Summer Creativity Challenge No.2: (The Necessity of ) Taking on an Unnecessary Project

The desk was a gift.  Found in a basement boiler room of a building scheduled to be demolished, it was cleverly disguised beneath multiple layers of paint applied with a heavy hand.  The original silhouette had been altered by the addition of a haphazard plywood shelf, which it wore like a fake mustache.  It was battle-scarred and appeared to have lived a life of many purposes beyond the school room for which it was originally intended.

Opening the drawer on the front revealed a warm stained wood interior with an inkwell, still holding the ancient residue of black ink.  Its potential hidden history and true purpose discovered, it came home with my fiancé where it was deemed to be an excellent find and a great restoration project—for when there was time.

Months passed.  The desk was stored in the basement and once again became a base on which many other things were stacked.  In moments of purging, and feeling “realistic” about the time needed to restore it, it was placed on the curb—only to be brought in again.  There was something about the desk, something about the neat lettering on the inkwell that read in three curved lines radiating out from the nib dipping area, “American Seating Co., Boston No. 59, Pat Apd For,” that wouldn’t let me relinquish it.

Then, one evening a few weeks ago, I was reviewing and integrating some content from author Todd Henry’s book The Accidental Creative into my Creative Thinking class lecture “Where Do Ideas Come From?” designed to inspire students to think differently about where they do their best thinking.   Despite having read the book and put into practice many elements of Todd’s wisdom, I realized that I was missing—and longing for—one key element, which he calls “Unnecessary Creating.”

Unnecessary Creating is actually incredibly necessary for busy creatives.  It is a way to empty or disarm the ever watchful Censor, which I wrote about in last week's challenge.  In keeping busy, the subconscious is left alone to do the magic that it does best: incubate.

My own neglect of (resistance) to Unnecessary Creating, is the same as Todd Henry addresses in his book (p.175):

At this point some of us may be thinking, “I barely have the time and energy to do what’s required of me for my job, and now you want me to take up a hobby?”  It’s tempting to resist this technique because we think it will add stress to our lives—yet another thing that we have to cram into our schedule.  But the experience of those who incorporate this practice is quite different.  They find that it actually clarifies their thoughts, makes them more efficient, and reintroduces a level of passion for their on-demand creating.  In addition, our Unnecessary Creating is often the best source of new insights for our on-demand creative work.”    

Deciding, during the actual delivery of the lecture, that nothing is more beneficial than practicing what I preach, the desk soon came out of the basement and into the hot sun of the driveway.  With a hammer, I knocked off the plywood shelf with a few satisfying whacks.  I was educated on paint removal by my fiancé and soon armed with what he called “a glorified hairdryer” and a spackling knife.  

Soon the paint on the desk was bubbling up to reveal a history of ecru, mint green and yellow lifetimes.  Beneath that, the stained wood still had a start of the school year glow to it.  A hot, sweaty, melting-paint-chips hour later, my “project” began to look more like the desk I knew it could be (although there was still far to go.)  I, too, had a new outlook—won over to the knowledge that Unnecessary Creating is very necessary in my life.

With space to spread out and windows to open, summertime invites hands-on projects.  It is also a great chance to experiment with introducing Unnecessary Creating to your weekly routine.  In Summer Creativity Challenge No.3, this week take a look in your basement, attic, yard, or house and see if you have any projects waiting for you.  Ideally, it should be something that you can sink your teeth into and work on consistently for a few weeks.  Whether is it painting a room, building a bookcase or breaking ground and planting a new garden, get started and see what happens.  Note how you feel and what other endeavors may suddenly feel more-doable.  As always, record your experiences in your sketchbook/notebook and also share here (pictures of your project welcome) on The Paper Compass.   

    

Summer Creativity Challenge No.1: (The Pursuit of) Two Kinds of Happiness

"Ground Swell" Edward Hopper, oil on canvas, 1939

Summertime engages our senses.  The world is vibrant with color: the green of grass, the rainbow of fruits and vegetables at a farm stand, the blue of the ocean meeting the sky at the horizon.  The days are filled with the scent of humidity, tomatoes on the vine, the scent of ozone before a flash of lighting.  Birds sing, waves break, the beat of radios and murmur of neighbors talking on the porch comes in the open windows.  We wear less clothing to allow our skin to soak up the sun.  We open ourselves to summer.

This symphony of the senses makes summertime the ideal time to restock the source of our creative juices.  In this season of long light and slow heat, it is a perfect time to play, to explore and to inspire your creativity.

This is the fourth summer of weekly Creativity Challenges on The Paper Compass.  For the next six weeks this summer, there will again be a theme to meditate on, a small task to fulfill, or a memory to be explored.  Some challenges will take you to new places, others to past experiences, and all hopefully to a wealth of ideas to compile in your sketchbook or notebook.  Consider it your season of creative harvest, abundant with ideas to delight your mind or spark an even greater artistic endeavor. 

