Cynthia Morris

What are your plans for your creativity next year? Perhaps you have a project in mind and can’t wait to get started. That’s me!

Or maybe you don’t know what you want to work on. There are possible projects. Your friends have clear goals. But you don’t know what you want to do.

In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius I will share a perspective on how to focus your creative time so you feel satisfied and on track no matter what happens. It’s both broad and specific, and I think you’ll love it.

If you’re like me, you tend to be ‘all over the place’ with your ideas and possibilities. The Creative Edge gives us a broad yet specific focus. It makes it easy to choose projects that give us a sense of momentum and progress.

Did someone – a teacher, or parent, or peer – shut down your art? This happens all too often, especially when we are young. As kids, we don’t have the perspective or resiliency to know when someone is telling us something that’s not helpful for us. This drives me crazy! I work with so many people who have had to reclaim their artist. And sometimes, it’s decades before they shed the story someone else told them. Did this happen to you?

In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I talk with multi-media artist Sean McMullin. To be transparent, Sean and I are art buddies who meet regularly to talk about what we are making. We go on and on about what inspires us and what gets in the way or supports our art-making. But in this episode, the focus is on Sean. We talk about:

• Giving ourselves permission to explore and create.
• Ending a lifelong struggle with creativity.
• How Sean makes his art a central part of his days with project management skills.
• Why and when and how to share.
• Keeping good notes as a key to a successful art practice.

If you’ve ever struggled to find space for your art or to reclaim the artist that got shut down as a child, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

Sean’s Instagram account

Mark Dion

Emilie Wopnick

Barbara Sher

At the end of the year, it’s tempting to just dive into planning for the next year. But if we don’t pause to reflect on the year we had, we rob ourselves of much of the empowerment and joy we earned through our actions. For creatives especially, doing an annual review process can give us the confidence and courage to brave new things. In this solo episode, I share why it’s so important to reflect. I also share some of the major challenges I experienced, some creative wins, including one of the biggest creative projects of my life.

The lens I look back through is always focused on my creative process. What did I make? What did I learn from that? How did the books and podcasts and shows and movies and things that I consumed impact my life and my creativity. With these guiding inquiries, I’m able to not only see what I did, but I can appreciate who I became as a result of doing those things.

Doing an annual reflection process helps us digest the year, the things we did, and who we were. It allows us to honor and savor our efforts and our being. We often skip this step and end of the year feeling harried and unaccomplished, we start the new year on an empty tank.

Mentioned in this episode:  

Annual Review for Creatives workshop  

Sparketype  

Write Your Travel Stories  

Victoria Bresee, therapist  

Mindfulness Workbook for addiction: a guide for coping with the grief, stress and anger that trigger addictive behaviors by Rebecca E. Williams, PhD and Julia S. Craft MA
(also available in the Denver library)

Tim Ferris with Paul Conti: How Trauma Works and How to Heal from It  

School of Life: Why Happiness is a Useless Word  

Things that made a difference in my life this year  

Workshops 

Center for Applied Jungian Studies  

Esther Perel The Great Adaptation Conference  

Natalie Goldberg haiku workshop  

Transform Your Relationship with Food  

Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals   

Books 

Still Writing by Dani Shapiro 

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick’s

Living Color : Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing by Natalie Goldberg

Illustration Workshop : Find Your Style, Practice Drawing skills, and Build a Stellar Portfolio  by Mary Kate McDevitt 

Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg  

How to be an artist  by Jerry Saltz  

Let’s Eat France
This might be the coolest book I have ever seen. It’s for the lover of food, the francophile and the person who loves trivia and history. Feel free to treat me to this for Christmast!!  

Magazines 

Cook’s Illustrated
I got this randomly from the library. I couldn’t even get past the masthead because it was so interesting and valuable! I tore out the subscription card and handed it to Steve. “Birthday present,” I said. I LOVE this magazine and cannot believe I am only this year getting on board. 

Poets & Writers
If you are serious about the life of a writer, this is the magazine to have. In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I mentioned a special piece I have in the January/February 2022 issue. Don’t miss it!

