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

Managing a large creative project that must be done in stages and with attention to what seems like a million intertwined details is a skill that must be learned through trial and error. Most project…

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 contempl…

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 "…

In which I share my thoughts on how creative practice helps us handle the often difficult conditions of the artist's life: how long and hard we have to work to establish ourselves, the mental health …

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 …

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 ha…

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 discussio…

In a twist on a classic interview episode, in this one friend of the pod Ann Wainscott returns to interview someone herself!

Links from this episode:

Switched on Pop's Madonna episode No.1, No.2, and …

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 l…

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…

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 t…

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 struc…

In this episode I discuss my recent diagnosis of being neurodivergent, including why I pursued a formal diagnosis, what it entails, and its relationship to creativity and my art.

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 th…

I'm not really sure how to summarize this episode, y'all...but you'll want to listen!

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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 Experim…

In this episode I take stock of where I am in my creative journey as I contemplate what lies beyond the dreams we hold for ourselves. Are dreams holding us back? Do they ultimately make our lives les…