What To Do When You Are In The Dark

There is a reason that the birth of an idea is so frequently represented by the bright burst of a light bulb coming on, or the dazzle of a spark. This “ah ha!” moment is hard wired in our brains as a positive, pleasure giving experience and releases endorphins—which is why humans continue to discover, experiment and evolve. The iconic light bulb, and the spark, are symbolic visuals because having an idea or discovering a solution often “illuminates” the next step on the path to a goal. This could be something as complex as figuring out how to improve a work relationship, what needs to happen to a main character as the next plot point in a story, or as simple as figuring out a new configuration for your too stuffed closet (ok, maybe not so simple.)

But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Or in other words, there is a ying for every yang. So this post, on a blog about discovering bright white wattages of ideas, is actually about the opposite. This is a post about what to do when you are “in the dark.”

To be “in the dark” usually means that you don’t have information available to you or that it is kept from, or unknown to you. While ideas illuminate the next step or express understanding, being in the dark encompasses a sense of blindness regarding the situation or a lack of direction.

One of the myths about ideas, and creativity, is that it comes easily. The truth is that creativity has many, many enemies. For me, and most people—and most companies—being overwhelmed or too busy is at the top of the list of creative roadblocks. When I get into The Busy, or have more ideas and tasks than I can count, all feeling of equal importance, I encounter moments of feeling that I don’t know the next step or have the right idea. This is when I feel “in the dark.”

While having one of these moments recently, I thought to myself, “if I was literally in the dark, the best thing to do would be to move slowly.” This awakened a memory of a long ago 6th grade art class, and one of our first projects, using blind contour to draw a portrait of one of our classmates. (Blind contour, for those of you who have somehow escaped this classic academic art exercise is where you look at something and draw it, while never looking at the paper and never picking up your pencil. You can look to the photo for this post for an example—I used blind contour to draw a light bulb.)

The teacher, whose name is long forgotten—but whose advice is not—told us this as a way to start the blind contour drawing:

“This is how I want you to think: How would you drive if you were kidnapped and put behind the wheel of a car blindfolded?”

(Never mind that it was 6th grade and none of us could drive.)

There was the usual awkward middle school silence and emphatic re-asking of the question, the teacher’s mane of curly red hair bobbing “How would you drive blindfolded?”

“You can’t,” came an answer.

“Yes you can! You would drive very slowly. And I want you to draw, vvveeeery sloooowly.”

So when I am feeling uncertain about the next step or overwhelmed by challenges that need solutions and I don’t have any readily available, I remind myself that I need to move slowly and gently. The answers will come through small steps. Most importantly, have patience with finding your way, because the answer always comes, like a light bulb flicking on, even when you are in the dark.

What do you do when you feel “in the dark” on a problem or idea? Are there any techniques or creative tools, such as morning pages that you’ve found helpful? To inspire you, especially if you are feeling “in the dark,” or stymied in your progress towards a goal, here are a few suggested techniques to put in motion to illuminate your thinking:

• Walk away from it: Think about where you do your best thinking—it is usually a different place from where you do your best “working.” When you are stuck, and ideas are just not forthcoming, one of the best things you can do is go do something else. Change your scenery by talking a walk, going for a drive, seeing a movie, or just stepping away for a moment to refresh your brain.
• Embrace mundane tasks: Julia Cameron in her book “Vein of Gold” recommends putting together a pile of items that need mending. When you get stuck on a project, sit down with the mending, ask a question, and then sew up the holes in socks and put buttons back on shirts. In an hour, not only will you have accomplished a household task, but you will also probably have the answer to your question. I, personally, find doing the dishes is also a great form of meditation. And folding the laundry is another good one.
• Organizing: Sometimes our external environments can begin to reflect our internal mind. I find that if my desk is messy, my thinking is messy. When the next step on a path to a goal is not apparent or the goal seems unobtainable, I recommend finding the physical area in your home that is associated with that challenge and then do a deep clean and reorganization of it. While your desk or office may be an obvious choice, this can also be applied to goals such as eating healthy. If you keep finding yourself nibbling your way through the kitchen in the afternoon, then do a deep clean of your refrigerator and pantry. Put a big bowl of oranges and apples on the counter, and healthy choices right where you can spot them if you open the fridge.

