Personal Life Media

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Editors Take Notice!” in which creativity coach Eric Maisel presents a new aspiring novelist each week. The hope is that an editor, publisher, or literary agent may fall in love with today’s guest and that other writers will find enjoyment and may feel inspired! Today Dan Holloway introduces himself and his novel Songs From the Other Side of the Wall. Tune in to listen!

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Editors Take Notice!” in which creativity coach Eric Maisel presents a new aspiring novelist each week. The hope is that an editor, publisher, or literary agent may fall in love with today’s guest and that other writers will find enjoyment and may feel inspired! Today Elizabeth Keating introduces herself and her novel The Zen of Zelda. Tune in to listen!

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Editors Take Notice!” in which creativity coach Eric Maisel presents a new aspiring novelist each week. The hope is that an editor, publisher, or literary agent may fall in love with today’s guest and that other writers will find enjoyment and may feel inspired! Today Annelie Ferreira introduces herself and her novel The Roughwork Book of Miracles. Tune in to listen!

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Editors Take Notice!” in which creativity coach Eric Maisel presents a new aspiring novelist each week. The hope is that an editor, publisher, or literary agent may fall in love with today’s guest and that other writers will find enjoyment and may feel inspired! Today Tess Hardwick introduces herself and her novel Falling Star. Tune in to listen!

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “The Creative Person in Recovery.”

The episode begins this way:

“Active recovery provides you with the opportunity to do decades of creative work while sober. This may not seem to you like a blessing in the first months of sobriety or even in the first year or two, as you struggle to work your recovery program and wish you had a few drinks or a fix to help you with your current novel or painting. Ultimately though, as you find the way to access your emotions, go deep without fear, and tackle the challenges of the creative life without recourse to addictive substances or behaviors, you will discover that you have not only saved your life but saved your creativity as well.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “Creating in Recovery.”

The episode begins this way:

“Every day is a day to create. But every day is also a day to pay attention to your recovery. As Barbara, a painter, explained, ‘I need to do my painting or else I don’t really feel alive. But the pressure I put on myself when I paint to get it right and to make it conform to my vision, and the state I get into when I open myself up to my dark imagery, each jeopardize my hard-fought recovery. The longer I maintain my recovery, the less dangerous this becomes, but it is never really a completely settled issue.’”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “Your Creativity Recovery Program.”

The episode begins this way:

“People do manage to enter recovery and create regularly. The writer David Adams Richard explained: ‘When I walked into that first AA meeting, people smiled at me and shook my hand. I hung around. But it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. Sometimes it still isn’t. It took months before I felt human, and three years before I was able to complete another book. But since then I have written ten more. Since then, by luck and by God, and though I have been sorely tempted, I have never taken another drink.’ No one, Richard included, is saying that it will be easy—only that it is a real possibility.

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the sixth in the series, is called “Creating as Replacement Activity.”

The episode begins this way:

“Creating is not a complete solution to recovering from an addiction. You can write beautifully and write a lot—and still be a practicing alcoholic. You can play the saxophone like a tireless virtuoso—and still be hooked on heroin. Creating is neither the litmus test that proves your wellness nor the key to addiction recovery. The litmus test is actual recovery and actual mental and emotional health.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Art and Healing.”

The episode begins this way:

“Making art can heal. This represents a time-honored understanding of the power of creativity and it explains why the arts have always found a place at the table wherever healing, rehabilitation and recovery are promoted. Traumas victims are encouraged to make art. Patients in mental institutions are encouraged to make art, to such an extent that their efforts have led to a branch of art known as ‘outsider art.’ The field of art therapy sprang up based on the twin ideas that art media can be used for diagnostic purposes and that the use of art media promotes insight and healing. Expressing you thoughts and feelings by drawing, writing, sewing, or in some similar way aids in the recovery process by virtue of the healing properties of making art.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Creative Nature Risk Factors.”

The episode begins this way:

“In previous episodes I described your creative nature as a certain drive or inner pressure to be an individual and to realize your human potential, a drive that as likely as not puts you in opposition to conventional aspects of your family, community, and society at large. This drive or inner pressure is itself a substantial risk for addiction, as you are likely to find yourself regularly frustrated in your efforts to express yourself and in your efforts to make money from your creative work, a set of frustrations that cry out for relief; and because the pressure to be individual and to create regularly demands an ‘addictive break,’ the kind of break that alcohol, cocaine, food, sex and other substances and behaviors afford.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Creative Recovery.”

