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Last year I read 25 books total. This year I’d read that many by the end of April. I know for a lot of people that’s not a lot, and for others that’s a huge amount, but I think it’s just about the most I can do right now.

 

When I was little I loved to read. I would devour books. I could spend hours and hours reading. There’s a reason I studied English.

 

But ever since I finished my degree I’ve been struggling to really get into reading. I had to read miles of critical texts and source material every week. But I had to scan and skim and read with an essay in mind (not every well I might add). I had to stop devouring and slowly I feel like I forgot how to. I forgot how to enjoy reading.

 

But this year I wanted to make a conscious effort to get back into reading. And I think I’m doing okay so far.

 

So I wanted to share some of the ways I’ve overcome readers block.

Set aside enough time to read in gulps

It’s hard to really get into a book if you’re only able to read a few pages in a go, AKA the only time you have to read is the 2 minutes before you go to sleep and you can barely keep your eyes open. I’ve tried to go to bed a little earlier (although the BBC still thinks I’m an extreme night owl) to give me the time for an extra chapter. I’ve also tried to pick up my books in lunch breaks and tube rides, but more on that further down.

 

Build a varied reading list

One of the most rewarding ways I’ve been working to read more is changing what I’m reading. I’ve read more non-fiction, more biographies, more (non-literature) academic works than I have ever done for fun before. That range has given me so much more to delve into. I’ve had some hits and some misses, but I’ve always had something new to look forward to. I’ve not forced myself to read anything I’ve not fancied at that moment in time. I’ve looked for books I’m genuinely been interested in and then just given them a go.

 

But don’t be afraid to return to what you love

While I’ve added variety to my reading list diet, I’ve still turned to old favourite genres and writers. If I’m ever feeling like I’ve had a patch of books that I’ve not really liked, that haven’t left me wanting to read more, I’ve not been afraid to just read what I know I like. In my case, I love thrillers (I was a murderino before it was cool), I love a good romance, and on occasion I’ll even return to my truest love of all fanfiction.

 

Change up your reading media

I think the biggest change for me has been moving away form just reading paper books. As much as I adore how a ‘real’ book feels in my hands and smells when you thumb through the pages, it’s not always the most practical. I get motion sickness if I read on a train or tube, and my bag is often stuffed full. So I’ve started to download books on to my phone for quick breaks at work and to replace my endless scrolling. I’ve also discovered a new love of audiobooks, which I still class as reading no matter what anyone else says, and they have transformed my commutes.

 

Reading more has given me a power I’d forgotten. Sure it’s nice to say you’ve read however many books, but what’s really exciting is when those books start to join up in your mind. Now I’m reading again, I’m joining up dots and I’m starting to feel inspired to make my own work. When I say that I don’t just mean I want to make (I always want to make) but to push myself to make things that join up those dots and have that giddy feeling of literary power I’ve been feeling recently. I’m not sure I’ll ever live up to it, but it sure can’t hurt to try.

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I’ve been writing a fair bit about time in my newsletter recently, about the power of time, about how time is constructed, about how we can choose to use our time to nap all we want.

 

It was all set in motion by a trip home. Where I grew up everything shuts between 5pm and 8pm. We’re more like 30 minutes away from anything you might deem a high street. So, when I went to take my dog for a walk at around 7pm on a Friday I saw hardly anyone.

 

Whereas where I live now, the high street about 30 seconds from my house pretty much never closes. It will be as busy at 1am as it is at 1pm.  As such, I’ve become used to walking out on an evening and seeing people, or running errands after dinner.

 

We adapt to the environments we’re in, and those environments include their own rhythms. I had come back to York with my London rhythm and felt completely out of place despite knowing the streets as well as I know any in the capital.

 

A social sense of time had impacted how much I felt a part of a community.

 

But those rhythms can easily become something more solid. Think of how Henry Ford’s standardised work week has permeated across the world and into our psyches such that working 9-5 isn’t just a way to make a livin’ it seems to be the only way, despite lots of studies arguing perhaps the set 40 hour week isn’t the most efficient use of our time.

