Category: Creativity

What Is Creative Facilitation?
(Above: The 2025 cohort of the Creative Facilitator Training presents their final projects. Photo by Story Parlor and Inward & Artward.)

Around this time last year (Sept 2025), I graduated from Story Parlor’s Creative Facilitator Training and earned my Inward & Artward certification. This basically means that I am certified to facilitate creative workshops and offer one-on-one creativity coaching, in addition to the freelance literary editing that I already offer.

What is creative facilitation, you ask?

Merriam-Webster defines “facilitate” as:

– To make easier

– To help bring about

– To help run more smoothly and effectively

By these definitions, facilitating is about making the learning process easier – it’s about helping. To me personally, “to facilitate” means to guide without controlling. It is equally important for the person facilitating to get out of the way as it is for them to influence. The core belief here is that the participant is, in fact, their own best guide, and the job of the facilitator is to trust and empower that inner guide.

How is creative facilitation different?

This letting go of control is a fundamental difference between facilitation and traditional instruction. Traditional approaches to education generally emphasize authoritative lecturing – as in, one person who supposedly has all the answers makes a direct deposit into the brains of others who, it is assumed, know less. The exchange is transactional rather than co-creative.

As a teacher-student, however, the facilitator is as much a participant as the students themselves, constantly evolving as a person and learning more about the subject through the students’ wisdom and classroom experiences. Humility and openness replace the absolute authority and single-mindedness of traditional education.

Likewise, the participants are student-teachers in that they are invited to bring their own perspectives, wisdom, and authority to the table. This collaborative model creates a feedback loop in which everyone learns from everyone else, contrasting traditional approaches that value hierarchy, black-and-white styles of thinking, and intellectual and creative homogeny.

What to expect at Small Fury Creative

The kind of space that a facilitator creates and holds for others is a reflection of their own energy. In consideration of this, I am continually striving to cultivate greater awareness of and responsibility for my own wounds and biases so that I can show up for others with neutrality and compassion. For me, learning and spiritual growth are not just high personal priorities but also efforts to be accountable: I am walking the walk, too.

Not only this, but I find much inspiration for my creative facilitation style in the archetype of the Eternal Child. In a childlike way, I invite you to play with me, to unmask and let your creative truth roam free. I encourage you to embody a beginner’s mindset and to embrace the humility of your first baby steps toward mastery. I treat the workshop space like a playground, where it is normal to run with an idea, fall down, get back up, experiment playfully and express fully — all in the name of learning about yourself and what makes your creative spirit special. By embodying this Eternal Child archetype, I hope to bring out your own inner child, and to remind you of the unexpected wisdom of the nascent and the power of the untrained wild.

My personal goals as a creative facilitator are:
- To guide creatives in reconciling their fear and affirming their joy.
- To inspire others, ensuring they always leave a little better (wiser, less blocked, more creative, more empowered, feeling safer, etc.) than they arrived.
- To share the wisdom gained from walking the walk, and to show others the path so that they might find their own meanings.
- To be of service to my creative community, fostering a sense of belonging and empowered resourcing within it.
- To trust that the participant is their own best guide, and to empower that inner guide.
- To reimagine what authority means and does by always prioritizing safety, inclusion, and co-creation.
If you resonate with this style of learning, join me for one-on-one creative coaching sessions or an upcoming creative workshop. How do you imagine your inner muse might behave differently in a space where its wisdom is genuinely wanted and invited?
September 23, 2026
Creative Experimentation: A Cure For Perfectionism & Stuckness
Sometimes when I arrive at my novel writing, I don’t know where to begin or what to write. But I know it’s still valuable to show up for it and spend consistent time with it each week, even if all I do is stare at it and produce nothing – or nothing but trash! I’ve learned that productivity is far less important than dedication.

So, this one is about encouraging you to just show up for your writing, whether or not your writing seems like hot garbage, or whether or not you write something at all. Just stay in the habit of it.

The Habit of Showing Up → Creative Experimentation

Habits are important, so they say. They definitely have helped me to ease into the real, deep work much more smoothly. All too often when I feel blocked, it’s just due to a lack of movement in general. Sometimes, you just have to move at all, anywhere, just to get unstuck enough to eventually start drifting toward where you actually want to go. Like a barnacle scraped off its rock to catch some current throughout the seven seas.

Here’s a big lesson that I picked up from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin: experimentation is important to the creative process. It’s the phase where you don’t judge anything. You don’t shut any idea down. Nor do you go seeking ideas necessarily. You just let whatever comes come, and you’re just okay with it. Put everything in your back pocket. It may be useful someday. Even the garbage. Creative experimentation allows you to foment and formulate what you’re actually going to say later. And staying in the habit of showing up provides you a consistent space for experimentation, even when you feel you have nothing to say. (Once you let go into the experiment, you’ll likely end up finding that you have plenty to say after all.)

