Portfolio
Curious about me and the sentences, lyrics, and music that I write and record? Scroll down.
Jump to my music (including the Luna Project)
Publications
FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers
GOT STUCK? You’re not alone. And feeling stuck doesn’t need to be permanent. In fact, the stuckness itself can be a key to discovering what to do next. Use FLOAT to draw on your own hidden resources, and find your way again. Including more than 80 tools, extensive introductory materials, inspiration from published authors, and multiple indexes for easy reference, FLOAT is a resource to keep handy. From Amazon and Bookshop
I finished reading FLOAT this morning and the joy was like experiencing the grand food halls in Copenhagen – each little stall offered another delicious morsel of beauty. I expect every reader will have their favorites – some of mine were “Eye On The Why,” “Fence Yourself In,” “Fire The Editor,” “Tell Me A Story,” etc. One can learn from your fine work even if one is not stuck.
~ Ed Hess, Professor Emeritus, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
Preface to FLOAT • FREE download
We can probably each remember peak experiences that illuminated our connectedness with all the beings on the planet, and perhaps beyond. Yet, day by day, each of us navigates a continuum of need, between mistrustful isolation and immersive connection.
When you feel at a loss for words – or motivation – in your creative project, draw on your own inner resources, and the wisdom of many who’ve come before. Draw a card, consider its meaning, and re-balance. Any time you just need a boost, let FLOAT Cards for Writers provide thought-provoking, bite-sized sources of inspiration and intervention to get the creative juices flowing again. Pick a card! You’ll pick up your writing again with ease. An online guide with suggested ways to use the cards, alone, in groups, and in workshops and classrooms, is included with purchase.
Chapter: “What We Do Matters” in Artists in Crisis: Rethinking the Mental Health Challenges of Creative and Performing Artists (Eric Maisel, Arnoldo Cantú, and Susan Raeburn, editors; Ethics International, 2025)
The longer I serve as a creativity coach, the less I feel like a zebra in a world of horses. For much of my life, I lived with a sense of disappointment, and even shame, that my creative life hadn’t amounted to enough. Enough what? The answer to that question morphed over the decades, as my interests, working life, and circumstances changed. But a pervasive displeasure was my constant companion.
Chapter: “Shaping Routines That Work” in The Coach’s Guide to Completing Creative Work: 40+ Tips for Working with Procrastination, Perfectionism and More (Eric Maisel and Lynda Monk, editors; Routledge, 2023)
Changing habits and routines is hard to do because unthinking behavior saves a lot of effort and energy and protects us from unexpected harm. I picture my brain’s brawny enforcers glaring at me, their thickly muscled forearms crossed belligerently, when I consider an alteration to my usual behavior. When is it worth it to struggle against those enforcers? What makes me dedicate myself to changing an unexamined, comfortable state?
Chapter: “The Becoming Unstuck Journal” in The Great Book Of Journaling: How Journal Writing can Support a Life of Wellness, Creativity, Meaning, and Purpose (Lynda Monk and Eric Maisel, editors; Conari Press, 2022)
The starting place for reconnecting to purpose and becoming unstuck is listening to your own wise self. And how better to do that than in an ongoing journaling practice? Stuckness comes and goes, and it lands more lightly and leaves more quickly when you have a steady journaling practice in hand.
Chapter: “How Journaling Benefits Your Coaching and Your Clients” in Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists, and Clients: A Complete Guide to the Benefits of Personal Writing (Lynda Monk and Eric Maisel, editors; Routledge, 2021)
Slowing down enough to describe places, people, feelings, dreams, and experiences can take a while. When you make time for journaling, you find that you’re honing your ability to perceive, in a virtuous cycle that nurtures itself.
Chapter: “After #MeToo” in #MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What It Means and How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again (Lori Perkins, editor; Riverdale Avenue Books, 2017)
Anyone who says they had no idea that sexual harassment was happening has been studiously, astoundingly, willfully oblivious. We thought James Bond was cool, and, more recently, Don Draper. And in November 2016 we learned that the office of the President of the United States was going to be occupied by a thug and sexual predator. Tell me again about all that progress we have made; all those hearts and minds feminism has won over?
Guest posts
Expect the Creative Process to Be Uneven and Messy
https://janefriedman.com/creative-process-messy/
It’s reasonable to expect stops and starts. Rubs and disappointments, along with smooth, serendipitous states of flow.
Free Yourself from Rewriting Paralysis
https://janefriedman.com/free-yourself-from-rewriting-paralysis/
Your inner optometrist clicks the dials. The lenses change, bit by bit, sentence by sentence, until things look—and feel—a little sharper, a little better.
