Creative Momentum with Meg

Meg Dunley
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Creative conversations and mindset coaching. Creative Momentum with Meg is a podcast featuring thoughtful conversations with writers, artists, musicians and performers about creative practice, process, and what it takes to keep going. Hosted by Meg Dunley, a creativity coach, each episode explores the rhythms of creative life—routine, doubt, momentum, rest, and persistence—with people making work across different disciplines and stages of practice. These are conversations about how creative work actually happens: not just the finished outcomes, but the habits, tensions, and questions that shape the work over time. Some episodes are short and focused, others more expansive. All are grounded in curiosity, honesty, and a belief that creative momentum is something that can be nurtured, not forced. Episodes are released weekly and are available in both audio and video formats. Show notes: megdunley.substack.com megdunley.substack.com

  1. FEB 5

    S1E24: Teylor B Bonner, Entrepreneur

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 24: Teylor B Bonner, Entrepreneur In this final episode of The Chateau Season, I interview Teylor Bonner, a photographer and filmmaker from Houston, Texas, who works across multiple creative mediums including clay sculpting, painting, writing, and jewellery making. Teylor’s approach to creativity is deeply connected to her human design as a manifesting generator – following bursts of energy and inspiration rather than forcing herself into rigid structures. While she wishes her process were more structured, she’s learned that following her energy and mood leads to better results. In filmmaking, she might start with storyboards and scripts but often abandons them mid-project, feeding lines to actors in the moment when it feels right, trusting her intuition over prescribed structures. Her creative routine centres on mindfulness: starting mornings with meditation, stretching, water or tea, and trying to journal consistently. She creates specific playlists and ensures she has a good breakfast with hydrating foods because once she’s zoned in, she’ll work for hours without eating, sometimes looking up to find a whole other day has passed. This deep flow state requires the self-care foundation she builds each morning. Teylor’s inspiration comes primarily from love-based connections – interactions with family, friends, and the warm feelings that come from connecting with people. Even negative interactions influence her work, but her core inspiration is rooted in love. She’s particularly inspired by artists focused on authenticity over following established rules. In the film world, she’s encountered people who insist documentaries must be lit a certain way or follow specific guidelines, but she questions why artists should keep following the same rules when art is meant to be freedom. Being around artists at the residency who create for themselves and do what they want has been deeply inspiring – it’s about taking off the limitations. Her wisdom for beginning creatives acknowledges that art is a vulnerable process and can be scary, but she reminds herself that people will judge regardless, you can never make everybody happy, and not everyone will like your art. Because art is subjective, the most important thing is creating for yourself, for your purpose, and from your core – blocking out what people tell you art should be. Art is whatever you make it to be, a way to express yourself. Her final advice is to take a risk on yourself, believe in yourself because if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will, and give yourself the opportunity to shine and to be seen. Connect with Teylor B Bonner * Instagram: rennobproductions * Shop: ofthesunapothecary.etsy.com * Website: rennobproductions.com * Email: rennobproductions@gmail.com Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    12 min

  2. JAN 28

    S1E23: Tatyana Anderson, Textile Artist & Couturier

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 23: Tatyana Anderson, Couturier & Textile Artist In this episode, I interview Tatyana Anderson, a textile artist and third generation couturier from Melbourne. Tatyana’s work spans bespoke couture fashion, realistic silk flowers, beading, embroidery, and pattern-making. What stands out most about her approach is her philosophy of listening to materials – she starts with fabric rather than ideas because she knows immediately what a fabric wants to become. She shares a memorable story about a fabric that insisted on being a corset when she wanted it to be a dress, and after three months of resistance, it became a corset, teaching her that sometimes it’s better not to argue with your materials because they’ll get their own way anyway. This relationship with materials extends to her silk flower work, where she creates realistic blooms by starting with actual flowers, photographing them extensively to understand their structure, colour, depth and variations, observing how even within one species like camellias there’s enormous diversity. Tatyana doesn’t follow a fixed creative routine, instead fitting her work around life using whiteboards to plan one to two months ahead for orders and runway deadlines, and inspiration boards where she posts sketches so her team can see where they’re heading. Her challenge isn’t finding inspiration – ideas strike constantly from fabrics, nature, flowers, and runway details – but rather deciding whether she has time to implement them or should pass them to someone else. She’s generous with ideas, finding other creatives to give them to when they don’t suit her style or timeframe. She draws inspiration from unexpected places, like transforming a detail from an Armani couture skirt into her own ‘Uncle Armani skirt’ with completely different construction. The heart of Tatyana’s wisdom comes from her second attempt at running a business. She emphasises finding your crowd and supporters, not wasting energy on people who don’t understand or support your creativity because they’ll never change. Most importantly, she stresses writing down why you’re doing your creative work – because on those inevitable days when you look at your work and think it’s terrible and you’re not good enough, you can pull out that piece of paper and remember your purpose. Whether you’re creating to sell thousands, to be a small boutique, or simply to make beauty, once you connect to your why, everything else becomes easier. This why grounds you when you’re uncertain about new collections or directions, helping you navigate the difficult creative days that happen to all of us. Connect with Tatyana Anderson Instagram Website Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    14 min