Right now, you might be thinking something along the lines of, “If you’re going to create something, and go to all the trouble of producing something concrete out of thin air, then it ought to be something worthwhile. It “should” be worthy of the resources it takes up: materials, time, energy, focus, etc.” To this, I will gently push back: sometimes, it’s freeing to create fluff! Maybe that fluff turns into something of actual substance later. What comes out of you is not for you to judge, after all. You are just the secretary for your muse.

An “Anecdon’t” on Perfectionism

My process with writing novels has been interesting. I ended up back-burnering my first novel (a dystopian sci-fi) because I realized I didn’t yet have the skill that this particular project required. I thought at the time that I lacked writing skill, but ultimately, it was really about not understanding my creative process and what it needs. Ultimately, it was really about perfectionism.

For instance, I was too attached to structure, and it was hindering my motivation and creativity. I also struggled quite a lot to actually take the time to sit and write the damn thing, all because I put so much pressure on myself to do it all exactly right – exactly how the outline says: oh and don’t forget all these 19 important details that need to be included in this scene. It was all so scripted and controlled that the muse didn’t have space to breathe.

Having come from this, when I began work on my current novel (a DnD-inspired fantasy tale), I went into it with an entirely different energy: it’s not all that serious.

I dove headfirst into this novel intending for it to be a throwaway project. I thought, “Let me just get my crappy first novel out of the way so that I can become good enough to work on the sci-fi one.” Ironically, this fantasy novel has now shown me a beauty that is entirely its own, and I’ve come around to appreciating it far more than as a throwaway. Still, having the permission to not take it so seriously freed me from most of those perfectionistic tendencies from before.

And now, I know a few things about novel writing that may not be “the way it’s supposed to be done.” Did you know that…
- You don’t have to write things in chronological order.
- You don’t have to have a complete plot outline. You also don’t have to follow your outline completely. You are allowed to be completely unstructured and unorganized, or as much as you want.
- You can spend your writing session not writing, as long as you are bringing your calm attention to the project. Or, you can just free-write until something interesting emerges.
- You can create hooks or not care about creating hooks at all.
- You can write for a specific audience or not care about writing for marketing goals at all.
- You don’t have to write at the same time every day. You can if that works for you, but you don’t have to. You can write whenever, however, and whatever feels best and easiest and most fun in the moment.
This laissez-faire mindset might free you up enough from perfectionism to introduce your process to genuine creativity, rooted in curiosity and experimentation, as it did for me. And, as a result, you might just learn to have deeper trust in uncertainty and in the muse.

On the Value of Shit

So I will leave you with this question: what might open up if you were to be at peace with making something terrible and not worth the resources it uses? Your work is never actually going to be terrible and unworthy, of course. But cultivating an attitude where you can accept making a big steaming pile of shit frees you from the perfectionism that has been putting so much pressure on you to make a magnum opus.

As I like to say in my fiction editing work with clients, “Don’t try to write perfectly or even well. The goal of writing is to generate a big steaming pile of shit. Only in editing do we take that raw material and begin to sculpt something beautiful.”

So no, this may not be the greatest piece you’ll ever write. This one can just be an experiment. A “just for funsies.” That’s okay. If anything, that attitude is precisely what could usher it into actually becoming your magnum opus.

Wouldn’t that be ironic?
August 28, 2026
Dungeons and Dragons: A Framework for Inspired Creative Writing

I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a few years now, and like anyone else who has played for long enough, I have a long list of backpocket characters. They often come to me at the most random times, or during mundane moments, or after hilarious banter with my partner:

Him: Okay, if you could choose your name, what would you go by?

Me: Oh, I don’t know. Something pretty and magical like Ruthian Rose.

Him: No, that sounds too fantasy. It’s got to be a real name. OR, if it’s going to be a made-up-sounding name, it has to be ridiculous.

Me: (saying the first thing that pops into my head) Quizzard Litorga.

Him: LOL WHAT?!

Me: Haha ‘Quizzard Litorga’ sounds like a kobold wizard.

Him: What’s a kobold?

Me: A tiny lizard person. Yeah! As a wizard, he’s probably a genius by kobold standards so he grew up really lonely among his folk. Picked-last-for-boofball-every-time kind of thing, you know?

Him: Boofball?! Lol did you just make that up?

Me: Yup. So anyway. Quizzard learned magic so he could conjure up friends. Now his goal is to find the great dragon masters of the world and learn magic from them so he can build an army of best friends. So like, he has an innocent heart but actually ends up doing some awful shit. Oh, and he talks in a cliché anime hero voice because he spent way too much time alone playing puppets to feel like he had friends lol.

