Courageous Wordsmith

Storycraft: Resistance

Episode Summary

On the occasion of Winter Solstice, Amy is sharing a gem from her archives, a three-part podcasting experiment with her friend Nicole Diaz, who co-founded our Circle for Real-Life Writers. Welcome to Storycraft. These are conversations where we unpack one little bit of the creative process. Topic 2: Resistance.

Episode Notes

From Amy:

I met Nicole Diaz in the life-coaching world around the time that I was first envisioning my online community for real-life writers. She demonstrated a brilliant understanding of the creative process, and I had this idea of hosting Idea Parties as the centerpiece of my work with writing groups, with Parker Palmer's work as my model. Nicole was a Parker Palmer fan too. So for a few years, we collaborated to host once-a-month calls on Saturday mornings where we let beautiful words draw us into our writing.

Afterwards, people spoke their voices into the room, and nobody corrected or coached or edited each other. Instead, we let you be at the heart of your story and reflected your words back. And books began to be written and friendships began to be made.

Together, Nicole and I developed a flexible and potent Idea Party format that works to this day, even after she has moved on.

There were other experiments Nicole and I tried, among them this little series of three podcasts. It was going to be available in the community library only, as one of many exclusive features. Since then I've streamlined my online Writing Circle space to center on writing calls and there's no reason to house a three-part podcast series with a leader who's no longer there.

On the other hand, Nicole and I agree that these three episodes would make a beautiful Winter Solstice gift to YOU, my podcast listeners, at a time when creativity could bring us all comfort if we could just calm down about the creative process itself.

These are shorter than my other episodes, and I find talking with Nicole delightful. I hope you enjoy.

Happy holiday season.

Love, Amy

PS–Nicole sends her love too.

Nicole Diaz is a creativity coach and business strategist. She works with business professionals to access their creative flow, and with creatives to build the structure they need to stay on track without losing inspiration. Through private coaching and workshops, she helps people balance strategy and creativity so they can bring their ideas to life. 

www.nicolemdiaz.com