'Creativity needs oxygen just as much as fire does.'

What does it take to turn a spark of inspiration into a sustained creative fire?

This week’s episode is a reflection on the art of making fire, from striking the first spark with flint and steel to nurturing the ember with just the right balance of oxygen and fuel, and how that process sheds light on the creative process. More specifically, it's about the moment I found myself grinning like a loon while holding a flaming bundle of hay on my recent Write it Wild retreat. (Yes, really. Check out the episode artwork.)

Discover how permission, preparation, process, and patience all play a role not just in spark-wrangling, but in idea-wrangling too. And we'll talk about the art of holding your nerve when things get smoky.

Whether you're at the start of your writing journey or tending an idea that’s been smouldering for a while, this one’s for you.

'The foundations of how authors build visibility, build a readership... while the tools change, the principles don't.'

Jane Friedman has been commentating on the business of books for many years, and her classic The Business of Being a Writer has demystified the industry for thousands of authors. So on the release of its second edition it seems a good time to ask: what has changed over the seven years since the first edition?

It turns out that while the specifics of platforms and tech tools have moved on, the principles of writing and promoting a good book are pretty much as they always were: the fundamental challenge of persuading people to care about your writing still remains, and it's arguably harder than ever in the face of what Jane calls 'the tremendous fragmentation of attention across so many different channels'. And as a writer you need to engage with those channels, in fact you should even be asking if you should be focusing there instead of on a book.

But in any case, one channel that remains powerful for authors, and which Jane herself uses brilliantly, is the newsletter: we talk about how to write a good one, and how and when to migrate to paid subscription.

She also shares her own systems and processes for writing, including how she's integrated AI tools. It's part reality check, part masterclass, and it's wholly worth your time.

Leslie Grandy always wanted to be 'creative', but after discovering that she 'sucked' as a child at piano, painting, drama, dancing and so on she decided (to the relief of her teachers) that it simply wasn't for her.

Until she realized, in her corporate career working with visionary leaders like Steve Jobs, that creativity can also be defined as 'the ability to solve problems in novel ways'. And now she helps organizations - from major brands like Starbucks to early-stage ventures - navigate the challenges of innovation. Creativity, it turns out, is not an inbuilt talent reserved for the select few, but a practical skill that anyone can develop with the right mindset and tools.

And that's exactly what she provides in her book Creative Velocity: simple, everyday techniques for building creative confidence. She also tackles the role of generative AI, inviting us to see it as a partner that can expand our creative thinking, provided we bring structure and discernment to the process.

Leslie also discovered she could have filled a book with what she didn't know about publishing a book, and shares her insights from that journey too.

Funny, inspiring, practical, unmissable.