* * *

DnD is a table-top roleplaying game that has been around for decades. There are multiple editions but they all follow pretty much the same basic rules and structures. The beauty of having experience with a framework like this is that it serves as both a series of preset building blocks and as a creative constraint. You can easily apply it to your other creative work and find troves of ideas. Whether or not you are a TTRPG enthusiast, here are a few ways you can use the framework of Dungeons and Dragons to inspire your creative writing with unexpected character choices and original story arcs.

Character Archetypes

The most obvious way to use the DnD framework is in building original characters. In the Player Handbook, there are 12 classes and 9 races to choose from. In the wider world of the Internet, you can find dozens more races, classes, and even subclasses that others have homebrewed. These traits can help to inform the fundamental aesthetics, energies, and motivations that go into a character.

And that doesn’t mean there have to be “tortles” in your world, for instance…or even elves and dwarves and the like. Maybe you are writing a fictional piece that takes place in our world, without a variety of humanoid races. You can still use the traits of a tortle to describe a character. What about them is akin to a turtle? Maybe their characterization depicts a slow manner of speech and movement, or a weathered exterior, or seemingly ancient wisdom. Allow your imagination to run with every metaphor you can think up, while staying within the creative constraint of the racial or class archetype.

Rules of Magic

If you are writing fantasy, then it is already obvious how the vast library of magic spells and effects available in DnD could contribute to your fictional world. That said, the same can be true for those writing sci-fi, which is arguably a sub-genre of fantasy in which technology is the “magic.”

If there are divine interventions or miracles in your story, which god or goddess in the DnD pantheon might be most akin to it? How might you take that framework and tweak it to make sense for your story and add originality? If there are magical abilities in your story, which of the eight schools of magic might it belong to? Or can you come up with your own original type of magic that isn’t covered by those eight?

Roleplay For Dialogue

I’ve talked with a lot of writers who have said that they struggle to write believable dialogue. My suggestion is usually to spend a week or more just listening and noticing the conversations they hear in everyday life. However, if you have a background in TTRPGs, improv, or acting — or you don’t shy away from such things — then my suggestion is to roleplay your written characters.

First, you might need to find a friend or two who are willing to roleplay with you. Inviting others into the creative process with you can create a liberating atmosphere where play, experimentation, and unexpected turns can thrive. That said, you also don’t have to bring others in if you aren’t comfortable sharing your creative work or have other personal reasons. In that case, you may enjoy the challenge of roleplaying multiple characters yourself at the same time.

With your roleplay buddies assembled (or not) and briefed on their characters, the next step is to find your character in your body. Connect with their emotional state in the scene you are exploring. Meditate for a few minutes on what they want: both their overarching motivation and their immediate goal for the scene and the tactics they might use to get it. With this somatic and emotional preparation, you are now ready to jump into the roleplay.

Try to stay immersed in the given circumstances and the present moment. Don’t break character if you can. Make sure to remember that most basic rule of improv: “yes, and…” Otherwise, let go and have fun! Record the roleplay session so that you can revisit the phrasing and dynamics that emerged when it is time to write your dialogue.

Ask the Dice Gods

DnD is a game that uses dice to determine various outcomes. Does my character succeed their stealth check and get by unnoticed? Are they strong enough to resist an enemy’s grapple attempt? Do they possess enough intuitive insight to notice a subtle calling? Anytime there is a decision to be made that depends upon a character’s abilities or choices, the dice are rolled. So, if you are at a stuck point in your writing and you’re not sure what might happen next or what a character might do in a situation, try this: outline six different options and then roll a d6 (six-sided die) to choose.

The dice gods can be cordial some days and vicious other days. But they always get the last say. What they determine is absolute law. So set the intention to hold yourself to their verdict, because intention is powerful. If you go in with the intention to fully commit to whatever outcome is chosen, then the magic of chaos is guaranteed to transmute your faith into the choice that is truly meant to be.

That said, if you find you are not happy with what the dice gods have mandated, then you have your answer. Thankfully, creative writing is not a game of DnD, and you don’t have to follow what the dice say if you don’t want to. The important thing is that you received the clarity you asked for.

There are other ways to involve the magic of probability in your creative writing. It doesn’t have to be limited to dice. For instance, author Pierce Brown of the Red Rising series is known for drawing names out of a “Hat of Death” to determine which character must die. Another idea is to set your intention and ask your question, then pick up a book, flip to a random page, and see if the first sentence you read sparks any answers. You could also try any form of divination, like drawing tarot cards, casting runes, or consulting the I-Ching.

Wrapping Up

Dungeons and Dragons offers a pre-existing framework that can help to generate ideas, whether you’re working on character design, magical world-building, dialogue, or making important story decisions.

What other ideas do you have for applying DnD frameworks to your creative writing? How has it helped you make character choices or discover a character’s voice? What crazy decisions have been made for you by the dice gods?

Let me know – I’d love to hear how TTRPGs have inspired your creative writing!

