Living a creative life
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently read a great article on Medium by Srinivas Rao (the article first appeared in 2017, but I only recently came upon it). Rao discusses the importance of how we start our day and makes a distinction between “junk food for the mind” and “health food for…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. The title of this post doesn't refer to the 1979 horror film When A Stranger Calls. Instead I'm talking about, from time to time, scheduling a change of scenery. Long periods of deep focus are common with creative work. This is necessary and if you're struggling to stay…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. There is a romanticized image of the lonely artist, the tortured soul who courageously clings to a solitary vision while remaining misunderstood by the ignorant masses. Ayn (“Ayn the Pain”) Rand created an entire long-winded novel, The Fountainhead, around this image. The lonely artist is often portrayed in…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've nearly completed a major creative project I've been working on intensively for over a year. There is still work to do, but it will no longer be a full-time effort. I find myself asking, “What's next?” A number of new projects are on my mind. Which one…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I want to say up front that I don't advocate gambling in the conventional sense. The house always wins, and there are no exceptions to this rule. However, I've been thinking this week about Kenny Rogers' 1978 song The Gambler (written by Don Schlitz in 1976). Specifically, the…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been thinking a lot lately about inciting incidents and the different ways they can be used in fiction. An inciting incident generally launches the primary conflict or action in a story. Joseph Campbell referred to the inciting incident as a call to action. Sometimes our characters seek…
Continue reading ➞ Insightful Examples of Inciting Incidents
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I watched a delightful documentary recently (as I write this, it's currently streaming on Netflix). Bathtubs Over Broadway introduces us to the world of corporate musicals from the perspective of former Late Show With David Letterman writer Steve Young. First, Young discovered the likes of The Bathrooms are…
