Jason is an award-winning artist and designer based in NYC. He is known for his bright colors and even brighter messages. His work has received tons of awards and recognition, including the Golden Novum Design award and two CLIO Fashion&Beauty Bronze medals. He has also been featured on HGTV and the Discovery Channel.

In 2018, Jason was named by BUMBLE as one of the 100 Most Inspiring New Yorkers, and his colorful creations have found partnership with brands like Coach, Guess, Pepsi, and Maybelline. Jason’s mission is to spread color and positivity across the globe. His brightly colored designs and positive words reflect his zeal for life, his quest for joy and his love of LOVE.

In this episode Jason and I discuss:

• The ways his book is a visual version of the perfect mixed tape.
• How negative space and imagination work together to create a story.
• Why people see the same colors differently (hint: it’s rooted in science!).

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Jason Naylor

Jason is an award-winning artist / designer based in NYC, known for his bright colors and even brighter messages. Jason’s work has received global recognition including the Golden Novum Design award and two CLIO Fashion&Beauty Bronze medals. Jason has been featured on HGTV and the Discovery Channel. In 2018, Jason was named by BUMBLE as one of the 100 Most Inspiring New Yorkers, and his colorful creations have found partnership with brands like Coach, Guess, Pepsi, and Maybelline. Jason’s mission is to spread color and positivity across the globe. His brightly colored designs and positive words reflect his zeal for life, his quest for joy and his love of LOVE.

You can find Jason on his website or follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Live Life Colorfully

Live Life Colorfully is a quirky, illustrated mix of inspiring words, tips and tricks, and challenges from award-winning artist, designer, and creative director Jason Naylor. 

This colorful book is based on one of his strongest messages, Live Life Colorfully, and will inspire everyone who picks it up. 

• Find the silver living, taste the rainbow, and colorize your life with this vibrant book
• Filled with bright, colorful illustrations
• Sure to motivate anyone who needs a boost

Naylor spreads joy and kindness around the globe using his signature bright colors and even brighter messages with typography, illustration, and large-scale worldwide murals.

Live Life Colorfully is a succinct way to say, “Be yourself, be brave, be proud of who you are, be kind, be loving, be happy, and be colorful.”

• An inspiring book with a little bit of edge and a lot of confidence
• Taking a moment to deliberately notice colors in the world around you can significantly enhance your moment, your day, and your life.
• Perfect pick-me-up gift for self-help, motivation, and happiness seekers, as well as lovers of pop art and bright colors
• Add it to the shelf with books like 52 Lists for Happiness: Weekly Journaling Inspiration for Positivity, Balance, and Joy by Moorea Seal, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon, and Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration by Meera Lee Patel

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 341

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post 341: Live Life Colorfully: The Intersection Between Words and Art – Interview with Jason Naylor appeared first on DIY MFA.

It has to be approached from a behavioral perspective and on a case by case basis because each person is unique. Patient privacy has to be respected and protected and so the challenges of extracting useful data that can be reproduced and validated are significant, but diligent study has produced a number of sound theories and approaches to human psychology.

Neuroscience is a multi-disciplinary branch of biology that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, cytology, mathematics, and the aforementioned psychology to study the human nervous system. It focuses study on the brain, spinal cord, and neurons, including structures, neurochemical interactions, and functionality.

While you don’t need a PhD in psychology or neuroscience to write a good story, even informal study of these topics can improve your storytelling in the following cool, word-nerdy ways.

Character Motivation

Every character arc begins with an external or conscious desire and an internal or unconscious need. Sometimes the desire and the need can be related, but many of the best stories arise when the two conflict with each other.

The character arc is complete when one of the following occurs:

• The character recognizes the lie or misbelief inherent in their conscious desire, the truth of their unconscious need, and changes enough to achieve their story goal (positive change arc).
• The character clings to the lie of their conscious desire and rejects the truth of their unconscious need, and fails to either change or achieve their story goal (negative change arc).
• The character understands the truth of their unconscious need all along and influences the other characters around them to change for the better (flat arc).

The key to creating a convincing and satisfying character arc lies in understanding the character’s motivation. Why do they act the way they do? If you apply psychological principles to the motivations of your characters, you can create a consistent character arc, placing clues in the things the character says and does throughout the story that foreshadow the upcoming change, or failure to change, in a way that feels authentic to your character and therefore, to your reader.

