There is a period at the beginning of every creative session where nothing is really happening. The wheels are spinning but the creative vehicle is not moving. The length of this lack of creative engagement varies but it is always there. My daily writing sessions have made this phenomenon even more obvious. My fingers are [...]

Writer and artist Austin Kleon giving a talk on the genealogy of creative ideas and his creative process.

Thomas Moore has a timely essay in his book, Original Self, where he describes our need to leave space for the soul to be touched by life. He says we must leave the door ajar to let in something new. I shuddered when I read this because he had tapped into my deepest love of [...]

Paulo Coehlo, one of my favorite authors, riffing on writing and publishing with Nick Bilton, of The New York Times. Documented@Davos: Paulo Coehlo, Author from Michelle Laird on Vimeo. Tweet

We make commitments. We break commitments. There are times when it feels impossible for us to keep our word to ourselves. The question is, “What do we do after we break our commitment?” Years ago when I was in the early days of a fast I took a bunch of seedless green grapes and started [...]

Patrick H. Johnson is a phenomenal artist. We first met when he was mounting a show of his portraits. The portraits were unlike anything I had seen in how they depicted the essence of the subjects. I had to talk to the artist who had painted the portraits and our creative conversation began. It was [...]

There is a wisdom in creative practice that works in our everyday lives. This thought has been reoccurring in my mind and keeps returning me to an experience I had repeatedly when I was painting. I would usually paint in the morning. I would put in time on my chosen focus for that day and [...]

“The Last Wave,” Peter Weir’s film which is based on the myths and wisdom of the Australian aborigines was being aired the other day and this dialogue burned its way into my mind. “We have lost our dreams. And when they return we don’t know what they mean.” My creative spidey senses are tingling because [...]

My mind has been wrestling with the idea of how I can change some things in my life in order to have the energy, time and resources to do other things. I have been trying to figure out how to make all the stuff I don’t want to do lead to what I do want [...]

It’s 2012. This year is heavy with meaning but the most important ideas will be the ones we bring to the table for our lives. I asked a friend what his vision was for his life in 2012 and he asked me the same. I expressed some things that have been brewing in my mind. [...]