Category: my big creative year

my big creative year : what’s working

March 2, 2015

by annwood

It’s March! I love March – it always feels like a corner is being turned. And I’m two months into My Big Creative Year. Since beginning (kind of impulsively) I’ve thought a lot about what I mean by that – a big creative year – what do I want from it. The short answer is – to grow. To grow faster, to know myself better and be true to that, to be uncompromising and unapologetic, to challenge my presumptions and explore the farthest reaches of my imagination.

What I’ve learned so far:

The more creative work I do the more creative work I do. Quantity, or maybe more accurately consistency counts. Writing and sharing these posts with you, being intentional and curious and conscious about moving forward, trying new stuff that might not work, and the daily sketchbook practice are having positive effects on all my work, on everything really, there is an energy and agility in my thinking that feels new – I’m solving problems and getting unstuck more easily. The scheduled posts and daily sketchbook are also giving my week structure and shape and definition that’s making me more productive and building some momentum.

Searching for something, reaching and experimenting in public does not always feel good – it never has and it never will, but it keeps me moving forward and the commitment and constraints force me to let go of perfection. I love this quote from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland (I’m reading it right now and loving it- I’ll definitely talk more about it when I’m done).

“To demand perfection is to deny your ordinary (and universal) humanity, as though you would be better off without it.”

Letting go of perfection, letting go of outcome and expectations and giving myself permission to just respond to things and try stuff and play feels refreshing and like an opening. The sketchbook practice puts me in the moment and focuses me – I lose myself in these little experiments. I think its important that they are small, if I had a lot of time or a bigger space to work in (the little cards I made are small 4.5 x 4.5 inches) I would feel overwhelmed.

I show up for them every day, whether I want to or not (mostly I have wanted to) and just like physical exercise – it’s not always pretty and it doesn’t need to feel good all the time for the practice to be undeniably valuable and bring growth and transformation.

my big creative year : memory

February 23, 2015

by annwood

dress up 1970-ish (I’m in black)

I can’t think about myself creatively without thinking of my childhood and my memories of it. I think this is the richest part of my mind, a library of detailed and evocative images I return to again and again. For my creative life it is the place that everything comes from. Everything. It runs deeply through all of what I make – whether it is my intention or not.

When I approach it directly – when I go looking for those images and sensations and moods and textures and attempt to express them, as purely as I can, I sometimes lose my self consciousness, my judgmental self gets out of the way. I think it has to do with the quality of memory itself – shadowy and shifting, elusive and sometimes fragmentary – it requires patience, careful listening and something slower and quieter from me.

It’s something I’m curious about – these impressions of experiences that my brain made and kept. I’m curious about all these pictures that exist in my mind and nowhere else and I wonder how to express them as fully as I can without my current perspective and judgements getting in the way.

The image above is from my “this is where i am from” series: I remember when I was 10 or so, alone in my room, noticing that I was experiencing an exquisite moment. I was lying on my bed reading Anne of Greene Gables. It was late in the day on a Sunday and almost to cold too have the window open- but not quite.

my big creative year : sketchbooks

February 16, 2015

by annwood

I was planning to share some artist’s sketchbooks I admire today. And I still am – but as I began to put the post together the idea to make room for my own daily sketchbook practice crept up. I take notes all the time and I make lists, lots and lots of lists – sometimes that’s the first glimmer of a new project for me, a big list or pages and pages of scribbled notes, but I do not, and have not had a consistent sketchbook practice even though I think it’s an incredibly valuable thing. I’m not sure why not – scared of it I think. The books below are a couple of my favorites and there is a remarkable collection of artist sketchbooks here.

Alison Worman:

And Mia Christopher:

The closest I’ve come is the cardboard horse project – it was kind of like a sketchbook – they could be anything, I experimented, they reflect where I was in a given moment, I got ideas – so many ideas and sometimes it was painful, sometimes it was a chore and sometimes I loved it.

Over the weekend I’ve gone back and forth – there are good reasons not to:

* I’m already too busy and usually panicked about time. It’s adding another thing to my already giant to do list.

* Daily practices – even small ones – are guaranteed to be hard sometimes.

There is another part of me that is all for this:

* I love a record – a reflection of the day.

* I have a deep craving to make marks on paper

* This year – My Big Creative Year has to do with moving towards something — searching for something I need that I’m not giving myself or a place I haven’t gotten to – reaching. I have a strong sense that this small daily practice will move me in the right direction, it feels like a gift to myself, medicine.

The Plan:

* I am making it small, physically small, so it doesn’t scare me away. And instead of an actual sketchbook I’ve made myself a stack of 4 and 1/2 inch squares and I have a little box to file them in.

