Photo by Aedrian Salazar  on Unsplash Today I'm thinking about the futility of making art. David Speed (excellent podcast , highly recommend) says that all the artists he talked to say that you just need to keep making things. Which is decent advice, I guess. But he doesn't interview the thousands of people who kept making things their whole lives and stayed obscure; no one ever heard of them, and only very few people even engaged with their work. It's not that I intend to st

Photo by Sepp Rutz  on Unsplash When I started the collections, I was super excited and couldn't see this rather predictable slump coming. On many days, I feel like I don't have anything interesting to contribute. Today, for example, I feel like a dilettante--there are no consequences for my success, so really I'm just dabbling in writing, surely. Then I say, well, if I don't have anything interesting to contribute, then I'm just making noise, and the internet already has qui

Sakamoto Kaori at the team event When we lived in Ottawa, we discovered the Olympic Winter Games. When it's -26 degrees outside and pitch dark at 4 pm, anything would do. Plus, there's hockey . Despite the excitement, Olympic hockey isn't as good as NHL hockey, and when I watch the winter olympics I opt mostly for the more creative stuff: figure skating (although I can't connect to ice dancing, however hard I tried), big air (jumping with a snowboard), slopestyle (jumping wi

Read this on galpod.com. On Friday, I invited you to reflect on your strengths. I started on this path a while ago when I caught an...

Read this on galpod.com. As I mentioned, I’ve been thinking about fragility after experiencing the fantastic Maria Bartuszová exhibit at...

Read this on galpod.com. The first thing anybody who knows anything about blogging advises beginner bloggers is that consistency is key....

Read this on galpod.com. I've been struggling with doing a scene-by-scene analysis for my manuscript over the last few weeks. I thought...

Read this on galpod.com. I went to see the Rodin exhibition at the Tate Modern with a couple of friends. It was good fun (as far as...

Read this on galpod.com. I only feel at home when I have unpacked my books. We left our previous home on May 13th, but only last Thursday...

Read this on galpod.com. I think it's important that we say it. Even if you love writing and can't imagine your life without writing and...

Last week, on the amazing Writers Group, we talked about why writing is so friggin' hard. Thomas Mann said that “A writer is someone for...

Read this on galpod.com. I've been working with The Artist's Way for eight weeks. The book itself has been helpful to me, even though I...

Read this on galpod.com. Today, I'm thinking about creativity. I've been thinking about creativity a lot lately. When I say lately, I...

Read this on galpod.com. It's been a while since I've posted. I've meant to every week, but every time I ended up not happy with what...

Read this on galpod.com. I've been thinking lately about what it means to be creative. I have no definitive answers about that. I'm no...

Read this on galpod.com. I'm stuck. Remember that breakthrough I had in my story in July? Turns out it wasn't much of a breakthrough...

Read this on galpod.com. Photo Credit: Matt Biddulph First, an admin update: I was trying to switch to the new Wix blog, but I'm not...