Creativity Exercise "Five Lives": Let Your Imagination Do Some Trick-or-Treating

This Halloween, don’t only dress up in a costume, let your imagination dress up in some imaginary lives and see what they say to you.

This morning, I walked into the kitchen, where overnight the blood splattered blade of a guillotine magically appeared. Skulls hung in dirty nets above the sink. In my largest Cuisinart pot was a boiling concoction filled with bones that smelled as bad as it looked.

It is two days before Halloween.

Every year in our household, the last weeks of October gather into a maelstrom of dark and gory creativity as my boyfriend preps his props for the (terrifying) haunted house that he runs at a local country club. With the apartment looking like Jack Skellington’s workshop, and class prep on my mind, I was inspired to take a different angle and think about the lighter-side of Halloween today. Not the traditional meaning of the holiday, but the actual traditions—such as dressing up in costume.

This put me in mind of one of the activities from Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way that she calls Imaginary Lives (and I call Five Lives for ease of remembering).

It is a simple activity, not to be over-thought, where you list what you’d be if you had five other lives to lead. I suspect that this is actually an activity that everyone indulges in to a certain amount everyday in their imagination, which is why it becomes very powerful to put pen to paper and see what lives are officially calling to you.

My list today includes:
1. Secret Agent
2. Sea Captain (circa 1880)
3. Stationery & Gift Shop Owner
4. Best Selling Author (paperback “trashy” romances)
5. Yoga Teacher

This exercise has two very important elements to it that relate to creativity and inspiration. The first is that through seeing what lifestyles or careers are sparking your imagination, you can dig a little deeper and see what themes each of the lives has that make it so attractive. (This digging is important, because frankly as much as I like the idea of being a circa 1880 Sea Captain, it would: a.) be impossible due to restrictions in time travel. And b.) I like hot showers.)

Through a light “digging” into each of my five lives, I discover:
1. Secret Agent = Mystery + Adventure + Action
2. Sea Captain (c. 1880) = Adventure + Exploration + New Horizons + Travel + Courage
3. Shop Owner = Independence + Creativity + Merchandising + My Own Space + Action + Community + Sharing Happiness
4. Best Selling Author (Romances) = Writing + Creativity + Sharing Happiness + Fun + Research
5. Yoga Teacher = Healthy Body + Energy + Sharing Happiness

As you can see from my list, there are some themes such as Adventure and Sharing Happiness. These are two things that I can then brainstorm (or mind map) on how to incorporate into my real life, rather than it just be an impulse that manifests itself in my imagination.

Which brings me to the second valuable inspiration element of the Five Lives activity: action and incorporation.

There are two directions you can take the results of the activity once it is on paper. You can take the idea of the lives at face value, and use a creative medium to explore that life. For instance, I could write a one page sketch of my inner Sea Captain (that could lead to an awesome character for a longer story). Or, I could plan a trip down to tour the USS Constitution in Boston Harbor. Or, I could watch Master and Commander: Far Side of the World.

If I explore this from the themes that being a c. 1880 Sea Captain represents in my imagination, I can think about ways that I can add some adventure to my life. Maybe I begin to think about planning a trip, or learning something new in order to appease the desire for new horizons or adventure.

There are many, many ways to leverage this simple activity. Use it as a way to enrich your everyday life, which in turn, nourishes your creative self.

This Halloween, don’t only dress up in a costume, let your imagination dress up in some imaginary lives and see what they say to you.

Inspired? I'd love to hear about your imaginary lives! Share here on The Paper Compass.

In Creativity: The Importance of Postmortems

In creative endeavors, as in life, it is worth learning from—but not dwelling on—your successes and your failures.

The past few weeks have been busy in way that is unique to the beginning of the fall semester. Schedules change, routines change, the weather changes; autumn is a time of transition. Yet, the last few months of the year are also filled with tradition and annual milestones such as the first day of school, holidays and holy days that give us a feeling of familiarity. Through this dichotomy, I find that autumn is an intuitive time of year to meditate on change and progress.