The episode begins this way:

“Creative recovery is the way you honor your creative nature by dealing with your addictive tendencies. Creative recovery is the way you serve your creative nature by recovering from your addiction. Creative recovery is the way you use your creative nature as part of the recovery process. Creative recovery is the way you create a life that includes both creating and recovery. And creative recovery is the way you educate yourself about your risks for addiction, your patterns of addiction, and the details of your creative recovery program.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “Individuality as Addiction Risk.”

The episode begins this way:

“Like most people, you probably associate creativity with ideas like talent, ability, imagination, and so on. I would like you to shift your thinking and begin to associate creativity with the following idea: that creativity is an expression of individuality, an expression of a person’s desire to manifest her potential, to speak in her own voice, to have her own opinions, and to do her own work.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Creative Recovery,” based on the book of the same name, published by Shambhala Press, that addictions’ special Susan Raeburn and I have written in which we describe a complete addiction recovery program for creative people. In it we take into account the risks, needs, and demands of the creative life and the creative personality. I hope that you will give Creative Recovery a peek if addiction issues are of concern to you or to somebody you know. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “Creativity and Addiction.”

The episode begins this way:

“The short story ‘The Bound Man,’ by the German author Ilse Aichinger, is a beautiful piece in the existential tradition. It goes as follows. A man awakens one morning to find himself inexplicably bound by rope. Instead of removing the rope at his first opportunity, as we might expect him to do, he decides to remain bound and to become a circus attraction, turning his accidental bondage into his trademark work. How strange! Why would a person happily accept such bondage? It is similar to the question that Franz Kafka poses in ‘The Hunger Artist,’ where a man, who also chooses to become a circus attraction, starves himself to death because he can’t find food that interests him. These authors are asking variations of the following vital question: ‘Why do people carelessly, inexplicably, and even happily do things that harm them so much?’”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “Negotiating.”

The episode begins this way:

“When artists start out, they typically accept any arrangement offered them, as they are pleased to have anything good happen to them and fear that trying to negotiate will cost them the opportunity. But after years of hard-knock experience, they learn that they really must negotiate and protect their interests. How good are your negotiating skills? More to the point, how strong is your willingness to negotiate?”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “Maintaining Long-Distance Relationships.”

The episode begins this way:

“On a visit to London you made a great connection with a gallery owner, who subsequently agreed to show your work. Your paintings have been selling in that gallery nicely but not spectacularly. You know that you ought to pay more attention to that relationship, as you fear that the gallery owner may drop you in favor of some newer or hotter artist, as that happens often enough. How can you maintain that relationship over the great distance of many thousands of miles? Are emails enough? What else can you do?”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “Offering Classes, Workshops, and Retreats.”

The episode begins this way:

“Because it provides a revenue stream, because it is ego-gratifying, and because it is of professional benefit, a time may come when you may decide to offer a class, workshop, or retreat.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the sixth in the series, is called “Adopting a Public Persona.”

The episode begins this way:

“To what extent is it wise to be your ‘real self’ in public situations? If your real nature verges toward the ironic, do you want to let that irony loose when you talk to gallery owners and collectors? If you natural way is to say very little, will saying very little serve you in interview situations or when you sit down with a curator interested in your work? Your public persona is yours to create: how would you like to construct it?”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Balancing Multiple Relationships.”

The episode begins this way:

“If you are lucky enough to be represented in a number of galleries, acquire a substantial number of collectors, and become known in the world, then you have the job of maintaining these many important relationships, bringing some forward as circumstances dictate and letting others temporarily recede, and learning tactics and strategies that allow you to keep in touch with your audience without pestering them to death.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Preserving Relationships.”

The episode begins this way:

“Sometimes it is distance that begins to wear relationships down; sometimes it is interpersonal difficulty; sometimes the demands of life seem to steal all our time and leave little time left for even family and friends, let alone our contacts in the marketplace. This is a large theme, preserving art relationships, and I want to focus on just one aspect of it: preserving your relationship with “difficult” marketplace players, folks who are important to your art life but whose relational style sets you on edge.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Managing Boundaries.”

