Chasing Creative

We’re back after an extended summer hiatus! And we’re so happy about it. Not much changed for Abbie, Ashley had a third baby, and here’s how they’re managing life and creativity as they ease back into life in the fall.

While they’ve been gone, Abbie started hosting the Exhale Creativity podcast. Exhale Creativity is a monthly membership site where the Coffee + Crumbs team is able to encourage moms to follow their creative hearts. You can check it out here: exhalecreativity.com.

Want to hear the background on Abbie & Ashley’s personality types and how they approach their work + life? Here’s the episode you should listen to next.

We’re going to be releasing one episode per month this season. You can look for our first interview of the season next Monday, October 8th. And then we’ll have a new episode the first Monday of every month after that.

Love the podcast and happy to see new episodes in your feed? Consider supporting us on Patreon. If everyone who listens gave $1 per month, we could cover our expenses and maybe even hire an editor. That would allow us to create more -- for ourselves and you!

Here’s where you can find Abbie:

Website: inkwellsandimages.com

Instagram: instagram.com/abbigailekriebs

Twitter: twitter.com/abbigailekriebs

Pinterest: pinterest.com/abbigailekriebs/

Facebook: facebook.com/inkwellsandimages

Here’s where you can find Ashley:

Personal blog: ashleybrookswrites.com

Business website: brookseditorial.com

Instagram: instagram.com/brookseditorial

Twitter: twitter.com/brookseditorial

Pinterest: pinterest.com/brookseditorial

Mini Book Club

Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell

Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

In our last episode of Season 4, we’re chatting about how we keep creating even in chaotic seasons. Most of us have plans and dreams for the way we want our lives to go, but here in the real world, life is messy and unpredictable, and things rarely go as planned. When things go off the rails, creativity is often the first thing to take the hit. Sometimes scaling back is necessary, but we also believe there are ways we can prioritize creating even when we’re living right in the middle of chaos.

We will be back for a Season 5 at some point… but we’re not really sure when. To get updates on when we do, sign up for our newsletter. We promise it is the lowest-commitment email newsletter you will ever sign up for, because we send about one email a year.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Resources We Mentioned

While Ashley is on maternity leave, you’ll be able to find Abbie over at Exhale Creativity hosting a podcast that explores where motherhood and creativity intersect.

The Lazy Genius helps everyone manage life a little better - Kendra is a great resource for anyone trying to do things smarter to make more room for what you want to be doing instead.

Mini Book Club

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life & Work by Chip and Dan Heath

Beartown by Frederik Backman

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

While we are usually bemoaning our lack of time to sort out all of our creative projects, every once in a while we get stuck in a place where we’ve got time or desire to do something creative, but find ourselves with an utter lack of inspiration. When that happens, we both have some tried-and-true places we turn to that give us that little nudge we need to get back to making, and we thought we’d share them in today’s episode.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Resources We Mentioned

Blogs:

Melissa Camara Wilkins

John Blase, especially his advent book, Touching Wonder

Anne Bogel a.k.a. Modern Mrs. Darcy, specifically The Examined Life archives

Erin Loechner at Design for Mankind

Podcasts:

The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman

The New York Times Book Review

The Lazy Genius Podcast by Kendra Adachi

Magic Lessons by Elizabeth Gilbert

The #AmWriting Podcast

The Create if Writing Podcast

Social Media:

Nicole Gulotta’s Wild Words Collective - you can sign up for her newsletter to get access here

Lindsay Crandall on Instagram

The Coffee + Crumbs Instagram account

Our episode in Season 3 with Nicole Gulotta, the author of Eat This Poem

Mini Book Club

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman

Finish by Jon Acuff

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

We’re all have limited resources to dedicate to creativity, and one of those is money. No matter what your financial situation, money is a finite resource, and we can only spend so much on creative pursuits---and the costs can add up quickly. So how do we budget for creative projects when we’re not independently wealthy? That’s the conversation in this week’s episode.

Society6 for selling your creative work

YNAB (You Need a Budget) budgeting app

EveryDollar budgeting app

Financial resources by Dave Ramsey:

Wave for business accounting

Euphoria by Lily King

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Inkswells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

Pinterest: @abbigailekriebs

Personal blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

We’ve all heard that we’re supposed to be building an audience online. Even if we don’t want traditional success, many of us put our work online to share our creativity and use it to connect with others. But building all these “platforms” takes time and energy away from the creative process. It can make us discouraged as we compare ourselves to others and frustrated that we don’t have time to do all the things we’re “supposed” to be doing. So how do we balance social media and the creative life? That’s what we’re talking about in this episode.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Resources We Mentioned

Ashley loves Alexandra Franzen, who is not on social media and doesn’t seem to actively build a platform anywhere. It can be done!

