Creative Ease

Reducing friction and making creative habit easy and inviting

Oct 13, 2024

An old morning photo. Creative habit doesn’t have to be complicated. A. Cowen

“In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.”― Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

Happy Sunday!

Today, I'm going to suggest, both metaphorically and literally, that you need to toss out the measuring stick. But as I reflect on the week, I would be curious to see where my anxiety has been teetering on a scale that shows, in color, the rise and fall of a variable—an anxiety thermometer of sorts. I imagine it's up there. There are visible signs. I've got a twitch in one eye, a tooth that’s hurting, and so on. I've been spinning out all week.

I dealt with many of the things that had to happen this summer after my partner died. I took a blank book from the shelf, an orange one so I wouldn’t lose sight of it, and I started taking notes, tracking who I called, dates, numbers, passwords, and balances. The book is a mess, but in the moment, I felt methodical, deliberate. I was chipping away at a mountain.

After the initial frenzy, I've tucked my head in the sand a bit, played flamingo, and tried to buckle down at work, penny pinch and cut every corner we can day to day, and put dealing with everything else off. In reality, it hasn’t been nearly this easy to hide, but I can at least own the intent.

A flamingo isn’t invisible either. It is a brilliant peachy pink, a color the flamingo grows into as a visible result of what it eats.

I don’t know where along the way I started to think of my responses as something related to a flamingo, as flamingoing. Flamingos don’t bury their heads in the sand. They do dip their beaks into water or mud to eat, and they do stand on one leg as a strategy for conserving energy. But they don’t bury their heads in the sand. The metaphor I’ve been holding close is false.

It’s ostriches, you are thinking.

Ostriches bury their heads in the sand, you are thinking.

I don’t know how or when ostriches morphed into flamingos in my head, but ostriches also don’t bury their heads in the sand, although it may look like this when they lower their heads to turn their eggs.

Sometimes, our metaphors are false, and we knowingly stick with them.

In my head, I’ve been playing some version of whimsical, avoidant flamingo, not in standing knobby-kneed and graceful on one leg, but in burying my head in the proverbial sand. While this strategy may seem to reduce friction—something along the lines of if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist—it doesn’t, really. Putting things off or out of sight doesn’t make them go away. It may, in fact, make the fear of the unknown or the inevitable more overwhelming, more claustrophobic.

When you cry with your head buried in sand, you are bound to get a mouthful of sand.

I might want to think that playing flamingo is graceful in its own way, an elegant solution, a point of stillness, a resolve to slow down and resist the overwhelm, a point of grace in defiance of whatever storm is swirling. The problem with this approach, other than the grit of the sand in your teeth, is that you may not see what’s coming.

I feel like someone went behind my back, a plane trailing a message that I was trying to keep contained until I could see my way to a solution. This triggered a new set of dominoes, and I've been in knots, alternating between surface calm and panic rising to the point that I wondered about the mechanics of a paper bag, which they used to periodically use with kids in school who hyperventilated. (I never needed to breathe into a paper bag to balance my CO2, but those kids got a lot of attention.)

Over the last few years, I’ve done a lot of box breathing. It’s a simple approach for focused breathing. It’s something I often use at night when I can’t sleep, and in the last few years, I’ve needed it. I needed it through the long fall last year and through the relentless winter. This week, I’ve done a lot of box breathing.

One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…

There are things, at some point, I will need to write. Those are things I have used my flamingo skills, in my mixed and faulty metaphors, to bury, for now. Maybe this is the ostrich, burying the eggs, turning them from time to time. Maybe this is the dragon in me, fiercely holding everything that matters close. Maybe this is simply the lost, untethered me, unwilling to line up the words. I get closer and closer at times and then move farther and farther away.

Thank you to those who read and commented last week. The overlay of the science of the post, friction and erosion and galaxy formation, as a metaphor felt like a discovery, a lens I’ve been looking for, but I think I lost a lot of you.

Writing, too, contains friction, and sometimes, it adds friction for the reader. If you are not here for the tribology of it all, I understand. Sometimes the act of reading is like a scavenger hunt without the list.

