Stepping Off Now: Lessons in the Art and Craft of Creativity

Last week I made the trek down to Tampa to attend a writer's  conference and live pitch my novel to two agents! This type of experience can be overwhelming for creatives who are highly sensitive or have other types of sensory processing conditions--or for those who struggle with anxiety and/or mental health challenges. In this episode I discuss all the special accommodations I made for myself so that I was able to get through ...

Rejection sensitivity is one of the primary challenges neurodiverse and highly sensitive creatives face in reaching for their dreams. It can cause us to isolate, not seek out opportunities to share or showcase our work, or even keep us from doing creative work in the first place. If we do put ourselves out there, we risk severe mental health consequences when we experience real or perceived rejection, even of the mild kind (and rej...

This episode begins with an update on my preparations for the writers' conference I'm attending in Tampa on April 12. You can skip ahead to the 10:36 mark for the topical discussion.

We're often counseled to follow our own vision or intuition in our creative work, but what does that actually look like in practice? How do you do it? In this episode I discuss a new lens that I'm finding useful right now: ...

At loooooooong last, I am (nearly! almost!) ready to start querying my novel to agents, so I decided it was the right time to do an update episode on where things stand and my plans going forward. I touch on topics such as what it feels like to be done, preparing for querying, and finding opportunities for professionalization as a prospective author.

Writing Day Conference info (Tampa & Orlando)

Jane Friedman ...

Most timelines of the creative process depict it as linear and progressive, an "up and to the right" trajectory (like on a graph). But what I am finding in the final stretch of writing my novel, though, that this phase is entirely different from every part of the process that came before. Nothing about how I'm working as I struggle toward that finish line is like my ordinary creative practice, and I've had to al...

My sister is a competitive cyclist, and we enjoy discussing the similarities between athletic practice and creative practice. The other day she was telling me about how she and the cyclists she coaches recognize, treat, and recover from physical injuries. It made me wonder: can creatives and artists suffer from injuries, too? If so, how do we recognize when we have one, and how do we treat it? What can a sports analogy teach us abo...

I credit my creative practice with helping me recover from my life-altering burnout at the end of my PhD. I've maintained from the beginning (and often talked about in this podcast) that creative work should feel good most of the time. For many years I've been gentle and compassionate with myself in both my creative practice and life, never pushing too hard and taking breaks of days or even weeks when I began to feel over...

Have you ever noticed that successful artists' backstories often sound like destined paths or hero's journeys? Learning how to tell your own mythologized origin story is an essential tool for any artist. Listen to this episode to find out why and how to do it.

I am indebted to the podcast episode Infamous: Taylor Swift Before She Was Famous Part I for much of the information about Taylor Swift's early life. ...

I am a lifelong magical thinker, but in recent years have rejected it in favor of a more realistic (read: pessimistic/cynical haha) perspective. This holiday season, though, I have decided that I will once again let myself believe in magic. But am I ready to indulge in magical thinking in a responsible way? To find out, I compare my magical thinking or lack thereof during my two experiences of finishing a novel: one twenty years ag...

In these final difficult months of getting my novel ready for agent submissions, thinking about my art's greater purpose is serving as an important motivator. In this episode I discuss why I think it's best to save contemplating your art's greater purpose for the later stages of creation, how to know if you even need a greater purpose for your art, and how to figure out what yours is. 

This discussion is par...

When life gets messy, it's tempting to put our creative work aside until we have the space and energy for inspiration again. But this is no good if you are trying to finish a project or if you are dedicated to maintaining a serious creative practice as an artist or a mental health practice.  In this episode I talk about what I learned from a recent experience of upheaval in my own life, and give you some tips to help you when ...

What happens when someone who hates deadlines decides to try one out? Listen to hear all about my recent experience of setting a deadline for myself to finish my novel. Spoiler: I hit it! In this episode I talk about why I'm usually against deadlines, when they are useful, how to know if you are ready to take the next step in your project and set a big one for yourself, and how to set endogenous deadlines that serve YOU, rathe...

Why is it that after all the work you've put into your creative project you hit your biggest resistance when you can finally see the finish line? This is what happened to me this summer when I was trying to finish my novel (which will be done next week!!!). Turns out this is totally normal, and in this episode I talk about why this happens and how to move through it.

This episode marks a return to my regular programmi...

This is a grab bag of an episode in which I tell a long and rambling story about what getting my house tented for drywood termites has to do with the Empire State Building, share my thoughts on what I've learned about creative process as I've worked through my writer's block, give two examples of how I've humbled myself to art recently, and declare a new creative identity for myself.

Here is the episode...