Issue 92: Creativity is a pool

Having written a few years of this newsletter, one thing I keep coming back to is how often I learn the same lesson in different contexts and periods of my life. This year, I wanted to take my time with writing, but knew that between work and planning a wedding I would have less time for it. May and June have been busy months with travel, celebrations, wedding-related tasks, and getting COVID and norovirus, so I haven’t sat down and written in almost two months.

Despite planning for some creative lulls, I started to feel antsy and guilty. I began to avoid writing this newsletter because I didn’t feel like I had anything concrete or topical to share from my writing life. I only just started a second draft of my novel in April but found it hard to even open the Scrivener file. How could I reflect on writing or my ~creative process~ if I wasn’t actually writing? I then came across this Substack piece titled “13 no pressure creative outlets for perfectionists,” which was obviously clickbait to me, a perfectionist.

Ahmadi’s list emphasizes that perfectionism “hinders and prevents creation, rather than supporting and inspiring.” Yet again, I’ve trapped myself in a cycle of non-creation by holding myself to an arbitrary standard. I’ve narrowed my very ideas around creativity, which in turn, makes it hard to create. Creativity is a pool you should be able to wade into easily, to go for a dip when you please. It should feel relaxing and restorative rather than a panic-inducing cliff dive into rocky ocean waves.

In Ann Friedman’s latest newsletter, she had this important reminder that creativity is, at once, low stakes to exercise and high stakes in its impact:

Making art, and encouraging others to make art, is a revolutionary and life-sustaining act. It's not a distraction or a frivolous pursuit. Especially at a time when the people in power are focused on ripping apart and tearing down, creation is essential to resistance.

So here’s me taking some steps back into the creativity pool with a few no pressure creative outlets from the past few months:

• For my bachelorette, we did a few crafty activities. First was an embroidery workshop at the New York Sewing Center, where I embroidered a donut (groundbreaking) on a T-shirt while stabbing myself five million times in the finger. At Happy Medium, an art cafe, I painted a Halloween-themed goblet because I’m already looking forward to the fall.
• I was inspired by my friend to scrapbook the bachelorette weekend in a physical notebook. I used my mini Bluetooth photo printer and stickers I’ve hoarded (I’m even a perfectionist with my stickers!!). My friends saved business cards, receipts, and even loose thread to put in the scrapbook. Trash to treasure etc.
• I made photo keychains for my friends that contained two pictures, one from when we first met and one of us most recently. E made similar keychains, except he drew his friends as Simpsons characters!

• Kept up my five year journal with short daily entries
• I tried out some new eyeshadow tutorials and hopefully improved my blending technique
• For a friend’s wedding, I learned a few Indian dances that we performed at the reception—my favorite was the Levitating x Woh Ladki Jo mashup
• E got me a new Lego set for my birthday, which I built on one of the million rainy weekends we had in May
• Embraced my inner child and reread Holes by Louis Sachar and rewatched the Barbie version of the Princess and the Pauper with a friend. Preminger is an icon!
• Designed a graphic in Canva for my sister’s birthday because Wegmans allows you to print pretty much anything on a cake (can you tell she’s a Timothée stan?)
• I designed and coded our wedding website from scratch! I previously designed our save the dates and it was fun to extend those aesthetic choices into our website and invitations. I also used a lot of fun photos my sister shot on her film camera. I haven’t coded in my day job in a few years now, but the web is still one of my favorite mediums. (Side note: we need a return to websites!)
• Designed some charm earrings to wear to Cowboy Carter
• There were some overly ripe bananas laying around that were too mushy to eat alone, so I baked a chocolate banana cake from Yossy Arefi’s perfect Snacking Bakes

I’m excited to ease back into my novel draft over the summer, but will be trying to do so in ways that are low pressure. In the meantime, I want to continue exploring creative outlets, old and new, to get me into a generative mindset. What are some of your favorite creative outlets/hobbies?

Speaking of creative outlets, my fiancé (the infamous "E") shot a short film in April called The Audit, a dark comedy satirizing corporate culture and its impact on mental health, and he’s now raising funds for post-production! If the project resonates with you, please consider supporting Mr. Donut!

Creative resources

• Submit to Write or Die’s first ever fiction contest by July 1, judged by novelist Nora Lange! Winning stories will be published in their magazine in September.
• Oliver Burkeman on what it would mean to be done for the day: “By contrast, “being done for the day” turns the focus inwards: to what it would take to allow yourself to feel done. It’s about what you might reasonably expect of yourself today, given your actual situation and limitations, regardless of what might by some other definition “need” doing.”
• Writing Co-Lab’s Summer Camp is a three week online program of generative classes, panels, accountability write-together groups, and more! All events will take place live on Zoom, with recorded sessions.
• I’ve long enjoyed reading Kat Lewis’s newsletter, Craft with Kat, and appreciated her behind-the-scenes look at the process of editing and selling her first book.
• Christine Pride is hosting a writing retreat called “Write with Pride” in September in Santa Barbara. Applications are open until July 15. I enjoyed their interview with Agents & Books about what makes a dream writers retreat, how to set expectations, and what elements writers can take back into their own lives.
• I love the newsletter Big City, Little Friend (I always learn something new about New York and its history) and I shared a bit about one of my favorite New York experiences/places in their 100th issue!

Recent reads & other media

In books, I read Y/N by Esther Yi and Memory Piece by Lisa Ko. In romance novels, I read Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman and Forget Me Not by Julie Soto.

In movies I watched in theaters, I saw the 20th anniversary rerelease of Pride & Prejudice (iconic), Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (terrible exposition but amazing underwater and plane stunts), and Materialists (a romance exploring the dating market and capitalism, but wish there had been more Pedro Pascal). Sinners was my favorite moviegoing experience of the year, enhanced by Ryan Coogler’s great lecture about how they shot the movie and different types of film and aspect ratios.

In other movies, I watched The Big Short and Mountainhead in an unintentional Succession rivalry. A Nice Indian Boy is an incredibly cute romantic comedy and has a really lovely storyline about parent-child relationships. Some friends and I rewatched Titanic and it’s still a perfect blockbuster. For our joint bachelor and bachelorette weekend, E and I rented out a theater for our friends to watch Tropic Thunder.

In TV, I watched The Residence while I was down with COVID, which was a fun Shondaland mystery but way too long and weirdly paced. E and I watched the second seasons of both The Last of Us and The Rehearsal. I loved this interview with Nathan Fielder about The Rehearsal, especially this line about how he thinks about creating art: What’s the middle ground of something that is real but also something that is funny and entertaining?

In concerts, E and I decided to spontaneously get nosebleed seats for Charli XCX (last time we saw her in 2018, we paid $35 each 🥲). We also went to Cowboy Carter with my sister and some friends, and it was transcendent! It rained the entire time, but Beyoncé was incredible and performed the entire show, spinning horseshoe and all! The minute the show ended, it stopped raining, which just confirms the true extent of Beyoncé’s powers.

Recently read short stories: Rainbow Rainbow by Lydi Conklin (I first discovered their work, Sunny Talks, in One Story)

Note: Book links are connected to my Bookshop affiliate page. If you purchase a book from there, you'll be supporting my work and local independent bookstores!

~ meme myself and i ~

When people think I’m anxious. Dancing for rotisserie chicken. Amazing Sinners fanart. That one friend who doesn’t understand a sweeping candid. There’s so much happening in this video I can’t stop laughing. The rap verse in the middle of a song.