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And here are the last four tips in the "completing creative projects" series! 9. Get strategic help. You’re trying to finish up your independent film documentary but a handful of tasks stand between you and completion. Some of them are technical and require new...

Last week I shared four tips for completing your creative work. Here are four more! 1. Create a completion checklist. Devise a way of creating a punch list that helps you check off tasks. If, for example, you are doing something as complicated as making an independent...

Here are 4 tips for completing your creative projects. Give them a try! 1. Hold the intention to complete your creative projects. Many creatives who suppose that they want to complete their creative projects are actually harboring more reasons for leaving their work...

Here’s an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Magic of Sleep Thinking that comes out in a month from Dover. The book can be preordered now! ** If you want to use your brain’s ability to think while you sleep, just create a sleep thinking prompt or question that takes...

Anyone who puts creative work out in the world invites criticism. What are the best ways to deal with the criticism that may be coming? Here are five useful tips: 1. Grow a thicker skin Your prime strategy is to grow a thicker skin and let criticism bounce right off...

When you enter the marketplace, you open yourself up to criticism. You might as well accept that fact. Some people will like what you do and others won’t—and those who don’t may well share their unflattering opinions with you. Nothing injures the psyche more...

To what extent ought you to be your “real self” in your public interactions in the art marketplace? Think of the elementary school teacher who would love to smile but who has learned that to maintain order in her classroom she must adopt a certain stern attitude until...

Relationships in the arts are complicated. You may be very friendly with a fellow painter and also quite envious of her. You may actively dislike a gallery owner or a collector but decide that he is too valuable to cast aside, maybe because he is your only advocate or...

Unless you are impervious to the facts of existence—and no one is—you must learn how to create in the middle of things. You must learn how to create when wars are raging and when your own hormones are raging. You must learn how to create even if you hate your...

To celebrate my more than fifty books, my webmaster and guru designer Ron Wheatley has put together a gorgeous sampling of twelve of my books that we’d like to offer you as a gift. With selections from The Van Gogh Blues, Coaching the Artist Within, Mastering Creative...