author/performing songwriter
CLUES: The book is so much a part of me that I subconsciously used its images to govern my own first novel. I gifted my main character with a skeleton key that fits a hidden lock. Further, to our real-life son, we gave the name Colin. Do you know which book it is?
Space is as important to creativity as silence is to music. And it’s NOT easy to do. I already know that. It’s hella hard. Seems like everything in your life is set up against it.
It’s peculiar, in my experience, for a pastor to pray for us to have an audience.
Songwriter, Jennifer Daniels, named Writer of the Year under the elusive pen name Jennifer Daniels Neal—not for her songwriting, but for a YA novel!
Kids think you’re super pretty even when you look really bad. They like your shoes. They like your hair. They like the way your eyes smile. It’s a real boost. Kids are also gross. They lick the stage while waiting for photo ops. They sometimes lick you. They need tissues. I know it’s immature to find this funny, but I do. Enjoying people at their grossest has a gritty charm to it. I hope someone’s around to find me charming when I get old and start inappropriate licking.
The only way to keep from feeling frustrated past the point of self control is to submit to Motherhood.
Over the next weeks, I’m not going to accomplish what I want to, or even most of what I need to. That little death to self is a good thing. Somebody keep reminding me!
So stop worrying about the bills (when has that ever been what drove your art?) and get back to work (Unless worrying is what forces the art to happen. Then…carry on).
Your muse sucks sometimes. She treats you bad. Set boundaries for the relationship. Too much time with frigid non-corporeal women is toxic.
My eleven year old daughter, who, not ten minutes ago, was riding a wave of euphoria while singing her new song, is now angry and in tears because that same song “is actually trash.” I’ve been writing (as a career) for twenty one years now, and I still do the same thing.
Jennifer Daniels Neal 