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Resources

• Book: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin‘
• Dr. Andrea Lambert South’s dissertation
• Elaine’s website: elainegale.com
• Send Elaine an email if you’d like to receive a list of her favorite quotes about creativity. Email her at elainegale at gmail dot com.
• International Podcast Day (Sept 30) and contest
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

This week Elaine Gale challenges us to explore how we can bring a sense of curiosity in our life and examine what can we approach with a beginner’s mind. More details are on the podcast at []. Join the conversation by posting reflections and/or results in the comments section below.

Upcoming Workshops by Amy Climer

From Conflict to Resolution: Managing and Mediating Conflict at Work – November 6, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free PDF Transcript or read it below. Enjoy!

Transcript for Episode #018: Creativity in Research and Writing

Amy Climer:  Hey everyone!  Welcome to the Deliberate Creative Podcast episode #018.  In today’s episode, we’re shifting the focus a little bit from teams to individuals.  I’m talking to Elaine Gale who is a brilliant writer and writing coach at Antioch University.  As many of you know, I think I’ve talked about this in the show before, that I’m a PhD student at Antioch University in the Leadership and Change Program and Elaine is the writing coach for our program.  Her job is to work with those of us who are in the PhD Program and help us become better writers, which I just love that the program has that service for us.  She’s amazing and I’ve learned so much from her.  I’ve actually only worked with her one-on-one a couple of times and each time has just helped me so much, but I’ve also sat in some of her seminars and talked with her a few times on the phone.  I love how she explains things.  She really has thought a lot about creativity and about creative blocks that we have – about writers’ block, about research blocks – and she explores those things in our conversation today.

The premise for this episode actually came from a listener.  I’ve got an email a little while ago from Ethan asking if I could talk on a future episode about creativity in the research process.  You’ll hear his specific question a little bit once the conversation with Elaine and I start.  Ethan, I just want to say this episode is for you and thank you for your question.  To everyone out there, if you have a specific question you want me to explore, feel free to send me an email.  Just head over to my website which is ClimerConsulting.com, click on the contact page.  You can shoot me an email and let me know what you want to hear on the show and I will see what I can do.  In our conversation with Elaine, she provides a number of resources and some links.  You can find all of those over at the show notes, which is ClimerConsulting.com/018.  I think you’re going to really enjoy the conversation with her.  Here we go.

Amy Climer: Elaine, thank you so much for being on the Deliberate Creative Podcast.  I’m really excited to talk together today.

Elaine Gale:  You’re welcome.  I’m thrilled to be here.  Thank you Amy.

Amy Climer:  To start off, tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

Elaine Gale:  Sure.  I have a Doctorate in Communication and I’m a tenured professor at California State University Sacramento in the Communication and Journalism Department.  I’m a former reporter and writer for the Los Angeles Times and the Star Tribune.  I’ve been a freelance writer for a lot of different national publications and magazines, and I am the Writing Center Director for the PhD Program in Leadership and Change at Antioch University.

Amy Climer:  The premise of this whole episode came from an email I got from a listener.  His name is Ethan and Ethan had this question about creativity and research. He wanted to know how do you find a research topic especially something that hasn’t been studied before?  I know you’ve worked with a ton of grad students and you’ve helped me immensely.  I’m just curious.  Let’s talk a little bit about creativity and research and specifically maybe we start out with his question – how do you find a research topic?

Elaine Gale:  Well, when you are starting a thesis or dissertation, a lot of times the advice you’ll get is write what you know about.  Write about what you know.  I think that’s great advice and it’s also interesting to get out of the box a little bit and see where else your curiosity takes you.  I think when you’re coming up with your research question, which of course points to your methodology, I think having a lot of fun with that question is really important before you settle down.  I would say date around with your research question before you get married to it. Because it’s really interesting how just one word choice can change your whole focus.  It can even change your methodology – just one word choice in your research question, but I think the more that you tug on your sense of what’s interesting to you or what’s curious for you about something and the more that you interrogate your own fascination, the more you’re going to come up with a question that really sustains you because I think that research and scholarship needs to sustain you intellectually but it also has to irrigate other parts of you.  It has to kind of irrigate your psychology and your emotionality, maybe even you spiritually.  It has to have a sense of going beyond just this intellectual curiosity, but something that really hooks you.  It’s almost like when a pearl is formed.  There’s that irritation.  That’s what you want to follow.  You want to follow that sense of irritation, not in a negative sense but in the sense of discovery.

