notes on the creative process

Writing for Substack feels pleasantly furtive to me. None of my academic friends or acquaintances know about my little blog, and I’d be kind of embarrassed if they found out about it—my posts are earnest and often clumsy, and my cartoons are, um, artless. But I am enjoying the fact that writing, for this platform at least, is beginning to feel like... See more

In 1817, the poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization. “At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.” Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching ... See more

Once the search is in progress, something will be found . It’s a strategy for finishing, a strategy for trusting in my ability to complete a work.

Always work (note, write) from your own interest, never from what you think you should be noting or writing. Trust your own interest.

Most of the time, “What should I do with my life?” is a terrible question. “What should I do with this tennis serve?” “What should I do with this line at Starbucks?” “What should I do with this traffic jam?” “How should I respond to the anger I feel welling up in my chest?” These are better questions. Excellence is the next five minutes, improvemen

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You're going to get depressed because your sense of self-competence is overly reliant on FAST RESULTS.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they

did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it,

they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

—Steve Jobs

Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water, as with lettuce. Ripening goes on in my mind. So I’m always working at a great many things at the same time.