I like the idea of using seasons and cycles as a guide. It feels more natural than the algorithmic approach, which can spiral out of control sometimes. I do seek out old posts with some of the people I follow -- especially if I feel a resonance on a particular topic.
It's interesting that I saw this post from you today when I hadn't seen any recently, and even thought you hadn't posted for a while - I don't seem to get notifications of your posts anymore, I am not sure why...
I am also struggling to get started after the December break. I don't post every week but I did get into a fortnightly rhythm that was working for me though I noticed the views were decreasing with each post.
At the same time, I noticed that most if not all of the new subscriptions I am getting come from Notes. As much as I started my Substack to get eyes on my ceramics, I did it because I couldn't/didn't want to keep up with short-form Instagram-like content, meaning I was hoping it would be my writing about my process and my pieces that would interest people - I guess the way it happened with you :).
Now, I find myself at a point where I no longer know what to do... Writing is not what I do for a living so writing a post actually cuts into my making time, and making pots is what I am hoping to make money from...
I'm sorry - I am using your comments section to try to work out my issues...
I have thought about re-posting and somehow felt bad about it, for similar reasons to the ones you describe. But this idea of seasons and cycles makes absolute sense to me and I think it's what I will do too. So, thank you for articulating this for me - and now I'll try to find time to read your posts on Time (I guess there's a pun in there somewhere...) which I seem to have missed entirely.
The algorithm is a weird beast, I think the only way is to visit the profiles of people you want to keep up with. I think also when you comment or like that keeps you in the loop. I can't see any reason not to use Notes to show your beautiful work, there's nothing here that says you need to write long form essays, even if that's what many people are here for? Notes has taken it in a new direction...
Yes, it has. And yet, I find myself cringe every time I post a picture of a pot or point to my Etsy shop... I know it's childish - no one will find me unless I show myself. I know this and at the same time wish I didn't have to. If I was rich I would hire a publicist 😂
I’m just scrolling through comments already posted here before I make my own and saw you ‘processing’ and apologizing, then smiled. Tamsin’s writing makes us all circle back on our own inner workings, which is probably what we love most about her.
Just a thought: If making is what your ‘work’ is, then creating brief posts each with a capture of a new piece or work in progress as you go is absolutely permissible, with a few words jotted about how it became for you. They could be lists of impressions; what about a spontaneous poem? Something about your kiln temperature and the weather—it matters not. Writing is writing and Making is making. Different demands on our creativity can generate different products we offer as part of our Substack portfolio. We can make a section for ramblings; a section from the studio; a section for evolved written works.
Where this place is going is inevitably to the commercial god of content for profit. It is not and never will be the old Substack any more. Yet we are becoming MORE of who we are, with less time ahead. The formula is an inversion. Expecting to keep up with it is therefore only frustrating and a moot point.
Instead of a treadmill we ride, let’s create our own rhythm to benefit from what has been thrust upon us. Reporting in small-sharp-progress-shocks seems to fit into what it is rewarding. We have work we do that can benefit from this as well, post or note, it matters not. A snapshot in creativity can offer us markers in progress, capture of a sporadic thought, something we can accomplish and accumulate to develop into a larger written post once per month while still being here. They can all link into the one post, all those little thoughts and images, creating a web of integrated posts which have readers bouncing back to past ones to better understand the current one. We are the traffic masters when we choose to be.
Look at it less as “the job” and more as a tool to record and organize? Maybe this will help?
I like the idea of capturing the progress of a new piece, and the re-frame of using my substack as a "tool to record and reorganise" ... I am not sure how things will go for me in this new year, but I am leaning more and more towards keeping it simple and studio focused. Actually, after writing my comment above, I reposted an essay which is basically a process post for the making of a mug...
I really like this: "Yet we are becoming MORE of who we are, with less time ahead." I find this to be true and one of the biggest ironies of life.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to write - you have helped a LOT!
