Write Brain

A description of how I meditate and the ways I change my meditation structure as needed.

All about my year of getting old and how I'm trying to learn and grow from it, along with some specific plans for the future.

We live in a world that doesn't value creativity. How do we live in it? What questions do we ask ourselves about our value? How do we answer them?

Why I sometimes feel like giving up (as a release mechanism) and why sometimes the impulse to give up means something more (like it's time for big changes ahead).

I'm trying to get more used to rejection, so I'm writing 20 short stories in a month. In this episode I explain why I'm doing this and what my results are so far.

Today I'm giving you special permission to fail. And also, an assignment to do something only for today that you know you will fail at, something different and new and scary.

The first stage of learning to write goes by in leaps and bounds. You can see the changes in your writing so quickly. And then you reach the "almost there" stage and it feels like you've come to a stand still because the improvements until you're publishable all seem tiny and so subtle.

People who don't put their creative self on the line every day to be mocked and reviewed and criticized may not understand why it hurts so much or how to deal with it. I've got some ideas here for how to deal with it, but the hurt is probably not something I can erase.

I talk about the links between depression and creativity and why I think it's NOT what you think it is. You don't need to be depressed to create and taking your meds isn't going to steal away your creativity. But also yes, creative types do sometimes have a greater likelihood of becoming depressed for the same reason that they become creative.

This is an embarrassing list of all the things I did stupidly wrong in my first 5 years of publishing. PLEASE do not do any of them. I suffered so you don't have to.