The episode begins this way:

“As artists, we require solitude and alone time, probably more than the next person. But we also require human contact, human warmth, friendships, and marketplace advocacy. Life can grow too cold if we live it completely alone and our career suffers if we avoid interactions with the people who might help us and who might appreciate our art. So, although we may consider ourselves introverts and feel happiest keeping ourselves company, we have many interpersonal needs that require our attention.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “Practicing Empathy.”

The episode begins this way:

“There are two completely different ways to conceptualize how you might relate to your potential collectors. One way is to picture buyers as people who deserve to be manipulated and who must be reached by virtue of sales tactics that play on human weaknesses like greed and envy. A second way is to picture buyers as your fellow human beings who can be met without manipulation and without trickery. If the question is, which way garners the better results, sadly enough the answer is probably the first. If the question is, how do you want to live your live, the answer surely is by practicing the second in large measure—by practicing empathy and by championing the principle that people do not exist only to be manipulated.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Nine Relationship Skills for Artists.” In the series we look at relationships skills that artists can nurture so as to become more effective advocates for their creative work and more comfortable players in the art marketplace. The series focuses on the relationship issues of visual artists but the lessons are directly translatable for creative and performing artists in every discipline and for creators in any walk of life. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “Presenting Yourself.”

The episode begins this way:

“The question how should I present myself is really two questions in one. The first question is, ‘What works?’ The second question is, ‘How do I want to represent myself in the world?’ It may work to be difficult, arrogant, grandiose, paranoid, dramatic, and pretty nearly impossible—that is, to be a diva. But is that who you want to be in the world? This is a serious first question, as many ambitious artists might be inclined to answer, ‘Absolutely!’ Picasso, Dali, Warhol—to turn a noun into a verb, artists with big egos and big talents are often inclined to diva the world.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “Au Revoir to the Place Des Vosges.”

The episode begins this way:

“It is hard to leave the Place des Vosges.  I have a rich life waiting for me back in San Francisco but still it is hard to leave.  The Place des Vosges is the first place I come to when I arrive in Paris and the place where my leave-taking occurs.  I give it a whole afternoon of leave-taking, sitting on the western side of the park, not thinking about home, not thinking about Paris, but thinking, this particular afternoon, of a certain Camus essay, penned the night of Paris’s liberation.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “Fearing Paris.”

The episode begins this way:

“Maybe you fear coming to Paris to write.  But is it really Paris that you fear?  My hunch is that it isn’t.  I doubt that you fear not knowing the language, ending up in a closet-sized studio, or subjecting yourself to a supercilious shrug or two.  I bet that the thought of managing your affairs from an Internet café or buying a foreign shampoo doesn’t seem all that daunting.  My hunch is that what you fear, if you fear anything, is bringing into consciousness a trunk full of painful thoughts about your writing past, present, and future.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “On Not Speaking French.”

>p>The episode begins this way:

“For any creative project that you contemplate doing, you can always ask yourself ‘Do I really know enough to tackle this?’ or ‘Am I really equal to this?’ and talk yourself out of trying. How might you talk yourself out of Paris? One way is by reminding yourself that you don’t speak French. Tell me, though—how much French will you really need? An awful lot to translate Finnegan's Wake into French but almost none to write in English. You are not in Paris to study archaeology at the Sorbonne. You are in Paris to write in English. If your best excuse for not coming to Paris is "I don't speak French," make sure to add that to your "great excuses that hold no water" list.

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the six in the series, is called “The Professor of Nothing.”

The episode begins this way:

“I meet an American writer at a café not far from the Right Bank Sorbonne annex where English is taught. Many Americans gather at this particular café because of the Sorbonne connection. Emily explains to me that in their midst is a fellow from the Midwest who is a poseur. He is posing as an instructor at the Sorbonne but, as she explains it, ‘He is really a professor of nothing!’”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Smaller and Smaller.”

The episode begins this way:

“You’ve made it to Paris.  Congratulations!  Now, where will you live?  In a tiny studio, no doubt, so as to keep expenses down. You can certainly survive in a small studio, just as millions of artists have done from time immemorial.  But there is a catch.  The smallness of your studio will definitely begin to get to you.  One afternoon you’ll find yourself daydreaming about wide verandas.  Then, rather more dangerously, you’ll think about proposing to the very next person you meet with a real apartment.  Cheap rooms--and everything that comes with them, the alienation, the bad dreams, the roaches, the dingy walls, the ratty furniture, the unbroken silence, the hallucinations—addle the brain over time.  In order to endure the smallness of your studio you had better take some precautions.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Disrespecting Albert Camus.”