I like this piece, and your whole approach, a lot. I've gone through a similar fallow time after an explosion of creativity last year. I'm beginning to emerge now but I'm still not sure which way it's going to go. Maybe you can help me figure that out. Anyway, I've subscribed so you must be getting something right. I look forward to exploring your back catalogue.
Thanks Sara, I found it! Miranda, I'm glad this was useful to you! I write about process things from time to time, but also write a lot about my reactions to contemporary art and about Indian art, so feel free to leave again if these aren't your things! 😀
Hi Miranda! I think you may want to move your comment up to the main level so that Tamsin sees it - you have replied to my comment and this way she won't know/read your words, which I am sure she'll appreciate :)
Substack is a bit like a multimedia literary magazine. You’ll be found by people browsing articles on Google as much as here if people are looking for q specific thing, but some of the things we write may be buried under a lot of inconsequential stuff. There is a side of « current issues » that distracts people. So we have less of a tendency to go to the back catalogue perhaps. Re-posting with a nice intro might be really great.
In podcasting, we have to take breaks: what we do is either re-post, create special episodes (shorter, little snapshots of what we gleaned over the season) and it is super helpful to look back and see the topics treated. It can lead to new ones, it can close a chapter, and it can even help people find you. It’s an opportunity to explain what you do, the places, art and notions you focused on.
I’m always excited with the way media affects our writing. I enjoy the way Substack has led me to be clear and intentional and sometimes, breaks are good for that. It’s not always about researching, it’s also a way to welcome people, ask about them, collect impressions… After all, this is an interactive platform!
Yes! So true! I've noticed myself how I'll sometimes read an article that appears via Notes and only when I ge to the end and see I've already liked it do I realise that I must have read it before! Certainly my restacking of the India stuff in the lead up to the exhibition chat got plenty of views, I think it's definitely a good thing. Interesting to hear your thoughts on managing your regular podcasting, thank you.
You know I'm on board with you here. This was nice to read as always. After my stint teaching elementary art, I took a job painting signs at Trader Joe's, here in Texas. I learned there is a huge difference between channeling a drawing through my veins, and commercially creating one. The latter doesn't need seasons. The latter I could churn out each day because it wasn't tied to my soul. That was a lesson I learned the hard way, lol. The General Manager used to find me slaving away over a chalkboard for two hours... "Borrelli, it's just chips and queso! No one is looking at it more than 30 seconds." Eventually I could do a 4 foot board in 45 minutes without a dent in my energy. That's definitely not true for the stuff I do in my own studio.
Isn't that interesting... I guess it's true, it's only the stuff that touches down into what is actually real and important to us which has to be handled so respectfully perhaps?
As I was listening ( and reading) to your words, I was thinking about what often happens for me with songwriters/singers/musicians. I will sometimes hear, say, 30 seconds of someone’s voice online and find myself so transfixed by it that I seek out their back catalogue. Reading that back, that’s how it has ever been, I suppose. Same with authors, poets, visual artists …
I then ask myself if I do the same thing with Substack writers? I suppose I establish a potential connection in that I choose to subscribe…. but I generally don’t seek out their back catalogue in the way that I do with singers/songwriters etc
Is it the platform? Am I somehow viewing every essay as the “thing without history” in a way that I don’t with singers, musicians, poets, authors ( many of whom also write on Substack )
Hmmm. getting a bit lost now, but there’s something here that your writing has ignited …
Thanks for reading and commenting! I know, it's food for thought. For me one of the problems with Substack is that there's so much good stuff here, and much if it is also very long. I can't even get through what I would like to week by week, let alone go looking for a back catalogue. And the damn backlit screen - I must get into printing out using @Danielle's funky program, did you see that? - I've only got so long I'm prepared to stay here. Whereas with music I can listen with my attention still in the world, and like you will go back looking for older work. It must also be something to do with the posting/algorithm culture, fanning that novelty-addiction thing....musicians can't post at the rate writers can, it's a different process. Perhaps writing lends itself to the more more novelty thing?
Such a good point made about music. A music catalog is a sacred thing. We tend to comb it for evolution. The tracks and albums provide the map—we don’t really need one to be curious, tourists of a creative career of slow hard work.
