In June and July, I did the daily Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge. In August, I posted here every weekday. What I found is that showing up is what leads to inspiration, not the other way around.
Here are some of my favorite posts from this month:
These wouldn’t have been written had I waited for inspiration to strike.
A daily practice is the foundation to creativity and innovation. Austin Kleon calls it “apply ass to chair“: regularly find time to sit down, and you’ll discover something to write about, or paint, or collage. Getting started is the hardest part.
Don’t wait for inspiration — just show up, and inspiration will find you, eventually.
How much of your own life, of your own thoughts, are you missing?
Whenever I travel and face limited digital connection, I realize just how much my online habits have taken over my life. Last August, I was in Tunisia with my now-husband, visiting his extended family for the first time. Cell and internet service was limited, so I spent the entire week unplugged. I couldn’t snap a photo of the beach and immediately post it, then inevitably get lost in social media updates — so I snapped the shot and then returned to the present, actually enjoying the water and the company.
Usually, any time I have a few seconds between tasks, or I am waiting for something, even for a few minutes, I reach for my phone. I scroll through Instagram, or type in some answers in the NYT crossword app. I check my email, knowing that it’s mostly newsletters I won’t read and won’t respond to, just for something to do. I’ll check the weather over and over.
You are a priority
For years, I have practiced paying attention to the tiny things, the bees and the ants and the clouds and neighborhood kids laughing. But rarely do I give myself that same time and attention.
Anne Lamott writes in her book Bird by Bird about how so much of writing is sitting down and waiting, listening, and seeing what arises. “If we just sit there long enough, in whatever shape, we may end up being surprised … Try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen,” she says. Austin Kleon has a similar mantra, shared by a former writing teacher: “Apply ass to chair.” Put the distractions aside and show up for yourself and your art.
The creative process requires us to be present. How much inspiration and intuition are we missing by keeping ourselves distracted? Why do we spend so much time avoiding what is right in front of us, or what is going on within us?
How I practice being present
“There is ecstasy in paying attention,” Anne writes. But to pay attention, to find that ecstasy, we have to tear ourselves away from all the things — TV, social media, notifications, news — that are tearing us away from ourselves.
I’m still learning how to be more present (and unlearning toxic avoidance), but here’s what works for me:
Embrace the discomfort. When we are used to being entertained and distracted every moment of every day, unplugging or sitting still is hard. I remind myself to sit with that discomfort, and not to run from it.
Get grounded. When I need to ground myself in the present, I do things that require me to be off my phone: get outside, go to the gym, meditate, or journal.
Get in the flow. I stop ruminating on the process or the shoulds, and start. I’ll put some paint on a page. Stick some collage down. Go full screen in a writing app and get some words out. If I show up, often the flow will follow.
For each piece of polished, finished art shared online, every artist has a whole pile of unfinished, “messed up,” or ugly pieces. And that’s exactly as it should be.
I, for example, don’t love the art journal spread above.
It started out with some collage and minimal marks with oil pastel and black India ink, but I realized that it reminded me of camouflage and hunting — not something that resonates with me. I added more colors and marks, still hated it, and then covered up most of it with white tempura paint. It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll turn the page and do something else.
For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen: make ugly art.
It’s one of the first things I recommend to emerging artists, those who are afraid of messing up (whatever that might mean) or who desperately want to be able to translate what’s in their mind onto the page but haven’t practiced long enough to know how to do that.
Purposefully making ugly art lessens the fear of creating something you dislike and is a great exploratory process.
Some ideas for making ugly art:
Use color combinations you don’t like or usually use
Scribble out or paint over sections of your work
Stick down collage any which way
Try using tools you haven’t used before
Use materials you aren’t usually interested in or aren’t special: tissue paper or wrapping paper, a receipt, a ripped ad from a magazine, etc.
Move quickly and impulsively, not thinking about what you’re going to do next
The best part about setting out to create ugly art? If you finish it and hate it, you’ve succeeded. But if you finish it and love it or love sections of it, you’ve also succeeded.
No matter the outcome, you are creating, exploring, practicing, and learning so much more about what you do and don’t like.
People talk in a precious way about genius, creativity, and curiosity as superpowers that people are born with but noticing is a more humble pursuit. Noticing is something we can all do.”
In a Shakespeare class in college, I learned that “nothing” and “noting” were pronounced nearly the same in Elizabethan times. Much Ado About Nothing — one of my favorite plays — is both about making a fuss out of nothing, and of the plot drama that comes out of noting, or noticing.
I pay a lot of attention to the little things: details in artwork, the way bees kiss flowers (and sometimes take naps in their petals), forgotten grocery lists. I’ve also kept a logbook for the past few years, keeping record of my daily life.
Noticing/noting; little nothings. Little notings.
A huge number of the photos I take are studies in composition, a way of noticing and appreciating the random, everyday textures and colors around me.
While an art form all in their own, small observed details can also be the spark for something bigger.
Pursue your curiosity: asking questions like “What do I like about this?” and “What textures, colors, and compositions could I borrow?” and “What if…?” may result in a surprising painting, an essay, or a entirely new way of working.
Years ago, I kept a blog called My Peacetree where I explored art, healing from trauma, and the natural world. I took an extended hiatus after I enrolled in college, started my career, and settled into adult life.
But looking back, there are so many bits and pieces of those years of writing that still ring true.
Even cooler, sometimes they speak to and build upon one another:
Starting – picking up a paintbrush, a camera, a pen – can be one of the most difficult things to do in a creative’s life when inspiration has vanished. If we feel we have nothing to give, our minds ask us why we should we begin at all. And so we get discouraged, believing that we have lost our gift, and sink deeper into a creative rut.
Let me share a secret with you, darling, one that I must remind myself of again and again and again: often, the inspiration comes in the creating.
Inviting Inspiration, 2011
My experiments in art do not have to result in perfection. In fact, they rarely do. We as a society, as a world, are obsessed with success, and failure is often a threat. Not so in my art journal. Here, I can play and seek out and explore and find comfort in the tension and disharmony of my mistakes. Here, I can accept them for what they are.
I thank them for the wisdom they’ve given me. And I turn the page.
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