Amy Climer:  Kind of that curiosity.

Elaine Gale:  Yeah.

Amy Climer:  I love the visuals of the pearl and this irritation.  And even that point about there could be one word and the little bit of methodology that I know about is – if you have a question that’s why or how is going to completely change your methodology and how you approach the research.

Elaine Gale:  Right.  Then you could really purse down on what you’re actually curious about and I know in my research question, I was trying to figure out how newspaper editors came up with what they put on the front page.  At first I thought it was about stories which would have pointed more toward a narrative methodology but then I realize it was really about the talk.  I really wondered about how they talked about news worthiness as a concept and then at that point of the discourse analysis, but I did play with it for a long time and I think for me, it reminds me of magicians who keep pulling the scarf out of their pocket.  You keep seeing more and more colors and more and more texture.  It opens up your imagination and your sense of play.  I think that’s really important with academia that we keep inviting in a spirit of play because sometimes we shut that down and it’s really part of how we can free ourselves up in our intellectual academic processes is to invite that spirit of play into an inquiry.  It really does open things up.

I think the same thing is true actually about curiosity that a lot of times in academia, we are so focused on expertise, becoming experts and calling our expertise.  We spend years drawing together this neat review in a particular area of expertise.  Instead of the shallow end, we’re at the deep end of this lit review by the time we do our doctorates, but sometimes that expertise can shut down curiosity.  It can be used as a bludgeon instead of as a shovel which is how I see curiosity, that you’re really digging the dirt, you’re really tilling the dirt and stirring things up or sometimes when people come at things from this mindset of being an expert, it shuts that down and it doesn’t leave any room or any oxygen for something new to come in.

Amy Climer:  I feel like that idea of being an expert, it really puts a lot of pressure on us.  I want to be an expert in this certain area, well to be an expert, I kind of think of, well, that can’t happen until I’m like 65 at least because it’s going to take that long.  I think if we give ourselves a little more grace then we can realize what does being an expert actually mean and what is this idea of research?  How do I get a little bit closer to something I’m curious about?

Elaine Gale:  I agree with that.  To go back to Ethan’s question about research that there’s a lot of times where we go into a grad program or we go into a classroom and we’re armed with our expertise, we’re armed with this knowledge, I think that the academics and intellectuals that I enjoy the most, they are armed with their expertise, but they still have this real sense of exploration and discovery, joy and curiosity that’s really invited in to the conversation.  And then they keep on building their stream of research throughout their lives in their teaching, in their consulting because there’s a sense of openness and there’s a sense of always building on and refining and adding to not that this research has been done and that’s kind of it.

Amy Climer:  It’s the beginning, not the end.

Elaine Gale:  Right, exactly.

Amy Climer:  I really appreciate, at least in our program at Antioch, I feel like there is conversation about this openness, curiosity, and the spirit of play.  I find it really freeing but I don’t know that that’s the case in many doctoral programs.  I feel like it is more of that, “Oh you have to become an expert and write what you already know” I think that can almost be a little stifling at times.

Elaine Gale:  I think it can be too and I think our program is more nontraditional so we have a little bit more latitude, but I think that this translates not only into the outcome, but into the process.  I think as a writing teacher, I’ve been with our program, this is my 11th year in my program and I’ve learned a lot about the process of creativity and writing through working with our students for so long and it really excites me to see people dismantle their resistance and dismantle their fear.  Sometimes people even have to deal with their shame.  By that I mean they say they are going to write and then they don’t, and then they feel back because they think it should have gone a certain way and it didn’t, and then they get into this kind of a downward spiral in their process instead of an upward spiral.

Amy Climer:  I’ve found myself in that, getting stuck in that and then, okay, wait a minute hold on, back up.

Elaine Gale:  How did you do it?

Amy Climer:  Well, I just called you and talked to you.  You were like, “Amy, go read the War of Art.”

Elaine Gale:  That’s true.  That book is so good.

Amy Climer:  I know.  I’ve read it twice since I’ve gotten into the program.

Elaine Gale:  I have it on my nightstand at all times.

Amy Climer:  Nice.  Read a passage before you go to bed.

Elaine Gale:  Exactly.

Amy Climer:  Let’s talk a little bit more about that creativity within that research process.  What have you found?  Can you talk a little bit about how you feel that creativity applies to that research process and the writing process?