  3. JAN 20

    S1E22: Steve Capone, Writer and Publisher

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 22: Steve Capone, Writer and Publisher In this episode, I interview Steve Capone, a writer and publisher from Utah in the United States who lives near the Rocky Mountains. Steve has been teaching for 18 years but has been writing his whole life, getting serious about fiction writing about a dozen years ago after leaving graduate school where he spent seven years studying political philosophy and ethics. He writes primarily horror with a social commentary bent – sardonic, Kafkaesque stories that explore how systems (government, HOAs, social expectations) fail to meet the needs of common people. He started Whisper House Press 18 months ago with a mission focused on transparency, elevating voices that might not otherwise be heard, and revealing mundane but upsetting aspects of society. At the time of the interview, which was in August 2025, Steve had just released his first anthology and was launching a second in October, had signed his first three novella authors (including an Australian writer from outside Sydney, Jordan King-Lacroix), and publishes monthly short stories of 200-1,000 words. He recently won an award for a sarcastic letter to the editor about book banning in Utah and had a screenplay he developed at the Chateau selected in two film festivals. While at the residency, Steve began exploring visual art for the first time with encouragement from visual artists there, discovering it puts him in flow states – though he struggles to make time for it at home since most of his creative time goes to reading books and watching films for review, or reading generally. He consumes about 120 books a year (40-50 with his eyes, 60-80 audiobooks), constantly thinking about stories and structure. His creative process is mechanistic – identifying setting, conflict, and character, thinking through three-act or five-act structure, building scenes, considering character arcs – treating writing as craft with room for the muse showing up in the choices he makes. Steve works in flow states, listening to ambient or Math Rock (instrumental music too complicated to follow so his brain doesn’t track it), visualising the story unspooling in his brain and recording what he sees by typing it out. He needs dedicated writing spaces (basement office, coffee shops, libraries) where writing is the only purpose, working minimum two hours but ideally five to seven hours without pause – every Sunday spending six to eight hours at a coffee house, plus getting up at 5.30-6.00am on weekdays to work at Starbucks before teaching. His advice centres on having many tools in your tool belt and not being wedded to just one or two – different projects need different approaches, and if something isn’t working, try a tool you haven’t used yet. He recommends craft books including Chuck Wendig’s Gentle Advice for Writers, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Stephen King’s On Writing, Jane Allison’s Meander Spiral and Explode (about nonlinear plots), and Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook. He emphasises that in small press publishing, making yourself easy to work with – being pleasant, communicative, doing what you say you’ll do – is a superpower that gets you invited back, since the same person is often opening emails every time you submit. Connect with Steve Capone Steve’s publishing house Whisper House Press Other links: https://linktr.ee/stevecaponejr Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    41 min