Podcasts 

I listen to podcasts constantly, it seems. These are the ones I especially loved this year.  

Daring Greatly  

Unlocking Us 

This Jungian Life 

Art Juice  

The Splendid Table  

Other treats

A fun, unexpected treat was Mud\Wtr. My stepson Mark Davenport and I were talking about mushrooms. I have been using Lion’s Mane in my morning coffee and also taking a mushroom supplement. Mark asked if I knew about Mud/Wtr. I checked it out.

Their copywriting and marketing was so compelling, I had to order. I got their morning kit and was in love with it before I even tasted it! Then I tried it. I love the blend of spices, mushrooms and a spot of black tea. This has replaced my second cappuccino. I highly recommend this. Use this link to check it out.  

My new favorite notebook! I put images from my favorite calendar on the front of these to jazz them up a bit.  Zen Art Supplies dot grid notebook 

Affiliate links are used in this blog post.  

What’s your relationship with poetry? You may have read or written some back in school. Perhaps you think poetry is obtuse and intellectual and not for you.

I love poetry for how essential it is. Every word matters in a poem. A writer has no place to hide; their truth and emotions are right there in the sparseness of the lines. The very first writing class I taught was a poetry class. The things I learned from that class inform all the writing I do. Whatever your relationship with poetry, I think you’ll love the conversation I had with poet and poetry lover Mark McGuinness. Writers of all genres will benefit from the things he shared about bringing his love for poetry to life in his podcast, A Mouthful of Air.

Mark and I talk about what it’s like to create something from your passion, to finally have a place for all the enthusiasm he has for poetry.

“This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever created,” he confessed. As an introverted Brit, learning how to read poetry with emotion and his true voice was a challenge. Mark shares the story of how he broke out of his self-consciousness and into his true voice.

Voice is one of the most important elements of writing. Somehow, even though our voice is right there within us all the time, it’s oddly elusive when it comes to expressing ourselves. Mark shares some surprising perspectives on voice that gave me new ways of thinking about voice and how to access it.

Even though Mark is a seasoned podcast host and producer, A Mouthful of Air gave him new challenges. He was able to break away from traditional podcast formats in order to shape an experience he wanted people to have of poetry.

Our conversation was energizing to me and gave me a renewed sense of hope and vitality. I feel emboldened to return to poetry myself, both reading and writing it.

Enjoy this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, getting insight from Mark’s stumbles and how he recovered with grace and commitment.

Find A Mouthful of Air here:

amouthfulofair.fm

Twitter @amouthfulofair

Instagram

Facebook

Linkedin

Mentioned in the episode:

Kristin Linklater Voice Center

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

When you’re a writer, people will often say you have a gift with language. What if we used our words as a gift? I love the idea of being generous with your words. There are a million ways to do this. I suspect you give the gift of your words all the time.

In this solo episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I share a few thoughts on how to use your words as a gift to others. Plus, a special treat from my client, Christopher Robbins, who generously agreed to give the gift of his words to us here.

Warning: There is explicit language near the end of this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

Christopher Robbins

Annual Review for Creatives workshop

Impulse Writing Club

My new favorite postage stamps

Many of us want to help when we hear about others’ challenges, but we don’t know how. Sometimes the problems seem too big. It’s all too easy to tune out and surrender our ability to connect.

Kelly Beck impulsively said yes to a random request that changed her life. She not only went on a cross-country mission to give support to a community, she connected with that community in profound and lasting ways. Kelly’s story is a great model for how to surrender helplessness and step into right action.

She’d done a lot of things including running a successful business, but she’d never done anything like this. In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, we hear how she overcame bureaucratic red tape and inner challenges to take consistent action. She’s growing herself and using her gifts to make a direct difference in people’s lives.

Mentioned in this episode:

Almost anything worthwhile is done together. – from Accomplis website.