Today is not an essay. Today is a straightforward list of suggestions for ways to think about reducing creative friction (for the good). The idea isn’t to make things so glassy that you drift away into nothingness. We need anchors. We need some degree of friction. But when it comes to creative habit, we want to smooth the way, to cultivate creativity as an invitation, as an open-armed space that is ours to inhabit, to shape, to weave, and to grow.

Today’s list is a simple set of things to consider to help make your creative habit something you simply “do” or feel invited to “do” each day rather than something that feels cumbersome or tedious or a struggle to get to the point of doing. You may find that just one simple change in your approach can make a difference. Maybe it’s as easy as dedicating a spot at the table. Some of these ideas, on the other hand, require some reframing, some mental work to shift and redefine our relationship with creative habit.

If you have the space to set up a creative zone that is always stocked with just what you need, tidy enough, and easy to get to, do that. But that, in and of itself, may not be the complete answer. There are no gold keys. Many people with time and means still struggle to cultivate a habit that feels easy, ready, and waiting.

There are at least two sides to the equation. Our minds and spaces work together to invite our creative expression.

Personally, I find the most meaning and fulfillment in creative habits that I can inhabit.

Sometimes you will find that when you lift your head from the sand, crunching on the grit, there is something actionable to do, something to approach with intention. Like a flamingo, shift legs, gain your balance, and act. Even if you return to the sand, give yourself credit for whatever steps you take.

I always pull my quotes after the post is mostly done. I read The Creative Habit many, many years ago. I happen to have it checked out again right now, though I haven’t opened it. That quote is really spot-on for today’s post.

I cut this post in half today (even as I resisted yanking out full sections and examples). I cut hundreds of words, but it’s still long. Maybe the right thing will jump out at you from the headers.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

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Strategies for Reducing Creative Friction

This conversation started with a phrase I heard while watching a video related to software I am currently using (and still plan to write about as a separate, geeky publication). I heard “frictionless creativity,” and I was hooked on that as a concept, as an interesting way to think about what we want and crave from our creative habits, about what might ease or smooth these habits.

This post is not about starting a brand new creative habit. This isn’t a guide to habit formation. But if your creative habit exists or has started to emerge, a shimmering thing in front of you or just to the side, the goal is to find a seamless way in, simple strategies for nurturing the habit, making it inviting, and helping you reinforce it until it is strong and tall, something you can climb into when you need the quiet of the trees, something you can retreat to when you need perspective, something you find comfortable and meaningful.

Today, some strategies for thinking about ways to carve and shape a creative habit that invites you in. If there is too much friction before you ever “get to” the habit, it may become something you resist or find unsatisfying or simply decide you can’t fit into your day.

That’s the starting point.

🎯 1. Be clear about what you want (or what matters)

You might think of this as “know your why.” When it comes to reducing creative friction, the more you understand what you are seeking, the more you can be intentional about shaping the contours of a fulfilling habit, one that makes you feel good and empowered or balanced each day.

What is it you want from your creative habit? Knowing this answer is important in reducing creative friction.

🎯 2. Make it part of every day

If you make art and/or writing a part of your daily landscape, the path to reduced friction is doing it. Spending time with your creative habit each day fulfills the habit. This can be a perpetual circle in which your creative time reinforces your creative habit which reinforces your desire to spend creative time.

When they are well-formed, daily creative habits can be a beautiful and nourishing part of your day and how you think about yourself and your place in the world.

🎯 3. Cultivate a space (or a go-bag) that is ready and waiting

This sounds obvious, but this is sometimes a make-or-break component to creating an inviting creative habit. How easy is it for you to slide into the habit each day and get started? If you have to gather or prepare or hunt or clear or clean in order to get started, it’s unlikely you’ll follow through with consistency.

This might take the form of having a dedicated space at the table, having a small desk, or even having a portable table you use while sitting in a favorite chair in the living room. eep paper and pencils and pens (or whatever your tools are) handy. Keep them accessible and even visible. If you plan to work on the go, keep a plastic container, a backpack, or even a Ziploc bag filled with the bare essentials. Make it easy and automatic to sit down and “start” or grab your tools and go.

