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Walking with Vincent’s Ghost

My haunted ghouls,

As someone who is chronically ill, it’s rough having to start everything with “I’m sorry for the gap” but, um, mind the gap. In June, I had an unexpected major surgery, so I’m just now catching up again. Thanks for bearing with me.

Anyway, as I’m recovering, one thing I’ve been picking away at is my 70-day creativity challenge inspired by the artist Vincent Van Gogh. I hope to share with you some lessons from Vincent in the coming months. This week, I wrote about Vincent’s famous Starry Night painting. I was struck by how long Vincent thought about his paintings before he made them a reality. It reminds me that the thinking and pre-planning process are just as vital to the actual Making the Art part of creativity.

Lately, I’m also thinking about my creative practice as a larger collective. I’m no longer putting my creations in buckets. here is the bucket for writing, here is the bucket for the speculative stuff, here is the bucket for art . . . Instead, I’m trying to see my creative practice as threads that weave into each other. In the end, they result in a big pretty quilt of all the things that make me . . . well, me. These boundaries, they only hold us back.

In other news, I’ve got big, big writing news, but I can’t quite share it yet. Just know that your resident darksome poet has not given up on writing totally awkward, too-personal poems.

I hope this summer you are able to create without boundaries!

Write what you love, love what you write.

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I'm a working narrative artist, and you can catch some of my upcoming in-person workshops happening at my art studio, MERGE, in 2026: