I love Paris. At least I think I will love Paris if I ever get there. I’m waiting for my children to move out on their own and I plan on going to France before I replace my children with a puppy.
I share this because one of the things that I love to do is to read about Paris, especially memoirs of those who’ve run away from home to Paris and started a new life. This summer I read one such book by Janice MacLeod called Paris Letters, and then later her books A Paris Year, and Dear Paris. In the books she talks about doing a series of illustrated letters that she sent to friends and eventually sold a subscription for.
So I’ve decided to do the same, on a smaller scale. In order to force myself to practice, force myself to write not for work, and force myself to do illustrations I’ve started sending illustrated letters to my mother once a week.
It has been quite helpful to have a bit of accountability for myself. Which is interesting since I typically hate any sort of accountability or expectations. I suspect it’s a result of being a single parent and having so much of both in my life.
Still routine and structure and accountability are indeed required when it comes to creativity. You need meaningful feedback, you need regular intentional practice. With all of the expectations and responsibilities that we have it can be hard to add more, and sometimes that means we need to find a way to remove at least one in order to add in one that is for ourselves even if we disguise it as an obligation to another.
I have such a hard time prioritizing my own needs that the “hack” for me seems to have been to wiggle what is best for me into an obligation to another. Getting the writing practice and illustration time in as doing these letters to my mother.
It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t do something similar for the two series of children’s books that are brewing in the conceptual stage. Perhaps release them serialized as a series of letters to readers and then publish the books as epistolary books, of course if I did that I’d need to learn how to properly pronounce that word and someday even spell it.
In any case if you’re finding prioritizing your own creative efforts, practice, and process consider how you might be able to shift those efforts and adding in a sense of accountability to yourself or others.
