Chasing Creative is all about how everyday people can make creativity a priority in their daily lives. We're talking to regular people who have insights and action steps you can take TODAY to make your creative plans happen. Whether you’re squeezing creative pursuits into your kids' naptimes or in the evening after working a 9-5, we're here to give you the inside scoop on how regular people are chasing creative.
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We thought we’d be back with a new season of Chasing Creative in 2022, but alas: it did not happen. Our lives are just too full right now with, well… life! We cannot, however, let the year go by without getting together to talk about books: our most favorite episode to record each season. So, we’ll dive in and talk about our reading wins this last …
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Hi! It has been *an entire year* since we last appeared in your podcast feed. We’re wading through Pandemic Year 2 just like everyone else, complete with all the day-to-day negotiations and risk calculations like everyone else. And also: a fourth baby for Ashley, a smattering of kids entering the public school system for both of us, and entire rout…
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2020 hasn't been kind to most of us, but books are always there to see us through. Listen in to hear how 2020 changed our reading habits, the books we loved (and didn't), and what's next for our reading lives—and the podcast!—in 2021. Books Mentioned in This Episode The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett Becoming by Michelle Obama The Color of Comprom…
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S7 E4: Kayla Craig on listening well and advocating for vulnerable people
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In today’s episode, we chat with Kayla Craig about what it looks like to advocate for the more vulnerable people around you. As a journalist, Kayla learned the value of listening well and choosing to hear a story and act on it. As a mom, Kayla knows just how important the stories we read and tell and see in our own lives affect everything about the…
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S7 E4: Ari Tison on Lifting Up Underrepresented Voices
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Ari Tison is an award-winning writer with poems and short works published in Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, and Rock & Sling. She is also the editor for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop's Broadside Competition. Ari lives and works on Dakota and Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) lands in St. Paul, MN. Join us as she shares action steps for lifting up…
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S7 E3: Dani Bruflodt on hydration, social justice, and political engagement
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Deep in a pandemic, an election cycle, and a world that looks vastly different than six months ago, we’re all a little worn out these days. But we also need to press ahead like never before. We wanted to talk to Dani Bruflodt on how she summons the energy to engage online around social justice, politics, and making a difference in the world -- and …
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S7 E2: Simone Griffin on Counseling and Creativity
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We’re welcoming counselor, writer, and calligrapher Simone Griffin to the show today. Join us as she shares about the overlap between counseling and creativity, and how art—both our own and others’—can improve our mental health. Be sure to check out Simone’s newsletter, Counseling + Christ, and her devotional workbook, Glimmers of Hope. Resources m…
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S7 E1: Using Creativity to Make a Difference
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We’d be remiss in trying to continue on with the podcast acting as if nothing is happening around us. 2020 has been an upheaval year for just about every single person on the planet, and while we are both privileged, middle-class white ladies in Midwestern states who are faring quite well during the pandemic, all things considered, our lives do sti…
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By Abbigail Kriebs, Ashley Brooks
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S6 E11: Kendra Adachi on Trusting Your Creative Intuition
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As the lazy genius, Kendra Adachi teaches people how to be a genius about the things that matter, and lazy about the things that don’t. Join us in this episode to hear how she listens to her intuition when it comes to creative projects, the seasonal rhythms she uses to get things done, and the creative process that led her to leave perfectionism be…
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The world has been turned upside down, and being productive as a creative doesn't need to be your top priority right now. Instead, learn to think of your creativity as a form of self-care. Resources Mentioned in This Episode The No Grocery Challenge by Sarah von Bargen Bank Boost by Sarah von Bargen Elise Blaha Cripe's Three Things Template for Ins…
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S6 E9: Staying Creative as a Military Spouse with Lindsay Swoboda
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Today we’re chatting with Lindsay Swoboda about how being a military spouse experiencing seasons of deployment and living overseas has affected her creative journey. Along with being a military spouse, Lindsay is also a mom and writer. Her blog Uplifting Anchor encourages mothers and military spouses in their daily and creative lives. Resources Men…