Accomplis

Lide Haiti

518 Free Store

Jonathan Fields’ Sparketype assessment

Rainn Wilson

Soul Pancake

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

I have always loved Jeffrey Davis for his calm, wise ways. I’ll never forget him at Camp GLP one year, onstage, wearing the most fabulous red corduroys while reciting his poem, Coat Thief. Jeffrey’s most recent book, Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed by Productivity has so much to offer sensitive souls like me in the way of being productive without sacrificing our sense of joy and delight.

In our conversation, we touch on the origins of devotion, intelligent naiveté, which I feel is a great way to describe my willingness to learn and grow. You too? Jeffrey shared the six facets of wonder. He gave us an inside peek into his process of writing his book and the practices that have sustained him through many revisions.

I know you’ll love this conversation with Jeffrey where we look at the challenges and delights inherent in life and creating.

Mentioned in this episode:

Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed by Productivity

Instagram @JeffreyDavis11

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

When you see an illustrated journal, it’s almost like peeking into someone’s mind. Denver designer Marty Gregg has one of the most complex and interesting visual journals I’ve ever seen. In this episode, we look at how he uses modeling and journal sketches to design work for his clients and to design a life he loves. This interview is also available on video. Find it and the show notes at OriginalImpulse.com/podcast.

Back in 2010, I did video interviews with some of my interesting friends. The first video I did was with Marty Gregg. I had to bring him back to Stumbling Toward Genius.

We kept the video recording because there was so much to see.

Here are a couple of images of Marty’s journals where he chronicles his life, dreams his future, and brainstorms project ideas in sketches. Plus, there is a lot of typographical joy here.

Mentioned in this episode:

My first video interview with Marty in 2010; more peeks into his pages and process here. 

ArtHouse Denver

Marty’s Leuchtturm 1917 Sketchbooks

Lula Rose General Store Denver coffee shop

Lisa Sonora on Stumbling Toward Genius

Marty Gregg on Instagram

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

If you are thinking of embarking on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), here are some coaching tips to make your writing month a success – on your own terms.

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

Transcript:

In this solo episode, I talk about NaNoWriMo or national novel writing month. This happens every November. It’s a free global writing challenge where you start and finish writing a novel in the month of November. I know that sounds really intimidating, but the goal is really just to get your shaggy first draft of 50,000 words or more done.

If that sounds like a lot. Well, it is. But the whole purpose behind this kind of accelerated focus is to get you to stop overthinking over-planning and editing as you write, the goal is just to get stuff down. Later, you can edit to your heart’s content.

I just coached somebody on how to prepare for NaNoWriMo and I want to share some thoughts about how you might prepare if you want to do this kind of focused challenge or anything like it. First I want to say, I really believe in this kind of writing freely and with abandon. It’s how I write every single thing. Later, I edit a piece at least two or three times.

What’s important to me about giving ourselves permission to write badly is this. When we let our words onto the page with the editor outside, trimming the hedges, doing something else but getting all in our space, our voice is so much more present. We’re writing from our truth, from our essence, from our own creative style.

This piece of writing voice it’s really what makes or breaks writing. If you don’t have your true voice on the page, honestly, the writing will be flaccid, uninteresting, and just not you. 

Let’s be real. It takes a lot longer than a month to write a novel. Writing a novel is a thing. If you’ve never written a book, you of course have a learning curve ahead of you, but that’s not a problem.

It’s not a problem to not know how to do something. Why would you know how to write a novel? Unless you’ve already written one. You have to do it in order to learn it. So I find the shaggy first draft incredibly useful to just get over those concerns about it being perfect or even making any sense on the first pass.

To be honest, I’ve done NaNoWriMo only once, mostly because I was writing the same dang novel for 12 years and the challenge is to draft something new. So for a long period of time, I was rarely in the ‘draft something new’ phase. I was in the revision phase. But the one time I did it was when I wanted to knock out a draft of a book that was on my list of things I wanted to write.

This project kept hovering on that list. And every time I would see it, I would think, oh, that someday I’ll do that. I don’t really like being a someday I’ll do that kind of person. I’m more of a, why don’t I do everything all at once right now, kind of person. So, here’s an idea that won’t go away. It seems to have potential, but it never will take priority on my list of things I’m doing. You know how it is, there’s an idea that won’t go away, but you don’t ever get to it. So I thought let’s crank it out in a month. I will use NaNoWriMo to contain the project to one month and then I’ll decide whether I want to go forward with it.

