Odds are good you're making things harder than they need to be—and that's getting in your way more than you realize. Please leave a review , and in it, tell us about how you've made something less hard on yourself. I'm experimenting with my own writing over on Substack! It's called The Spark, it's free, and I hope you'll join us! Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a n...
Aug 23, 2023•8 min•Ep. 195
Writer, editorial director, and publisher Michael Dolan was a math whiz before he fell in love with writing and journalism in high school. After a career in magazine publishing and working as a professional writer, he decided to start Winding Road Stories, which aims not only to publish new authors, but to help those authors build a writing career. Michael tells me about his start in publishing, how ghostwriting led to the idea for Winding Road, why he wants writers to collaborate and help each ...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 196
It sounds counterintuitive, but the fastest way to get things done is to slow down (and stop multitasking!). I'll tell you why in this short episode. Please leave a review , and in it, tell us about how slowing down has helped you. Check out my new newsletter, The Spark ! It's free, and I hope you'll join us! Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.co...
Aug 09, 2023•8 min•Ep. 194
Caroline Whiddon thought she was going to play French horn professionally, but panic and anxiety had other ideas. Fortunately, orchestra administration turned out to be her true home, ultimately leading her to co-found the Me2/ orchestra with her husband, conductor Ronald Braunstein. Braunstein’s bipolar diagnosis left him unable to find work, and Me2/ is the world’s only classical music organization created by and for individuals with mental illnesses and the people who support them. Caroline a...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 193
Which project should you work on next? And what should you do when you feel downright compelled to work on something, even if it's not the next thing on your list? I'll tell you in this short episode. Check out my new newsletter, The Spark ! It's free, and I hope you'll join us! Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com , or say hello on Threads !...
Jul 26, 2023•7 min•Ep. 192
My guest this week is author David Roth, who spent thirty-five years as a professional writer of documentaries, corporate communications, multimedia, and more before turning to creative writing. He completed his MFA in 2017 and published his debut novel, The Femme Fatale Hypothesis in 2019. That book just received the American Book Fest's 2023 International Book Award for Best Literary Fiction. David and I talk about the differences between professional and creative writing, the pros and cons of...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 191
Last time we talked about how sometimes, quitting is the smartest thing you can do. This week, I'm sharing one crucial way to make sure you don't waste time on a project you should abandon. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me ...
Jul 12, 2023•9 min•Ep. 190
My guest this week is Rob Schwartz—journalist, music/film producer, entrepreneur, and son of the late Morrie Schwartz of Tuesdays with Morrie fame. Rob has founded a number of companies, both in Japan and the US, and has produced numerous film and music projects with international teams. Rob and I talk about his experiences in Japan and India, and how travel enhances creativity, and the role of listening in language learning and the influence of language on thinking and behavior. Rob also tells ...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 189
We're told all the time that "winners never quit, and quitters never win." That "advice" can get you in all sorts of trouble. I explain why in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com ,...
Jun 28, 2023•11 min•Ep. 188
Lucinda Sage-Midgorden has been a story lover since she and her family watched TV and movies together. Her father taught her how to find the deeper layers of a story. This love prompted her to pursue a double major in Religious Studies and Theatre and Speech, a MA in Theatre Arts, and finally a MAEd so she could share her love of stories with her students. Now retired, Lucinda writes her weekly blog, Sage Woman Chronicles, is working on her second novel, manages her online course, "Saving the Wo...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 187
Creative work, and in fact, most of life, works better when we're good to ourselves, even if that seems counterintuitive. I'll tell you why in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com ,...
Jun 14, 2023•9 min•Ep. 186
I’m absolutely thrilled to be talking this week with actor Peter Davison, star of All Creatures Great and Small , Doctor Who , At Home with the Braithwaites , West End musicals like Spamalot and Gypsy, and much more. He’s also the author of a delightful memoir, Is There Life Outside the Box: An Actor Despairs , and Doctor Who fans also know him as the creator of the 50th anniversary special, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot . Peter talks with me about many of those things, plus how he came to write ...
Jun 07, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 185
It may sound counterintuitive, but doing nothing can be really good for you. (If you just felt your whole body relax at the mere thought, that's a sign!) I'll tell you why in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Sen...
May 31, 2023•8 min•Ep. 183
Author Elizabeth (Eliza) Morton was an actress before she started writing, and has always loved the power of stories. She’s also part of an acting family—she’s married to Doctor Who’s Peter Davison and step-mother-in-law of the show’s David Tennant, and sometimes wonders if she started writing romantic sagas as an escape from all the science fiction in the house. Liz joins me to talk about acting and drama school, transitioning into writing, how her drama background influences her fiction writin...
May 24, 2023•59 min•Ep. 184
It's so easy to want to be like everyone else, but is it really a good idea? Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com , or contact me on Post.news, Spoutible , and Mastodon !...
May 17, 2023•8 min•Ep. 182
Today’s guest, Nick Morrison, is a guitarist, teacher, author, and composer whose work you’ve probably heard in productions from Warner Bros, Universal Studios, Sony, MTV, ABC, NBC, HGTV, and HBO. Nick talks with me about how musicians can make money making music beyond performing and teaching and how writing music for TV and movie productions works. We also talk about why structure and limitation enhance our creativity, how the time he spent in Japan influenced his creative process, and more. P...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 181
Every so often, do something the old-fashioned way. I'll tell you why (and how I came to this discovery) in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com , or contact me on Post.news, Spouti...
