Gifted Underachievers

All creatives have immersive careers. We live in our own minds for long periods of time. We need to go to our office/home/studio wherever and just be on our own, away from people to think. That is creative work even though a brush isn’t on a canvas, words aren’t being produced, the stage is empty. Explaining this need to people wondering why we are leaving a party…or not showing up…always (often?)...

Many creative folks work remotely and have video meetings with people from all over the world. Your Gifted Underachievers are two such people—James has many meetings with clients, publishers, and agents, and Pat has students and clients in far-flung places such as Singapore, New Zealand, Central Europe, and the U.K. We’ve both noticed that people located in Eastern Time (North America) can sometim...

Nietzsche said “Love your fate because your trials are necessary.” This isn’t nihilism—quite the contrary. There can be great meaning in welcoming your challenges rather than seeing them as “bad luck” or “unfair.” In this brief segment, the Gifted Underachievers talk about how loving their fates has increased their own sense of agency and control. Question for Listeners: Do you love your fate? Buy...

When James pitches for a ghostwriting gig, he needs to quickly present himself as a capable professional to clients for projects often worth $80k or more. Pat faces much the same situation when she meets with prospective clients: they have to believe that she offers professional services that will get them closer to their writing and publishing goals. While they represent two different roles in th...

The Academy is relentless in their push to sue the Gifted Underachievers for $1B. They have won removal of the case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. But worse than that: They want the GU Clubhouse. The team are up against the wall; they’re being rolled by a well-funded and motivated adversary. In an act of desperation, they launch the GU Extraction Team. Questions for Listener...

After a period of offering two main services, James has focused on ghostwriting without distraction, with the goal of becoming one of the top 20 ghostwriters in the country. Pat has more than one sphere of operation, and she freely tosses around terms like “beachhead” and “flagship” to describe how she successfully manages these separate spheres. Note—In case you’re wondering, the characteristics...

The Gifted Underachievers talk about how to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a creative worker’s art. Are there guard rails that will help you deliver a needed truth in a way that feels supportive while getting taken seriously by the artist? What are the tenets of constructive critiquing? We share our experiences in workshop environments and MFA programs and share real-world examples of how...

If you were to write a tagline for your internal narrative as a creative, what would it be? Pat and James talk about how they view their internal creative narrative. Unsurprisingly, Pat is the underdog fighting forward. James is the outsider doing his best to find a way inside. While these may be true self-assessments, what do they mean? How can we use our internal narratives to help our creative...

The Gifted Achievers have stepped in it now. The GU newsroom is reporting that the Academy is suing the Gifted Underachievers for $1B. This comes just weeks after Pat and James (mostly Pat) fired the GU legal team. The lawsuit is shutting down the GU Below the Line Crew Bee Oscars. More to come in future updates. Question for Listeners: * How much sillier can this get? [Answer: a lot] For Further...

The vast majority of schools are structured to recognize, validate and reward people who thrive with a certain way of learning. As most gifted underachievers have discovered, being good at school does not mean you will ace life and career. Conversely, not being good at school doesn’t mean you will fail. Many of us get more from experiences outside that structure. Although we might not do well init...

If you’re like us, you’re doing more than your own creative work to keep the lights on at home. Here in the Gifted Underachiever Clubhouse, we provide services to other creative folk who seek professional help in making their work the best it can be. Experience has taught us that a few skills come in very handy in building sustainable creative-adjacent careers across artistic disciplines. What are...

It’s our 100th Episode, and to celebrate this momentous achievement we are letting go of someone very dear to our hearts: novelist John Irving. Join us live as we release John back into the wild at an undisclosed location in the dead of night. And set your alerts for news of his reappearance in his very own adopted home town of Toronto, Canada! Question for Listeners: Do you think John will make i...

James is stuck. Pat has an idea: Try setting some constraints in your process or actual creative work to release creative flow. The key areas to place constraints, Pat explains, are time, form, and materials. Beyond that, the Gifted Underachievers discuss how to force decision making while diving deeper into a creative flow. Questions for Listeners: * What constraints might work for you? Buy us a...

It takes a village to make a movie, even a bad movie. But not everyone in that village gets the recognition they deserve. These are the people who comprise what is known as the Below the Line crew. IN this segment, the Gifted Underachievers pick up the Academy Awards’ slack. Questions for Listeners: * Aren’t we all as gifted underachievers below the line crew? Buy us a Coffee and Win a Guide to Wo...

Further to last week’s difficulties with finding the clock, the Gifted Underachievers are puzzled about what British folk mean when they invite you for a meal at “7 for 7:30.” Spoiler: It means about what you’d expect. Questions for Listeners: * What do you think about sitting down to dinner half an hour after you arrive at someone’s house? * If the invitation said “7 for 8,” would you still go? B...

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...