Elaine Gale:  Sure.  I think I’ll answer that in two different ways.  For me, I’ll talk about the writing process second but the first thing that I would say to answer your question is in my doctoral program, I was a little lost because my master’s degree was a Masters of Fine Arts and Creative Writing.  So then I entered a doctorate program in communication and when it came to the dissertation, I wasn’t sure how my voice was going to come through and I wasn’t sure how my creativity was going to be expressed in this document that had such a long history and tradition, and so much structure and so much expectation.  So I remember talking to a colleague of mine whose name is Dr. Andrea Lambert.  She’s at Northern Kentucky University now.  We were at University of Denver.  We were having this conversation and she said to me, “Elaine, I think of Chapter 4 as being the place where I get to have my creative voice and get to take all the data that I found and come up with something that’s really interesting and presented in a new way.”

What she did, she studied post affinal kin, which are families that maybe there has been a divorce or separation so they are no longer families but they still have some connection.  What she came up with, she created a new theory of families that she called the Theory of Fluid Families and it’s based on the scientific principles of fluidity that cause the quality or state of being fluid and the physical property of a substance that enables it to flow.  She noticed that there were all these answers in the data that corresponded to properties of fluidity.  That’s the theory that she gave birth to in the world in her dissertation.  To me, that really lit me up creatively.  I really got to see that my Chapter 4 could be this fusion of innovative thinking and creativity, and maybe a new metaphor or application that came out organically that kind of rose out of the research that I did.  That was a real game changer to me.

Amy Climer:  Let me just interrupt real quick and add for those people listening that haven’t been through a doctoral program or aren’t familiar with it, Chapter 4 is the results section.  Chapter 1 is your introduction.  Chapter 2 is your literature review where you’re looking at all the previous research.  Chapter 3 is your methodology and then Chapter 4 is results where you get to say, “Hey, here’s what I found.”  Chapter 5 is where you get to explore that even more and it’s called the discussion section.  I just wanted to add that for those who are familiar with the process.

Elaine Gale:  That’s great.  Thanks Amy.

Amy Climer:  I know you had another piece you’re going to add there about how creativity applies to research.

Elaine Gale:  Well, I think the other way that I’ve really noticed this is the piece with fear and resistance.  I think that part of the creative process is that it’s like you’re taking hip waders and putting them on, and you’re wading out into the unknown.  It’s dark out there and you can’t see the bottom.  You’re not really sure where you are or what you’re going to find.  It can be scary because that’s part of what the creative process really entails is this delving into the unknown.  I’ve noticed in my own writing, there’s a point where things are so messy that I get scared because I’m not sure how I’m going to get out of it.  Maybe the connections aren’t quite coming yet.  I haven’t quite seen this pattern, this organizing principle that may come together and illuminate all my research for me.  That hasn’t happened yet and I think when we’re in that muck, in that muddle of creativity of the writing process that there is fear that’s going to come in and I think a lot of times, we try and jump to the end and we don’t really stay with that mess for long enough and we just try and clean it up because that’s the instinct.  But I found that when I’m able to just sit in it and not panic and just keep thinking about all the material and for me, movement is a really big deal.  I came up with the organizing principle and idea for my doctoral research when I was on a walk with my dog, Karma.

Amy Climer:  I love it.

Elaine Gale:  I have to say, I do thank her in my acknowledgements.

Amy Climer:  That’s awesome.

Elaine Gale:  I do also tell students a lot of times even though this is a mental process, it is an embodied process.  We’re not disembodied heads.  We’re part of a whole body and a whole emotional psychological human being, and we need to have some movement.  It’s funny because I even tell students now, if you’re stuck, go put on Michael Jackson Want to be Startin’ Somethin’ and just dance around your room because it will shake something loose for you.  It will move something for you.  For me the fear transforms into faith and that faith is a secular faith.  It’s a faith in the creative process that you will end up on the other side and that you will be able to pull things back and bring things together and find your way to more clarity and more organization, and to the result.  That’s something that I’ve really noticed.

Amy Climer:  You said so much there.  I think that part about being in the muck and working through it is so true and I’ve certainly found that in my own writing where sometimes I’ll sit down and I have 1-2 hours here to write.  I don’t even know what I’m doing.  It takes me 15-20 minutes to even figure out what I’m doing.  Sometimes the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing before I sit down makes me not want to sit down because I know it’s going to be mucky and messy, and then it’s finally like, “Okay, I finally figured it out.”  I feel like I always have to do that every single time I sit down to write.

