LISTLISTLIST I LOVE LISTS THIS ONE IS SPECIAL IT IS A LIST OF LISTS OF CREATIVE AND ART

Creation and Absorption Five

[oops i transferred this from my substack way late. please forgive me.]

Hiya! I’m on time again! The apartment is FINALLY unpacked to a livable level, and with the new year hitting me in the face like a plastic bag in the wind, I am ready to get back into creating (and absorbing, I guess).

I hope the very newborn year has been treating you well. It’s pretty convenient for me that my newsletter schedule lined up with this occassion, but it fits. I get to share some cool things you can start your year with!

Anyways, it’s time for perhaps the best cat photo so far in this series: Harley cradled in my partner’s arms!

THE NEWSLETTER PROPER

Creation

Here’s a few resources I’ve found in my journeys:

  • The Biodiversity Heritage Library - a collection of really cool, Creative Commons images that you can include in your works or just have as inspiration :).
  • The Phrontistery by Stephen Chrisomalis - A wonderful website full of weird, obscure, and lost words. Maybe you don’t use any of them in your writing, but they can be an inspiratory window into strange and historical realms.
  • Lit Theory 101 | Narrative Structure & Time by Strange Pilgrims - This essay details some good literary terms on narrative that you can add to your toolkit :)

Now for the main course: my suggestions for the new year:

  • Try a handwritten creative to-do list you CAN’T avoid. Write it on a small piece of paper and bring it with you wherever you go. Physically cross stuff off. Having been raised at a computer, it was easy for me to forget how good it feels to physically slash that line through tasks.
    • I’ve been doing weekly to-do lists since late October, and it’s been working very well for me :).
    • I’m ambitious and write down more than I can reasonably get done in a week, but it’s been good to push me.
  • If you’re a writer, try handwriting drafts of your work. Typing up the final drafts later could be a good way to methodically go through all your words and grammar, making for more focused editing. You can’t just skip over words.
    • This is something that I’ve never really tried (other than with poetry), but now that I’ve typed down this idea, I want to try this for my next short story.
    • Oh, and it’ll workout your hands!
  • Despair is easy to find in an internet filling with AI floodwaters, a thing which, shockingly, is never good for one’s mental health (much less creative inspiration). I know many others have been blaring this horn for many years (centuries, even), but I implore you to look for real things.
    • Look for real things away from the screens. Look for beauty, for love, for art in hidden places. Look for life. Look for funny knick knacks.
    • Go to your local museums. Wander the shelves of your local library. Go to your local antique store.
    • GO TO A PARK, for GOODNESS SAKE!
      • Don’t just touch the grass, twiddle it between your fingers, take some dead stalks and weave a little sculpture out of them, swing a stick, climb a tree, sketch a forest (especially if you don’t think you’re good at drawing).
  • I don’t care if this stuff has been said a squilliam times before, I’m gonna say them. Good things are worth saying and worth hearing over and over.
  • In your adventuring—which, by the way, can take place entirely in your morning walk or dailing commute, if you’re strapped for time—collect things. Sketch or take pictures when you can’t take stuff with you.
    • When you have some free time, jot down whatever ideas the bits and bobs give you. Let them inspire you.
    • The best part is: you don’t have to keep them! Once the blinks and blonks have given you all they can offer, feel free to release them back into the world (or the trash/recycling if that’s where they best fit).
      • I currently have a stack of miscellaneous papers on my desk.

And finally: LEARN THINGS!

Absorption

Here’s some good pieces of art I absorbed these past two holidayey weeks:

  • Slapstick and terror on the high seas | Fool Time Part 3 of 4 by Secret Base - WATCH THIS! well, watch the first two parts first, then WATCH THIS! how Jon Bois wrote the storm is some of the best storytelling I’ve ever scene. if you’re a writer, whatever medium you’re in, take notes. physical notes, I mean it.
  • Fantastic Mr Fox REANIMATED by Cat Glass - a loving collaboration of many animators. if you watched the movie as a kid, definitely watch this :).
  • Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds by Dylan Bajda - a wonderful speculative biology project, where the concept is that an extremely powerful being has put a modern house bird on a planet with no other land vertebrates—only insects, plants, a couple fish, etc—and let them evolve. It’s really cool, and I’m making my way through the video series that Aspen Aspires produced for it.
  • You know me, I can’t help but include a piece of ancient literature here: The Epic of Gilgamesh! - you (might) know it, you (likely don’t) love it, it’s the best-known work to come out of the ancient Sumerian/Babylonian literary tradition. It’s fascinating, there’s a ton of parallels with the Hebrew Bible, and Gilgamesh’s despair over death is poignant.
  • Also, my partner has had very good things to say about the novel Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, and it’s next on my reading list, so expect to hear more about it in future newsletters.

OTHER

Goodbye!

I’ll see y’all in approximately two weeks! Though for you youtube subscribers out there, I will have something out sooner eeeheeeheheheheheeeeeeeeeeee.