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We both spent 2019 getting serious about writing our novels. In this episode, we're hashing out all the details, from where we got our book ideas to how we're fitting writing into our daily lives. Listen in to hear more about our creative processes and what the future holds for our writing. Resources mentioned in this episode S6 E3: Elise Cripe on …
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S6 E7: The Most Creative Thing with Ashlee Cowles
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Click here to take the Chasing Creative survey! Join us in this conversation with author and kindred spirit Ashlee Cowles as she shares about how travel and parenthood have changed her creative process. Ashlee believes that “creativity is not something we can lose, even if it has to lie dormant sometimes,” and we wholeheartedly agree. Listen in to …
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Do we normally try to keep our book talk to a minimum at the end of each episode? And do we normally keep our episodes under an hour? Yes and yes. But today, we have nearly an hour and a half of entirely book-focused conversation for you -- and we hope you love it as much as we loved recording it. Come find us on Goodreads! Abbie: https://www.goodr…
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S6 E5: Sarah Von Bargen on setting creative goals that actually make you happy
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Did you know that it actually takes between 12-265 days -- with the average being 65 days! -- to make a new habit stick? Sarah Von Bargen shared that statistic with us on the podcast, and we were blown away! Sarah is the mastermind behind yesandyes.org where she is a writer, coach, and educator who helps people spend their time, money, and energy o…
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S6 E4: Callie Feyen on Creative Transitions
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We're welcoming returning guest Callie Feyen to the podcast! Join us as we talk about Callie's recent transition into full-time self-employment as a brave step toward making space for creative work. Listen to our first interview with Callie here. Listen to our second interview with Callie here. Books we talked about Designing Your Life by Bill Burn…
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S6 E3: Elise Cripe on having big creative dreams and making them happen
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We’re so glad to have Elise Cripe back on the podcast! We previously chatted with her on episode 4 of season 3, all about how she got to where she was creatively, and touched on taking creative breaks and her Get To Work Book business. Today, we wanted to have her on to talk about her first traditionally published book that releases tomorrow, Octob…
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S6 E2: Nicole Gulotta on Seasons of Creativity
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Nicole Gulotta wrote the book (literally) on navigating different seasons of the creative life. Join us to hear her advice on the ups and downs we all experience as creatives, and get the scoop on her new book, Wild Words. These show notes may contain affiliate links to IndieBound, a website that connects readers with books sold by independent book…
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S6 E1: The Ebbs & Flows of the Creative Life
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Hello and welcome back to Chasing Creative for Season 6! We’re excited to be back with you, and still cannot believe that we’ve been doing this together for six seasons now. This season, we’re going to be interviewing some previous guests and some new guests, but asking them all similar questions: what do the ebbs and flows of the creative process …
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Bonus Episode: How We Planned Our Creative Retreat
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We were in the same room for the third time ever for our first (and hopefully not the last!) creative retreat. And we decided to record an episode all about how we made it happen, what our plan was, and what we accomplished while in a valley near LaCrosse, WI with no WiFi for 48 hours. Resources We Mentioned We first heard about creative retreats f…
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S5 E9: How This Podcast Has Changed Our Creative Work (and What's Next for Us)
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In the last episode of season 5, we're exploring all the ways recording this podcast has changed our own creative lives. We're talking about the power of audio conditioning in motivating you to do the work in front of you, catching up on our novel writing processes, sharing our progress in The 100 Day Challenge, and giving a preview of what's next …
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S5 E8: Doing the Creative Work: How We're Using the Lessons from Growing Gills
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We first chatted about Growing Gills with Addie Zierman in this episode on self-care, resourcing, and diving back into writing after some time away. Then, we got the chance to interview Jessica Abel herself on her method for creating systems that help you be creative in this episode. And then we realized that we had a lot to say about what Growing …
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S5 E7: Jessica Abel on Integrating Creativity into Your Life
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Jessica Abel is cartoonist and author who is demystifying the creative process. Join us as we talk about her philosophy that the creative life is just . . . life. You’ll gain practical strategies for integrating creativity into your everyday life with systems and routines that work for you. Books and Links We Talked About Growing Gills: How to Find…
