YAY SO MANY THINGS IDEAS IDEAS LETS GO CREATIVITY ART AND ARTISTS DANCING THE WORLD NEW

Creation and Absorption One

Ah, creation. What a sublime, terrible, heartmending, releasing, heartbreaking act! How we can learn and grow from joining hands with it in dance! But if you’re here, you already know that, I imagine. You’re an artist. I think we all are. My goal here is just to get the pencil sharpened, the pen full of ink.

This once-ever-two-weeks newsletter has already been running on a email list for a good handful of weeks now, but I decided to move it to my substack because, quite frankly, I think it could reach more eyes there.

But as you can see, I'm also posting each entry on this website.

Oh, and just like before, each newsletter WILL be accompanied with a picture of one of my cats, as you can see in the banner up there.

What is this newfangled newsletter, though? It is a place where I share:

  • Resources for writers, worldbuilders, and other creatives (the Creation part)
  • Cool pieces of art I come across out in my explorations (the Absorption part)
    • I try to focus on the WEIRD and the EXPERIMENTAL. If that interests you, you’ve come to the right place.
    • The pieces I share will be mostly writing, stories, essays, videos, but don’t be shocked if I link the odd painting or song. However much my interest tends to writing and worldbuilding, I’ve tried to expand my net recently.
  • Any fun suggestions I think of to help your creative process (also Creation)
    • This will also mostly be about writing or worldbuilding, but you know the gist by now. Other suggestions may pop their heads in.
  • Any other random art stuff I’ve come across, like cool games or silly online experiments.

SO with my grand release to my own halls, I’ve decided to gather up my favorites from all the newsletters I’ve sent so far. A sort of best-of. To y’all who’ve been around since the first newsletter: hopefully this isn’t too much of a repeat :p. I’ll throw in a couple new things, just for you.

THE NEWSLETTER PROPER

Creation

  • A shortlist of writing resources and tools:
    • Scrivener - the writing program I use to write my longer stories and collections! It is paid, though it’s not overly pricey.
    • LibreOffice - a good option for if you don’t wanna be tied to a major corporation like Google or Microsoft for your document editors. It’s got a whole suite of free programs! That don’t try to connect you to the C L O U D.
    • Obsidian - A wonderful notetaking program that uses markdown. Very smooth, very wiki-able.
    • Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer - a book I borrowed from my partner, and though i’m very much still diving into it, it has been fantastic. a creative take on teaching creative writing :).
    • 4 Exercises for a Better Understanding of [Your Own] Writing - a wonderful set of writing exercises on itch.io!
    • I’m Politely Begging You to Write Nonfiction by Writing with Andrew - A delightful video that makes a very strong case to add some creative nonfiction into your writing practice :0. Inspired me, that’s for sure! This video is the reason I wrote On decks and why they aren’t outside and Metaphor Is.
    • Paint Chip Poetry - For you poets out there, here’s a fun little game to play with a group of friend poets! Poet friends! It’s a great way to practice free poetic creation :).
  • The grand Wikipedia art portal, if you’re down for some inspiring research rabbit holes.
  • A list of worldbuilding resources - what it says on the tin. a fantastic list of resources, very comprehensive, honestly. just found it a few minutes ago, lol.
  • take the weird route to marketing your art by Elizabeth Aman - for something more concrete, here’s a good essay on how weird marketing can be a lot better (and often cheaper) than typical marketing methods. for you authors and general creatives who are trying to build your own career!
  • Decker - an AMAZING program able to make games, slideshows, visual stories, and much more, all with a real cool pixely style!
  • Ok fine, I’ll plug myself a bit and share my worldbuilding templates for Obsidian. There’s a bunch of them, I’m planning on adding more, and I’ll leave the rest to the itch page.
  • MY SUGGESTIONS
    • Make a creative to-do list every week. Write it on a sheet of paper, and physically cross stuff off as you do it. Put it in a place where you will see it. DAILY.
      • You can also just do that with your other to-do lists, lol. My main point here is that digital lists can easily get buried in folders. Physical things are harder to get hidden, especially if you make a point of having them always be visible.
    • Start a physical journal. I mean it. Whether it’s whatever little thoughts pop into your head as you go through your life or a record of what happened every day, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get ideas down and practice your prose. You can see it, feel the paper, and make freehand sketches much easier than in Word or Obsidian.
      • It may seem slow at first, but you’ll be surprised how much material you have written after a year.
    • Here’s advice that are always thrown about, but I thought I’d give them my weight too:
      • Enter writing contests. Submit to literary journals. Join a writing critique group (ideally in person, meeting at least once a month). Go to in-person poetry readings. Go to in-person literature readings. Go to your local library.
      • The main themes here are to RELEASE and SUBMIT your work (get it out there!) and JOIN ARTISTIC COMMUNITIES!
      • If art is communication, then you gotta go out and communicate.
    • Make a piece from the perspective of a bird or a bat or some other flying creature. It is a WILD experience to try and put your mind in that headspace.

