“Whatever the reason, when we stop making, our artistic identity doesn’t disappear–it goes subterranean. Or it leaks out in sideways places, leaving us incredibly restless. It learns to whisper rather than shout.”

“Observing the patterns of your energy and output is the first step in addressing common writing challenges, and it’s the beginning of getting on better, more accurate terms with yourself.”

“That critical, hesitant voice you sometimes hear, the one that bellows from a deep familiar place inside you? It might not be your actual voice. It might not even belong to you.”

“When I meet my needs, I can show up in relationships with clarity, steadiness, and choice. I can choose the kinds of relationships that help me feel seen and safe—instead of trying to mold myself into ones that don’t suit me.”

“The essays you’ve written, the poems you’ve tucked away, the notebooks you’ve kept—these acts are not waiting rooms for success. They are the success. The act of making is what nourishes you. The rest is noise.”

“Needing external validation is a habit; a learned way of relating to your creativity; a roped boundary placed on an otherwise open field.

But habits can be broken…”

“If you’ve been on the hunt for ways to make creativity feel more possible, shifts in language—in how you talk about and frame your creative practices—can open a surprising door.”

“When we commemorate, we aren’t capturing our accomplishments and putting them behind glass; we’re relating to our own capabilities. We’re gathering ourselves together in a kind of kinship, acknowledging: yes, this happened, and I did good work, and that matters to me.”

“As writers, our loyalty is not to the question, ‘how did it really happen,’ which can limit and bind our storytelling.

Instead we must ask: How did it feel? What did it change in me? What echoes did it leave behind?”

“When you’re building something that’s going to require multiple iterations—a book, a longform essay, or some other larger body of work—the best gift you can give yourself is time.”

“For a long time, I struggled to describe what I do—especially in the context of small talk, where nuance gets flattened. But if you asked me right now what I do, I’d simply say: I help people with their creativity.”

“Making is a form of participating in the world. It’s a way of being in relationship with what’s here, and what’s possible.”

“Your creativity serves as a daily anchor, bringing clarity, confidence, and deeper connections with the world. This isn’t a rare occurrence, nor one reserved for weekends or vacations, but the way you experience your normal self.”

“Dear writer, you are allowed to be an artist and to have needs. Yes, even big ones.”

“No matter the circumstances, I promise you: You are not difficult or broken or bad at being creative. You might just be a fern in need of some shade.”

“When you think, sense, use language, or process meaning differently than others, it’s easy to forget that your ways are objectively as valuable as the more normative ones.”

“The more my self-belief depends on an external, inflexible circumstance, the more anxiously I remain attached to it.”

“A healthy relationship to publishing and sharing our creative work doesn’t get to define our creative work entirely.”

“You are allowed to trade your economic frameworks for environmental ones."

“Sometimes, taking care of yourself is remembering that you can be creative in order to feel more like yourself, rather than waiting to feel more like yourself in order to be creative.”