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S5 E6: John Blase on moving from pastor to poet
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John Blase is a former pastor turned writer and editor. He spends his mornings writing poetry, his days as a developmental editor for Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers in Colorado Springs, and his evenings with his wife and three kiddos (when they’re home from college!). He preached for over a decade and has brought a pastoring stance to his writer’s…
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S5E5: Intentional Creativity with Ron Vitale
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Science fiction and fantasy author Ron Vitale keeps up an impressive writing pace while working full time and being an active father. What’s his secret? Intentional creativity. Join us in this episode to hear how Ron makes space for creative work, manages marketing and networking alongside writing, and maintains a self-care routine. Books, links, a…
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Reading is a big part of our creative lives, and we know the same is true of many of our listeners. We're giving you the rundown of our year in reading, including our top picks in a variety of genres, our favorite read-alouds for our kids, and the one book we BOTH couldn't finish! If mini book club is your favorite part of the podcast, this episode…
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S5 E4: Creativity, Burnout, and a New Way of Looking at Self-Care with Addie Zierman
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The creative world is full of people and places encouraging you to practice self-care. But what if the self-care that the world is promoting feels a little hollow? Addie Zierman shares with us a new way at looking at self-care on the podcast today. It’s called “resourcing” - and we think you’re going to gain a lot from this concept. Addie Zierman i…
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S5 E3: Taking creative risks with Andrea Debbink
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Andrea Debbink is an editor and author with more than a decade of experience in the publishing world. Currently she’s an editor at American Girl where she creates nonfiction content that empowers girls to explore their creative potential. Her new book Spark: A Guide to Ignite the Creativity Inside You just won a 2018 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award.…
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S5 E2: Creativity and Place with Jane Heinrichs
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How does the place you live and work impact your creativity? Do beautiful landscapes or bustling cities help boost creative inspiration? Join us as we explore these questions and more with illustrator Jane Heinrichs. Jane works as an illustrator with publishers around the world. Her first children's book, "Magic at the Museum," was short-listed for…
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We’re back after an extended summer hiatus! And we’re so happy about it. Not much changed for Abbie, Ashley had a third baby, and here’s how they’re managing life and creativity as they ease back into life in the fall. While they’ve been gone, Abbie started hosting the Exhale Creativity podcast. Exhale Creativity is a monthly membership site where …
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In our last episode of Season 4, we’re chatting about how we keep creating even in chaotic seasons. Most of us have plans and dreams for the way we want our lives to go, but here in the real world, life is messy and unpredictable, and things rarely go as planned. When things go off the rails, creativity is often the first thing to take the hit. Som…
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S4 E24: These are the Resources that Inspire our Creativity
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While we are usually bemoaning our lack of time to sort out all of our creative projects, every once in a while we get stuck in a place where we’ve got time or desire to do something creative, but find ourselves with an utter lack of inspiration. When that happens, we both have some tried-and-true places we turn to that give us that little nudge we…
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We’re all have limited resources to dedicate to creativity, and one of those is money. No matter what your financial situation, money is a finite resource, and we can only spend so much on creative pursuits---and the costs can add up quickly. So how do we budget for creative projects when we’re not independently wealthy? That’s the conversation in …
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S4 E22: Social media and the creative life
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We’ve all heard that we’re supposed to be building an audience online. Even if we don’t want traditional success, many of us put our work online to share our creativity and use it to connect with others. But building all these “platforms” takes time and energy away from the creative process. It can make us discouraged as we compare ourselves to oth…
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We have to eat, we have to have clean clothes, and we should probably vacuum once in a while. If you can’t outsource any (or all!) of those kinds of things, maybe the next best step is to inject a little more creativity into them so that they feel like less of a distraction from our creative goals and more a part of them. Join us in this episode to…
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We’re both personality nerds, so it’s no surprise that our Myers Briggs letters and Enneagram types have come up multiple times on the podcast before. In today’s episode, we’re devoting our entire conversation to the ways our personalities can affect our creative lives. There are probably hundreds of personality typing systems out there, but today …