Elaine Gale:  Absolutely and I think that’s what ends up translating into shame for some people because we don’t sit down to write.  We don’t not sit down because we’re lazy.  We don’t sit down because it’s uncomfortable so we’re avoiding it.  It’s not really a matter of being lazy, it’s a matter of that uncomfortableness and that avoidance that happens.  Of course then we procrastinate and then we’re keeping more and more guilt and shame on us.  I agree with you and I think that if you can put some starch in your backbone as a creative person and realize that even if you’re writing academic work, it comes from the creative impulse.

For a long time, I had an MFA in Creative Writing and was a writer.  I worked professionally as a writer for decades so when I went into academia, I’m kind of an accidental academic, I’m kind of a hybrid.  When I came to academia, I thought wait a second, this isn’t creative writing.  This is academic writing.  This is a process and a procedure, but I realized pretty quickly was that any kind of writing draws from the same source of our creative spirit no matter what it is.  Even if you have to put in APA Style or Chicago Style, or make the tone more formal as we do with academic work, it’s not kind of this free ranging and wild as creative writing can be, but the impulse, the origins, and the seed of it still come from that creative place.  For me, I’ve had to just create more muscle around this discomfort and the uncomfort, and the not knowing and the mess.  I think friends of mine who are really fierce artists are great examples for me.  They are people who practice this day in and day out.  They have a six pack around the creative process and I think that’s really wonderful to remember is going back to the leadership of the artists in our country, our programs are all about leadership and change to go back to the leadership of artists and how the quotes that they have about creativity. One of my favorite books is by the dancer, Twyla Tharp, called The Creative Habit.

Amy Climer:  That’s a good one.

Elaine Gale:  Yeah and it’s astonishing to continue to always be a student of creativity and to always be a student of people who are from different creative disciplines.  If you’re in an academic program, why not learn about creativity from dancers or from people who play the saxophone.  It’s all the same.  It comes from the same roots.  I just always try and be a student of this in my life and then I always say this to my writing students, but practice makes perfect so be careful what you practice.  The more that I practice developing this muscle and this confidence and this sense of faith that comes from the fear, the more I’m able to sit down more regularly and create more of a practice around it.

Amy Climer:  Yeah and it goes back to the title of this podcast, the Deliberate Creative.  I think sometimes people think of creativity as this really fun thing and I think of the idea that pops in their head in the shower, which is always exciting. You just get so excited about it, but I think sometimes either we don’t realize or forget that it can be kind of painful to get there and it takes practice.  You actually can get really good at it if you do practice it.

Elaine Gale:  Absolutely and part of it is just feeling how scared you are and feeling you want to have this great project.  You want it to be fantastic.  Our minds always jump to the outcome.  They always jump to the end.  We want to look good. We want to sound good. We want to be smart.  We want to be successful, but the magic is in the process.  If you cannot jump to the end and I always think, if fear alchemizes into faith, then resistance alchemizes into surrender the more that you practice it.  The more that you work with your own resistance, the more you can surrender to the beauty and the magic of this creative process.  The quicker it will come to you the more you practice it.  I think that’s something else I’ve noticed that has been really great.  I don’t quite have a six-pack yet I’d like to point out, but I’m working on it.

Amy Climer:  It’s probably pretty close.  I remember one time not too long ago, I was stuck with something with my dissertation.  We were talking on the phone and you were telling that when we experience resistance to something, it’s often because we care so much about it.

Elaine Gale:  Yes.

Amy Climer:  I don’t know if that came from the War of Art or where that came from but that helped me so much because I realize, “Oh yeah, I do really care about this and that is why I’m resisting it and procrastinating.”

Elaine Gale:  I love that.  We mentioned this book a couple of times, but if anyone out there is struggling with resistance, there’s this amazing book called the War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  He talks in the book about resistance and love like that there’s a relationship between the two.  I’ve really found that for myself, watching students in our program work with their dissertations at the very end of their doctoral process, and what I’ve noticed is that when I can ask students questions that returns them to their sense of love, it lessens the fear and it lessens the resistance.  When people talk about what they are passionate about and what brought them to grad school or to their research project, you hear the commitment that they are living in and that they are living from.  It is incredible how connected they get to their sense of purpose and passion and then that can completely reorganize what was maybe a scattered sense of productivity and gives them a focus again.  I think for me, it reminds me of being a little kid and taking a magnifying glass and having a dried leaf and then catching one ray of sunlight and just focusing it and it lights the leaf on fire.