July 25, 2026
Mindful Listening: A Doorway into Creative Flow
Today, I was called to advance my craft by reflecting upon my failures. A big failure for me when it comes to creative writing is just sitting down to do it, especially when inspiration isn’t already present. I’m not the only one who struggles with this. Just doing it is often the hardest part of the creative process for many writers. So what type of resistance is that, and how can we work with it?

The First Step of the Creative Process

I’ve been doing a good job lately of keeping a consistent daily writing practice, even if I only do a few minutes of journaling. But I know I could do more, or get started sooner and more easily, or maybe have even more time for writing if it weren’t so hard to get warmed up into it.

That’s the point of resistance, isn’t it? Getting warmed up. By that, I mean getting settled into the sense of slowness, warmth, and safety that I need to enter a flow state. ‘Warming up’ in this sense is a matter of nervous system regulation: specifically, of transitioning.

Our nervous systems aren’t designed to make sudden starts and stops and twists and turns. Suddenness usually puts us into one of the dysregulated states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and it is very difficult to be creative or playful in these energies.

Therefore, the first step of the creative process MUST ALWAYS be safety. Or else the rest of the process will be like a night of insomnia: restless, unsettled, uncomfortable, forced.

Mindful Listening As a Threshold to Safety

Synchronously, I happened to read the section in The Artist’s Way on Listening. It did a pretty fair job of summing up the solution I’ve been narrowing in on lately. Let’s see a few main takeaways:
- You’re doing the writing wrong if you’re trying super hard to think something up. Just get some random, meaningless words down instead. It should feel easy. There should be no work involved, no effort-ing.
- The Creator (or the muse, the genius, Spirit, God, the higher self, the collective consciousness, or whatever you like to call it) is the one doing all the work; you are just a conduit. “Expect the universe to support your dream. It will.” -Julia Cameron
- The story you are writing already exists in its entirety. Your job is to listen for it, watch it like cinema in your mind’s eye, and write it down like a good secretary.
- “Listening is a form of accepting.” -Stella Terrill Mann
Listening is the key. Listening means the same thing as mindfulness meditation, safety, and (for me personally) privacy. Mindful listening means slowing down, being present, letting go of thoughts and fears, listening for whatever else is arising spontaneously.

Art happens when the mind is enjoying a simple, comfortable world.

I find that when my mind is full of those overexcited voices, intrusive thoughts, fears and doubts, it’s because I am not using my physical ears. I am listening internally too much. Artists are often sensitive or introverted types, gifted at listening inwardly with keenness. And yet if we go too far along that side of the spectrum toward inward focus, we disconnect our consciousness from our bodies and physical reality, which is the only thing that is actually real.

So, it’s a catch-22. Yes, have a rich inner world and explore it indulgently. And also, don’t forget to come back to earth. To do this, you must find ways to place your awareness on the external world. Mindful listening is just one option.

Here is a simple mindful listening practice to try out:
1. Put your focus on the tactile sensation of sound hitting your eardrums.
2. Notice sounds around you that are highest in pitch, then medium, then lowest in pitch.
3. Notice sounds around you that are closest to your body, then in the immediate vicinity, then quietest or furthest away from you.
4. Let in all sounds from all of these separate ranges at once. Imagine letting your conscious awareness fill the world outside of you, rather than staying inside your head.
5. Allow curiosity to lead your listening flow. This means, don’t get stuck on any one sound. Don’t hold onto expectations. Meet each sound as if hearing it for the first time.
Speaking of Curiosity…

Sometimes when I practice listening, I am able to slow down and find some peace and calm, but I still feel resistance to the writing work. Do you experience that, too?

I think this resistance comes from an implicit construct that many of us in Western cultures have: the belief that work is supposed to be hard. And our inner child responds to this with: “I don’t want to do something hard!”

For instance, I feel resistance to figuring out where to pick up again in my novel writing, to thinking logically about what happens next, and to trying really hard to make it ‘good.’ This, and every other form of resistance, is just judgment.

When we get to this stage, curiosity may be the remedy. Curiosity is judgment’s opposite. It allows, rather than critiques. It flows, rather than tries. It pulls you along playfully, rather than asking you to grind it out effortfully.

Curiosity about my fictional world allows me to feel excited about diving into another realm. Curiosity about the characters helps me uncover motives and backstories with ease. Curiosity about what could happen next (not what should) pulls me along toward discovery, rather than pushing me begrudgingly toward high standards.

A simple definition of curiosity is the desire to explore, which is inherently delightful, fun, and easy. It is motivated from a place of love and meaning, a place entirely free of judgment. With a curious and open mind, we can ask questions instead of reaching for answers. We can let go of needing to have it all figured out and instead let the question float away into the dark ether, trusting that the answer will be given to use from our Source when the time is right.