Bad habits die hard. We were trained to scroll, initially by fb. Then think of all the other conditioning by Pinterest and IG, etc… I tend to look at Substack more like a library. I admit it’s not what most do, but it is one—even in its name it was telling us: Expect a Stack. Book stacks. Periodical racks. Back dated National Geographics. You get the idea.
I’ve thought it was turmoil in my life and health problems but having read this I think that even barring those mine would, as you say of yours, be a cyclical process at best.
Forcing it causes blockage at worst and derivative/lower quality content at best. I have a few I’ve put out in the last year since I started on Substack that indeed resemble such. I leave them posted as is because there’s at least some good quips or creatively profane MAGA bashing.
I'll go read! Yes, number of views is no indication of quality. Horrible AI-generated shite gets thousands of views so perhaps few views means we're good? 😀 In all seriousness though I'd rather two people read and engaged in the comments than have an apparently large number of views from strangers who say nothing... (not that I trust Substack stats where views are concerned)
This is such a powerful reflection, Tamsin. Your words move with the very rhythm you're advocating for—cyclical, spacious, wise. I deeply appreciate how you’re carving space for emergence, not only in your own practice but as an offering for others navigating similar tides. The courage to trust the creative seasons, especially in the face of algorithmic pressure, is no small thing.
I have a vision of Dumbledore using his wand to pull threads of thought and politics them into the pensieve. Tamsin pulling threads of our thoughts together into her/our collective mind here on Substack.
I tend to dedicate quality time to one post or author at a time, delving as deeply as my mind will go, asking the questions and clicking sideways to other writing or comments to find the answers. I would rather do this and let all else fall to the wayside than consume quantity only at the top level.
It goes back to critical thinking—which I think I will repost today, by duplicating as a new post with a new intro, bouncing back to this post and discussion. This keeps it new and relevant.
Mind you, I will probably leave the old post deep in the stack unless it didn’t get much read—then I will unpublish because yes, I do want my averages to gradually go up. So old less-read posts come down and get recirculated to an audience which has grown since then. There is no harm in this. If 80 readers opened it the first time and I only had 150 subs, then 250 will open it this time because I have 5x more, etc.
This is an example which answers something you brought up. It’s perfectly fine to repost and keep, or not, the old one. Magazines republish old articles; also more than one copy circulates. I think of how many times I used to fan through the ones sitting in doctors’ offices. I never got mad at them if I already read the article! I just moved on.
Readers who can’t deal with seeing something they already have are, as you say, free to move on.
In my case I don't really worry or even know what substack itself is doing or what it thinks I should be doing. I am horrible at keeping up with that kind of thing so I don't even think about it and it certainly does not effect my publishing decisions in any way. I use my substack as an experimental studio for myself and whoever is willing to follow along. From that standpoint I have no complaints myself but that is from being blind to the whole thing.
However, when I am in a writing frensy, and I often am, I store those items in the drafts folder in my dashboard and when I feel the need to post stuff consistently, especially when I am out traveling, I schedule posts up to two months in advance so I don't have to think about it. I tend to post something on the daily which a very different approach than what you are doing Tansim. But I really like scheduling posts and storing posts in the draft folder. I don't know, maybe that can work for you if you are concerned about that regularity issue. As they say, make hay while the sun is shining and then store the bails for later.
Yes, I agree, that's usually how I work too, I generally have lots of drafts and ideas! So it's interesting when life or illness or even the creative imperative itself interrupts the normal flow of ideas. Perhaps that never happens for some people. It happens for me regularly, usually I guess when a line of exploration comes to an end and I have to wait for a new one to appear.
As a visual artist I think of that as an 'image crisis' when all of the sudden the main trail you have been following dries up without a backup plan. That has happened to me many times over the years. My personal creative solution to that is to have three or four trails of exploration in play at the same time. Then when one trail becomes blocked or comes to a conclusion you can jump over to one of the other trails you have going to take a rest from the one you were following and avoid the terror of coming to a dead stop. What I like about that is there are always interesting things in waiting and it feels fun to change tracks and keep moving.