Causality

Cause and effect is all about plot, but where does the plot of any story originate? In the characters and their actions. Just as you should be confident that each of your characters are internally consistent in terms of the desires, needs, and overall character arcs, you should also ensure that the plot of your story grows organically and logically from your protagonist’s actions.

Part of that involves making sure that when your protagonist acts, other characters, including the antagonist, if applicable, react to those actions in believable ways that propel the plot forward. Psychology and neuroscience can help you assess whether these actions and reactions (cause and effect trajectories) make sense.

Whatever your protagonist does, they should act (not think about acting in the future or reflect on actions of the past). If you’ve ever received the comment that your protagonist lacks agency, it means that they’re passive and letting the events of the external plot pull them along. Your protagonist should make decisions, take actions, and deal with the consequences. Each consequence, in turn, should result in another decision and another action. Thus progresses the plot.

The protagonist’s cause and effect trajectory through the story, as well as interactions with other characters, can produce obstacles, which must be overcome, and complications, which worsen the existing situation. Each decision and action should be true to the character. The character’s reactions to every obstacle and complication should likewise be true to their desires and needs.

Depicting Neurodiversity

Neurodiversity is the range of differences in individual brain function and behavioral traits, regarded as part of normal variation in the human population. It’s most often used in the context of people on the autism spectrum, but also includes those living with learning disabilities and mental health issues. You likely have neurodiverse friends or family and it’s a good idea to want to write about them as part of your fictional world.

This section’s going to come with some cautions, though. Depicting neurodiversity well is difficult at the best of times and if you, yourself, are not neurodiverse, it’s even harder. I would caution against writing a neurodiverse character based on read (or viewed) research alone. Find someone (or several someones) in your community who identifies as neurodiverse and see if they’re willing to sit down and talk about their experience of the world. Consent is paramount. Be upfront about the fact that you’re doing research because you want to include a character like your friend in the novel you’re writing. Let them know that it would be extra helpful if they’d be interested in reading your scenes after you’ve written them. If they decline, or prefer not to be involved, respect that.

If you can’t find someone you know who’d be willing to help, there are sensitivity readers. Yes, this is a paid service. These people are professionals. Interact with them as such. This is an area, like depicting any form of diversity in your characters, where you can’t afford to get it wrong.

Some thoughts on that:

• Resist the temptation to make your antagonist or villain the only neurodiverse character in your story. If any of your readers share the kind of neurodiversity your antagonist displays, the only character they can identify with is your villain.
• Unless you’re portraying your personal neurodiversity or have a dedicated neurodiverse friend or sensitivity reader to help you with all the critical details, endowing your protagonist with a profound or complex variety of neurodiversity may not be wise. A neurodiverse reader will be able to tell the difference and inaccuracies can cause harm you don’t intend.
• Characters are rarely only diverse in one way. This is known as intersectionality. A character could live with obsessive-compulsive disorder and be a person of color. A character may live with extreme social anxiety and be asexual. A character could live with synesthesia and a visual impairment. Again, you may wish to consult sensitivity readers when creating a character of this level of complexity.
• If you choose to write neurodiverse secondary characters, resist the urge to make them a victim of the antagonist. Again, if they’re the only neurodiverse character, readers who share that neurodiversity may think that the character’s only purpose is to show how evil the villain is, to motivate the (usually neurotypical) protagonist, and that the character, and thus their neurodiversity, is objectified in a negative way. It’s better to show a neurodiverse character making positive contributions to team good, not in spite of, or even because of, their neurodiversity. They’re just a really good programmer, or fighter, or doctor, who also happens to be neurodiverse.

Ultimately, a neurodiverse character’s story is not just about their neurodiversity any more than a character of color’s story would just be about the color of their skin or a visually impaired character’s story would just be about their visual impairment. It’s just one aspect of who they are.

Taking it to the page

For writing-specific psychology resources, I’d recommend Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story and Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal. To start. There are more books on the subject. Just have a look.

There are tons of good resources that you can find on the internet every day. Try not to limit yourself to the obvious choices like Psychology Today, though it’s a great place to start. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian often have articles on psychology and neuroscience.

Scientific American and Popular Science have interesting articles, too. I’ve found inspiration on NPR, the CBC, and the BBC. Gizmodo and IFLS can lead you to some interesting findings, as well. There are great YouTube channels to peruse, like SciShow Psych, Kati Morton, and Inverse has an irregular feature with Shannon Odell on how various things (coffee, puppies, lack of sleep) affect your brain.