The episode begins this way:

“I love Albert Camus to pieces but intuitively supposed that there would be few monuments to Camus in Paris.  His World War II heroism notwithstanding, he told too many hard truths to receive public glorification.  So, out walking one day in the northeast corner of Paris, it horrified me but did not surprise me to discover how the politicians have decided to disrespect Camus.  They exiled him far from artistic and intellectual Paris, a maneuver excellent as irony and an unintended reminder of the title of his short story collection, Exile and the Kingdom.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Sartre and Inauthenticity.”

The episode begins this way:

“We writers lie incessantly.  That we are bound to lie, however, is no justification for choosing to write insincerely. If we ourselves know that the point we are making is weak, it rests squarely on our shoulders to strengthen that point or abandon it entirely.  If we throw in a gratuitous scene, tossed in to make fun of this or to rail aimlessly at that, it is up to us to edit that scene out when we revise.  If we are writing in jargon so as to avoid saying what we mean or to disguise the fact that we haven’t much to say, our own voice should shout ‘No!  Don’t do that!’ There is necessary lying; and there is old-fashioned, everyday lying.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “Privilege and the Place Vendome.”

The episode begins this way:

“I’m a privilege-conscious person.  I’m fully at home with sentiments like Proudhon’s ‘property is theft’ and other articulations of the idea that we are not entitled to more than our neighbors.  We possess no such rights just because we are pretty, Caucasian, American, a celebrity, have lived there longer, or claim that God is on our side.  When I see a grand estate I think ‘criminal.’  If you strut about with a sense of entitlement, I’m there to trip you up.  It is therefore not surprising that questions of privilege pop into my head as I cross the Place Vendome.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “Pure Flaneur.”

The episode begins this way:

“Paris is a physically small city comprised of twenty arrondissements laid out like a pinwheel.  The inner arrondissements contain most of the tourist attractions—the Louvre, Notre Dame, the D’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower—and the outer arrondissements sport features like the Bois de Boulogne to the west, the Bois de Vincennes to the east, Montmartre to the north, and the Parc Montsouris to the south.  Most tourists skip the outer arrondissements and experience Paris as a very tidy, handy place.  Even those tourists who venture further afield discover that they can get anywhere by métro in no time at all.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the ninth in the series, is called “Egg-cetera.”

The episode begins this way:

“I often do the odd thing of having folks in my online trainings start out their lesson responses with the following affirmation: “My creative work and my creative life matter to me.” I might have them do this for a month running and, if they agree to make this announcement, it is almost impossible for them not to turn their creative life around. You try to say thirty consecutive times that you and your work matter (even if you don’t believe it) and see if you don’t change for the better.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the eighth in the series, is called “At the Green Apple.”

The episode begins this way:

“One winter evening I find myself in the green room of the beautiful new theater on the campus of the North Carolina School of the Arts, waiting to give a creativity chat to a crowd of a few hundred Carolinians. I’d given this chat many times before, varying the title to suit the audience but presenting essentially the same material, and can now deliver it on a dime, starting up the instant you say “Go!” and ending directly on the hour. In fact, when I delivered this chat to a group of Indiana arts administrators, what impressed the conference chair the most, more than the chat’s content, was the fact that I ended so promptly—perhaps a little left-handed praise, wouldn’t you say?”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the seventh in the series, is called “City Lights.”

The episode begins this way:

“The problem with bookstores is all those books. I’m analogizing to a groaning buffet, to the idea that we writers are inclined to buy three books every time we set foot into a bookstore even though we have twenty-nine unread books at home. No, the problem with all those books is that any one of them can precipitate a meaning crisis.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the sixth in the series, is called “You Are a Real Poet.”

The episode begins this way:

“For a year I dated a schizophrenic poet—let’s call her Carol.  Carol was ten years my senior, very sane, and very crazy.  When insane, she had visions of roses appearing, threw a bowl of poisoned pumpkin soup at the counter girl at the Owl and the Monkey, and craved pastrami.  When she was sane, she was a meditative vegetarian who lived on adzuki beans and classical music.  Finally she got too crazy and got herself institutionalized in the locked ward of a local hospital. When she emerged, months later, she was still broken.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fifth in the series, is called “Silent Respect.”

