The Spark File with Susan Blackwell and Laura Camien

What if the thing your creativity needs most… isn’t more effort—but more delight?

In this episode of The Spark File Podcast, we’re diving into the deceptively simple, wildly powerful practice of The Artist Date — a concept from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way that might just change your creative life.

If you’ve been pouring energy into making, producing, solving, and showing up — but feeling a little… creatively dry? This one’s for you.

We explore what happens when you shift from constant output to intentional input — when you step away from the grind and give your imagination something to feast on. From solo breakfasts and antique warehouses to wandering with no agenda and rediscovering boredom, we unpack how curiosity, novelty, and play can reignite your creative spark.

Plus:


Why your inner artist might be feeling a little neglected


The surprising science behind stepping away from your work


The “rules” of an Artist Date (and how to break them just enough)


A powerful question: What would your creativity say about your relationship?

Consider this your permission slip to go wander, wonder, and maybe—just maybe—poke a bug with a stick.

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What is creativity… really?

In this episode of The Spark File Podcast, we dive headfirst into one of the most slippery — and surprisingly limiting — questions in the creative world: how do we define creativity in the first place?

Along the way, we unpack why so many traditional definitions leave people out, explore the difference between “revolutionary” lightning-bolt ideas and the quieter, powerful force of evolutionary creativity, and challenge the belief that creativity is reserved for the chosen few.

Drawing from decades of experience (and a few delightful bloopers along the way), we land on a definition that is simple, expansive, and radically inclusive, and specifically Spark File:

Creativity is applied imagination that fights for the power of good.

And when you start to see it that way… everything changes.

This episode is an invitation to recognize the creativity already alive in your life —and to begin using it more intentionally, more frequently, and more courageously.

Because creativity isn’t just what you make.

It’s how you live.

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What happens after the big creative push?

In this episode of The Spark File Podcast, Susan and Laura dive into the all-too-real experience of the creative hangover — that strange, tender, sometimes disorienting crash that can come after a big creative risk, milestone, performance, launch, or emotional lift. One minute you’ve done the brave thing. The next? You’re flattened, fragile, weirdly ashamed, or unable to answer a single email.

Inspired by a rich conversation in a recent Coach’s Corner, this episode explores why creative hangovers happen, what they can feel like, and how to care for yourself on the other side. Susan and Laura talk about everything from chemical cascades and nervous system overload to shame spirals, recovery days, processing with a trusted friend, resetting your space, and building a pre- and post-creative care plan.

Because making something brave is only part of the process. Recovering with kindness is part of the creative practice too. 

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What do we do with the grief that doesn’t come with a funeral, a clear ending, or even a name?

In this tender and powerful episode of The Spark File Podcast, Laura shares a spark about “Ambiguous Grief” — the kind of loss that lives in the in-between. It can show up in a relationship that ended without closure, a loved one who is here physically but no longer fully here, a dream that never quite got to live, or the loss of a future you thought would be yours.

Together, Susan and Laura explore what it means to grieve what is unresolved, unseen, or unfinished — and how naming that grief can help us begin to make meaning of it. They also look at the connection between ambiguous grief and creativity, and why so many of us may be carrying sorrow we’ve never been taught how to recognize.

If you’ve ever felt the ache of something lost without knowing exactly how to mourn it, this episode is for you.

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What happens when the thing you reach for to soothe yourself starts quietly stealing your time, your attention, and your creative life force?

In “Dopamine Reset”, this week’s episode of The Spark File Podcast, Susan shares her deeply personal experience of getting hooked on TikTok during a season of illness and exhaustion — and what helped her find her way back. Using insights from Dr. Anna Lembke’s book, Dopamine Nation, Susan and Laura explore the science of dopamine, the sneaky design of our frictionless modern world, and the very real cost of compulsive overconsumption.

They dig into how addiction can show up in surprising forms, why so many of us feel trapped in cycles of craving and numbing, and what a dopamine reset can offer us in return: more presence, more freedom, and more room for the creative work and real life that matter most.

If you’ve ever looked up from your phone and thought, Wait… where did my time go? — this one’s for you.

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