Creative Lift

Creative Lift is for you if you are a writer or any other kind of artist who takes your work, your practice, and your growth seriously enough to dare to play your way to the page. Each episode includes an invitation for your curiosity, a game or thinking experiment, and a question or two to take into your week.

Creating Space - Finding Flow 11/22/2024

Creating Space: Collaborating in the Cafe 05/10/2024

Creating Space: Designing with Collaboration in Mind 05/01/2024

Creating Space: Learning in the Library 04/24/2024

Creating Space: Designing with Apprenticeship in Mind 04/10/2024

Creating Space: Designing with Apprenticeship in Mind In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Designing with Apprenticeship in Mind, we'll explore another essential mindset for creative thinking: apprenticeship. So far in this season, we've considered the importance of improvisation, critical thinking, and reflection, and their related skillsets. We've given each of these thinking modes a specific space in our mind. We've visualized a building to hold these rooms, our creative Illuminary, and considered the look and feel that each room might have. We've noted how these rooms can provide shortcuts into a particular way of thinking, and help us to effectively approach the specific creative work in front of us. In books like Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, or Find Your Artistic Voice by Lisa Congdon, long-time creatives have emphasized the importance of deeply studying the work of other artists. The goal isn't to copy, but rather to learn by heart, and after that learning process, build beyond what we've learned. In this way, we navigate using the light of those artists who have illuminated the path before us. We're apprenticing with them, even if we can't sit in their studios with them. Today's room is a Library. Instead of thinking of that Library as a place filled with only shelves and books, I invite you to allow your Library to be expansive. Give it listening rooms, art galleries, and even a live stage. Regardless of what your artistic medium (or mediums) are, you aren't limited to apprenticing with artworks that look and feel like your own. In fact, sometimes you'll learn much more about pacing or tone by apprenticing with an artist who uses those tools in an entirely different way than you do as you create. Inspiring works of art are all around us. How might we use them as tools of apprenticeship? How might we create an inviting space for ourselves as learners that guides that reverse-engineering and skill development process? Episode Links: Find me on Instagram: Find Alex on Instagram: /episode/index/show/creativelift/id/30764833

Creating Space: Reflecting in the Attic 04/03/2024

Creating Space: Reflecting in the Attic In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Reflecting in the Attic, we’re building on last week’s exploration of an inner, mental space, specifically designed for reflection. Today, we’ll step into that space and try an activity together called The Emotion Jars. You’ll consider the emotional fuel you currently have for your creative work through a hands-on experience. I encourage that you listen to this one with pen, paper, and some colored pencils in hand. Why consider our emotions in relation to our creative work? In Brené Brown’s book, Atlas of the Heart, she describes a survey that she gave as part of her research on shame. Over 7000 participants were invited to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. The (shocking) average number of emotions named across the surveys was three: happiness, sadness, and anger. What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and the many other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human? Through our creative work, we craft experiences that evoke emotion. We open doorways that make it possible for hearts to expand with wonder, and to contract with disappointment. Through experiencing art, people strengthen their emotional range and each artistic touchpoint clarifies their compass. By returning to your song, your story, your poem, your painting, they intuitively feel the slight difference between surprise and shock, or between embarrassment and belonging. The emotional fuel we use for our work shines through in it, whether it is remembered emotion, current emotion, or sometimes even unacknowledged emotion. Taking the time to ground ourselves in our emotional landscape helps us to see ourselves, our work, and others more clearly, and deepens the impact and meaning of our creative work. Let’s take a look, then, at where your heart is, today, through this activity in the Illuminary’s Attic. Episode Links: Find me on Instagram: Find Alex on Instagram: /episode/index/show/creativelift/id/30660998

Creating Space - Designing with Your Voice in Mind 03/27/2024

Creating Space - Strategizing in the Workshop 03/20/2024

Creating Space - Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind 03/13/2024

