It has been a while since my last post in this Creativity & Inspiration newsletter, and for that I apologize. February and March were very busy, with Storyfort (a series of literary events around the Treefort music festival here in Boise) preparations for the Show & Tell exhibition at The Common Well, as well as the last push to get my novel Rose Milk drafted before the end of the Show & Tell residency. Now Storyfort is over, the exhibition is open, and the novel draft is at about 50,000 words.
I am feeling a little drained, creatively, so I thought it might be a good time to share some of what I am doing to try to get past that.
Local Horror Writer and Reader Outreach
Community can help us stay inspired, I think, especially if the community shares some interests. I’ve long wanted to know more local people who enjoy horror and so I've been reaching out to local horror writers and readers to get a meet-up and a Discord server started. The first meeting will be at The Common Well (110 E. 31st Street in Garden City, Idaho) on Saturday April 12, 2:00-4:00 pm, with another meet-up coming later in April if there is interest. My hope is to help local writers and readers get to know each other and perhaps begin a book club and/or writing group.
If you are local and would like to be in on the Discord or alerted to any future meetings, reach out through any social media or https://christinogle.com/contact/
Note that there is already a local horror-themed book club meeting every other month at Oldspeak called the Edgar Allen Hoes. We discussed Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth just last night for the April meeting, where I was excited to learn their next read, for June, is Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays, which should be available at the book bar well in advance of the meeting. Instagram is probably the best place to learn about their book club meetings.
Wrapping up the Show & Tell Residency
As discussed in this Noglesque post, I have been participating in a residency since November, which has led to some very interesting creative leaps and introduced me to many local artists. Now at the end, there is a feeling of exhaustion, but there's also a good opportunity to reflect on the experience and decide what good next steps will be. This residency ends in an artist talk, so I'll be trying to use the opportunity to really synthesize and process everything I've done for these six months, which I hope will be helpful for the audience as well as for me.
My piece for the group show was a fulfilling project: I created the “Novel Hovel,” an environment like the places I choose to write. It contains audio of my short fiction, a selection of my visual art inspired by my current novel’s themes, some of the books I have found inspiring as an author and reader, and samples of my current novels in progress. This installation can be viewed at The Common Well until May 13. We also have artist talks upcoming until May 13.
Books on Creativity
Discouragement is pretty natural when I'm in the middle of a longform project, it seems, not to mention the chaos and tragedy in the news recently--and so I have been reading and rereading some books about creativity. I would recommend these to anyone seeking some assurance that our creative work does matter.
All of these are meant to bring a creative person back into the work and away from perfectionism, block, and feelings of hopelessness (vast oversimplification, of course, but you would need to–and should read the books if you’d like more detail.)
If there are other books like these that you would recommend, I'd love to hear about them
So that is where I am right now! I hope that your creative work is going well and wishing you to find solace and meaning in it, as much as you can in these difficult days.
Some more updates and upcoming things:
Caitlin Harris and I will deliver artist talks on April 22 starting at 6 pm, at The Common Well.
How Can Publishing Affect Your Motivation? Linktree Christinogle.com Bluesky Instagram Substack Welcome to my brand new newsletter focused on creativity & inspiration! I’ve been thinking a lot about how to spark and sustain creativity, both in writing and in visual art, and I hope to write on these topics throughout 2025. This first issue focuses on writing and is a follow-up to a presentation I gave on February 19 at a Boise library, Publishing Your Work: How to Get Started. There we...