* I’m committing to one year – beginning yesterday, Sunday 2/15/2015.

* The question of sharing it – for the moment I will – I’ll post all the week’s entries here every Saturday. The promise to share is important, I need the accountability. It will probably feel embarrassing often and if it is too painful for me or seems too tedious for you I’ll create a separate page for it so that you have the option to visit or not visit rather than posting on the blog.

There are no other rules – just making marks. It doesn’t have to be fancy or intricate or detailed; I can glue stuff, scribble, splatter, draw – anything – I just need to show up and make marks on paper and I’ve got to do it every day.

Here are Sunday’s and today’s :

Check back on Saturday if you like for all seven of week 1 – and if you’d like to join me in this experiment or you already have a regular sketchbook practice you feel like sharing – let me know – I’d love to see.

my big creative year : playing with words

February 9, 2015

by annwood

The original intention was to use them on ships and boats and I do, but something else happens when I take out my box of words – I get all sorts of new ideas. It has become an intentional practice.

I started collecting words accidentally. I almost always cut paper for paper mache ships in a particular way. For my top layer I like newsprint, cut rather than torn. I separate my strips by text size and weight and I prefer that the strips are horizontal – flowing with the text. When I’m cutting newspaper, things invariably jump out at me. There is some mood or meaning, some sensation or memory evoked by a word or phrase. And so I save them.

When I’m wandering and inviting inspiration I sort through the box – a single word can spark something, shift my direction just a little, send me to a place I would not have gotten to, intersections appear.

It is a kind of listening. I love the happenstance of it.

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my big creative year : rescuing time

February 2, 2015

by annwood

I know that I could be more efficient and accomplish what I must in far less time than I do. I’m losing hours and hours that could be spent on play and exploration and experimenting. For the last couple months I’ve been recording how I spend my time in excruciating detail. I recorded what my task was, how long I spent on it, what I accomplished, how often and by what I was distracted and how much time I spent in those distractions – even if they were small. It was a tedious and imperfect process that I did not enjoy but It has been enlightening.

I’ve got issues…..

1. structure

I respond very well to structure – always have. When I’m teaching at Squam I can get a ton of stuff done, I’m happy, efficient, productive and relaxed – even though I’m super busy, I am in a place of ease. I would do very well living at summer camp permanently. At home I have not created much meaningful structure for myself. I’m surrounded by distractions and even more importantly I don’t have clearly defined work hours – that has me feeling like I’m working constantly when I’m really not. This is what’s really going on:

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Packing and shipping a couple wholesale orders – could take 4 hours, could take all day……

2. smart hours

I am smarter and more creative in the morning, so that work has to come first – even if there is busy work that feels urgent. That stuff will always be there and will always feel urgent.

3. interruptions

Also known as the internet…. I knew it was a problem but keeping a written log highlighted how much of a problem it is. What are these interruptions really costing me in time, focus and serenity?

4. exercise

I’m better with exercise. My brain and everything else works better when I’m consistent about it. I can focus for longer periods of time, I’m sharper, quicker and have more energy. The difference in my productivity is remarkable – the time investment is worth it. Always.

5. email

This is a real trouble spot. I waste a lot of time on email – looking at it, organizing, categorizing, flagging messages, and feeling guilty, embarrassed and overwhelmed. By the time I actually do something about it I’ve handled an email a number of times, stuff gets lost, overlooked etc. – in all that shuffling I’ve created confusion for myself and annoyance and inconvenience for others. I’m making a cumbersome and overwhelming task more cumbersome and more overwhelming by not just dealing with it once.

going forward

Just the awareness, observations and exercise of recording my days is having an effect on me. I think it would be a mistake to tackle all 5 issues full-on, all at once though, so I’m picking one to to work on this week: Email.

My big, scary, tangled inbox mess. I will handle email once. I won’t check it until I’m ready to deal with it immediately. And I’m committing an additional 30 minutes everyday to work on the current inbox debacle. I’ll let you know how it goes.

my big creative year : percolating ideas and MacGyver

January 26, 2015

by annwood

I’ve been thinking about some of the painful parts, the really not fun moments, that are part of creative work. The fear and panic I feel when inspiration or solutions aren’t appearing and a deadline is looming. I felt a lot of this during my fox project. The schedule was ambitious – they had to be photographed in mid November and I started designing from scratch in October. They are relatively large, they are jointed (this is brand new to me), they needed to be free standing (nightmarishly difficult for this kind of creature) and their posture and body language were important to the mood, the mood was everything and I wasn’t getting it.

This was waking me up at 4 in the morning night after night – frantically replaying the work of the day and searching my mind for solutions.