Interview Your Own Inner Diminisher
https://janefriedman.com/its-time-to-interview-your-own-inner-diminisher/
If taking a break, drinking water, slicing vegetables, or other simple fixes aren’t freeing you from the influence of that voice, consider addressing the judgy elephant in the room.
Managing the Clutter-Tidiness Continuum
https://janefriedman.com/3-aspects-of-managing-the-clutter-tidiness-continuum/
A quick look at ways to unclutter stuff, people, and the words we write.
Get Out of the Silo
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Remember you have friends and colleagues out there in the world. Talk with them. See what happens.
When It Lights Up and When It Doesn’t
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Time teaches us all that if we hold out for the golden moments, we wait indefinitely, discarding days, weeks, months, years because the work didn’t present itself appealingly enough.
Your Journal as Time Machine
https://www.janefriedman.com/your-journal-as-time-machine
Often I find the best use of a sliver of time is to drop into an awareness of my breath and shift into a lower gear. One way to make that shift is to put pen to paper in my journal.
Not A Journal Person? Now Might Be the Perfect Time to Start
https://www.janefriedman.com/not-a-journal-person-post-pandemic-might-be-the-perfect-time-to-start/
For all the things you’re thinking but not comfortable saying, your journal is a safe receptacle.
Is Journaling A Waste of Your Writing Time?
www.janefriedman.com/is-journaling-a-waste-of-writing-time/
A private journal welcomes unselfconscious writing. In your journal, you are free to fire the editor.
Becoming Unstuck: Keeping the Creative Flow Going
https://labourgeois.biz/2022/03/28/becoming-unstuck-keeping-the-creative-flow-going-by-anne-carley/
We stay stuck when the stuck situation keeps looking the same. Seeing it differently is a key to getting out from under its influence.
Creative Habits: Positive Energy from Shared Commitments
www.setyourmuseonfire.com/
Even if writers need to isolate in order to make the time to create, I find time and again that we also treasure a sense of community.
Interview Your Inner Critic https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-health/202104/interview-your-inner-critic
It’s easy to hate the inner critic and to want to banish it permanently to a place far, far away. What if we consider the possibility that the inner critic has something useful to offer?
How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Creative Process https://www.janefriedman.com/sabotage-creative-process/
If a writer sells a book, do all other writers suffer? Only if we’re in a zero-sum book-buying universe.
Are You Clear About Your Writer Persona? Going Public by Design https://www.janefriedman.com/clear-writer-persona-going-public-design/
Who am I? Who do I want to be? What am I telling the world about myself and my writing?
Essays
“Ones and Zeroes” – A love letter to the potential of the internet, written in 1999 • FREE download
All dollars are the same, and more of them is generally considered a good thing. On the other hand, not all information has the same value. With ones and zeroes, we are more selective. As digital junk, interchangeable with so much other digital junk, clogs the pipeline, isn’t it likely we will place increasingly higher value on non-interchangeable material, like opinion, point of view, imagination – things that often manifest as creative artforms?
“Back to the Archives” – Challenging assumptions about keeping information at the dawn of the digital age • FREE download
As you quickly breeze through one of the innumerable pages of possibly new information on a website, you may ask yourself: Do I want to keep it? If so, what does “keeping” mean? And, if I decide to keep it, what is the “it” I’m imagining I will want to access later?
“I Know It When I See It” – When creative art and courts of law meet up, it can get twisted and weird • FREE download
Years ago, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court was said to have explained, “I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.” He was talking about obscenity. He might as well have been talking about art.
Articles for publications include
ArtForum • Slant: Moral Right https://www.artforum.com/print/199105/moral-right-33788
No one is sure how The Visual Artists Rights Act will be applied in the courts to traditional artworks, or, in particular, how it will be understood to apply to Conceptual and Minimal art, or other nontraditional artworks that exist in the mind of the artist. To quote from the movies (which are not covered by the new law), “Hold on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Estate Planning Magazine • When Art and Collectibles Are Assets of an Estate • FREE download
The professional advisor must attempt to build a bridge between the realm of the collector, whose assembled objects are imbued with years of memory and passion, and the realm of the IRS, which views collections as mere groupings of (appreciated) tangible personal property.
Virginia Educational Leadership • Educating Alll Students: Kid Pan Alley • FREE download
“We want to be able to demonstrate that our children can do well on tests, but that’s not all there is to teaching and learning. Just because it can’t be quantified doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
The NonProfit Times • Gift Horses: The offer that can be refused • FREE download
In a perfect world, every offered gift will be completely welcome and appropriate to the nonprofit’s purposes. In the perfect world, the donor will never ask for further attention from the nonprofit, promised gifts will always arrive on time, the IRS will find no fault, and the administration and development offices of the nonprofit organization will be telepathically linked.