This summer we begin, inspired by one of the core values celebrated on Independence Day: The Pursuit of Happiness.  Creativity and happiness are an interesting pair.  As Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman write in the Newsweek article, The Creativity Crisis, “… [C]reative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.” 

Creatives, as agents of change, big and small, are driven.  With this drive comes what author Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way calls The Critic.  This negative (and untrue) voice can be a huge hurdle for creatives pursuing their happiness.  The Critic is loud and eagerly points a finger at anything less than perfect, often keeping ideas from even arriving at their first destination: the blank page or the blank canvas. 

But summertime, by any definition of perfection, is far from perfect.  Summer is wild.  It is extremes.  It is a profusion of heat, bugs, sun, vegetation, and sand.  It is the boisterous person at the party who sets off fireworks, turns up the radio, and pushes people in the pool.  And this makes it the perfect time to give yourself some space away from The Critic in order to explore more of your creative happiness.

The interesting thing about happiness is that it is both a present state and a memory.  Our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently as documented by Nobel Laureate and founder of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman.  We don’t always experience happiness in the moment, but we often look back on an experience and our brain has categorized it as “happy.”  If something ends on a happy note, we often remember the whole experience through rose colored glasses—even if we were bored silly, disgruntled or exhausted for the majority of the time.  A five day vacation where it rained for four days and ended on one sunny day?  Excellent!  The 90 minute wait in an endlessly snaking line for a joyous ten minute ride at Disney World?  Forgotten!    

While science has proven the two kinds of happiness true, I need only to look to my own experience of being at the gym to see it in action.  I have many happy memories of time spent on the elliptical watching the Food Network (oh, the irony!) or traveling to exotic locations vicariously through the Discovery Channel.  Yet, when I am actually at the gym, in the heat of physical exertion, I promise you that happiness is the last emotion on my mind. 

Exploring the two kinds of happiness in this summer creativity challenge allows us to identify things that make us happy in the moment (like petting a cat or reading on the back porch) and most importantly for creativity, the things that make us feel happy in retrospect (like having written this blog post).  Both are important as one grounds us in time and the other helps us “do the work”; the work that makes our creativity and ideas a reality.  The promise of happiness in the future is a huge motivator, but most importantly it is important to explore our pursuit of happiness.  Being in pursuit of something means you are on a journey.  If you watch carefully and observe the process of working on a creative endeavor, you may suddenly see more moments of happiness than you believed existed.  And suddenly that blank page looks a lot more inviting.   

      

This week, for Summer Creativity Challenge No.1, spend some time contemplating your own pursuit of happiness.  Make a list of things that make you happy in the moment.  Or observe very carefully the things that bring you happiness.  Also, make a list of the things that you remember as being happy.  Revisit them.  What made you remember it as being a happy experience?  Often you will discover themes rather than things or places or people are at the heart of happiness.  What themes (such as travel, exploring, being outdoors, having long, intimate conversations) do you see in your memories of happiness?  Are any a source for an Artist Date or Adventure?  As always, document your thoughts in your sketchbook/notebook and share any thoughts or questions here on The Paper Compass.

     

Devouring the Pie: Creativity, Routine, and a Meditation on Time

For creatives, who so often see solutions to the many challenges or opportunities presented to them, saying “yes” comes easily.  It takes you in exciting, new directions, allows you to flex new thinking skills, and—more often than not—divides your focus so that your pie is full of many little slices. 

During my freshman year at Boston University, I had a French teacher who, through no fault of his own and like many others before him, was unsuccessful in teaching me to improve my abysmal French.  However, he did make a lasting contribution to my life regarding my comprehension of time.

One day, during a tangent in the middle of a lecture, the professor turned to the board.  His tonsured head reflected the florescent lights as he drew a large circle, sliced it into lines with a piece of chalk and declared: “Time is just one big devouring of pie!”

I have written before of this epiphany. This random statement—capturing the essence of time as a limited resource (while in the middle of conjugating verbs)—has only continued to prove more and more true the older I become. 

Time is like a pie, and however you slice it, there is only so much of it in a day.

For creatives, who so often see solutions to the many challenges or opportunities presented to them, saying “yes” comes easily.  It takes you in exciting, new directions, allows you to flex new thinking skills, and—more often than not—divides your focus so that your pie is full of many little slices.  Or, if you are a focused creative, with much willpower, who is Getting Things Done, then your pie is probably divided into only a few big slices.

This has been one of my meditations as The Paper Compass lay fallow during the snowy Boston winter and tragic, strange days of early spring.  I thought about it frequently as my life had taken off in some surprising, wonderful and new directions, and taken my blogging time—and perhaps even more importantly—my routine, with it.

If time is like a pie, creativity is like water.  Unless directed it follows the path of least resistance.  Sometimes it carries you along, and other times, you are responsible for laying the duct work, building the dams, making sure that it doesn't overflow the banks, or dry up completely. 