May 03, 2023•8 min•Ep. 180
My guest today is Kate Powers, a lifelong theatre kid who became an off-Broadway and regional theatre director. Her list of credits is long, but I wanted to talk to Kate about the unusual home she’s found for her work: maximum security prisons. Kate is the founding artistic director of the Redeeming Time Project, which uses Shakespeare to effect positive change for the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated. She has been a facilitator with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (www.rta-arts.org) a...
Apr 26, 2023•59 min•Ep. 179
"Push through resistance" is absolutely terrible advice. Why? I'll tell you in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com , or contact me on Post.news, Spoutible , and Mastodon !...
Apr 19, 2023•8 min•Ep. 178
My guest this week, Stacey Smith? was one of my first guests in 2019, when we talked about the creative side of mathematics, and particularly about mathematical models of disease outbreaks—and the occasional zombie apocalypse. We also talked about how Doctor Who influenced her decision to become a mathematician in the first place. I asked Stacey to come back and talk about her own personal gender transition, both in terms of how that’s influenced her own work and what it’s taught her, and also t...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 177
Our culture tells us we should be obsessed(!) with the thing we're meant to do, which can lead to judgment on our part—of our kids, our friends, and ourselves. There are lots of reasons not to be obsessed, and better ways to deal with them than judgment. I'll tell you more in this short episode. If you suspect you're multi-passionate, I highly recommend the work of Barbara Sher ("Refuse to Choose") and Margaret Lobenstine ("The Renaissance Soul"). Thanks to Walt Whitman by way of Ted Lasso for t...
Apr 05, 2023•9 min•Ep. 176
My guest this week, Patrick Lombardi, was born and raised in New Jersey, where he still lives and writes for a variety of local and national sites like BestofNJ.com, NJ.com, and BuzzFeed. He’s collection of humorous stories and essays, Junk Sale, came out in 2018. He’s also the creator of DevourNJ.com, which highlights independent food businesses in New Jersey, and the companion New Jersey Food Truck Cookbook, which was just released in February. Patrick talks to me about how he decided to focus...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 175
It's easy to think we don't need to get to our creative work now. It's also wrong. I'll tell you why in this short episode. The episode I mention about being ready is Pep Talk #5: Ready. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a n...
Mar 22, 2023•7 min•Ep. 174
Novelist Michael McLaughlin trained as a doctor for more than a decade before deciding that medicine wasn’t where he wanted to be after all. He moved back into his first love—fiction writing—in stages, moving to medical communications before deciding it was time to write full-time. Michael tells me how and why he made that shift, including how he wrote his first book, on career change, before jumping into the world of long fiction. We also talk about how he draws on his medical background and co...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 173
We often believe that the best way to do good work—of any kind—is to do it well. Seems obvious, right? What if I told you the opposite is often true? I explain in this short episode. Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks! Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note ...
Mar 08, 2023•8 min•Ep. 172
Author Matt Leyshon spends his days as a software engineer before morphing into a fervent writer at night. He’s best known for his writing and research for his debut novel, Jack the Ripper: Live and Uncut , which has received the Jack the Ripper: Book of the Year award for fiction from the Ripperology community. He has also appeared as a Jack the Ripper expert at MegaCon and on the History Channel. Matt joins me to talk about why that book was self-published for only six months, his foray into w...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 171
Building on last week's conversation with Nina Hart about Keith Johnstone's book, "Impro," here's why putting on a persona can be a valuable part of your creative process. Want more? Here's a handy playlist with all my Creative Pep Talk episodes. Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.co...
Feb 22, 2023•6 min•Ep. 170
My friend and fellow Kaizen-Muse creativity coach, Nina Hart, was one of my first guests, and she comes back to the podcast today. Nina is an author and performer—including being an original member of San Francisco’s experimental dance troupe, Contraband, and, playing a purple electric bass, recording and performing with numerous bands—and I invited her to dig into Keith Johnstone’s groundbreaking book on theatrical improvisation, Impro , with me. I knew Nina would have a lot to say about how we...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 169
It's the 50th pep talk! And it's time to give ourselves credit. Why? And How? I'll tell you in this short episode. Want more? Here's a handy playlist with all my Creative Pep Talk episodes. Get the 6 Creative Beliefs that Are Screwing You Up , plus biweekly updates on what's going on in my world (including upcoming events) for free! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com , or contact me on Post.news and Mastodon ! And I'm now...
Feb 08, 2023•5 min•Ep. 168
Jodi Krangle is a Toronto-based voice actor who works with major brands all over the world including Dell, BBVA, HGTV, Nespresso & Kraft. She's been heard in thousands of your favorite commercials and websites, so odds are very good that you’ve already heard her voice. She also hosts the Audio Branding podcast, which delves into how to make an impact with sound, and how sound influences us. We talk about her journey to voice acting, the reality of voice acting versus our perception of it, an...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 167