A lot of the time an answer can be found on an alternate trail that becomes a solution for the other trail. But the main thing is to have some other things to pivot to without coming to a dead stop. I have a few of articles that circle this problem.
That sounds like an excellent strategy! I can see how it would work well. I guess however this approach assumes an imperative to keep working without a pause as your primary intention. I think my position is slightly different. For me that would be a merciless and relentless way of working that would have a cost, not only to my health and sanity, but also to my work. I've learnt that pauses and space, for me, are actually an essential part of the whole process. I need times that are not 'productive', times that allow unconscious currents and elements to work without my interference.... Perhaps that's linked to what I said about writing (or painting) as emergence, rather than an intentional building.
Yes I agree, time off is all part of the rhythm. I am not saying work like a maniac in a merciless and relentless way. No, no, no. Bad idea. My way of working is a slow saunter, smoothly working along through the day without rush or anxiety. Just doodling along slow and steady without getting run down - take naps, sleep whenever you need to, go out for walks, etc. But doing it with intentional and purposeful design. That all. And depending on long term organized accumulation to do the heavy lifting. For me, this allows me to think on a bigger scale by extending the horizon.
I like the idea of using seasons and cycles as a guide. It feels more natural than the algorithmic approach, which can spiral out of control sometimes. I do seek out old posts with some of the people I follow -- especially if I feel a resonance on a particular topic.
Thanks for reading, and that's good to hear!
It's interesting that I saw this post from you today when I hadn't seen any recently, and even thought you hadn't posted for a while - I don't seem to get notifications of your posts anymore, I am not sure why...
I am also struggling to get started after the December break. I don't post every week but I did get into a fortnightly rhythm that was working for me though I noticed the views were decreasing with each post.
At the same time, I noticed that most if not all of the new subscriptions I am getting come from Notes. As much as I started my Substack to get eyes on my ceramics, I did it because I couldn't/didn't want to keep up with short-form Instagram-like content, meaning I was hoping it would be my writing about my process and my pieces that would interest people - I guess the way it happened with you :).
Now, I find myself at a point where I no longer know what to do... Writing is not what I do for a living so writing a post actually cuts into my making time, and making pots is what I am hoping to make money from...
I'm sorry - I am using your comments section to try to work out my issues...
I have thought about re-posting and somehow felt bad about it, for similar reasons to the ones you describe. But this idea of seasons and cycles makes absolute sense to me and I think it's what I will do too. So, thank you for articulating this for me - and now I'll try to find time to read your posts on Time (I guess there's a pun in there somewhere...) which I seem to have missed entirely.
The algorithm is a weird beast, I think the only way is to visit the profiles of people you want to keep up with. I think also when you comment or like that keeps you in the loop. I can't see any reason not to use Notes to show your beautiful work, there's nothing here that says you need to write long form essays, even if that's what many people are here for? Notes has taken it in a new direction...
Exactly. I have also seen people use posts like notes. Small excerpts with links to others or a folio of images of WIPS.
Yes, it has. And yet, I find myself cringe every time I post a picture of a pot or point to my Etsy shop... I know it's childish - no one will find me unless I show myself. I know this and at the same time wish I didn't have to. If I was rich I would hire a publicist 😂
I know what you mean, it's hard to try to sell things, and when it's your own creative work it can be painful...
Hi Sarah—
I’m just scrolling through comments already posted here before I make my own and saw you ‘processing’ and apologizing, then smiled. Tamsin’s writing makes us all circle back on our own inner workings, which is probably what we love most about her.
Just a thought: If making is what your ‘work’ is, then creating brief posts each with a capture of a new piece or work in progress as you go is absolutely permissible, with a few words jotted about how it became for you. They could be lists of impressions; what about a spontaneous poem? Something about your kiln temperature and the weather—it matters not. Writing is writing and Making is making. Different demands on our creativity can generate different products we offer as part of our Substack portfolio. We can make a section for ramblings; a section from the studio; a section for evolved written works.
