How to be Creative for the Long Term, with Orna Ross and Joanna Penn: Advanced Self-Publishing Podcast

In this session Orna and Joanna go back to the source to talk about creativity: what it is, how to sustain and nurture it and the challenges of overcoming resistance, beating block and sustaining a creative life over the long term. 

Sharing their own creative practices and process, and what they’ve learned over decades of writing and publishing, they explore creative approaches not just to writing, but to publishing and author business too.

This podcast is for you if you want to know what it takes to make a life, and a living, in words.

Defining “creative” and creative success  Applying creativity not just to writing but to publishing and business too: the “create-state” Filling the creative well - how we both do it  Trust in emergence - a seven stage process Making time to write and create vs business stuff: How not to burn out - Balance creative work, rest, play Contrast -- get off the internet and social media, get into nature, be sociable, get your body moving Cycles of creative life, like cycles in nature. Allow for fallow periods (not necessarily blocked) Making Business Creative: Self-Talk  Forms of Creative Resistance Varying Pace Keep learning - and try new things - don’t be wedded to just one way of doing things,  Think long term and make sure you have a stable base of multiple streams of income - so you are never desperate to just rely on your art. 

Our advanced salon is brought to you by specialist sponsor IngramSpark.

Find more author advice, tips and tools at our self-publishing advice center, http://selfpublishingadvice.org. And, if you haven’t already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at http://allianceindependentauthors.org.

Now, go write and publish!

About the Hosts

Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author, as well as writing non-fiction for authors. She is also a professional speaker and entrepreneur, voted as one of The Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013. She spent 13 years as a business IT consultant in large corporations across the globe before becoming a full-time author-entrepreneur in September 2011. For more information about Joanna, visit her website: http://thecreativepenn.com

Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller’s “100 top people in publishing”. She also publishes poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and is greatly excited by the democratising, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website: http://www.ornaross.com