Brene Brown grew up with gritted teeth and a tart tongue. Armored, that is. In her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, the fellow multi-generation Texan comes clean about her lifelong resistance to being emotionally vulnerable. Brown’s situation as a Texan, a…
Twenty years ago, conversations around creativity revolved around creative thinking. Lateral thinking. Metaphorical thinking. Design thinking. Those thinking models remain useful, but what we talk about when we talk about creativity today exceeds creative thinking. We talk about living creatively and being creative, not just thinking creatively. One person whose work in this field I admire…
Note: This is a op-ed blended with personal narrative. It’s unapologetically 3200 words. I welcome your views and comments to further the conversation. 1. Are You a Punk or Outlaw? The DIY movement has its roots in home improvement – decades before Home Depot made it vogue and cheap. But its more current currency has…
This is a story about seeing beyond either/or. It’s a story about choosing friends and fulfillment and your readers while still forwarding your career. It’s a story about collaborative publishing. It’s a tale of two novels, too, coming out on the same day by the same author. But context, first. (Skip down if you don’t…
We often hear about the importance of play when it comes to creating new things and ideas. John Cleese says, “If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” But what about creating a new life? A whole new way of viewing yourself and of acting in the world? Where does play come…
When William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he implored the then-younger, perhaps more jaded writers to exhibit this quality. The next year, John Steinbeck followed suit and called for it as well. Maxine Hong Kingston has called it the most important quality a writer can possess. And David Foster Wallace rhapsodized about it,…
Here’s what I’ve been hearing: Something in us aches to be free and brave to create what matters. To take risks to stand up and stand out. To tell the Story we know must be told. But time dogs us. We make a creative mess more than a mountaintop. We’re not sure how to shape…
In the Tower of Babel that is publishing these days, it’s easy for authors to get distracted and to side-track their creative process in favor of over-thinking viable creative products. The push to publish and profit can override the hardest fact. I’m offering four spots in a program and then a free call for a select group of…
A TRACKING WONDER Conversation with Jen Louden & How We Can Step Up & Teach Now (+ smashing hard-boiled eggs, feeling like fried leather, getting out of fish bowls, why we have no time for sacred fetuses, & lots of laughter) Our Tracking Wonder Conversations connect you with creative people who both captivate our hearts…
In 2005, where was wonder, this emotional state at the core of creativity, story, innovation, and wisdom? Newly divorced and fresh off a book tour, I hovered that year in a precarious in-between state. So what did I do? I started quietly but deliberately tracking wonder. I thought I would find it chiefly among poets and…
Discover the inspiration behind Tracking Wonder. When life (literally) goes up in flames, learn to use the transformative power of wonder to find hope and even thrive in challenging times.
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