Observation Journal: Things that might make her do the thing

These two observation journal pages are a follow-up to some previous pages (see: Why has she not done the thing), and feature solutions to problems. In one case, a portfolio of fixes for the future, in the other, a direction that did work.

The first digs deeper into my issues with framing, packing and posting art (or anything, really). Specifically, I’d realised that I should look at what had worked in the past, on this and similar problems, instead of just dwelling on my resistance.

At the time, it didn’t feel like I’d reached an overwhelming conclusion. There was no epiphany, or one unbelievable trick. But it has proved to be a very useful list of things to plan for and around when I do need to post things. It’s also an array of solutions to try when I do get stuck.

The other question (“why has she not done the thing yet good grief why”) hadn’t been finished because I thought the unadorned skeleton of the questions I needed to ask myself was hilarious, if damning. Here it is again: I’m going to stick a copy of this next to my desk.

But I did revisit it. The problem involved writing several pitches, and I was wrapping myself thoroughly around the axle. In this case, dwelling on the points of resistance helped, because they weren’t as physical/practical as with packing-and-posting. And leaning on those points meant just sitting with the project for a while, and slowly tinkering things together.

Other key solutions:

• find what was exciting about it
• ridiculous fast first drafts feel as if they have no weight
• you can just make stuff up?
• talking it through with someone
• sitting and staring at the problem for a period of time, even if I don’t do anything
• making a playlist (a way of gently leaning on the idea)

As it turned out, in this case half the problem was simply allowing molehills to expand unchecked (with a healthy dose of self-doubt and fear of inability to read other people’s minds). And in such cases, setting a timer for half an hour and just staring at the task usually breaks through. (A watched molehill doesn’t grow?)

Finally, my housemate tricked me into watching The Morning Show aka The Morning Wars and I found it, like much (prestige?) drama, extremely stressful. This is how I watched most of it:

Note: If you’d like to support art and writing and posts like this about it, I have a Patreon account (patreon.com/tanaudel) and patrons there get behind-the-scenes process and sneak-peeks, starting from US$1, or you could buy me a (virtual) coffee at ko-fi.com/tanaudel (and I get through quite a bit of coffee).And/or check out prints and products available at Redbubble and Spoonflower.

Also, I’ve just started a mailing list. It’s not a newsletter — it’s just going to be the occasional email with any major updates (publication announcements, exhibitions, etc) and semi-regular heads-up of things you might not want to miss. If that’s for you, the (extremely early version of) the sign-up page is here:

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Observation journal — plans and deliberateness

On this observation journal page, a reminder to myself regarding “doing it wrong” vs “doing it my way”.

This was the day my copies of Flyaway arrived! I also went to the hairdresser’s, to feel like a proper author.

Useful reflection

I don’t love being introspective. Particularly not in long-form prose. When I do have a problem to grapple with, I find it most useful to start sorting it into patterns of thought, however roughly. This way I usually end up with either an answer, the raw materials for one, or at least a better question.

Some usually useful approaches to vague concerns:

• X vs Y (as here), to start finding boundaries and tipping points.
• A list, to get a worry out of my head and be able to look for patterns.
• A table, if I want to compare multiple events/projects
• A mind map, if I sense some general areas of enquiry.

This is a ratty little page because I was sad and sleepy and it was late. But it was still helpful.

I think this page was prompted mostly by worries I wasn’t “properly” celebrating Flyaway‘s publication. A minor crisis, but representative (it turned out I was sick — spent the actual publication date being horribly ill, which certainly relieved any residual guilt).

This page in particular

In the first part, I collected my thoughts on (the fear) of doing it wrong vs doing it my way.

In the second part, I rounded up thoughts on not-partying — things people kept asking, why it wasn’t happening, what I though ought to happen. And the same on possibilities: I had champagne. I could at least acknowledge the release, and appreciate it, and tidy the house, and be aware.