  4. JAN 13

    S1E21: Sam Moe, Visual Artist and Writer

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 21: Sam Moe, Visual Artist and Writer In this episode, I interview Sam Moe, a visual artist and writer from Massachusetts who now lives in Huntsville, Alabama. Sam creates illustrations, paintings, and writes novels using a method called ‘braiding’ – something she was already doing intuitively before discovering the name for it. After reading The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas-Gonzalez about an indigenous Colombian basket weaver who wove her memoir together like weaving a basket, Sam realised ‘I do that but I don’t know what to call it’. She takes three or more stories and alternates them like braids in hair. In her paintings this appears as three separate columns representing three stories, or alternating colour schemes every few centimetres; in her writing, she braids memory, trauma, visual imagery, and research. Her work draws heavily on gastronomy research and represents herself through hands and body, often with metaphorical elements like faces containing animals inside them. Sam does extensive self-archival work, having kept 91 journals since age 12. She finds inspiration watching films about survivors of sexual violence and horror, and reading contemporary speculative memoir – a genre where people tell survivor stories visually or textually without using precise language. Key influences include Shea Hui Choa’s The Story Game, an experimental memoir written like a detective story interrogating how she got PTSD. Sam has a book called Cicatrizing the Daughters that’s recently been published and three more books planned for 2026. Her creative routine is remarkably disciplined – she writes and makes art every single day, though art is more triggering so she does less of it. At residencies she writes around 10,000 words daily; at school she completes three poems or one short story or essay in one sitting (3,000-4,000 words), collecting and editing these for submission to literary magazines that eventually become books. On weekends she writes around 8,000 words, needing to complete entire pieces or she gets nervous. She has a ritual of transporting all her materials – about 30 books – to whatever space she’s working in, setting everything up, then cleaning it all away so nobody touches it, which she attributes to not being able to make art safely growing up. These materials also serve as touchstones, objects that call forth theory and scholarly connections. Her advice to beginning creatives is to do whatever they want and write recklessly without anyone telling them what to do. She wrote 10 chaotic, messy novels before entering an MFA programme, which she found stifling and intense, stopping her writing for about 10 years. Sam emphasises writing for yourself rather than for the market or trends, noting that literary agents want work that’s uniquely you and different, and that prizes like the Man Booker celebrate extreme uniqueness – so being yourself is actually what’s applauded, even though the literary community can feel intense. Connect with Sam Moe Instagram Sam’s latest book: Cicatrizing The Daughters Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    18 min

  5. JAN 8

    S1E20: Naomi Elizabeth Montoya, Multidisciplinary Artist, and Su Hudson, Filmmaker

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 20: Naomi Elizabeth Montoya, multidisciplinary artist, and Su Hudson, Filmmaker In this episode, I interview the collaborative duo from Albuquerque, New Mexico Naomi Elizabeth Montoya, multimedia artist, and filmmaker Su Hudson. They have been creating site-specific dance films together for the past 20 years. Naomi started with painting and visual art in her youth, began dance in middle school, and has taught for 27 years – two decades of which have been at a performing arts school teaching contemporary dance. She's also performed with an Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian dance company. Su is a filmmaker with over 35 years in the film industry. Their collaborative work takes dancers off the stage and into other locations – diverse landscapes like the white sands of New Mexico (crystal gypsum sands) or domestic spaces like kitchens – creating films that they often bring back to stage for multimedia performances combining film with live dance or installations. Their creative process is location-driven and spontaneous – they might plan extensively but don't really know what will happen until they arrive at a location, as conditions like wind, sand texture, or spatial constraints change how movement unfolds. They're primarily inspired by landscape and space, exploring how diverse New Mexican environments fuel creation, but also work extensively in domestic spaces to explore the female experience – particularly kitchens as the heart of homes where secrets, gossip, and life's stories unfold. Naomi's individual process involves journaling, improvisational movement, and letting ideas sit before developing them, sometimes keeping ideas on the shelf for months or years before completing them. Su handles technical aspects like lighting and equipment. They work around grants with parameters, fitting creative work around daily tasks and paid employment. Their advice to beginning creatives emphasises finding your community of supportive people when family support isn't available, not taking no for an answer, doing what you love so everything falls into place, learning your tools and equipment, applying for grants, doing the work repeatedly until you create something you like, and viewing every experience – even rejections – as learning opportunities. Naomi particularly stresses that creative work feeds the soul and brings happiness even without financial wealth, and that if work feels fun, it's probably what you should do. Connect with Naomi Elizabeth Montoya Instagram Bio Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    22 min

  6. 12/30/2025

    S1E19: Michael Manning, Visual Artist

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 19: Michael Manning, Visual Artist In this episode, I interview Michael Manning, a collage artist from Boston, Massachusetts, also known as Westwood. Michael has been doing collage art since he was about 14 years old and took it professional right out of college in 2013. His creative work focuses on piecing together elements of modern-day identity, exploring the things that people collect and finding serendipity in those moments – always focused on cooperation, collage, collections, and fascinated with words. Michael’s creative process is built around asking questions – he believes it’s all about collection and asking good questions, trusting that if you ask the right questions, you’ll very naturally find the answers. He loves questions and diversity in his work. His specific process involves finding an image first, often getting a commission to recreate a photograph, which he projects onto a canvas and then works almost like a paint-by-numbers approach. He rifles through magazines and materials that people discard, looking for pieces of paper and colours – going through systematically to find specific colours like blues or greens, then skin tones, building up his palette. He describes finding the colours he needs and then trying to find corresponding textures and contexts that match, creating collections of imagery that he can draw from for his collage work. His process combines traditional artistic techniques with found materials, creating new compositions that explore modern identity through collected fragments. Connect with Michael Manning Instagram Website Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    14 min

