Stuck in a creative rut? We've all been there, but not all of us know how to get out. Here at EMM we're all about making your creativity work for you instead of waiting for inspiration to strike. But when you're blocked, you don't want fluffy platitudes - you want practical steps to sparking your art again. These are our 10 best tried-and-true steps you can take to turn your creativity back on today.

To purchase "The War Of Art" mentioned in this podcast, click here.

To purchase "Bird By Bird," click here.

In this episode of The Early Morning Musician, we dive into one of the hardest but most essential skills for independent artists: learning how to say "no." As creators balancing day jobs, personal responsibilities, and artistic pursuits, it's easy to let distractions and requests from others chip away at the precious time you've carved out for your craft.

We'll explore why saying no is not selfish - it's necessary. You'll learn how to recognize the subtle ways time is stolen, strategies for setting boundaries with friends, family, and colleagues, and tips for overcoming guilt when prioritizing your creative work. This episode will empower you to reclaim your time so you can stay consistent, inspired, and focused on what you love: your art.

Tune in to discover how the simple act of saying no can unlock more time, energy, and mental space for your creative journey.

Here at the Early Morning Musician, we believe in the AM hours so much that we named our podcast for them. But you may not be convinced that making 5AM your prime creative time is when the juices will be flowing. Maybe you like to work best when the inspiration strikes, or maybe you find yourself inspired during night owl hours. In this episode, we're telling you why working in the morning will double your effectiveness, output, and creativity in 2025.

This year was our first full year as indie artists releasing a song every month. From January until now we released 10 songs and learned a TONNN along the way. Here are the top 5 things we wished we had known sooner but learned this year. Hopefully they'll save you some time!

We reached our goal this year, guys.

On this episode we're talking about why millions of other artists quit too soon; before they've found their sound, their look, their audience, and how to create income from their hard work.

If you aren't familiar with the internet trend of "Hear Me Out," where people show photos of UNLIKELY characters from movies and tv that they'd consider romantically seeing (or lately, hear-me-out-cakes, where friends are putting photos of their characters on a stick and sticking them into a cake together), then let us be your introduction to the musical version of hear-me-out-artists we hate to love. We didn't talk about which artists we were going to surprise each other with, so Carisa went a slightly different direction than Ryan, but each one stayed historically accurate. Here are the most unlikely tunes they like and never talk about.

This year we set a goal to release one song - Every. Single. Month. For a year. We got to September (so close to the end of 2024!) and failed for the first time this month. Tomorrow's October 1st, and this podcast is us processing this failure out loud together for the first time. Trust us when we say we haven't talked about this before now - so this podcast is a really a stream of consciousness.

Join us for a casual chat about what we think this miss means for Geraldene. And stay tuned for September's song to come out THIS month, in October 2024.

Lollllll

You never know when you're going to have a random opportunity come your way - and this story is our most random. It's also a testament to the reality that no matter how an opportunity pans out, sometimes the opportunity alone was all you needed to become someone completely different.

This episode is for the nerds who don't want to pay someone else to produce their tunes. Here's everything that DIDN'T work - and everything that has been worth every penny - in our home studios over the last ten years. Ryan's been on a quest for studio knowledge for like, a very long time, and in this episode he's spilling the tea on all the tech he would advise new starts to invest in.

What a fun trip down memory lane. We decided to share with you the meanest (and funniest, by default) things that have been said to us or have happened to us while pursuing music the last 10 years. If you've ever worried about what people might say to you if you put something out there, this episode will either make you feel a whole lot better or a lot worse. Enjoy! :')