Dane Clark Collins 
Most creative work benefits from long periods of focus rather than checking tasks off a list. Meanwhile, most productivity systems that are floating around in books and online are designed for working your way through checklists. I’ve designed a better one. Read more
About The Mythos Cycle A mythic adventure through madness and transcendence. A mind lost in the lonely outer reaches of consciousness. A frail old man, tortured by grief and delusion, is dying a pitiful and horrifying death, and he is utterly alone. How has it come to this? Scars and bleeding wounds in the shapes … Read more
Magic is real, and it’s created every time we make a piece of art or choose to live our lives creatively. Art and creativity are a communication between our thoughts/experiences and the deeper, less conscious, more powerful part of the mind that controls so much of our perceptions and behavior. So how can we use that magic with intent to shift our experience and to create better, more creative art? Read more
Why are people so driven to create—to leave behind something that did not exist before—an extension of the self, willed and manifested outward into the world where it can leave an imprint on the minds of others?How are people able to produce such complex and beautiful artistic creations? Why are some people considered creative geniuses while others believe themselves to be uncreative? Read more
Frazetta’s paintings showed me that art could be primal and terrifying, portraying an ancient and primitive world, where the terror of the unknown lurked in every shadow. Read more
You can learn the basics of Markdown in 5 minutes, so I’ll teach you those basics now. Learn a tiny bit of code to make your life easier. Trust me, this is easy. Read more
This strategy can be easily adapted to other software. If you do use Scrivener, I’ve created a downloadable Scrivener template for convenience. The problem of complexity If you ever have a difficult time managing the threads of your plots and subplots, this strategy may help you. It can also help to bring lackluster characters to … Read more
For those of us exploring past, future, or speculative worlds, we often go to great lengths to avoid physical anachronisms like cell phones in the wild west, but we don’t often consider philosophical or ideological anachronisms. And yet, I find doing so gives me great insight into the human condition I may not have discovered otherwise. And more importantly, it strengthens and deepens my characters. I’ll explain why. Read more
I’m going to make the case that the way you capture your ideas is just as integral to the creative process as what happens in the mind. It not only prevents forgetting great ideas, but it creates a feedback loop that leads to more great ideas. Read more
In the first few pages of E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, we see a man named Lessingham carried on the back of a hippogriff. He is led by a magical black martlet to a world called Mercury—a world that resembles the Viking Age of Earth. Lessingham is to be an observer of the story … Read more