While all was quiet on The Paper Compass, creativity was flourishing through different outlets. A proposal—and joyful answer of “yes!”—have brought the whirlwind that is wedding planning to my life.  To mark this happy occasion, I found myself pleasantly engaged again in crafting handmade gifts and keepsakes for my family (images below).  I also flexed my creative writing muscles working on a draft of my novella under the direction of a talented student editor in Emerson College’s Publishing Program. 

A handmade card asking my sister to be my MOH

A MOH Survival Kit complete with instructions

A playful customized gift tag asks my brother if he'll walk me down the aisle

A keepsake box for my mom contains a garland made up of family wedding photos

I kept returning to my meditation on time as pie though, because at the heart of creative process is routine.  While we could speak endlessly about creativity and time as the best of frienemies, it is really your routine that allows you to do the work.  There is limited space for creative endeavors within a day, because time is limited, so it all comes down to choice, priorities and “pruning”, as author Todd Henry of The Accidental Creative calls it.  While I made advances on other creative projects in my life, The Paper Compass was placed on the proverbial back burner. 

The good news is that no creative endeavor is truly endless.  In fact, creativity like all things, has its cycles.  Which is why I am pleased to say, that the heat wave that has ushered in June in the Northeast has also brought back my summer routine: the summer semester of Creative Thinking & Problem Solving is underway and my thoughts once again turn to blogging, writing, and the Summer Creative Challenges.    

The lyrics of John Lennon remind us that, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”  So while I can’t promise that this will be my most prolific blog year (it is the fourth year of The Paper Compass!), I can say that The Paper Compass is “back” and I will do my best to integrate my creative outlets and post here for sharing, thoughts and inspiration for your own creative journey.

All this talking about pie is perfect for some food for thought (pun intended!) or discussion below:

• If your day was a pie, how would it be sliced?  What slices are the smallest? What are the largest?  Can you make any changes to prioritize small slices of the pie?
• How much time is set aside for creative endeavors?  
• Do you have a creative routine?  If not, what are some of the ways that you could create one?
• How do you prioritize personal creative endeavors in your schedule?
• And one question that has been important to me in the past several months is: How do you bring patience to your creative process?

Summer Creativity Challenge #2: The Hunt & The Perfect Find

A box of Victorian monogram stencils at Brimfield

Inside the tent it is dim and still.  The canvas walls are hung with shallow shadow boxes in tight and tidy rows.  Inside each is a small storm of objects from arrow heads to lady’s pistols to campaign buttons with hairstyles that date the people in them to my great-great-grandparent’s era.  In a corner there is a tall shelf which is the current home of a handmade Eskimo doll who leans languidly against a bottle of Frigid Fluid Co.’s branded embalming fluid circa 1900.  The bottle is still full.

Across the tent, a man standing behind a table marks him as the booth’s owner.  He looks like he simultaneously stepped off his Harley and stepped away from conferring with J.E.B. Stuart over the Confederate’s next move in order to talk to customers.  He has recognized a previous patron, decked out in a stylish straw hat with a brim which would make the British proud.  He is telling her of his latest finds, the point of his salt-and-pepper beard moving up and down over his solar plexus as he speaks.  He has a voice full of gravel and as flavored with the West as his framed memorabilia.  Concluding business with the wide-brimmed hat, he wishes her the felicitous salutation of the day, “Happy hunting.”

The main street of the town of Brimfield during the show

I am at Brimfield, one of the largest antique shows in the country.  And I am hunting too.  Happily.  So is my boyfriend and our friend Cassy, who has taught us the ropes, being a long-time Brimfield veteran.  Tents filled with everything from fine antiques to collectibles and hidden treasures stretch the length of several (approximately ten) football fields.  Some booths are cluttered with odds and ends--old photos, books, random pieces of china, vintage toys--and as you explore your hands come away dusty.  Others are as pristine as a china shop, with linen covered tables displaying polished silver serving pieces, claw-footed curio cabinets, and full sets of Depression Era glass all vying for new owners while their prices break the hearts of many admirers.  If shopping is now a form of entertainment, then Brimfield is the Comi-Con of antique shows. 

A Brimfield booth filled with industrial items and index card cabinets

Brimfield is a feast for the eyes and a playground for the memory and imagination.  When I browse—stepping from tent to tent, my eyes adjusting from sunlight to shadow; hot, still air to warm, fan-blown breezes, to browse the wares—I enter a state of flow, quickly loosing track of time (and also often of my companions.)  The three of us have what we call in Creative Problem Solving “fuzzy goals” which means that we have an idea (and ideal) of what we are looking for, but are willing to be lead in new directions.  


At Brimfield, we return to an early form of shopping where exploration, perseverance, and even negotiating evoke the thrill of The Hunt.  It is a place where The Perfect Find—a combination of serendipity, memory/imagination, desire, and price—often feels like it finds you. What I like most about Brimfield and the variety of vendors and items is that The Perfect Find is often not a wallet-breaker, but something that speaks to you in that moment.  One of the items that Cassy scored yesterday was a team image of the 1982 Celtics that reminded her of the ones that use to hang on her family’s refrigerator door when she was younger.  It was a steal at $1.