Keep things sharpened or filled. As a fountain pen user, I don’t wait until I run out of ink in my pens to fill them. Instead, once a week, sometimes in the few minutes before my drawing call or while I’m waiting on something (like another cup of coffee to brew), I stand at my table and check and fill the pens that I’m using most frequently. That way they are ready to go at night.

🎯 4. Use what you have

This one is huge In terms of reducing friction. Do you really need something new? Some people, I think, are more interested in shiny new tools and in pondering shiny new tools than they are in actually writing or making art. Some people believe there is a magic pen or pencil or paintbrush that will create the results they want.

Using what you have reduces friction. Thinking you need just one more thing, one more color, one more ink, a better this or that in order to make art is an endless distraction. It’s a story you tell yourself. There are no magic or perfect tools. Start with what you have.

🎯 5. Throw out the measuring stick (and maybe the ruler)

Keeping a conceptual measuring stick in your head adds friction. Don’t worry about what other people do or how they make art. Don’t worry about how much they write or for how long. Yes, you can look at art and writing and try to identify what you love about it, but when you work on your own pieces, stay true to you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t try new things or experiment or change mediums. But do so for the exploration, a constant process of experimenting, keeping what works, integrating, pushing, and moving forward.

Try not to measure against the work of others. This is hard, maybe impossible. We do this unconsciously. Our culture is built on implicit competition, on ladders to be climbed. As much as you can, keep this out of your creative habit.

The more you can make your creative time simply about getting someone or something on the page, the more meaningful the time and the less friction there will be when it comes to showing up for your habit. You will want to do it again the next day.

As for the literal ruler….if your work allows you to be flexible with space and line, leave the ruler aside now and then. Embrace your line. Don’t worry about how perfectly straight it is. Don’t worry if the boxes you draw have nice, neat right angles. There is some freedom to be gained when you relax, at least now and then, and embrace your line, however wonky it may be.

🎯 6. Have a ready list of ideas for a week or a month

Knowing what to draw really is a big one in terms of reducing friction. I think this might be one of the most important ones for me, and I have given all kinds of suggestions in the past. Reducing this specific friction has something to do with why I love working in series. This strategy also has a lot to do with the Illustrate Your Week prompts, which help to identify things you might draw week to week.

At one point last year I talked about creating a jar of personal prompts, things from your shelves. It’s a strategy that targets creative friction and, importantly, decision fatigue. Some of us have trouble deciding “what” to draw, and the indecision becomes a stumbling block.

The “Everyday Matters” list, a reminder that there are countless things around us to be drawn, offers a similar approach. Using any monthly prompt set can help you line up ideas, but unless the images are provided, you will need to spend some time thinking through what’s coming. Knowing what to draw and finding your source images ahead of time (as needed) reduces time wasted when you sit down to draw and can make a huge difference in how much friction you feel.

When I do a challenge like Inktoportraits in October, or ICAD, or even the 100 day project, I often work with portraits and need to find someone to draw each day. I typically spend time in advance looking for and finding and selecting the images. I set up a folder or a Notion database so that I have a pool. I might set up a tentative order, but I usually let myself choose day to day (unless there is a prompt set I need to match). The pool reduces friction, but making the decision day by day adds flexibility. Instead of having to “find” someone to draw, I decide who I want to draw “from this set of options.”

I know from experience that if I don’t have the photos already selected and ready to call up when I sit down to draw at night, I can easily waste an hour or more looking for the perfect image. By the time I find something, I’m often tired and less interested in the process. Plus, I’ve used my window of time.

🎯 7. Remember that skill is built by repetition

This is related to the mythical magic pencil. I sometimes refer to this as being willing to be a beginner or starting where you are. Many people want a creative habit, want to be “someone who draws” or “a writer” but don’t really want what goes into a consistent creative habit. Not everyone wants to work at building skill.

If what you want is something you enjoy doing, then the time spent building skill is fulfilling. Again, this is a positive circle. If you enjoy the time, you will return, you will build skill through repetition, and you will reinforce a creative habit that connects with who you want to be.

