Amanda Lewis

I post about creativity every weekday on my Instagram page. These posts focus on practical writing tips, but are grounded in how we make space for writing, how we need to give ourselves permission to create and to fail in the process. Above all, I believe that making art needs to feel possible, which is…

In his essay on nature and creativity, The Tree, John Fowles speaks to the tendency to ascribe meaning to the world by classifying it. The belief is that we can’t know something until we can see it, describe it, name it, and determine its use—as a resource, as a species linked to or distinguished from…

The dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille said: Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. Leaping in…

Carolyn O’Hara breaks down the components of great storytelling in this 2014 article from the Harvard Business Review.

Hands up if you add too many items to your to-do list each day. You might feel frustrated that you’re “not accomplishing anything.” The real issue is that you’re not prioritizing tasks. I’ve experimented with numerous approaches to the to-do list over the years, and finally settled on a simple format that works.

Kate Harris has won the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize (Nonfiction) for her debut memoir, Lands of Lost Borders. Of Lands of Lost Borders, judge Michael Harris said,

In their classic book on making art (or avoiding the process), Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland outline the merits of using your work as a litmus test for your commitment: Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are…

Humans tend to favour analogical reasoning—we regularly look for the similarities between two or more unlike things or systems (compare reasoning from first principles). But when is relying on analogy a problem, and does doing so prevent us from living in the moment and engaging deeply with our writing? In Rob Walker’s new book, which…

You feel like you should finish your book—you’ve already sunk so much time and energy into it. But your old techniques for productivity aren’t working anymore. Your story isn’t going anywhere—no purpose, no horizon. And you hate your manuscript. Like, really, truly, loathe it.

I’m absolutely thrilled for music therapist Jennifer Buchanan. Her latest book, Wellness Incorporated: The Health Entrepreneur’s Handbook, won first place in the business category at the 2019 Next Generation Book Awards and 2019 New York Book Festival, and was the Runner-Up in the 2019 San Francisco Book Festival. I edited this book for Page Two.