A Brimfield booth specializing in film and photography

More than antiquing, this is a post about the places that we go to “hunt”—to shop, to browse, and to acquire.  We all have them.  For some, it is the local music store where you browse records and CDs.  For others it is the bookstore, where you disappear for hours, cappuccino in hand.  It is also the gift shop, the home décor store, or that sale rack in the back of the department store that you know just when to visit.  

These places are about more than just shopping, they contain several aspects that create the perfect frame of mind for creativity and embody the Creative Problem Solving Process:

·         You go on a whim or because you have a hunch

·         You are excited and open minded in your approach to the task

·         You have a “fuzzy goal” in mind, which leaves you room to explore alternative solutions  

·         You have to observe and try out all the options in the environment

·         You evaluate the items that have stood out

·         You make a decision and take action (purchase or not purchase)                       

We have these stores, shops or events like Brimfield in our lives because we need environments that we can explore in and mingle with others that share our passions.  Most importantly being on The Hunt consciously (or unconsciously) for The Perfect Find is about being open to unexpected solutions and serendipity (and a touch of happenstance, which I wrote about last week).

All of this is inspiration for the second Summer Creativity Challenge: The Hunt & The Perfect Find.  This week, plan an artist date (or at least an hour) to browse one of your favorite stores or shops.  This is a great time to revisit an old favorite shopping haunt or head into a store that is new to you.  Most importantly, there is no pressure or need to purchase anything for this challenge.  Browsing is a great way to enter a state of flow, which is refreshing for the creative process.  If you have something in mind that you do need to make a purchase for, this is a great time to be aware of the Creative Problem Solving steps and explore how being in an environment where you are comfortable exploring options (divergent thinking) makes you feel, verses an environment where you are focused on getting to a single solution (convergent thinking).  In this challenge, take the time to be aware of how the environment engages your senses. If you don’t have a current haunt in which to Hunt for The Perfect Find, you can use this challenge to remember a favorite place or find a new one.

     

With this as your touchpoint for this interpretive challenge, record your impressions, memories, explorations, or even the merchandise that you found most interesting in your sketchbook or notebook.  Please also share your thoughts, experiences and ideas here on The Paper Compass. 

     

Creepy Brimfield Baby Doll

Where else can you find a vintage polygraph machine?

Even the dummies at Brimfield are having a good time

Brimfield railroad glass pieces

All this exploring with the scent of fresh made donuts in the air

Summer Creativity Challenge #1: The Library

The third floor of the Newton Public Library is a mausoleum for magazines.    

I made this discovery a few weeks ago on a hot and muggy Saturday, on a trifold errand to renew a book, escape the heat, and find an inspired place to do some end-of-the-semester class prep.  Despite the sign on the door that stated that the air conditioning was not working correctly, I marched on and up the spiral steps of the library to the unexplored reaches of the third floor, eager to find a quiet corner to seclude myself in.

Taking a right at the top of the stairs, I discovered a row of unoccupied study desks (thanks to the broken AC) and row upon row of archived magazines in sagging, canvas-covered catalogue boxes or uniform rows of beastly-sized annual editions. 

It was there that I made one of my greatest finds of the summer: an army-green, big-boned volume of House & Garden from 1923.  It sat alone on a shelf, its nearest neighbors a set of volumes beginning in 1963.  Unable to resist, I tugged the mammoth book from the shelf, carrying it through aisles that spoke of different eras (and that I would return to explore in further weeks).  Here was an entire collection of The Saturday Evening Post starting with volumes from 1935.  I passed St. Nicolas Magazine, two shelves of leather bound journals from 1904 to 1912 filled with Edwardian children's stories.  A volume of Harper’s Magazine from 1865, with marbleized cover and gold stamped leather binding.  Which, when browsed, featured current events such as Sherman’s march from Savannah; Sheridan’s operations in the Valley of Shenandoah, “and his junction with Grant’s army, and of the series of actions before Richmond . . . ”  All this news in a size six font on a packed two-column page.  A single paragraph among hundreds of stories of about war and love, many likely read out loud by candle light in the final months of what we would call the Civil War.

The House & Garden volume though was my true obsession.  All other tasks forgotten, I lost myself in the now almost foreign world of 1923.  Articles entitled, “The Electrically Equipped House: In Which Comfort, Convenience, and Pleasure Can Be Increased In Many Ways by the Thoughtful Use of Electric Current,” educated on how many outlets should be in a room.  Advertisements featured maids in crisp black uniforms with knee-length skirts and ruffled white aprons.  There were also ads for automobiles—most from the chauffeured passenger’s point of view.  For “those planning on traveling to Europe and The Orient” there were multiple ads boosting of the being the best cruise ships.  All you needed to do was send a written inquiry and they would mail you a brochure in return. 