Rachel Meeks from Small Notebook hasn’t blogged in years and Abbie still goes back and re-reads her blog from time to time.

Hootsuite does post to Instagram now! So does Buffer, but Abbie’s favorite remains Later.com.

Ashley recommends finding tools that recycle past updates for you on social media. She recommends RecurPost and SmarterQueue for Twitter as free or close-to-free options, and Board Booster for Pinterest, but she doesn’t remember how much it costs.

Mini Book Club

Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

We have to eat, we have to have clean clothes, and we should probably vacuum once in a while. If you can’t outsource any (or all!) of those kinds of things, maybe the next best step is to inject a little more creativity into them so that they feel like less of a distraction from our creative goals and more a part of them. Join us in this episode to learn how we make our daily tasks a little more creative.

The Fitness Marshall on YouTube Note: Not all songs are appropriate for little ones!

Callie Feyen's Chasing Creative episode on writing through transitions

The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet by Callie Feyen

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

Pinterest: @abbigailekriebs

Facebook: @inkwellsandimages

Ashley Brooks Writes

Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

We’re both personality nerds, so it’s no surprise that our Myers Briggs letters and Enneagram types have come up multiple times on the podcast before. In today’s episode, we’re devoting our entire conversation to the ways our personalities can affect our creative lives. There are probably hundreds of personality typing systems out there, but today we’re focusing on three that have had the biggest impact on our creativity: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Enneagram, and Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Resources We Mentioned

Reading People by Anne Bogel

Creative You: Using Your Personality Type to Thrive by Otto Kroeger

The Sacred Enneagram by Chris Heuertz

The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile

The Road Back to You podcast

16personalities.com

A recent Hope*Writers podcast interview with Ian Morgan Cron

The Selfie Podcast series on enneagram

The Enneagram Institute online resource

Explore Your Type online resource

The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz

Mini Book Club

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Sherlock Holmes Series by Arthur Conan Doyle

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

The longing for a peaceful creative retreat at a cabin in the mountains is probably high on the wish lists of creative people everywhere. But the fact is, our mountaintop creative moments don’t happen all that often, and we probably need to dream a little closer to our own backdoors if we’re ever going to make creative retreats happen in our own lives. Today we’re chatting about those retreats, the dreamy ideal ones and the real ones.

In the Creative Retreat workbook, there are activities to get your creative juices flowing and blank pages to do idea dumps when you need them. It’s a planning resource + coloring book combined, and it’s full of Jennie’s signature adorable doodles. If you struggle to make the time that you have for your creative projects count, this workbook can help. It’ll walk you through why you want to take a retreat, how to get started, and how to keep the magic flowing even once you come back home.

Learn more and grab your copy at makearetreat.com!

Plan Your Perfect Writing Day on the Hope*Writers podcast

Tips + Tricks for Planning a Solo Retreat by Ashlee Gadd

Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Marie Rilke

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The Harry Potter series

Emily of New Moon books by L. M. Montgomery

Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

Pinterest: @abbigailekriebs

Facebook: @inkwellsandimages

Brooks Editorial

Ashley Brooks Writes

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

For many of us, it’s tempting to shove our creativity into a dark corner and try to keep making progress on our own. But like we talked about in our episode on sharing your creativity, creatives aren’t meant to work in a vacuum. This week, we’re focusing on creative communities: how to find them, how they can help us achieve our goals, and our personal experiences being part of creative communities.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Cool Things We Mentioned

The StorySocial and #CreateLounge Twitter chats

Nicole Gulotta’s Wild Words Collective

The #AmWriting podcast Facebook Group

Jon Acuff’s 30 Days of Hustle

Mini Book Club

The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs

We’re excited to share a special episode this week as we welcome back returning guest and one of our favorite writers, Callie Feyen. Callie has been on the podcast twice in recent years, and we’ve loved hearing from her about her writing journey and how it has evolved as her life has changed. Since we last chatted, she’s undergone another big transition and published her first book, The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet, released February 14th by TS Poetry Press, and she’s here to tell us all about it.

Listen to our first interview with Callie here.

Listen to our second interview with Callie here.

You can now support Chasing Creative on Patreon!

Mini Book Club

Joseph Cronin’s The Passage books

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Beastly by Alex Flinn

The Rose & the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Order your copy of The Teacher Diaries here, in paperback or on Kindle.

Read Callie’s blog.

Connect with Callie on Twitter or Instagram.

Personal Blog: Ashley Brooks Writes

Business Website: Brooks Editorial

Twitter: @brookseditorial

Instagram: @brookseditorial

Pinterest: @brookseditorial

Website: Inkwells and Images

Twitter: @abbigailekriebs

Instagram: @abbigailekriebs