🎯 8. Identify repeatable pockets of time

You don’t have to allocate hours to your creative habit, but habit adoption is easier if you know where it belongs in your day or what other footholds it follows or precedes. Making creative time a part of a habit stack (a la James Clear) can help reinforce habit and reduce friction.

Even if you don’t think of the pocket of time as part of a habit stack, being able to mentally tag a window of time as for a certain activity gives that window a purpose and can reduce creative friction. Earmark five, ten, or thirty minutes for your creative habit. (How much time you need depends on you, your art, and how much time is reasonably available.)

Through the years, I’ve used unexpected windows of time that were powerful and perspective changing. One time when doing the 30 Inks 30 Days challenge, I took what amounted to less than 10 minutes to do a dip pen and ink doodle each morning before school drop-off. I would sit on the couch while my son finished getting ready, and I would do my doodle before we got in the car. Another time, I experimented with stopping in the neighborhood where the school was before heading home after drop-off, sitting in the car on the side of a street somewhere, setting a timer, and drawing the house in front of me. Five minutes, and then I drove home for my work day.

🎯 9. Use a timer

If finding time is one of your biggest hurdles, try using a timer. If you need a concrete marker, you may need to use an alarm to make sure you move into the creative habit. But once there, set a timer. (Your phone or Alexa will work just fine, but if you have some cool, whimsical, light-up, rainbow or toast timer, by all means, use it.) Maybe you have five minutes. Set the timer and practice using the full time. Don’t worry about missing whatever is next. The timer gives you boundaries. See if you can focus on whatever your project is until the timer buzzes. If you have more time, go for longer sessions. (I use a timer method for other kinds of breaks and really find it helpful. If you have an hour, set it for thirty minutes. You may find you really appreciate adding another thirty when it goes off.)

🎯 10. Don’t require a masterpiece.

You may not really expect a “masterpiece,” but you may be increasing friction simply by expecting finished or frame-ready pieces every time you make art. For most of us, this isn’t realistic.

I have sketchbooks full of daily drawings and portraits through the years, but when I shifted to the illustrated journal, it was partly a shift away from the finished product, away from the “art in a frame” mindset, away from the single portrait on a page approach. There is nothing wrong with those things. (Obviously, if you are making a living from art, you will need to do those things.)

In my scenario, it was just a waste of paper. It was a process that fostered the pressure of finishing something each day. I can. Many times I do series (like the portrait series I’m doing right now) where I do exactly that… something start to finish every day. But is there extra virtue in being able to keep that up daily forever? For me, the answer was no.

Putting pressure on myself to finish something each day also limited the kinds of work I could do. For a while, I focused instead on acknowledging works in progress (the way knitters do). I worked on bigger drawings and worked on them over days. I think it is a result of social media that there is unwritten pressure to show something new each day. It’s an expectation worth questioning.

Writing is different. The expectations are different. The processes and the cycles of editing are different, but the reality is that these words are not (yet) a book. I view each post as a draft, as finished as possible in the time I have. I spend a lot of time each week on this post, but I always know that I am sharing a draft. Day to day, however, I make time for other kinds of writing that have no expectations of being “finished.”

🎯 11. Fluid Systems

Finding accessible and affordable tools and solutions that make it easy to enter and manage your creative habit is important. If that means a composition book and a pen for you, that’s great. Go with that. There have been times when that was the answer for me, even for making art.

I always have a notebook with me, but when it comes to writing, I need to type. (This isn’t a better or worse thing. You do you.)

For me, reducing friction means having a system or strategy that allows me to move fluidly between laptop, iPad, and phone. The more difficult it is to drop back into my work when I shift devices, the more friction there is. Input matters, too. Having a small portable keyboard I can use on my lap or on the couch or the coffee table or in the car is really important to me. Changing the switches on the keyboard to “silent” ones that make it even easier to work from the library was also important.

Finding solutions that work for you as a writer is important. Don’t overlook the impact that friction can have when you can’t access your work from anywhere, can’t find the files you need, or don’t have a good plan for doing and assimilating ad-hoc or on-the-go work.

🎯 12. Be pragmatic about your contours, your now

Be realistic about your creative habit. Almost everyone can find “some” time and the minimal tools for a creative habit. You may not have “as much” time as you would like right now. It’s okay to admit that, but then find ways to embrace and appreciate the pockets of time you do have.

