Jennie Nash is a book coach, a writer, and the founder of Author Accelerator, a strategic book coaching service that offers the sustained editorial support writers need to complete their projects and make a powerful impact on their target audience.
For eight years, writers serious about reaching readers have trusted Jennie to coach their projects from inspiration to publication, landing top New York agents and book deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette.
Jennie is the author of four novels, three memoirs, and one self-help book for writers. She has taught for 12 years in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, delivered three courses for CreativeLive, and spoken at writing conferences all over the country. Her guest posts have appeared on popular writing sites including The Write Life, Writers Helping Writers, and The Book Designer.
Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/jennienash
-The inspiration that her father gave her as a hard-working writer.
-Her lifelong pursuit of trying to prove the power of story.
-How she developed as a writer after her 4th grade debut.
-The importance of grabbing onto whatever creative thing is calling out to you.
-How she became a book coach and what she does to help her clients.
-Wrestling with her identity.
-How the creative parts of our lives are mostly spent in solitude, spending time with our own minds.
-How anxiety, doubt and stress are emotional resistances that all writers and creative people will deal with their entire lives.
-The importance of knowing why you want to do something creative like writing a book so that you can get through all of the resistances that you encounter along your journey.
-How to know when it is time to walk away from a project, temporarily or permanently.
-More information about Author Accelerator.
“If you’re writing aimlessly, it’s easy to not end up anywhere.”
“A book is an incredibly linear thing. But a book is not written in a linear fashion and a lot of writers get into trouble when they think that it is.”
“Even the most successful writers are having the same struggles as you. It doesn’t end.”
“Project: easy. Editorial solution: easy. It’s the emotion that’s hard.”
“Why do you care about this particular story. Why? What about it is calling you and moving you?”
“Writing is hard for so many reasons. But it shouldn’t be painful.”
Blueprint for a Book (Author Accelerator)
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
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Dougie Hoppes : Website
Jeff Leisawitz is an award-winning musician/producer, a critically acclaimed author and internationally distributed filmmaker who has devoted his life to creativity. He burns with a mission -- to inspire writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, entrepreneurs (and everyone else) to amp up their creativity, heal their hearts and shine in the world.
Not F*ing Around: The No Bullsh*t Guide for Getting Your Creative Dreams Off the Ground is Jeff's first book.
Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/jeffl
-His early interest in music, photography, and writing.
-The importance of focus when you have many creative impulses.
-NLP and how it can aid creative people.
-How creativity is a way for us to be seen, expressed and healed.
-How to get past your inner critic.
-Seeing your art as ephemeral and being willing to destroy it.
-How the movie, Patterson inspired him to take up the daily practice of writing a poem.
-The notion of building up resiliency to rejection.
-The lessons that he learned from improve comedy such as “Yes, and….”
-His advice for people to shift from the fucking around mindset to the not fucking around mindset.
“If you don’t focus on something, you’re never going to get very far in anything.”
“Creativity is a way for us to be seen, expressed and healed in our lives.”
“The inner critic is the super villain of the creative self.”
“If you’re going to step out into the world as any kind of artist, you will be rejected most of the time. And that’s okay. The trick is to remember that you are not your creation.”
What I learned from 100 days of rejection | Jia Jiang's TED Talk
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Jennie Nash : Website / Author Accelerator
Matt Madden is a cartoonist and teacher best known for his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style. In addition to his personal work he has written two textbooks with his wife, Jessica Abel, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics, (First Second).
Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/matmadden
-How he got a later start with art and cartoons.
-How he discovered Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau and he instantly knew he wanted to do something similar with cartoons.
-Oubapo.
-How giving yourself rules or constraints can help you to get past the fear of the blank page.
-How he has come to terms with certain limitations of his own creative process and pace.
-Some actionable advice for anyone wanting to implement some limitations or constraints in their own work.
-His advice for people who might feel as if they got into their creative passion too late and are “behind pace.”
“I rarely have that terror of the blank page.”
“It’s a very slow moving thing and a long time before I get that gratification of finishing a project.”
“You have to be careful what you draw in those panels because you are condemning your characters to relive that scenario eternally.”
99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden
J.S. Bach - Crab Canon on a Mobius Strip
Jessica Abel on Your Creative Push Episode 179
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Jeff Leisawitz : Website
Pascal Campion is a prolific French-American artist, illustrator, concept designer, character designer and animator whose clients include: Dreamworks Animation, Paramount Pictures, Disney Feature, Disney Toons, Cartoon Network, Hulu, and PBS.
Passionately inspired by his wife and kids, he is best known to his tens of thousands of fans and followers for “Sketch of the Day”, a ritual of drawing a new image first thing in the morning from his home studio in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/pascal2
-How he started his "Sketch of the Day" project.
-His advice to anyone struggling to do the work every day, to take it one step at a time.
-How if you are impatient with your art, it is something that you can work on with your daily practice.
-The importance of finishing a drawing, because your brain starts to recognize the beginning, middle, and end of creating a piece of art, and if you don't finish the piece, you don't recognize those landmarks.
-How as you create art and get better, your goals change as you continue to learn more and more.
-How many of his less-favorite pieces end up being more popular than the ones he loves the most.
-How you can compare yourself to other talented artists, but they might be comparing themselves to you as well.
-His advice for people who might be afraid to draw or paint everyday scenes.
-A story about the time he watched a duck for 20 minutes.
-How when you are younger you want to be someone else, but as you get older you grow to accept who you are.
-How hard it is when you are young (or even older) and you are told to “be yourself,” when you don’t know exactly who you are.
-The beauty of being able to recognize that you are changing as an artist and a human being.
-Being able to let go of things you are good at for the sake of progressing, especially if those things found success.
-What it is like for him to get into the “zone,” and how it is like deep-sea diving.
-When he gets into a flow state, how it feels as if he is a conduit for something else, and how he is just there to help it along.
-The importance of staying physically fit and the relationship that it can have with your art and creativity.
"I have a hard time doing an image without telling a story."
"After a few minutes, I have this nervous energy where I just want to get to the end really quickly."
"Patience and the amount of time that you can sit down and draw is something that you can work on. It's like running. It's like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the better you get at it."
"If you don't finish a drawing, you don't get those landmarks in your head."
"If you actually put yourself through the paces of finishing a drawing, your brain is going to create a grid: This is the beginning, this is the middle, and this is the end. You'll have an idea of the trip that you're going to be taken on."
"Always finish your drawing. The more you finish, the more you understand the whole process and the easier it is to get it done. If you keep starting and not finishing your drawings, you will never get the map in your head of the amount of work it takes to get a drawing done."
"I get incredible pleasure from creating images. Even if they are bad, the actual process of it is fun to me."
"As long as you enjoy it, it's going to show in the drawing."
"When I turned 30, things got a whole lot easier in my life because I wasn't trying to become something else anymore."
“The more you keep saying you’re going to do something when you have time, the less likely you are to do it.”
“There’s no better time than NOW to do what you want to do.”
“The ME of ten years ago would not do the same drawings as me now, even if we were at the same technical level.
“My best days of drawing are often when I’ve done a lot of physical exercise.”
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Matt Madden : Website / Facebook