Imagine you’re a painter in the early 20th century. You’re no Georgia O’Keefe, but you do all right. You specialize in realistic family portraits. Business is booming. There’s just one thing that’s been niggling at the back of your mind, planting a tiny seed of doubt about the future of your career: this newfangled technology […]
Creativity
How to Find Your Fan Club
How do you find an audience? What do you do if the people closest to you aren’t supporting you?
The Creative Resilience of Netta Barzilai
Most years, I pretty much ignore the Eurovision song contest. But this year there’s been so much hype around my country’s highly unusual representative–the indomitable Netta Barzilai–that ignoring it has been absolutely impossible. Now, to be clear, part of the reason I usually ignore the contest is that the music is typically not to my […]
5 Creative-Resilience-Building Pursuits that Have Nothing to Do with Your Art
In the course of the extended conversation I had with our latest Rejection Survivor interviewee, Elizabeth Bell, something occurred to me about the long “creative dry spell” I experienced during early adulthood. Upon completing my national volunteer service at age 20 (which I did as an alternative to the mandatory IDF service), I began studying […]
How My Own Fictional Character Supported Me Through Rejection & Self-Doubt
As readers of any of my blogs may have gathered by now, letter-writing is one of my favorite ways to process things. I write letters to people that I never intend to send; I write letters to myself as though they’re from other people I feel a need to hear from; I write letters to people who […]