So you might be wondering what book I wrote in a month. The project was a book about the time I moved to Portugal. I fell in love with a hot young rock climber and had an amazing whirlwind romance that had a lot of highs and a lot of lows. This adventure took me all around Portugal. I saw some of the most gorgeous off-the-beaten paths. I drank a lot of tasty red wine and ate olives and cheese. And my God, I even became a rock climber.

But this person turned out to not be the love of my life. And one brisk October day saw me taking a 15-hour bus away from Lisbon crying my way all the way to Madrid. If this sounds like a good story, well, I have to say it is. That’s what I thought. I thought getting it out in writing would be at least cathartic. So I did it. And here’s what helped me succeed at getting 50,000, well, actually more like 60,000 shaggy words out, and these are some of the things I offered to the client I was coaching.

First, I want to say, write whatever project you want. While the point of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel who cares what you write? No writing hall monitor is coming by your screen to say, ah, Nope, that’s a memoir. That’s not allowed.

In the vein of doing what you want, consider why you chose the project you want to focus on. What’s important about that now? What do you imagine you will gain from spending a month of your life on it? Do a short free-write to clarify your purpose and intention. That will help you through any dark days when you question WTF are you doing this anyway.

Do daily timed writing sprints. I lead online writing workshops where we do three timed free-writing sprints of 10, 15, and 20 minutes. This adds up to 45 minutes of writing. In that time I can typically get out 2,500 words total.

So if you do that every day for 30 days, that gives you 75,000 words. Or more realistically, a few days of wiggle room when you might not be so productive,

You might want to buddy up with a writing buddy. I teamed up with someone else who was writing a book every day after I wrote I would text him that I had done the writing and he would respond that he had done his writing too. It was great accountability, but it was also camaraderie. And sometimes we’d share a little bit more than I just did it.

You might consider padding your month with self-care. Prepare ahead of time. Act as if you’re going on a month-long writing retreat. Maybe you cook up a bunch of meals and have them in the freezer or get someone else in your household to take up some of the household chores a couple of days a week that month.

What are the things that you need around you to make it super easy? Maybe there’s some clutter to clear. Maybe there’s a writing nook you need to set up. Act as if this month is a special time. Because it is and get yourself ready for it.

Also in that vein of preparing for a writing retreat, take anything off your calendar that’s not essential. You might limit your news reading. You might change up some of the things that you don’t really need to do. Just look at what you can clear off your calendar, but definitely keep exercise on your to-do list because you want to stay in good form. You want to feel that you have your energy for doing the work.

You might want to have a working outline and some character ideas laid out before you start the writing month. You might want to gather other pieces that are helpful for the writing. For instance, I gathered my journals and photographs that I had from that time, and that helped me with the details and the timeline and remembering some of the events. And from that, I was able to easily write them with some detail.

You might consider giving yourself a set of prompts to work from you. You don’t have to write your book chronologically. You can choose your prompts or scenes, and then you can draw them at random. You could put them on cards and pull one at random, or just use a list and write them. That way you have a sense of surprise and freshness in your writing.

I would say, don’t try to control the writing too much. As I mentioned earlier, voice is the most important thing. So you want to let your voice come through and that will bring the best freshest. I would say if there’s a need to control something, dialed down the static about how good the writing is. If it’s going to be a waste of time, will this end up in the book? Will it not end up in the book?

I recently pulled that 60,000-word NaNoWriMo manuscript out of the drawer, and I looked through it to see what was there. I know when I finished it at the time I felt done with it and I didn’t need to do anything with it, but now I’m considering giving myself, November and December to go in and revise it. I noticed that there is a lot of work to be done, but it still feels like I’m not starting from scratch, that I have something to work with and that there is some good material in there. And that helps me rather than starting from the blank page.

