The Difficulty: Creativity, Meaning & the Hard Work of a Life

Dr. Chad Prevost
  • 0,0 (0)
  • Autoajuda
  • Duas vezes/semana

The Difficulty is a podcast about creativity, meaning, and the hard choices that shape a life. Each week, writer and publisher Chad Prevost works through the questions underneath the creative process and the examined life—how we make work that matters, sit with life's difficulties instead of rushing past them, and keep going. Expect arguments, reflections, and the occasional witness to something worth seeing. Slower, more contemplative episodes land on Saturdays. It's also the voice of Crossroads Publishing Group, a press built on a single idea: books are occasions for community. If you're a creative, a thinker, a maker, or anyone navigating the difficulty of doing meaningful work—pull up a chair. chadprevost.substack.com

  1. Wait, For Now

    há 22 h

    Wait, For Now

    There’s the feeling of standing on the edge of everything and nothing at once. So much that might happen. So much that could happen. And nothing has happened yet. You can feel your whole life leaning forward, and you can also feel that today, right now, for all your efforts, nothing’s changed. Sometimes joy and sadness in the same hour. The almost. We’ve been taught to treat the almost like a waiting room. A dull hallway before the real thing starts. This week’s episode makes the opposite case: the almost is not the hallway. It’s the room. The waiting is not the thing before your life. It is your life, and there’s a way to be in it that isn’t agony. I let three poets say it better than I can. Galway Kinnell, in “Wait,” a poem he reportedly wrote for a student close to giving up: “Wait, for now. / Distrust everything if you have to. / But trust the hours. Haven’t they / carried you everywhere, up to now?” Not the highs. Not the crash the morning after the highs. The hours. They didn’t fail you before. They’re just not done. Wendell Berry, six lines called “The Real Work,” for when it isn’t just waiting but stuck: “The mind that is not baffled is not employed. / The impeded stream is the one that sings.” The smooth stream makes no sound. It’s the rock in the water that makes the music. Being baffled doesn’t mean you’re off the path. It means you’ve come to your real work. Rilke, to his young poet: ripen like the tree that doesn’t force its sap. “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Not solve your way in. Live your way in. And then, for the first time on the show, one of my own, from a collection coming soon called Mirage and Tar. It arrived easily after a David Whyte walking tour, back home in the ordinary house after the extraordinary time. The first two stanzas: Lightly When you step, step lightly,though you may not know where to go. But step, and know you get there by going,not by thinking where to go.When you breathe, breathe lightly,and trust the air to be there.Your breath knows what to do without thinking, but will followthe way you want to go… The practice this week is one small thing. Once today, name one thing that is ripening in you. Something real and forming and not yet finished. Then, on purpose, refuse to demand that it be finished today. Just name it, let it ripen, and go on with your hours. The verb isn’t hurry. It isn’t arrive. It’s wait — the way Kinnell means it. Active waiting. Trusting the hours. Listen to the full episode above. New episodes Mondays and Thursdays. Poems: Galway Kinnell, “Wait” (Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, 1980); Wendell Berry, “The Real Work”; Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. “Lightly” © Chad Prevost, from the forthcoming Mirage and Tar. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    17 min
  2. Genesis Greykid and Chad Prevost on the Creative Life and the Pathless Path

    há 4 dias

    Genesis Greykid and Chad Prevost on the Creative Life and the Pathless Path

    Host Chad Prevost and co-host Genesis launch the first live happy-hour episode of The Difficulty from Home Bar in downtown Chattanooga, inviting listeners to join Fridays and describing the city as a creative crossroads. They discuss Chattanooga’s “animal” vibe, then welcome Chicago-based curator/artist LaRon Dittoe, who works in finance and commits to a monthly creative practice through gallery shows and artist dinners, and shares her handle and a planned September Chicago exhibition. Another guest, Nic Chung (an artist in Chattanooga), argues creativity is an identity beyond mediums and reflects on a dream of dying that shifted him toward minimizing regret rather than fear. The group talks about confronting “the bottom,” social anxiety, community, sponsors, the show’s growth, weekly giveaways (including The Artist’s Way next week), Chad’s daily reader book structure, and brief UFO skepticism and faith-versus-doubt discussion. Tune in every Friday for conversations that begin one place and always take you somewhere else like a good poem. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    41 min
  3. The Big Five Just Chased the Indie Author