Become an information magpie and, if you find something of interest, the scientist’s names will be cited, or there will be a link to the source article or material. Then you can dig in. Deepening your understanding of the human mind and how it works can only improve your craft.

Until next time, keep speculating and see where it leads you!

Melanie Marttila creates worlds from whole cloth. She’s a dreamsinger, an ink alchemist, and an unabashed learning mutt. Her speculative short fiction has appeared in Bastion Science Fiction Magazine, On Spec Magazine, and Sudbury Ink. She lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, where she spends her days working as a corporate trainer. She blogs at https://www.melaniemarttila.ca and you can find her on Facebook and Twitter.

The post What Psychology and Neuroscience Contribute to your Stories appeared first on DIY MFA.

If you answered “Yes” to the question in the title, then you got it wrong.

The fabulous Kristen Lamb—author, blogger, and friend—often gives this pop quiz at conferences. She’ll tell the audience: “Raise your hand if you’re an aspiring writer.” Some people wave wildly like the writing version of Hermione Granger. A few others hesitate at first, then slowly muster the strength to sneak their hand up. After a few seconds, most of the room has their hand in the air. I’ll admit, the first time I heard hear ask this question even I raised my hand.

Of course as the audience soon discovers, this is a trick question.

No one is an “aspiring” writer. If you write, you are a writer. Period. End of story. It’s a telling fact that so many of us need to qualify our status as writers by calling ourselves “aspiring.” In fact, I’ve found this is true with most creative careers, where we’ll hear people say they are aspiring actors or musicians, but we never hear someone call themselves an “aspiring plumber” or an “aspiring neuroscientist.”

I share this anecdote to underscore the power of words, even if those words seem inconsequential. Whether we tack on the dreaded a-word when we call our selves writers, is only the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, every word matters, and when we talk about ourselves, those are often the most influential words of all. What we tell ourselves about our writing not only shifts our perspective about the work itself, but shades how we view ourselves as creative people.

Last November I shared a personal story with this community, and today I wanted to take that story one step further. I want to talk about how the language I’ve chosen around bipolar disorder has shaped both the way I see my illness and how I live with it. These nuances might seem like mere semantics, but as writers we know how much words matter. Here are two decisions I have made regarding word choice and how they have influenced my thoughts, my beliefs, and even my actions.

Being vs. Having

“My friend/sister/neighbor is bipolar.” This is a refrain I’ve heard often since sharing the story about my illness. I’ve even had some people tell me: “I’m bipolar, too.”

Every time I hear the word “is” or “am” in relation to mental illness it makes my skin bristle, because I refuse to think of myself as someone who is her mental illness. I usually try to correct people (lovingly, of course), using the word “have” in place of the verb “to be.”

Early on, I decided this disease was not going to define who I am. I may be many things—a woman, a Brazilian-American, a New Yorker, and word-nerd-in-chief at DIY MFA—but I most certainly am not my mental illness. Yes, I have bipolar, the same way someone might have cancer, only we don’t call them “cancerous.”

This being vs. having conundrum has challenged me to develop more empathy for how other people describe themselves as well. When I talk to someone about charged topics, I’m very careful to listen to how they describe themselves. After all, just because I have decided not to define myself by my diagnosis doesn’t mean that another person might not make a different choice, and if I impose my choice on them, I’m no better than those people who label me by my mental illness.

This need for empathy and understanding applies to any aspect of identity, by the way, including gender, race, nationality, socioeconomic status, mental health, or even politics. The key is remembering that the words we choose—even something as seemingly minor as the distinction between being vs. having—can have a profound impact on how we think.

Because vs. Despite

I recently took a writing class where I submitted an essay about bipolar disorder. When it was time to discuss my piece, the teacher said how inspiring it was that I accomplished so much despite having this huge obstacle in my life. I almost choked on my coffee when I heard this. And after a few other students echoed the sentiment, I knew the conversation would amount to little more than “inspiration porn.”

A lot of people talk about success as either something we achieve either because of our good qualities and advantages, or as something we reach despite the challenges we face.

But when it comes to bipolar disorder, this because vs. despite dichotomy is problematic. Some might argue that this illness has helped spur my creative accomplishments, not unlike that idealized image we have of a tortured artist. In fact, Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Touched with Fire suggests a strong tie between bipolar illness and creativity. You could also use it to explain away some of my less glamorous moments: “Don’t mind Gabriela… she’s just having one of her episodes.” On the other hand, you could take the same position as that writing teacher, stressing how inspiring it is that I achieved so much, despite the setbacks caused by my topsy-turvy brain chemistry.