Spoken word
How to Become Unstuck as a Writer with A M Carley
International branding professional Thuy Pham interviewed me about the process of being a writer.
Candle: A Radio Essay
My local NPR affiliate broadcast this 3-minute piece of mine, about living with the suicide of a loved one.
Zack Bonnie’s audiobook, Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir
I recorded the non-narrative interstitial portions of Zack’s wonderful, harrowing memoir, available here.
Recorded Music Compositions
Scroll to each piece to get high-quality audio downloads on Bandcamp. Click the Luna images at the left, to watch and listen on my YouTube channel
Luna Project
What is it about the moon? Is it in the rhythms of waxing and waning, the importance assigned to its phases by cultural traditions all around the globe, or is it simply its ephemeral beauty and mystery when it appears in the sky? Are your memories richer, your dreams deeper, when the moon is full? Do you notice an ages-old sense of delight and relief when it reappears after waning?
Like seventeen-year cicadas, Luna Project is back. I started Luna on 10 January 2009, when I decided to give over to the full moon’s influence. Under each of that year’s thirteen full moons, I began another song without words, titled with folkloric names: Wolf Moon, Bony Moon, Sleepy Moon, Awakening Moon, Bright Panther Moon, Blue Moon, Strawberry Moon, Buck Moon, Moon When All Things Ripen, Harvest Moon, Blood Moon, Sassafras Moon, and Long Night Moon.
Now, in 2026, like cicadas, these pieces are re-emerging.
At this time of year, male deer shed and begin to grow new antlers. Healthy and strong bucks will grow a larger, more forked set, drawing on the ample seasonal food supply. Their new antlers signal how robust they are. Bigger is better, evolutionarily speaking.
As I wrote the beginnings of this piece, in July of 2009, I was appreciating how clever the magnolia in my back yard was, having positioned its blossoms higher than the tallest deer. Anything lower swiftly became deer brunch. Back then, I found myself sobbing after a melodrama on TV, recalling sorrows from the past. These days, too, a lot of us are feeling porous and easily affected. Maybe it’s time to shed old growth and start anew. Don’t guess we can grow antlers. No worries – there are plenty of other ways to indicate robustness.
Get your high-quality audio download here and watch the music video on YouTube.
This Strawberry Moon piece is wrapped up in home. In June, 2009, the night this piece began, I had a lovely conversation with an older man who thanked me for saying I had enjoyed spending time in his hometown. He had a sweet sort of pride about his homeplace. Home is where the heart lives, as the saying goes.
When I was putting the music together for Strawberry Moon, I was delighted to find some ‘canned’ loops (short, preexisting musical passages) that meshed exactly with the harmonic feel I was going for. That happens rarely, and it was a lovely moment. It almost felt like coming home.
Get your high-quality audio download here and watch the music video on YouTube.
The Blue Moon piece of the Luna Project is unique among the thirteen debuting in 2026. All the others are posted at roughly the same time of year as the original inspirations for them appeared in 2009. But a blue moon isn’t pegged to a time of year.
A blue moon occurs arbitrarily, when there’s a second full moon in a given month. When I began writing this one in 2009, the blue moon showed up at the end of December, while this year it’s at the end of May. Back when I started it, I was picturing a grotto – dark, rocky, with flowing water and crickets chirping. So I picked up on that imagery when I made the Blue Moon video.
According to folklore the blue moon represents a blessing from above, as when farmers benefited from the nighttime glow at planting and harvest time. If you receive any wacky insights under the blue moon, consider giving them extra credence.
Get your high-quality audio download here and watch the music video on YouTube.
In May 2009, under the full moon, I imagined a panther (one of five members of the leopard family), her green eyes guiding her in the dark, even on rainy nights, as she roamed for miles. The field recordings (leopard sounds) helped guide the completion of the piece, which began with two short musical ideas that came to me as I awoke from a deep sleep.
The music that resulted touches on the moon’s eerie, mysterious qualities, as well as the reality that predators apply themselves diligently to their work. Along with vibes of discord and threat, I like to think the light of the moon in the video is a sign of hope. We need to know what we’re facing in order to prevail, right?
Bright Moon and Panther Moon are two folkloric names for this moon. I combined them here. This full moon coincides with May Day, which is celebrated as the start of summer (as it falls between the spring equinox and the summer solstice).
Listen to and watch the Bright Panther Moon video here and buy high-quality audio downloads of the music here.