With the advent of Halloween only a few weeks away, I thought I would share one of my favorite (and most morbid sounding) post-creative project evaluation techniques that we discuss in Creative Thinking & Problem Solving, the class that I teach in the Emerson College graduate Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) program.

At the beginning of every semester, I have the students read and discuss the insightful Harvard Business Review article “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity” by Ed Catmull. The article is one of my favorites as it relates to understanding and appreciating the four dimensions of creativity: People, Place, Process, and Product. Through these “4 P’s of Creativity” the problem solving process and institutional architecture that powers Pixar Animation Studios' success and vision with movies such as Toy Story and Up are revealed to be tangible and consistent solutions that can be applied to ironing out the kinks in a major motion picture—or, due to their structure and simplicity—applied in order to empower your own creative process.

One of the techniques, that Pixar employs after a movie has been completed, is called a Postmortem. This is where, rather than just celebrating the launch of a movie and sweeping several years of stress, trial, and triumph under the rug, the company rounds up the team to reflect on the process and data and create a record of learned experiences for future projects. As Ed Catmull notes, “…although people learn from the postmortems, they don’t like to do them.” To be relevant to end of the project, and the point in the process where usually people want to move on, a Postmortem is a balance of both positive and negatives. At Pixar, the team lists the top five things they would do again as well as the top five things they would not do regarding the project. This is combined with the data from the project to create a final and factual big picture of lessons learned.

While I am a creative, I am also a project manager at heart and the idea of a Postmortem speaks to me. Creative people have a tendency to see solutions quickly, coupled with a willingness to take on new experiences, which often leads to projects that are started quickly, muddled through in the middle, and then finally finished in the dark hours of the morning, fueled by coffee and a pending deadline. I am no exception to this. Introducing the Postmortem to my endeavors, be they professional or personal, has helped me create reminders of what I can do differently to make the next project more successful, the process smoother and everything less stressful. Granted, there will always be new and unforeseen circumstances when embarking on a creative project, but understanding what worked, or should be avoided as learned from previous projects is an invaluable experience, and a great way to stimulate your own thinking process.

There are no special tools, or set-in-stone instructions for Postmortems. In fact, Pixar usually mixes up the Postmortem routine in order to make sure that they always gain new insights. On a basic level, you want to set aside time to document in your sketchbook or a master project file the five things that you would do again (or that went well) and the 5 things that you would not do again (or that went poorly) as they relate to your project or creative endeavor. From this, I usually have some mind mapping type lines that connect to ideas for avoiding or cultivating future solutions as needed. Most important: make sure to place the Postmortem somewhere that it can be referenced in the future!

Do you currently use a postmortem-like process for any of your projects, creative endeavors, or in general? Is it similar to the Pixar Postmortem? In what ways is it different? What do you personally find as the most effective way to learn from a completed project? Share your thoughts here on The Paper Compass.

To inspire your thinking, here are a few of the ways (usual and unusual) that I have found to successfully apply the Postmortem technique:

• Books: This summer, I was SO EXCITED that the long awaited volume, A Dance with Dragons, in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (for those of you watching HBO it is Game of Thrones) series was released, but I was also lamenting that after six years, I could not remember what characters had been left where and in what peril. In the case that it is six more years until the next book comes out, I wrote a “postmortem” cheat sheet when I finished the book and tucked it into the back cover of the last volume.

• Holidays: Every year, I do a short Postmortem the first week of January, which evaluates the triumphs and trials of Christmas. Not only am I reminded what gifts were a success (or forgotten in the back of the closet), I also always have ready the travel information (phone numbers, hotels, etc.) on hand for the following year—which makes the holiday travel (slightly) less stressful.

• Teaching: At the end of every semester I do a Postmortem on the class and what materials were successful or not successful. In the spirit of Pixar’s data collection, I review my notes from each class and determine what exercises worked or failed, and what I can introduce to improve them. Sometimes, if a particular class did not go as I was anticipating, I will enact an Immediate Postmortem in order to get things back on track or customize the material and timing to the different learning habits of the students in that semester.

