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
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
I imagine my inner critic as a stern school teacher who wears prim cardigans and too-serious loafers. In her crisp button down shirt and impeccably coiffed hair, she is the paragon of perfectionism. Our inner school teacher is convinced there’s a right way to do things: introductions should have a hook followed by background and … Continue reading
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
What does it mean to lead a creative life? When most of us hear the words “creative” or “artist,” we imagine aloof hipsters in berets and black turtlenecks. A “real” artist, we’ve been told, is someone who makes a living from their art— and takes their work very seriously. The mythology of creativity can be … Continue reading
For me, writing has always been a steamy love affair. Whenever I can, I snatch a few moments to scribble: when I have five minutes to kill before heading to work, when I’m waiting on my boyfriend to finish getting ready for dinner. Writing is something I lust after. Yet at times writing is a temperamental … Continue reading
“People claim to want to do something that matters,” Ryan Holiday, author of Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts once said, “yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate … Continue reading
When contemplating a piece of work, Julia Cameron advises we’d do better to think whom is this work for? whom will it serve? rather than how will it serve me? Pondering this notion of art as service, I’m reminded of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s luminous Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of his five … Continue reading
“There are two states in which you may exist, person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, ‘I aspire to pick up that piece of paper … Continue reading
On one of my favorite Q & A shows, Lori, a long-time watcher, asks for advice. Like most of us who are ambitious, she suffers from a widespread malady- heart-breaking disappointment at the revelation that her dreams aren’t manifesting in the way she wants: “I’m clear on my goals and take daily action toward my … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 