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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 [...]

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 [...]

For anyone yearning to be heard. For anyone whose voice feels caged in a cubicle or sliced on a chopping board. For anyone whose Muse still battles Time and Mind and Circumstance. For anyone [...]

Where Your Wilds Things Are   You know the feeling. Something almost wild resides inside you. A bold idea. A bold story. A bold way of doing or viewing something. Let’s call it a Wild Idea. Let’s [...]

I know you want to take a day off but may need to retrain yourself on how to loaf. Here are two pieces from the Tracking Wonder archives to help you make Memorial Day a day of productive loafing [...]

Branding is part and parcel of who we are as thing-making, idea-shaping, experience-crafting creatures. Few people have helped me weave meaning and mission into brand-making for myself and [...]

I was an anxious boy, quiet, often distracted to daydream and doodle. The lovely Ms. Goodman scolded me at six years old for connecting the dots. My pencil was linking the bubbles in my science [...]

What could an agent possibly offer a novelist whose self-published ebooks are bringing in five figures a month? That’s what self-published science fiction novelist Hugh Howey wanted to know [...]

One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good [...]

Note: I’m taking a decidedly personal detour today in honor of mothers nurturing imaginations everywhere. My mother made the most of her means and time to give my imagination and spirit an [...]