daily-ish notes…

  • re: isaac asimov.

    I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid, and in the eighties and nineties that meant I read a lot of Isaac Asimov. You could say that he was a bit of a creative inspiration for me.

    Asimov wrote constantly. The mythos that surrounds him suggests that he got up early, wrote as much as five thousand words until he could write no more, and then got on with his day.

    Writing five thousand words per day is a lot. Daily is a lot. But it showed in his work that he was able to produce so much, and a lot of it of great quality to the point that you can still buy fresh printings of his books today.

    Infinitely monkeys with infinite typewriters will eventually, by sheer chance, produce Shakespeare, but one guy with dedication and a single typewriter can produce something just as great by force of willpower and effort.

  • of anything daily.

    Daily practice isn’t about volume, nor output, nor streaks, and neither is it about simply filling a calendar.

    Daily practice is about doing something on repeat, routinely, no matter the mood or state of mind you happen to be in or the place you are at physically, mentally, emotionally, or whatever.

    Daily practice is about building a creative muscle that performs whenever you need it, not just when you feel like it. It’s about controlling the creative process and being able to call upon it at leisure, and not merely building a skill that requires an external factor to be present and available and in control of you.

  • on dabbling.

    I painted a picture last night and it’s a mess, and I’m fine with that.

    It’s not a bad painting, per se, but it didn’t quite do what I wanted it to do. Not that I’m sure I could even tell you what it is that I wanted it to do anyways. It was an experiment, me dabbling and trying something I’d never tried before, and no it wasn’t perfect. Of course I’m fine with that.

    Dabbling can lead to success or it can lead to … well, something other than success. Failure is the wrong word here, Even though failure would have been fine, too. Both success and failure come out of trying something new, and both success and failure and everything in between can result in learning.

    So, dabbling leads to learning, and as a learner that’s ultimately my goal, right? And I should dabble more and not overthink it.

  • are coffee powered.

    I’m sitting here drinking a coffee and waiting for inspiration.

    We were watching a show last night before bed and one of the characters turned out to be an artist. It was depicted in three ways. He splurted some paint onto a palette. He got a really intense look on his face. And he poured himself a cup of black coffee from a cheap plastic automatic coffee maker.

    I realize that I too tend to do some of my work while caffeinated.

    This is only really a shame because coffee tends to keep me awake, so I don’t drink it in the evenings. So, I wonder what inspiration I’m missing after 5pm.

  • see purple mountains.

    I live on the prairies, but I’m driving distance to the mountains.

    When I go to the mountains I like to sketch and paint them, and every time I do I tend to learn a little bit more about mountains, colours, and nature.

    Mountains, it turns out, are purple.

    And red. And orange. And green. And brown. And sometimes there is a little bit of blue.

    I’ve never painted a grey mountain.

    It’s the light and the rocks and the distance and the feeling evoked by standing at the base of something a bajillion times bigger than you and looking up at it to try and represent it with a few brush strokes.

    But it’s also a lesson in painting what you see and feel and not the image that you brought with you from the prairies that doesn’t actually exist.