    há 5 dias

    The Big Five Just Chased the Indie Author

    The difficulty in life is the choice. And every choice is a crossroads. This week’s Working Writer roundup covers three stories that land on the same square, plus an announcement I’ve been sitting on. 1. Simon & Schuster relaunched Pocket Books as a home for indie and hybrid authors.One of the oldest names in American paperback publishing, rebuilt around signing successful self-published writers to print deals. Their own words: “a home for forward-thinking writers, including bestselling indie and hybrid authors looking to amplify their reach.” Translation: New York is no longer asking who has a manuscript. It’s asking who has readers. The room you build around your work isn’t the consolation prize anymore. It’s the asset. 2. The industry is counting its robots.BISG and BookNet Canada opened their 2026 “AI in the Book Industry” survey (through July 17). Last year’s round found about half the industry using AI, almost entirely in the plumbing: admin, marketing, data. Not the voice. I talk about where Crossroads stands: machines in the machinery, humans in the writing, audiobooks narrated by human beings. The flood of machine-made content drowns the generic. It can’t drown a voice a reader trusts. 3. Fourteen thousand librarians walked into Chicago.The American Library Association held its 150th annual conference: 14,801 registrants making plans for the future of reading. The quiet answer to “nobody reads anymore,” and a reminder that the professional middle (librarians, book clubs, spiritual directors, retreat leaders) is where books actually travel. And some news of our own: starting this Friday, I’m launching a new live series with Genesis the Greykid, fine-art poet and co-owner of Home, the bar at the corner of Fourth and Market in downtown Chattanooga. A crossroads city, a bar on an intersection, and conversations about the in-betweens: the hard choices, and the constraints (time, money) we build a creative life inside. It can be beautiful. If you’re a writer with a message standing at your own crossroads, that’s what we build at Crossroads Publishing Group. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    12 min
  4. Working Writer: The Money Moved

    25 de jun.

    Working Writer: The Money Moved

    Five things that actually moved in publishing this month, and what to do about each. The Authors Guild puts hard numbers on why author income keeps slipping, Audible forces a year-end decision on audiobook royalties, FSG opens a no-fee $15,000 fellowship (deadline July 6), book discovery starts shifting from search to AI, and the indie bookstore "death" turns out to be growth. The channels you don't control are getting harder, so put your weight on the ones you do.Join us at crossroadspublishing.group. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    25 min
  5. Crossings: The 64-Page Book That Knows Where You Are

    22 de jun.

    Crossings: The 64-Page Book That Knows Where You Are

    How many books on your shelf were actually finished (if they were even began)? This episode is about a different kind of book: short on purpose, beautiful enough to keep, written from the far side of a hard turn for the person standing in it now. A case for concentration over padding, and the first look at Crossings, our new short-form line. Find us at crossroadspublishing.group. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    20 min
  6. Weekend Reflection: Penelope at the Loom

    20 de jun.

    Weekend Reflection: Penelope at the Loom

    Homer gives us a woman who weaves a shroud by day and unravels it by night, holding off a house full of suitors. We call it stalling. Homer calls it devotion. This one is for anyone whose truest work looks, from the outside, like waiting: the patient no, the thing left undone on purpose, the refusal to finish on someone else's terms.Find us at https//:www.crossroadspublishing.group. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    22 min
  7. Writing By Hand in the AI Era

    18 de jun.

    Writing By Hand in the AI Era

    I did an episode a few weeks back on Jasmine Sun’s provocations about independent writing in the AI era. One of those provocations: the value of polish is going down, and the value of personal style, charisma, and weirdness is going up. AI is very good at polished prose. AI is bad at voice—the particular moves only this writer would make, the typos the writer would have caught but didn’t, the metaphor that shouldn’t work but does because it’s coming from this particular mind. Sun’s frame and the longhand frame meet exactly here. Voice is the comparative advantage. Voice is what AI cannot generate. And handwriting is one of the most reliable disciplines we have for preserving and developing voice. Here’s why. When you type, autocomplete and muscle memory and the smoothness of the keyboard tend to push you toward standard phrasings. The fastest sentence to type is usually the most expected sentence. AI tools accelerate this further by suggesting the most predictable next phrase. Even without AI, typing tends to homogenize prose toward the average. When you write by hand, none of that exists. There is no autocomplete. There is no suggestion engine. There is only the pen and the next word, and the speed limit is your thinking. The sentence you write is the sentence you composed in your head and chose to put down. The sentence is unmistakably yours because nothing intervened between your mind and the page. In the AI era, the handwritten draft is not nostalgic. It is maximally human. It is the most reliable way to produce prose that could not have been generated.Here’s something I’d like you to try. Write your next essay—or a chapter—by hand. Don’t do it for one session. Do it for a few weeks, long enough to get into a flow. See what emerges that doesn’t emerge at the keyboard. If you do it, write me back and tell me what you found. --- WHY THIS KEEPS COMING UP I’m writing this partly because the original Medium article keeps showing up in my analytics every month, even though I wrote it years ago. Writers are looking for ways to think about the question of HOW THEY WRITE in a moment when the answer is contested. The longhand discipline is one answer that hasn’t gone out of fashion in the lifetimes of the writers I just named, and I don’t think it’s going out of fashion now. If anything, the AI moment makes it more important. If you’re working on something and you want a publisher who’ll talk to you about voice and craft and the actual practice of writing—not just the production at the end—Crossroads is that press. Discovery call on the site. Twenty minutes, free. The difficulty in life is the choice. —Chad This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    26 min
  8. Opening the Doors: The Crossroads Commons

    15 de jun.

    Opening the Doors: The Crossroads Commons

    TL;DRToday we open the doors. Crossroads Publishing Group—a hybrid publisher of serious nonfiction in Chattanooga—announces the Crossroads Commons, our founding membership. Three tiers; fifty lifetime Founder spots, ever.• Join the Commons → crossroadspublishing.group/commons• Publish with us → crossroadspublishing.group/engagements• The catalog → crossroadspublishing.group/catalog• Questions → chad@crossroadspublishing.group Most small presses spend their first year trying to look like a big press. We’re not doing that. A hybrid publisher of serious nonfiction, based in Chattanooga, founded this year, built around the idea that books are occasions for community—and that the press’s job is to take that seriously.The Long StoryA few weeks ago I made a decision about how Crossroads Publishing Group would set itself apart: a real commitment to relationship. Then, on a mountain bike trail a few days ago, the bigger version of the idea arrived. It’s not just relationship—one-on-one, editor and author. It’s community. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it: leadership books end at community. Recovery books end at community. Theology, parenting, loneliness, climate—trace the actual argument and the topic turns out to be the doorway in. Community is the thing itself. So I’m building the press to take that seriously, not as a marketing line, but as operating structure. Today’s episode lays out the whole thing. Five structural commitments: * Every Crossroads author gets a direct-purchase URL for their community—their people buy from the press, their royalty is higher, and the relationship stays out of the algorithm. * Every book launches with an event in the author’s community, wherever they live. * Every Crossroads author appears on The Difficulty. * Authors meet each other—the catalog becomes a community of minds, not a list of titles. * Readers get a structured way to belong to the press: the Crossroads Commons, open today. The Commons, three tiers: * Reader — $200/year. Every new title shipped to your door on publication day. A quarterly Circle Letter. 20% off direct orders. Your name in the colophon of every title shipped during your membership year. * Patron — $500/year. Everything above, plus a signed limited-edition hardcover each year (printed exclusively for Patrons), an invitation to the annual Crossroads gathering, private author Q&As at every launch, and 30% off. * Founder — $1,000, one time, lifetime. Limited to the first 50, ever. All Patron benefits in perpetuity, your name permanently in the colophon of every title we publish during your lifetime, and one annual meal or coffee with me. When the 50 are filled, that door closes forever. The Commons isn’t a subscription to this podcast, The Difficulty stays free, always. It’s membership in the press itself. And you shouldn’t join from obligation or scarcity pressure. Join because the editorial direction and the community we’re forming matter to you, and you want to be part of the early conversation. → Join the Crossroads Commons The four doors, if you’re wondering which is yours: * Authors — from a $750 Legacy Audit to the full Compile to Publish engagement (print + ebook + audiobook, six to eight months): crossroadspublishing.group/engagements * Readers — the Circle: crossroadspublishing.group/circle * Writers developing a manuscript in community — the First Draft Cohort, applications open July 13, inaugural class begins September 14. * Just want a book? — crossroadspublishing.group/catalog — William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience is in print now; Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is next (and I’m narrating the audiobook myself) This is your moment to step in. —Chad This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    22 min
Ver tudo (283)

Trailer

Sobre

The Difficulty is a podcast about creativity, meaning, and the hard choices that shape a life. Each week, writer and publisher Chad Prevost works through the questions underneath the creative process and the examined life—how we make work that matters, sit with life's difficulties instead of rushing past them, and keep going. Expect arguments, reflections, and the occasional witness to something worth seeing. Slower, more contemplative episodes land on Saturdays. It's also the voice of Crossroads Publishing Group, a press built on a single idea: books are occasions for community. If you're a creative, a thinker, a maker, or anyone navigating the difficulty of doing meaningful work—pull up a chair. chadprevost.substack.com

Informações