Gifted Underachievers

Throughout his life, James has driven past the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference campus in Ripton, Vermont, hundreds of times if not a thousand. Often, he speeds by as the writers’ conference is happening knowing he’d been rejected once more. That he has this connection to the campus is galling. But there are lessons to be learned from each failure and a discussion of why Bread Loaf and similar creat...

The clock (aka the timer) is handy for a couple of loquacious idiots like the Gifted Underachievers. But where is the damn thing?! Questions for Listeners: No questions today, we’re too busy looking for the other thing. Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putt...

In this segment, the Gifted Underachievers talk about one of the great benefits of being an artist in any field: making art forces you to pay attention, and attention to the real world gives you experiences you won’t have if you’re doomscrolling in the coffee shop. We talk about essayist and humorist David Sedaris, street photographer and poet Rodney DeCroo, and how to strengthen your “noticing” m...

In every creative field there are “top-tier” workers, aka A-listers, whose achievements are undeniable and well-earned. This milieu can seem like a closed system, but the Gifted Underachievers agree that the elite corner of the creative ecosystem survives only by seeking out and admitting new talent. Questions for Listeners: * Are you a member of the so-called creative elite? * If yes, can we inte...

Last year, the board of a prestigious Canadian arts grant recommended Pat for a grant, but then they ran out of money before her name came up on the approved list. This year? Ame thing, exactly. WTF! Is this a victory, validation that Pat’s work and proposal are worthy? Or is this a more painful form of shunning? Plus! An important US NEH grant update: The worm turns! Questions for Listeners: * Ha...

Two years ago, James made a pearl. And he’s back at it, trying to bend the will of nature and time to his ‘creative’ whims. Questions for Listeners: * Any pearls in your past? For Further Exploration: Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so l...

In this segment, Pat brings up the issue of resetting our creative physiology via the five senses when we feel frazzled or just need to give the brain and body a break. This isn’t about some complex, time-consuming set of to-dos to add to your list. Instead, it’s about taking five or maybe ten minutes and doing something simple that either refocuses the mind or stretches the body. Questions for Li...

In this segment, Gifted Underachiever Dobes is just in from the opera house, where she did a high-profile speaking engagement and had them rolling in the aisles. Kidding! But Dobes has, in fact, spoken in front of an audience, occasionally for money. James has also spoken in front of an audience—for example, his legendary talk on creativity for the organization called Creative Mornings. We talk ab...

Here in the Gifted Underachievers clubhouse, we’ve been talking about travel lately. Spanish cities James would like to visit include Barcelona and Madrid. When Pat shares her experience of wonderful Barcelona, James realizes there’s been some weird episodes in his GU cohost’s life. Questions for Listeners: * Have you ever been to Barcelona? * What’s your favorite sport? Buy us a Coffee and Win a...

What “career” pathways exist for creative writers, visual artists, and actors? Is there anything analogous to the training grounds of the minor leagues in sports? We examine some options and come to the inevitable question for many people: how do I get into the minor leagues, period? What are the obstacles for your average creative worker, and how can we overcome those obstacles? The answers we fo...

The median income for all employed artists in all domains according to the NEA in 2023 was $70,170. Meanwhile, the value that all of that creativity delivers to the economy in the US (sorry Canada and Europe…more data to come) is $1.2 trillion. Does that feel like a disparity? It does to the Gifted Underachievers. Is it going to get worse now that Trump cut nearly all arts funding? You betcha. Wha...

After 100 episodes the gifted underachievers have decided it is time to release John Irving from controlled captivity in the Gifted Underachievers’ clubhouse.* This is it. As of June 18, 2006, John Irving will be free. Shockingly, Irving has still managed to be unbelievably productive. Questions for Listeners: * We’ve enjoyed ‘hosting’ the big man…have you had some fun, too? For Further Exploratio...

James and Pat ask questions, discuss options, and debate financial and productivity growth plans for creatives. The debate: Pat must convince James that it’s possible to have a growth plan for purely creative work. The plans: Pat and James run through their respective growth plans for BOTH their creative-adjacent and purely creative work. For both: How to find more capacity to do more and better w...