Reflections

Your somatic system and creative process are unique. Not everything discussed in this blog may resonate with you. So I’d love to hear what does and doesn’t work for you and what other ideas you have. And as you continue on your creative journey, feel free to borrow these journaling prompts to help you cultivate your relationship with your muse:
- How important is nervous system safety to your creative practice? In what ways do you (or do you fail to) provide yourself safety?
- How might the practice of mindful listening help to bring your awareness back into your body, external reality, and the present? Would some other somatic mindfulness technique work better for your system?
- Is creativity supposed to be hard? Is work supposed to be hard?
- How might you reframe your resistances and creative blocks as forms of judgment?
- Rather than thinking about what to write, what questions do you have about your story so far?
June 29, 2026
Unpopular Opinion: Creative Incubation Is Not Laziness
(Above: a still shot from the 2022 video game, Stray. Video games are an excellent past-time for creative incubation.)

There once was a British dude named Graham Wallas who developed one of the first models for the stages of the creative process. Many artists are familiar with these stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Today, let’s just talk about the incubation stage.

What is Creative Incubation?

Incubation is the point in the creative process that comes after you have been actively researching or working on a problem. It involves departing from active contemplation and engaging in other unrelated activities in order to allow the unconscious mind to work on it in the background. Like a slow-cooker, incubation simmers together all the inputs from the “preparation” stage for an indeterminate amount of time, leading to the rise of some creative new solution: the “illumination” stage or “eureka” moment.

For instance, let’s say you see an Internet video about a wolf living at a wild animal sanctuary. The next day, you read a fiction novel before bed, and a wolf appears before the protagonist. A week later, you have a dream about wolves. Then, on the forested drive home from work, you spot a pair of eyes gleaming from the side of the road. Eventually, you start to notice the recurring theme, and you wonder what that’s all about. Then suddenly, something magical happens: you receive some insight about staying loyal to your “pack” or something else a wolf might symbolize; or maybe you find inspiration for a new creative project about wolves.

In the spiritual community, some might call these repeat occurrences a “sign from the divine” or an “omen” or a “synchronicity.” In the scientific community, they might call it confirmation bias. Whether you are of a more spiritual or scientific leaning is irrelevant; the point is that these seemingly intentional repetitions stick out to our brains, which are wired for noticing and interpreting patterns. If you choose to be open and curious enough, you will hear the universe speaking to you in this way.

The kind of insight and inspiration worthy of goosebumps doesn’t often come when we are working diligently or when our conscious mind is very active and focused. The nature of the incubation phase is to be unfocused, to wander and daydream, to be living unconsciously so as to allow the unconscious mind a chance to peek above the surface. When you received those disparate pings about wolves, you were not working at your desk, but mindlessly scrolling social media, winding down with a book before bed, asleep and dreaming, or driving home on auto-pilot.

The Capitalist ‘Laziness’ Narrative

None of these activities are inherently productive. And that goes against the capitalist narrative that anything that isn’t directly related to chasing dollars or status is, at best, a waste of time, or at worst, a selfish indulgence. But that mindset usually only leads to self-effacement and burnout. Take it from someone who has been there, too: it isn’t a healthy or sustainable way to live. And the truth is, doing things that aren’t inherently productive or actively creative is still part of the creative process.

Let’s say you don’t feel like working on your wolf project. Maybe you’re feeling sick or uninspired or just not in the mood (ultimately, it doesn’t matter why, and you don’t have to offer excuses). So you bum around watching TV for a bit. That’s still part of the creative process. That TV show is giving your brain some substance to gnash on, which may or maybe not be relevant at a later time.

Everything you do and experience and see and feel each day goes into your nervous system and your memory bank. From there, the inputs are processed by your unconscious algorithm, the thing responsible for dreaming up the outputs. In other words, it’s all fodder for producing something else.

Activities for Incubation

So, in a culture that tends to overvalue productivity and action, how can you be more intentional about de-shaming your need for incubation time? What kinds of activities do you think might help you rest and incubate?

Here are ten simple ideas to help you catch ideas:
1. Watch a TV show or read a book in the same genre as your project or dealing with similar themes.
2. Go on a walk and connect with nature. Walking is a form of bilateral stimulation that calms the nervous system and improves communication across different parts of the brain.
3. Do some gentle, flowing, or rhythmic movement, like tai chi, yoga, or qi gong. Sometimes I’ll do some light Muay Thai shadowboxing in the morning because the blood flow helps to get my brain in gear.
4. Make a home-cooked dinner. Yes, that’s part of the creative process, too! You have to eat to live, and you have to live to make art! Take a nice, long, satisfying poop, too.
5. Practice mindfulness. This ranges from breathwork and visualization to mindful eating and somatic experiencing.
6. Create a Pinterest board or physical vision board depicting a character in your novel, an environment you’d like to capture in a song, or something unapologetically unrelated to your work.
7. Color in a page of a coloring book and give it to a stranger.
8. Plant something in a pot and talk to it as you water it and watch it grow over the next few weeks.
9. Talk to your creative project. Ask for what you need, especially if it’s a week or two of space from thinking about it at all.
10. Get a good night’s sleep. Wind down with some yoga and binaural beats, a cup of chamomile with ashwagandha, or cuddle time with your fur baby, and then go to bed early. (Bonus: In the morning, write down any dreams you can remember!)
Following the Flow