Last, I started collecting more general thoughts on what I felt I should be doing vs what I always seem to do and actually enjoy doing. This section was more about some new smaller projects I had to work on, but it was a good reminder and one I’ve had to come back to more than once:

• Pressuring myself to be/write: clever, witty, slipstream, literary, Australian Gothic, not too obvious, not too fantasy, not boring!, but consistent.
• Things I actually (and like to) do/be/write: odd, strange, compact, multiple, fast, pleasant, following a story, chasing things that are intriguing-to-me.

At Stefan’s, with tea and hair foils

Observation Journal — Why has she not done the thing?

I don’t like being introspective — one of the advantages of the observation journal is that I worked that out quickly and was able to sidestep it thereafter. However, the journal is sometimes useful for unpicking specific problems. [Edit: there’s now a follow-up post to this — Things that might make her do the thing]

For example: My intense avoidance of packaging and posting things. I can make myself slightly feverish, now, just by starting to think about preparing art to send to a show.

I always have to look up tabebuia online — the pink ones blossom like crepe-paper pomanders in winter

The important approach on this page was to:

• follow each high-level answer down through several levels (what types of stress, and which physical parts, and what’s causing that…)
• highlight key elements as I went (otherwise these pages are unintelligible when I revisit them.

The most useful question to ask for this type of page turned out to be: has [the problem] ever worked out okay, and why/how. In this case, the tricks for getting me to package and post things effectively/at all have been:

• Clearing space
• Dedicating time
• Recruiting a second pair of hands (or passing it over to someone else entirely — there are people out there who apparently LOVE and are GOOD AT putting rectangles into other rectangles, and I need you all to know you are important and valued)
• Having a tested technique AND checking if there are better approaches out there
• Information/checklists

Two days later I started to investigate something else I was avoiding, but when I put down the key questions I thought they were (a) self-answering and (b) funnier left unanswered.

The moral of the story is: stress can be repurposed for entertainment. And sometimes laughing at myself is what is needed to get a project moving.

“could she in fact be doing the thing right now instead of writing this?”

UPDATE: I addressed these points further — and completed the template page! — on this post: Things that might make her do the thing.

Observation Journal — time vs floors and ceilings

It’s all a bit Alice-in-Wonderland

As well as an excuse to draw Alice in Wonderland (see previously), this page of the observation journal was an opportunity to think about me vs time. Specifically, it’s a musing on the pleasant and horrible aspects of treating a deadline as a ceiling vs the present as a floor.

The well-known meteorological classifications “high little many clouds, & lower puffy ones”

I have always been a deadline-motivated person, as well as very good at procrastinating (I don’t know which is the cause and which the effect). But some combination of 2020 and too many deadlines were breaking that system. The really useful aspects of deadlines (motivation, eventually, and productive procrastination) were suffering.

Changing my approach and treating now as a place to begin seemed promising. But it’s a skill I only learned very recently (at the beginning of my MPhil, in fact) and it is not yet innate.

Time vs me is, I suspect, an ongoing process rather than a work in progress. And these approaches are less in opposition than part of a continuum. A setting I need to constantly, consciously slide and adjust according to circumstances — ideally before but certainly when (as recently) cracks open and things fall into them. (Apologies.)

Potplant vs ceiling

Some previous Alice, also available on Redbubble and Spoonflower.

Note: If you’d like to support art and writing and posts like this about it, I have a Patreon account (patreon.com/tanaudel) and patrons there get behind-the-scenes process and sneak-peeks, starting from US$1, or you could buy me a (virtual) coffee at ko-fi.com/tanaudel (and I get through quite a bit of coffee). And/or check out prints and products available at Redbubble and Spoonflower.

Observation Journal — unsubstantiated manifesto

This observation journal page features strong but deliberately not particularly thought-through opinions — and also a council employee dancing dramatically with a whippersnipper.

