“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will […]
Joseph Conrad on Fiction, Art and the Power of the Written Word
Fiction — if it at all aspires to be art — appeals to temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the […]
Rainer Maria Rilke on Writing Being Your Purpose and Judging Art
7 Ways to Embrace Vulnerability and Write Truth
When you create with openness, with a willingness to trust and be vulnerable for your art, your writing is all the more authentic and true because it is uncensored, drawn from the deepest part of yourself — pure feeling articulated on the page — but it can be hard to share our truths, to write without censor, especially when the […]
Creative Confidence: How to Believe in Yourself [and Your Art]
“Self-confidence grows every time you keep a promise to yourself.” —Asha Dornfest Sometimes everything just feels right. You feel confident and relaxed, as if life and your creative projects are all swimming along sweetly. Other times, a fluctuation in your creativity, subtle anxiety or momentary doubt can knock your confidence and lead you to question everything you […]
Creative Overwhelm: Slowing Down and Finding Stillness in a Busy World
Finding stillness in our busy world is crucial not only for our ability to live in such a world, physically, and neurologically, but also for our inner landscape. In stillness we are able to reconnect with our centre, our true, authentic self. To silence the endless clamour of our planet of bleeps and busyness, and disconnect from the demands […]
Anne Lamott on Perfectionism, People-Pleasing and Shooting for the Moon
6 Ways to Liberate Your Creativity by Rebalancing Your Being
Underneath the clamour and chatter of our busy world, in the very depths of your being exists your own inner stillness. Yet because the focus is so frequently on the externals, all that exists outside of the self, it can be easy to forget that this inner sanctuary can be accessed whenever you choose. Regularly retreating to […]
Picasso on Art, Instinct and the Shadow
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, —the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.” ~ Pablo […]
Elizabeth Gilbert on Finding Your Elusive Creative Genius
In this talk ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ author, Elizabeth Gilbert, contemplates the impossible things that are expected from artists, authors and geniuses — she shares the interesting idea that, instead of the rare person being a genius, all of us have a genius. It’s amusing, inspiring, insightful, personal and moving talk. “Gilbert is irreverent, hilarious, zestful, courageous, intelligent, and […]