Amy Climer:  That’s amazing.

Elaine Gale:  That was such an amazing moment as a child but I think about that even now that when you get people reconnected to what they love about their project, about the process, about the doctoral program that they are in or the master’s program that they are in, they really get reconnected up to the engine of their own curiosity.  That is what propels you to the finish line of something.

Amy Climer:  Absolutely. I love that.  You’ve given a lot of tips throughout.  We’ve talked about a couple of things here.  I’m wondering, do you have some specific tips for writers or researchers to help them get over that writer’s block?  They are sitting down and they are stuck or maybe they are not even sitting down yet because they are afraid to.  Do you have some specific things?  You mentioned just getting up, dancing to Michael Jackson. Maybe there are a couple of others you can share.

Elaine Gale:  Well, that’s my number one piece of advice for people who are stuck.  I think that just remembering your body and just listening to your body, a lot of times, we’re sitting in these chairs working and we kind of forget about some of the things that we need as a human being.  It reminds me of that Red Smith quote about writing.  “Writing is easy.  All you have to do is sit down at the computer until the beads of blood form on your forehead.”  Sometimes it feels like that.  It has got that feeling of just kind of intellectual constipation and resistance and stuck-ness.  I think any kind of movement is great.  I’ll tell people, “Go garden.  Go for a walk.  Take a yoga class.”  Whatever you do that you find enjoyment in can kind of stir you up and it reminds me of I‘m taking this amazing performance class and the teacher had us do this incredible exercise last week.  I want to mention this because this really freed me up.  She had us come in and do one thing that we’re virtuosic at and then do one thing that we’re not virtuosic at but that we enjoy.

Amy Climer:  Can you give an example?

Elaine Gale:  I went in and I read a piece.  I do a lot of creative writing so I read a piece of creative writing and then after that I played the Djembe drum which I’ve never had lessons at in doing and I absolutely loved to play the drum.  The Muppet animal from the Muppets was my favorite Muppet.  I had a little animal puppet when I was a kid.  I always wanted to play the drums and instead I played the clarinet.  So I finally bought a drum when I turned 40 and I love it. I was wailing on the drum having the best time and we talked about it afterwards.  Everyone in the class did this and sometimes, the things that we’re virtuosic at, we get a little stuck in because we may have abandoned or not been connected to our sense of play and joy.  I would say if there’s anything in your life that you have great enjoyment in, whether it’s playing the ukulele or singing at the top of your lungs to the radio in the shower, or whatever it is where you feel this great enjoyment.  Some people bake pies.  Whatever it is for you that is a really great way to reconnect to your own spirit and sense of enjoyment and then that can translate into a really great work session in terms of writing.

Amy Climer:  That’s a great example.  I think it goes back to what you mentioned at the very beginning about expertise and how we can get sort of caught up in that.

Elaine Gale:  Yeah.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because that exercise had a profound impact on me and I kept thinking about all these ways in which I can return to the enjoyment of something without any attachment to the outcome.  That I’m just doing something for fun and it’s incredible what kind of intelligence that opens up within you.  It’s like you almost become good at it just through your own sense of enjoyment.

Amy Climer:  That would have been interesting to see the class and I would imagine you can see this difference in each person when they were doing the thing that they were so good at versus the thing that they just did for fun.

Elaine Gale:  Right.  That’s exactly right.  It was really interesting. I guess a challenge for everyone listening would be if there’s something in your life that you feel a little stuck about, how can you get curious about it?  How can you bring a sense of curiosity to something in your life that you’re currently really stuck with?  Also, just the feeling of being unsettled in a project, how can you get really comfortable with that feeling of being unsettled and just develop some piece around that that it’s just part of the process.

Amy Climer:  I was thinking when you were talking about that earlier how we’re talking more about being unsettled in an individual project but I was also thinking of the same application in a team like in an organization that’s trying to create some change and how there is a point in the process no matter what it is you’re trying to change where it gets really mucky and I just wondering to myself, “I wonder how many projects get abandoned because team members just stop feeling good about it because it’s that mucky space.”

