It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.

Making art is a rite of initiation. People change their souls.

While there is no quick fix for instant, pain-free creativity, creative recovery (or discovery) is a teachable, trackable spiritual process. Each of us is complex and highly individual, yet there are common recognizable denominators to the creative recovery process.

When you are feeling too dull and too domesticated get on a horse, sit tall in the saddle, and for a moment live in a world that feels like risk and adventure.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage.

I am what I am again: a writer. I have metabolized the injury into art.

If we lean into what we love instead of soldiering toward what we 'should,' our pace quickens, our energy rises, optimism sets in. What we love is nutritious for us.