taylor at tribeca

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taylor at tribeca


Taylor Swift on fighting imposter syndrome and becoming a director.

As I walk onto Broadway to find the line for the Beacon Theater to see Taylor Swift speak about her short film All Too Well I see another crowd forming. It seems to be people without tickets to the talk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Taylor when she arrives.

The crowd starts singing All Too Well at the top of their lungs on 75th street.

I smile and turn the other direction to find the line.

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10 lessons for artists from Taylor Swift and Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions

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10 lessons for artists from Taylor Swift and Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions

The morning after the Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions came out I woke up to an email from my friend Emily with one word in the subject line – “Taylor.”

I moved from San Diego to Florida a few months ago and my west-coast-friend Emily decided to email instead of text since she finished the sessions past my east cast bedtime.

Her email shared her gut reactions to the revelations in the sessions and how inspiring they were to her as an artist (she’s a fiction writer – her books are like a comforting cup of tea fyi).

I felt the same, and since Taylor has long been an artist who inspires my own writing, I thought I’d share the creative lessons that shone through. ❤️

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the missing ingredient in most creative plans

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the missing ingredient in most creative plans


Inspired by Samin Nosrat: Chef, author, and host extraordinaire of the Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat

It’s fine to do some things fast. There is a time for all that speedy goodness - to whip something up and get it out. Done is better than perfect and all that jazz.

We live in this amazing time where we can create quickly. Like, right now. I had an idea and I rushed to my computer and here I am, with you now, because I just got going.

But what about those Big Creative Projects?

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why your stories keep others going

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why your stories keep others going

Aka why I’m obsessed with Angie Thomas

I was walking in an airport feeling like giving up.

It was about a year ago. I was in year three of a book project I thought would take one year. The research was intense, and everything else in life kept getting in the way of me having the long stretches of uninterrupted time I needed to wrap my head around the million words of research I’d created.

I started to feel like it just wasn’t going to happen.

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7 lessons from the artist who gave me permission to dream

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7 lessons from the artist who gave me permission to dream

What did you like to do when you were a kid?

I've been thinking about that question a lot lately.

I put snails in a jar.

I wrote plays.

I acted in my own plays and one-woman shows. (Thank goodness YouTube did not exist then).

I memorized and performed scenes from The Little Mermaid.

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spinning teacups

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spinning teacups

"Chaos is a ladder," so says Game of Thrones.

My goal is to meet the person who wrote that line.

Like all great art, there are a million ways you can interpret that line. Please, enjoy your own. But mine? Mine came to me like my first book idea jumping into my head while walking on campus - a bolt of lightning that feels like it's come out of nowhere until you realize it is something that has been building for 24 years. 

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when your creative project wants to be something else

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when your creative project wants to be something else

I woke up today and decided it was time to scrap everything on my website (isaadney.com) about the book I've been working on for two years and rewrite.

Over the course of these past two years, the book became something completely different than what it started out as. 

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dandelions

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dandelions

I have loved Beauty and the Beast for what feels like my entire life, but there is one scene that has always stood out among the rest (and that is saying a lot because it had to compete with the library reveal and that time when she's trying to pick out a book on the step ladder and that first "There goes the baker..."). 

But the scene that has stayed with me long into adulthood is the one where she runs into a field of dandelions and sings, as the music crescendos,: "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can tell..."

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maybe being embarrassed by your creative work isn't always a bad thing

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maybe being embarrassed by your creative work isn't always a bad thing

Doing creative work can be embarrassing: putting yourself out there for all to see, waiting to see if anyone responds, all the while unsure which scenario you fear more - someone actually seeing it and responding or no one seeing it. Both sound terrible in the beginning. 

I'm sure there are things I probably never published because I felt embarrassed, or maybe things I never said. I'm sure there are projects and ideas I've never shared because I was embarrassed. Somehow I came to think that embarrassment about something before sharing it was a sure sign that the thing would indeed be embarrassing (i.e. a total failure). 

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a cuppa

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a cuppa

I am not British but I went to England for two weeks in college and I fell in love with everything about it. We did London for only a few days at the end - which was great of course - but what really captured my heart was the English countryside.

The gardens. The architecture. The very friendly people and scrumptious food that belied much of what people told me to expect about the place.

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10 ways to make a massive creative impact

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10 ways to make a massive creative impact

Hamilton: The Revolution is one of only two books of which I own two copies; the other is The War of Art.

Both gave me hope in some of my darkest times of self-doubt. And that is why, even if you are not obsessed with Hamilton the musical, Hamilton: The Revolution is worth a look. Because it is about so much more than a hit Broadway show.

It’s about what it takes to make the impossible possible.

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is your creative project taking you too long?

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is your creative project taking you too long?

It happens at a Little Women watching party, a few days after Christmas.

My friend Brittany is down from Washington DC and invites a bunch of girls over to watch Little Women, my favorite movie of all time. Brittany and I have been friends for years but I have no idea we have this in common; I've only ever watched Little Women alone in my room, letting it fuel my writing dreams on rainy days. I can't wait to watch it with another woman who loves this story as much as I do.

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when your creative project isn't fun anymore

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when your creative project isn't fun anymore

I've thought about the First Post for this blog for a few months now. I've been thinking how I could introduce this new blog, what I could say, how I could put into words the swelling of emotions and failures that have led me here.

The sentences and ideas have been rumbling around in my head since July. I wanted to get it right.

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