Where this place is going is inevitably to the commercial god of content for profit. It is not and never will be the old Substack any more. Yet we are becoming MORE of who we are, with less time ahead. The formula is an inversion. Expecting to keep up with it is therefore only frustrating and a moot point.
Instead of a treadmill we ride, let’s create our own rhythm to benefit from what has been thrust upon us. Reporting in small-sharp-progress-shocks seems to fit into what it is rewarding. We have work we do that can benefit from this as well, post or note, it matters not. A snapshot in creativity can offer us markers in progress, capture of a sporadic thought, something we can accomplish and accumulate to develop into a larger written post once per month while still being here. They can all link into the one post, all those little thoughts and images, creating a web of integrated posts which have readers bouncing back to past ones to better understand the current one. We are the traffic masters when we choose to be.
Look at it less as “the job” and more as a tool to record and organize? Maybe this will help?
Hi! Thank you so much for this!
I like the idea of capturing the progress of a new piece, and the re-frame of using my substack as a "tool to record and reorganise" ... I am not sure how things will go for me in this new year, but I am leaning more and more towards keeping it simple and studio focused. Actually, after writing my comment above, I reposted an essay which is basically a process post for the making of a mug...
I really like this: "Yet we are becoming MORE of who we are, with less time ahead." I find this to be true and one of the biggest ironies of life.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to write - you have helped a LOT!
🫶🏻💫
I like this piece, and your whole approach, a lot. I've gone through a similar fallow time after an explosion of creativity last year. I'm beginning to emerge now but I'm still not sure which way it's going to go. Maybe you can help me figure that out. Anyway, I've subscribed so you must be getting something right. I look forward to exploring your back catalogue.
Thanks Sara, I found it! Miranda, I'm glad this was useful to you! I write about process things from time to time, but also write a lot about my reactions to contemporary art and about Indian art, so feel free to leave again if these aren't your things! 😀
Hi Miranda! I think you may want to move your comment up to the main level so that Tamsin sees it - you have replied to my comment and this way she won't know/read your words, which I am sure she'll appreciate :)
This is such a lovely chat. Look at how helpful we all are! 🫂🤗
Hey Tamsin. Thoughtful stuff.
Substack is a bit like a multimedia literary magazine. You’ll be found by people browsing articles on Google as much as here if people are looking for q specific thing, but some of the things we write may be buried under a lot of inconsequential stuff. There is a side of « current issues » that distracts people. So we have less of a tendency to go to the back catalogue perhaps. Re-posting with a nice intro might be really great.
In podcasting, we have to take breaks: what we do is either re-post, create special episodes (shorter, little snapshots of what we gleaned over the season) and it is super helpful to look back and see the topics treated. It can lead to new ones, it can close a chapter, and it can even help people find you. It’s an opportunity to explain what you do, the places, art and notions you focused on.
I’m always excited with the way media affects our writing. I enjoy the way Substack has led me to be clear and intentional and sometimes, breaks are good for that. It’s not always about researching, it’s also a way to welcome people, ask about them, collect impressions… After all, this is an interactive platform!
Yes! So true! I've noticed myself how I'll sometimes read an article that appears via Notes and only when I ge to the end and see I've already liked it do I realise that I must have read it before! Certainly my restacking of the India stuff in the lead up to the exhibition chat got plenty of views, I think it's definitely a good thing. Interesting to hear your thoughts on managing your regular podcasting, thank you.
You know I'm on board with you here. This was nice to read as always. After my stint teaching elementary art, I took a job painting signs at Trader Joe's, here in Texas. I learned there is a huge difference between channeling a drawing through my veins, and commercially creating one. The latter doesn't need seasons. The latter I could churn out each day because it wasn't tied to my soul. That was a lesson I learned the hard way, lol. The General Manager used to find me slaving away over a chalkboard for two hours... "Borrelli, it's just chips and queso! No one is looking at it more than 30 seconds." Eventually I could do a 4 foot board in 45 minutes without a dent in my energy. That's definitely not true for the stuff I do in my own studio.
