How to Fill Your Creative Well

June 22, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Filling Your Well vs. Burning Out In capitalist Western culture, we’ve been taught to prioritize hard work in exchange for “success.” Many of us work harder and faster, without taking the time and space we need to refill our well (health, happiness and well-being). I find this all too often translates into our creative work as well. We’re taught to write every day, do more, work faster, blah blah blah. I call BS. Because if you’re on constantly on task/ under the gun and you’re not feeding your creative well, you’ll eventually burn out. That’s not why we’re here. Art is meant to feed and inspire us. But it can’t do that when we’re trapped within the confines of urgency and perfectionism—hallmarks of capitalism and white supremacy culture. What’s Filling Your Creative Well? What’s Inspiring Your Writing? Now that my kids are fully […]

Which Creative Seeds are You Planting?

April 26, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Change and transition seem to be my watchwords these days. Spring, the Covid vaccine and pivotal birthdays have been going on in my corner of the world, inspiring me to think about ritual, thresholds and what inspires real change. All the more so after Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict here in the U.S. last week. It was a drop in the bucket, to be sure. But finally, a bit of accountability. Let’s keep it coming, folks. We have so much work to do with Black Lives Matter, climate change, gun reform and anti-Asian violence, to name a few of the shifts we’re currently navigating. With biracial children and a Japanese American husband, the recent spate of anti-Asian violence has hit especially close to home. (See a list of anti-Asian violence resources here.) All of which has got me thinking about what enables change and […]

When the World is Burning, Is Art a Waste of Time?

February 8, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Last week, I watched this incredible TEDx talk by R. Alan Brooks, one of my colleagues at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop. Wow! I hope this talk will be shown to teens everywhere. And adults, too, for that matter. As you’ll see in Alan’s talk, it’s never too late to follow your dreams. Especially in these intense times, when there’s so much at stake. (Spoiler alert: Brooks quit his day job in insurance to write comic books. Wait until you hear what happened next.) Here’s a short excerpt: “If art really has no power, if it’s really a silly waste of time, then why are dictators afraid of it? Why were Nazis burning books and paintings? Why was McCarthy so dedicated to blacklisting artists in the 1950’s? Why was Stalin’s government so focused on censoring artists in Russia?” I hope you find this talk as […]

What Inspired You to Become a Writer?

July 3, 2019 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Happy 4th of July! As we ease into the holiday weekend, I’ve been thinking about why I became a writer. I’ve also been thinking about the books that inspired me over the years, and I would love to hear what those books are for you. Was there a specific book that made you want to become a writer? For me, those books were Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. I’ve always been a reader, but much of my young life was spend reading traditional Western male authors. In school, we read Beowulf, Lord of the Flies, then Beowulf again. (Blech.) As the daughter of Yugoslav immigrants–and someone who spent much of my childhood traveling back and forth between Chicago and the former Yugoslavia–I never saw myself or my experience mirrored in the books I was reading. […]