Paying Attention
"Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity... I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance." Sally Mann
I really love the simplicity of this as an approach to creativity - and especially in the fallow periods when we are tired, or blocked, or just stuck in some kind of limbo between projects.
As someone who has always loved walking for itself - but has also discovered it’s a useful way to deal with difficult emotions (I always walk when I’m angry, if possible) and when I’m feeling low. I know walking helps to keep the lupus under control - at least until the lupus is so far out of control that I have those periods of time when I can't walk. And it’s always been a useful way to get myself out that stuck feeling when I’m writing too.
So I like this basic idea of a Thirty Minute Noticing Workout which I found via Austin Kleon’s blog
I’m quite excited too because the addition of some deliberate photography - perhaps on a theme - may not only help with my writing, but may inspire my embroidery and my tapestry weaving too.
I was wondering, also, as I am not capable of walking very much at the moment, how I could adapt this approach to being stuck indoors. Maybe there’s a way of using the internet-as-distraction as a kind of productive procrastination?
So instead of half an hour outside, I decided to today to spend half an hour online, exploring a particular theme of my next novel and not in any directed way, but just wandering - and collecting any little nuggets of usefulness. I spent more than half an hour - I might have to set a timer - but I have created a new folder in my Scrivener file where I am storing ideas for scenes, characters - images and links.
I’ve always done this purely by chance, or serendipity - and it always seems like a promising sign when synchronicities start to show up as I’m writing - a relevant story in the news, or a discussion in a blog which is relevant. I just hadn’t thought of deliberately going fishing for them before - relying on memory and chance to propel me onwards.
Ann
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More reading
I liked this, from The Art of Noticing, about attention as a virtue.
Here I would offer engagement as the opposite number to indifference. I hope that’s a guiding theme of TAoN: engaging with the world, with others, with the natural and the material and beyond. Obviously I don’t address world affairs in TAoN, but I think it’s just as obvious that staying engaged with the larger world and our collective future is central to caring about what you pay attention to and paying attention to what you care about.
I also enjoyed this link, to embroidered everyday objects - probably because they reminded me of some of the favourite projects I’ve completed in the past.
Here, a felt ‘jammy dodger’ ornament, hanging from a friend’s Christmas tree
And here, a box of chocolates made out of ribbon…
Maybe you could have a go at macro photography indoors. Perhaps with your embroidery. It is amazing now fibres and colours look very close up. Lots of connections with focus on character detail here maybe. I try to get inspiration by playing the guitars as well as walking