territorial.
Steven: She was open. Yeah, territorial. She was wide open to my coming in, and I talked about, well, well, maybe we could, you know, build a department, build a specialization, you know, some sort of a thing. And Maureen said “You can work part time. I'll give you a, right now.” I didn't go in an interview and do what people do. You know.
Melinda: The the official process? Of course not, ‘cause you’re a creative.
Steven: She just said, “Okay, go ahead. You can start. And you work there.” About three months later, so I decided I I'd live in San Francisco. I always like it. It just didn't make any sense. It was first on my list when I started saying I wanted to leave L.A. And then the tech thing came, and it was so expensive. And it didn’t make sense. But I just committed to lived there, then. Instantly.
Melinda: And then there you were.
Steven: Three months later, somebody left the department, at the time that Ruth and I were in, and Maureen said “I’m putting you on half time.” And you're going to chair that. So I'm brand new and I'm chairing the…and so then eventually, it took years to get full time. That took five more years I think, at least. But I got a part time job somewhere else, and, but you see--it all--I mean, it seems like there's a lot of luck involved.
Melinda: Of course, of course. Right. Again, you know, it's like we can't necessarily foresee where the path is going to lead, particularly as creatives, or people pursuing creative fields, you know, So then I think it becomes important to be able to sort of tap into that intuition, and that, and trust that sense of synchronicity. Right? That one conversation will lead to something and yeah, and to go for it. Yeah.
So I'm mindful of our time. It's flown by and unfortunately, we have to start wrapping up. But I'm curious, so you got to Saybrook. You're, you know, you're teaching, you build the creativity program. And I don't know, this might be a hard question but over your years of teaching students, and working with students around creativity, is there a particular piece of advice you would give, or what's the most important thing that you've come to understand about creativity and the creative process?
Steven: Um, I think it's that not to categorize it. To recognize that everyone's creativity is as unique as is everyone is.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: Yeah. So some people have the ability to stretch and grow. And I feel as a teacher, the only thing you do is give people the space to do that. It's like as a parent, you can't; your kid will have to find their way.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: You know, you hopefully give them some things that are useful for them, and some understanding, and some confidence. And then it's really up to the individual to find a way to do it. But, and the ones that succeed, I tend to take chances and go ahead and do it. They don't sit there, waiting for someone to knock on the door because that, I don't have any story about “I'm sitting there and someone came along.”
Melinda: Exactly.
Steven: And said, “Hey, you, you want to you want to write a show? You want to be a professor?” No, that doesn't happen. So, taking charge of your life, and being willing to go for what you want. I don't think it's wise to take some of the risks I've done. I did an interview for a chapter about my career, and I came out and I thought, well, you know, I ended up saying at the end of, don't do what I did.
Melinda: Don’t do what I did! [Laughter]
Steven: I mean, it could happen. You can see the spots where it could have been, right? You know, I would be on the street. I mean, it's been a little bit reckless. And because the first thing, of just moving to Hollywood and doing that at, you know, 24, which is already getting toward that 30 age when you’re too old.
Melinda: Right. Yeah.
Steven: Theoretically. And don't, I think, I don't follow those rules either, because, you know, who knows? I didn't see too many people past 30 make it either.
Melinda: Exactly. Yeah. And most of the creative, most creative people, the most creative people, are not the ones who are following the rules usually. Right? So you do have to take risks. And sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't.
Steven: That's right. And that's both the good and bad part.
Melinda: Exactly.
Steven: You're in something where the, you know, the personal stakes may be high, because if it works out you're, you know, I've had now 25 years almost at Saybrook. And I feel, for a second career, there couldn't have been anything that made me happier, and it didn't have the didn't have the downside of show business. There is, you know, stuff, but there's plenty of stuff.
Melinda: Always. Everywhere.
Steven: Which isn’t easy. And there's always stuff. I'm, as I look back I'm happy. I had to two careers that were very interesting, and I feel happy about the life I lived, and even, you know, I’m one that goes has gone over the mistakes, the could-haves, the would-haves. I've got a PhD in that in my head.
Melinda: Yes, exactly.
Steven: I’ve got the 50,000 hours necessary.
Melinda: Right. Right.
Steven: And I could put the diploma on a wall. I can say, you know, with all of that, I don't regret any of it. I think it was, it was really a, I can't, some parts were fun. Some parts were painful, all of it is living life. And that's where I think creativity; the most important thing about a creative life is you are engaged.
Melinda: Yes.
Steven: You aren’t sitting around. You are fully engaged in what you’re doing.
Melinda: Exactly.
Steven: That, there's no substitute for that. is no you are really living life at a pace. You know, I had that, I mean two years of that going in in the office and just hating every day. That is not what I think most people want out of life.
Melinda: Indeed. I mean, there's nothing like working in an office to drive you into creativity. I had the same experience.
Steven: Yeah. I mean, part of my part of the reason I didn’t want to go, I did become a producer and I did go in years in shows. But, you know, I have, some of that was really fun and some of it wasn't. You sit in a room with a lot of really funny people and try to make jokes, and if it doesn't work, you still got that time in that room.
Melinda: Exactly. Yeah, right, it's the process as much as anything else. Yeah.
Steven: Yeah. Process is great. And in terms of teaching you, whether you want to learn or not.
Melinda: Exactly. Exactly right.
Steven: It’ll lead to something. That is why I would like to see that, the next thing I'm really excited about doing is seeing that knowledge. Some of the knowledge that I was so excited about learning has since, in the last 25 years, worked its way into the general knowledge.
Melinda: Absolutely. Creativity is out there. It's everywhere. It's a buzzword now, right? Not so obscure. So yeah.
Steven: There's still, you know, a lot of work to do, and getting it down into the educational system, at the high school, and grammar school level. There was just a bill passed in California that you can, have to have, they had cut the arts teachers, the education and arts teachers, arts and music.
Melinda: Yeah, which is happening.
Steven: And somebody got a bill, and they passed it, and the funding is in part of the bill to have this. Now, that's going to make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives. You're talking about changing lives.
Melinda: Yeah.
Steven: This is the core of what psychology is all about. So my as I see that, and some of the other ways this is starting to influence the educational system, I think that's really important, because if you can get into kids’ heads that they can live a creative life, they can make their life creative.
Melinda: And it opens up so much more possibility.
Steven: It can go in unexpected directions.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Steven: Lots of options, you know, lots of pitfalls. But you're fully engaged in life. That's what a creative life is.
Melinda: I love it. So I think that's a great note to end on. I'm so grateful to you for coming on the show today, and for all of your mentorship over the years. And if people want to learn more about you or reach out to you, how can they find you, Steve?
Steven: Well, my email is easy. It's spritzker at saybrook.edu
Melinda: Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes.
Steven: I don't have a website I at this point. I should.
Melinda: Old school. Okay.
Steven: Yeah, well, I'm not I'm not old school. I'm just busy. I'm working on another website.
Melinda: Okay. There you go.
Steven: I haven’t had time to do mine.
Melinda: Okay, fair enough. So thanks so much to Dr. Steven Pritzker for being with us today. And at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for one on one coaching or join our Syncreate 6-month coaching group starting in April [now starting in July].
And if you say you heard about it here on the podcast, we're offering a 10% discount on that. You can find us at Syncreate dot org, We're on YouTube and all the podcast platforms, as well as social media. So find us and connect. And we are recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. And we've got Dr. Pritzker with us from California. Thanks again for being with us today, and we will see you next time.