Creating Space - Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind In this season of Creative Lift, “Creating Space,” we’re making the abstract and sometimes confusing creative process more tangible. We’re giving ourselves tools to see the way we move through the creative process so that we can ideate, craft our work, gather feedback, and revise our work with more clarity and flow. Today’s episode, “Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind,” builds on the concept of the Illuminary, which I outlined in episode 60. In this imagined space, you can visualize different kinds of creative thinking inside distinct mental rooms. In our last two episodes, 61 and 62, we explored the Studio where you’re invited to think expansively—brainstorming, improvising and experimenting. Today, we’re heading over to the Workshop, where you’re invited to think critically—making decisions, developing ideas, and revising your work. When I spend too much time in the Studio, my ideas spiral out of control, leading me into intriguing, but often illogical territory. When I spend too much time in the Workshop, my work bogs down under the weight of my critical eye. Even though both rooms are essential, so is the wall between them. Without a wall to separate these kinds of thinking, your inner critic has clear access to throw darts at fledgling ideas. In retaliation, your creativity is likely to rebel and either shut down or tangle storylines into rats’ nests. My recommendation is that you firmly close your Studio door, and march across the hall into an entirely separate room where you can envision your Workshop. You’ll want to be able to move easily between the rooms—often in one work session, you’ll start out in the Studio to generate ideas, head over to the Workshop to begin to shape those ideas, hit a snag and need to pop back to the Studio to brainstorm again, and then bring your solution ideas back to the Workshop to finish the day’s work. The more capacity you build in these two spaces, the more fluidly you’ll be able to use as you move between them. Let’s explore the Workshop, which is filled with practical tools and the can-do optimism you need when you’re facing a pile of messy, but promising ideas. Episode Links: Find me on Instagram: Find Alex on Instagram: /episode/index/show/creativelift/id/30351513

Creating Space: Playing in the Studio 03/06/2024

Creating Space: Designing with Play in Mind 03/01/2024

A Room of Your Own - Why Creative Space Matters 02/21/2024

A Room of Your Own - Why Creative Space Matters In Season Eight of Creative Lift, our theme is Creating Space. Today’s episode is titled A Room of Your Own: Why Creative Space Matters. When you think of creative space, what comes to mind? Do you think of your physical creative space? Or does your mind turn to something less easy to define, such as your mental or emotional space? Maybe right now, you’re in a season where you feel you have the just-right amount of creative space. Or maybe you are longing for more physical or metaphorical creative space in your life. No matter where you are, this season invites you to take a deep breath, and to look at creative space in a new way. You’ll gain tools that help you apply your creative thinking skills directly to your creative process. We all have those stuck places that come up over and over again. What if your creativity was exactly what you needed to reimagine those challenges and overcome them? It’s likely that in one place or another, you’ve heard me speak about the Illuminary. This imagined villa houses many rooms, and each room offers a particular thinking environment. The Studio, for instance, provides you an expansive, playful space where you can ideate and dream. Across the hall, the Workshop holds practical tools to help you craft those ideas and dreams into a shape you can share with others. The Illuminary makes what the invisible—our creative thinking process—visible. By illuminating the shifts we make from one mode of thinking to another, we avoid common creative blocks. By equipping each room with tools that are personalized for our own approach, we learn not only to rely on our strengths, but also create ease in the spaces that are less comfortable for us. Throughout this season, we'll explore the Illuminary’s rooms, discuss the essential mindset required for each, and try out activities that help you experience the feel of each mindset. In today’s episode, we’ll walk through the Illuminary so that you have a map for where we’re headed in this season, and I’ll share a few stories about how and why I developed this tool for myself and others. I’m very excited to share the Illuminary’s tools and creative mindsets with you. They’ve been transformative for me in my creative process, and I have seen them blast through obstinate creative blocks for others, too. My hope through this season is that through these tools, you will find a renewed sense of momentum and joy as you unlock new horizons in your creative process. Episode Links: Find me on Instagram: Find Alex on Instagram: /episode/index/show/creativelift/id/30052398