the Inspirited Word

Writers tend to have a mixed relationship with silence (either literal or more internal). On the one hand, we sometimes crave more of it, as a way to make space for the words we’re trying to coax ont…

This month on the pod, I’m going to be doing something that is sometimes considered obnoxiously gauche and self-obsessed—I’m going to tell you about a totally weird dream I had (two totally weird dre…

If you were around for last month’s episode, you may have caught this little line toward the end: “You want to practice your craft consistently as an ethic, not a metric.” And maybe you thought, “Oka…

This month on the pod, I’m going to be giving you a little creative pep talk about two things:

1. Why your consistent creativity matters, even if you’re not publicly prolific
2. A practical way to reach the …

This month, something very strange happened. I found myself researching a biz-bro productivity hack for writers... and actually wanting to try it.

How did this come to pass? In these manically trying …

It's January! And regardless of how you feel about the whole “new year, new you” vibe, January is the ultimate case study of goal-setting in the wider cultural zeitgeist. Maybe you’ve tried the often…

I allude pretty clearly to my political leanings on the podcast, but I don’t generally structure entire episodes around specific political issues. And I do like for this to be a kind of quiet space w…

This month, sort of in honor of Halloween and sort of just because, I want to share and explore a single phrase about writing that has been inspiring me lately:

Your characters are your ancestors.

This…

Today’s pod is coming to you from the messy middle of something I’ve been mulling over for a long time. Something I don’t have a tagline for yet, but that still feels worth sharing, in all its in-pro…

Today’s episode is for any writer who’s found themselves focused more on chasing the perfect creative practice than actually having a creative practice. (So, it’s for most of us.)

This month I’m shari…

This pod is usually focused on our personal relationships to our writing, and ways to rediscover and strengthen that alchemical creative connection. But this month, I’ve been thinking about the role …

As a rule of thumb on this podcast, I try to keep things generally positive, since most of us have enough negativity in our creative lives. This month, though, I’m inviting you to take a little trip …

(First things first: Thank you to thank Taylor Swift for releasing The Tortured Poets Department last month and thus making this episode kind of topical…)

We’re all way too familiar with the idea that…

It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring p…

Ever found yourself lying awake very late at night or very early in the morning wondering if you've missed your calling in life? I'm guessing most writers will be in the yes camp; we tend to be sensi…

You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:

1. Write every day
2. Finish as many projects as possible
3. No exceptions

And maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely…

There’s a popular New Year meme about picking words to act as guideposts for the year. And in this first month of 2024, I’ve found myself reflecting on two sort of abstract terms I use to describe wh…

’Tis the season of wintertide celebrations, including the ritual of gift exchange... no matter how commercialized and un-ritualized that exchange might have become. But I promise this month’s episode…

The typical ways writers study and practice storytelling often encourage us to conflate “paying attention” to our craft with catching errors or imperfections.

We try to pay our best, most granular att…

When writers talk about story structure, we tend to conceptualize it in one of two ways:

1. As a set of almost mechanical instructions on how to put a story together “correctly”
2. As an organic, intuitive o…