• Parties: Postmortums and parties go hand in hand. This is how the following year I remember to use the crock pot, buy plastic bowls that are heat resistant, and have a good idea of how many bottles of red and white wine will be needed, and how many will be brought. Better party, much less stress. Thanks Postmortem!

From a Stationery Store in the Heart of Boston, Remembrances of September 11th

I was not prepared for the events of the work day following 9-11. When you think about stationery, people tend to think letters, wedding invitations, birth announcements and other happy items. But paper plays an important role in all life occasions—including death.

The morning of September 11th, found me folding laundry and watching the CNN morning news on my day off from my job as a manager for Crane & Co. Paper Makers, a stationery store at that time located at the Prudential Center in the heart of Boston. As the first images of the devastation came on TV, I remember standing in front of the screen, a pillow case held mid-fold in disbelief, with the sinking sensation that something very serious was happening. Within minutes of the first tower being hit, the phone rang. It was the associate manager from the store, wanting to know if something important was going on as they had received a “stand-by for further announcements” automated message from the Prudential Center. It felt surreal to explain the stories coming in on the news and to tell them to hold tight and do exactly what the Prudential Center instructed them to, even if that meant locking up and closing the store for the day. Then, like everyone else, I was held a captive witness to the devastating images and news on TV.

For me, that was only the beginning of my experiences connected to September 11th. Strangely, by being in the stationery business, it was the days after September 11th that made the devastation and heartbreak human and personal.

On Wednesday, September 12th, I walked to work, like I did every morning, from the Fenway to The Prudential Center. The city was eerily subdued for a week day work morning. Sirens could be heard, which vividly evoked the sounds and images from the TV the day before. I felt filled with adrenaline. As I walked along the Christian Science Reflecting Pool, a fighter jet flew overhead toward the financial district, and in the fading of the defining and heart bounding roar, I remember thinking, nothing will ever be the same.

I was not prepared for the events of the work day following 9-11. When you think about stationery, people tend to think letters, wedding invitations, birth announcements and other happy items. But paper plays an important role in all life occasions—including death.

The first call I took that morning was from the newly widowed wife of one of the pilots killed in the hijackings. She was calling to order sympathy acknowledgement cards. Her voice held the contrasting notes of logical calm and bewilderment. Having lost my father only two months earlier, it was a combination I knew well from grief. At the end of the call, after giving me her address for shipping, she asked for all possible privacy to be taken with her information as so many people were contacting her. There are reporters in the front yard, she said. After the call, I walked quickly to the backroom, needing a moment off the floor, feeling breathless and holding back tears as I absorbed the reality, not of images on TV, but of the people whose lives were forever changed by the attacks.

The rest of that day, and the days that followed, were emotionally wrenching. Several of our corporate customers had lost employees in the hijacked flights that left Boston. We sold black leather bound guest books for memorials, black bound books for remembrances, black pens to sign them with, black bordered sympathy acknowledgements. There were many moments of standing in the backroom looking for a boxed product, trying to remember a SKU, and feeling heartbroken over the story of lost that you had just heard.

Each night that week, I would closed up the store and, beginning the walk home, marvel at the emptiness of the Prudential Center. It felt as though the city was under a self-imposed curfew. The beat of my shoes echoed as I walked through the empty corridors, which are usually always filled with a steady stream of people.

About two weeks after the attack, on the first day commercial planes were given permission to fly again, I was on my dinner break, at the long since gone, Sbarro pizza place in the Copely Mall. It was a favorite haunt of mine for the quiet, the pizza and the view of the skyline of South Boston. From where I sat, starring out at the cloudy twilight, I began to see the lights of planes lining up to land at Logan. This sight, and its normalcy, after so many days of horrific images, heartbreaking stories and uncertainty in the aftermath of the attacks, filled me with an overwhelming feeling of hope. To this day, I still remember how the line of planes coming in to land looked remarkably beautiful, like a loose string of shinning diamonds against the gray evening sky.

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.