The gifted underachievers have lots of ideas. We’re not saying they’re good ideas, but sometimes you don’t know how a creative project’s going to work out until you do it. If you get partway into the project and discover you no longer care, is it time to ditch it? Or are there other things you can do? How about when you have two equally interesting ideas at the same time—which one do you work on f...

The Gifted Underachievers’ corporate HR Rep has installed a livestream device in the content creation clubhouse, pissing off the two biggest GUs in the whole org chart. Listen to Pat and James discuss their options in this battle royale with HR. Questions for Listeners: Do you think podcasters should have complete creative control of their content? YES or NO. Why? Buy HR a Coffee and Win a Book HR...

After a very busy and at times emotionally challenging past year, the Gifted Underachievers discuss what it felt like to be a kid looking forward to summer vacation and how even during the busy end of school, that thought provided a mental break. But at this time of life—adulthood generally—there isn’t a summer long vacation spanning out ahead of us. Instead, we are busy with work and all of our r...

Two experiments are running in the GU Clubhouse, each with the goal of developing an extra income stream and getting some new lines on our creative CVs. Our grant experiment started in September 2024 and we began entering writing contests in October 2025. Both are ongoing. Both have had “mixed” results (aka no money earned, but many lessons learned). In this segment, we discuss the key takeaways i...

Pat is lecturing James on the difference between a sweater, a Jumper, and Kurdistan when her throat seizes sending the Gifted Underachievers down yet another rabbit hole. Questions for Listeners: * What’s your favorite throat clearing technique? * Tea? * Warm lemon water with honey? Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creat...

A brief conversation with an avid reader leads Dobes to a valuable insight about pitching ideas to your audience: sometimes it takes an ‘outsider’ to the field to see problems with your approach. This leads your Gifted Underachievers to question the habit of pitching our story ideas to industry insiders—in the case of writers, we might describe our project to other writers, publishers, or agents,...

Gifted Underachiever Dobes returns from a month-long creative retreat (with some remote work sprinkled in) bearing pure gold—golden advice, that is! She got a fair amount of work done on her novel, though not as much as she’d hoped to get done. In this segment, we discuss the situation and “unpack” the lessons learned. Questions for Listeners: * Have you ever taken a creative retreat? * If yes, di...

You might not believe this, but it’s true: We Gifted Underachievers sometimes make mistakes. In this segment, we discuss why mistakes happen, what to do when you realize you’ve made one, and how to not just survive the experience, but learn from it. Questions for Listeners: * What’s the worst mistake you’ve made at your creative or creative-adjacent work? * Were there extenuating circumstances? *...

After a hectic few weeks (lifetime, really) the Gifted Underachievers gave in to their underachieverness and are taking a week off for calm reflection. But with soooooo much wonderful content over our TWO YEARS!!!!!! we couldn’t leave a total void. Our interview with wildly achieving Burlington, Vermont, artist Kath Montstream (first aired on October 7, 2024) was a ton of fun and filled with lots...

James comes out of the marketing wing of the Gifted Underachiever clubhouse feeling disillusioned. The marketers are coming up with catchphrases, but they’re not producing anything. He wants to know, “What makes my creative work matter?” Pat can sympathize, but she’s got no real answers except that while you’re creating something, it has to matter to you. We do many projects that never achieve mon...

Yes, even bright, well-intentioned people can display an uncharacteristic ability to ask dumb questions. We do it at work and at home. (And if you do that of your teenaged children, you know what the punishment is for a dumb question.) In fact, at one of James’s first ghostwriting gigs, the editor’s biggest question was “would you be afraid to ask dumb questions?” James said, NO! And he was hired....

Well, we’re not proud of this, but here in the Gifted Underachiever Clubhouse we’re starting to believe we might never blossom into our full creative potential. James has delusions about being a giant bead head (an artificial nymph fly-fishers use). After all, if you’re going to be a nymph, you might as well be a giant fake one. In this short segment, we ask ourselves, do we have what it takes to...