Though “because” and “despite” seem to be opposites in this context, I dislike them for the same reason, because they imply causality between my achievements (or boneheaded failures) and my illness. The truth is, that causal link doesn’t actually exist. Bipolar isn’t something I’ve succeeded because of or in spite of, it’s simply something that has been alongside me throughout my journey.

Choosing to say “alongside” is key. This subtle semantic shift has overturned how I perceive the illness itself and the role it plays in my life. It is no longer a partner in crime or an obstacle I must overcome, it’s just a fellow traveler on the road with me.

It’s Your Turn

My challenge for you today is to think—really think—about the words you use when you talk about yourself, your life, your creative process, and even your health, either physical or mental. Strip those words down to their barest essentials. Try to understand that deeper meaning behind them.

Then choose one word or short phrase and rewrite it. Use different words. Be deliberate. I gave you two examples here. Now it’s time to make your own.

As always, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Pop Quiz: Are You an Aspiring Writer? appeared first on DIY MFA.

In this episode I break down the art of the ask into three simple steps and walk you through how you can artfully ask for things as small as a re-tweet or as large as the favor I asked for when I was in college. Listen in to hear the whole story.

The Art of the Ask in 3 Simple Steps

1) Just ask.

Most of us are so scared of hearing that “no” that we hold off on asking for things that are actually quite feasible. Most people are good and altruistic at heart, and they’ll be happy to offer some help… if they know you need it. But they’re not mind-readers and they won’t know to help you unless you ask. The first step to getting the help you want or need is to swallow your pride and ask for help. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

2) Show what’s in it for them.

Yes, most people are good and altruistic, but it doesn’t hurt to show them that helping you could actually help them too. Lead with service and kindness. Offer to help them first and foremost, before asking for something in return. Don’t make it all about you and what you get out of the equation.

And if you’re asking for help from someone truly amazing (someone you’d never be able to adequately “repay” by offering to help them) then just say something nice. Compliment their work. Tell them you loved the talk they gave at such-and-such conference. Thank them for inspiring you. We’re all human, after all, and we love hearing that our work is valued and appreciated. When asking for help, “please” and “thank you” go a long way.

When you do ask for something, make the request specific and super-easy for the other person to do. Don’t ask someone to “help promote your book,” give them something specific and easy that they can do, like tweet out your latest blog post (in which case, provide the link already formatted as a sample tweet).

TIP: Bloggers and people with huge social media followings are unlikely to promote a paid product, so go for more of a soft sell. Put a link to your book in the footer of your most most content-rich blog posts and ask people to share those posts. Alternatively, you can also offer to write a guest post for bloggers and include a link to your book in the bio.

3) Motivate them to help you. (And to do it now.)

People often procrastinate, so you want to motivate them to want to help you and to do it right away. Part of this is making it super-easy for them to help. If you make it as easy as clicking “publish” on a tweet the likelihood of people procrastinating goes down. But sometimes you need to add a little extra incentive to make people want to get on the bandwagon right now. This is where it’s key to make people feel like whatever you need help with is bigger than just you.

Friends, fans and colleagues all want to feel like they’re part of something that’s bigger than themselves. Think of the ice bucket challenge that went viral this past summer. I’m not here to argue the politics or ethics of the challenge itself; that’s a topic the scope of this podcast. (As with many things that go viral on the internet, many people were pro-challenge, but some were not fans.) What I’d like to underscore is how the challenge made people feel like they belonged to something meaningful and how it motivated people to join the charge because they wanted to be part of this movement. The challenge created a feeling of camaraderie among the participants and it was that sense of unity that made people want to join… and do it right away.

Questions to consider:

How can you ask for help in a way that motivates people to stop procrastinating and help right now? How can you make helping so ridiculously easy that people would be fools to say no? How can you help first, and ask second? That’s what this podcast is about.

Resource Recap:

After recording this episode, I watched this fantastic TED Talk by Amanda Palmer about The Art of Asking. It’s a slightly different take on this concept, but definitely complimentary to what you heard in this episode so check it out. Amanda Palmer’s book (by the same title) is due out in November and I don’t know about you, but I’m counting down the days to when I can get my copy. Check out her website for more info or to pre-order a copy.

Link to Episode 10

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!
Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 10: The Art of the Ask – How to Get What You Want appeared first on DIY MFA.