The fourth full moon of 2026: When this piece began, in April 2009, I was pondering the long lives of two relatives, including the legacies – of learning and emotion – they were leaving to their students and loved ones. The melody came to me as a response to the bell pattern, which was inspired by a fun website – I wish I still had the link – that let you play around creating repeating musical patterns using synth-y sounds. Later, I made a new pattern, with a happy tip of the hat to that long-ago website.
The Awakening Moon gets its name from the advent of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Warmer weather coaxes the natural world into growth. Every full moon offers us a moment to release the old and welcome the new. With the change in season here the Awakening Moon feels particularly auspicious that way. What is it time to let go of? What are you ready to begin?
Listen to and watch the Awakening Moon video here and buy high-quality downloads of the music here.
The third full moon of 2026 brings the music for Sleepy Moon, along with an eclipse. I took in the full moon from a gas station pump in Northern Virginia in 2009 on the night this piece began. The celestial light directed me to a shiny penny on the concrete near my feet. I was on the way to Maryland, where my mother’s cataract surgery would take place the following morning. My mother loved the ostinato – the musical device of a repeating pattern. It’s no coincidence that this piece is full of them. I like to think those patterns can lull a person off to a good night’s rest.
Long before science studied the impact of full moonlight on humans, tradition had dubbed this moon Sleepy Moon. Now we know, turns out, that people are likely to be sleepier in the few days before the moon is full, because we sleep less then. An upcoming full moon is a sleep disruptor, even for urbanites who don’t pay attention to lunar cycles.
Here’s a video version of Sleepy Moon on Youtube and audio-only Sleepy Moon on Bandcamp where you can buy high-quality audio downloads of my music.
The second full moon of 2026 brings the music for Bony Moon. We had high winds and warm weather in 2009 when this piece began, and the news reported that birds were migrating farther north than ever. As I prepared the music and video in 2026, we faced imminent power failures and lots of snow and ice.
The trees in the nearby woods are bare. I begin imagining that they come to life at night under the moonlight. Skeletal trees stalk their domain. I’m told that the Cherokee named the January full moon Bony Moon because hunger was always a risk at this time of year. The bird in the video has to fluff up its feathers to retain any available warmth. In a time of scarcity and punishing weather conditions, the light of the moon is a reminder that change is inevitable.
Here’s a video version of Bony Moon on Youtube and audio-only Bony Moon on Bandcamp where you can buy high-quality audio downloads of my music.
Starting the year off, the name Wolf Moon conjured up images, a mood, and some weird chords and melodic lines. That’s what I started with, under the full moon. Later, as I worked on the music, I wanted to hear wolves howling. They didn’t regularly visit me where I lived, so I went online.
Time was, the US Fish and Wildlife Service made their field recordings freely available. The evocative wolf calls in this piece came from that wonderful public resource in 2012. I’m not sure whether the audio files remain online – they may be there somewhere, and I’m grateful for the FWS people who made the recordings and provided public access to them.
I realized that one of the wolves was contributing excerpts from the traditional Irish tune, “Slane.” This moved me to use Slane as a response to the wolf calls in this piece. (You can hear the wolf echoing the melody at the end, for instance.) I tuned the piece to the pitches of those wolf calls and timed it to their cadences. Here’s a video version of Wolf Moon on YouTube and high-quality audio of Wolf Moon on Bandcamp.
the Portfolio album
A portrait of a man with lowered expectations
Inspired by a cross-country train ride from Seattle to NYC. I wrote those trumpet parts because I once had a crush on Charles Ives. And it was a blast the day John D’earth came to the studio.
First inspired by Laura R., whose mother would exclaim this when she discovered something had gone awry.
Charlie Murphy suggested this title as the germ of a song, years ago. This is what sprouted. Singing with Terri Allard on this one was a joy.
Therese Schwartz, a NYC painter, told me she threw out 20 paintings she had just made. She assured me, “Anne, it’s not lost.”
Girls and young women absorb a lot of wacky messages, growing up. This is an illustration of some of them. Also, thanks, Rosanne Cash, for believing in this song.
Inspired by life in NYC – a composite portrait of several people. I loved writing the cello part.
A song of love, betrayal, and the seasons of the year – dressed up, wearing a big hat. I pretended to be a real piano player on this one.
Dedicated to artists with day jobs, always juggling it all.
Inpired by women accommodating the passages of time.
Two friends walk into a bar. He tells her about summers in the Thousand Islands. She recalls her mother’s stories about a place called Gananoque. A song is begun.
Almost everyone has one of these somewhere. Admit it.
Bonus track: This Time – Instrumental version
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