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The longing for a peaceful creative retreat at a cabin in the mountains is probably high on the wish lists of creative people everywhere. But the fact is, our mountaintop creative moments don’t happen all that often, and we probably need to dream a little closer to our own backdoors if we’re ever going to make creative retreats happen in our own li…
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S4E18: Creative Communities and How They Help Us
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For many of us, it’s tempting to shove our creativity into a dark corner and try to keep making progress on our own. But like we talked about in our episode on sharing your creativity, creatives aren’t meant to work in a vacuum. This week, we’re focusing on creative communities: how to find them, how they can help us achieve our goals, and our pers…
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S4E17: Callie Feyen on Writing Through Transitions
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We’re excited to share a special episode this week as we welcome back returning guest and one of our favorite writers, Callie Feyen. Callie has been on the podcast twice in recent years, and we’ve loved hearing from her about her writing journey and how it has evolved as her life has changed. Since we last chatted, she’s undergone another big trans…
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S4E16: Get Unstuck: Troubleshooting Common Creative Pitfalls
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Do you get excited about a new creative project, then give up halfway through? Or maybe you don't think your idea is good enough to even get started? What if you get all the way to the end of a project but can't quite push through to the finish line? We all have individual struggles with actually completing a creative project. Today, Ashley and Abb…
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S4 E15: Dealing with Tasks that Drag Us Down
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Life is full of those little things that have to get done but that can really drag us down. If we let them, they’ll steal our time and our energy away from the creative pursuits that are important to us. Today, we’re chatting about all those small things that drag us down and our best tips for dealing with them so we can get back to our fun creativ…
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We’re all trying to make room for our creative projects in our already full lives, so how do we approach trying new types of creativity? Do we even? Ashley and Abbigail chat about the types of creativity they’ve tried in the past, things they’ve picked up, loved, hated, and put down, and what new things they’d like to try someday soon. You can now …
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We're not huge fans of structured creative goals, but we do like building creative habits into our daily lives. In this episode, we're sharing how we cultivate creative habits and the tactics that do and don't work for us. Thanks to our sponsor, Jennie Moraitis! Jennie's new book, Happy Journal, Happy Life, is a fun, low-pressure way to add a creat…
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What counts as "real" creativity? Join Ashley and Abbigail as they explore the definition of creativity and how to define it in your own life. Resources and quotes mentioned in this episode "But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with pa…
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S4 E11 Tracking and Setting Creative Goals in 2018
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Setting creative goals can be a whole lot of fun -- but meeting them is often a whole different story. Ashley and Abbigail chat about what their creative goals are for 2018 and how they plan to measure and track them. There’s a lot of discussion on what makes a creative goal a good one and how to choose goals when you’re just not sure what your yea…
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This episode is all about books! We're chatting about how reading helps (and hinders) our creative lives, the books that have made an impact on our creativity, and the ups and downs of setting reading goals. Books mentioned in this episode Deep Work by Cal Newport The War of Art by Steven Pressfield A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman Big Mag…
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S4 E9: What Our Creative Spaces Look Like
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Every one of us dreams about having the perfect creative space: it’s got tons of natural light, elegantly potted plants, clear surfaces, and all of our tools within arm’s reach. This is far from reality for most of us, contrary to what Instagram would have you think. Ashley and Abbigail share what their real creative spaces look like, how they coul…
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Today's episode is all about creative wins: what we consider a win in our own lives, why it's so important to acknowledge our accomplishments (big and small), and our favorite ways to celebrate creative wins. Resources mentioned in this episode Hello There, Friend Chasing Creative episode: Sharing Your Creativity Chasing Creative episode: Make a Mi…
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It’s hard to work on your own creative projects. You have to find the time, the energy, and the motivation -- and those three rarely live on the same planet for most of us these days. One way to convince yourself -- or maybe trick yourself -- to prioritize your own work and make progress on your creative goals is to join a creative challenge. Ashle…
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