"The day of the big, bulky enclosed motor car has gone."
Jordan Motor Car Company

Each individual House & Garden magazine was a fascinating world of black and white photographs of patterned parlors and proper dining room interiors (no intimate spaces like bedrooms and no work spaces like kitchens).  1923 is a prosperous place where the world is full of new “conveniences” and where, in a decorating magazine, the word modern still only means “most current.”  At the time, the Bauhaus School, founded by Walther Gropius in Germany, was only five years old.  The idea of stores such as IKEA, unfathomable. 

"Standard" kitchen sinks, "yard stick high," provide
comfort and prevent back-strain.  How high is yours?
Standard Plumbing Fixtures

What I love the most is that all these magazines and volumes are available to anyone curious enough to look, to get a little dust on their hands.  It is wonderfully straight from the shelves.  No special cotton document gloves, no appointment-only archive room.  It is a perfect exhibit of happenstance, which is part of the magic that is the library.

I am a fan of technology (I have a much-used Kindle) but I will argue that the library is a sacred place.  Not just for readers, but for creative thinkers.  The library offers us the one thing that instant downloads to your e-reader, Amazon reviews, Google searches and StumbleUpon can’t: the tactile act of random discovery.  In the meditative quiet of the library there is no algorithm guiding your search, no SEO, no commercial interest, it is just you and whatever sparks your curiosity.  Who knows why we pick up a book?  It could be the condition of the cover, the typeface of the words in the title, or it could be the fateful mystery of it being out of place on the shelf.  The public library has always been about discovery, education and curiousity, and I would argue that it represents all of those things now, even more than before the "digital age."

All of this is inspiration for the first Summer Creativity Challenge: The Library.  This week, plan an artist date (or at least a half hour) to browse the shelves at your local library.  If you are a student and spend lots of time in the school library, choose a city library, to visit.  Or, if you are a frequent library attending bibliophile, plan time to explore a new-to-you section of the library.  (I still remember my first time discovering the rare book room at the Boston Public Library—it was a holy experience.)  Make sure to bring your library card, or the documents to get one, and a tote bag in the case that you find more than one book you want to check out.  If you are a dedicated eBook Reader, maybe consider switching it up and borrowing your next book from the library.  After all, it is free!

      

With this as your touchpoint, record your impressions, book lists, or library explorations in your sketchbook or notebook.  If the library sparks memories from another time in your life, feel free to capture your memories in detail.  You can interpret this challenge in many ways, as an artist date, writing exercise, or inspiration to start a book list, just to name a few.  Record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.   

      

2012 Summer Creativity Challenges Commence! Tap into a Season of Creativity

This season marks the third year of Summer Creativity Challenges, weekly activities designed to stimulate your creative process by tapping into themes and memories that make the most of summer.

Summer is a season ripe for creativity, not only do we have more daylight hours but there is also a sense of having more time in our schedules (and hopefully some vacation too).  This is also a season that brings out our natural tendency to play and explore, two of the key tenants of creative discovery. 

I have always believed that there is a certain magic to summer, a thinning of the veil between the past and present.  With our senses stimulated by the scents, sounds, flavors, textures and lush summer landscape, we are more easily able to tap into memories from our childhood or other times. 

Memory plays an important part in the creative process.  We use our own experiences and observations of the world around us to “fill the well,” as author Julia Cameron calls the process of restocking our internal creative resources.  Summer offers the perfect time to take in the world, explore our own memories, and be playful with new ideas.

I feel the spirit of the Summer Creativity Challenges is captured in this beautiful quote by artist Rebekah Maysles, “If I could dream up the perfect summer day, it would be a combination of time and place.  I would be able to move around from Long Island Sound to Harlem, from when I was younger to now, with people who are here and those who are no longer . . .”

For the next eight weeks, The Paper Compass invites you to play and share around these creative activities.  Each week we will feature a weekly Summer Creativity Challenge post on a theme or topic that is open for your own interpretation.  You can think about it, savor remembering it, write about it, create an artist date around it, or do whatever comes to mind.  The intention is that the topic, or something related to the topic directly or indirectly, will spark an idea that can be of use to you in the future—or may just be really enjoyable and inspire some creativity in the now.

Most importantly, feel free to share your ideas, memories, thoughts and feedback around each post.

If you’d like to take a look at previous Summer Creativity Challenges you can review where we’ve been and what we’ve explored:

2010

Week #1 Candy

Week #2 Books

Week #3 Ice Cream

Week #4 Sunrise, Sunset and High Noon

Week #5 Spontaneous Play

Week #6 Wanderlust

Week #7 Adventures

Week #8 Alfresco

2011      

Week #1 The Beach

Week #2 Summer Jobs

Week #3 Summer Camp

Week #4 Scents of Summer

Week #5 Summer Love

Week #6 Postcards

Week #7 Time Travel

Week #8 Labor

Also, the Summer Creativity Challenges are not written in stone.  I have an idea of the topics for the next 8 weeks, but if you have a suggestion or want us to return to a favorite and explore it from a different perspective, please let me know!

