Today on Common Shapes I share what I am up to in my business and my life since the end of last year where we left off. Much has happened!

Links mentioned :

Creative Ideation Portal : Free three day guide to visioning your projects

Look About You : Order your copy

Landscapes : A writing group for all genres

Writing The Personal : A three week class to bring the poetic, personal, and political together for essays of self discovery and service Taught by Cody Cook-Parrott with guest teachers Anna Fusco and Fariha Róisín

Devon Price's essay about burnout

Hello Common Shapes listeners. 🔸 I wanted to pop in with a little mini-episode to check in between seasons and share a few updates. Take a few minutes to hear why I changed my name and how you can join us in Flexible Office this spring. 🔹

LINKS

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m deep in conversation with poet, teacher, and my dear friend, Jacqueline Suskin.

Jacqueline is a poet and educator who has been teaching workshops, writing books, hosting retreats and creating spontaneous poetry around the world since 2009. She’s published eight books, and her most recent one, A Year In Practice, was just released with Sounds True press.

Together we talk about seasonal practices, radically reconnecting with the Earth, Fern Gully, writing multiple books, having multiple calendars, and choosing to remember.

Tune in to learn about—

• The radical nature of connecting to the Earth’s cycles
• How to tap into seasonal rhythms
• Jacqueline’s daily & weekly planning practices
• What’s our work & what’s not our work
• How to hold nuance in your writing

Links

• Visit Jacqueline’s website
• Order Jacqueline’s new book, A Year in Practice
• Subscribe to Jacqueline’s Substack newsletter
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m joined by my dear friend Fariha Róisín for a conversation at the intersections of writing, politics, care, and liberation.

Fariha is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Ontario, Canada and raised in Sydney, Australia. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, she is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. She’s the author of five books and writes the Substack newsletter, How to Cure a Ghost.

In this episode, Fariha shares her experience telling the truth amidst propaganda and channeling righteous rage into writing. She explains how she approaches writing about Palestine during the genocide in Gaza and how she embeds the depth of her feelings and beliefs in her work.

Tune in to hear about—

• Feeling the responsibility to speak out
• Fariha’s process for working on two books at once
• Pouring your feelings into your writing
• Demystifying spiritual practice
• The importance of surrender
• Where the personal meets the political
• How Fariha writes her weekly newsletter

Links

• Visit Fariha’s website
• Order Survival Takes a Wild Imagination
• Subscribe to Fariha’s Substack newsletter
• Follow Fariha on Instagram
• Mentioned in the episode: James Baldwin, Mother Country Radicals
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

I’ve been writing personal essays for over a decade, and I believe that my personal essay practice allowed me to leave social media.

So in today’s episode, I share how I blend the personal, the poetic, and the political in my writing. And I unpack how that supports me in speaking up and sharing my work without shying away from what’s happening in the world.

I hope this episode inspires you to share your writing with the people. Tune in to learn about—

• The importance of your life story
• How to share your political values
• Facing fear when we don’t know what to say
• Being willing to get it wrong
• Why you should choose a container for your writing
• How personal essays can help you leave social media

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Sign up for Writing the Personal, Dec 3 -17
• Mentioned in the episode — Body Work by Melissa Febos, 69herbs, Sister Spinster, Lukaza’s Substack, Fariha’s Substack, Friendship Village book, Bear Hebert, Off the Grid podcast, Ayana Zaire Cotton Substack
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Welcome to season two of Common Shapes! Since last season, I took a big step in my life and logged out of Instagram for good.

So in this episode, I’m going to share why I left and how I did it. Not from a place of knowing-it-all, but by asking the question, “what does it actually mean to be done with social media?”

I hope this episode inspires you to take supportive steps that are right for you. Tune in to learn about—

• What it’s like to leave Instagram
• The portal of the validation loop
• A big business success moment since leaving
• Is Substack social media?
• Weaving the personal, poetic & political

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Sign up for my Skillshare class, Success on Substack
• Listen to Off the Grid podcast — especially the 5-step Plan to Leave Social Media & this conversation with Melissa Word
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

How are you doing, dear listener? Today I'm checking in with a tiny episode between seasons. 

This one's full of personal updates about my current practice and a magical spell to support your creative ideation.

I look forward to being back for season two soon. In the meantime, find everything I'm up to below in the links. 

LINKS:

• Subscribe to my Substack newsletter
• Take my Skillshare class, Success on Substack
• Sign up for my workshop, Crafting Hidden Marketing Gems In Your Newsletters on Nov 21
• Book a Creative Advising Session

Making this podcast brought me into a business ecosystem crisis. Very little of my output changed, but my inner understanding of my work needed to shift.

So in today’s episode, I’m sharing how my job description has changed since I launched this show. And I’m exploring how shifting your job description can transform your relationship to your work.

Tune in to learn about—

• How to discover what you’re devoted to
• What are the themes of your job
• What is not your job
• How to write your job description
• Aligning your job with your values & interests
• What’s next for Common Shapes podcast

Links

• Get my mini-workshop Your Everchanging Job
• Book a Creative Advising Sessions
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

🔶 Interested in finding out more about placing an ad for next season? Fill out this form! 

Your offer ecosystem is how your creative offerings branch out of your artistry, fit together in the world, increase your income, and expand your reach.

In this episode, I share how I’ve crafted my offer ecosystem over the past decade, and I tell you the stories of how a few of my offers have evolved and even ended.

Tune in to learn about—

• What an offer ecosystem is
• My favorite ways to get ideas for your offer ecosystem
• How to choose a container for an offer
• Why one-on-one work can be a great place to start
• Charging for your offerings

Links

• Learn more about Teaching As A Practice
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Teaching online classes is how I’ve made the majority of my income since 2017. And it is a great joy of my career to have had such amazing, invested, weird, inspirational students.

In this episode, I’m going to share my approach to creating an online class by walking us through how I teach my class A Quilt Is Something Human.

I hope that this inspires you to become the teacher that you are meant to be. 

Grab a pen & paper, then tune in to learn about—

• How to decide what to teach
• Reasons to teach online
• Pricing your online class
• 5 reasons the world needs your online class
• Some of my favorite tech for selling online classes

Links

• Learn more about Teaching As A Practice
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Learn about Melissa Word’s class Grief Threads
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes