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[0:10] Susan Blackwell: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in my spark file.

[0:18] Laura Camien: Spark files to be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[0:23] Susan Blackwell: I pump it in my spark file.

[0:23] Laura Camien: Spark file.

[0:28] Susan Blackwell: I jump into my spark slide.

[0:32] Laura Camien: Let's open up the spark files.

[0:36] Susan Blackwell: Welcome to the Spark File, where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone.

[0:43] Laura Camien: I'm Laura Camien.

[0:45] Susan Blackwell: And I'm Susan Blackwell, and we are creativity coaches who help people fear less, create more, and bring their creative visions to life.

[0:53] Laura Camien: If you are an OG member of the Spark File community, welcome back, Sparkler.

[0:58] Susan Blackwell: Do do do do.

[0:59] Laura Camien: If you're joining us for the first time, well, look at you. Welcome, friend, and come on in. Know that just by listening to this podcast, you are joining a warm and wonderful clan of creatives.

[1:12] Susan Blackwell: But hold the phone. You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file?

[1:14] Laura Camien: A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and fascinations. If you're like us and you're making stuff all the time, or you wanna be making stuff all the time, you know if you're not careful, your campfire of creativity can flicker out.

[1:32] Susan Blackwell: But don't despair. We're collecting kindling in the form of fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark creativity and pique curiosity.

[1:43] Laura Camien: To light a fire under our collective asses to make things like this podcast. Like season four of this podcast.

[1:54] Susan Blackwell: Yes. Every episode, we're gonna reach into our spark files and exchange some sparks. And from time to time, we're gonna talk to some folks who spark us too.

[2:04] Laura Camien: That means, friends, we have more sparks than we can possibly use in this lifetime. So please, we beg of you if something lights you up, we encourage you to take that thing and make something out of it.

[2:19] Susan Blackwell: So without further ado, let's open up the spark file.

[2:26] Laura Camien: Welcome to your season four of the Spark File.

[2:31] Susan Blackwell: Susie B.

[2:33] Laura Camien: I'll take that season four and match you a season four of The Spark File podcast.

[2:40] Susan Blackwell: Can you believe it? It's a little bit mind-boggling, but I just we're in the twilight zone of time anyway, so I can't fathom that it was how many years ago when we started this.

[2:52] Laura Camien: I don't know. I've lost track.

[2:54] Susan Blackwell: Uh four score and seven years ago.

[2:56] Laura Camien: That's right.

[2:57] Susan Blackwell: And that's how we ended up at season four, 2022. You do the math.

[3:03] Laura Camien: Um, let's get into this. Let's get into season four, friends.

[3:06] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh. Are we excited to be back or what?

[3:10] Laura Camien: We're super excited. If you are a listener to this podcast, you will know that one of my favorite things to do in life is podcast with Laura Camien on the Spark File.

[3:20] Susan Blackwell: I love it. It's so much fun.

[3:24] Laura Camien: Yeah, babe. Is there something that we have learned? Is there something that has sparked you since the last time we were on mic?

[3:33] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, a little catch-up since last we met. Um just a little spark. I just need like a take. Just a little something. I'll tell you that I sparked myself big time.

[3:45] Laura Camien: I joined a mastermind group at the independent film school with my mentor Elat here. And I haven't worked with a lot in a few years. And A, I fucking love her. And B she has just the most extraordinary way of scaring the crap out of people, like just dialing up. What did you think your goal was? We're gonna dial that like pressure.

[4:15] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, that four up to a 10. So you know, I mean, we believe, and I I personally believe in coaching, I believe in teaching, I believe in you know, getting the support that you need and challenging yourself in new ways. And you and I are always always asking that of our clients, yeah, that they remain um curious, sort of remain curious, but also remain in the hot seat.

[4:43] Laura Camien: So keep doing things that challenge yourself, and so I decided, well, shoot, I ought to be doing that too. I should do something that scares me. So I love it. That's what I have done, and I'm sure I'll talk about it along the way. It's a it's a year-long thing, so you're just gonna your brain's gonna get bigger and bigger, it's just gonna get better and better.

[5:08] Susan Blackwell: I already feel like the beneficiary of learning about story structure. Like there's so much that you're bringing back that I'm just like, uh, I feel like I get to take I get to take this class without doing the work, and I really enjoy that.

[5:22] Laura Camien: Are you also gonna have a script at the end of this?

[5:25] Susan Blackwell: If you write a screenplay, it'll probably be your script. And I'm just gonna scratch out your name and write mine in crayon. Oh, look, we wrote a screenplay.

[5:37] Laura Camien: It's so much fun because, like right now, I I um feel light pressure, but since it's a year-long program, of course, I'm like, I've got time. And what I've done is just started seeing as many movies as I can, just seeing movie after movie and practicing that muscle of like seeing seeing the structure there, and like, oh yeah, I know how to how they did this. And awesome. It's super fun.

[6:02] Susan Blackwell: That's what I did with my summer vacation. What about you, Suze? Anything you've learned or discovered?

[6:09] Laura Camien: Have we been doing a lot of creative work in our home in the form of breaking it down and building it back up?

[6:17] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh, you are building a home. And that's been intense.

[6:20] Laura Camien: Yes. Um, but a little baby spark. This is such a baby spark, but I would I I it's one of those little minis that I love so much, but I would never put it into an episode. I found this app called Yucca.

[6:35] Susan Blackwell: I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast, but I got really kind of addicted to TikTok, and I was like, fuck this shit. Fuck how much of my time it's robbing for my life.

[6:46] Laura Camien: Yeah, time suck.

[6:48] Susan Blackwell: But before I got off of TikTok, I saw this recommendation for this app, and essentially it's spelled Y-U-K-A, Yuca, and you can scan food and like beauty products. You scan the barcode and it gives them a rating based on the ingredients, and it tells you like all the way from the thumbs up, like eat this or put this on your face, all the way to this is outlawed in Europe. Throw this away now. Do not put this on your body or in your body.

[7:18] Laura Camien: And then it provides recommendations for like alternative products. And I have to tell you, I took a nice yucca spin through my medicine cabinet through my like beauty products, and I cleaned it up. And my skin feels better. Like my skin feels, I mean, I still have like aging lady skin, but you have gorgeous skin.

[7:42] Susan Blackwell: Oh, you're the sweetest. It feels like it's a made of positive change. The Yuka app. I love it. It's just one of those like baby sparklets that you know, why not share it with you here now?

[7:53] Laura Camien: Baby sparkles. Is that like can we sell them like little chiclets? Do you remember those little uh baby sparklets would be a great stripper name?

[8:02] Susan Blackwell: That's not where I was headed, but yeah.

[8:04] Laura Camien: I know it wasn't, it's where I'm headed, though. Baby baby sparklets.

[8:09] Susan Blackwell: Oh, baby sparklets. Listen, let's let's talk a little bit about this. Is just a little teaser episode. Some of the sparks, the longer form sparks, not the baby sparklets, but the longer form sparks. We're cooking up some good stuff.

[8:22] Laura Camien: We're cooking up some good stuff. Let's go. You go, I go, you go, I go.

[8:27] Susan Blackwell: Okay. What's coming up?

[8:29] Laura Camien: Okay. So one thing that I cooked up uh that you'll hear all about is I went to see Camp Siegfried at second stage, and I was shocked to learn that there was a pro-Nazi summer camp just 60 miles from Manhattan on Long Island in the 1930s. And um, first of all, just that fact blew me away. So I learned all about that. And then I'm gonna share with you some of the big the key takeaways from that play, which is amazing.

[9:04] Susan Blackwell: Don't say too much now.

[9:05] Laura Camien: I won't. But it was written by Bess Wool. And there are some extraordinary lines that have like stayed with me. I will not tell them to you right now, but I might reveal a couple of them on the podcast.

[9:19] Susan Blackwell: All right. All right. Light up, I'm nervous about giving away too much. We want to let you know a little bit about what's coming up, but I don't want to give more too much. Um I'm gonna do uh episode um really fascinated by creation that's about destruction. Literally creation that's about destruction. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

[9:43] Laura Camien: That's it. Nope, that's all you get.

[9:45] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I'm gonna spark it up with um, I know a lot of you may have known that I've spent a lot of my career at Blue Man Group. And as we built that show from a little off-Broadway show to a global juggernaut. We followed some marketing philosophies that I think might be of interest to people because um I wanted to share them as it relates to our personal sort of self promotion and how to do that without losing sight of your own values.

[10:19] Laura Camien: I like that.

[10:21] Susan Blackwell: I'm going to, you know what? I'm just gonna tell one more. I'm just gonna tell one more because I don't want to, I don't they don't need to know everything that's coming this season.

[10:30] Laura Camien: Okay.

[10:31] Susan Blackwell: I am very sparked about women's reproductive rights in these United States and around the world. And I'm excited to um share about some creative, largely women doing some creative creativity around women's reproductive rights. So that's something that I am excited to share.

[10:57] Laura Camien: Well, I'll tell you one more and then I'll leave it.

[10:59] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[10:59] Laura Camien: But I'll tell you one more. Thanks to one of our clients, Alex Gardner. Thank you, Alex. Um, I am reading the book, The Comfort Crisis. And it is all about how you know humans have gotten comfortable really only in the last hundred, hundred and fifty years after thousands and thousands of years of living in discomfort of one form or another, like seeking shelter and finding food and all that.

[11:27] Susan Blackwell: But I'm gonna talk about it through the lens of creativity, which the book does not, but it sparked me so much that I'm like, let's talk about the crisis of getting too comfortable as it relates to your creativity.

[11:44] Laura Camien: I look forward to that.

[11:46] Susan Blackwell: I've never heard of that book, and I'm excited to hear more.

[11:48] Laura Camien: You know what else fun we have coming up? Susan, we're gonna do the long weekend mini challenge this year.

[11:52] Susan Blackwell: The long weekend mini challenge.

[11:59] Laura Camien: We didn't do it last year. We did it the year before that. It is so fun. It is a free three day creativity challenge designed to just inspire you and get your creativity popping. It's November 25th, 26th, and 27th in the year of our Lord 2022.

[12:18] Susan Blackwell: It's three days, but it's just 30 minutes a day. So, like join us, get inspired, get your creativity going, and then get back to, you know, whatever it is you want to do over your long weekend.

[12:29] Laura Camien: That's right. And if you can't watch it live, you can watch the video. That will be as long as you're registered, you can have access to the video so you can catch up.

[12:39] Susan Blackwell: We're gonna meet up at 11:30 a.m. Did you say that? 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, 8:30 a.m. Pacific time. November 25th, 26th, 27th.

[12:49] Laura Camien: It's free.

[12:50] Susan Blackwell: It's free. And there's prizes. We'll just say there's prizes and that you have to be in it like Lotto. You gotta be in it to win it. So come on and join us for that.

[13:02] Susan Blackwell: Friends, this is just a little teasy tease to let you know we're back, babies.

[13:02] Laura Camien: We're back.

[13:09] Susan Blackwell: We're back. This little tiny episode of the Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape people. And as always, we hope we've put a nuts and a bunch of baby sparklets in your spark file.

[13:19] Laura Camien: Remember, if there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you'd like to learn more about how to coach with us to bring your creative ideas to life, you can email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, thesparkfile.com.

[13:31] Susan Blackwell: We'll even take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you gotta share a creative risk that you have taken recently.

[13:38] Laura Camien: Follow us on social at the sparkfile and be sure to subscribe, rate, and five star review this podcast. It really does help other listeners to find us.

[13:46] Susan Blackwell: Also, if you like this podcast, this tiny podcast, the other ones are longer. We hope you'll share it with the people that you love. And if you didn't like it, it's season four buzz off.

[13:59] Laura Camien: Or stick around, give it a shot. You know, if you don't you might like it.

[14:00] Susan Blackwell: You might like it. If something lights you up and gets your creative sparks playing, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take that spark and fan it into a flame.

[14:17] Laura Camien: You know you gotta take it and make it.

[14:22] Susan Blackwell: When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark file.

[14:31] Laura Camien: Spark file.

[14:32] Susan Blackwell: Could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[14:37] Laura Camien: I'll pump it in the spark file.

[14:40] Susan Blackwell: Spark.

[14:42] Laura Camien: I jump into my spark file.

[14:45] Susan Blackwell: Spark file.

[14:46] Laura Camien: Let's open up the spark file.