• Why Fewer Tools Makes You a Faster Creative

    Discover why mastering fewer creative tools boosts speed and productivity. Learn how familiarity accelerates flow, reduces cognitive load, and unlocks deeper creativity. Focus on depth over breadth to compound skill, streamline workflows, and make your tools disappear so the work can truly begin.

    Read more…

  • The Next Tool Won’t Fix It: Why More Gear Doesn’t Make Better Creative Work

    There’s a moment that we all, as creative people know: we’re stuck, and we start to think the problem is the gear I have. But the creative tools you already have are almost certainly enough. So why do we want more? Why do we think the creative fix is in the new shiny?

    Read more…

  • The Habits That Quietly Kill Creative Output (And What to Replace Them With)

    The Habits That Quietly Kill Creative Output (And What to Replace Them With) Here are several creativity killers with advice on how to stop them and creative habits to replace them.

    Read more…

  • Is Your Creative Idea Worth Finishing? Here’s How to Decide

    How to Tell If a Creative Idea Is Worth Finishing (And When to Let It Go). Is that song, this painting, my story about an AI enhanced goldfish worth finishing? Here’s how to decide if your art, song or writing is worth continuing. The rhyme and reasoning behind deciding what creative projects to finish.

    Read more…

  • What Years of Creating Taught Me About Discipline

    Discipline and willpower are not the super powers of successful creatives. it’s about crafting effective systems that naturally guide behaviour. Learn how these creative frameworks can help you achieve more without the constant struggle.

    Read more…

  • Why Creative Constraints Make You More Productive (and More Creative)

    Creative projects with the most freedom are often the hardest to finish, or even start. The ones with tight constraints tend to move faster. And sometimes come out better. Three simple rules for creative freedom

    Read more…

  • My latest journal set-up – New Size

    A look at my latest journal set-up as I prepare for the week ahead. I am separating my monthly and weekly from my daily, in an attempt to find the right size and feel for each day. All part of my ongoing quest to find my perfect journal set-up. I’ll be back soon with a review of how is it going.


    Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
    namaste
    d
    xox

    If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

    Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest

  • Finding the right size – Journal update

    Finding the right size - journal update video cover

    A junk journal and planner update in which I talk myself into using another journal… what’s he like?

  • The old journal – Friday Fiction Writing Prompt

    A Fiction Writing Prompt to stretch the literary muscles. No rules. No word counts. Simply write and explore.

    I discovered it at the bottom of the trunk. I opened the old, dusty journal and began to read. A life long gone breathed again… Friday Fiction Writing Prompt

    I discovered it at the bottom of the trunk. I opened the old, dusty journal and began to read. A life long gone breathed again…

    Writing Prompt Expanded

    You might have noticed but I like to journal. In fact, I am an avid journal user. I often find I am repeating myself in several places. If you picked up and read my journals, you’d get a pretty good idea of what my life is like. And that is exactly where we are going with this prompt

    This prompt is all about recreating a world from the past. Your character is reading an old journal and as they do they discover the life of the person who wrote it.

    • What year was the journal written?
    • Is the journal written by a relative?
    • If they had an occupation, what was it?
    • Was their life difficult or easy?
    • What things concerned them day by day?

    This prompt will help you bring an old world to life. Creating a believable setting for your characters and stories is a vital skill. Using this journal style prompt is one way to do that. You describe someone’s life and therefore describe the world they inhabited. And even just several years in the past can make a huge difference to the way people lived. Smartphones and the Internet didn’t exist twenty or so years back.

    As always these writing prompts are optional and entirely open to your own interpretation. Use them as a starting point for a short story or something a little more grandiose. If you do write something, please share it or a link, in the comments or tag me. I’d love to read what you create. Write and enjoy the learning process.

    Original Journal Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay


    Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
    namaste
    d
    xox

    If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

    Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest

  • Dartmoor – Wordless Wednesday

    Dartmoor - Wordless Wednesday
    Dartmoor - Wordless Wednesday
    Dartmoor - Wordless Wednesday

    I went to Dartmoor, this is what I saw.

  • abandoned

    a short soundscape

  • Actions speak louder than lists – Journal Update

    Actions speak louder than lists - journal update

    A flip through of my junk journal and planner and a little thought about the sort of things I write on my to-do lists. Why do I add things that aren’t actions to my lists? They cause nothing but trouble.

    Bandcamp
    this temple eden
    Shop: Planarchy and Stuff
    https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/darrenrhill