Bad Diagnoses: What’s Wrong With Writer’s Block.
Writer’s block exists. But it is not a useful diagnosis.
Creativity
19 Posts
Creativity on the Academic Margins: Podcast
A podcast interview about writing, creativity and the challenges of teaching in multilingual environments, with Dr Tim Hannigan.
The Zhouyi – a Tool for Invention
A copy of my talk from the third Zhouyi summit forum in Wuxi, China (with Chinese translation).
The Secret of Creativity Is Not Suffering, It Is Pleasure
Three rules for the creative life: avoid suffering, embrace difficulty, seek out pleasure
On Bread and Fiction
Writing fiction is like making bread. You need to know when to knead it, and when to just let it rise.
Amateurism, Professionalism and the Art of Creativity
If you want to create, you need to be professional. But you also need to be an amateur.
Nietzsche’s Ten Commandments for Writers
Advice on writing from the most literary of all philosophers.
On the Art of Staring into Space
Creativity happens when you find the courage to do absolutely nothing
Serendipity: Cultivating the Art of Creative Luck
Creative luck is not just blind chance. It can be cultivated
On Vacation: Reeling in the Mind
Nourishing life to nourish your writing, and nourishing writing to nourish your life.
A Centre for Laziness - A Proposal
Unless we are accustomed to moving across the borderlands between hard work and laziness, then we are not going to live optimally
Big Beasts, Little Beasts, and the Value of Creative Writing
Creative writing teaching is about more than churning out big-shot novelists.