 

Whenever I think about the power of time and our control or lack of control over it, I find myself playing out a scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III. King Richard is about to have all of his plots unravelled, to lose his control, his kingdom and his life. But first, in a preparatory scene, which is (wrongly in my opinion) sometimes cut from certain editions, Richard yields his sense of time.

 

“KING RICHARD III

Well, but what’s o’clock?

 

BUCKINGHAM

Upon the stroke of ten.

 

KING RICHARD III

Well, let it strike.

 

BUCKINGHAM

Why let it strike?

 

KING RICHARD III

Because that, like a Jack, thou keep’st the stroke

Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.

I am not in the giving vein to-day.”

  • Act 4, Scene 2

 

Richard had controlled the pace of the world around him, but now his “meditation[s]” are being interrupted by Buckingham and more than that, he admits defeat to the ticking clock. What I’ve always found interesting about this passage is that Shakespeare wrote it just as clocks had first started to invade people’s homes. For the first time ever, personal spaces had visual and audible reminders of regimented social time. I’ve always wondered if this scene was inspired by this change, by an impact having a clock ticking away as he wrote had on Shakespeare. But who knows.

 

That scene also makes me think about how we mark time visually on clocks and audibly in ticks, tocks and ringing bells. Today, I wanted to play around with how I represent my time. I wrote a few ‘how I manage my time’ posts back when I first started this blog, but I didn’t just want to do that again. Instead, I wanted to challenge myself to make something visual, because telling visual stories is something I want to do more.

 

So here goes nothing…

 

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In my taste finding expedition, I’ve found myself being drawn to more complex and narrative pieces which juggle multiple elements.

 

I’ve always loved looking for structure in whatever I’m looking for whether that’s pattern when I’m researching, rhetorical devices or clever conclusion when I’m reading or hidden triangles when I’m walking around a gallery. But since leaving school, where the importance of composition was drilled into us in with almost a gull term of arranging triangles, squares and circles when we were 14, I’ve gotten lazy.

 

So I thought I should go back to basics and do some research. When I’m doing research, I’m a big notetaker, because that’s the only way I remember anything. This is a spruced up version of those notes in case you’re looking to put some more visual structure into your own work, or to just feel like you’re in the club when you’re looking at art. This is definitely not a comprehensive guide, but it’s what stuck with me.

 

The Tate defines composition as “the arrangement of elements within a work of art”

 

What makes good composition?

The qualities that make good composition seem to almost mirror the qualities that make good visual work more generally, which I pulled together a little while ago in poster form (below). The qualities most relevant to composition (with a little explanation) are the following:

  1. Proportion – how do “things fit together and relate to each other in terms of size and scale; whether big or small, nearby or distant”? This is the most obvious quality of composition.
  2. Emphasis/focus – where is the viewer’s eye drawn? Creating contrast and playing with balance, rhythm or movement can make certain elements of a piece stand out and appear more important.
  3. Balance & unity – do all of the elements work together? Symmetrical compositions instil a sense of order and calm (think Wes Anderson) whereas asymmetrical ones create more dynamic and active pieces.
  4. Rhythm & movement – what is happening in the image and how does it draw your eye? Leading lines and underlying shapes/tones can direct the viewer to focus on certain elements of give a sense that a piece is going somewhere at a certain pace.
  5. Pattern – do elements of the composition repeat? Using repetition can give clear structure or draw certain parts of an image together.
  6. Contrast – how do elements of the piece appear different? Contrast may come in many forms including hue, tone or scale and can create dynamics within a piece.

12 Basic Elements of Design

Tried and tested structures.

There are a number of “rules” in classical composition like using the golden mean or the rule of thirds. These seem to be less rules in the strict sense, but tried and true templates we can use to inform our own compositions. I’ve put together a visual guide to these templates/bits of composition inspiration.

Top tips

  • The rule of thirds works best in rectangles (not squares)
  • Aim for variety in the sizes and spaces between elements for a more dynamic composition – but there is a time and a space for super regular work.
  • As well as the scale/spacing of elements, also use colour and tone to draw the eye.
  • Use objects and light to point at the thing you want people to focus on.

 

So those are the bits of advice I’ve collected so far, but if any of you have any other top tips or have more formal art backgrounds and can help a girl out I’m all ears!

