Hello everyone, and welcome to new subscribers! This is the first of a newsletter that will come to you at the start of every month. Each one will be slightly different and have some recaps from the last couple months of what I've been up to and some works in progress that I rarely discuss anywhere else on social media. In today's letter we're talking about drawing/writing challenges and the pressure creatives face. Happy reading !

It's my favorite time of year. Even though I live in sunny California, where it rarely gets to be sweater weather, I still embrace all aspects of the season. This fall in particular has been the first in at least 3 years that I have felt my creative spark come back. I feel as if I have been chasing this feeling for a lot longer than that, but there's something about this year where a lot of my mindset around creativity has really shifted.

As much as I love sharing my reading habits online and yapping about books, and will definitely do so in future posts, this one is mainly going to be about illustration and writing. Well before I was ever posting online, I was writing and drawing every single day. It was a habit, it was my greatest passion, and somewhere along the way I just completely stopped doing both. I just became stuck. I have historically used both drawing and writing as avenues to express my thoughts and process a lot of what I experience and since I stopped, I genuinely wonder what is going to come out of me now that I'm back in a rhythm. In an era that is so grossly encumbered by the weight of its own technological obsessions, it feels absolutely incredible to put pen to paper.

The main avenue that jump started this creative wave for me was embracing some drawing/writing challenges that I always felt were too daunting when I learned about them many years ago. Namely, inktober and nanowrimo.

If you've never heard of either of these challenges, drawtober as well as peachtober, and many other variations all branched off from inktober, a drawing challenge that started in 2009 to draw one ink drawing a day for the entire month of October. It's founder has done some dubious things over the years (which you can read about here) and there have been many similar challenges before this, but the concept was popularized online in the illustration and art spaces I stay plugged into and have for well over a decade. The second major challenge in November is nanowrimo, another 30 day challenging writers to write a 50,000 word story in a month. You can read about their ai bullshit here.

I have attempted to participate in both challenges many times over the years and I have never made it to the end. The pressure to do the challenge perfectly was entirely self imposed and stress inducing. I felt as if I had to follow rules, make up a lot of unrealistic deadlines, and became strict about what I was making and how I was making it. For a while I just stopped drawing altogether, believing that I didn't have the talent and that it wasn't important to keep up the practice when I never had any intention to make art for anyone other than myself. The same happened for writing during my post-grad burn out in 2020.

A solid 5 years later and now, I am just glad I still have it in me to draw, to create stories, to write. I feel like I've been jolted awake after a long slumber. I completely took my creative talents for granted, especially when both have always brought me joy and comfort. Not doing these practices have meant that I am constantly not feeling fulfilled. And why? Because I didn't have the talent to match the unrealistic expectation in my mind? I can't believe it has taken me this long to realize that no rules or guides or skill level matters at all when it comes to something as free form as painting, drawing, writing, storytelling. You can read advice online and hear from skilled artists and writers all day long about their process and still get no closer to finding your own talents until you sit down and make it a daily practice in your own life.

Even when I think about these drawing/writing challenge organizations that have lost face over the years, and how that intersects with rampant ai use in creative spaces, I just think about how disconnected people have become from the main reason creative challenges were made in the first place. These were challenges that, back when social media was simpler, used to be about people embracing their creativity and forming community around that expression, yet have both (and many others, I'm sure) have morphed over time to be less people centered and more tech focused. If you look at these sites now it's about hitting goals and meeting objectives, when art itself is a nebulous thing. The creative process involves constantly making mistakes, embracing alternative paths, and finding new solutions using methods you never would have discovered if you didn't go down that road at all. Art is weird and creativity can not be controlled or forced.

I could go on and on about how the creative process is absolutely necessary for the progression of our society but I'll just say for now, a drawing challenge does not have to cause so much pressure. In order to participate in an October drawing challenge in this year of epiphanies, I decided to just make a prompt list on a piece of paper: (pls ignore my attempt to draw a cat's face from memory idk what that is)

I had some travel days so I left a few days intentionally blank, but this was the full calendar. I liked the idea of themed weeks (like how drawtober is structured) so I took a mix of ideas and came up with this. I went with ink prompts for the first week, watercolor prompts for the second, swords was the prompt for the third (it felt prudent for that theme to apply to a whole week) after that was zine week and then the last week was spooky week, of course. Some of the drawings were quite rushed, others turned out great, and some still have yet to be completed (I might rethink making a zine a day for a week for next year) but overall I'm quite proud that I did this. It was fun to make these and I'm quite proud of how it turned out!

Here are some of my favorite page spreads and some of the zines I made and stuck in my journal:

Since I've been on a collage making and drawing kick, I also did a two page spread of my New York trip earlier in the month. It's comprised of stickers, bookmarks, and bagel receipts. I also stuck in my ticket from the broadway show Death Becomes Her and it was absolutely incredible, 11/10

Now that it's November, I have the bold idea in my mind that, with absolutely no planning at all, I will write a completed work in a month. In another attempt to make a challenge completely my own, the spin I'm planning on is finishing a comic script. It feels achievable because this comic has been in my brain for years and it is possibly the most vivid story I have ever imagined. Even when I wasn't writing this story I was thinking about this story. It has stuck with me and honestly, it has the largest pinterest board I've ever made. At this point, it feel ridiculous to not write it. Even if it's terrible. Even if I don't know how it ends. Even if I'm a day behind (yup I'm writing and posting this on Nov 2nd). Wish me luck as I try this out!

I hope these musings on creative expression and how I'm trying to break out of these old ideas of perfection help out any creatives out there! It's tough to not get stuck in your own mind when you have a lot of ideas and many issues executing them. I hope this time of year sparks some creative moments for you and you decide to write that poem, finish that painting, or fully create something new!

Quick Notes:

• Youtube video is coming to you next month (yay) this one has taken a lot of time and research to make so I hope that comes through. I'll give you a hint on the topic.

• The book club is going on hiatus till the end of the year! We'll be back in January with a planned calendar of reads so it's more accessible

• Bindery posts will more frequent as I exercise my writing brain! Let me know with the poll below what type of content you want in your inbox

Till the next letter, thanks for reading. <3