Isn't that interesting... I guess it's true, it's only the stuff that touches down into what is actually real and important to us which has to be handled so respectfully perhaps?
As I was listening ( and reading) to your words, I was thinking about what often happens for me with songwriters/singers/musicians. I will sometimes hear, say, 30 seconds of someone’s voice online and find myself so transfixed by it that I seek out their back catalogue. Reading that back, that’s how it has ever been, I suppose. Same with authors, poets, visual artists …
I then ask myself if I do the same thing with Substack writers? I suppose I establish a potential connection in that I choose to subscribe…. but I generally don’t seek out their back catalogue in the way that I do with singers/songwriters etc
Is it the platform? Am I somehow viewing every essay as the “thing without history” in a way that I don’t with singers, musicians, poets, authors ( many of whom also write on Substack )
Hmmm. getting a bit lost now, but there’s something here that your writing has ignited …
A ever, juicy fruit for thought ….
Thanks for reading and commenting! I know, it's food for thought. For me one of the problems with Substack is that there's so much good stuff here, and much if it is also very long. I can't even get through what I would like to week by week, let alone go looking for a back catalogue. And the damn backlit screen - I must get into printing out using @Danielle's funky program, did you see that? - I've only got so long I'm prepared to stay here. Whereas with music I can listen with my attention still in the world, and like you will go back looking for older work. It must also be something to do with the posting/algorithm culture, fanning that novelty-addiction thing....musicians can't post at the rate writers can, it's a different process. Perhaps writing lends itself to the more more novelty thing?
Such a good point made about music. A music catalog is a sacred thing. We tend to comb it for evolution. The tracks and albums provide the map—we don’t really need one to be curious, tourists of a creative career of slow hard work.
Bad habits die hard. We were trained to scroll, initially by fb. Then think of all the other conditioning by Pinterest and IG, etc… I tend to look at Substack more like a library. I admit it’s not what most do, but it is one—even in its name it was telling us: Expect a Stack. Book stacks. Periodical racks. Back dated National Geographics. You get the idea.
I’ve thought it was turmoil in my life and health problems but having read this I think that even barring those mine would, as you say of yours, be a cyclical process at best.
Forcing it causes blockage at worst and derivative/lower quality content at best. I have a few I’ve put out in the last year since I started on Substack that indeed resemble such. I leave them posted as is because there’s at least some good quips or creatively profane MAGA bashing.
Of course the good thing is that if we post something that isn't that great, it just gets lost in the froth of the wake behind us!
Then again, the piece that I’m most proud of hardly has any views at all so umm.. go figure IG?
https://open.substack.com/pub/noelkeith/p/tranquil-piece-of-mind-vol-1-no-7?r=4c7psw&utm_medium=ios
I'll go read! Yes, number of views is no indication of quality. Horrible AI-generated shite gets thousands of views so perhaps few views means we're good? 😀 In all seriousness though I'd rather two people read and engaged in the comments than have an apparently large number of views from strangers who say nothing... (not that I trust Substack stats where views are concerned)
This is such a powerful reflection, Tamsin. Your words move with the very rhythm you're advocating for—cyclical, spacious, wise. I deeply appreciate how you’re carving space for emergence, not only in your own practice but as an offering for others navigating similar tides. The courage to trust the creative seasons, especially in the face of algorithmic pressure, is no small thing.
Thanks for reading, and for this comment. That's what I hope, I suppose , that my musings are helpful in some way once they get out of my head.
I have a vision of Dumbledore using his wand to pull threads of thought and politics them into the pensieve. Tamsin pulling threads of our thoughts together into her/our collective mind here on Substack.
🪄We are Wizards. Never forget this.
yes, please break all the rules ... X
I tend to dedicate quality time to one post or author at a time, delving as deeply as my mind will go, asking the questions and clicking sideways to other writing or comments to find the answers. I would rather do this and let all else fall to the wayside than consume quantity only at the top level.
