It's not as if we’re going to stop the forward march of AI: lawsuits and enraged authors don’t count for much in the advance of technology, and as a society we don’t have a good track record of asking whether we should do something; we’re only interested if we can. Ethics will never precede innovation for obvious reasons.

Stories are what make us human. Ever since we had proper language, we’ve been telling stories to each other to overcome our fears, to understand the world better, to become better humans. So reading isn’t just the best thing you can do for your brain, but also for your soul.

Every writer goes through periods when their ideas just aren’t flowing, the inspiration just isn’t there. But stepping away from your writing practice is never a good plan. Instead, I want to offer some options that can help jump-start your idea incubator.

Art is about showing the invisible, expressing the unconfessed, and comprehending the incomprehensible. Or, as George Bernard Shaw said more eloquently, “without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

Many people would say that art and science live in completely different areas in the brain, and in people’s consciousness. I know you take issue with that assumption. Let’s talk about it.

Roland Barthes has famously remarked, Literature is the question minus the answer. So you have to be ready for some challenges, some ambiguity, some blank walls. Literature isn’t a main course of a lovely dinner; you have to embrace it, interact with it, internalize it.

This is simply a fun conversation I shared with my friend and colleague, novelist Indira Ganesan, about the delights of reading a novel or watching a series (Midsomer comes to mind) dealing with English country murders. Enjoy!

Do we ignore what they’ve done and said, or do we reject their entire opus because of it? Does knowing the toxic views of the artist in question affect your enjoyment of their work?

This definitely belongs to the “muse” part of the podcast, the section meant to inspire your practice! while he is not himself a writer, Jung-Ho’s thoughts on creativity and community can apply to us all.

If you want stories with passion, humor, love and death, look no further. I'll just take one example to whet your appetite: one version of the Minotaur story goes like this:

I’m still not convinced that the United States isn’t peopled by murderers and grizzly bears, at least in part, but I’m grateful now that my mother never thought twice about exposing me to Time and Reader’s Digest, as innocuous as they might seem now.

I’ve always maintained that creating feelings of empathy is one of the greatest roles of fiction, but lately I’ve been wondering whether creating that empathy might be a political end in itself. For example, is it a political belief that empathy is good, or that there is such a thing as shared humanity?

In meditation, you’re often asked to empty your mind. Reading isn’t the same—your mind stays very focused and very active—but its practice allows you to transcend the same stray thoughts and useless worries that are banished when you meditate.

Vision is our primary sense, and 70% of our sensory receptors are in the eyes. So it’s no wonder that what we see can dramatically affect us and our emotions! The Greeks considered ekphrasis important for developing written and perceptual skills, and contemporary writers have adopted the technique to improve their writing.

It’s really easy for creative people to self-sabotage. We work in isolation, which can sometimes lead to discouragement. But there’s hope! Meditation creates an inner sanctuary where you can protect your best writing self from your worst writing self.

Our writing practices are filled with moments of jubilation—and of dark despair. We don’t succeed where we thought we would. We are disappointed—in how to world deals with our writing, and in how we ourselves sometimes feel about it. But despair, while part of the writing life, doesn’t have to dominate it. Here’s how!

Just as you can’t be madly in love all the time, you also don’t always feel inspired to write. In this podcast, Jeannette helps writers kickstart their imaginations and find the inspiration that provides the greatest “rush” of all by identifying what works for their particular practice.

We’ve all experienced it to some extent, and it’s cost us all hours of fatigue, distress, and even despair. Writer’s burnout is a state of exhaustion that manifests as making you physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of doing the most basic of writing tasks well. It’s caused by trying to do too much to the point of becoming overwhelmed. In this podcast, Jeannette helps you identify the causes of burnout, learn to avoid it before it happens, and deal with it once it attacks.

In this episode of Writing Muse & Writing Mentor, we lean heavily on the “mentoring” side of the podcast, as Jeannette discusses what makes a writer, how language evolves, removing “should” from your vocabulary, and why you should be reading… a lot!

In this episode of Writing Muse & Writing Mentor, we lean heavily on the “muse” side of the podcast, as Jeannette leads listeners on a guided meditation sure to release creative thought and spark creative ideas.