Today’s newsletter is a special treat: my first guest newsletter!

I’m doing some traveling this August and September so I commissioned two of my favorite thinkers and writers to develop special letters just for the readers of Tending. Today’s newsletter is from Catherine LaSota, a creativity coach and workshop facilitator based in NYC (and a previous guest on my podcast, Honing In).

I’m a big fan of Catherine’s newsletters and workshops (most of her workshops are online, so you can attend from anywhere!), and I always get something fruitful out of her journaling prompts. 

My September 2nd newsletter will be a deep dive into personal resources and how they affect our productivity. Until then, you can learn more about my Productivity Coaching here, listen to Honing In here, and email me directly at [email protected].

Take care, talk soon, and without further adieu, here’s Catherine!

Hello there, creative human,

As a person who has had her fair share of moments lying on the floor in a puddle of tears as I tried to finish a big project – and yet still manage to finish many of those projects to some level of satisfaction – I have a lot of empathy for the ups and downs of riding the creative cycle, as well as a few tricks up my sleeve for getting through the harder moments with self-compassion.

When a project feels stalled out, one of my favorite tools in my toolbox (to get unstuck!) looks like this:

Approach the work from a completely unexpected angle. In fact, get into the stalled project in a way that doesn’t even feel like you are working on that essay, book, dissertation, or other creative project you feel like throwing against the wall.

This tool of “doing the unexpected” works well as a way to expand your creativity and approaches to your projects – and not just when you are stuck, but also in your day-to-day life as the creative human I know that you are.

Here’s one of my favorite examples of how this kind of tool can look:

For two years, I ran a monthly workshop called “My So-Called Literary Life,” where I would show clips from (one of the best television shows of all time) My So-Called Life and then offer prompts inspired by those clips, for short bursts of writing time (3-5 minutes). People came to these workshops thinking that it would be a fun opportunity to revisit a favorite show (that lasted only one season, alas, in 1994-95!) and maybe get a few pages of writing done. But what ended up happening, as we wrote to the prompts, was that people uncovered blocks in their writing process, broke open the bigger projects they’d been working on, and more. I heard things like:

“I haven’t written so freely since I was a teenager.”

and

“This helped me start writing new scenes for the characters in my novel-in-progress.”

Here’s what I believe happened: when you come into a creative situation with expectations that are completely removed from whatever creative issue has been plaguing you, consciously or not, you are more likely to sneak your way into a solution to those problems.

For many of those My So-Called Literary Life attendees, they didn’t see any correlation between watching television and having a creative breakthrough…which means they didn’t walk into the situation ready to feel like they were failing at something. (Yes, it’s true, we all do this. I’ve seen this set-myself-up-for-failure mindset more times than I can count with writers and artists!).

Not only did the attendees of this television-based writing workshop not “fail” (whatever that means) – they soared. They left the workshops invigorated and with their minds open to new possibilities.

Are you curious about this tool of “doing the unexpected”?

I invite you to try one of these unorthodox ways into accessing your creativity – you can treat the following as journal prompts (and there is no way to do these incorrectly!):

• Think of one of your favorite movies. How would you describe the setting of this movie – when and where is this story taking place? What is the first thing you might do if you found yourself placed into this setting? (You can also place a person you know, or someone of interest to you, into this setting and ask what they might do.)

• Do you have a place you regularly commute to, whether by train, bus, car, or walking? Mix up that commute in some way the next time you do it (e.g., walk around a different block; take the last car in the train instead of the one in the middle; etc.). Write down five things you notice.

• What would happen if a character from one of your favorite novels met a character from another favorite novel of yours? Write a scene of them meeting. (More a fan of nonfiction? You can do this exercise by having two historical characters “meet,” too.)

I leave you with this: if there is an activity you enjoy that you think has nothing to do with your creative life or work, see what impact it could have on your creativity if you tried incorporating that activity, in some small way, to the work that you do.

My hope is that you are not in a low moment of the creative cycle currently (because I know those moments suck!), but if you are, remember that the low moments don’t last forever, and doing something unexpected might help to turn that wheel in the right direction sooner than later…

And if you’re like, “Catherine, I can’t think of any good ways to mix up my creative practice right now, can you help?” The answer is, “Yes, I got you!”

While I am not hosting My So-Called Literary Life workshops at the moment, I do still offer workshops that help you get into your creative practice from new angles, including a *free* Fall Equinox Writing Workshop – that one is coming up on September 22, 2026 on Zoom, and I’d love to see you there! It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s low stakes…and you might just have a breakthrough. Sign up here, and let the changing of seasons inspire you.

To your creativity,

Catherine

Catherine LaSota

writer / artist / creative advisor & inspirer

catherinelasota.com