The exercise is from Elizabeth McCracken, who tweeted:

I enjoyed this type of manifesto much more than some introspective ones (see: Manifestos (ugh)). It’s rather fun being unreflectively and unsupportedly opinionated. Here’s the list as it stood then (with some commentary):

• Art should be just absolutely infested with so-subtle-its-invisible allusions & references & foreshadowing. [I don’t like doing puzzles, so I kind of hate this as a viewer, but as long as I don’t expect anyone else to pick up on them, it’s an excellent way to add texture.]
• Movement trumps accuracy. [I went to the She-Oak and Sunlight exhibition and just sighed a lot at hurrying flecks of people busying themselves across canvases in one or two smears of paint.]
• Expression ditto.
• Aesthetic is king. [Guillermo del Toro makes movies for illustrators]
• Keep it chatty. [An excuse or a philosophy?]
• Space should be filled with a network of bits.
• Tinier is easier (it isn’t).
• With enough SIZE or REPETITION anything can become fine art.
• The soul of most composition is just this: be deliberate.
• Why realism, though?
• Texture and colour like icing is a heaven closed to me. [I write so I can be painterly — there are passages in Flyaway that are deliberately me using e.g. Tom Roberts’ palette and light.]

Revisiting this after almost a year, I don’t think my feelings have changed significantly (although some are being tested, though not threatened, by recent projects). However I’ve been thinking more about them, ever since writing them down. Some have turned into exercises and workshops; some have helped me make clearer decisions; some are lessons I never learn.

Here is another element that emerged from the journal! It’s a tiny note on which jagged leaf shapes were most fun to draw (at least in ballpoint pen).

Together with some ornaments from a summary page, these leaves made it into the May 2020 calendar (also demonstrating repetition, small drawing, and filling up space with bits).

The design is available on Redbubble on cushions, throws, clothes, etc, and on Spoonflower as fabric and wallpaper.

Note: If you’d like to support art and writing and posts like this about it, I have a Patreon account (patreon.com/tanaudel) and patrons there get behind-the-scenes process and sneak-peeks, starting from US$1, or you could buy me a (virtual) coffee at ko-fi.com/tanaudel (and I get through quite a bit of coffee).

Observation Journal — stalling and stopping

This page of the observation journal is about where my work was stalling and why (also Agatha Christie and guitar).

My position in relation to introspection is fairly well advertised. It’s not what I, personally, enjoy using the observation journal for, and too long a course of it will make me stop keeping a journal at all. However, the journal has been very useful for working out ways to muse over things in ways that are practical for me.

In particular, rough tables suit how I think: I can concentrate on just jotting notes, and then look for patterns, and not write myself into a spiralling pit of angst or ennui.

In this case, I was looking at Where I Was Stalling & Why.

This was in April 2020, so I need to say up-front that this list alone did not fix anything. I still am digging my way out of some stalled projects from last year. However, it taught me a lot about what to avoid. It’s also fascinating to revisit now, where I’m setting up for some new large projects.

Here are the columns:

• Project list (cunningly mis-named to protect those involved)
• Quick thoughts on why I might be stalling.
  • Just high-level thoughts on what was going wrong (an unpleasant mixture of inertia and panic).
  • It was good doing this on multiple projects. Occasionally a note on one project would make me realise it applied to another. And once it was done, I could look for patterns. The main patterns were:
    • (Loss of) impetus and (loss of) enjoyment
    • Lack of pressure + competing distractions
    • Guilt + stuck-together-in-door
    • Doubt
• Ways I could fix those situations.
  • The most magical fixes were, boringly yet thrillingly:
    • Accepting there is no one right task (and therefore no ‘wrong’ choice).
    • Picking anything — why not the first thing on the list?
    • Setting a timer for fifteen (or 30) minutes to concentrate on solving just one of the issues (it worked and the project in question is out). This is the only solution that works for me almost 100% of the time. I’m always wildly irritated that it works.
      (There’s a reason Evaline Ness’ Do You Have The Time, Lydia speaks to me.)
• Ways I could avoid those situations happening again.
  • These turned out to be mostly same reasons projects catch fire in the first place (see: Observation Journal — giving ideas a push):
    • Acting immediately
    • Using (and surfing) the fun of it
    • Setting aside the time
    • Doing the prep work

I only practice the guitar during natural disasters

As an aside, I’ve recently found Charlie Gilkey’s Start Finishing useful on aspects of managing multiple projects. It’s the sort of book I suspect is most useful if you’ve already got a robust understanding of how you manage your work, and of how to approach time management books, and can therefore apply/mine it for specific solutions. I found myself resisting the structure/phrasing of the book itself the whole way through, but it’s also been one of the most useful things I’ve read for a while.

