Articles from metaphor
The Inner Life of the Inner Critic
We’re all familiar with the inner critic: the voice inside your head that delights in belittling, criticizing, and judging you. This article is focused on reconnecting with the protective impulse the inner critic is expressing, and using that impulse as a catalyst for developing your creativity.
Keep the Embers Burning
We celebrate creativity as a positive, life-enhancing force. But like most things, creativity has a shadow side. When you’re not able to express your creativity over a prolonged period, that shadow can be destructive.
Cathedrals of the Imagination and Other Beautiful Things
It feels out of step with the times to write an article on beauty, but it’s what beauty demands. What is the purpose and nature of beautiful things? This article collects some of my thoughts on these questions.
Craft Writing Tools
This is the third installment in a series on how software applications shape our creative thinking. The article focuses on craft writing apps and the ways writing in these tools differs from word processing.
A Triptych on the Adjacent Possible
This article is a triptych—three standalone posts related to the same subject: the transformative power of curiosity, exploration, and artistic expression. The post concludes with a tribute to the late Chick Corea.
Wrangling Words: Microsoft Word and Creative Thinking
This article explores the evolution of Mac-based word processing programs to gain insights on why popular applications often turn into walled gardens that constrain creative thinking.
The Room Where It Happens
This article is a montage—four short posts on the concept of “inner space,” aka the room where “it” (our creative life) happens. On to safe spaces, memory palaces, vaccines and video projection mapping...
Creativity, Mind-Wandering, Flow, and Deep Play
Understanding and nourishing your capacity for creative thinking is an essential skill. This article explores mind-wandering, flow, and deep play: three tools that will help you enhance and renew your creativity.