Latest Entries
Make a Date with the Muse: Writing as Commitment
Artist's Inspiration

Make a Date with the Muse: Writing as Commitment

Sometimes our relationship with the muse feels like a situationship.  Our connection has many of the characteristics of a serious romance, but none of the commitment.  Like a couple, we’ll listen attentively to each other’s problems, we’ll text each other “how’s your day?”, we’ll kiss, we’ll have sex.  We might even go to Saturday brunch … Continue reading

The Literary Best Dressed List: 4 of Literature’s Most Fashionable Writers
Artist's Inspiration

The Literary Best Dressed List: 4 of Literature’s Most Fashionable Writers

When you think of a writer, many words come to mind but fashionable probably isn’t one of them.  Dark and depressed?  Certainly.  Above average intelligence?  Perhaps.  But fashionable?  Unlikely.  The popular conception of a writer is a bearded man in a dirty bathrobe hunched over his desk.  He hasn’t showered in weeks, his hair is … Continue reading

Love Your Muse
Artist's Inspiration

Love Your Muse

Man’s relationship to his muse has always been tempestuous.  When the muse arrives predictably every day at our desks, we’re enraptured by our work, in love with our every superb sentence.  Words seem to flow from our fingers with little help from our intellect.  We’re not so much writing as taking dictation.  Our work feels … Continue reading

6,000 Filaments to a Light Bulb: Why You Need to Fail Many, Many Times Before You Find Something That Works
The Writing Process

6,000 Filaments to a Light Bulb: Why You Need to Fail Many, Many Times Before You Find Something That Works

Why do we conflate creating with suffering?  The word “artist” conjures images of manic-depressive poets who drink themselves to death and mad painters who chop off their own ears.  Our conception of writers is especially bleak.  In our minds, the writer is a tormented soul who spends his days hunched over his desk, forehead wrinkled … Continue reading

Make it Art
Artist's Inspiration

Make it Art

We live in an age of distraction.  Silicon Valley’s brightest engineers deliberately design apps to be addictive and monopolize our attention.  “It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you coming back,” former Mozilla employee Aza Raskin told BBC, “Behind every screen … Continue reading

Passion vs. Curiosity
The Writing Process

Passion vs. Curiosity

Finishing a project brings about two contradictory emotions: exaltation and dread.  On one hand, birthing an idea and witnessing its metamorphosis from squirming caterpillar to a shimmering creature capable of flight offers a sense of gratification few things can.  We mere mortals accomplished a feat of God-like proportions: we brought something into being that previously didn’t exist!  … Continue reading