Writing/art exercise

• Think of a project that you are stalled on (or want to start, or don’t have the skills for, or…). The first one that springs to mind, or else pull it out of a hat.
• Set a timer for 15 (or 30) minutes.
• Until the timer goes off, you can either work on the project or stare at the project. But you can’t do anything else. (You might have to consider your definition of “work”. I generally exclude planning and research, unless it’s extremely obvious the lack of that is what is stopping me moving forward — which is rarely the case. Related to which, this pamphlet (Turbocharge Your Writing) is one of the most practically useful writing books I’ve ever read.)
• The few times this doesn’t push either me or the project forward, it later turns out that staring time was what the project actually required. (This is specific to my experience and how I work, but I hope the worst case of this exercise just means you got 15 minutes quiet thinking time).

Observation journal — space and time and small epiphanies

One of the unexpected results of the observation journal project was that it provided a thread through 2020 — something colourful holding it together, and occasionally a way to work out what was happening.

I’ve mentioned several times that the journal helped me to clarify (and work around the fact) that I don’t enjoy extended introspection (see e.g. Observation journal: flirting with contagion, and soothing with reflection and the links there). But from time to time the journal was a usefully contained place to work out why I felt a certain way (instead of analysing stories and motifs about which I felt strongly, which was more fun).

These two pages were a week apart. The context was April 2020.

On the first, I was trying to work out 10 WAYS TO ACTUALLY STOP AND NOT FRITTER:

My go-to emergency relaxation/circuit breaker is going to the movies. (It’s air conditioned and you can’t wander off and do something else around the house and sometimes there are large explosions). Making a list of other available (and actually relaxing) options was… not helpful, in that most of my go-tos had vanished. There was no-one to sketch, and the cafes were closed, and I couldn’t meander on errands, and most other options either ran up against or turned into actual work at some point.

It was illuminating, though. I never quite worked out better alternatives (my housemate and I did watch a lot of Midsomer Murders and Miss Marple). But it made me realise that although I thought I was already working from home, I really wasn’t.

This led to the page below, in which I was TRYING TO FIX WORKSPACE.

I had worked from home, yes, but actually from two desks, both sofas, both ends of the kitchen table, bed, and (for various purposes) the spare room and store room. I’d also been working from my desk at uni, other people’s offices, several classrooms, two campus cafes, two local cafes, etc, etc, and quite often those each served a different project. (The eagle-eyed will also spot at least 11 categories of project, and conclude that might be TOO MANY, but it took me a bit longer to work that out.)

But I’d also been living alone for a couple years. In January my new housemate moved in, and then of course everything outside shut down and my housemate also suddenly had to work from home (none of this is a complaint — we’ve had a great year). So my working space was compressed to one desk, one sofa, one end of the table, and bed. Which is quite a lot of room, really, if I’d noticed what was happening. But I didn’t, and all the projects began crowding each other, mentally and physically.

Just realising this — sketching it out on one page and going oh — helped a lot. My mind was a bit cacophonous in April 2020.

The best practical/physical changes turned out to be as follows:

• I took everything that wasn’t a computer off my desk. This created the illusion of elbow room.
• My housemate and I both bought some rolling caddies (a la the RÅSKOG, and off-brand equivalents).
• Each trolley was assigned a broad project category (i.e. general art supplies/admin/teaching).
• The trolleys were herded out of the way at night. By day, the relevant trolley would be dragged alongside the relevant space, creating the illusion of a dedicated workspace.
• We also bought a TV (my first for about 8 years!) and a rolling stand, so it could be trundled into place for Evening, and back out of the way for work.

RÅSKOG

Observation Journal: A sketch, a bear, success

The activity on the opposite page of this observation journal spread is not shown, because it was a fairly standard “how do you define success”/”how does your field define success” set of questions borrowed from an interview. The interesting points for me, then and in retrospect, were that it underscored that I like having time & freedom to do what I want (which turns out to be writing and drawing). But I don’t like excessive introspection so I won’t inflict that on you.