Check back in on Sunday for our first Summer Creativity Challenge.

Summer Challenge Week Eight: Labor

Challenge #8: Labor. The word labor evokes a sense of dedication and focus that is integral to creative endeavors. This week, transition from summer to fall with a meditation on your own creative labors, as well as a celebration of your creative achievements.

In this final 2011 Summer Challenge, use this week to set goals for creative projects this fall, or even examine ways that you can integrate time to “labor” over creative projects into your daily routine. Also some points to contemplate: What are projects that you feel you labored over? What was the experience of laboring for you? Did you experience a state of flow? What could you recreate or change from that experience to create a better environment for dedicated work on creative endeavors? (Which no matter how frustrating should always be a “labor of love.”)

With the concept of labor as your touchpoint, whatever ideas you choose to explore, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Labor Day arrives and with it, signs that these are the final days of summer. The holiday marks the last hurrah of summer with a long weekend, filled with final beach days and last barbecues. It is also a time when the newsstands suddenly sprout magazines about Halloween, and our thoughts turn to the new school year or the final months of work ahead.

I find it fitting that Labor Day is the US holiday that marks the transition from summer to fall. While the holiday has many political connotations, at its heart, it is a celebration of work and achievement. What better way to move from the care-free and casual mindset of summer, to the productive and focused thinking of fall, than with a day to meditation on your own creative labor—and, even more importantly, to take a moment to appreciate and celebrate your own creative achievements?

Labor Day became an official federal holiday during the heart of the Industrial Revolution in 1894, allowing members of labor unions to march together without having to take a day without pay. The federal holiday was a political concession after the violence of the Pullman Strike, but it originated out of the labor movement to eliminate the dangerous working conditions at the height of the Industrial Revolution. At this time the work day was twelve hours long—seven days a week—and many factories employed children because they were small enough to work inside the machines, they were quick, and could be paid less than an adult. More than a hundred years later, we are the recipients of the positive changes to our working conditions—and a structured work week—that is a result of the strife and violence that was part of the long battle that ultimately brought about this lazy summer holiday.

While labor means, on a basic level, to work hard, to be engaged in a productive physical or mental activity, it also means to toil, to strive towards a goal—which I think reflects the changes the laborers worked towards and advocated at the turn of the century—and also what we each experience in our own personal work and creative endeavors.

Labor, by itself, is an infinitely interesting word, especially where creative thinking is concerned. The word labor expresses a state of dedication and action towards an end result. To say that something is a labor of love means that even though the work is hard, it’s end result brings you pleasure. Or, if the work is strenuous, the word labor provides a sense of pace, of forward momentum, even if slow and plodding.

There are many other words for labor, especially in the language of the creative, but the bottom line is that no creative can escape the hard work of bringing an idea into reality. (So it is also fitting that the word labor also means the act of bringing a child into the world.)

Creativity is associated with joy and the free flow of ideas (similar to summertime). Labor is much more serious and somber (like fall). Yet, when you are in a good place with your work, labor transforms into something sublime that renowned academic Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”, a state of mind of completely focus motivation, when both sides of your brain are working in harmony. When you are in a state of flow, you lose track of time, the work comes easily, you are engaged, progress is made. When you are not in a state of flow, you could literally say you feel like you are laboring (in all of its negative connotations).

We know though, that labor must come before flow and as Julia Cameron emphasizes, the most important part of creativity is “showing up at the page.” Or as the last stanza of Longfellow’s famous poem “Psalm of Life” tells us:

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

All of this is inspiration for the eighth summer challenge: Labor. The word labor evokes a sense of dedication and focus that is integral to creative endeavors. This week, transition from summer to fall with a meditation on your own creative labors, as well as a celebration of your creative achievements.

In this final 2011 Summer Challenge, use this week to set goals for creative projects this fall, or even examine ways that you can integrate time to “labor” over creative projects into your daily routine. Also some points to contemplate: What are projects that you feel you labored over? What was the experience of laboring for you? Did you experience a state of flow? What could you recreate or change from that experience to create a better environment for dedicated work on creative endeavors? (Which no matter how frustrating should always be a “labor of love.”)

With the concept of labor as your touchpoint, whatever ideas you choose to explore, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Seven: Time Travel

Challenge #7: Time Travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time, is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better. In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.

If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)

With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

This summer, I have been experimenting with time travel.

A popular form of travel mainly occurring in science fiction books, TV, movies, and the DC comic universe, it is also the Big Idea behind the well done radio ad campaign for the non-profit organization Historic New England. With their cleverly designed “passport” guide to their 36 preservation properties in five states in-hand, my time travel adventures this summer took me back to 1940 at the Walter Gropius house and to circa 1890 at The Codman Estate, both in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

With time travel on my mind, it was with some interest that I learned that physicists from Hong Kong University recently announced that time travel is impossible and officially only something that could occur in science fiction. A fan of Jack Finney’s classic time travel books Time and Again and From Time to Time, I was a little disappointed to hear this conclusion, presented in a radio news story as I made my way slowly through traffic on Mass Ave.

