Recently our family was getting settled around the dinner table when our seven-year-old son halted all his usual bounciness and pointed. “What’s that?” he asked, staring out the back door. We all looked to discover a young hawk perched on one of our deck chairs. I grabbed my phone and snapped this picture:
I’m delighted to be have a guest post up over at Jeff Goins’ blog today. Here’s how it begins . . . When I was younger I played the trombone, but I didn’t really get it. I had friends who got it. You could tell orchestral music did something for
In Memory of Robin Williams As we entered his classroom, Professor Whipp grinned at us. Just as we finished settling in, placing our backpacks on the floor, our notebooks on our desks, he beckoned us to leave. “Come,” he said, “Follow me.” And out we went onto the University of
A few years ago the Baker Books acquisitions assistant at the time recommended Chris Guillebeau’s The Art of Non-Conformity to me. I loved the book. In it Chris points out that we don’t have to do life as it is almost always prescribed to us. We don’t have to earn a
For aspiring writers the “pub board meeting,” where book contracts are won and lost, is mysterious and even unnerving. “What goes on in there?” writers wonder. “What’s the conversation like?” For over ten years I’ve been attending publishing board meetings in an acquisitions role for a large book publisher. I’ve
I saw the film Her weeks ago, and one element of the movie still haunts me. Set in futuristic LA, it’s about a man named Theodore Twombly (played by Joachin Phoenix) who ends up dating his artificially intelligent operating system. Far-fetched, perhaps, but I enjoyed this quirky cinematic excursion. The
We can do it for the money or the prestige or freedom. We can do it because we have a message we want to send into the world. Why do we, why do you, do this creative work? In this video I tell a story about (who else?) my mom that illustrates
Many of us are pursuing our dreams in the margins of life. We have work commitments, family commitments, volunteer commitments, the list goes on. So if we’re going to get after our dreams, we need a way to spur ourselves to action. In this video I share about how coming up
We all want our writing to capture people’s attention and keep them reading. How do we do that? Here’s a quick video that explains my top piece of advice on how to do this. If you can master this tip, you’ll never lack readers . . . [youtube id=”KFkZ-yiYOpo”] Can’t
Sometimes our anxieties about the future negatively impact the present. We anticipate 1-star Amazon reviews before we’ve written a chapter. We dread how little our new business venture will make before we’ve designed the product. But is all thinking about the future bad for productivity and creativity? Of course not. Natasha
Like most, I do my art in the margins. I have a day job, one I like very much, and so my writing and product making and speaking and platform building have to happen on the side. Some have called this a “side hustle.” I’m supposed to tell you that
Not long ago I visited an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum titled Master Painters. The focus was a collection of pieces from The Netherlands during the seventeenth century, a period known as the Dutch Golden Age. One painting in particular grabbed my attention: a stunning maritime scene of ships