Elaine Gale:  Yeah and that maybe we shut that creative process down too soon sometimes.

Amy Climer:  Yeah, I think so.  Absolutely.  So at the end of each episode, I always offer listeners a weekly challenge related to the topic that we’ve been talking about.  You just kind of mentioned one challenge, this idea of paying attention and exploring what you’re curious and passionate about.  I’m wondering should we make that the challenge for the week or do you have something different?  What are your thoughts?

Elaine Gale:  I like that.

Amy Climer:  Okay, let’s do it.  Can you reiterate it one more time?

Elaine Gale:  Well, we’ve talked a lot today about creativity and we’ve talked lot about curiosity.  We talked a lot about the process of getting lost and in the muck during that creative process and trying to get more comfortable with that.  If there’s something in your life where you feel stuck, whether it’s a project, a relationship, or research project, how can you bring a sense of curiosity and a sense of peacefulness amidst the unsettled feeling that you have about it?  How can you be curious about it instead of just bringing a lot of judgments and opinions about something?  That seems to be something I noticed in myself.  When I’m really positional, when I have a lot of judgments or opinions, or if I feel like I’m coming at something from a sense of being an expert then I miss a lot of things.  It just shuts things down instead of opening things up.  Curiosity opens things up so it reminds me in yoga and meditation of this idea of having a beginner’s mind.  It has got that same flavor of how can you approach something with a beginner’s mind with that curiosity of being comfortable with not knowing something.

Amy Climer:  I think that’s a great challenge of paying attention this week, what can you approach with the beginner’s mind and how can you bring more curiosity into an area that you might be stuck in your life?  For those of you listening, if you do end up doing this, you can share your thought and your experiences on the show notes on my website which is ClimerConsulting.com/018. You can go there and type your comments. Share with us what you think.  Elaine and I will both look at that and can reply to what comes up.

Elaine Gale:  That sounds great.

Amy Climer:  Elaine, if people want to learn more about you, your writing, and what you do, where can they go?

Elaine Gale:  I have a website which is ElaineGale.com and you can also email me on that website.  You can just click on the little envelope and send me an email.

Amy Climer:  Great.  You mentioned earlier there was something you wanted to share with our listeners.  You have a PDF that you wanted to send out.

Elaine Gale:  Yeah, I was going to say if you send me an email to ElaineGale@gmail.com, I will send you a handout that has a lot of my favorite quotes about the creative process and creativity.

Amy Climer:  Awesome, that will be great.  You’re a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this learning process.

Elaine Gale:  Thank you so much, Amy. Well, you too.  I love collaborating with you on the topic of creativity. Thank you so much for inviting me and for being part of this conversation with me on the world.

Amy Climer:  Thank you Elaine.  I really appreciate it.

That was Dr. Elaine Gale.  I love talking with Elaine.  She always knows the truth.  She has this ability to point out whatever is going on in our minds, our hearts, our heads, in a way that makes it so much clearer to me.  Often when I’m stuck in the writing process, I think to myself, “What would Elaine do?” Then I do whatever I come up with and I get unstuck.  I’m going to add to that list to get up and dance to Michael Jackson.  By the way I put in the show notes a link to Want to be Startin’ Somethin’ so head on over here to ClilmerConsluting.com/018 and dance around for a little bit.  You never know, it might help.

I want to ask you all a favor those of you that are listening.  I want to ask you a favor to write me a review on iTunes if you have enjoyed the show at all.  You probably didn’t know this but Sept 30th is International Podcast Day so that means for the month of September, there is a competition going on amongst podcasts for the Gratitude Award.  The gratitude award is given to the podcast with the most reviews during the month of September where the reviews express some expression of gratitude for how the podcast has impacted the listener.  If this podcast has impacted you in any way, I would welcome and be so thankful if you would go over and write a review on iTunes.  You can get there by going to ClimerConsulting.com/iTunes and if you want step by step instructions on how to write a review on iTunes as far as screen shots and the technical components, just go to ClimerConsulting.com/Review. Also, feel free to share on social media.  If you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s @AmyClimer and you can also like me on Facebook under Climer Consulting.

Take some time this week.  Try out some of the advice Elaine shared and see what happens.  You’ll never know.  You just might break through a creative block.  Have a wonderful week.  I’ll see you next time.  Bye!

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