While there is a part of me that respects that the speed of a photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light—hereby supporting Einstein’s theory that “an effect cannot occur before its cause”—there is another part of me that holds out hope though, that maybe just like in Finney’s novels, time travel is closer to hypnosis, and therefore just another deeper layer of the mind, rather than an actual place.

Another pin pick to the theory of time travel is English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking’s observation that if time travel was possible, we would have more tourists from the future. While we could surmise that they are very discrete, the lack of time travel tourists seems to point to evidence of it not being possible, or something that is not explored. Based on the number of ostentatious baby blue CSI crime scene booties that I have worn this summer to carefully traipse across the floors of historic houses without further wearing down the carpet—I can tell you one thing, I don’t think that time travel could ever be subtle.

But I like this idea of time travel tourists. It is a perfect expression for the nostalgic pleasure that I experience when I see the house stationery on the desk at The Codman Estate with “The Grange” engraved on the envelope—no need for an address. Or the long built-in desk where Walter Gropius and his wife worked side by side the window before them framing the view of a hill covered with long yellow grass and Queen Ann's Lace in the summer.

While most people on the house tours seem to be interested in the craftsmanship of the floor tile or the rarity of the paintings, I am imagining an evening conversation at the Gropius dinner table with its dramatic lighting. Or what happened to motivate the oldest Codman daughter, whose bedroom is filled with her own watercolor paintings, to ride her bicycle from Lincoln to Marblehead in one day in the early summer at the turn of the century. Was it athleticism? Curiosity? Boredom? Did she start riding and then just keep going? Did she forgo her corset? Did any of her friends begin the journey with her and decide to turn back while she continued on alone?

I believe that the role of the imagination is to create blue prints for ideas, to test them out, to taste them before we make them real. As a writer, my version of time travel inspires me toward new ideas for stories and also helps me see details that may make the story authentic.

Time travel though is also a way to step away from our own lives. Understanding a different time in history can be as inspiring as understanding a new culture. In learning, you open up your mind not just to immediate insights about what you are studying, but also gain insights into your own life, or the reasons behind why you do something a certain way. There are many “departing gates” for being a time travel tourist, from history books, to antique stores, to museum artifacts. This week especially though, I encourage you to do some immersion time travel by visiting a historical house or building in your town and see what it inspires.

All of this is inspiration for the seventh summer challenge: time travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better (this is especially important for innovation—think of Dick Tracey’s futuristic walkie-talkie watch or the Futurism art movement at the beginning of the 20th Century). In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.

If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)

With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Six: Postcards

Challenge #6: Postcards. Whether you are traveling abroad, to the museum in the next town over, or just feel like adding an element of the exotic to your daily routine, writing a postcard to someone (even yourself) is a great way to capture your thoughts, document the moment, and connect.

With this as your touchpoint, this week take the time to write and send a postcard to someone (or yourself). If you are traveling this week, take the time to pick up some postcards as souvenirs and send them to a friend back home, or use them as a posted travel journal. Writing and sending a postcard from a local museum or attraction can make the difference between day trip and memorable adventure.

Postcards are also a great way to document artist dates, and I encourage you to send a postcard to yourself sharing what you did—through words, a sketch or even an idea. If being a homebody is in the weekly plans, use a postcard you have on hand and send it to someone who you have been thinking about (it will make their day). Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

If summer was a piece of stationery it would be a postcard.

Short and sweet, rich with vivid imagery and a snapshot of vibrant thoughts, the postcard in all its casual practicality is the embodiment of summer. Filled with sentiments such as wish you were here, thinking of you, or the itinerary of travel, the postcard is a perfect vehicle for capturing and sharing your thoughts within a specific moment, whether mundane or memorable.

One of the things that I like best about postcards is that while letters have an illustrious history, the postcard has a slightly checkered past. It is believed that in 1840, the first postcard was sent by British writer and infamous rake Theodore Hook. Addressed to himself, from himself, and containing a caricature of workers at the post office, it is believed to be a practical joke on the postal service. As Hook was also known for the Berners Street Hoax, this sounds completely feasible.

Postcards as a popular form of souvenirs or for sending short messages began to catch on in Europe in the 1870s. By the late 1880s and early 1890s, images of the newly built Eiffel Tower at the World’s Fair and the exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, would ushered in what is known as the Golden Age of Picture Postcards.

While the postcard is most closely associated with souvenir images of tourist and architectural attractions, any illustration—from flowers to advertisements—could (and did) grace the front. By the 1930s, the “saucy postcard” was in its heyday with cartoon illustrations of bawdy imagery, and the use of text filled with innuendos, double entendres and bawdy images.

