* Bestselling * Award Winning * Indie
Happy St Patricks Day! Living abroad as I do, I love this day when the whole world goes a little bit … Read more
One of the many interesting people I've met at The Red Vic, the B&B I'm staying in here in San Francisco, is Laurie Marshall, writer, educator, peace activist and artist. Laurie is instigator of The Singing Tree Art Project, aiming to unite divided young people through having them work on a shared mural, based around the concept of planet earth as the ‘singing tree' of the cosmos.
Her most
Just a quick note to say if you are thinking of reading Before The Fall, then today’s the day to … Read more
Sorry for the delay…. I got a little waylaid by all the activity around the Alliance of Independent Authors but … Read more
I'm rather excited to tell you that the indie author's website I've been talking about for so long is finally ready to take members. Yes, the only global nonprofit association for the self-publishing writer has arrived. 
We're so thrilled at the bright and brilliant advisors that have come on board, the brightest and most brilliant names in indie writer-publishing. Handpicked for their knowledge and expertise, they will provide our members with superb support and guidance.
There are a few more
I’m awake in the middle of the San Francisco night, maybe because my body’s still on London time, maybe because … Read more
I've just got the jacket for ‘Before The Fall' (the sequel to After The Rising) over from the designer, the rather wonderful Andrew Brown at Design For Writers. 
I couldn't wait to show it to you.
Andrew and I are hoping you'll like it as much as we do. I reckon he's excelled himself this time.
The book is going through final
So the first week of January is over. Are the new year's creative intentions beginning to flag?
It's understandable. Finishing a task is an event. An outcome. A visible achievement. But starting is just starting.
Take running a marathon or publishing a book. Crossing the finishing line, having a book launch: these are events. Life before looks different to life after.
Starting isn't like that. When you
We're all trained to notice the gap. Between what we have and what we want, between where we are and where we hope we're going, between the person we are and who we'd like to be.
That's where the new year's resolutions slip in, even though we know they don't work. Through that gap. That hollow feeling of not doing, having or being enough.
How about this for an
They don't publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh winter.
The good news is that you have
I used to do long-distance running and whenever I hit a wall, I would think of Haruki Murakami quoting Guatama Buddha on the difference between inevitable and optional: ‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
‘Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to [you].'
Here are ten more inevitables and an optional mindset with which you can meet each of them.
Or not.
Giving is at the heart of the creative approach. You give something of yourself – sometimes for payment, often not. 
Sometimes knowing exactly why, often not.
This blog post is my once-a-year callout, where you get the opportunity to intentionally give — by supporting a vulnerable person who, because of famine or war or genocide or some other trauma, is struggling.
This is where I ask if you have enjoyed or received any other benefit from the Go Creative! blog this year, whether you might
“Being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.
The most productive
ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren't ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people's words.
“They might
With the help of the good folk at PaperLi, I'm now curating The Creative Times.
In this daily epublication, I aim to gather the very best writing and broadcasting about the very best creative work from around the English speaking world.
Today's issue has:
In the early 1990s, three psychologists visited Universitat der Kunste, the esteemed arts academy in West Berlin, to study a cohort of elite
violin students and see what made them so very good.
As a control group, they selected students from the education department training to be music teachers. Though this group were also serious about the violin, their playing ability was more average.
What the researchers wanted to understand was why. Was there a shared behaviour among the members of each group that made the excellent players better? Were they more