But I wanted to include this page, because I sketched my very first Zoom meeting. More innocent times.

It was also the day Sue brought around this beautiful polar bear (see: Pursued by a (small) bear!):

Observation Journal — a tremor in the web

[NB: On Friday night (US)/Saturday morning (AUS) I’m talking about Flyaway and art and writing games for the Storied Imaginarium!]

On this page of the observation journal, I was again looking at questions from the recorded interviews set for the class I was teaching.

By this point I’d worked out (through the journal: e.g. 1, 2, 3…) that I, personally, should avoid super-introspective questions. Your mileage may vary! As always, a large part of the usefulness of the observation journal is not so much the answers on the page as what I notice about the process of putting the answers on the page.

At any rate, I can eventually learn things, so in this case I deliberately chose questions from the interviews that felt like they inclined towards actions/useful information.

[Note: The first three questions are adapted from those developed by Associate Professor Kim Wilkins and Dr Skye Doherty for interviews with people in various creative industries, for the University of Queensland course HUMN3700: Creativity — myths, methods and impact.]

• How important are noticing and observation to [my] creative practice?
  • (The observation journal itself is obviously a key part of this.)
  • The process of sitting up and taking notice mid-way through a project is very useful. If I’m stuck on something, I’ll sometimes look around the room and try to add in a reference to (or a texture from…) something I can see. If nothing else, it will shake things up.
  • But it’s particularly important as an incidental/ambient part of what I do. As a library and a toolbox and a habit. As practice in the sense of doing scales on the piano. This is why, in addition to observation activities (observation exercises, ROYGBIV, etc) I also like games and exercises that let me pull out and rearrange and play with things I’ve already noticed and know. For example: Observation Journal — tables and other locations; The Key to All Mythologies.
• When do you get a sense that you can create something?
  • There are always ways to make something — knowing that aspect of the craft and/or the material helps a lot (and a lot of the journal involves that). But there’s also a distinct feeling when a thing seems to come with its own momentum, as if it wants to be made.
  • At this point, it felt like that feeling was usually attributable to three things:
    • Inspiration, in the form of a lot of creative input (exposure to other people’s work, to sources of ideas, or just to other people busily making things).
    • Desperation (I think now this is also a type of momentum — it usually happens when I’m being productive on other things. It’s just that I notice it more when the limits of time and space then stop me adding on new activities).
    • Boredom (the kind you have when there are no sources of distraction).
• How do you tell which of your observations are worth developing?
  • I think anything can be developed, and answering this tied into my ongoing thoughts on getting from an idea to a thing (e.g., Observation Journal — giving ideas a push; Observation Journal — Reflections and making things happen).
  • But for some projects there’s a moment of a spark or a sense of greater interest. This usually comes from mismatches, little (or big!) infelicities in the patterns of things (see e.g. Observation Journal — improbable inventions; Observation Journal — Mix and Match).
  • There’s often also a strong aesthetic that drives an idea (e.g. the baroque language of “The Heart of Owl Abbas”).
  • And all of this developed into a new reflection I added to some of my journal activities.
• The new question: Basically, I decided to try stopping (after coming up with ideas) and asking myself which ideas I liked and which I didn’t and then (and this is the important part) WHY.
  • I quickly ran a few recent ideas through that format, which revealed:
    • Ideas that felt as if they might have life had a feeling of narrative impetus, aesthetic charm, a through-line and an innate arc (those two might be the same thing)
    • Ideas that didn’t quite resonate had in common a structure without inhabitants (no people or viewpoint to hang it on), an aesthetic that didn’t charm me, and elements without an arc.
  • This meant I could make a note to further work on understanding the things that worked (e.g. what aesthetics charm me and why) and some tools to deal with ideas that haven’t quite come to life yet (e.g. narrative exoskeletons).

Writing/art/journal exercises:

• If you listen to an interesting interview with someone in your field (or any field, really), instead of (or in addition to) taking notes of the answers, take note of the questions, and try answering them yourself.
• Next time you make a list of ideas (new or existing), take time to go through and work out which ones do (and don’t) feel like something worth pursuing. Then make a few notes on why that is (in both directions. See if there are any patterns. Can you draw some lessons from that for ways to strengthen future ideas?