You won’t feel the same every single day. One day, you may feel super positive, and so the prospect of writing a heart-breaking scene might feel really out of alignment. Listen to that and don’t force it. Trust that you will feel what you must in order to write that heart-breaking scene on some other day, and be okay with today just not being that day.

Instead, focus on what is easily available to you today. Maybe you run with that super positive mood and find some other areas of your story to flesh out that do match that energy. Maybe you’re actually not feeling positive at all, and you’re having a sucky day. That, too, is part of the creative process. In that case, put the work aside and see which of your incubation activities might resource you the most right now.

You’re simply not meant to force yourself to do anything that doesn’t feel like flow. Give yourself permission to NOT work harder, and instead work smarter – and sometimes, that means not working at all. Feel around for where the flow is at this particular moment – because it will always change from day to day. That’s the joy of the creative process.

A Relationship With Joy

You know, sometimes, maybe it’s okay to allow yourself some peace. It’s really okay to not feel okay.

It’s also okay to allow yourself some joy.

Creativity is no more and no less than a relationship with your joy. Some people call it the inner child, the muse, the “genius” in the house. It’s the unique and fully individual light that comes from within, the spirit within. And sometimes that spirit doesn’t wanna go to the river!! …even though we had that artist date planned for today.

Ultimately, what’s the point of the Artist Date? It’s only to foster that relationship. This is a good reminder not to do things just because you feel like you should, or because someone told you to, or because our capitalist society overglorifies discipline, but rather to align your actions with what those things represented in the first place. If the goal of the Artist Date is to foster a relationship with your joy, well, your joy told you it doesn’t want to go. So listen to it. Ask that child what they do want to do instead:

“So tell me, Joy, how would you like to spend today? I’ll follow you wherever you lead, loved one.”
April 29, 2026
Patience: The Path of Least Resistance

Have you ever experienced resistance in the moments leading up to creating your art? Have you ever sat down at your laptop to write and found it immensely difficult to open your word processor or to decide what to write next? Then do you start to wonder, what’s happening on those days when getting started is actually easy?

One of my intentions of late is to follow the path of least resistance – literally, to embrace and follow what’s easiest. I think this has to do with patience.

Normalizing Resistance

When it’s hard to get started, I’m usually anxious. Anxious about the effort that goes into warming up. About the writing itself. About where in the writing to pick up. About money. About trying to figure out and analyze the story so far in order to create the story. About getting the day’s word count clocked. And all of this anxiety is resistance.

If you have experienced resistance like this, first just know that resistance is totally normal. It’s a block that every artist encounters in one way or another, at some point or another. And it’s also a necessary part of the creative process.

I personally believe that what an artist creates, or how much she creates, or how well, is actually less important than the deep internal work required to overcome the resistance of creating it. The never-ending battle to overcome resistance is the artistic process; it is the meaningful life work of an artist.

Resistance As Nervous System Dysregulation

First let’s talk about what resistance really is and what it feels like in the body. If you’ve read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, you may be familiar with the same tired patriarchal advice to GET YOUR LAZY ASS UP and FORCE YOUR BRAIN INTO GEAR and JUST DO IT!!! Respectfully, Mr. Pressfield, I’d like to offer a less brutalistic way to understand resistance for those who are actually more likely to suffer and fail horribly under authoritarian discipline.

Polyvagal Theory: A Brief Overview

We can better understand resistance as nervous system dysregulation. I highly recommend doing your own research on Polyvagal Theory or working with a somatic coach if this interests you, as I will now offer only a brief overview here.

In essence, Polyvagal Theory says that evolution designed the nervous system to be able to respond to threats with different strategies: fight, flight, or freeze. While these nervous system states are certainly helpful for staying alive when a lion attacks you, this isn’t a scenario we often see in the modern world. Instead, the threats we encounter in modern society tend to endure over longer periods or resolve covertly outside of the body’s awareness. So, the body will get stuck in one of these states if it continues to perceive the threat or if it does not experience an overt transition after the threat is gone.

Polyvagal Theory In A Creative Context

When it comes to creativity, these nervous system states – fight, flight, and freeze – are a few of the faces of resistance. You may relate to “fight” if your resistance looks like workaholism, urgency, a need to control, or hypervigilance. If your resistance feels like “flight,” you might experience avoidance, withdrawal, or restlessness. For those who experience “freeze,” notice what’s happening in your body when you draw a blank, feel unmotivated, or dissociate with doomscrolling or other numbing addictions.

