Pythia Peay

Vermeer — or de Kooning?

Hugh Delahanty, editor-in-chief of AARP magazine, recently passed along a link to a delightfully interesting story about his personal creative process. Having taken up painting in his mid-fifties, Hugh had been wrestling with a conflict between his “inner Vermeer,” an artist who rendered every detail perfectly, and his “inner de Kooning,” who was freer in [...]

Women Inspiring Women

A link and a note from writer and speaker Kathryn Ruud got me thinking again about an observation from the feminist historian, Gerda Lerner.  In Lerner’s book The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (Volume Two, Oxford Press) she writes that humans have always used history as a way to find their way forward in the future. [...]

Please enjoy these additional excerpts from my interview on The Huffington Post Intewith Jungian analyst Larry Staples, author of Guilt With a Twist, and The Creative Soul. (Fisher King Press). Pythia: How does working with our dreams help the creative process? Larry: The dream itself is an enormously creative act, and it’s essential for creativity. [...]

The biographies of famous authors reveal that when looking for material as a writer, one place to start is with the life you’re living and the work you’re doing.

“What do you do when you have writer’s block?” is one of those questions writers are frequently asked.  There are probably as many responses to this question as there are writers.  Over the years, I’ve developed a two-pronged approach to that moment of paralysis when the words simply stop. The first (as outlined in my [...]