Related Recs

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The artists way

Here to Rec this again, or The Right to Write also by Julia Cameron. It doesn’t necessarily help with line actual writing tips, but I found it helped my writing and creative practice in general by beginning to consider my entire life as a whole as part of it. What we write comes from how we live, what we see, how we think. And this helped me with that! It comes in from an “Artist’s block“ perspective, and I was worried it wouldn’t work because I wasn’t at all blocked, but I still found it really useful and interesting to discover the ways that maybe I was blocked and hadnt realised. It’s also just a really good tool to ensure commitment to craft, which i think is the hardest and most important thing in creating. If you do it a lot, consistently, you will improve, always.

@mouse

Apr 27, 2024

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doing another kind of creating

The Artist’s Way is the classic rec for this ask, but theres one lesson it teaches that stuck with me most. when you feel stuck doing the creating that you really want to or feel like you “should”, do another form of creating instead. If you’ve a writing block, paint instead. A paining block? Collage! go on a photo walk and take some good photos. All creativity is linked and if you feel blocked in one, loosening up another can help!

@mouse

Jun 20, 2024

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Julia Cameron

I was going to recommend The Artist’s Way, but someone already has. So I thought I’d come and say that she has another course-book called “The Right to Write”. I haven’t started it yet, but I have it and it’s similar to The Artist’s Way but focussed specifically on writing. I really loved The Artist’s Way, and there are things I started when I was doing it that have become parts of my life in general. Morning pages are something I’ve done for years but had fallen out of doing everyday, so it put me back on track and I find it useful. Although I do sometimes think that i prefer evening pages to morning. Morning pages your brain is blank so it’s easier to create new things, but if you struggle with creating new things atm then evening pages often gives you more to work with. You have everything you did that day, stuff to reflect on, feelings to process. So if morning pages are feeling tough, perhaps try before bed! You might end up doing both night and morning!

@mouse

Mar 19, 2024

Top Recs from @alaiyo

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Using the word “gauche” instead of “cringe”

it’s so them-coded

@alaiyo

Mar 23, 2024

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How to do nothing by Jenny Odell

a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say will definitely be revisiting

@alaiyo

Mar 25, 2024

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Hummus

when i tell you the first sixty seconds of this video changed my life i need you to believe me. 10/10 strongly recommend especially amidst boycotting for palestine

@alaiyo

Mar 21, 2024