 

But for now I’m just going to try out what I’ve got in my illustration and by burgeoning photography practice.

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Discombobulated.

 

It’s one of my favourite words. It also describes how I’ve been feeling on and off a lot recently.

 

I spent some time writing about it as a word and as a state of being in my newsletter. Occasionally, the more personal or  looser pieces I write for my sunday mail out spark something a little deeper, and this was one of those pieces. So I wanted to expand upon it a bit and share it in a more permanent place.

 

Originally it was just a playful, rootless coinage conveying a sense of confusion. It was probably inspired by similar words like discomfit and discompose, but the –bobulate part has no etymological origin. In fact, it started its linguistic life as discombobricate, a bit of American English, which mocked its latin sounding brothers. It is this nonsense quality that gives the word its meaning—i.e., to throw into a state of confusion. It’s also what makes it the perfect word for when I’m feeling without my bearings, because it has no root, no anchor in the ‘real world’ of language.

 

I’m never quite sure why, but I can quite easily feel anchorless. Perhaps it’s because I had a change to my routine on a Monday, perhaps it’s a change in the chemicals that control my feelings or perhaps it’s just where my mind is at.

 

Erynn Brook recently put together a brilliant Twitter thread about mental health and executive function. She described exectuive function by way of a clever post-it note metaphor:

“Executive function is the little executive assistant in your brain. The part that keeps track of tasks and slides you a little “hey you’re doing this next”. Like, say you always put on deodorant after you brush your teeth, it’s routine. That’s executive function.

 

[…]

 

Imagine that everyone starts each day with a stack of 100 post it notes. You get 100 “oh right, this thing next” moments in each day, and when you’re out, you’re out.

 

But some people also have an executive assistant with unlimited post it notes, and some people don’t.”

 

Generally, I have a pretty good stack of post-it notes. But when I’m feeling discombobulated, it’s not that I have fewer post-it notes necessarily, it’s that the stack has been dispersed by a huge gust of wind and I’d left grasping at the air to get them back.

 

That’s probably one of the reasons I’m a very routine and order based person. If I can weigh my post-its down with the rock of a solid plan or stick them together with a set of routines, the less likely I feel like they are to blow away.

 

I think, or at least I hope, it’s a feeling a lot of us have at some points or other. Like we’ve been spun around a few times too many in the playground and we’ve lost sight of the ground and need to sit down before we can get on with our days. Or, not to become that guy, like in Fight Club when the narrator says “Everything’s far away. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.”

 

It’s a normal feeling, but it is a little discombobulating.

If you’ve been made dizzy recently, or in case someone takes you on the merry go round any time soon here are a few of the ways I find the ground again when I’m feeling that way.

 

Take some time to sit down – it’s easy to feel like you’re loosing ground if you stop just because you’re feeling a bit off. But I’ve found, at least for me, the more I try to push myself forward the more discombobulated I feel if I can get back on track. So, I like to sit down with a book or a film or just to close my eyes.

 

Find what grounds you – there are some things which are just so rooted in our brains that they put us back in our bodies. That might be visiting a specific place, cooking a certain food (smells are some of the strongest memory triggers) or revisiting an old favourite. For me, it’s speaking to my Mum. It doesn’t matter what we talk about, this week it was the carpet she’s just had fitted, but I can’t be anything but myself when I’m speaking to her.

 

Return to a thing you can do without too much effort – in Erynn’s thread she point out how just telling someone who’s running low on post-it notes to go to yoga doesn’t help because it takes a whole load of post-it notes to actually get to yoga. “It’s not that “you should try yoga” is a bad idea, but it’s the equivalent of telling someone standing in the ashes of their burned down house that some succulents would really brighten things up.” Instead someone helping you make a plan is better. So if you can let someone else take the work out of your plans for a little while so that you can reorder your post-its. Or, if you’re on your own, just go for something that’s so well-worn that you could do it in your sleep – make a lasagna, do some cross-stitch, watch some trashy TV.