Watching Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears — the last visit to the cinema Before Everything. No regrets.

Observation journal: flirting with contagion, and soothing with reflection

I mentioned previously, regarding the observation journal, that I prefer to avoid introspection (see Observation Journal: Sharks Eating Stormtroopers, myths and the difficulties of artistic ritual). But the observation journal itself (as opposed to other journal techniques) has helped me when a little reflection on my thought processes is needed, so I wanted to include this page before getting back to the more obviously creative exercises.

First, though: on the left-hand page, canned goods and toilet paper were being purchased and a boy on campus was using an explanation of the mechanics of virus transmission as an excuse to touch the bare arm of the girl with whom he was having coffee.

But on to the right-hand page. Part of what happened in this week of the observation journal, as well as classes (briefly) starting on campus, was that a very last-minute opportunity to arose to take part in an arts residency on a boat. It would have been amazing, but also I was still recovering from hurting my back, and was behind on everything (including class preparation) as a result, and the year was in the process of falling apart.

It was exciting and gratifying and wildly stressful, and in the end it was far too short notice and everyone was in transit (and within a week it would have been overtaken by current events). But I wanted to record what the points of the worst stresses were, and what my personality was doing to make things better (or worse) in a situation like this.

The notes came together fairly naturally around several key points (specific to me and this situation):

• The occasion of getting the offer, and the attendant circumstances and reactions.
• The responses I gave, and which responses were effective, given the limitations of my personality.
• The various feelings I put myself through (I need to put this into my list of project post-mortem questions, too)
• What would make it different.

For the notes on these, I tried to push through a few levels of thought: why I said/did that, and why that was, and why that was. Pushing questions a bit further is usually illuminating, and in my case the approach is loosely based on a combination of the “five whys” and Tiffany Aching).

On a personal level, the main things to come out of it were:

• My extreme difficulty with saying no to anything that fascinates me, compounded by the facts that (a) so many things do fascinate me, and (b) I want to be the sort of person who rushes off at the drop of a hat to do interesting things.
• The desire for some sort of version of a financial “opportunity fund”, but for time. I keep running up against this, because of the way work (and interests, and distractions) expands.
• The known and increasingly undeniable principle that a modicum of organisation now will allow for a great deal of spontaneity later — or, as it says rather grandiosely here — discipline in service of opportunity and spontaneity.

But I’m including this page less as an exposé of my various angsts and anguishes, and more because — again — if I’m forced to be introspective, I find this one-page approach to considering a problem more useful than a wall of text, for several reasons:

• It’s an adaptation of the “lessons learned” notes I usually make after big events (travel and conventions, usually), so the focus is more on recording things in order to learn from them — or at least to have the possibility of learning from them.
• The map approach means I can pursue interesting points without losing the thread of my thoughts or getting mesmerised by my own prose.
• I can glance back at it and find different useful (if unflattering) bits easily each time.
• Importantly, it inclines me to summarise the main things I learned (or want to do).
  • This can appear as a topic on the page (in this case, under “what would make it different?”).
  • But also the principle of reflecting-on-the-observations, which I was building in for my students, helps me to remember to summarise conclusions and extract points to pursue or act on. Having a separate area for reflections already ruled out on the page very much encourages this.
• And finally, even if I don’t actually work out how to resolve an issue, just knowing it’s there, and how I’ll likely react in similar circumstances, at least means I’m prepared and can plan around my habits.

I also, around this time, wished loudly and frequently that someone else would just give a blanket NO to everything on my behalf, which in retrospect is something one shouldn’t have said at the beginning of March 2020.

Ibis surveilling student on phone.

Note: I’ve put together a draft introduction to the observation journal here: Observation Journal. Comments and further questions are welcome.

Second note: I’ve mentioned Flyaway (which you can buy now), but my next book Travelogues is now available for pre-order! It’s essentially an observation journal, recording a sequence of train journeys, and is out in October.