Hi All – Okay, so I took another extended hiatus from the blogosphere, but rest assured, friends:  I’m still very much alive, and not only kicking but still going through a creatively explosive period.
In my last post, I shared that I’ve been writing a musical comedy about a young software engineer named Steve, and his [...]

The last few months have definitely been a creatively explosive period for me, in ways I didn’t expect and I’m not accustomed to.
It started back in September when I was flying back from a friend’s wedding.  For whatever reason, ideas for a musical spontaneously popped into my mind.  Thankfully, I had a yellow pad with [...]

If I see myself as a burden, I probably won’t talk to you.  When I see you, I’ll most likely think “oh, they must have so many interesting and fun people around them — they don’t need me taking up more space in their life.”  To make sure I don’t bother you, I’ll avoid [...]

I’ll start by thanking everyone who’s checked in with me during my month-long absence from blogging — that really brought home to me that I’ve made some genuine connections in the blogging world, and it’s not all just about “one hand washing the other” and “you scratching my back and me scratching yours” and collectively [...]

I usually don’t feel drawn to doing “list posts.”  Some of this is because of my unease about doing something “everyone else” seems to be doing.
So, as a personal growth exercise, I’m going to jump right in and do a list post!  I also think this is a pretty cool and valuable list of questions [...]

I haven’t been on the internet much lately, because I’ve been deeply engaged in a new project.  I’ve been creating a computer game with a friend.  It’s built around an adventure story, as many games are, but the main focus is my ideas about what the spirituality of prehistoric people was like.
Being a reflective sort [...]

I do something kind of unusual when I’m writing.  (I know, shockingly enough.)  I keep a journal of what I’m feeling and thinking when I’m faced with writer’s block.
To an outside reader, this journal would probably seem painfully repetitive, because it talks about the same worries again and again.  Some common themes are:
* “I think [...]

(This piece was inspired by one of the many heart-opening conversations I had with Robin in the comments to an earlier post.)
There’s a lot of advice out there about “how to be creative.”  On the surface, this sounds great — everybody wants to come up with useful and profitable ideas, right?  But when I look [...]

I used to believe that I shouldn’t sit down to write unless I had a compelling vision of what I’d say.  Unfortunately, this attitude was the reason why, for many years, I didn’t do any creative writing.  Sure, I wrote a lot, but only when somebody else (1) gave me a subject to write about [...]

To help us find a compelling direction in life, self-development writers often tell us to ask ourselves “what we’d do if we couldn’t fail.”  For example, we might ask, what kind of book would we write if we knew that whatever we produced was destined to be a #1 bestseller?

I’ve taken to asking myself basically [...]