Transcript
Andy J. Pizza (0:03)
On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. You're probably listening to this show because you consider yourself creative or you want to be creative. And when you consider think about creativity, I don't know about you, but for me I think of the way the culture kind of talks about creativity. It's very like Barney and Friends, you know that don't hug me, I'm scared. Let's get creative. You know, if you're not familiar with that, it's like just having fun with finger paints and like bouncing around and you know that, that kind of energy. But in reality, creativity, being creative, getting creative can be really intimidating. It can be really scary and it can be really easy to feel blocked because there is just so much great work out there. More than ever before. The blank page is precious. And the pressure to show up there and put yourself, pour yourself onto the canvas is just a lot. And there is this pressure to be seen, singular, to be original. But what if those pressures weren't based in reality? What if they were based in mythology around creative work? And what if your art doesn't have to be this singular thing, but it can be seen as in conversation with other artworks and movements and scenes that you love and want to participate in. In today's episode, I have a chat with poet Maggie Smith about her new book, Dear Writer, pep talks and practical advice for the creative life. I frickin love this book. I love this chat. Maggie is just a great hang and I'm super pumped to have her back on the show for the second time.
Maggie Smith (2:13)
In.
Andy J. Pizza (2:13)
In this book, Dear Writer, she both demystifies creative practice while somehow also making it seem more magical and achievable at the same time. And one aspect of this book that I really love that does this so well, that we dive into today is these ways that she introduces formal methods to be influenced by an honor and credit the influences from your life and from culture and other artworks that you love and are inspired by. And so some of these ways I was aware of, many of them I wasn't aware of, but really inspired me. And I'm excited to pick them apart and, and dive into them today in this episode with you. And later in the episode I get a little bit choked up because I start talking about, in this book I had an encounter with poetry in a deeper way than I ever have before. Like it made more sense to me and it really moved me. And so I'm excited for you to get to that as well. If you don't know Maggie, you probably do know her work. You've probably come in contact with her poem Good Bones, which has been on TV shows and in commencement speeches and just all over the Internet. And by the way, it's a great poem. Highly recommend you go check it out. It is Bones, it I feel like it's the poem of our times. It captures the devastation of living in this era while also the the hope and love for life that many of us feel and want to cultivate. So I would go check that out last if if you like this episode and you want to hear more of this kind of thing, go check out episode 407 after this, which was the first time Maggie was on the show and we were talking about her memoir, which is called you could make this Place Beautiful, which is a line from that poem Good Bones. All right, I can't wait for you here, so I'm going to shut up. But I will be back at the end for acta, a call to Creative Venture to put some of these ideas to practice. It's called make something out of something and I'll explain what that means when I get back. Quick warning. There are grown up words in this episode. You've been warned. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I love Squarespace. I'm a longtime user. One of the things I love about Squarespace is I will use it's so easy to use that I will use it to create pitches. If I'm pitching a book or I'm pitching something to a client, I will use a Squarespace page in my website and I'll build the whole thing there. Then you don't have these clunky like document PDFs clogging up people's inboxes and it looks super slick. If you want to see one of those that I use all the time. I did one for my series right side out andyjpizza.com RSO and you can see how I create a little pitch summary of that project. Go to squarespace.com pep talk get building for free and trying it out and testing it. And then when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk all one word for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the US. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for Threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply. The main thing I wanted to, like, kick off with was like, I'm imagining your kids listening to you talk about this or read this, and I'm kind of like, I feel like when I was younger, I wasn't interested in how the sausage gets made, so to speak.