Absorption

  • I kind of have to start with Ursula K. Le Guin. She’s my favorite author, and her works have dearly changed my writing over the past year. Here’s the must-reads:
    • Always Coming Home - My favorite book currently!! It’s a measured, loving, and honest fictional ethnography of a far-future culture living in California.
    • The Dispossessed - A sci-fi novel about a physicist alienated from an anarchist society who travels to a capitalist society, determined to unite them.
    • The Left Hand of Darkness - A sci-fi novel that’s story mixed with anthropology. About gender and the clashing of cultures.
    • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - A fantastic essay on the merits of a different, more measured, less conquering form of storytelling.
  • Worldbuilding videomakers!
  • Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - I still haven’t read this yet, but just reading the first page left a huge impression on me. Do it. It is a WILD experiment with what’s possible with writing.
  • How Should One Read a Book? by Virginia Woolf - An old essay by an early-20th century writer, and though this piece is mostly about reading, there’s some valuable things to glean about writing, I feel.
  • The Magnus Archives - Primarily a horror podcast, but it has some very interesting writing decisions that make its plot and story stick out to me. The ending especially is one I wouldn’t have guessed leading up to it, but that makes perfect sense. It’s very much a story that fits very well with its themes.
  • Ars Goetica - WOW. I mean... WOW! A collection of beautiful illustrations of various demons.
  • The Marginalian - a fantastic site full of essays about poetry, literature, and philosophy that are sure to inspire.
  • CJ THE X! - thought I’d throw them in here because why not. if you’re not familiar, CJ makes music and video essays on philosophy, art, and beauty. has an extremely energetic and unique style of delivery.
  • Slay the Princess - In case you’re not familiar with this game, it’s one of my favorites, and it has some fantastic writing and story. You kinda must play it to experience it. Very inspiring.
  • Stice’s Satyricon (2021) - A WILD film! It takes a lot for stuff to make me gape at its strangeness, and this was most definitely a lot. Shows just what you can do with art!
  • Centoquest by Bibliomancer - A FANTASTIC text adventure game where you explore a house and make a poem from bits and pieces of writing scattered about.
  • this manifesto is a part of you now by Natanya (aka Fox with a Fountain Pen) - a wonderful manifesto made by my partner on their art-making process, and I think it could inspire you as it has me!

OTHER

  • cool wikis - a webpage that lists a whole bunch of interesting wikis. for your internet surfing needs.
  • Here’s a fun history website on Medieval Europe.
  • The debate between sheep and grain - Now here’s something from leftfield! This is an ancient cuneiform piece of writing that was apparently part of a whole genre of inanimate-objects-dissing-each-other. I think this could be a delightful thing to inspire weird literary traditions for worldbuilding.
  • Marginalia Search - a great alternative to the big company search engines. focused on the small and obscure internet.
  • TAKE NOTES! Get out a physical notebook, and TAKE NOTES! Read a textbook. Yes, I’m serious. With no pressure, jot down notes, read at your leisure, maybe even do some exercises. It can be for whatever you wanna learn more about, like creative writing or the history of the Medieval Germany or astronomy.
    • Feed your curiosity, and it will bleed into your art.

The End

So, this was a lot, I imagine. Take your time with it all. I just figured that for the first entry on substack, I’d pack it real full of my favorites :).

Oh, and a reminder that this newletter is released once every two weeks. Happy creating and absorbing, and I shall see y’all then :)!