During one of my 4 AM worry sessions I took a vacation from my fox problem. This is a coping tool I’ve been using my entire life and it works remarkably well. I say to myself “I’m taking a vacation from my problems” and it flips a switch in me – for a little while I can put something out of my mind – get out of obsessive mode, step temporarily out of unproductive worry. I think it works so well for me in part because I’ve been doing it for so long – habits and practices are so powerful…. My brain knows just what I’m looking for when it hears that phrase. So I took my vacation and fell back to sleep. When I woke up I knew exactly what to do about my foxes. The solution was a combination of things I had tried separately but not together. My conscious mind couldn’t get there – couldn’t see the forest for the trees, had too much anxiety and judgment in the way but when given the opportunity my subconscious stepped right up.

Taking a vacation from my problems doesn’t always involve sleeping – in fact it usually doesn’t. The mix of deeply repetitive work and intense creativity and problem solving works for me. I work on a problem or reach for inspiration or an idea and then let it go – I don’t think about it. I take a vacation from my problem and do something else, something that doesn’t require that kind of thinking. It’s my percolation phase. And then when I’m sewing a million birds or packing and shipping or doing the dishes something shifts and I know what to try next or what to let go of. My problem may not resolve completely but there is movement.

Last week I came across a very simple, direct and intentional practice for accessing one’s subconscious and this is where MacGyver comes in.

I listen to The Unmistakable Creative Podcast (Srinivas Rao) on the regular, in this episode Srini talks to Lee Zlotoff – the creator of infamous 80‘s action TV show MacGyver. Please listen to the episode for Lee’s story or learn more about him and find a detailed explanation of his creative process/ problem solving technique and the science behind it here.

How it works – the basics:

Ask a question

It’s important that you write it down on paper then ask your subconscious to work on it.

Percolate

Give your subconscious a crack at it. Do something to distract your conscious mind from the problem – something that occupies you but doesn’t require too much brain power. For me something like cutting paper for lots and lots of flamingos works beautifully.

It is important that you not watch TV, read or have much conversation etc. I’ve been listening to a wind in the pines sound loop while I work for my percolation time.

Ask for an answer

After a pre-determined period of time ( I’ve been using 2-3 hours – could be longer or shorter but for me longer works better), ask your subconscious, “What have you got for me?” And start writing. If there’s nothing there just write anything at all – just write and ideas will begin to emerge….

Do it again.

It’s creative muscle, it’s marking a path to an elusive place – the more you do it the stronger the muscle and the connections get.

It sounds so simple … simplistic even or like magical thinking, but I’ve been repeating the process everyday for a week with remarkable results (it has gotten better with practice). I’ve been playful and curious with it – I’ve asked my subconscious to work on little problems and big bold questions – really expecting nothing and gotten some remarkable clarity and insight. I hope you play with this – it’s interesting……

my big creative year : overcoming obstacles

January 19, 2015

by annwood

I’m great at getting in my own way, overthinking things, feeling overwhelmed and procrastinating. In the week since the first post in My Big Creative Year series I’ve heard from lots of people who struggle with the same things I do and have similar aspirations: to be more deeply creative and productive, to get ideas out of my head and into the world. Below I’ve shared where I frequently get stuck and tools and practices I’ve collected over the years that get me unstuck. They are not fancy or complicated and have saved me again and again. And I still need to be reminded of them – again and again.

What gets in my way :

1. I’m too busy

2. I don’t have an idea

3. I don’t know where to start

4. I’m in love with my idea

What I can do about it :

1. I’m too busy

Reduce the scope. I can find 15 minutes. I can find 30 minutes. 15 – 30 minutes everyday is meaningful. The daily practice starts to build a habit and it gets me out of inertia and into momentum. Inertia is my dreaded life sucking nemesis.

2. I don’t have an idea

Or I have too many ideas – they are kind of the same. Pick something – the subject really doesn’t matter that much – I know that for sure. What does matter is that it is achievable in current circumstances. I love assignments and I started this blog with my 100 Cardboard Horses project. It was a very simple practice that led to all sorts of other ideas. It could have been anything – what mattered is it got me moving and thinking.

You can also seek out assignments and challenges – an external prompt and sharing are good things. Some of my most satisfying work and ideas came out of being in a diorama club here in NYC for 10 years. We took turns picking the subject and then assembled to share what we made. This is one of my favorites:

gjoa haven 2008

And you can find creative challenges and assignments online – I recently discovered PBS’s The Art Assignment.

Committing to a do-able assignment and applying small consistent effort is as close to a magic formula as there is for growing creatively and getting unstuck.