It goes back to critical thinking—which I think I will repost today, by duplicating as a new post with a new intro, bouncing back to this post and discussion. This keeps it new and relevant.
Mind you, I will probably leave the old post deep in the stack unless it didn’t get much read—then I will unpublish because yes, I do want my averages to gradually go up. So old less-read posts come down and get recirculated to an audience which has grown since then. There is no harm in this. If 80 readers opened it the first time and I only had 150 subs, then 250 will open it this time because I have 5x more, etc.
This is an example which answers something you brought up. It’s perfectly fine to repost and keep, or not, the old one. Magazines republish old articles; also more than one copy circulates. I think of how many times I used to fan through the ones sitting in doctors’ offices. I never got mad at them if I already read the article! I just moved on.
Readers who can’t deal with seeing something they already have are, as you say, free to move on.
In my case I don't really worry or even know what substack itself is doing or what it thinks I should be doing. I am horrible at keeping up with that kind of thing so I don't even think about it and it certainly does not effect my publishing decisions in any way. I use my substack as an experimental studio for myself and whoever is willing to follow along. From that standpoint I have no complaints myself but that is from being blind to the whole thing.
However, when I am in a writing frensy, and I often am, I store those items in the drafts folder in my dashboard and when I feel the need to post stuff consistently, especially when I am out traveling, I schedule posts up to two months in advance so I don't have to think about it. I tend to post something on the daily which a very different approach than what you are doing Tansim. But I really like scheduling posts and storing posts in the draft folder. I don't know, maybe that can work for you if you are concerned about that regularity issue. As they say, make hay while the sun is shining and then store the bails for later.
Yes, I agree, that's usually how I work too, I generally have lots of drafts and ideas! So it's interesting when life or illness or even the creative imperative itself interrupts the normal flow of ideas. Perhaps that never happens for some people. It happens for me regularly, usually I guess when a line of exploration comes to an end and I have to wait for a new one to appear.
As a visual artist I think of that as an 'image crisis' when all of the sudden the main trail you have been following dries up without a backup plan. That has happened to me many times over the years. My personal creative solution to that is to have three or four trails of exploration in play at the same time. Then when one trail becomes blocked or comes to a conclusion you can jump over to one of the other trails you have going to take a rest from the one you were following and avoid the terror of coming to a dead stop. What I like about that is there are always interesting things in waiting and it feels fun to change tracks and keep moving.
A lot of the time an answer can be found on an alternate trail that becomes a solution for the other trail. But the main thing is to have some other things to pivot to without coming to a dead stop. I have a few of articles that circle this problem.
https://www.touchonian.com/p/develop-several-co-existing-ways
https://www.touchonian.com/p/creative-blocks-and-burnout
https://www.touchonian.com/p/rule-no0037-think-in-museum-time
https://www.touchonian.com/p/rule-no0036-strategic-patience
Thanks for the links. It's always good to read someone else's perspective on what you think you understand!
That sounds like an excellent strategy! I can see how it would work well. I guess however this approach assumes an imperative to keep working without a pause as your primary intention. I think my position is slightly different. For me that would be a merciless and relentless way of working that would have a cost, not only to my health and sanity, but also to my work. I've learnt that pauses and space, for me, are actually an essential part of the whole process. I need times that are not 'productive', times that allow unconscious currents and elements to work without my interference.... Perhaps that's linked to what I said about writing (or painting) as emergence, rather than an intentional building.
Yes I agree, time off is all part of the rhythm. I am not saying work like a maniac in a merciless and relentless way. No, no, no. Bad idea. My way of working is a slow saunter, smoothly working along through the day without rush or anxiety. Just doodling along slow and steady without getting run down - take naps, sleep whenever you need to, go out for walks, etc. But doing it with intentional and purposeful design. That all. And depending on long term organized accumulation to do the heavy lifting. For me, this allows me to think on a bigger scale by extending the horizon.