Posted March 31, 2011 – Our very favorite teaching environment is songwriting retreats. About our retreats, songwriters say: (1) When we’re sequestered from our ‘regular routine,’ our mental and emotional senses are heightened. (2) We explore new ground, new info, new approaches to doing things, in a place where it’s OK to fail. (3) We [...]

I heard a wonderful interview on the radio last week, 3/19/11, with the fabulous actor, Sir Ben Kingsley… This quote stuck with me: “I think that the role of the actor, perhaps at its simplest and its purest, is one of the tribal storyteller. And that if you were to transport me back maybe 3,000 [...]

March 14, 2011 Writers (and songwriters) often ask me about which kick-start methods are most helpful. There are several. For example, a common one is to use “prompts” (i.e., starting a sentence, or a paragraph with a diving-board phrase like … “The worst job I ever had was ____ .”  or “My best friend became [...]

March 13, 2011 I know you’ll find several things in this excellent article,  (written by Alan Deutschman, in Boston.com) that will apply to you, even if you have kept your job for many, many years. Excerpt from (click): Why Starting Over in Your Career Is So Hard: “When I talked with one of the world’s [...]

Writers: You tell me you’re looking for a challenge. This one (based on Julia Cameron’s ‘Morning Pages’ exercise in The Artist’s Way) will take you to a whole new level. And yes, I’m thinking of doing it myself. Yeow! Read about the  750 Words Challenge … some folks write daily for a month, some write [...]

Naomi Seldin wrote a funny article we all can relate to: 20 Sure-Fire Ways to Create Clutter. I post this because we are entering the season of Spring Cleaning! (And see below, the ‘good clutter’ info about Bill’s Records, will tug at your creativity sleeve as well…) My husband and I (mentioned before) cleaned out [...]

Congratulations to Jon Iger (devoted and beloved president) and the very, able staff of the Arizona Songwriters Association, on their 15th Annual Arizona Songwriters Gathering. It’s a great event! John Braheny & I have had the great fortune to participate in almost every one —–   And it’s FREE! —– Bonus: There will also be [...]

This article, This Year, Change Your Mind, is written by (physician, best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center), Oliver Sacks, M.D., and appeared in the New York Times, on 1/1/11. He starts off by acknowledging that, at the New Year, many of us re-new our intentions to improve our [...]

This one is from The Art Institute of Vancouver … (A lovely place, if you decide to visit!) It’s a “creativity test” to find out if you use more (%) of your (click here) “Right Brain vs Left Brain.” It’s free to take the quiz and it determines the score for you. Then, read the [...]

Here’s a great article in Discovery News by Emily Sohn, 1/10/2011. Science finally confirms what most of us already intuit when we listen to music. “People love music for much the same reason they’re drawn to sex, drugs, gambling and delicious food, according to new research. When you listen to tunes that move you, the [...]