The episode begins this way:

“I would see him drawing with pen-and-ink and colored pencils and sometimes writing in the same oversized sketchbook in which he drew. It seems to me that he wore a flannel shirt and jeans, though I also recall a colorful vest. I took him to be a visual artist or maybe a children’s book writer. He would sit at one table at the Owl and the Monkey, on Ninth Avenue in the Inner Sunset, and I would sit at another. Sometimes we sat across the café from one another, sometimes we sat at adjoining tables, and sometimes, when the café was very crowded, we even shared a table. But we never spoke and we never acknowledged one another.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the fourth in the series, is called “Theme Party.”

The episode begins this way:

“I was throwing a little party at our Bernal Heights flat for a visiting publisher, someone with whom I had a long history. She had been my editor fifteen years before, one of two editors on my first nonfiction book. Then she went back to school, into the Master’s program at San Francisco State, to hone her fiction skills. During that interlude I occasionally attended the salons she organized and hosted at her apartment in the foggy Richmond, so far west that it was almost in Japan. Then she bought a publishing house in Boston and published me. She was going to be in town and I rounded up some folks for a get-together.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “South of Market.”

The episode begins this way:

“Dateline 1966. When I wheeled my armored personnel carrier down the rutted road between grassy mine fields I felt the joy that only a nineteen-year-old can feel, a cigarette between his lips and a 30-caliber machine gun poised behind his ear. I should have been in the higher turret, manning that machine gun and monitoring the other three armored personnel carriers in the platoon, as I was acting platoon sergeant. But as acting platoon sergeant I got to designate myself the driver. I just loved to wheel that beast down those Korean back roads.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the second in the series, is called “The Bohemian International Highway” and makes the case that certain places pull at our collective artist consciousness and demand that we visit them—and, if we can—live in them for at least a little while.

The episode begins this way:

“San Francisco and Paris are sister cities.  They are not connected by architecture, class structure, or climate.  They are not connected by their shellfish preferences (in San Francisco it is crab, in Paris it is mussels), their history (wild west provincial versus urbane royal), or their museums (San Francisco has no Louvre, D’Orsay, or even Pompidou).  The way they are connected are as two of the world’s very few bohemian meccas.  Each is an important, well-marked stop on the bohemian international highway.”

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Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from San Francisco.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s San Francisco that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the first in the series, is called “The View from Bernal Hill” and provides a glimpse of my writing world here in an out-of-the-way San Francisco neighborhood.

The episode begins this way:

“I’m American by birth but an urban writer by nature.  My true homes are Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco and the world’s resonant cities.  I am calmest in a Paris jostle or a Manhattan stampede and edgiest hiking a mountain trail or shopping a Walmart.  Everything in the universe may be equally spiritual but not equally congenial to a blue state person like myself with a horror of orthodoxy and the grandiosity of everyday people.”

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In the ninth and last episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the abundant joys that arise when you actually honor your creative space. Creating is not all woe and difficulty: sometimes creating provides us with the deepest satisfactions available to us. What are these satisfactions? Tune in and find out.

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In the eighth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at how active choosing helps you make the most of your creative time. If you are uncertain about which creative project you are actually working on, if you can't quite decide whether to tackle chapter three or to do a little research, if one song is pulling at you but you think that you ought to finish up another song, you can tire yourself out even before you begin. What can help you choose more efficiently? Tune in and find out.

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In the seventh episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we examine why you want to slow down time so that you can create more deeply. If you spend time in your creative space the same way that you spend time during the rest of your day--in an unquiet, half-mad rush to get items checked off your to-do list--deep creating will elude you. What can you do to slow time down? Tune in and find out.

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In the sixth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the idea of returning to your creative work periodically during the day. Many creative people, even when they have sufficient time available, only create once a day. What if you were able to return to your creative work several times during the day? Wouldn’t that increase your productivity and deepen your connection to your art? What can help you do just that? Tune in and find out.

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In the fifth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we examine what other creative spaces you want to nurture, in addition to your primary one. It is vital that you have a primary space where you go every day to create. But it also valuable to find additional spaces, especially public ones like cafes, that afford a change of pace and that force you to wear your artist being publicly. Why is this so important? Tune in and fine out.