Time changes.

At various points in the last twenty years, my windows of time have been different. I used to drive to the top of a nearby hill while one of my kids napped. I would write in the car while looking out at the sprawling view. During the school years, I found other windows. (Many of us fit portions of our creative lives into the time we spend “waiting.”)

Today, I have more flexibility than I did when I first started tracking creative habit and creative life in the margins 18+ years ago on the podcast. Our contours change.

Ten years ago, being daily was a goal, something I continued to work towards. Today, being daily is simply part of who I am. It is also a big part of what I value in my day.

🎯 13. Make it enjoyable

Do you need to craft a glamorous experience to enjoy your creative habit? It depends on you. Knowing what brings it all together in your head is important. Maybe you need a clear space, a window view, a string of fairy lights, or flowers on the table. I love having a fresh cup of coffee next to me when I sit down to write. Maybe you like music. Maybe you like to draw while you listen to a book on tape or watch TV. Maybe you light a candle.

The more you understand what creates the right mindset, the right level of ease, the more you can make your creative habit fit your life and work for you.

🎯 14. Be accountable

Whether you add your creative time to your planner, bullet journal, habit tracking app, or a daily to-do list, make it something you owe yourself, something you intend to check off. It’s a gift, really, an act of self-care, not a chore, but it may have to feel like a chore at times while you cement your habit. It shouldn’t be something that at the end of the day, you look through your morning list and think, “darn, I forgot again to make time for my creative work.”

If self-accountability (tracking or simply saying to yourself that you are going to do it) isn’t a strong enough reinforcing tool, seek ways to be publicly accountable. This might be posting in social media, sharing in a private creative group, or even texting a friend. (Buddy accountability systems can be challenging to navigate but can be worth it if you work out clear parameters and expectations.)

🎯 15. Embrace the process

This feels very much overused as a catchphrase, but it really is important in reducing creative friction (and creative angst). If you enjoy the time you spend on your creative habit, then the outcome is secondary. Focusing on what the habit brings to you in terms of fulfillment, relaxation, mindfulness, and balance reduces creative friction. The benefits of the habit are self-replicating as long as the primary focus is on the act of doing.

Even if you set up the perfect window and space, if whatever creative habit you are trying to instill or whatever creative medium you are trying to pursue isn’t something that you enjoy or love or find meaningful, it isn’t going to stick. It isn’t going to be something you care enough about to keep showing up.

Not All Conversations are About Doing More

I think it’s important to stress that a discussion of reducing creative friction, and/or bolstering creative habit, is not necessarily a conversation about doing more or maximizing time or being more productive. My goal isn’t to suggest that everyone should do more. I always know there is an implicit level of “pick and choose” in how we spend our time.

In many ways, I’m all about slowing down. I’m all about a creative habit that is mindful, reflective, balancing, and comfortable.1

Creative Habit is Individual

No matter how smooth your creative habit is, the actual act of creating is something you may find a struggle at times. Hopefully this is not always the case. What I mentioned last week is that creativity doesn’t have to be painful and tortured to be valid.2 I’m not talking more about this today, but I do acknowledge that we all have a different experience with and relationship to our creative practice.

Today is simply about creating a mindset and a space that can help you approach your creative habit with joy.

It should be something you approach with joy and for the enjoyment and fulfillment you feel in the doing. Yes, creative habit can be cathartic and something you use to process things that are overwhelming, hard, depressing, sad, or worse. But for many of us, the creative habit can and will, if we let it, be a comfortable part of the day, something we know we can sink into.

That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve created for myself. It doesn’t require buying things. It doesn’t require much of anything other than my intentionality. The habit exists only because I show up every day.

You can too.

Weekly Bits and Pieces

Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 42
Diary List Comics / 52 Weeks
Related old shows (the site is a mess, but I’ll be taking it down next month, so I’m not worried about it at this point):

Made It?

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your comments. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

Ostrich or flamingo
Pink or orange
What one thing makes it easier for you to maintain your creative habit?
What is one book you are reading right now?
What is your favorite window for creative time?