 

Try a shock to the system* – if all else fails try to step out of your routine again. Routines are brilliant but it’s easy to go through them on auto-pilot, which means if you’re discombobulated it can be as if you’re floating above yourself in some kind of out of body experience while you go about your day to day. Doing something unexpected, even if it’s something small, can shake you back to reality. I’m going to try a photography trip to a new spot after this newsletter goes out. *This one only really works if you’ve got the mental energy and resources, so I know it won’t apply to everyone in every situation.

 

That’s what I’ve got some etymology, some tips, some being a messy human being in the world.

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In a recent post, I wrote about taking mini-adventures on your own. The power of taking yourself on holiday and how to get started if the idea of spending a significant amount of time (in a new place) solo is a little intimidating.

But when I travel alone now, I’m not just focused on learning to be by myself I also try to make my mini-adventures time to reset and rejuvenate my creativity. So, this is just a short optional add-on to those tips to help you turn a solo-adventure for adventures sake into a solo-creative-endeavour.

 

It’s long been argued that venturing somewhere new can help change your perspectives and ignite a creative spark. Travel allows you to draw on new source material new views, new encounters, new tastes and sounds. Travel is also one of the best opportunities to get lost and if we are to believe Keats that’s an essential part of creative thinking. He said a great thinker was someone who had negative capabilities, who was “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” One of the times that plays out, for me at least, is when travelling. You can literally live in a space where you are uncertain full, a place full of mystery.

 

There’s so much literature on the power of travel for inspiring creativity, that I won’t dwell further on it here. Instead, I’ll point you in the direction of a piece illustrator Jean Julien put together for the National Geographic, which I read last year and has still stayed with me – so it must be good. He “set out on a classic American road trip along California’s central coast […and] documented [his] journey by placing paper cut-outs of [himself] on location and shooting vignettes” and he uses those vignettes to explain the lessons the trip taught him.

So, instead of writing ad infinum about the virtues of travel for creativity, I want to share a couple of the ways that I try to embrace the potential travel brings, because sometimes you have to work for it a little bit.

 

Rest & be bored

A lot of the time the reason we’re not feeling creative is because we’re tired and we haven’t given ourselves time to let ideas percolate. Being on holiday is the perfect time to rest up and ruminate. Sleep in. Sit somewhere and just watch the world go by.

Get lost

There are a whole load of cheesy wall stickers that say something like ‘only when we are lost can we find ourselves’. They’re corny and I wouldn’t be caught dead with one, but they probably have some truth. If we turn back to Keats and think about “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” The best way to do that is to get lost, to wander without aim or bearings without reaching for a map for a little while. To see what we find as we walk (or cycle or paddle or whatever) and to see what finds us.

Do something different

Travel’s power to inspire creativity supposedly comes from being in an environment that jolts you out of your day to day. Being somewhere new forces you to see things with new eyes to set out of your habits and make conscious choices all the time because you’re not in the familiar. If you’re not in somewhere that feels completely different, or even if you are, try to do something a little out of the ordinary. You could try a new food or a new activity. You could mix up your ordinary routines. You could just wander and say yes to the first thing that comes along. Just try something new and see if it gives you a fresh perspective.

Make something with your hands

Whenever I go on a solo trip I like to make something. I’ve crafted rings and whittled spoons. I’ve sketched and collaged. Essentially I just like to make something outside of my usual workspace and get my hands dirty. There’s something incredibly liberating about being in a new space, with a new set of tools and just getting to play. You could even take a class. Plus taking home something you’ve made is always a brilliant souvenir.

Document it

In my mini-adventures post I wrote about the importance of documenting trips when you’re on your own because you’re not socialising stories and turning them into memories. That process of capturing what you see, hear and feel is even more important if you’re looking to use a trip as creative fodder. As much as you might set up a trip to be the perfect creative getaway, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to feel creative when you’re there. If you’re anything like me, your desire to make will come and go as will your inspiration. So taking a note of things that catch your eye, ear or heart as you travel means you have those memories and beginnings of ideas ready for later when you’re in a position to use them.

 

So, that’s it. Essentially, go away, embrace the new and try to make something. Of course there are structured creative breaks you can go on, writing and painting retreats. But if you’re just looking to make the most of a trip you already have planned, I think the only real thing you need to do is be conscious of that desire and honour it while you’re away.