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In the fourth episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at the notion that it matters what you do in your creative space and that some activities are more honorable than others. It is fine to do research for your novel–but only if that research is really needed and not if you are researching in order to avoid tackling that hard chapter in front of you. What can you do to better honor your creative space? Tune in and find out.

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In the third episode of the “honoring your creative space” series, we look at what it takes to protect your creative space from visitors, emails, and other distractions. If you allow foot traffic to flow through your space, if you accept interruptions, if you distract yourself while in your space, you will find it extremely hard to settle into a good creating rhythm. What can you do to better protect your creative space? Tune in and find out.

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In the second episode of the "honoring your creative space" series, we examine the art of picking the right physical space in which to create. Your preferred space may not be the room in your house with the most stunning view but the room where you can actually go deep and get lost in the trance of working. Which is the best space for you? Tune in and find out.

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In the first episode of the "honoring your creative space" series, we learn why you have to rebuild your personality in order to make space for creating. It doesn't matter how fine a studio you outfit or how fast your computer can compute if your personality doesn't match your tools. What can you do to strengthen your personality so that you stand ready to create? Tune in and find out.

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In the ninth episode of the “creative obstacles” series, we look at the idea of how easy it is to blame others for our lack of creative output—and why we don’t want to do that. One of the ways that we avoid getting our creative work done is to involve ourselves in the affairs of others, enter into dramatic and difficult relationships, and distract ourselves with people–and then blame them for our meager output. What can we do to change this dynamic? Tune in and find out.

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In the eighth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we examine the idea that the anxiety produced in us when our creative projects shift and change can cause us to flee the encounter. It is in the nature of creating that the project in front of may change countless times as we continue thinking about it, as we chnage our mind about its direction, and as it takes on a life of its own. What can we do to survive all of this morphing? Tune in and find out.

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In the seventh episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we look at the idea that a creative person's sense of individuality is a special sort of challenge. Born individual into a conventional world, a creative person begins to grow oppositional as he fights to retain his individuality. What can he do to retain his individuality and modulate his growing oppositional nature? Tune in and find out. Good listening! more.

In the sixth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we examine the idea that there is a difference between having emotions and being a slave to your emotions. It is necessary that a creative person have and express her emotions, but that is a very different thing from being led around by the nose by her fear, anger, envy, or sadness. What can we do to break free of the grip of our emotions? Tune in and listen. Good listening! more.

In the fifth episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we look at how our psychological defenses can get in the way of authentic creating. Why do we deny--to ourselves and to others--that we are having difficulties with our current painting or our current novel, when if we admitted that truth we might open up to our good solutions? Listen and find out. Good listening! more.

This week's show is the fourth in a series called "Overcoming Obstacles to Creating," a series about how our personality can get in the way of our creating. Today, in a show adapted from an essay in my book A Writer's Paris, we look at the negative effects of looking too ardently to the past for models. The show is called "Chasing Ghosts." Good listening! more.

Today's episode is the third in our series about overcoming obstacles to creativity. In today's show I focus on the problem of self-censorship and how too many people, wanting to be "nice," fail to find the internal permission to say, in their life or in their art, what's really on their mind. This lack of internal permission is a great blocker and a great silencer--which is why we need to take a careful look at the problem. I hope you enjoy today's show! Good listening. more.

In today's episode on the Joy of Living Creatively, the second in a nine-part series on "creative obstacles," I chat about how writers who take my nonfiction book proposal writing workshops start with such enthusiasm and quickly lose that enthusiasm as the largeness of the task in front of them becomes all too abundantly clear. The episode, called "Fearing Difficulty," focuses on our natural desire that the creative work in front of us might be just a little bit easier to accomplish than it is--and the courage we have to muster in the face of the ordinary difficulties that come with creative effort. I hope you enjoy this week's episode! more.

Creative people start each project hoping to do excellent work. That makes perfect sense; and yet, side by side with that hope and wish, needs to be the deep and real understanding that only a percentage of their output (maybe a large percentage, maybe a modest percentage) will actually turn out to be excellent. This means that they will need to take "the bad with the good" in their creative life. In the first episode of the "creative obstacles" series, we learn what happens when you don't allow yourself to take the bad with the good. I hope that you enjoy the show! Do leave I comment—I look forward to hearing from you. more.