Living a creative life
"What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does." -from The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carre Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. In a recent post, I referenced Robert Caro's diligent research process. If you haven't read any of Caro's books, either The Years of Lyndon Johnson series…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently read George Michelsen Foy's 2016 book Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human. It deals with physical navigation and how our approach to navigation has changed over time. On a deeper level, it's a meditation on how we humans find our way in life and how…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure Many of us played with building blocks, or similar toys, as children. Lego bricks, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets were common during my childhood, and they're all still available to kids today. I never had Lego sets, but I did have Lincoln Logs and an Erector Set. (The…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. It's easy to think of creativity as an act of creating something out of thin air. A novel, a painting, a sculpture; these are all tangible products that didn't exist until they were created. We shouldn't believe that creativity is always about making something up, however. Sometimes, it's…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Currently I'm reading The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by scholar and classicist Mary Beard. Pompeii is briefly referenced in my current writing-project-in-progress, so I'm reading about the city primarily for research. Fundamentally, however, I'm reading a well-researched book by a respected historian about life in…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently self-published a novella that I started writing in 2017. It was inspired by the life (and death, in early 2017) of a dog that I adopted from a shelter in 2002. It's called Buddy and Thomas, and it's about a stubborn dog that disrupts the life…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. As a lifelong insomniac, I looked forward to reading Benjamin Reiss' 2017 book Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World. I wasn't disappointed. Wild Nights is not a book about how to get a better night's sleep. Instead, it's a cultural study of the history of…