  7. 12/23/2025

    S1E18: Mary Powell, Multidisciplinary Artist

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 18: Mary Powell In this episode, I interview Mary Powell, a multi-disciplinary artist from California who describes herself as someone who can get her hands on pretty much anything and everything – a jack-of-all-trades, master of as many trades as possible. Mary has technical training in oil painting, sculpture, and drawing, and over time has explored stained glass, mixed media printmaking, and photography. She’s tried pretty much any medium that’s out there, at least once or wants to add it to her list. Her creative process is spontaneous and messy – she explains that it’s not the same every time and she doesn’t have a defined approach, but it’s pretty much different almost every single time. She starts with both enthusiasm and a very long time commitment, describing herself as a very messy person who definitely is not tidy with her creative process. She does the thing, gets everything she needs, and lays it all out, acknowledging there’s a lot of inspiration everywhere – from different places, different projects, and pictures she’s found. Mary explains that she knows where everything is and exactly what she needs next, and gravitates towards whatever interests her in the moment. She gets obsessed with something for a while, and it’s whatever she’s drawn to at that time – whether that’s the subject matter or the materials themselves. She just kind of gets into that headspace and allows her curiosity and immediate interests to guide her creative exploration across multiple disciplines and media. Connect with Mary Powell Instagram Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    13 min

  8. 12/16/2025

    S1E17: Maddie Kimber, Children's book illustrator

    Season 1: The Chateau Season Episode 17: Maddie Kimber, Children's book illustrator In this episode, I interview Maddy, a 25-year-old children's book illustrator, graphic designer, and screen printer from Illinois who now lives in Savannah, Georgia. Maddy's work focuses on telling stories to kids in a respectful and creatively fulfilling manner – avoiding the tendency to just use bright colours and crazy visuals to grab children's attention, instead focusing on more mundane but impactful stories using animal characters. Her creative process is deeply informed by her own childhood experiences with undiagnosed ADHD, thinking about the difficult feelings and big issues she struggled to navigate as a kid without the nuance of adulthood. She works extensively with animal characters to create allegory that's both fun and engaging for children without scaring or boring them, believing that kids don't like being told how to do things but respond to stories that invoke imagination. Her process involves lots of sitting, doodling, figuring out what fits the story, doing colour studies, and thinking about how colour engages different moods – using saturated colours because she feels things deeply, but not to dictate how viewers should feel. Maddy's creative inspirations include her mum, a therapist who has a gift for making people feel seen and heard; Winnie the Pooh and A.A. Milne; Calvin and Hobbes and Bill Watterson; and Louis Wain, known for painting anthropomorphic cats with gouache and his mastery of colour and brushstrokes. She emphasises remaining curious as central to her creative routine, spending lots of time with her sketchbook to practice skills and explore outside her comfort zone – especially important since client work requires more cautious steps, while personal art and sketchbook work allows experimental exploration. She's particularly interested in drawing anthropomorphic animals living human routines, carrying over human elements into animals. Her advice to beginning creatives is to make bad art – with the understanding that no art is ever bad if it's bringing you closer to your vision – and to think of art like singing in the car: something you do not because you need an endpoint but because it's natural to humans to have fun and express themselves creatively. She encourages people to keep making art while honing technical skills, taking the steps that feel right for them rather than the ones that will turn them into someone else. Connect with Maddie Kimber Website Instagram Tattle tails Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min
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About

Creative conversations and mindset coaching. Creative Momentum with Meg is a podcast featuring thoughtful conversations with writers, artists, musicians and performers about creative practice, process, and what it takes to keep going. Hosted by Meg Dunley, a creativity coach, each episode explores the rhythms of creative life—routine, doubt, momentum, rest, and persistence—with people making work across different disciplines and stages of practice. These are conversations about how creative work actually happens: not just the finished outcomes, but the habits, tensions, and questions that shape the work over time. Some episodes are short and focused, others more expansive. All are grounded in curiosity, honesty, and a belief that creative momentum is something that can be nurtured, not forced. Episodes are released weekly and are available in both audio and video formats. Show notes: megdunley.substack.com megdunley.substack.com

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