Episodios
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Here in Florida our challenging season is summer--it's both broiling hot and rainy. My backyard turns into a literal swamp. It can be hard to maintain motivation for our creative work when the weather and climate are so uncomfortable. Maybe in your area it's winter that's the challenging season. If you struggle to keep up our momentum during these times, I have some suggestions on how to handle your creative work in ways that can create motivation.
Info on Lisa Ross's literary editing services
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As I contemplate ways I can resist against the forces of chaos and cruelty holding sway in society, I am sometimes dismayed by my own limits. But I am not utterly powerless. In this episode I discuss the many ways in which doing art can be a form of resistance.
Dina Brodsky's Instagram
Athena Scalzi's blog post
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Beyond passion, skill, and commitment, there is another quality that defines what it is to be an artist: the ability to make choices in your art and follow through on them. In this episode I contemplate how being stuck in art (and life) is often more the result of a fear of making wrong choices than a lack of inspiration. It can help to shift our mindset to see artistic choices as neutral, and to understand that we have the power to make a choice a good one by continuing to work with it until it has borne fruit.
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I've long thought that talent is the least important ingredient in artistic success (however you define that). The further I get in my writing career, the less it seems to matter whether I have any "natural" talent. What matters is consistent and sustained effort over time. In this episode I contemplate whether talent is what we think it is, and provide an alternative framework for conceptualizing it that can help free us from the pressure of not feeling talented enough.
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I recently added a second creative practice to my roster of creative activities: watercolor painting. While I definitely felt ready for this big step, it has nonetheless served as a disruption in my life and to my understanding of the role of creativity in my life. In this episode I contemplate the value of disruption and how both planned and unplanned disturbances to our status quo can help us grow creatively and develop a deeper understanding of our work.
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Creatives and artists can be roughly divided into two types: intuitive and conceptual. Many do successfully combine both styles, but I have never been able to. I am a strongly intuitive writer and have historically failed at incorporating conceptual tools, like outlining and plotting, into my practice. As part of my journey toward being a published author, though, I've been forced to consider using conceptual tools to streamline my writing process. In this episode I tell you how it's going and what I've learned. What it boils down to is that even us intuitive creatives CAN learn to successfully use conceptual tools...as long as we develop them ourselves in an intuitive way.
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As the wheel of history lurches forward I've been thinking about what role I play in society as an artist. What do I contribute? How can I make a positive difference? Typically this kind of discussion focuses on the artist's art, but I've taken a different view. I want to know what role artists themselves play, separate from their art. In this episode I contemplate this question and offer some thoughts.
Hewes House -
When you are a highly sensitive gentle soul, the chaos and cruelty of the world can feel unbearable at times. How are we to protect ourselves while still engaging? In this episode I discuss this in light of my own thoughts on the recent US election results.
My sister's Instagram account (jillpattersoncycling)
The poem Desiderata -
Have you ever been told you take yourself too seriously? I heard this all the time growing up. And it was both right...and wrong. In this episode I discuss how I held myself back from reaching for my creative dreams both by taking myself too seriously and not seriously enough. Sound confusing? Well, give it a listen!
Here is the Instagram reel that sparked this episode. -
I wasted years of my life following other people's advice about how I should be writing novels and developing my creative practice, and it mostly failed me. So finally I decided to chuck it all out the window, go against the grain, and listen to myself. In this episode I discuss why we mostly shouldn't listen to anyone else and instead expend time and energy figuring out what works for US individually. But we also shouldn't dismiss advice and expertise wholesale! So I balance my rebellious FU side here with a discussion of when and how we can benefit from advice.
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I am using my current project, novel #2, to master plot, my weakest area as a writer. In the past, I've been ambivalent and even felt antipathy toward applying commercial and Western-style plot structures to my novels, because I felt they constrained my art. So what's changed? In this episode I discuss my evolving views on structure in life and art, and why I'm now leaning into the concept that structure can free us...if we do it right.
For some background on my thoughts on plot, and particularly on Western vs. Eastern styles, see this episode on the Kishotenketsu narrative structure. -
With novel #1 winding its way toward publication (hopefully), I have officially begun work on novel #2...and I've realized I will have to approach writing it in an entirely different way. Not only that, I'm going to have to use a technique I have utterly failed at in the past: preplanning the plot. Simply put, I suck at plot. It was the last thing to fall into place in novel #1. In this episode I contemplate why the things we suck at could actually be special talents in disguise, and how we can shift our mindset around our perceived deficits in order to better face the challenges of our artistic journeys.
Link from this episode:
The Binary Code Shop -
Sometimes it can be difficult to see how our own societies and cultures influence us. I have this trick I use to help reveal some of those hidden influences that I call the OG Society Thought Experiment. I imagine how a small pre-capitalist "original society" would have functioned and compare that to my modern capitalist society. Today I use this thought experiment to explore different ways to frame how and why we share our art with the world.
Contact me -
Notice: The Kishōtenketsu Workshop I am doing with Andy Mort is coming up next week! You can find more info and sign up a this link.
In this episode I discuss two women I've learned about recently who are lights in the dark for me. They inspire me to keep going through tough times, and to not lose hope. Table tennis phenom Zhiying Zeng, who is making her Olympic debut in Paris this summer at the age of 58, reminds me that it's worth it to try for a dream a second time around. And singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, whose wonderful song "Brave" is worthy of the number one spot on the charts even if it didn't make it that far, reminds me that if we let go of our attachment to specific outcomes, we allow for even better things to happen. -
I recently discovered a notebook filled with poetry I wrote thirty (!) years ago, and in one fell swoop it reconfigured my understanding of myself as an artist. In this episode I contemplate the threads that define who we are as artists that weave their way through our lifelong body of work (creative or otherwise). And I read one of those thirty-year-old poems (eep)!
Find out more about my Kishotenketsu workshop partner, Andy Mort
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