There is only one absolute certainty about art-making: resistance will always show up. If resistance is a guarantee, then perhaps we can take some comfort in expecting it. Might our artist’s journey then also comprise keeping a toolbox of guaranteed strategies for coping with it?

One for the Toolbox: Patience

What Is Patience?

What do we mean by “patience”? In The Creative Act, Rick Rubin talks about patience as the acceptance of “what is,” rather than wishing reality were different in any way. This is similar to gratitude, a form of acceptance that emphasizes one’s positive reaction to a positive aspect of reality. Patience, on the other hand, is a more neutral and nonjudgmental acceptance of reality, for better or for worse. Simply put, patience accepts a shit sandwich, while gratitude celebrates a delicious sandwich.

Using Patience to Address Dysregulation

When I am experiencing that “fight-or-flight” type of resistance, it feels like my internal state is constantly moving, impatiently urging me to move at lightning speed to get to my self-prescribed destination. At the same time, the world is constantly in flux, shifting and moving around us, too. I more often find myself getting stuck in my creative process when I’m feeling chaos both internally and externally.

Patience helps me to slow all that rapid energy down. I practice “accepting what is.” I accept my internal state, no matter the good or the bad, by sitting still and listening to it without any judgment. Stillness builds, and I become aware of the contrast between my internal state and the chaotic world outside. Suddenly, I am the one who is completely still, and the world outside is the one who can’t stop moving. There is contrast. A restless internal world will experience stuckness in the outer world; a still internal world will perceive the chaos to be in the outer world.

Patience Is For HSPs

I cannot recommend the practice of patience enough, especially to those who are highly sensitive. Sometimes, maybe it’s not that you are too sensitive to external stimulation, but that you are overwhelmed by existing internal stimulation that’s been stuck there for too long. Radical acceptance of your internal state means slowing down enough for your nervous system to realize it is safe.

The Muse Thrives In Safety

If the restless energy of “fight-or-flight” is what creates resistance, then stillness is what our inherently creative inner child needs to feel playful and active. Stillness and nervous system safety are one and the same.

I like to imagine that ideal nervous system state of safety as a place. For me, it’s a secluded library-study, deep within like an underground bomb shelter, shrouded in the most absolute darkness and privacy. Sometimes, it’s a vibrantly green forest and the sound of a soft breeze in the foliage. What does that place look and feel like for you?

Here in your place of safety and emptiness, innocence and inspiration (aspects of the inner child) can emerge. Innocence is a childlike mind with no preconceptions, biases, or rules that can discover countless never-before thought-of solutions, ideas, and methods. Likewise, an empty mind (through the practice of patient stillness) invites inspiration into its vacuum.

A Patient Writing Practice

To sum up, patience is the practice of employing a radical acceptance mindset to our anxieties. Much of acceptance comes down to letting go of control and trusting the universe (or Spirit or the muse or whatever you believe in).

We often sit at the empty page, trying to figure out what comes next. But maybe, we don’t need to know the full picture. If we have just a small window of the picture, we can get started writing, and we can trust the muse to reveal more as we go and as it is relevant. When we are in the flow, we don’t know what’s coming around the bend. We don’t try to adjust according to what we think may be coming. Instead, we trust our intuition and senses to be able to react in our best interest when the bend does arrive and reveal whatever it reveals.

In other words, we show radical acceptance toward all areas of uncertainty. Allow questions to be intentions and nothing more. Our only job is just to ask the question, not to go searching for the answer. The answer is entirely up to the muse, and we just have to trust that it will be revealed when the time is right.

As Rick Rubin says, “All we can do is invite it in and await it actively.” So once you’ve slowed down enough to regain your sense of safety, just set an intention or ask a question. Then do nothing else but listen patiently for a response. Because doing nothing is the easiest thing in the world – it’s the path of least resistance.

March 26, 2026
Is Art Necessary for Survival?

While living through major catastrophes like the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Helene, I struggled to make the argument that art is necessary for survival. When it comes to what feels like the apocalypse, after all, it’s hard to equate making art with things like farming, engineering, and a multitude of other useful skills. It’s true that the human race (at least in this modernized society) would not survive in the short term without those necessary skills. But I believe that art is absolutely necessary for survival in the long term, just in a different way.

Art Raises the Bottom Line

Take someone who is unhappy, ineffective, and unwhole, for example. What good does a depressed person offer to society? They can’t offer much in that state. But because we live in a civilization, resources are given to that person to help them survive in the short term. Yet instead, art could potentially heal them permanently, transforming them into someone who is able to contribute and create.

