Creativity Episodes

“You have to be able to look for the gems that are in the darkness, that something to hold on to that will give you some kind of hope. It doesn't have to be anything big, but just even one thing that you can hold on to that gives you hope.” – Diana Colleen

“If you could imagine an entire country whose mental illnesses are untreated and their addictions to drugs and alcohol are running rampant in the streets, our society has improved a wee bit. However, it does make for some fun times looking back.” – Laura Van Wormer

“It's amazing how everything scaffolds on top, all the skills scaffold on top. You still have to stay current, but all of that has just been a wonderful foundation.” – Jean Burgess, PhD

"There's no expiration date on reinventing yourself." – Kirsten Telan

“Whatever genre you want to write in, whatever you want to do. Your art is important, and it deserves to exist in the world.” – Amy Lou Jenkins

“We just felt like, you know what? If we don't do it now, we're never going to do it because too many people wait until they get older and then they never end up leaving.” – Alison Gieschen

“Imagine it's your last day on Earth. What song would you write?“ – Greig Watts

“I had written before, and I would stop. Either life would get in the way or my own perfectionist tendencies. So, I just made the intention that I'm not going to stop. I'm going to finish this whether it gets published or not.” – Lori Zoss

“One thing I try to do in all of my novels, no matter how serious they are, I like to have comic relief. I like to have the reader smile and go, ‘oh, that's funny’.” – Adele Royce

“As I unpacked that with them in their interviews, some of them came to tears because something that is so personal and what some people discounted outside of the walls as something emotional, actually had value and meaning outside of the walls of that church and into very hard-hitting corporate America.” – L. Michelle Smith

“I never forgot that. That was asked of me in July of 1971. I had just left medical school. I was in Ohio. I was one of 35 doctors, but I was the only black doctor, and I was asked that question. And so how do you how do you forget that?” – Dr. Otto E. Stallworth Jr.

“There is a reason why I'm writing her story. So, I gave myself permission to write her story to get all these feelings out of me. And once I gave myself permission to do that, I did not stop writing.” – Laura Frost

“Don't let the metrics and all the followers kind of get you down. If you can help one person today, make them smile, solve a problem, or make them understand that they are loved and appreciated. You've done your job for today.” – Allen C. Paul

“The body will not allow you to feel something, even if it's positive, if it doesn't feel safe. It's a pure biological, instinctive response. It’s the body's job to keep you safe, and if something feels like a threat, it's going to divert your behavior, and we're going to do something to sabotage it.” – Dr. Evette Rose

“At the same time in which, he kind of like crushed my dream a little bit. He gave me permission to dream a new one, a different one, which in the end, looking back five, six years later, I appreciate.” – Regina Linke

“It just takes a different mindset and a different approach and a different way of saying yes to yourself…I learned to say yes to myself and say, give it a chance. See what happens.” – Heike Yates

“If you have a very empty but very conscious mind…then anything can happen in that mind.” – Stan Lai, PhD.

“I'm not afraid of the beast. I am the beast.” – Bria Rose

“Living is a progressive art.” – Dr. Candy Campbell

"There's no better way than to call your own bullshit, then to write your own story through the hardest and messiest parts of your life. Because as time passes, and as hindsight tends to be, you can finally see yourself clearly.” – Becca Eve Young

“Life is short, and I spent 11 years of my life doing something that I found interesting, like software development and project management. And this is all wonderful and interesting, but there is an opportunity cost to that. These are 11 years that I didn't write my books, and I don't want that to happen to me again.” – Katerina Stoykova

“I don't know if it's time, but what I do know is I know where the road to nowhere goes, and it goes to nowhere. And I want to take the road to somewhere. Somewhere has road signs like, you can do this, you accomplish this, you're going to feel good about yourself.” – Mike Burkhard

“If you don't care about that reader, if that's not the main focus, the rest doesn't matter.” – Troy Horne

“There’s something really beautiful about sharing your stories with people, because universally we're all connected through love and pain.” – Kelli Kassoff