The Notebook

Cecily is talking about notebooks and her thoughts moved me. My response was

I love notebooks as well. I have a current spiral and moleskine going at all times, each having different purposes. As a writer myself I too have taken that “you must journal” mantra to heart and took it, I must say, too literally. I thought that if I wasn’t writing down minute details of my day that were full of literariness (”I stopped in the street and noticed the blossom on the tree had grown in both size and beauty since I last passed”) then I wasn’t doing it right.

It took time but eventually I came to think of my moleskine as just my notebook, not some great historical notebook that demanded great things be written in it. So it became home to grocery lists and to-do lists and book club meeting times etc. But then it also become home to the first paragraphs of future books, “Out There Someday Ideas,” projects I want to take on, next actions for projects I want to start now, quotes that inspire or touch me, miniature collages, occasionally actual real journal entries about what I’m thinking or feeling, and sometimes honest to god insane observations about the blossom in the tree being grander in scale and beauty than it was yesterday.

My point being, it was only when I stopped stressing about filling my notebook with literary and artful things that I could actually start filling my notebook up with literary and artful things. That and I also started doing collage in a different context and it made me think about myself as an artist in a different way and that left me feeling more inspired and motivated.

It's true that I had a lovely moloskine notebook that intimidated me because I wasn't creating anything wonderful and beautiful in it. It took a long time for me to realize that more important than not creating anything wonderful and beautiful was the fact that I wasn't creating anything at all. The key part of being a creative person is creating. I was so frozen by the fear of what I was doing not being good that I stopped doing anything. For several months over the summer and fall I barely wrote at all. Writing, which I love almost more than breathing, was not part of my life, not even in simple blog form. So with writing being gone calling myself a creative person or an artist was more than little stretch. What I was doing though was falling in love with photography. Honestly and truly in love with it. I love having my camera everywhere and shooting everything imaginable. Even when the shots turn out poorly I'm happy with the action itself because usually I learn something from the bad shot or the experience.

Did you catch that? Even when the shot itself is a failure it's really not, because I'm learning from the shot itself or the experience and I'm progressing and I'm creating. I keep a notebook that I paste "bad" prints. After a little bit of time has passed I look at the prints again and add notes beside them about what's wrong, what could be better and what I've learned. Even when I fail, it's not horrible. Even when I fail I'm not horrible.

I became conscious of these things back in October or early November. I think that for a long time I'd wanted to define myself as a writer above all other things and really wasn't open to many other creative outlets. Or to put it another way, if I was going to call myself a creative person (and that's a big if) then the only justification I had for it was that I was a writer. I can't draw stick figures, I haven't played music in over a decade, etc. I didn't have any talent in any other areas other than. Forces came together for me in the fall ((more like things were bad, really bad for a while in the fall and I was thinking a lot about how to make things better and how to be a better, happier person) and when I was thinking about creativity and art and things I'd like to do and try in my life kfan quoted from Kabuki: The Alchemy* #5 and it resonated with me in a big way.

Don't wait for some kind of validation or logic to give you external motivation, or you will never start. You don't have to make a living at it at first. Just begin it.

I find that to accomplish anything, you need initiative, persistence, discipline, and will. And most of all the decision to just do it and set it in motion. The conventional idea of talent is an illusion.

So many people have a natural talent and do nothing with it. You must do something in order for your talent to show up. You don't just wait for it to show up and do nothing.

That's a snippet of what he quoted (no link for the full quote). I read the whole thing over and over and over again. It just resonated with me. I can't explain it. Let me be earnest and cheesy and say that it moved me and moved some blocks in my mind.

Shortly after that I started a couple new photography projects that I had been wanting to work on as well as starting to make collages. I used to looked at collages as a children's art that grownups like to wrap in the trappings of adulthood. Meaning you can dress a collage up but it's still just something that a little kid could do. Now I love doing collage. Seriously. Taking ephemera, images, quotes, words, colors, shapes, thoughts, feelings, mixing it all up and seeing what comes out is fascinating and fun. Now my sketchbook, glue stick, scissors and sketchpad (my preferred collage destination) are always near by. Are my collages masterworks? No, of course not. Does that matter? No, of course not. Can anyone do it? Yes! But who says that's a bad thing?

I think of myself now as a creative person, maybe even something close to an artist. I'm a writer, I'm a collage maker, I'm a photographer, I'm open to other creative endeavors. My notebook is full of ideas and works in progress, of business plans and creative dreams and grocery lists and birthday present lists and all sorts of things that make up the life of a creative sort.

I wish that my notebook was filled with brilliant ideas that would turn me into an instant creative and financial success. But it's ok that it's not. It's ok that I try and it's ok that I sometimes fail. It's ok for you to try too and it's ok for you to fail.

Also see:
http://artjournalproject.blogspot.com/
http://www.kerismith.com/blog/