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Clients ask me all the time, how do you know which projects to focus on? How do you decide where to invest your time and energy?  My answer is simple. Listen to what wants to be written.  Just start something, and in those first few minutes of action, scan yourself to see which muscles and bones and systems feel tight, energized or relaxed. Notice your posture and your breathing…

Any time you retire from a creative pursuit, it always comes back in another form. That’s the nature of the artistic mind. Creative water always finds its own level.  And so, once a person realizes that art needn’t be restricted to any one means of expression, they find new ways to channel their thinking and create value and meaning in the world.  I was listening to an interview with…

If it’s not interesting, the audience won’t be interested.  That’s how boring art works. It never goes anywhere. It just sits there and laps up time and money and attention, traveling in a circle, never arriving at its destination, never quite succeeding, never quite failing.  That’s why my number one rule of songwriting is, I have to surprise and delight myself. With every new tune I write, the goal…

Thanks to the internet, the sum of all human knowledge is now free, instant, ubiquitous and accurate.  And so, your value isn’t about information, it’s about context and perspective and judgment and process. Truth is, clients don’t want to know what you know, they want to know how you think.  Meaning, your processes. The structures you place around yourself to make sure you get things done consistently. Meaning, your…

I recently read a fascinating study about why hobbies make for successful businesses.  Turns out, the differences in progress and viability between conventional entrepreneurs and hobby based founders aren’t as stark as we might assume. According to the research, leisure based founders may be slower to make progress initially, but after a certain time threshold, their progress is no different than other types of founders.  They’re tortoises, not hares. Which doesn’t…

Everyone starts by throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. In the absence of experience, that’s really the only way to uncover which path to pursue. We try things, we experiment, we listen to what wants to be written, and we move forward accordingly.  But the mistake many of us make is, we forget to go back and clean up the old, crusty noodles off the floor….

Carlin once said that most of the world is a straight line, so you have to tilt your vision just enough to see the craziness.  It’s true. We live in a society that disparages smartness, thwarts individuality, isolates eccentricity, discourages critical reasoning and minimizes existential thought. And if we have any intention of making the world a better place, we have a responsibility not just to think, but to…

All creativity begins with the moment of conception. That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here. Based on my books in The Prolific Series, I’m going…

Being an artist is like owning a venture capital firm.  You make lots of individual investments at varying levels, but you only need one of them to be successful to make the whole portfolio work well.  The hard part is, you never know which one will take off. There’s no certainty in art. Creativity is not a combination lock. Every day you’re just winking in the dark, throwing frisbees…

I’ve always been a fiercely independent person.  I love connecting and conversing and communing and carousing with people, and I cherish the centers of belonging in the different parts of my life, but on a traditionally sanctioned scale, I’m just not a joiner. I don’t have strong affiliation needs. Niches and scenes and cliques and teams and genres and circles and clubs and associations and tribes just aren’t appealing to…