Postcards to this day remain an important part of the souvenir industry, but more importantly, they have come to embody the mythos of a person abroad, exploring, looking for themselves through the experience of new places. For author and prize-winning journalist Alice Steinbach, postcards became a key element of recapturing the narrative of her life as she traveled through England, France and Italy on a journey of personal discovery and reconnection. These postcards, sent to herself, make up the backbone of her book Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman. In the well-known PostSecret project, the mythos and public nature of the postcard is taken one step further to anonymous confessions that connect us with others and the complexity of our own humanity.

All of this is inspiration for the sixth summer challenge: postcards. Whether you are traveling abroad, to the museum in the next town over, or just feel like adding an element of the exotic to your daily routine, writing a postcard to someone (even yourself) is a great way to capture your thoughts, document the moment, and connect (or reconnect).

With this as your touchpoint, this week take the time to write and send a postcard to someone (or yourself). If you are traveling this week, take the time to pick up some postcards as souvenirs and send them to a friend back home, or use them as a posted travel journal. Writing and sending a postcard from a local museum or attraction can make the difference between day trip and memorable adventure.

Postcards are also a great way to document artist dates, and I encourage you to send a postcard to yourself sharing what you did—through words, a sketch or even an idea. If being a homebody is in the weekly plans, use a postcard you have on hand and send it to someone who you have been thinking about (it will make their day). Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Five: Summer Love

Challenge #5: Summer Love. Summer gives us a unique time to be bold, to feel open, and to experiment. In this interpretive challenge, think about your own summer loves—romantic and/or experimental (such as a new idea, endeavor, or hobby.) How did you feel when they were happening? How did you feel after the summer ended? If you were to bring more romance or creative expression to your summer, how would you do so? If you were to create your own Summer of Love in the remaining weeks of summer, what would you do? How would it affect your daily life or routine?

With this as your touchpoint, this week meditate on summer love. You may be inspired by the core concepts of experimentation, openness and freedom of expression OR you may remember a relationship that made your summer memorable. Summer love, especially romance lends itself to many mediums for storytelling—visual, literary, or musical. You may also be inspired to experiment with integrating some Summer of Love creative expression into your weekly routine. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

From Sandy and Danny to Sammi and Ronnie, summer has always been a season of love. Whether it is the seductive call of a warm night, the baring of skin, or the inevitable end date, summer romances are well documented in literature, movies, and what seems like an almost endless repertoire of songs. The dictionary defines romance as something that is fanciful, impractical, idealized and sentimental. Add in summer and you get the classic definition of summer romance: two (sometimes unlikely) people being open to taking a risk on their attraction, with no idea where it will go after the summer ends. In the case of Sandy and Danny in the musical Grease, we get to see the challenges of the romance when school returns. In the case of Sammi and Ronnie on the Jersey Shore, we get to watch multiple episodes of bad behavior. Love is never easy.

Summer heightens emotions. Like attracts like. People (especially youth) gather.

In the summer of 1967, roughly 100,000 people gathered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, creating a hub for the hippie counterculture movement that spread across the US during what was known as The Summer of Love. It was a pivotal summer in history, when the 60’s counterculture gained awareness in the US as a cultural revolution and the movement spread through similar gatherings in many other cities in the US, Canada and Europe. Synonymous with creative expression, communal living, free love, psychedelic drugs and music, The Summer of Love was also seen as a social experiment. “It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one’s existence” Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir said of Haight-Ashbury and The Summer of Love.

Just like any summer relationship (think Sammi and Ronnie more than Sandy and Danny) The Summer of Love, had consequences both good and bad that have shaped who we are today. Beat poet Michael McClure says of the summer of 1967, "If these young people hadn't declared the possibility of a new culture, a new family, a new tribe, believing in peace, nature, sexuality, the positive use of psychedelic drugs -- if they hadn't been there to broaden and deepen the hundreds of thousands and then millions of people who were broadened and deepened by this -- we would be in an even bigger [global environmental and economic] stew."

Whether it is a summer love or The Summer of Love, both of these experiences—one personal and one cultural—at their heart are about being open and taking creative risks. Summer love is about the freedom of exploring new ideas and new relationships without the restraints of the analytical mind of fall and winter. Most importantly, summer love is about the very important creative principle of experimenting.*

All this is the inspiration for the fifth summer challenge: Summer Love. Summer gives us a unique time to be bold, to feel open, and to experiment. In this interpretive challenge, think about your own summer loves—romantic and/or experimental (such as a new idea, endeavor, or hobby.) How did you feel when they were happening? How did you feel after the summer ended? If you were to bring more romance or creative expression to your summer, how would you do so? If you were to create your own Summer of Love in the remaining weeks of summer, what would you do? How would it affect your daily life or routine?

With this as your touchpoint, this week meditate on summer love. You may be inspired by the core concepts of experimentation, openness and freedom of expression OR you may remember a relationship that made your summer memorable. Summer love, especially romance lends itself to many mediums for storytelling—visual, literary, or musical. You may also be inspired to experiment with integrating some Summer of Love creative expression into your weekly routine. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

*The terms “risk” and “experimenting” are to be used within the context of creative thinking. Please be safe!