"Don’t imagine you’ll have it forever. Use it while you’ve got it because it’ll go; it’s sliding away like water down a plug hole." So said Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing of creativity. The author of The Golden Notebook, who passed away recently at the age of 94, said this five years ago when describing …
Month: November 2013
How I Failed to Avoid the Post-MFA Slump
I have a confession to make. It has been six weeks since my last serious effort at creative writing. One thing I've learned from interviewing artists is that even the best of them sometimes find themselves in a slump. And we can be very supportive of each other in these times, as I discovered when …
Why the Arts Matter in STEM Education
My tour of a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) grade school in Akron, Ohio, serves as my launching point for a look at arts education--and the effort to add an A for arts to make STEAM--in a guest post I wrote for Artist Think. This thought-provoking blog is produced by visual artist, writer, and …
The Elusive Nexus of Creativity and Mental Illness
She insisted she killed people with her mind. She was a creator and destroyer of worlds. She also found new ways to comprehend the wisdom of Aristotle and earned four prestigious academic degrees across varying disciplines with top grades and high achievements. She struggled with a diagnosis of schizophrenia yet created a life for herself, …
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The Artist's Road 