Yes, art has that kind of power; it grants us the power to move through suffering, to meet our shadow, and to allow outcasted parts to come home. The more healed people are, the fewer who need welfare and other social services. Art literally raises the bottom line of society through its healing effects.

These were the arguments I would tell myself, as I longed for art to be seen by society – as I longed for myself to be seen by society – as something just as valuable as a trade. And these reasons are good and valid. However, here is another idea that we maybe haven’t considered yet.

The Key to Human Evolution

Take what I’m about to say next with a grain of salt, because obviously it is a strong generalization and there are frequent exceptions. In my experience, people who are drawn to making art tend to be, at best, quite unhappy (which is why they need art), and at worst, quite miserable at any other occupation (usually due to neurodivergence). But they still pursue other occupations because society has told them that their art is not valuable and won’t provide them money for their survival. This is how malinformed, internalized cultural biases block creatives’ inner light and create depressed people.

First, I should define what I mean by “inner light.” Inner light is, in essence, the soul and its creativity. It is a person’s potential, representing what their spirit is here to offer. (What a spirit has to offer could be many things and not just art, such as scientific study, engineering, tradesmanship, entrepreneurship, etc. – for these things are all creative, too.) This inner light grows brighter when fed experiences that bring it joy and pleasure. It grows darker when denied joy and pleasure. A person can never lose their inner light. However, it may grow so dim that they effectively resemble a walking dead.

Now, I believe this inner light is the key to evolution. Our species is really quite incredible, if you think about it. Look back on human history for a moment. We evolved from apes, essentially, and developed technology – how?

Through our creativity.

We drew paintings on cave walls and divined about ethereal beings when we were barely more than monkeys. Each act of creativity brought us closer to where we are now. I believe humanity evolved to be so successful, proliferating across the entire planet, precisely because of our advanced ability to create through play. This inner light is what led us all the way to this point in our evolution.

How did I come to believe this?

Well, I had to ask myself, why do I have this inner light? What purpose does it serve? Is its purpose merely to be a reminder of how much I hate my day job? Merely here to represent a contrast between what I wish to do and what I must do? Here to make life miserable? Is life supposed to be miserable? And I did believe this for such a long, long time…

But no, life is not supposed to be miserable. Here’s how I know this: The more I follow the inner light, the more I slowly start to believe that life is actually supposed to be joyful. Life actually wants joy for us.

Life can be a scary, sad place. AND it doesn’t have to be.

This creative inner light serves the same purpose as a compass. It shows us where we need to go, for our own survival. With this understanding, we can reframe depression as just the calling of a dimmed soul. It’s not here to remind us how much life is supposed to suck. It’s here to remind us that life can be so much better, if we just start to follow it.

If the inner light sounds like a spiritual concept, it is. But it also doesn’t have to be. It’s grounded in science, too. (Another misconception in our Western culture is that spirituality and science are at odds; rarely, in fact, are they not fully in alignment with one another, revealing the same mystery through unique perspectives.) Don’t believe me? Go ahead and read up on studies about creativity in human evolution and the healing effects of art for individuals and communities.

Useless?

So I ask myself again why I have this inner light. I ask myself, if art doesn’t contribute to human survival, then what use is the artist to society? What use am I…? Art is the only thing I am capable of. Am I just…useless? Is who I am at my core simply incapable, simply not fit for survival?

Then I think about how many individuals and ancestors had to live and reproduce successfully since the days of the apes in order for me to exist. I am literally the result of thousands of years of evolution – and evolution only chooses the fittest to survive.

Sorry, capitalists, but evolution has had the final say: If artists exist, then it means we are fit for survival. Which means: we are important for survival.

This inner light must have been built into us through evolution. Why else would we have it? If art-making was truly responsible for making individuals useless and not fit for survival, then artists would simply have ceased to exist.

The Fittest Are Creative

So why does evolution favor the existence of artists and art-making?

Because art is necessary for survival in the long term, not just the short term.

Art ensures the longevity of the human race as a whole, not just immediate survival for a single individual. Why? Because art heals. It processes and dissolves trauma. It prevents the passing down of trauma through epigenetics. It teaches lessons that help us to be better people and live fuller, happier, more effective lives. It rehabilitates those who are lost and depressed. It raises society’s bottom line. And it facilitates healing and connection-building within entire communities. And we know that no one survives long in the wild without the belonging and support of a community.

The Survival Power of Art

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I saw a lot of people talking about how art is not “essential,” and many interpreted that to mean it is not necessary for survival. Perhaps, those who actually believe this are just short-sighted, focused on the short term. Or maybe they lack the humility to acknowledge the innate survival power in healing, connection, and community — all of which art facilitates.

So, if you are ever made to doubt whether your art is important, or whether art as a whole is important, take comfort in knowing that thousands of years of evolution have occurred in favor of you and your voice existing.

February 24, 2026