3. I don’t know where to start

The box method has been an effective tool for me. Putting stuff in a box – pretty do-able. I’m a fan of Twyla Tharp’s book in general but this one practice has had a huge impact on me. From The Creative Habit:

“The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet. It also represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on a box means that I’ve started work”

Also list making – beginning to get ideas out of my head. I make a huge list of possibilities – not editing myself at all – whatever comes to mind: colors, sounds, smells, memories, textures – I make little drawings or get absurd or silly or morose – just a big free brain dump. Interesting and unexpected connections and intersections emerge from these big messy lists. Sometimes I use a notebook and sometimes I make them physically huge – the shift in scale can spark something for me.

4. I’m in love with my idea

That doesn’t sound like an obstacle does it? For me it’s one of the biggest. And it really has to do with fear. I fall in love with an idea, get precious about it, and if I don’t have some external force, some credible threat or deadline to draw it out of myself it lingers there – in it’s perfect and untested form in the safety of my imagination, not subject to scrutiny or interpretation by others; it can live forever as a glorious possibility with no chance of my abilities to express it coming up short. This, more than anything causes me to not move forward with ideas that intrigue or delight me most. The only remedy is to start, suck it up, acknowledge what’s happening and start- make a list, put things in a box, commit some time, start. Once I get moving the failures don’t bother me – it’s the anxiety of starting and that anxiety can be huge.

And something else I need to remind myself of again and again:

I don’t have to want to

How inspired or motivated I’m feeling in a particular moment about starting seems to have no effect on my degree of satisfaction with what I make. In the various self imposed assignments I’ve committed to there were inevitably times I just didn’t feel like it – I mean REALLY didn’t feel like it – but because I had made it mandatory I showed up. Sometimes it was miserable from start to finish but I still felt good about following through and the habit was reinforced. More often than I would have guessed something else happened – I ended up deeply focused and engaged and created work that surprised me and I felt good about – something new happened that felt like it came from a deeper more elusive place in myself.

the swamp 2013

Left to follow my inclinations or wait for inspiration this work would not have happened. Showing up in that uncomfortable moment opened me to possibilities I could not have predicted.

Show up. Sometimes it’s all you can do and sometimes it’s all you need to do.

If you decide to try a new practice – recording ideas in the moment, making a big list, putting stuff in a box, committing 15 minutes a day to a project you’ve been sitting on – I’d love to see or hear about it. Please use #mybigcreativeyear on instagram and twitter or post your link or tell me about it in the comment section. Yesteday I used the box method to get myself moving on a project I’ve been having trouble starting (too in love with the idea) – and it’s getting 30 minutes every day too.

Onward.

my big creative year

January 12, 2015

by annwood

Shadows of things to come………

A big creative year. That’s my wish and intention for myself for 2015. I’m committing to take action on ideas I’ve been sitting on, to look harder and deeper for inspiration and to make more time to explore my curiosity. Curiosity has always been my driving force and trusted compass. It’s so easy to become mired in busyness and lose sight of how important it is to make time to explore. I always intend to make time but the deep and inescapable truth remains that hope is not a strategy. There are though, tools and systems and practices that work if I use them:

The first is so easy and for me might be the most powerful – a note book and a pencil. It’s also the practice I’ve been most consistent with throughout my life. The more you use it the more effective it is. Record ideas immediately as they come to you – it only takes a moment and it must be on paper. I’ll go on and on about this in a future post – I love my notes and sketches but I could be so much more consistent.

Schedule everything – all that stuff I do that keeps the lights on still has to happen but it could be done more efficiently. A lot more efficiently. I’ve been experimenting for a few weeks with how I schedule myself and I’ve learned a bunch I’ll share with you later on. I’m also exploring systems and tools to make some of the less inspiring but important tasks take less time. There is so much available that could help – it just requires attention and planning.

Put ideas and exploring on the schedule, even in a small way. Ideas need space, time, support, discipline and momentum. Even when I’m super duper busy – there is time somewhere- even 15 minutes can be powerful if its truly focused and consistent.

Collaborate more- some of my most significant growth and most satisfying projects have come from collaborations. I finished 2014 with a big project with Fortuny that I loved and I’ll share that soon (the photo at the top of the post is a sneak peek). Below are a couple other favorite collaborative projects.

It’s such a simple question: What would you like to happen this year? Why not make it your big creative year too? Each Monday of 2015 I’ll share what I learn – what I’m experimenting with, what’s working and what isn’t. And I’d love to hear from you – what would you love to accomplish this year? What new practice will you try? What challenges you? What lights you up? What tiny change could you make to bring you just a little closer to doing something you’ve dreamed of?