Are authors the most masochistic of all artists? Is serendipity God stepping in or are you just finally paying attention? At Katie’s funeral, which one of us will hype her as the undisputed queen of all hype-girls? We ask some big questions while checkin after week three. This week sparked some of the strongest pushback against Julia’s advice and we dig into how privilege plays a role in our ability to find success and simply create art. No, the universe does not make things fall into place just because you try hard. Sorry, Julia.

We are in total agreement on how painful criticism can be and the crippling effects shame has on budding artists.

Take a listen and let us know what you think here on Substack or in our Discord. https://discord.gg/nTcb2pS4KN Are authors the most masochistic artists? What was your favorite childhood toy? What piece of art gives you goosebumps every time? We want to know!

Bonus! If you make it to the end of the episode (it’s long one) you can hear about some upcoming festivals where you can meet Brynn and Katie.

Week 2 inspired some hot takes, our first unanimous disagreement with Julia, and justification for finding the perfect teacup and chair for your life. We also recorded while one of us was getting texts from upstairs reporting the baby’s oxygen levels so is this our most organized episode ever? No. Did we breakdown the chapter, offer our recommendations for the worthwhile tasks, and do the dang thing? Yes, we did.

We loved Julia’s advice to pay attention to the world around you. She argues that our capacity to find joy correlates to our ability to pay attention and with that observation she explains to a population of people scrolling their phones why we’re all on Zoloft. Her thoughts on obligations to others and the absence of any mention of family time in this week’s activities made us concerned. We’re pro-community here at (Not Quite)Losing It. Julia, friend, are you ok and how are things with your family?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on Week 2! What if any quotes resonated or made you bristle? Join us on Discord for discussion, support and some live hangouts! https://discord.gg/8zN2r6UvN

We made it through week one with only a single ER visit cutting into those morning pages. We made some important discoveries. The size of the notebook really helps getting through all three of those morning pages. Childfree artist dates are about as likely as a winning lottery ticket, but if you and your kid build Lego space cats together, it is both a parenting and creative win. It’s better to read the week’s activity on Day 1 instead of Day 6 in case there was something you were supposed to be doing all week. We also talk about our monsters, champions, alternate lives and the costumes at DragonCon.

Probably the most important takeaway, to paraphrase Julia, is we want progress not perfection and one small thing is better than no things. If you’re short on time and energy, we highlight the most impactful activities for us with the tweaks we had to make in order to complete them.

We've got a great community started over on Discord! Come join us! https://discord.gg/xqMVPz4rH

How excited are we to be starting on The Artist’s Way path with y’all? SO EXCITED.

Will we do it perfectly? No.

Will we write morning pages first thing in the morning literally every day? Almost certainly not.

Will we lower the bar so we can clear it? You know we will.

And we’re dragging you along with us.

Whether you are determined to follow AW to the letter or just want to see what you can pick up by osmosis from our journey through it, you are so welcome.

We’ve found a platform that is a little more conducive to ongoing conversations, show and tell, and topical discussions over on Discord. Whether you’re joining us in September 2026 or months or years down the road, we hope you’ll head over there and join the discussions, ideas for artist’s dates, and general camaraderie we hope we’ll develop there. (We'll still be launching and hosting the podcast here on substack every week)

Buckle up Buttercup. We’ve got dragons, quests, raw numbers and feelings about publishing, about trying to get published and some really excellent advice for when the “tea party is wooined”.

We start with some honesty about Brynn and Melissa’s publishing quests. Brynn shares her sales numbers from the first two months of her book’s life. Melissa talks about where she stands a year in the agent querying trenches. Katie saves us from an hour long pity party with some truly wonderful feedback on our fledgling podcast and the wisdom of pre-schoolers.

Then we dig into Book Three of Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, Assassin's Apprentice. Duty versus self-love. Vengeance. How many pages can a quest last before we want the characters to just set up a roadside tea shop? Adults really should be more honest and open with youth if they don’t want them running off to murder people. Robin Hobb writes the most epic final 100 pages in all of fantasy. This is definitely not a minisode.

We loved our summer bookclub and it’s a great way to lead up to our second season: The Artist’s Way. September 1 we’re starting our 12 episode journey through the entire course. We hope you’ll join us!

Summer bookclub #2! Y’all, when we decided to do this podcast, we agreed that we’d keep going as long as it was fun for us, not too stressful, and that we were genuine and fresh in our topics. So we are letting ourselves follow our whims and talk about what we want to talk about, which is, at this point, Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy.

But even if you haven't read the books (YET), you should stick around for the first 14 minutes or so to hear our check-ins before you check out. We share some TV and a couple music recs like Game Changer, Aeroplane Over the Sea, and Milo Murphy's law. Something for everyone!

We are women of our word. We promised a deep dive into Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Y’all probably thought we forgot (or hoped we did). Well, we are here to deliver on that promise with the first NQLI Summer Bookclub Episode! This is the first of our 3-episode deep dive into the Farseer Trilogy. We’re starting with Assassin’s Apprentice, the very first book in the Realm of Elderlings.

If you love fantasy, analyzing the trauma of imaginary people, political intrigue and obsessing over the greatness of Robin Hobb, this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. We start with a quick check-in, a spoiler-free overview of the book for those who haven’t read it, and then we spoil all the things starting at 22 minutes.

Katie has shared her obsession with her co-hosts, and now we’re inviting you all into our Realm of Elderling Fanclub.

Looking ahead! Season 2 of (Not Quite) Losing It will drop on September 1, and we’ll be doing all 12 weeks of the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Grab your own copy and join us as we try to recover our creativity!

In which we invent our own Pokemon and discuss the greatest actor of our generation who brought to life iconic characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Odysseus, Romeo, D’Artagnan, and Faust: Wishbone.

Prompted by a check-in on what media our kids are consuming, we reminisce about classic PBS and conclude Kindly Keyin is no Jack Russell Terrier in a feathered cavalier hat. For our creativity challenge, we create our own Pokemon, and we’re pretty sure Nintendo will be calling any day.

This is a fun, easy challenge to do with the kids if you’re running on fumes during these last days of summer!

K, love you, bye!

The last time we had a poetry assignment as our creativity exercise, I (Melissa) accidentally doomed us all to write bleak poems. Oops. This time, we went a little sillier.

In our check-in, we share some hacks for summer survival, so join us for a very quick break from your children’s summer break. We promise a few giggles and maybe a practical take-away or two.

K, love you, bye!

This week’s creativity exercise is borrowed from the vaults of Odyssey of the Mind— which is basically the creativity olympics for kids.

One part of the competition is for each team to come up with many creative responses to prompts like: Name a thing inside a thing inside a thing. (ex: a foot inside a sock inside a shoe.)

Check out this OM website where you can find TONS of these verbal creativity prompts. They are great for road trips or waiting at the doctor’s office or restaurants, or anytime you and your family or friends want a fun and zero-prep way to pass the time.

Hope y’all are having a lovely summer! We’ve got some fun stuff coming down the pike so stay tuned!