Creativity 🤝 Convenience

Plus: street photography in Tokyo, painting with thread, and cats farting

I’ve been thinking a lot about convenience and creativity.

Creativity isn’t necessarily about an end product; it’s a journey, an experience, a road full of diversions and discoveries. Sometimes creativity leads to a larger purpose, but other times it’s just about delight, about the sheer joy of it all and nothing more.

Convenience means getting from Point A to Point B with ease. No more rifling through an outdated Rand McNally atlas in the car (I’ve got GPS), no more in-person shopping (there’s same-day shipping, if I really need something fast). Convenience saves time and resources so I can use those time and resources for other things.

I’m not some cranky old crone who thinks fondly back to my 90s childhood and yearns for dial-up internet (that’s what they mean by slow living, right?). The goal to save time and resources is an admirable one—what a gift to have more time, what a blessing to have more resources available. But if convenience is about reaching a conclusion of sorts or about achieving some kind of goal, then I have to have an idea of where I want to end up before I’ve even started.

Creativity is like a labyrinthine garden—lush, vibrant, and begging to be explored. Convenience hands us a map and says, "Follow this path. It's the quickest." But treasures hide in the wildflowers that grow off the beaten track.

I’ve been journaling since I was eight years old, on and off, and in the last few years I’ve made a regular journaling habit on my computer using the Diarium app (and I’ve been typing up old, handwritten entries into this as well). I can tag entries, I can add locations, I can search for entries from any time with certain keywords—it’s all incredibly convenient. I also love that it means my journals are backed up, I can access it on my phone or my computer, and I benefit from having a journal and our technological era at the same time. Little eight year-old me scribbling about her doggy and her summer vacation in her Lisa Frank notebook would never have dreamed what her future journals could be!

The past few months, though, I’ve ditched the convenience. I’m still using the app as sort of the master place all my journal entries go, but I’ve gone back to writing in notebooks instead. I don’t know—I just really craved something more tactile in the process. I have to remember to take the notebook with me wherever I travel, I have to have backup ink for my pen because of course I have a favorite pen, I have to take breaks to massage my hand because it starts to cramp. It’s a lotta work.

But—it’s the best method of journaling for me these days, and it’s a small change that’s really boosted my mood and creativity levels lately. In a world that's fixated on ticking off boxes and achieving preset milestones and speeding up processes in the name of productivity, the art of taking the slower route is undervalued.

And I get it (again, not an old crone)! But people want absolutes; they want to know which is better, creativity or convenience, based on their definition of better, and then always and forever rely on that option. You shoot film or you shoot digital. You write longhand or you write shorthand. You have your favorite paintbrushes, either in your brush set or in your favorite digital painting app, and That is That.

Reimagining convenience within the realm of creativity doesn’t mean throwing the Convenience GPS out of your car—it’s just helpful to know when to switch it off. Sometimes you might want a more straightforward path, while other times you want the detours.

It’s hard for me to picture a world where I’m not writing my novels on my computer in my writing software of choice (Scrivener, babeeey) and instead writing them out in a notebook. My hand wants to die thinking of how painful this would be, my mind shakes in its lil brain boots envisioning what it would be like to misplace or lose the notebook and not have a backup. I am 100% okay taking a more convenient route for this (and, conveniently enough, my software actually helps my creativity in many ways rather than stifle it, so win-win).

But I also recognize that, sometimes, it’s better for me to see the pages laid out in front of me; sometimes, I crave the act of writing it down with a pen. I actually did this the other day, writing up some scene cards for the following book I’d like to write. I’ll eventually transfer everything into Scrivener, but as I’m imagining scenes and figuring out what’s next, printed off pages worked best.

Creativity is not a means to an end; it’s not just the finished painting or the published novel or the captured photograph. It’s the act of being present in a process without the fixation on a particular outcome. If modern-day conveniences help with that, great! If not, also great! Find the balance that works for you (I’m certainly trying to).

I’d love to hear your thoughts on convenience and creativity. What kinds of convenient things help your creative process? What hinders you?

Cool Recs, Hot Takes

• It’s been a while since I’ve popped into your inbox, and I’ve also gained some new subscribers recently, so hello, and hello! Nice to be here. I needed some rest and, as

  Sandra Ann Miller
  of
  A Sassy Little Substack
  reminded me, it’s fine sometimes to pump the breaks.

• Some interesting background on Raffaelle Monti and the Veiled Lady, which is a hunk of marble I could look at all day.

• Nat Geo’s Pictures of the Year are out! If you don’t have a Nat Geo subscription (which is included with Disney+ btw), you can view some great ones here on CNBC.

• I’ve been finding the joy in cooking again and I can’t get enough of this high protein pesto butter beans dish.

• Chat GPT sounds like “cat, I farted,” in French. 🐈💨😂

• I recently read Melt for You by J.T. Geisinger, as recommended by a romance writer friend. This book should not have worked for me—I’m not a fan of the ugly duckling to swan transformation trope, or super cocky male main characters, but the author did such a wonderful job of weaving everything together! It honestly read like an early 2000’s romcom film (in a good way).

• Also reading-wise, I am going through The Hunger Games books and films again (it’s a story I like going back to now and again, partially because Suzanne Collins is so talented but also because it’s just a compelling story). I saw The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, btw, and it does not disappoint!!

• I’m a contributing writer at Dieline covering branding and packaging design, and they just released their 2024 Trend Report. It’s always so much fun putting this together, and I’m pleased to have written 4 sections of the report this year.

• Some soothing street photography from Tokyo. I recently discovered this YouTube channel and very quickly subscribed! It was also really enjoyable to see some behind-the-scenes work from this photographer who went on assignment to Peru for Nat Geo.

• Embroidery skill goals. 😻

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- Theresa