What you will have at the end of the month is hopefully 50,000 words or more. It doesn’t matter. Even if you only get to 20,000, it’s more than what you had at the beginning of the month.

NaNoWriMo will give you a solid sense of your writing stride. How long can you write for? When does it tip into diminishing returns? Where do you write best? Standing, sitting on paper or keyboard?

Use this month to give yourself a lived experience in your writer’s life. And you’ll see what works for you and what doesn’t. That in itself is so valuable, just knowing yourself as a writer. Make it fun, make it an experience.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Leave a comment here, letting us know what creative project you’re devoting yourself to in November. I hope this has been useful for you and given you a few ideas for how to frame NaNoWriMo and make November a super successful writing time for you.

Do you suffer from having too many creative interests? You want to write, and make art, and sing, and dance. Yet you’re not a one-person band. Your time and energy is limited. How do you manage all your creative desires?

I feel the same way. I’ve always danced with a lot of different interests. In this solo episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I share how I am currently working with all the things I love and want to make. It’s not what you would expect from a creativity coach!

As mentioned in this episode

Write Your Travel Stories

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Good Life Project podcast with guest David Heinemeier Hansson

Visit Paris Like an Artist

Center for Applied Jungian Studies (where I am taking some courses)

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

One way to I assuage my wanderlust is to read a good book. I’ve been interviewing authors for my podcast, Stumbling Toward Genius, and I had the chance to get my Paris jollies in conversation with Cara Black. Cara has written 19 books in her Aimée LeDuc Investigator series, many of which I have loved. Her most recent book is a departure from the series, and I was curious to know what was different about writing that book.

Three Hours in Paris also features a strong female lead character. We talked about women in fiction and women writers. Talking with Cara sparks my desire to write more fiction, and sets my mind and heart racing about all the possibilities. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

We are headed into autumn here in the northern hemisphere, and this is a great time for creative people to start to go inward. I like to ‘hunker down’ as they say, because it feels it’s easier to focus in this season. Is that true for you?

Alongside the inward focus runs a thread of wanderlust. I dream of going back to Paris and Japan. I miss that feeling of adventure I get when traveling. Travel is an umbrella practice for my values of exploration, discovery, beauty, and learning. And of course, personal growth.

You may have heard of my writing workshop, Write Your Travel Stories. I designed this as a way to get some of those travel needs met during a time when I am not venturing out as much. We have another flight of this class scheduled to take off in early October. See how to join us and get the early boarding rate (ends on October 1st) here.

Mentioned in Cara Black episode:

Three Hours in Paris

Aimee LeDuc series 

Workshops and events with Cara Black 

REI travel dress 

Foyle’s War historical TV series

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

One of the things people often say they need when embarking on a creative project is something I can’t give them. Permission.

I’m not the authority or the all-knowing one who metes out permission. Permission comes from inside. As adults, we decide how we devote ourselves to our creative projects.

While I don’t think permission comes from someone else, I do believe that role models help us see what’s possible. Permission can come from seeing how someone else boldly carves out their own path. Permission comes from seeing someone else demonstrate that it’s okay to express our authentic selves.

I felt this sense of permission the minute Kristoffer Carter crossed my path almost ten years ago. There is something about him, from his unabashed energy to his ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, that inspired me. Some would call it ‘unfiltered’.

Kristoffer, or KC, and I were part of a year-long program together. This time changed our lives and also revealed that we are what we call ‘soul siblings’. KC has had a profound influence on my growth as a person and artist. He was the first person I interviewed for Stumbling Toward Genius, and I am delighted to bring this episode to you.

We talk about his new book, Permission to Glow. We discuss:

• the four permissions and how he is still on the edge of practicing them daily
• the difference between performing and embodying your message
• how Kristoffer found his path to joy through consistent spiritual practice
• and much, much more. Plus a musical treat for us!

Mentioned in this episode:

Permission to Glow book  –   Pre-order your copy today

Good Life Project

Autobiography of a Yogi

Detention, the Akron-based band

Brene Brown

Weird Al Yankovich on songwriting

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.